From Heatwaves to Wildfires: Why Climate Change Can Leave Us Feeling Anxious and Powerless

When Climate Change Starts to Feel Closer to Home

For a long time, climate change could feel like something happening somewhere else, or something we would really have to worry about in the future.

I am not sure it feels quite so distant anymore.

Very hot days, drought conditions, warnings about extreme heat and images of fires spreading across dry ground have become increasingly familiar. In August 2026, fires in the West Midlands damaged homes and led to evacuations and hospital treatment. The fires happened during exceptionally hot, dry conditions and made what can sometimes feel like an abstract environmental issue suddenly look very close to home.

Watching something like that can bring up all sorts of feelings. You may find yourself wondering whether this is what summers are going to be like now. Perhaps you start thinking about where you live, your children, your home or what life might look like in ten or twenty years.

For some people, those thoughts pass. For others, they stay. And this is where climate anxiety, sometimes called eco-anxiety, can begin to take up more space than we would like.

What Is Climate Anxiety?

Climate anxiety is a term used to describe worry, fear, sadness, anger or helplessness connected with climate change and what it might mean for the future.

It is not necessarily a sign that something is psychologically wrong with you. Eco-anxiety itself is not currently a formal mental health diagnosis. It can be an understandable emotional response to something that feels threatening, uncertain and largely outside our personal control. That distinction matters.

Sometimes when we feel anxious, the temptation is to immediately ask:

How do I stop feeling like this?

But perhaps there is another question worth asking first:

What is this anxiety actually about?

Is it fear about your own future? Concern for your children? Grief about changes you are already seeing? Anger that more has not been done? Or the uncomfortable feeling that something enormous is happening and you have very little power over it?

For many people, it may be a mixture of all of those things.

Why Heatwaves and Wildfires Can Make Climate Change Feel More Personal

There is a difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it emotionally.

We can read about climate change for years. We can understand the science, watch documentaries and hear warnings about rising temperatures. But seeing smoke close to homes in a British town is different. Experiencing days of intense heat is different. Seeing grass that would normally be green turned dry and brown is different. It brings something that once seemed distant into the present.

The UK Health Security Agency has reported that extreme weather, particularly heat and flooding, is already affecting mental health in the UK. It has also highlighted growing anxiety about future climate impacts, particularly among younger people.

That does not mean everybody who experiences a heatwave is going to develop a mental health problem.

But it does mean there is a genuine connection between climate change and mental health, and it is worth talking about.

Why Does Climate Change Make Me Feel So Anxious?

Anxiety tends to struggle with uncertainty. It likes answers. It likes to know what is going to happen, when it will happen and what we should do about it.

Climate change gives us very few of those comforting certainties.

You might find yourself thinking:

How bad is this going to get?

Could a wildfire happen where I live?

What kind of future will my children have?

Should I be making different choices now?

Am I doing enough?

What if everybody else carries on as normal?

The mind can keep asking these questions because it is looking for an answer that finally makes everything feel safe. The problem is that there may not be one. So we search again. We read another article. We check another forecast. We watch another video. And for a little while it can feel as though gathering more information is helping us regain control.

Then we see something else worrying, and the anxiety begins again.

When Staying Informed Turns Into Doomscrolling

There is nothing wrong with wanting to know what is happening in the world. But there can be a point where staying informed becomes something else. Perhaps you pick up your phone to read one story and, half an hour later, you are still scrolling.

One wildfire leads to an article about drought. The drought story leads to a temperature projection. Then you are reading comments, predictions and increasingly frightening scenarios about what might happen years from now. You may finish feeling worse than when you started. And yet, strangely, you may still feel the urge to check again.

This can happen with many forms of anxiety. The checking is often an attempt to reassure ourselves. The difficult part is that reassurance does not last. One question gets answered and another one appears.

If you recognise yourself in this, it may be worth noticing not simply how much climate news you consume, but what you are hoping to get from it. Are you trying to understand something useful? Or are you trying to reach a level of certainty that simply is not available?

Sometimes putting some boundaries around news and social media can help. That does not mean ignoring climate change. It might simply mean choosing when you read the news rather than allowing it to follow you around all day.

Why Feeling Powerless Can Be So Difficult

For me, this is one of the most important parts of understanding climate anxiety.

Climate change is huge. We are individual people. That mismatch matters.

You can recycle. You can drive less. You can change what you buy, how often you fly or what you eat. You can vote, campaign or support organisations doing work that matters to you. But however committed you are, you cannot personally control global temperatures, government policy, what large companies do or how billions of other people live their lives.

And that can leave us in a difficult psychological position.

"I care about this, but I cannot control it."

For someone who already struggles with anxiety or overthinking, that feeling can be especially uncomfortable. Anxiety often persuades us that if we think hard enough, prepare enough or worry enough, we may somehow prevent the thing we fear.

Of course, worrying does not give us that control. Mostly, it leaves us tired.

When Caring Becomes Guilt

Climate anxiety is not always experienced as fear. Sometimes it appears as guilt.

You may start questioning everyday decisions.

Should I drive there?

Should I take that flight?

Should I buy this?

Am I doing enough?

Am I part of the problem?

There is value in thinking about the impact of our choices.But there is also a difference between making thoughtful choices because they fit with your values and living with the feeling that every decision carries a moral burden. Nobody lives with zero impact.

If the standard you set yourself becomes perfection, there will always be another reason to feel guilty.

You can care deeply without making yourself personally responsible for solving something that requires action far beyond one individual.

When Climate Anxiety Starts Affecting Decisions About the Future

Climate anxiety can also enter much bigger areas of our lives.

Where should I live?

Should I buy a house?

What kind of work do I want to do?

Is travelling still something I feel comfortable with?

And, for some people:

Do I want to bring children into an uncertain world?

A recent personal advice column explored just how deeply climate fear can become tangled up with decisions about pregnancy, family and the future. What stood out was not simply the climate anxiety itself, but the way anxiety became connected with grief, uncertainty and much bigger questions about what the person wanted from their life.

There is no universal answer to these questions. And counselling should not provide one.

If someone came to me struggling with a decision about their future, my job would not be to decide for them.

What can sometimes be useful is trying to separate two voices which can become difficult to distinguish:

What do I genuinely want? and What is fear telling me I should do?

They are not always the same thing.

We Often Want Certainty Before We Allow Ourselves to Live

There are times when anxiety persuades us that life can begin properly once we know everything is going to be alright.

Once the test result comes back.

Once the relationship feels secure.

Once the finances are sorted.

Once the world feels safer.

The difficulty is that life has never offered that kind of certainty.

Climate change can make this particularly obvious because it forces us to think about a future that none of us can fully predict.

Learning to tolerate uncertainty does not mean pretending everything will be fine. I think that distinction is important.

It means recognising that we cannot know everything about the future and asking ourselves how we want to live in the meantime.

You Can Care About the Planet Without Carrying Everything

People sometimes worry that reducing their climate anxiety means becoming less concerned about climate change. It does not have to mean that at all.

Caring and anxiety are not the same thing.

You can remain informed. You can make choices that reflect your values. You can support change. You can be angry about things you believe are wrong. And you can still give yourself permission to laugh, make plans, go on holiday, spend time with people you love and enjoy your life.

There can sometimes be an unspoken feeling that enjoying yourself while something serious is happening elsewhere is somehow selfish. But carrying permanent fear does not make you more caring. It simply means you are carrying permanent fear.

Finding Some Control When So Much Feels Outside It

I often come back to the difference between control and influence when thinking about anxiety.

We may have very little control over the bigger picture. But that does not mean we have no agency at all. You can choose what information you take in and how often you take it in. You can decide which environmental actions genuinely matter to you rather than trying to do everything. You can become involved in your community or support a cause that gives you a sense that your values are being put into action. And you can pay attention to your own mental health. That matters too.

Sometimes taking action helps because it gives anxious energy somewhere useful to go. Other times, the thing we need is not another action. We may simply need somewhere to talk honestly about feeling frightened, angry, sad or powerless.

How Can Counselling Help With Climate Anxiety?

Counselling for climate anxiety is not about trying to convince you that climate change is nothing to worry about. That would miss the point. It is also not about telling you what you should believe or what lifestyle choices you should make.

Counselling offers space to look at what is happening for you.

Why does this particular issue feel so frightening?

What happens when you feel you are not in control?

How much of your time are you spending mentally living in the future?

Is climate anxiety connecting with other worries you already carry?

Do you find uncertainty particularly difficult?

Are you feeling grief?

Guilt?

Anger?

Or perhaps you simply feel exhausted from thinking about it all.

Sometimes anxiety attaches itself to something very real but then begins to grow around it.

Talking can help us work out what belongs to the situation in front of us and what may be connected to older fears, habits of overthinking or our own need to feel safe.

There does not always have to be a clever answer. Sometimes having somewhere to put the thoughts is a good place to start.

Caring for the Future Without Losing the Present

None of us knows exactly what the world will look like in ten, twenty or fifty years.

For someone experiencing climate anxiety, that uncertainty can feel enormous.

But there is another side to it.

We are also living now.

There are people around us now.

There are conversations, relationships, ordinary days, birthdays, walks, meals, plans and moments that are happening now.

If our mind spends most of its time trying to live in a frightening version of the future, we can gradually lose contact with the life that is actually in front of us.

This is not an argument for ignoring climate change.

It is about finding a way of caring about tomorrow without allowing fear of tomorrow to take over today.

You do not have to care less about the planet in order to care for your own mental health.

If Climate Anxiety Is Becoming Difficult to Switch Off

If worries about climate change are affecting your sleep, relationships, concentration or ability to enjoy everyday life, it may be helpful to talk to someone. You might not even think of what you are experiencing as climate anxiety. Perhaps it simply feels like overthinking.

A constant sense that something bad is coming. Difficulty switching your mind off. Or feeling responsible for things that are much bigger than you.

Counselling can offer a confidential and non-judgemental space to understand those feelings rather than simply trying to push them away.

I am a BACP Accredited Counsellor and Psychotherapist and offer counselling online, by telephone and face-to-face in Ashford, Kent, supporting adults with anxiety, overthinking, stress and other emotional difficulties.

If you would like to talk about whether counselling might be useful for you, you are welcome to get in touch.

Frequently Asked Questions About Climate Anxiety

What is climate anxiety?

Climate anxiety, sometimes called eco-anxiety, describes feelings such as worry, fear, sadness, anger or helplessness connected with climate change and its possible effects on the future. It is not currently a formal mental health diagnosis, although climate-related distress can still have a very real effect on wellbeing.

Is climate anxiety normal?

Feeling concerned about climate change does not automatically mean you have an anxiety disorder. There is a real issue behind the worry. The question may be whether that concern is beginning to dominate your thoughts, affect your sleep or interfere with the way you want to live.

Can heatwaves affect mental health?

Yes. Extreme heat can affect physical comfort, sleep and emotional wellbeing, and UK health authorities recognise heat as one of the climate-related hazards already affecting mental health. People who are already vulnerable may be affected more strongly.

Why do wildfires make me anxious when I am not directly affected?

Seeing homes threatened, people evacuated or familiar landscapes burning can make danger feel much closer. Your mind may begin imagining what could happen to you or the people you care about. That does not mean the same event will happen to you, but the images can still provoke a genuine emotional response.

Why do I keep checking climate change news?

Repeated checking can sometimes be a way of trying to reduce uncertainty. You hope the next article, forecast or update will make things feel clearer. It may provide temporary relief, but if another worrying story appears, the urge to check can quickly return.

How can I stop feeling powerless about climate change?

It can help to separate what is within your influence from what is not. You cannot personally control global climate change, but you can decide how you live, what causes you support, what information you consume and how you look after yourself. Having influence is different from having complete control.

Can counselling help with eco-anxiety?

Counselling can provide somewhere to explore the fear, grief, anger, guilt or helplessness connected with climate change. It does not require you to stop caring about environmental issues. Instead, it may help you find a way of living with uncertainty without allowing anxiety about the future to overwhelm your life in the present.

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Written by Paul Madden MBACP (Accred) is a BACP Accredited Counsellor and Psychotherapist with around 20 years of experience supporting adults through anxiety, grief and bereavement, relationship difficulties, stress and burnout, men's mental health, sexual health concerns, life transitions and the emotional impact of health diagnoses. He offers online, telephone and in-person counselling in Ashford, Kent.

Learn more about Paul and his approach →