- Sessions being held at the University of Derby by Dr Jamie Bird
- They involve participants trying to express feelings through art and poetry
- Student Claire Prowse felt she may not have a future because of climate crisis
By Harry Howard For Mailonline
Published: 09:45 EST, 24 January 2020 | Updated: 10:01 EST, 24 January 2020
Students and staff anxious about climate change are being offered therapy to tackle feelings of anger, guilt and grief.
University of Derby are running art therapy sessions for those suffering ‘eco-anxiety’ -an issue brought to the forefront of public attention by 17-year-old activist Greta Thunberg.
Participants are encouraged to express their feelings about climate change through ‘poetry and movement’.
One student attending the therapy sessions, Claire Prowse, said climate change makes her feel like she is ‘not going to have a future’.
She told the BBC: ‘It makes me very anxious because every time I look at the news I rarely see any good news about the environment.
‘It just makes me think I’m not going to have a future.’
Another attendee, Nicola Grigg, added that climate change made her feel ‘isolated and lonely’.
She said she felt ‘guilty’ because she does not have the power to ‘change’ the climate situation.
The academic behind the sessions, Dr Jamie Bird, said people suffer ‘climate grief’ when they see the environment being damaged.
Writing on a blog on the university’s website, Dr Bird, who is head of health and social care research at Derby, said: ‘This activity focuses on the here and now. It does not seek to solve problems or provide solutions.
‘It provides a safe space to express feelings in a compassionate environment.’
Eco-anxiety is described by Psychology Today as ‘a fairly recent psychological disorder afflicting an increasing number of individuals who worry about the environmental crisis’.
No stats are available on how widespread it is, but some experts said there is increased public anxiety around climate change.
In a 2017 report, Professor Susan Clayton at the College of Wooster, in Ohio, wrote: ‘We can say that a significant proportion of people are experiencing stress and worry about the potential impacts of climate change, and that the level of worry is almost certainly increasing.’
As well as being offered to students and staff, Derby University’s workshops have been held in towns nearby, with more planned in Derbyshire this year.
Dr Bird said: ‘More and more I think there’s this recognition that people are feeling not only anxious but also a sense of loss, or it might be a sense of anger or guilt or shame.
‘Helplessness underlines a lot of those feelings because it’s something we’ve never really had to face before and we don’t know how it’s going to pan out.’
He added that the sessions have been successful, with some finding that they feel less anxious or guilty when they leave.
Cooling… Warming…. Change Prophecy is a first-order forcing of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Anxiety (CACA). A well known therapy is to force the university to refund student admission and matriculation costs… prices.
What a bunch of pathetic snowflakes they are!
They allow the media and propaganda deceive them so easily, it seems that these people will never be happy because they are susceptible to being used by people who seek power and money.
For me I sleep fine, knowing that weather and climate, are not my enemy in life.
Climate mania is a cult, de-programming cult members can be very difficult, as I understand it.
As studient;s don/ they have any curiousity about what makes the world work.
So instead of blindly accepting this CC nonsense what about some research starting with the properties of CO2, then some studies of history, its all happened before, so what is there to be upset about ?
MJE VK5ELL
“students struggling with anxiety about climate change THERAPY to tackle their feelings”
Climate scientists too
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/10/19/emotion/
Far too many in universities have never grown out of their childhood. This is the result of years of indoctrination and coddling. And as for “therapy”, far too often that too is nothing more than indoctrination. Not even CLOSE to being a “science” of any kind.
How far the standards have fallen. People so intellectually and emotionally fragile have no business at something called a “university”.
Best quote on the subject
“All it really takes to destroy a people is to take away their future, to take away the potential of their children”
Rare Earth
How to destroy People: Japans Untouchables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIsndKkasfI
7min – 40secs
I was drafted into the US army in 1966 at age 19. That is something to have anxiety about- possibly dead in Vietnam. Tell these wimps to grow up!
They don’t grow up they are part of the #me generation and mommy and/or daddy does everything for them. They live in nice Detol cleaned houses with their allergies and have never seen the real world much less deal with real problems.
Well said, Mike McHenry.
A famous Australian cricketer, the late Keith Miller, who flew Mosquitos for the RAF in WW2 was once asked if he suffered anxiety playing Test Cricket.
He famously replied, ‘ Stress? playing cricket?’
‘Stress is a Messerschmidt up your arse!’
And even though the airframe was wood the Mosquito was an exceptional fighter/bomber.
Get thee to the other side of campus.
Art therapy for climate anxiety — what could be more comical?
And I even claim to be an … “artist”.
There’s not enough head shaking that can be done here.
Confession of a Climate Criminal
(A therapeutic poem by RK)
I am human,
I am cancer,
I am cause
of world disaster.
My carbon sins destroy Earth’s nature.
Solutions lie in legislature,
where laws must strive to regulate
our rights to eat and copulate.
Too long our comforts plague the air.
The planet suffers — it is not fair.
Molecules that drive our breath
have multiplied to speed our death.
Our duty lies in transformation,
using false imagination,
void of researched practicality,
ignoring basics of reality.
Forgive me Gaia, I have sinned.
Forever will I make amends.
I feel so much better now.
Trouble is that they don’t have enough real problems to worry about.
The curse of psychology keeps right on giving.
No one who feels real guilt goes around bragging about feeling guilty. No one readily admits to a sin he has actually committed unless he is sure he will be forgiven for it.
The real anxiety climate crisis activists feel is that they may be wrong. Tell them that life on Earth will end in twenty years and they beam with joy. Tell them that human beings will continue to advance and prosper far into the foreseeable future and they get quite agitated.
Perhaps floating an ice cube in a glass of water might allay their fears a bit more and demonstrating Archimedes principle. “The water level remains the same when the ice cube melts. A floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight. Since water expands when it freezes, one ounce of frozen water has a larger volume than one ounce of liquid water.”
Pretty standard nowadays. Most university press releases have the “if you feel threatened by this, we provide counselling etc”. It’s probably to cover themselves a little so they aren’t sued by their students (irony).
One word for those afflicted: Xanax
Because that one-word help requires they find professional mental health care, which they apparently are in desperate need of.
Poor Dears! Darby U should provide each one of the afflicted with their own ‘Widdle The Worrier’ doll! It will help them express their irrational fears and aid developing coping skills for the non-problem of Climate Change. Yep – ‘Widdle’ is a real ‘thing’….. UGH!
“Widdle the Worrier is a talking doll that gives your child tips and coping techniques every time you squeeze his tummy. Widdle is effective for role-playing and a fantastic teaching tool. He’s also really cute!”
https://gozen.com/product/widdle/
You said it straight, Allencic. I live in Alberta, and I was born in 1952. Everything about life has improved since I was born. The wealth even poor people enjoy here now was unheard of in the fifties. There have been enormous strides in general health and social equality for minorities.
And yes, the climate here has warmed, but this is a very good thing. I delivered newspapers after school in Red Deer in the sixties, and I remember weeklong cold snaps when the temperature was close to 40 below. There would still be ice on the Red Deer River on April !st. Now the winters are shorter and milder, but the summers have not become noticeably hotter.
You just can’t tell people that things are getting better, and will likely get better still. People just don’t seem to notice anything but discomfort and pain, so when these things inevitably happen, they distort people’s understanding of how pleasant most people’s lives are most of the time.
Greta Thunberg is just an anxious, chronically unhappy person. She wants us to panic. Not me. I’m going to have some more pumpkin pie and take a nap.
The University of Derby would like to treat the student’s anxiety symptoms because the world, including the University, is telling them that Change Change, due to CO2 emissions, will set the globe on fire in 10 to 30 years.
The university has a STEM program, why not teach the the students the science of global warming/climate change. The students will learn some of the following and perhaps dispel their anxiety.
1) CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere.
2) The Vostok Ice Core shows CO2 lags Temperature in the various transitions from glacial/interglacial periods over the past 600,000 years.
3) The polar bears are thriving and increasing in population
4) Sea Level Rise is mostly due to land subsidence and not due to rising CO levels.
5) The earth is greening due to the fertilization effect of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
6) Greenhouse operators raise CO2 levels to over 1,000 ppm to improved plant growth.
Need more be said? There is a lot more.
Someone recently told me very recently actual greenhouses use CO2 to keep them warm because CO2 radiates heat.
The opening line needs a wee alteration:
Students and staff anxious about climate change will be repeatedly brainwashed until all anger, guilt and grief is forgotten.
What a tragic situation has arisen when our youth is being traumatised by the promise of imaginary anthropogenic climate change which will deprive them of a future! Mother Nature determines the climate….NOT humans! What a crime to expose them to this brainwashing!
Claire Prowse .. a student in poetry …
Did Claire specialized in Prowse writing ?
This Daily Mail’s article is a farce (written in prose form).
Time to defund non STEM courses. Bunch of thick snowflakes.
The big issue here is mobile phones / tablets / PC’s.
I imagine most of these impressionable young people read the news on their phones etc. They get fed the news instead of seeking out the news. I call this the “Amazon issue”.
The Amazon Issue happens when you buy a book off Amazon called something like “How to be a Climate Crusader and Defeat All Those Naughty D****rs”*.
Amazon then bombards you with “Because you bought “How to be a climate crusader”, you may like “How to Join Extinction Rebellion Whilst not Feeling Guilty About Your Huuuuuuuge Carbon Footprint”*
So people are receiving suggestions that reinforce their existing beliefs rather than challenging their beliefs.
Exactly the same thing happens with news on your phone etc. You read one piece of “news” about “Love Island” and all of a sudden your phone thinks your interested in “Dancing on Ice” and insists on removing news about Brexit in favour of fluff pieces about irrelevant “news”.
*These books may not exist, although they probably do.