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Burning anxiety: The new normal isn't just the fire, it's the fear
Source: The New Daily (Australia)
Back in September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations that the climate change debate was subjecting Australian children to “needless anxiety”.
A few weeks later, Australia began to burn. It’s been burning for months, with no end in sight – an apocalypse from which entire communities will still be recovering from, and feel hurt by, when sooner than later the nightmare will start over again.
If the fire chiefs and climate forecasters are correct – and common sense still means anything – we’ll burn again just as brightly and painfully over and over again. If not next year, the year after that.
Which is why the climate-consequence anxiety of our children isn’t needless after all. In fact it’s now a national trend. Because mummy and daddy are feeling it too. Who isn’t even a little afraid? Who doesn’t wonder where things will go from here?
As a nation, how mentally off-kilter are we?
For people directly affected by the fires – be it losing a home or a family member, or spending terrified nights huddled with your children on a beach as the flames sizzle closer – there’s the matter of immediate trauma and later depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, mood disorders, suicidal tendencies and alcohol abuse.
A few weeks later, Australia began to burn. It’s been burning for months, with no end in sight – an apocalypse from which entire communities will still be recovering from, and feel hurt by, when sooner than later the nightmare will start over again.
If the fire chiefs and climate forecasters are correct – and common sense still means anything – we’ll burn again just as brightly and painfully over and over again. If not next year, the year after that.
Which is why the climate-consequence anxiety of our children isn’t needless after all. In fact it’s now a national trend. Because mummy and daddy are feeling it too. Who isn’t even a little afraid? Who doesn’t wonder where things will go from here?
As a nation, how mentally off-kilter are we?
For people directly affected by the fires – be it losing a home or a family member, or spending terrified nights huddled with your children on a beach as the flames sizzle closer – there’s the matter of immediate trauma and later depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, mood disorders, suicidal tendencies and alcohol abuse.
Snip
The new normal: Why things will never be the same again
So what’s the nature of this change to our national psyche? There’s fear of course. And the growing recognition that what we assumed would happen at the end of the century – the nasty consequences of climate change – have begun to happen now, and happen here in the Lucky Country. The biggest blow to our sense of identity and sense of place is we’re now waking up in a country we no longer wholly recognise.
Dr Robert Llewellyn-Jones is a Sydney psychiatrist and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.
Speaking to The New Daily, Dr Llewellyn-Jones said that if the predictions are accurate about these fires becoming a hallmark of the Australian way of life, “then our kids and grandkids will be living in a very different country. And that is going to affect our national psyche”.
“We’ve always seen ourselves as a secure, safe and prosperous nation. All of what we have taken for granted is threatened by the fact that we will be having many more extreme weather events.
“Those sorts of events are likely to make people feel helpless, and as a result of the helplessness and feeling it’s all too hard, it can make people develop a siege mentality.”
So what’s the nature of this change to our national psyche? There’s fear of course. And the growing recognition that what we assumed would happen at the end of the century – the nasty consequences of climate change – have begun to happen now, and happen here in the Lucky Country. The biggest blow to our sense of identity and sense of place is we’re now waking up in a country we no longer wholly recognise.
Dr Robert Llewellyn-Jones is a Sydney psychiatrist and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.
Speaking to The New Daily, Dr Llewellyn-Jones said that if the predictions are accurate about these fires becoming a hallmark of the Australian way of life, “then our kids and grandkids will be living in a very different country. And that is going to affect our national psyche”.
“We’ve always seen ourselves as a secure, safe and prosperous nation. All of what we have taken for granted is threatened by the fact that we will be having many more extreme weather events.
“Those sorts of events are likely to make people feel helpless, and as a result of the helplessness and feeling it’s all too hard, it can make people develop a siege mentality.”
snip
“You only need to think of how badly the koala population has been decimated in NSW and the Gippsland area,” he said.
“That’s something people are worried about now.
“Everyone thought it was going to go bad at the end of the century. But it’s happening now. And this is either going to act as a huge wake-up call and lead to significant change in the way the population views climate change – and as a consequence the way politicians view it. Or it could go the other way: If people get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, people could become fatalistic, or even worse, go into denial.”
Dr Richard Yin is a Perth GP and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.
In 2018, he published an essay – well worth reading – about the phenomenon of waking up in a country you no longer recognise, because it’s been destroyed. This phenomenon is called ‘solastalgia’, a word derived from nostalgia.
Dr Yin wrote: “While in nostalgia that pain relates to leaving one’s home, in a sense solastalgia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of ‘home’, that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape; it is the homesickness you have when you are still at home.
“That’s something people are worried about now.
“Everyone thought it was going to go bad at the end of the century. But it’s happening now. And this is either going to act as a huge wake-up call and lead to significant change in the way the population views climate change – and as a consequence the way politicians view it. Or it could go the other way: If people get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, people could become fatalistic, or even worse, go into denial.”
Dr Richard Yin is a Perth GP and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.
In 2018, he published an essay – well worth reading – about the phenomenon of waking up in a country you no longer recognise, because it’s been destroyed. This phenomenon is called ‘solastalgia’, a word derived from nostalgia.
Dr Yin wrote: “While in nostalgia that pain relates to leaving one’s home, in a sense solastalgia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of ‘home’, that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape; it is the homesickness you have when you are still at home.
Link: https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/wellbeing/2020/01/11/burning-anxiety-the-new-normal/
A long, thoughtful essay.
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