Anxiety Around Climate Change: How Chicagoans Can Cope

A local, grounded guide to managing eco-anxiety with action, community, and compassion

If the thought of melting ice caps, extreme weather, or polluted shorelines sends your anxiety into overdrive—you’re not alone. In fact, there's a name for what you’re feeling: eco-anxiety.

Eco-anxiety is a very real, very human response to a changing planet. And for many Chicagoans, that worry hits close to home. With more frequent flooding, unpredictable winters, and rising lake levels along our Lake Michigan shoreline, climate change isn't just an abstract global issue—it’s happening right here in our backyard.

At Full Circle Counseling and Wellness Center, we believe that acknowledging your climate-related stress isn’t pessimistic—it’s profoundly empathetic. This blog explores how eco-anxiety affects mental health, and how Chicagoans can cope through mindfulness, community, and meaningful action.

What Is Eco-Anxiety?

Eco-anxiety refers to persistent worry, grief, fear, or helplessness in response to environmental damage and climate change. It’s not a mental illness—but it can absolutely impact mental health.

Common signs of eco-anxiety include:

• Racing thoughts about the future of the planet

• Feelings of guilt over your carbon footprint

• Hopelessness or sadness about the next generation

• Overwhelming fear triggered by environmental news

• Avoidance or apathy as a defense mechanism

• Heightened anxiety during weather events (e.g., floods, heatwaves)

For many people—especially young adults and caregivers—climate anxiety is woven into daily life. And for Chicago residents who walk the lakefront, kayak the rivers, or garden in community plots, the connection between nature and wellbeing feels especially personal.

Why Chicagoans Are Feeling It Deeply

Chicago is a city of contrasts. We’re surrounded by natural beauty—the lakefront, forest preserves, community gardens, and the Riverwalk—and yet we’re also a dense urban hub dealing with air pollution, stormwater runoff, and extreme weather fluctuations.

Recent local climate events include:

• Historic flooding in neighborhoods like Rogers Park and Albany Park

• Extreme summer heat affecting low-income and senior communities

• Shoreline erosion along Lake Michigan

• Air quality alerts from wildfire smoke reaching the Midwest

• Urban heat island effects in concrete-heavy neighborhoods

These experiences can leave Chicagoans feeling vulnerable and disempowered. And for those with existing anxiety, depression, or trauma histories, climate change can intensify emotional overwhelm.

How to Cope With Climate Anxiety (Without Checking Out)

The goal isn’t to stop caring—it’s to care without burning out. Here’s how to tend to your mental health while still staying informed and involved:

1. Acknowledge the Grief

It's okay to mourn environmental loss. In fact, allowing space for grief is healing. Talk about it in therapy. Cry about the disappearing monarchs. Write a letter to future generations. Honor your sadness—it means you care deeply.

2. Focus on What’s Within Reach

You can't stop climate change alone. But you can compost, support local green policies, bike to work, or teach your kids to recycle. Small steps matter—not just for the planet, but for your own sense of agency.

3. Use Mindfulness to Calm Your Nervous System

Climate worry often triggers survival responses. Mindfulness helps bring you back to the present.

Try:

• Box breathing while watching waves at Montrose Beach

• Noticing the feel of grass at Promontory Point

• Taking “tech-free” walks in a city park

Mindfulness grounds your nervous system, making the anxiety more manageable.

4. Talk to a Therapist (Yes, Really)

Eco-anxiety isn’t something to “shrug off.” Therapists—especially trauma-informed and somatic practitioners—can help you hold space for these feelings without spiraling. At Full Circle, we’re seeing more clients naming environmental stress as a core concern.

5. Join an Environmental Group (Activism as Therapy)

Getting involved with climate justice work can transform despair into purpose. Bonus: it combats isolation.

Chicago-area options include:

• Chicago Environmentalists – a volunteer collective hosting cleanups, tree plantings, and speaker events

• Friends of the Chicago River – offers community engagement and habitat restoration

• Chicago Sierra Club – advocacy, education, and local environmental campaigns

• Alliance for the Great Lakes – protects our shoreline, beaches, and water

• Urban Growers Collective – supports food justice and sustainability in South and West Side neighborhoods

Activism doesn’t have to be loud or all-consuming. Even showing up once a month for a shoreline cleanup or attending a virtual panel counts as meaningful engagement.

6. Limit Exposure to Doomscrolling

Being informed is good. Being flooded with terrifying headlines daily? Not so much.

Try:

• Choosing 1-2 trusted climate news sources

• Setting “scroll boundaries” (no news after 9 PM)

• Following environmental accounts that also share solutions and success stories

Hope is an essential ingredient in sustainable activism.

7. Reconnect with Nature—Even in the City

Spend time outside with intention. Plant a native garden. Touch a tree. Watch birds at Lincoln Park. Participate in community nature walks or restoration days in city preserves.

Nature heals our nervous systems—and reconnecting with it is an act of resistance.

When to Seek Help

If eco-anxiety is interfering with your ability to function, sleep, or care for yourself, it may be time to seek professional support. Therapy can help you:

• Move from paralysis to empowered action

• Process grief and fear in a safe space

• Address underlying anxiety or trauma

• Create personal boundaries around media, conversation, and energy

At Full Circle Counseling, we offer therapy tailored to modern stressors, including climate anxiety. You don’t need to “get over it”—you just need support navigating it.

You’re Not Crazy—You’re Caring

Feeling anxious about the planet is not a sign of mental instability—it’s a sign of empathy, awareness, and being alive in this moment in history.

We may not be able to fix everything. But we can care for ourselves, support one another, and make choices that reflect the kind of future we believe in.

And sometimes, the best place to start is simply stepping outside, taking a breath by the lake, and remembering: you are part of something larger—and you are not alone.