How does the climate crisis make you feel?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan is a full-time climate justice activist based in Metro Manila, Philippines. She is the convenor and international spokesperson of Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines, the Fridays For Future of the Philippines. A strong voice on anti-imperialism, anti-colonization, and the intersectionality of the climate crisis, she is committed to changing the system and building a world that prioritizes people and planet, not profit, through collective action.

In the 7th episode of season 3, Confessions of a Climate Activist, Clover sits down with Mitzi Jonelle Tan to explore the difference between eco-anxiety and eco-trauma, and how to understand our emotions. They discuss how to keep showing up and the power of community in cultivating mindset shifts from anxiety to agency. Finally, Mitzi spills her climate confession!

“Knowing that you’re not alone in it really helps. Knowing that the collective action aspect of activism is so crucial. Even if you don’t see anyone else who is anxious, there are people who are fighting alongside you fighting.” - Mitzi Jonelle Tan

Follow Mitzi:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitzijonelle/

Finally, if you haven't heard the word 'senti' before, it means 'sensitive' - IYDKGTK ;)

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Clover Hogan:

Hi my name’s Clover and you’re listening to the Force of Nature podcast. This season, we’re diving into “Confessions of a Climate Activist”. What comes to mind when you picture an activist? Is it a person glued to the road? Someone with a reusable coffee cup? Maybe, a teenager holding a microphone? Whatever it is, I want you to let it go — because I’m about to invite you behind the scenes. You’re going to hear from activists on the stuff that doesn’t get talked about. Burnout; getting cancelled; the ethical compromises of making money; imposter syndrome, and even what it’s like to alienate friends and family. See this as your how-to guide when understanding and navigating the nuances of activism and barriers to action in the climate space. Over the season, we hope to find some answers: namely, what activism can look like when it's more open, honest and human. Make sure to stick around to the end of each episode when our guests spill their climate confessions. After all, we don't need a hundred perfect activists - but millions of imperfect ones.

Clover Hogan:

Last week on Confessions of a Climate Activist we discussed how to navigate our personal lives alongside our activism. Today we’re talking about eco-anxiety. At Force of Nature, we found through our research that 70% of young people experience eco-anxiety. This is such a huge topic that we already dedicated an entire season of the podcast to it! In season 2, we explored the climate crisis through the lens of mental health: from the food we eat, to our relationship with media, and our addiction to fossil fuels. In that context, we talked about eco-anxiety as a catalyst: how feelings of anger, frustration, despair, sadness and everything between are evidence that we’re awake to the planet being on fire. But what we didn’t really talk about is navigating these emotions long-term. What’s like to do this work, to practice resilience, over 5 years? Over 10? What about for activists who have been engaged for decades? Before we dive into our conversation, I’d love to hear from our community…

Community member 1:

Why they may be getting cancelled. Let's say you make a controversial statement on your social media, you're an activist and you're expressing extreme views. You are going to face backlash within your own community, region, by the public, the media, they are gonna call you out. And you are as an activist challenge in the status quo and are pushing for changes that are perceived as... threatening to these powerful people. Any activist who may be getting canceled because of the work they do, it is due to serious political pressure and making a stand on a view that you stand by. You gotta do it. Somebody has gotta do it, right?

Community member 2:

My basic anxiety with this is just that it hurts my brain to think about. For example, you go on the internet, you see this is a problem and this is how the world wants to fix it and this is how we should fix it and this is why it's not possible. And it's usually really helpful content, like it teaches you about stuff, and I'm always really happy to watch it. But then afterwards, my anxiety just comes from not knowing what to do in these types of situations. I'm just lost. Every time I see news about climate change and environmental disasters, it really makes me feel hopeless about my future. Like I can't have a future on this planet.

Community member 3:

Everytime I see news about climate change and environmental disasters it makes me feel hopeless about my future, like I can’t have a future on this planet.

Clover Hogan:

While our earlier research indicated that 70% of young people are eco-anxious, when we polled our community ahead of this podcast, we found that 95% of them experienced these feelings. A theme here, and in so many of the conversations we’ve had with young people, is that eco-anxiety doesn’t merely stem from the enormity of the climate crisis - but inaction in the face of it. It’s almost impossible not to feel these emotions when we read the headlines, when we see the crisis unfolding around us, but what makes it all so much harder is when these feelings are dismissed. When young people give voice to them, but are dismissed as ‘the snowflake generation’. The question becomes, how do we keep our eyes open, our hearts laid bare, when the crisis continues to worsen around us? When it feels like so much in our culture is trying to numb us to this crisis? How do we keep showing up? I could think of no one better to help me answer this question than my friend Mitzi Jonelle Tan. Here she is.

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Hi I’m Mitzi Jonelle Tan and I am a full-time climate justice activist in the Philippines.

Clover Hogan:

So Mitzi, today we're gonna be talking about eco-anxiety in the context of activism. I think this is something we've had many personal conversations about. It's something I've heard you speak about on social media and on panels, but. I'd love to just start with a very simple question, which from your perspective, what is eco-anxiety? How would you define that?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

The way that I describe climate anxiety is as if there's a guest in your home and sometimes they're on the sofa reading a magazine. Sometimes they're lying down on the floor and you have to scoot a little bit to get past them. Sometimes they're breaking everything and banging on the doors. So it's something that's always constantly there because of the growing... climate crisis because of the climate trauma that communities and people in the global South and marginalized areas have already experienced. And then also seeing the inaction of world leaders. I think that's what really fuels my anxiety that I see the destruction, I see the devastation, I experience it, I see my friends feel it, I see my friends be anxious about it, yet there's no action.

Clover Hogan:

When did you first become aware of those feelings within yourself?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Clover Hogan:

It's a really important point because I think for a lot of young people who are in a bubble of like relative climate privilege, there was a kind of definitive moment where they learn about the climate crisis, they became aware of it, and suddenly those emotions came rushing in. And I know for me, you know, that was very distinct, like when I was 11 and I discovered documentaries and I started learning about the issues. But for me, climate change is something that I watched in films. It was something I read about in articles. And yet, as you've just spoken to, for you, that anxiety, those feelings, they were with you, your childhood. There wasn't this catalyst moment. I guess, reflecting on that, what do you think some of the key differences are in how... young people who speak to their eco-anxiety, their climate anxiety, what are some of the differences in how young people experience those emotions based on their privilege, based on where they're growing up in the world?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

I think one very clear difference is the climate trauma and the climate anxiety. I think something that we all, I would say, universally experience is that fear of the future, but the fear of the present, the fear of the immediate future, of tomorrow, of a typhoon warning, of the thunder. I think that is something that communities are already being impacted by the climate crisis experience specifically. A key difference is also how this isn't necessarily global north, global south, but I see a lot of disparity in the way that some people approach climate anxiety and they become very hopeless and almost go into doomism where they think that there is no hope, that there is nothing that we can do. And I think it's very crucial that whilst we acknowledge and talk about climate anxiety and say that it is a valid and genuine fear and not some irrational fear of the future. We also have to remember that there is something that we can do about it and there's action that we can do and it isn't hopeless. It isn't a complete failure yet. There are things that we can do and I think that's such an important topic to talk about and we don't just stop at the anxiety but the solution is how we address both the anxiety not in the sense of... Okay, how do we make you not anxious, but rather how do we get rid of the thing that's making you anxious?

Clover Hogan:

Yeah, I think that's often what happens when we kind of pathologize climate anxiety, eco-anxiety, is like, it becomes the problem. And you see these articles like, how to fix climate anxiety. It's like, no, how to actually mobilize people in positions of power to take action on climate change, you know. But I guess speaking to that. despair and that overwhelm, is that something you can relate to? Have you ever felt completely inundated by your own emotions in response to the climate crisis and climate inaction?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Clover Hogan:

One of the things that you mentioned in the kind of global conversation around like climate anxiety, co anxiety, is that in certain cultures, there is a lot of stigma around mental health. I'd love to hear what your experience has been like trying to have some of these conversations. in the Philippines, like in your home country.

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

It depends on the generation and the circumstances in the social context, but in some areas you say anxiety, they won't know what you mean. Maybe they'll understand like fear, but not that laxing fear that impacts you constantly. And that's why I've gotten to describing it in a personalization type of way, where it's someone in your home that's always there and then that way people understand a little bit more. For other scenarios, you'll get comments like, oh, if you're so anxious about it, then just stop reading or stop learning about it or stop being worried about it. And I'm like, it's not gonna change if I shut off. It's not gonna change if I ignore it all. It's still gonna be there. It's still gonna impact us. I think that's something that is so crucial when we talk about climate anxiety. It's rooted in a physical thing that will impact us whether or not we're anxious about it. And that's... the difficulty as well because if you start talking about anxiety and mental health, you know, you still get that stigma, oh, she's crazy, oh, she has like, oh, she has special needs like in a very weird way and conservative way, the way that it's talked about in approach and sometimes people don't understand it at all and they just shut off. I've had friends who aren't climate activists who talk about how during one of the typhoons, they were so scared. when they were hearing the winds of the storm and they thought that their house would collapse. And I said, how do you feel about that anxiety and that climate anxiety? And they're like, oh, no, I don't have anxiety. I was just afraid. I was like, it's interesting. There's almost a defensiveness of having climate or anxiety in general.

Clover Hogan:

Yeah. I feel like oftentimes it's easy. It's kind of invalidate someone else's experience or like stigmatize it, then look in the face of your own emotions. Cause I know for me, like even doing this work, I was in denial about my anxiety for years, you know, and I felt like I had to kind of cling on to this optimism and hope and also because that was like the box that was painted for me as like a quote unquote youth climate activist is like, oh no, you're here to inspire people. Like we don't want you scaring people or like making them depressed. even though it's objectively a depressing situation, we want you to be happy and optimistic and determined. And I really did a disservice to myself in not allowing those feelings. And it's hard when you also have journalists and whoever else saying like, oh, is this not just like the snowflake generation? Like, are you guys not just like ultra-senti? And I'm like, maybe we are senti, but like, that's not a bad thing, right? We're facing this kind of crisis because we've gotten so good as a culture, particularly people in positions of power at like numbing ourselves to the problem, pretending it's not there, at sticking our heads in the sand. You kind of alluded to some of that anxiety for you coming from inaction and coming from what's happening in the wider world and informing yourself. Do you ever feel like that anxiety has come from like engaging in activist spaces?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Funnily enough, Activist spaces, no. So learning about climate science and climate papers, definitely. You know, that's some scary stuff, like especially looking at the projections, understanding what it means, what it could look like. This is a question that was asked to me also recently, where how do you engage yourself in activism without being so overwhelmed by the destruction of the world, of the climate crisis? And I said, that's exactly how I stop being overwhelmed by engaging myself so fully in that activism. do the work in whatever sense, either conversations in the talking, in protests, in yelling out chants. I think there's a catharsis almost of being able to let out those feelings and those emotions and being able to do something yourself that comforts you and also knowing that you're not alone in it. That collective action aspect of activism I think is so crucial because you remember that even if you don't see anyone else who's anxious. there are people who are fighting alongside you for the thing that's making you anxious to go away. And that I think is such a comforting idea knowing that it's a global movement. It's a global approach to making sure that this is so.

Clover Hogan:

Have you ever felt like your own anxiety around these issues is interlinked with how you live on a personal level? Like is that something that you yourself have felt?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

I definitely think so. Because on one side... I think individual lifestyle change will never be enough alone, but I think if you have the privilege to do it, you should, you should do everything. And I think in the beginning, when I switched my diet to vegetarianism, I cried vegetarian, but it was really hard here in the Philippines, but when I switched my diet, a lot of it stems from that anxiety where I felt the need to really embody action. to the very core in terms of the food I eat, the way that my body receives nutrients, I felt like a lot deeper. And especially since food is so tied to culture and almost spirituality here in the Philippines, it felt like the right direction to ease my anxiety. I do it now in a much healthier... mindset, I think. I think it's always really difficult when you do things out of anxiety. And I think it's super valid if that's where you're starting, but I do encourage everyone to find other ways to do it because that's a really tiring reason to do things. And often when we interrogate the anxiety, it does come from a place of love or wanting safety or wanting peace. And then just shifting that mindset of thinking that that's where you're coming from, it does help a lot.

Clover Hogan:

One thing I've spoken about a little bit in the context of being vulnerable within climate is giving voice to your emotions. I don't know, I'm keen to get your perspective on this because on the one hand, I feel like my activism has a lot of integrity when I'm able to be really honest. Sometimes that looks like crying on stage, sometimes that looks like getting angry, sometimes it just looks like being human, basically. oftentimes I feel this kind of like emotional hangover from that as well. And I can also get a bit resentful because I'm like, why do I have to do this emotional labor because no one else in this room is having a real conversation about this thing. And it takes that level of vulnerability to crack through the kind of like facade of the business suit and the bureaucracy and everything else. Is that something you can relate to? Like that emotional hangover, that like feeling of almost like whiplash from... trying to be human in what are often really like unhuman spaces.

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Definitely. When you asked me about vulnerability, that was what popped into my head as well, where I think it's good to be vulnerable, but at what cost? As you said that I like the term that use emotional hangover, I feel like after squeezing yourself like a sponge in front of these spaces, in front of these people, you often feel just dry. and squeezed and wrung out and just extremely tired and drained. And so it is a question that I ask myself, like, how much of this do I show? How much of myself do I give? And then it goes to, I guess, who the audience is, is how I answer that question. If it's a space where I can bring myself dry, but then know that as soon as I let go, I will be filled up again because it is a community space, then I do it. But if it's a space where, you know, it's a speech in front of politicians or world leaders that aren't really listening, I'll give it a little bit, but I won't give all of my emotions of my humanness because I think it's super important to also take care of yourself and make sure that what we're doing is sustainable.

Clover Hogan:

I want to say thank you so much for this conversation. I have one last really silly question for you, which is a question where we're asking everyone who comes onto the show. which is to share a climate confession in the interest of being more human, more honest activists. As you can imagine, I've had to come up with dozens of these climate confessions, so I am fully in the territory of being a hypocrite at this point. I'll share a confession and then would love to hear if you have one as well. I think my most recent confession would have to be, this is kind of a boring one, but it's really important. Apparently, on an individual level, one of the most impactful things you can do, aside from not shopping fast fashion, not eating meat, whatever, is to actually change your pension and to change where you keep your money. Because as we know, big banks are invested in fossil fuels and military and everything else. this is something I've been meaning to do, like changing who I bank with is something that has legitimately been on my mind for like five plus years and I have just not done it yet. So that is my climate confession. It's on my to-do list, it hasn't happened, but it's pretty bad that it hasn't happened. That's my confession. How about you, Mitzi?

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

So recently I was on the plane because I was there in London and for some reason it flew over the Arctic. I'm not sure which... direction it went, but I was looking over and I was like, wow, this is so pretty. And I was like, this is great. I'm having a time of my life, like looking out of the plane and I was like, but we don't like planes, Mitzi, but we wouldn't be able to see these views without these planes. It's just,

Clover Hogan:

yeah. I definitely get that, the mental scolding where you're like, no, stop enjoying it.

Mitzi Jonelle Tan:

Yeah. There's that. And I also, I enjoy shopping with my friends. I try not to partake in fast fashion as much, but sometimes some things are just really pretty and you're like, no, I'll make sure to wear it like a thousand plus times and then resell it and every bit, you know, sometimes you give in.

Clover Hogan:

Honestly, so long as you wear it a thousand times, we chillin'. I think that was some statistic about fast fashion in Australia, which is like... The average woman who buys a new piece of clothing wears it like two to three times before throwing it in landfill. So I'm like, that's the bar. So, so long as you're wearing it a few times, you're good. Mitzi, thank you so much. It's been such a wonderful conversation. You are always so articulate and wonderful to talk to. So thank you.

Clover Hogan:

I really appreciated from this conversation was the lens of climate justice, and Mitzi’s distinction between eco-anxiety and eco-trauma. We can recognise that many young people today experience eco-anxiety — and also the fact that as a generation, there is a *huge* diversity in our lived experience, especially through the lens of privilege. Eco-anxiety is going to be very different for a young person reading about the climate crisis, for whom it’s a distant threat — versus a young person living through it today.

I’ve often heard that action is an antidote to eco-anxiety… but I think that’s a major oversimplification. Yes, cultivating agency is so important — feeling like there’s something you can do to make a difference. However, as this conversation with Mitzi has shown, it’s not as if the more you engage with climate, the more your anxiety lessens. If anything, the more you engage with climate, the more you think about it, the more heightened those feelings can become too.So, “anxiety to action” is an incomplete response. To cultivate emotional resilience, we also need to talk about our emotions, in community. We need to hold space for one another. We need to practice self-compassion, and create space for the feelings that sustain our activism, love, connection, contribution. Another dimension of mental health as an activist is burnout. We touched on this last week with Fehinti, who spoke to the contradiction of overworking to the point of burnout, while recognising that this culture of hyperproductivity is a symptom of the very system we’re trying to change. I want to better understand why burnout within activism is so common, and what we can do about it. So next week, for our penultimate episode, I’ve invited my friend Arifa Nasim to join us on the show to share her own story — including the decision to leave behind her activism behind, and the lessons she’s gained since. In the meantime, if you enjoyed today’s episode and are thirsty for more Force of Nature content, you might want to check out episode 8 from Season 2 — where we dive into how the food we eat contributes to the climate crisis, and may also fuel our eco-anxiety. When you’ve listened, drop us a comment and let us know what you think.

Clover Hogan:

How did today's episode make you feel? Let us know by heading over to Force of Nature's instagram, @forceofnature.xyz, and dropping us a comment. If you’re between the ages of 16 and 35, you can join Force of Nature’s growing online community and access our free programmes and trainings, which help you develop the skills to take action. You can also find resources on our website.If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast... well, you know what to do. This show was brought to you by Force of Nature and OneFinePlay. From OneFinePlay, Kasra Firouzyar is the editor and producer. Connor Foley is the producer and researcher. From Force of Nature, I’m your host, Clover Hogan, and this season would not be possible without Meg Stillwell and Isabel Flynn.