In this month’s Ask a Climate Therapist column, we’re tackling two questions at once — each examining similar themes of burnout and paralysis from two very different vantage points. Wherever you are on your own path of climate engagement, I hope the advice will resonate.
Dear Leslie,
I have been working in sustainability for over 24 years. I’m tired, demoralized, feeling pretty beaten. I try to live by the motto that you only fail when you stop — but with a heavy heart I feel I’m nearly at the point of giving up. Do I give up, and say I tried? Or how do I continue trying in a world that I have little influence or control over?
—An Exhausted Specialist
I’m 31, and I know more about climate change than anyone I work with. Twice now I’ve driven to a neighborhood canvassing event and left without getting out of the car. The only way I can explain it is that I’ve started to believe that nothing I do could make the slightest dent in the immensity of the planetary crisis. It sounds true when I say it out loud, but I can’t tell if it’s clarity or just fear dressed up as reasoning.
