To cope with the emotional toll of working in the field, researchers have developed strategies to help themselves and others.
"Kristan Childs, a therapist in Sebastopol, California, agrees. “They need permission to feel,” she observes. “Some think if they allow themselves to feel, it’ll be like falling into a pit of despair they can never get out of. But almost always, the opposite happens,” she says. “When they see other people feeling the same way, it actually lifts the burden of aloneness.” And some even feel inspired to take collective action, she says." In the current generation of scientists, Gatti had to learn how to shift her mindset in her daily practice to avoid burnout. Similarly to Kalmus, she uses climate grief as a fuel to keep sounding the alarm. “The least I can do is to make noise and learn to speak a language everyone understands — so they become conscious that we must change at the micro and macro levels,” she says. “This is a huge opportunity for humanity to evolve.”
