Asklemmy

43336 readers

790 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

142

How do you deal with depression about climate change? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

93 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I started getting sad about climate change two years ago after seeing Planet Earth and many documentaries. I completely changed my lifestyle to reduce my part and put significant effort into it.

But seeing rich celebrities who use as much as a common man's lifetime resources in a week or two, and others who barely put in any effort to combat it, and corporations fucking the entire planet for quarterly profits, barely any efforts towards fighting it even though we had known about its consequences 30-40 years ago, I get this feeling that my efforts are even worth it.

Slowly, I told myself that evolution failed itself by giving a bit more individual selfishness over community/species survival. Just like human beings, Earth's time has started to end. Its death is inevitable. Everything should come to an end. Only if evolution had given a bit more thought to species survival, we would be in a much better place.

How do you all deal with this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Take a break from the internet for a bit. I got offline as much as possible for two weeks a few months ago and it did wonders for my mental health.

[–] Vibi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately this is some of the best advice. I think different people are more susceptible to existential anxiety - or moreso anxiety over things that will never be able to change or control. Some people can channel that emotion into advocacy, volunteer work, etc while others mentally drown in thought loops. As rude as it sounds, sometimes it really is a 'touch grass' type of thing. You HAVE to watch out for your own mental health and oftentimes that means disconnecting from triggers and focusing on your own life and interests. Play a game, watch something, read a book, go to the zoo, meet up with friends - live in the moment and outside your head. I also recommend using the internet purposefully and not just to kill time - use social media for discovery and research of specific topics and not for just general consumption.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

This is the way.

Social media will jump from one super important and stressful thing that we all need to lose sleep over to the next with or without us. Yes, these things might be important, but a lot of online activism seems to be about who can scare more people into supporting X, Y, or Z with zero regard for the reader's mental health, the rhetoric used, or even being 100% factual.

It doesn't hurt to disengage every so often.