Climate Undone

Description

What does climate change have to do with the way we feel?

We often recognise climate change through the things we can see: extreme heat, floods, cyclones, polluted air or disappearing ecosystems. But its impact can also show up in quieter ways — irritability during extreme heat, guilt over everyday choices, anxiety about the future, helplessness, overwhelm or simply the feeling that something is changing around us and we don’t quite know how to name it.

In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel are joined by counselling psychologists Nidhi Goswami and Ruchi Bhutada to explore the intersection of climate change and mental health in India.

At the centre of the conversation is a simple question: does something have to become catastrophic before it counts as a climate experience?

We talk about why climate and mental health are still often treated as separate issues, whether labels such as climate anxiety, eco-anxiety and climate grief actually help, and why language matters when people’s lived experiences don’t neatly fit into clinical or climate terminology.

The conversation also explores guilt and privilege — including the feeling that your own experience isn’t serious enough to talk about because someone else is suffering more — and how that can prevent people from recognising the ways climate change is already affecting their lives.

Nidhi and Ruchi also unpack the tension between individual and collective action, why trying to make every personal choice perfectly sustainable can lead to overwhelm, and how systems thinking can help put responsibility into perspective. And finally, we come back to something that runs throughout the episode: community. When climate change feels too large for one person to hold, being able to talk, organise, learn and act with other people can create space for both difficult emotions and hope.

Because climate change doesn’t have to destroy your home before it changes the way you feel, live or imagine your future.