Climate grief is getting to me whenever I’m more than two hours out from talking to another human and good god, I wish I weren’t also terrified to share with anyone even 20% of my sadness and fear and anxiety and burnout and anger.

A loved one today asked how I was feeling and I responded semi-honestly, forgetting that they’re like scary-bad at other people’s sadness, so they told me: 1. shake it off, 2. I’m a burden to those who love me, 3. We should talk about the sadness I bring to other people’s lives.

I don’t really know what to do with these feelings. I’m mostly happy/contented; these feelings of grief/terror/sadness I’ve learned to live with over the last 20 years, even as they evolve. But I don’t ever really talk about them, not at a release valve level, and I wish I could.

When I’ve gotten close to sharing in counseling, very rarely, my counselor very seriously told me I shouldn’t share my feelings with non-professional others because he can barely handle the despair he feels when I do and he’s trained for it.

I don’t know what this means.

I feel like the messy climate grief is a tangled thorn hedge in my head, separating me from other people, and I’m so lonely in these feelings and it’s been so so long of being alone here, and I just want to prune them back a bit. I think we as humans usually do this by sharing.

But I also know I’ve been in this climate-knowing for so long, in this learning to walk and function alongside deep existential grief, that I am terrified that in shifting and readjusting my feelings load with help, I will unwittingly crush someone else into paralysis/inaction.

And pushing anyone into climate despair, rather than action, is kind of my worst nightmare. I can carry whatever for however long, if I need to, I hope? I found my meaning and an ethos within this, alone, years ago, and if I didn’t break then, I can keep going.

But I just wish I didn’t have to. I wish it was ok to share this big sadness and grief and that I knew how, and that I wouldn’t worry about infecting others with my brain.

What does it mean if my sadness is too much for my counselor, my loved ones? What then?

This isn’t only my world, this isn’t my future alone. There is no out, we are in this together, and there is so much joy, but so much sadness and grief too. And we’re in the early days of it, so much rapid change and revolution ahead.

Nothing I know or feel is particularly specialized, hidden, unusual; most anyone has access to this information, and my emotional response to it is not unexpected. So why am I shunned for this grief & knowledge?

I’m sure this is all colored by the ways a very small handful of people have responded to me over the last 20 years, combined with the death issues I brought to it all then. Ymmv.

If you have tips for how to share your climate grief/sadness without crushing others beneath its weight, or propelling them into despair, lmk. I find it hard to even feel it when I’m with others; more often, I have scripts I fall into, about hope and action, if anyone is close.

I’m scared my flame, my friends will react as today’s loved one and my counselor have, as exes have, as family has, turning away, uncomfortable with my grief, and even more uncomfortable with the reality that underlies it.