Inhabiting a wounded world: a qualitative phenomenology of ecological anxiety

Introduction Ecological anxiety is defined as distress caused by awareness of the ongoing climate crisis. This qualitative phenomenological study aimed to describe how lived experience is altered in ecological anxiety. Methods We conducted 58 interviews with 30 participants who identified themselves as experiencing ecological anxiety. Interviews combined lifeworld analysis with a micro-phenomenological approach to explore specific experiential episodes. Transcripts were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory, with participant validation and intercoder verification. Results Participants reported fatigue, rumination, bodily symptoms, and sleep difficulties, alongside feelings of guilt, shame, and anger and heightened empathy toward humans and non-human entities. We identified two forms of ecological anxiety: informational, involving distress associated with information about the climate crisis, and experiential, arising from witnessing its consequences. A central phenomenological characteristic was a marked attitude toward information, including a perceived obligation to remain informed despite the associated distress. Participants also described altered temporality, feeling alienated from the future and rushed in the present. These temporal disturbances were intertwined with a pervasive loss of agency. Discussion Our findings suggest that ecological anxiety extends beyond discrete episodes of worry to broader alterations in participants’ lifeworlds, which we conceptualized as a prereflective sense of inhabiting a wounded world. Within this predominantly European, highly educated sample, ecological anxiety also provided a framework for interpreting wider personal and societal concerns. These findings highlight the importance of considering informational, temporal, and social dimensions when understanding and addressing ecological anxiety.