Mental health in the age of everything everywhere all at once

Feeling anxious about climate change? Good. No, really. We’re often told to stay calm, manage our stress, and protect our mental health. But in the face of climate change, is calm really the goal?
Where everything seems to be happening everywhere all at once, our emotional responses to climate change (eco-anxiety, climate grief, burnout...) are proportionate to an unprecedented global threat. Rather than suppressing difficult emotions, we’ll explore how they can become powerful drivers of awareness, connection, and action and how joy and hope can sparkle from it.

In a world defined by algorithmic anxiety, hustle culture, and compounding global crises, feeling overwhelmed isn’t a personal failure—it’s a predictable neurological reflex. For today’s young adults, chronic uncertainty keeps the nervous system locked in a state of low-grade threat, hijacking our attention and fracturing our sense of real-world community. We will bridge cutting-edge neuroscience with practical mindfulness to offer a biological roadmap back to center. We will explore how the brain processes uncertainty and why our hyper-connected, fast-paced environment often triggers the amygdala into a loop of chronic stress. This session unpacks the hard science of why presence acts as an emergency brake for the nervous system, and how genuine connection and belonging are not just emotional needs, but biological imperatives that regulate our physiology.

In times when social distancing is a norm, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, connecting socially is difficult. This can intensify feelings of loneliness for everyone, and especially for refugees who are among the loneliest in society. We explore how changes in social contacts during the pandemic—either locally or across borders with members of own or other ethnic groups—contribute to feelings of loneliness among refugees. We show the importance of staying connected in times of crisis, especially in diverse and local networks.