Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I deal with friends and family who won’t stop polluting?
Dear Leslie,
How do I deal with the frustration and anger that comes with having family members and friends who continue to fly and pursue other behaviors that worsen the climate crisis? They know better, yet they don’t act differently.
— Frustrated Climate Activist
Dear Frustrated Climate Activist,
Your anger and frustration are deeply relatable — and they’re happening for good reason. Your values and relationships are colliding, creating a painful rupture where you most long for shared ground. And your anger may be compounded by grief for the loss of species, cultures, and futures you know could be better protected if more people, like your loved ones, would take action.
That gap also creates a lopsided moral load. You’re actively confronting the difficult realities of our warming world and responding with care, while you perceive some of the people you’re most connected to turning away from that responsibility.
Living with that tension doesn’t just hurt — it eventually exhausts the nervous system and erodes our capacity to stay connected.
Before we go further, it may help to widen the perspective. It’s possible your family and friends hold a different view of what personal climate responsibility looks like. All of us participate in some activities that worsen the climate crisis, even if we’re trying to mitigate our impact (or create a positive impact) in other ways. It sounds like people in your life have decided they can’t give up flying right now, but maybe for them, positive action looks like voting for climate-forward policies, reducing consumption, or supporting initiatives you don’t see. Or maybe they care about the climate crisis but haven’t yet figured out what meaningful action looks like for them. Begin with curiosity about where they are and how they understand their responsibility.
But let’s say your family and friends claim to care, but truly are not engaging in any way — you see them strolling past the most critical issues with eyes averted. In that case, their failure to take any form of action may feel like a personal betrayal.
Here’s the hard truth: You can’t carry both the planet and your loved ones on your back. What’s appropriate in the relationships you’re talking about — people you want to stay close with — is emotional detachment without emotional withdrawal. That means choosing where your responsibility for others ends and your boundaries begin. You can continue to love imperfect people while also sustaining a fierce allegiance to caring for the climate.
You’re not required to be the climate conscience of every encounter and every conversation.
Try selective honesty. When you’re moved to speak, you might say something like this: “I struggle with [name the specific behavior], because it hurts to see people I love act like climate impacts don’t matter.” Then step back and let the silence do the work. You may not get the response you hope for, but you’ll know you spoke up for what matters most to you, and it’s up to you to understand when that’s enough.
People aren’t always moved to change immediately. Your words may land more deeply than you realize in the moment.
Letting go of the constant urge to convince isn’t giving up. It’s choosing to invest your energy where it can be amplified — for instance, in a like-minded community, an action group, or connections with other people who do share your priorities.
This is our work: staying human in a burning world without burning ourselves out. Try to find places where your clarity and commitment are shared — that in turn will make it easier to engage in other places where they are not. Let your love for the living world be fed by relationships that give your nervous system a place to rest.
Holding this with you,
Leslie
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I deal with friends and family who won’t stop polluting? on Feb 20, 2026.