The recent storms that hit Portugal — from north to south, with a special incidence in coastal and riverside areas, such as the north and central coast (districts of Viana do Castelo, Braga, Porto, Aveiro, Coimbra, Leiria), Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, Setúbal Peninsula and Algarve — left a trail of material destruction and claimed 17 human lives.
Houses flooded, roads closed, schools closed, agricultural fields devastated. There were floods, fallen trees/structures and power cuts. But the impact is not just measured in cubic meters of water or millions of euros in losses. It is also measured in what cannot be seen: the fracture in the feeling of continuity in life.
The climate crisis is no longer an abstract scenario but has become a sensitive experience. And this transition, from the plane of prediction, to the plane of experience, has profound psychic consequences.
Psychoanalysis teaches us that trauma is not defined only by the event, but by the impossibility of inscribing it, symbolically. To name it. When the storm breaks out, the “real” — in the Lacanian sense of something that escapes representation (language / “the Symbolic” and the image / “the Imaginary) — invades the psyche. The subject finds himself faced with a force of nature that goes beyond his usual defenses. And suffering, especially for the direct victims of these adverse events, leads them to confront the impossible, the unspeakable, a traumatic core that insists and returns, manifesting itself in holes in meaning, anguish, or — later, if not careful — symptoms.
In the office, a 43-year-old patient from Águeda described the day the water entered the house:
“I looked out the window and it felt like the world was ending. It wasn’t just fear. It was like everything I took for granted had ceased to exist.”
What is at stake is not just the loss of goods. It is the loss of a psychic continent — to use Bionian terminology — that sustains confidence in the predictability of the world. When this foundation fails, helplessness sets in.
The concept of helplessness (helplessness), formulated by Sigmund Freud, designates the primordial condition of the human being: radical dependence on the Other to survive. In natural disasters, this childhood experience returns in raw form. The storm reactivates an archaic memory of absolute vulnerability. There is a feeling of extreme fragility, dependence and impotence. It’s the primordial scar in its splendor!
A 58-year-old man from Leiria, whose company was partially destroyed, said:
“I felt small. Small like a child. There was nothing I could do.”
This regression is not pathological in itself. It is a response to the irruption of forces that exceed individual control. However, when helplessness does not find symbolic acceptance — whether in the community or in institutions — it can crystallize into trauma.
This patient continued: “And now, what will it be like?… With so many salaries to pay… without being able to produce anything… with millions in losses… with the usual delay in insurance and zero support from the state, which is what I fear… What will become of my life, of all these lives?…”
Unlike an isolated accident, storms produce collective trauma. Entire communities share the same scene of devastation. Local identity — linked to the landscape, routines, intergenerational memory, nostalgia for interrupted rituals — is shaken.
International literature has been highlighting the psychological weight of major climate events. Studies referred to by risk prevention platforms show a significant increase in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety following hurricanes and floods. But the contemporary specificity goes beyond the TSPT: it is a crisis of confidence in the future.
Terms such as ecoanxiety and solastalgia are no longer academic neologisms. Ecoanxiety translates the chronic fear of an environmentally threatened future; solastalgia describes the pain of seeing the place that has always been “home” transform into something foreign.
A young university student from Coimbra, aged 19, reported:
“Since the storms, I haven’t been able to look at Mondego in the same way. I’ve always loved that view. Now I think: until when?”
Solastalgia is a paradoxical longing: loss is felt while still remaining in place. The landscape stops being a source of support, but becomes a reminder of fragility.
Recent studies suggest that climate trauma can affect long-term decision making.
When the subject lives under constant threat, they tend to favor immediate solutions, reducing their planning capacity. Psychic survival becomes a priority.
This has social implications: communities repeatedly hit can develop a kind of fatalism — “it’s not worth rebuilding” — or, on the contrary, a defensive activism marked by urgency.
Taking this into consideration is important, especially when what we have heard most in recent days is: “Look, this is going to become common! Storms, excessive cold, extreme heat…. Get used to it! Get ready!”
Ecological mourning
There is a mourning that is rarely named: the mourning for landscapes, ways of life, species. It’s not just the house that’s lost; it is the feeling of perpetuity of the Earth. This ecological mourning demands social recognition. When it is not symbolized, it can turn into apathy or aggressiveness.
Freud, in Mourning and Melancholydistinguished mourning — a painful but transformative process — from melancholia, where loss is not recognized and turns against the self.
On a collective level, the inability to elaborate environmental mourning can generate a diffuse social melancholy: a feeling of discouragement, disbelief in institutions and a decline in civic participation.
This is where political responsibility becomes inevitable. It is not enough to rebuild roads and compensate for losses. It is imperative that the Government: integrate mental health teams into the responses of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority; create community listening and memory devices in affected areas; promote participatory reconstruction processes that respect symbolic links to the territory; ensure rapid economic support that reduces the feeling of abandonment. Helplessness cannot be the State’s response to the helplessness of its citizens.
Recognizing ecological mourning also means clearly assuming structural climate adaptation and mitigation policies, communicated without ambiguity or denial.
When public authorities oscillate between formal recognition of the crisis and maintaining practices that perpetuate it, it fuels social division and reinforces disbelief. On the contrary, a consistent policy — that articulates environmental protection, social justice and mental health — transforms pain into the possibility of repair.
Ignoring this psychic dimension of calamities is contributing to their repetition in the form of collective melancholy. Facing it, with institutional courage and a long-term vision, is to affirm that reconstruction is not just material: it is also symbolic, relational and ethical.
On a more individual and private level, but always maintaining psychoanalytic comprehensibility, in addition to access to state aid, it is essential that each individual finds their own solutions to this situation. The way out is not in denial, nor in panic. It is possible to repair.
Melanie Klein described the “depressive position” as the moment in which the subject recognizes ambivalence and responsibility for their actions, opening space for reparation. Applied to the climate crisis, this means accepting the pain and implication. Only from this acceptance can consistent and not merely reactive action emerge.
A patient who gave up an intense and exhausting life as a senior manager in a company and dedicated himself to agriculture, after weeks of discouragement, said:
“I’ve lost almost everything. But if I give up, it’s like the storm won twice.”
This movement is precious: from paralysis to symbolic reconstruction.
The function of psychoanalysis, in this context, is to help “build continents” — internal and community spaces where anguish can be thought about. It’s not about eliminating fear, but about making it thinkable.
Storms in Portugal are meteorological phenomena. But they are also psychic events. They reveal the fragility of infrastructures, but also the fragility of our internal defenses. They expose helplessness, but they can equally open space for solidarity and shared responsibility.
Between collapse and denial, there is a third path: that of elaboration. This is where it is decided whether the storm will remain a raw trauma, or whether it can be transformed into a meaningful experience.
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