Climate anxiety is increasing among students in higher education. In this mixed-method study, we map attitudes toward climate anxiety of students from sustainability related study fields. We analyze case study results from three universities in Europe (Helsinki, Warsaw, and Uppsala), querying: students' needs in coping with climate anxiety in academia and ways university operations can be improved to meet those needs. Results from a cross sectional survey (N = 157) place climate anxiety within a range of emotions, from sadness to hope. The majority of respondents reported a mixture of empowering and paralyzing emotional states. Respondents to semi-structured interviews advise academia to rethink its time economies, prioritize transformative climate action, acknowledge students' emotion work around sustainability issues, make climate education more humanistic, and include more-than-human-nature in educational spaces. Educators could employ transformative learning approaches to redefine climate anxiety from paralyzing emotion into constructive learning experience.