Feeling the weight of a heavy summer?
Helpful resources to cope with worry, fear, or grief about climate change
You’re at Mother E, a free newsletter published every other Sunday. I’m telling the stories about our kinship and connections with other species in a climate-changing world. You can read more posts here.
Today, we’re looking at how we’re affected when the lifeforms on Earth (including our fellow humans) are feeling the crunch of climate disruption. Find some solutions inside this edition.
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HAS THE SUMMER OF 2021 seemed extra challenging? If you read or watch the news, it's obvious something different is happening from previous summers: more fires and heat, more flooding, more unease. Our sense of security has been disturbed.
Whether you feel worried about this subject or not, mental health experts tell us that emotional distress is likely to increase in parallel to Earth's degradation, climate disturbances, and species loss.
“For more than a decade, psychologists and psychiatrists have been raising the alarm about the coming wave of psychological distress due to the climate crisis.”
Susanne C. Moser, social science researcher, and consultant, from her essay "The Adaptive Mind," All We Can Save book
You might be wondering, where will this all lead? Many people already have a reluctance to talk about mental health and climate change. This can make it harder to cope when the problems seem to climb on top of each other, leaving little time for recovery. Living through fires, floods or heatwaves can cause trauma and PTSD. Seeing the constant news about suffering can cause feelings of overwhelm or paralysis.
How do we grow resilience and fix our climate and social problems all at the same time? Where do we look for help when fears about the state of the world arise?
When my children were young, I remember the PBS television program Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. It ran for almost 33 years (a third of a century!) and ended before his death in 2003. This was a rare program because it didn't feature much physical action, a big cast, or cartoons. Instead, it starred a tall, calm-voiced man who talked to children in a straightforward, supportive way. He was an ordained minister who lived the phrase "compassion for others." One of his lessons was about what to do when you're afraid or in trouble. Mr. Rogers kept it simple— "Look for the helpers."
Look for the helpers
This seems like good advice for us today. Fortunately, we humans are an inventive species and are developing new methodologies to cope with new problems.
I went looking for the helpers who can aid us to build emotional resilience, face reality, and learn to live responsibly alongside our fears for the Earth. As author Joanna Macy explains, we reach out to connect with others to "find our own inner authority." The answers may be found in that space where diverse intelligences meet.
The first place one looks for help with emotions is in the mental health field. These professionals are the front-line workers for our psychological stress. (I’ve been married to a mental health professional for decades and have witnessed the life-help they provide.) A growing number of them understand the emotional distress that the climate crisis brings.
Unease, anger, or grief about what is happening in the world today is not a psychological disorder like a pathology. It's a reaction to the damage done to the world; it’s a sign that we are waking up and becoming more conscious.
“To experience anguish and anxiety in the face of the perils that threaten us is a healthy reaction. Far from being crazy, this pain is a testimony to the unity of life, the deep interconnectedness that relates us to all beings.”
Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
How we handle that fear, anger, or grief is where we may run into problems. If it's interfering with our relationships, impairing health, limiting our ability to fix the problems, or consuming our thoughts, it might be time to seek help.
Here is a partial list of resources. While you may find one is sufficient to bring some relief, I suggest experimenting with several. Think of these as ingredients for your own recipe to build resiliency in hard times. If you have a spiritual practice that can guide you also.
Resources for climate worries
1. Climate Awakening promotes meaningful, supportive conversations about climate fears and worries. Margaret Klein Salamon Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and activist who founded this site. You can sign up for a free seventy-five-minute small group session.
I tried one session recently where I met with 3 others, and we talked about our feelings around climate change: fear, anxiety, grief, hope, and visions for the future. The structure of the guided questions and short videos from Dr. Salamon promoted a good rapport in the group, turning strangers into mutually supportive acquaintances in a short time. My takeaway— conversations around climate change can happen more readily if we connect around the emotions we all share.
2. Climate Psychiatry Alliance and Climate Psychology Alliance provide a professional directory of climate-aware mental health professionals in the USA, Canada, and Brazil. Enter your location and search the database for therapists close to you.
3. The Good Grief Network is a "10-step program to help individuals and communities build resilience by creating spaces where people can lean into their painful feelings about the state of the world and reorient their lives toward meaningful action." Here are the 10 steps.
4. Author and activist Joanna Macy offers The Work That Reconnects. This is a powerful, deep-reaching set of teachings that can both "ground" as well as activate one's love for the Earth and its inhabitants. Macy draws her teaching and wisdom from a range of sources. She's a Buddhist, has been a decades-long eco-activist and community organizer, and is informed by the deep ecology movement and systems thinking.
5. Practices like yoga, meditation, tai chi, and somatic exercises have a thousand-plus-year history of use. These mind-body practices slow overthinking, calm the nervous system, and promote psychological stability. They can also help us integrate complex emotions. Facing the possibility of extinction for humans is a new emotion with which to grapple. Think about adding some kind of mindfulness or integrative mind-body practice to daily routines.
6. Earth Emotions, a book by Glenn A. Albrecht, is a personal and intellectual exploration of emotions, both negative and positive, that people are experiencing as they face Earth's changes. He has coined a new vocabulary that better defines these feelings. One example: Solastalgia— the existential homesickness you experience when you are still at home, but your environment is changing in distressing ways. Dr. Albrecht is an environmental philosopher from Australia with a theoretical and applied interest in the connections between ecosystem and human health.
7. Gen Dread is a Substack newsletter by Britt Wray, Ph.D., an author, broadcaster, researcher, and Stanford academic. Her newsletter is free and full of helpful tips on "staying sane in the climate crisis." She addresses the generations who may be conflicted about bringing a child into an uncertain future. Her article, Stepping Into the Role of the Prospective Survivor, was popular. You can sign up for her free newsletter on her site.
8. Nature-based activities like Japanese "forest bathing," bird language observation, walks, and slowing down to fit in with nature's rhythms can help center and balance us, fostering a desire to protect what we love. This is a Mother E topic I will address in a separate article.
Listening to the inner vibration of our feelings can deepen our human experience of life on Earth. Mental health professionals tell us that emotions such as anxiety, fear, and anger require our attention, not just medicating or pushing away. These uncomfortable feelings can be a prompt that reminds us to repair something broken, to change, and adapt for our ultimate survival and well-being.
Charles Darwin, the British naturalist, famously said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptive to change."
Our challenge now is to change and adapt at a more rapid pace than we've ever done before. We've covered up the problems for too long, and the Earth is hurting, as we are.
What would Mr. Rogers say about these times? He would probably remind us that we all share this neighborhood and planet together— from people and trees to whales and bees, living under the same sun and breathing the same air. He might also add that our care for one another just might be our saving grace.
I love to hear from readers!
Do you have additional resources to add?
Further thoughts on discussing climate through the lens of our feelings?
You can reach me by responding to this email, leaving a comment above, or on Twitter @RobinApplegarth
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Robin A.
This is an excellent article, addressing a very urgent condition many are now feeling. The list of helping guides is terrific. Really thoughtful ! Judy