My Climate Psychologist Journey
Our Journey for Context…
I will share my own experience, partly because as you will go on to learn, we need to check ourselves when climate change really resonates with us and we open up ourselves to truths, dialogues, and actions. Here is a brief explanation of how and why I have committed to helping people process eco-emotions. At some point, there has been an ‘Aha’ or perhaps more probably, an “Oh No!!” moment that has lead you to read this material. Mine is described below. as this is a relatively recent phenomenon for us, one which will bring up different feelings at different stages, it is meant to give context to the fact that we are all navigating our eco-emotions and processing differently. Understanding a validating this will help us be kind to ourselves and support our kids. If you are short for time, scroll on! The practicalities are below. Otherwise, this was the start of feeling resonant fear for our future and the motivation to take action for me:
I was added by a friend of a friend to a WhatsApp ‘ClimateClub’ chat of parents from another nearby school. To be perfectly honest, this was somewhat of a typical white, middle-class school. Known for having a fierce PTA, being quite ‘green,’ with conscientious, vocal parents who mostly had careers in academia of some sort. This particular group chat consisting of a disproportionate amount of scientists, economists and policy strategists, all with some focus on the environment. (This is something that has been identified as a criticism for climate activism, particularly in the Extinction Rebellion campaigns, as representative of an identified ‘white, middle-class issue’ and to be fair, this Whatsapp chat group was not a very good rebuttal to this criticism, however, I would argue that when schools closed in Delhi in November of 2019 due to air quality being so poor, parents there, who are not of this white, middle-class demographic, would maintain it is very much their crisis too. The point is it doesn’t really matter how long we debate who has a right to be up and arms, because frankly, we all need to be, This fight needs everyone, doing as however much, with whatever they have got, that can make a difference.
In our first meeting, we sat in the living room of a geologist who intermittently nursed her two-week-old baby. Being a mother of a 5 and 6-year old, I oscillated between broodiness and the smugness of a full 7 hours sleep. My husband and partner, Patrick, and I were in the “If we are going to have another one, now is the time” stage. I mentioned this to my own father a few weeks earlier and his response was, ‘There are enough people in the world, the climate can’t take anymore.’ This flattened me out a bit. This is the man I have been arguing with about driving his diesel everywhere and eating red meat for every meal (It’ the American way!). He was ‘woke’ enough to see the impact but not making any changes himself, expecting me to help the process by not having any more children. I realised this is what we are asking our own kids to do: take charge as long as it doesn’t interfere with our accustomed comforts.
My Climate Psychologist Journey
Another consideration of a new addition I wondered about was, is it a plus or minus to bring another child into the world? What if their impact was positive enough to counterbalance their carbon footprint, and I vaguely imagined my own little Greta Thunbergs. I recognised in myself, that this thought process isn’t really okay. It’s perpetuating the myth that we should put this pressure on our children to undo what the generations before them have incurred upon them.
The reality is that these are the terms in which we need to now think. What if in two generations’ time, there is a per couple cap on children? What if infertility is the new epidemic? What if there isn’t enough food? I sat in this living room, sipping coffee and spinning in and out of potential Handmaiden, Orwellian apocalypse scenarios that I desperately hope my children won’t have to experience, but the reality is, there are very big decisions to be made-very big changes and quickly if this is not going to be a reality for their generation and the ones to (hopefully) follow.
There were 38 phone numbers in that WhatsApp group. Five of us were able to make the end of the term, 9 am, Tuesday morning start. The initial discussions swooped in and around a child’s recent diagnosis, how the school was managing it, how the siblings were adjusting to the new baby if violin had been moved to Wednesdays, coffee or tea?… Eventually be broached the subject of the drop-off rate of the WhatsApp, which set us upon our intended topic: climate change and our kids. We discussed a range of initiatives, beginning with the ‘Climate Change Song’. I could feel myself growing slightly apathetic, impatient and then aggravated as the conversation turned into a debate about the usefulness of the hand actions, then to the hesitation of the school head to have any involvement in the climate discussion, as it was seen to be ‘political’, then on to how rude the secretaries in the front office can be, ‘except for that one with the brown hair..’. I caught myself bubbling up with the stress and anxiety thinking “STOP IT! STOP IT! None of this is going to help at all,” but I realised, these are the kinds of things that we all get caught-up in to anchor ourselves away from the gravity of this reality. These little delineations give us respite from the Big Picture because the Big Picture feels like too much to take on, let alone even think about. This is not a criticism of these parents. They were awesome. They were sitting there, one of them with a two week old in her lap, as drops in the bucket of catalyse for change. They were the fantastic five of the thirty-eight and as the morning progressed, so did the productivity of our goals and actions.
I realised early on that the conversation needed to be focused, positive and goal orientated. This is usually what I recognise with both groups and with individuals in my coaching. The tangents are the demise of the intended outcomes and staying on topic with clear facts, messages, goals and identified outcomes are the antidotes to this trap.
When I introduced myself as a Coaching Psychologist who was developing a program with my husband, a Clinical Psychologist, on ‘How to Manage Climate Anxiety’, I found I had a captive audience and there was clearly a need for this in supporting our kids.
The tone changed. There was a desperateness. Their anxiety and the anxiety they were holding for their children was palpable. ‘How do you talk to your children about Climate Change?’ was clearly a hot topic. ‘Should I be taking them to protests?’, ‘My son thinks global warming means there is going to be lava pouring from every mountain of the earth.’ ‘My daughter puts her fingers in her ears every time I mention it.’ This worry was coming from a place of love and protection, and a desire to help their children understand, just as there was a desperateness to have an impact on climate change.
We need to gauge where we are emotionally in this journey and how we will communicate and engage with others on the topic. We need to understand our own purpose and understand when different emotions are present for us.
When I began to write on the subject, it seemed like a good idea because I could see that we were engaging with more and more clients who were experiencing eco-anxiety. I saw professionals, individuals, parents and children experiencing eco-anxiety and knew I could put a formula to it. I had thought I had experienced eco-anxiety, but it wasn’t until later that I realised I had not truly felt it in my core.
In complete juxtaposition to my first experience of chatting climate change, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor of a home in Oxford with local parents, I perched on an art deco divan in West London, eating vegetarian sushi with three of my close friends (who all have some connection and commitment to sustainability relating to fashion, along with a few others who didn’t have a connection or much knowledge about climate change at all. We were invited along to listen to Tamsin Odmond and Molly Simmons from Extinction Rebellion speak about their work. We began with a grounding exercise and then dove deeper down into the gravity of climate change science then I had really been. I had heard all these topics but not really felt them. We discussed the mass extinction of insects and The New F Word, (feedback loops) and I realised up until now, I’d been hearing but not listening or feeling. When it finished, I actually left feeling energised and hopeful as it felt like the start of something big- a revolution I was watching unfold.
Later that week I attended the Extinction Rebellion’s 2019 Autumn Uprising. I went to observe and didn’t feel too emotionally attached. I was not an arrestable but I served food and talked to arrestables. Towards the end of my time there, I found myself staring into the eyes of an activist bolted to the steering wheel of a hearse in the middle of Trafalgar Square and something just hit. He looked like he could have worked in a trendy ad agency. Short hair, clean shaven and nicely dressed. He looked ‘normal’ not some hippy freak the media was portraying. Our eyes were locked and I felt a human connection to the cause, not one built on rage or political affiliation but of humanitarian purpose and hope and despair. I mouthed the words ‘are you okay?’ and he lightly shook his head, ‘no’. Then he mouthed it back to me and I mirrored his response: no. We gently smiled at each other and I felt a love for humanity that I suddenly desperately wanted to protect. This was the kind of exchange one experiences at a funeral for someone that has been ill for a while, but also went too soon. For many there that day this was a space to mourn. I began to mourn. As I proof read this, I can’t help but stop and cry. But this is an important emotion and deserves acknowledgment.
In the following days, my heart ventured down on the journey that is further than climate anxiety, but climate grief.
I went from dissonant action to resonant inaction. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. All I wanted to do was to go to the school, pick up my kids and hold them- run away and live on a farm somewhere safe. This was a logistical problem because I can kill a fake orchid and find Scotland freezing. I also, I knew this was exactly not the time to be with my kids. I needed to process this away from them so my emotion didn’t spill out onto them. I had my own revelation; hope feels lost, but courage is not. That is what I have now. I had to ask myself, ‘how courageous will you be for your babies?’ -not willing to learn to garden, but willing to speak out, vote, change my behaviour, disrupt the behaviour of others. With this, I created a purpose for myself that I could anchor onto when I felt wobbly. So what was I going to do? I started writing.
We Must Identify Our Own Purpose as Adults in the Climate of Change
I was engaged with climate change before, I was active in it and this was okay. I don’t think you have to experience what I did to engage, or be driven and motivated or at least supportive of your children in this, but for me, I had to really feel climate despair in order to engage with it-with my full heart. I needed to experience this to really understand the sorrow future generations will feel if action isn’t taken now. I tell you this, not to scare you, but to engage you and to tell you, that you are not alone in your grief, anger, denial and despair, hope, excitement, whatever you feel, but to show you that you are not alone I hope this gets you to a better place so that you turn from a place of dissonance or resonance and inaction to a path of resonance and action.
Thus began our work on Climate Psychology
