Sacred Demise: A Book Review

Carolyn Baker's newly released book Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Collapse is the first book devoted entirely to the psychological and spiritual aspects of today eco-nomic challenges. I am eager to recommend it to all helping professionals and others wanting to deal with the difficult inner work involved in the transition that's taking place around us whether we are embracing it, fighting it, or denying it.
Author, adjunct professor in history and psychology and creator of the Speaking Truth to Power website, Baker draws on a wide variety of traditions and backgrounds in crafting her thoughts on this vital subject and includes many heartfelt insights she has gained from her personal inner journey into the troubled waters of our time, never flinching to delve into its hard truths and our role in the challenges ahead.
As a practitioner you may not agree with particular points in her book and you may find sections emotionally disturbing, even difficult to read. But the significance of this book is that Carolyn lays bare the issues we must confront in ourselves and help our clients to confront if we are to find the inner equanimity needed to address the future with the confidence, wisdom, creativity, and effective action that is demanded of us.

I see reading this book as a doorway to the inner reflection we each need to do and help our clients to do.

Each chapter actually concludes with a Reflection and a blank page for Notes. I found these to be not only personally valuable but also useful tools for sharing with clients.
Because I had the honor of writing the Forward to this book, instead of describing its contents in more detail, I invite you to read the Forward. Then I hope you will take the opportunity to read Sacred Demise. I will look forward to your thoughts and comments, both as someone who faces these issues yourself and as someone who will be on the front lines of helping others.
For those for whom it will be helpful, I have created 6-hours online Continuing Education (CEU) self-study course for this book with an accompanying Course Guide. It's available for an introductory price of $20 (plus the cost of the book, which can be purchased separately through amazon or other sources either in print or as an e-book). Contact me if you would be interested in receiving these CEU's.
To a sane and sustainable future.
Sarah Edwards Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: Are You Encountering the Negativity Challenge?

I've noticed a common challenge in talking with my spiritually-oriented friends, colleagues, and clients about the needs for addressing the psychological aspects the environmental, economic, and psychological aspects of climate change and resource depletion. They consider such topics to be negative thoughts they don't want to contribute to.
I was discussing this conundrum with my friend and colleague Carolyn Baker because her excellent book, Sacred Demise, for which I wrote the forward, is the first book that addresses the inner, spiritual aspects of these very real, live-changing threats we're facing. Following our conversation she wrote a most thought-provoking essay on this issue for distribution.
I would very much like to know your thoughts, both to the topic and to Carolyne's response. Are you experiencing this kind of response from in your spiritually-oriented friends, colleagues, and clients? How do you approach it?
Soon I look forward to doing a review of Carolyn's book here on the blog. It is an invaluable resource for those of us who are helping with the Inner Work of Transition to a Sustainable Future.

WHEN FACING REALITY IS NOT "NEGATIVE THINKING"
by Carolyn Baker, Wednesday, 06 May 2009

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
~Carl Jung~

Recently a friend told me that she had been talking up my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse and suggesting to friends who are aware of collapse that they read it. On several occasions the response was, "Well, I don't want to engage in ‘negative thinking'. I'd rather keep a positive attitude and stay hopeful in the face of what's going in on the world." When I heard this, I smiled inside because this perspective in particular prompted me to write the book. One of my intentions in doing so was to help heal the false assumption that looking honestly at the end of the world as we have known it is synonymous with wallowing in negativity.
First, let me begin by assuring the reader that I do not recommend staring down collapse 24-7. Initially, admitting the reality of collapse is frightening and disheartening. People at first tend to become overwhelmed with fear or hopelessness or both. At that point, we can do one of two things: We can back off and process the facts in bits and pieces, interspersing doing so with living our everyday lives, doing things we enjoy with people we love, and savoring everything in life that nourishes us. Or, we can immediately engage one or more defense mechanisms in order to assuage our fear and cognitive dissonance.
The defense mechanism most frequently employed is denial, and unfortunately, some forms of spirituality are particularly useful in fostering denial because inherent in them is the assumption that accepting the demise of industrial civilization will drag one down into permanent depression, anger, hopelessness, or despair. While it is true that when first acknowledging collapse, one might experience such feelings, this does not guarantee that one must choose to take up residence in dark feelings, redecorate, change one's address, and permanently reside there.
I wrote Sacred Demise from the perspective of exactly the opposite experience. Did I feel negative feelings when first learning about collapse and its implications? Of course. Do I still have moments when negative feelings return and cloud what was an-otherwise normal day? Absolutely. But for me, acknowledging and preparing for collapse has been a sea-change in every aspect of my life, which includes a full palette of emotional and spiritual colors and hues. It has indeed made me more fully human and alive.
Rather than dragging me down into depression and despair, my acceptance of what is, has liberated me both emotionally and spiritually. As I have released false hopes of "fixing" civilization cosmetically or creating a mass consciousness change that might engender mass movements, I have gained much more energy for my work and for preparation for the daunting days ahead. In other words, I have gained a visceral understanding of "crisis as opportunity"-a cliché which I bandied about earlier in my life but could not fully appreciate until I allowed myself to deeply understand collapse and its ramifications.
Last month, Oregon Peak Oil researcher and blogger, Jan Lundberg, put out a call to his readers to respond on three questions regarding collapse:
What we are acting toward? What main outcome might we be looking forward to?
What do we relish leaving behind, as collapse begins or as it will be intensified?
What do we not want to leave behind unresolved; or, what needs to be done before it's too late to accomplish it?
This week, Culture Change published the results of the survey which I strongly encourage everyone to read. Here are a few responses:

• I look forward to the world breaking up "into small colonies of the saved" (Robert Bly). I look forward to a simpler, less neurotic life for me and my children. I would like to think that my children, while their chances of survival may be lower, their chances of happiness will be higher.
• The central change I would like to see is abandonment of the addictive, frenzied, exploitative American way of life in favor of a tribal, cooperative, relaxed way of life that puts responsibility toward other species and the Earth, as well as other human beings, first.
• An authentic life that is centered around people and not things. Revival of things spiritual and not material.
• Learning how to live with each other and within the larger community of our bioregions and ecosystems in a way that is intimate, honest, humble, and humanly and ecologically sustainable. That includes restoring viable community life, economic and ecological relationships and systems - living systems.

While none of us knows exactly how the collapse of civilization [as we know it]will unfold and while it is a process -- sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant -- whose beginning, middle, and end are and will be difficult to discern, the responses to Lundberg's questions are encouraging. First, they let me know that I'm not alone and that there are many more individuals than I could have imagined who are looking at collapse with the same optimism -and fear- that I feel when I contemplate it. Moreover, what I hear in these responses is not "negativity" but a deep longing for the possibility of living lives in harmony with all of the earth community and thereby experiencing the fullness of our humanity.
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Sigmund Freud cultivated a very dark perception of humanity as he assessed the baser instincts largely repressed in the human unconscious. His pupil who became the famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, acknowledged the dark side of humanity which drove Freud to utter despair but unlike Freud, Jung came to believe that the dark side was a necessary ally in transforming human consciousness.
Jung spent decades studying myriad spiritual teachers, mythologies, and archetypes of the unconscious, and championed the sacred in nature and in the human psyche; however, Jung insisted that, "We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites. The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so-called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole."
In other words, according to Jung, what we call "good" and "evil" need each other and in our binary thinking are opposite poles which in reality comprise the whole of the human experience; one needs the other for completion, and particularly for the transformation of consciousness. This is why Jung adamantly declared that "Mental illness is the avoidance of suffering." He was not referring to meaningless anguish but suffering which we endeavor to make sense of so that our genuine human purpose may be revealed to us.
In Sacred Demise, I repeatedly return to the question: Who do we want to be in the face of collapse? My friend Joanna Gabriel in a wonderful 2007 interview with Peak Moment TV beautifully articulates the question "Who Am I In A Post-Petroleum World". We both concur that these are the ultimate questions that collapse is inviting us to address in our individual lives and in our communities. I believe that it is futile to attempt to do so unless we are willing to struggle with all of the human emotions that emerge as we choose to stop avoiding the issue of collapse and with the support of trusted others, look at it honestly, welcoming it as a wise teacher and ally.
Sacred Demise painstakingly guides the reader in opening to the process of initiation that collapse is foisting upon us. The ancients and all traditional peoples know that without initiations, humans will not develop into mature, whole beings. In such cultures, it would be almost unheard of for anyone to speak of "wanting to avoid negativity" because all experiences and feelings are honored as necessary aspects of the human condition, without which humans cannot become fully conscious.
Among other things, collapse is asking us to grow up, to become initiated elders and thereby guide humanity in a revolutionary new direction. Near the end of Sacred Demise, I include an excerpt from a comment a reader of my website, Truth to Power, emailed me last year. He wrote:

I, for one, would find much more meaning from
putting food on the table that is truly needed and
sustaining rather than taken for granted. Food
that I raised or killed myself, or we ourselves,
or my neighbor did, and I bartered with him
for it. Much more so than the meaning Empire
tells me what I am supposed to get from sitting
here in my cubicle (my penultimate day today!)
rearranging little electronic blips in exchange for
money, which I am then supposed to exchange
not only for my sustenance, but also for all sorts
of diversions, to make me forget how meaningless
it all is.
I, for one, will find consolation in knowing
my neighbors - and in knowing that they are
there for me as I am for them, rather than living
amidst strangers, as most all of us do now. I will
find consolation in knowing that my ecological
footprint does not extend beyond my gaze.
That the things I consume do not cause death
and destruction beyond my ability to see and
internalize, rather than out of sight and mind as
now, and so much larger than any being could
ever have a ‘right' to.
I, for one, will find purpose in working closely
and cooperatively and communally with those
around me to provide our own sustenance,
comforts such as they may be, and entertainments
as time allows.
I have no illusions that life post-collapse will be
idyllic, nor that the transition will be anything
but ugly. But neither shall I miss that which
is dying - the dizzying complexity of our oil-drenched
lifestyles, a thousand channels of
nothing worth watching, mega-malls, motor
sports (how many kinds of insane are those!?!),
celebrities, glitter, growth, more, faster, bigger,
keep up with the Joneses but ignore the
sweatshops and the dying ecosystems, consume,
medicate, live large... then die. Where is one to
find a sense of purpose in all of that?
Whether one considers oneself "spiritual", atheist, agnostic, religious, or eternally skeptical, the task of accepting collapse and seizing the myriad opportunities it presents, is sacred work. As for me, nothing in my life has proven more positive or powerful.

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., is the author of Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009 IUniverse). She manages the Truth to Power website at and has also authored U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You.
You can order Sacred Demise here. Read book foreword at http://www.carolynbaker.net/ Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: Helpful and Harmful Additions

An excellent piece I highly recommend by Jason Bradford on "Healthy Addictions" prompted me to revisit my thoughts on addiction from a Nature-Guided Career Handbook and consider how I would expand them to focus on basis not only for today's growing sense of eco-nomic anxiety, but also on how socially conditioned compunctions lead to addictive behaviors that have and continue to contribute to the environmental problems we face today.my thoughts on addiction from . In particular it promted me to consider
Just about any activity can become an addiction or obsession, I wrote, in my Handbook. Not only the things we usually think of, but also many things we habitually turn to as an escape from circumstances that are chronically unfulfilling substitutes for natural feelings of happiness so often find missing in our lives.
Some addictions are more obviously detrimental to our lives and our bodies than others, of course, but it’s not the specific activity itself that makes a certain behavior an addiction. It’s the role it plays for us, and our relationship with it. For example, buying new shoes, eating a piece of chocolate cake, staying late at the office, taking a spinning class, playing a computer game, or cleaning house can each be an enjoyable and/or useful experience, or they can become enslaving addictions we are compelled to do without regard for our natural attractions at the time.
Spending time reconnecting with nature and becoming accustomed to the experience of following natural attractions helps us to recognize this difference. First, however, one needs to have a somatic sense of what a natural attraction feels like. This is actually quite easy to recognize. For example, silently say aloud to yourself the colors of the words you see below:

Green

Green

Did you say the words Orange and Green; or did you say Green and Green? Either way, notice the differences you experience in your body as you try to read and say green when you are seeing orange versus when you read and say green when both the color and the word match. This subtle somatic response is an indication of how our bodies identify a natural attraction versus something we're not actually attracted to but have been taught or otherwise come to think we're attracted to. The particular somatic sensation one feels will differ from person to person. For some it might be in a tightness in the pit of their stomach, for example. For others it might be a pressure in their chest, their throat, or some other physical sensation.
With that sensation in one's awareness, the following table lists a few of the contrasts we and others have noticed between the experience of addictions and the experience of natural attractions.



You and your clients can take this chart with you into a natural setting of some kind (i.e. backyard, park, garden area) and spend some time there following your natural attractions (the Green/Green - G/G - sensations). Then pause to notice the differences between these experiences in nature and any addictive or obsessive activities plaguing you.
An example I have permission to share is from a client who was addicted to shopping. Whenever she'd had a tense, stressful day at work, which was often, she would treat herself with a trip to the mall on the way home to buy "a little something." Usually after a long week at work, she and her husband would spend Saturday shopping at their favorite stores. This pastime had resulted in a large and growing credit-card debt. It also meant their home had become cramped and was hard to keep organized and cleaned. So they were hoping to buy a larger house, but their credit wasn't good enough to qualify for a loan.
The relationship between this type of addiction and the ecological and economic problems we face today is, of course, obvious. But this couple is far more typical than we as a nation want to admit. We have been deluged for decades with advertising messages and appeals, even from our US Presidents, that shopping and borrowing are essential to the economy and downright patriotic. Ubiquitous messages tell us that owning more things is the answer to our problems. It will make us sexy, healthy, successful, and ... happy. Although there are reams of research that show this is not the case; that, in fact, such addiction to materialism is correlated instead with feelings of dissatisfaction, depression, and anxiety (see The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser).
But, as George Lakoff professor of linguistics and cognitive science points out, words heard repeatedly matter, and I mean the word matter literally. "Even words we hear casually and listen to incidentally, activate frames or structures of ideas that are physically realized in the brain," Lakoff explains. "The more the words are heard, the more the frames are activated in the brain, and stronger their synapses get - until the frames are there permanently."
So if we are to escape the compulsions to which words have misguided our desires, we must get out of their digital or mediated milieu and reconnect with the truth our somatic experience will remind us of.
In this case, after having my client identify the somatic sensation of a natural attraction, I invited her to spend some time in nature following her natural attractions; then to take a moment to complete a brief worksheet, re-"framing" in words her experience of what is attractive. At first this was difficult for her. She reported not having the time to go outdoors or that it too cold or too hot, or too windy or wet to be outside. But as I encouraged her to focus on how she could create attractive outdoor experiences (i.e. putting on more clothing, selecting an appealing time of day), she was eventually able to begin spending short interludes in nearby natural areas, following her attractions.
Several weeks later she volunteered to share an insight she and her husband had that past Saturday. They'd spent the day shopping for a new home entertainment system. She described their excitement as they explored the latest bells and whistles among their various latest models; how elated they felt as they drove home, proud owners of the new system they'd purchased. Then her tone shifted as explained how short-lived these feelings of elation had been and how tired she felt by dinnertime. Only hours after setting up the new equipment, she realized it had become meaningless to her. "You know, she said, "we didn't need this equipment. I wish we'd spent Saturday at the park instead of shopping. I would have felt relaxed and refreshed instead of burned out again."
Since then by preferring to pursue activities that are naturally attracted to them and leave them feeling "ful-filled," this woman and husband have identified a lot of activities that would qualify as what Bradford calls "healthy addictions," though I'd prefer to call the healthy attractions. They have taken classes together, traveled to unexplored nearby outdoor locales, even created new jobs for themselves, her inside her existing place of employment' him with a new company. In the process, they have saved enough money to whittle away at their debt. "I'm definitely not attracted to having a lot of debt," she told me, "but now I'm not even attraced to shopping unless I actually need something."
This experience, like that of so many other of my ecopsychology clients, illustrates a point made in a 1961 study by psychologists Keller Breland and Marion Breland called "instinctive drift:" once we remove ourselves or are removed from unnatural conditioning circumstances, we gradually "drift" toward those things which are instinctually good for us. This natural human tendency bodes well for our potential to move toward more environmentally responsible behavior. Because we are inherently part of nature, if unimpeded, we will inherently move toward that which is healthy for both us and the environment that sustains us.
Until it is possible to do this unconsciously within the context of culture expectations, the choice to move toward natural attractions instead of addictions and compulsions is one we personally can make by attending consciously to our sensory awareness. As time passes, we'll being to make such personal choices unconsciously again as our species once did so very, very long ago.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2009 Read more!

Predictions Becoming Realities: Are We Ready?

"What will global warming looking look like?" the LA Times headline blared, "Scientists point to Australia."
We had just returned from Tucson where we were doing a Training 4 Transition workshop and presentations on how to prepare for the effects of climate change, peak oil, and the ensuing economic instability to evidence that at least in Australia the predictions we've all been hearing about and too often avoiding are no longer future possibilities but current realities.

Prolonged drought and deadly bush fires, monsoon flooding, deadly mosquito-borne fevers, widespread wildlife decline, economic collapse of agriculture and killer heat waves -- epitomize the "accelerated climate crisis" that global warming models have forecast, the article declares.

And the psychological impacts are also just a we've been discussing here.

"Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It's devastation," Frank Eddy who runs a shrinking orchard told reporter Julie Cart, shaking his head. "I've got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men -- big, strong grown men. We're holding on by the skin of our teeth. It's desperate times."

The article did not touch on what professional services are available to those suffering through such desperation. But it did point out, however, that:

- 200 Melbourne residents dying in a heat wave that "buckled the steel skeleton on a newly constructed 400-foot Ferris wheel and warped train tracks like spaghetti"
- days of temperatures at 110 degrees or higher with little humidity, and 100-mph winds,
- 4,000 gray-headed flying foxes dropping dead out of trees in one Melbourne park a quarter of Victoria state's koalas, kangaroos, birds and other wildlife dying from the heat
- entire towns destroyed in massive bush fires
- mile after mile of desiccated fields lying fallow
- 60% of the nation's produce farmers walking off their land or selling their water rights
- one rancher or farmer a week taking their own life and 14 dairy farmers committing suicide in the last five years

... and such dramatic anecdotal and empirical evidence hasn't sparked equally dramatic action from Australia's government.

Think that can't happen here? Think again. The climate in Adelaide where much of such suffering is occurring resembles much of our southwest, Los Angeles in particular. Other parts of the US are already suffering from severe weather anomalies at this very moment.

So the question is .... are we ready for this?

Are we ready personally? How are we preparing so that we as professionals can be available to help others instead of becoming paralyzed in our own desperation? Are we professionally ready? In this country known for its boundless opportunity, endless possibility, and rugged individualists, do we as helping professionals know how to assist our communities in adjusting to new realities such as these where choices are narrowed and even the rugged will face unimagined challenges?
Can we expect more of our government? What can we as both citizens and professionals do to assure a more immediate and effective response?
If you have been reading this blog, you already know a lot about what I and others have been doing. Safeguarding our homes as best we can. Setting up home and neighborhood growing possibilities suited to our locale, joining with others to restore resilience to our local communities, working to make needed policy changes, and learning nature-based psycho therapeutic methods for assisting our clients (and ourselves) to begin living more closely in harmony with our natural environment.
Still as I read and re-read this article, I sense the time to make such preparations is running out. I know we're all very busy. I know we're already stressed with other obligations and responsibilities. But just how important will our many other projects, plans, and duties be when we encounter what is already underway in Australia?
There are a wealth of resources here on this site already for responding to these challenges, but let's also share how we're preparing and support each other in our efforts.
We cannot do what needs doing alone.
Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: Breaking the Over-Consumption Habit

An obscure anomaly in our brains enables us to be tricked into denying what we truly want and pursuing a lifestyle that circumvents our well-being and contributes to the economic and environmental conditions we face today.

As Linda Buzzell and I point out in The Waking Up Syndrome, feelings of guilt and powerlessness often follow when we awakened to the fact our current way of life is not only unhealthy for us in terms of stress-related illness, but is also wreaking havoc on the planet and contributing to the ecological and environmental problems we face today.

These feelings may are becoming more intense now as we hear our President call for shared sacrifice over the years to come. How are we to understand and help others understand our role in the mess we're in without wallowing uselessly in guilt and despair? How do we extricate ourselves from a way of life that is ingrained into every aspect of our society? How do we find satisfying lives even as we sacrifice aspects of life we've valued but now must abandon?

I find that sharing the following explanatory background at opportune times combined with nature-based re-patterning activities can replace guilt with a realization that the way we're living now can't provide what we truly want from life, but that there are other satisfying ways to live. In this way we needn't continue blaming ourselves for our participation in the mess our species has created as long as begin to change the way we live now. Even if we can't reverse the damage, we can halt its progress. Here's the kind of background I try to provide. (Sources and citations are included here for professional references only unless further information is requested by my clients.)

How We Get Fooled into Believing We Want the Opposite of What We Say We Want

You have probably noticed there is a marked discrepancy between how we live today and how we say we would prefer to live. For example, we talk of wanting more time for family, friends and children, doing community activities, and pursuing personal interests, but we spend most of our time working to earn money so we can keep our lives as we know them afloat.

While we say we want to eat healthfully, exercise more and watch less TV, we live on fast food and crash in front of the tube. We say we want to stop to smell the roses, but instead we sit in hours of stalled freeway traffic and smell the exhaust.

By studying the relationship between the natural environment and our mental, psychological and physical health, Pioneering professionals in many fields from environmental psychologist Roger Barker to environmental educator Michael Cohen, entomologist Edward O. Wilson and Jungian analyst Marion Woodman are finding that this discrepancy arises because we are no longer attuned to the vast bioecological system of which we are apart.

We are endowed with inborn energetic connections to this natural system and are thereby naturally attracted to those aspects of life that will simultaneously sustain and support both us and nature as a whole (Cohen, 1997, pp 43-50), but once this connection is severed, we lose our sense of what we want and need and our desires can be easily subverted.

Disconnection from this web of natural attractions not only weakens us mentally and physically but also effects the system as a whole. (Cohen, 1997, p 67) In this sense we can see how the vast majority of our personal, social, psychological and environmental problems are nature’s way of calling our attention to this disconnection and attempting to bring us back into alignment. They are either a plea for help, a release from, or a sedative for, the lack of natural gratification that is our birthright as part of the natural world.

In reviewing history, we can see that our disconnection from nature began long ago. As Jeremy Rikfin points out in The End of Work, the Industrial Revolution was especially alienating. Leading scientists, economists, educations, and philosophers of that era, like French mathematician Rene Descartes and later psychologist B.F Skinner, “stripped nature of its aliveness, reducing both creation and all creatures, into mathematical and mechanical analogues.” (Rifkin, 1995, pp 43-44).

Or as Thomas Carlyle declared in 1829, “Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet we should be tempted to call it, the age of machinery in every outward and inward sense of the word. Men have grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand.” (Carlyle, 1997, pp. 229-231)

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, nature was no longer our source of sustenance, but became a resource to be conquered and used for the progress of mankind. We no longer considered ourselves part of the nature world, but as adversaries to its forces that must be tamed, measured, dissected, and harnessed for our use.

We didn't always shop 'til we drop; we've been entrained to over-consume.

Considering that just a little over one hundred years ago half of the U.S. population still lived on farms or in small towns, the gulf between ourselves and the natural environment has grown far wider in the 20th Century as the U.S. shifted from a producer culture to a consumer culture. Rifkin points out how during this time natural human desire, or our natural attraction to life around us, was intentionally manipulated so we would begin wanting things other than what we actually wanted. The result has been a convoluted way of thinking that has magnified over the last century to its pinnacle today.

Rifkin documents how at the turn of the last century, economists noticed that “most working people were content to earn just enough income to provide for their basic needs and a few luxuries, after which they preferred increased leisure time over additional work hours and extra income.” But if the economy was to continue to grow, they concluded, people had to “want things.” So they launched a concerted commercial campaign to convince us that we needed to buy more and more things. And within only a couple of decades, the “dissatisfied consumer” was born.

This shift was accomplished by massive advertising efforts in which “home-grown,” “natural,” and “handmade” items were denigrated while the “store-bought” and “factory-made” ones were extolled. Once “frugal Americans were converted into a hedonist culture in search of every new avenue of instant gratification.” (Rifkin, 1995, p 19-23)

By 1929, Herbert Hoover’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes reached a glowing conclusion that their surveys “proved conclusively … that wants are insatiable. … Economically we have a boundless field.” (Recent Economic Changes, 1929, p xv).

Until the recent financial breakdown, it appeared he'd gotten that right. As of last year there were 22.2 square feet of commercial shopping space per person in the US compared to 2 and 3 square feet per person in other first world countries.

But How Could This Happen? Surely We Know What We Want

We do, but not if we're convinced otherwise. Recent discoveries in neuroscience suggest how such hijacking of human desires occurs. The neural systems of the human brain that detect and evaluate social reward circuits are located in the mid-region of our brain where they generally operate outside of our conscious awareness. So, as reporter Sandra Blakeslee concludes in her review of this research in the New York Times, February, 19, 2002, “In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.”

Neuroscientists now believe that since we are highly social beings, our brains are shaped from infancy according to what we encounter in the external world. From an ecopsychology point of view this means that by spending 90% of our time in an indoor manmade world, we become disconnected from the natural sensory attractions that would subconsciously direct us to what is best for our well-being, as separate from what would benefit the economy. Instead of attaching to nature’s natural ways, the brain easily attaches to the social rewards defined by our consumer society, as well as to addictions that help ease the pain of our disconnection from our true desires.

By using magnetic imagining scanners, California Institute of Technology neuroscientists Steve Quartz and Annette Asp are observing the effects of advertising on the human brain. Their findings further explain how we end up not knowing what we need, much less knowing how to fulfill our needs. It seems that networks of neurons in our brain act in concert in response to experience. So, just as practicing the piano or learning to read physically alters areas of the cerebral cortex, intense, repetitive marketing can do more than change our minds. It may alter the brain itself.[1] We are not only what we eat, but also what we hear, see, and otherwise experience most often.

Armed with this information marketers have become ever more sophisticated at -- to use their term – "branding our brains" with what’s called neuro-marketing techniques.

The Painful Result

Once we disconnect from our natural attractions, our desires become insatiable because they’re not what we really want. No matter how much we consume, we remain dissatisfied. In a hopeless effort to consume enough to feel fulfilled, we consume more and more, so we have become the richest nation in the world, but not any happier.

As psychologists David Myers and Ed Diener wrote:

"People have not become happier over time as their cultures have become more affluent. Even though Americans earn twice as much in today’s dollars as they did in 1957, the proportion of those telling surveyors they are “very happy” has declined from 35-29 percent. Even very rich people are only slightly happier than the average American. Those whose incomes had increased over a 10-year period are not any happier than those whose income is stagnant. Indeed, in most nations the correlation between income and happiness is negligible – only in the poorest countries … is income a good measure of emotional well being."[2]

David Blanchflower, professor of economics and associate dean of the faculty of social sciences at Dartmouth College points out from his review of dozens of surveys, “Even as many people have grown richer, they’ve also grown less secure and less satisfied because of relentless competition that forces us to work harder and puts our jobs in constant danger.” (Blanceflower, 2001)

In his book The High Prince of Materialism, Tim Kasser (2002, p 8-9) presents a formidable body of research that highlights what for most of us is a counter-intuitive fact: Merely aspiring to have greater wealth or more material possessions is likely to be associated with increased personal unhappiness,” including more symptoms of anxiety, a greater risk of depression, and more frequent somatic irritations, watching watch more television, using more drugs, and having more impoverished personal relationships.

Making matters much worse, as we produce and consume more, we also consume natural resources faster than they can be replenished and we create vast amounts of waste, garbage, pollution and other fall out that damages the natural environment and has resulted in the energy depletion and climate issues we face today.

Is it any wonder that 49% of Americans have voluntarily made changes in their lifestyle over the past five years to earn less in exchange for a better way of life and that most of them happy with this change?[3] Now as we begin to wake up to the disconnect from our natural inclinations, more of us are in the process of making substantial changes. In addition the economy is forcing others of us to make similar changes, albeit sometimes unwillingly.

Reconnecting with Nature Can Help Us Make This Shift

The same information that explains how our brains get hijacked into thinking we want the opposite of what we really want and need also points the way for how we can take back our brains. If the neural networks that define what we want are shaped by what we experience, we can re-shape them by reconnecting with nature and re-experiencing our natural desires and attractions. Organic psychologist Dr. Michael Cohen’s Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) is designed to enable us to do that. NSTP provides a specific way to go into nature where we can enjoy culturally unmediated experiences and thus rewire our brains to consciously reconnect our neural reward circuits to natural as opposed to artificially induced attractions.

By spending time relating to nature in specifically defined ways, be it in an urban park, a remote wilderness, a backyard garden or with a potted plant in the kitchen windowsill, we can become aware again of our natural attractions and experience the difference between natural and artificially manipulated rewards. With this sensory awareness intact, we can also begin to reconnect with our natural attractions in other areas of life.

Representative comments from those who have used NSTP are evidence of the positive life-changing effects this process can have:

“These activities helped to make clear the gap between the part of me that lives in my stories of who I need to be and the part of me who knows who I truly am.”

“Immediately from doing this activity I had the sense that I was part of everything, not an alien here. It increased my feeling of self worth.”

“This is who I really am (we all are) at my core beyond what modern society has "taught" me to be.”

“This activity led me to feel that I can trust letting go of all my inner debris, allowing my emotions to be washed away to their organic place in the universe. Nature transforms them to beneficial energy. What remains are my roots, my trunks of strength, my rocks embedded in Mother Earth. This is my core essence, yet all is intertwined and constantly progressively changing. I can remember this place even when I am in my car rushing around the outskirts of this oasis and once again connect.”

“In those moments in nature all was right with me and with the world and I felt merged into all things.”

“I find myself singing, even dancing, through the day when relating to or engaging in these particular activities. This is in contrast to pushing or forcing myself to complete other activities because I will like the result some time later.”

“I can use examples in nature to describe and define parts of myself when with others. I can use these same examples to better understand the core of other people. I can feel more fully connected to a person by sharing our mutual experience with a part of nature. The experiences don’t have to be the same, but the fact that we both have them gives us something in common to each other and nature – like the root systems of the aspens!”

Resources and References

The Continuum Concept, In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff. New York: Da Capo. 1996.

Ecological Psychology by Roger G. Barker. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.Education and the Cult of Efficiency by Raymond Callahan. University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 50-51.

Educating, Counseling and Healing with Nature by Michael J. Cohen. Institute for Global Education, 2008.

“High Cost of Success” by David Blanchflower. USA Today, January, 2001.

The End of Work, The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1995.

The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser. MIT Press, 2002.

“Hijacking the Brain Circuits with a Nickel Slot Machine” by Sandra Blakeslee. New York Times, February, 19, 2002.

“Marketing Might Brand the Brain” by Robert Lee Hotz. Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2005.
“Signs of the Times” by Thomas Carlyle. Edinburgh Review 49, June 1829, pp. 239-359, reprinted in abridged version as “The Mechanical Age: in Clayre, Alasdair, ed. Nature and Industrialization: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)\. Recent Economic Changes, Committee of Recent Economic Changes. New York, 1929).


Reconnecting with Nature, Finding Wellness through Restoring Your Bond with the Earth by Michael J. Cohen. Corvallis, Oregon: Ecopress, 1997.

Footnotes

[1] “Marketing Might Brand the Brain,” by Robert Lee Holtz, Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2005.
[2] The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser. MIT Press, 2002, p 3.
[3] “The American Dream Survey,” Center for a New American Dream Widmeyer Research and Polling, August, 2004. http://www.newdream.org/

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2009

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An Eco-Anxiety Retrospective

What a Difference a Year Makes

It was just over a year ago when we began to see news coverage about "eco-anxiety." If you recall most of the articles referred to it in a rather demeaning manner as new designer malady concocted to describe growing concerns about environmental threats experienced primarily by neurotic, suburban housewives with too much time on their hands.

Coverage continued in that vein through last spring, then then began to wane until its all but vanished. Not the use of the word. No, just the demeaning tone. At the end of this post you'll find a few examples of the kind of frequent and widespread attention the term is getting today.

If you check these out, you'll notice the term eco-anxiety has become integrated into normal parlance, taken more or less as a given of our time. You'll notice also that rather than its being cast in the pejorative, more often that not it is being used in conjunction with tips and ideas for what someone can do about concerns one feels about such things as peak oils, climate change, and environmental degradation.

Here are several reasons for this quick and robust shift and what I see as the implications for us as helping professionals:

1. There is near universal acceptance now that there are very real and serious concerns about climate change and the future availability of cheap fossil fuel. This both makes the topic and people's concerns respectable and thus reduces anxiety levels somewhat for those whose concerns arose because it seemed that no one else but them was recognizing these impending threats. At least now these concerns can be discussed and options discussed in most polite company.

President-elect Obama's message to the public is certainly a help here. Not only is he bringing up environmental concerns as real and pressing, but also he is saying that the problems we face and the changes we will be needed to make are going to be long and hard ones, igniting some of the spirit of heartiness and endurance Franklin Roosevelt brought out to inspire people to hunker down and work together during the Great Depression and World War II.

2. Concerns about the economy are rapidly overshadowing eco-concerns for both the public and the media. Of course, there is a direct relationship between our living beyond the carrying capacity of the earth and its rapid degradation and our own burdens of debt and economic peril. But this relationship is not yet apparent to many and certainly we can help make the connections between the two. Fortunately many of the things we need to be doing to safeguard our health and well-being lives and address our eco-concerns are the same from living more simply, driving less, spending less, and becoming more self-reliant.

The rapid economic downturn is causing intense concern and suffering, however. Requests for counseling have soared 40% in the last six months with financial worries or marital problems arising from financial stress spurring most of this increase. Concerns among those already distressed over environmental issue can also arise when one is faced with the reality that healthier, "green" ways of life may be beyond one's means in today's economy. Realizing, for example, that one can no longer afford or is unable to relocate to less expensive, more eco-friendly area or to a small,er more energy-efficient home, for example.

3. But offsetting the above escalation in concerns is a growing number of people who are becoming involved in movements like local Transition Initiatives, so they 're no longer alone in their concerns. Instead they are directing their concern into constructive action. The Transition Initiatives were started in Totnes, UK, and has spread to over 100 towns there. It is growing quickly in the United States and spreading to Japan, New Zealand and Australia as well.

There are a variety of additional noteworthy elements to this movement applicable to us as helping professionals. First, they approach the changes we need to make as both an inner and outer process. So the psychological aspects of today's issues are being addressed and helping professionals are getting involved both personally and in their roles.

Eco-nomic concerns and anxieties will most certainly rise in the coming year. It will not be an easy year. Helping our clients understand what's happening, providing resources, and support in making practical, day-to-day changes will be crucial. It will be particularly important for us to resist the temptation to tell them all will be well soon, as it will not. But we also need to uplift our own spirits and those of our clients for affiliating with others who are working to make the fundamental structural changes in the way we live and work.

One of the ways we can help is to reframe all the "bad news" we're being bombarded with by the media as "good news." For example, we're hearing regular reports that shopping is down, people are using their credit cards less, borrowing less, learning ways to be more frugal, making things last, repairing our belongs, doing things for ourselves like making our own meals or entertaining family land friends at home. We're driving less, buying smaller cars, or riding a bike to work, traveling less or not as far. We're buying from local family farmers, volunteering to do more for others who need help, and using the library instead of the video store. (For these reports and more see the Middle Class Advocacy Institute News Updates and Archives.)

Such news is usually presented as a sign of how bad things are. We need to help our clients see that these changes are the very ones we all need to be making both for our own well-being and the well-being of the environment. They are signs that we are waking up, that we can adapt to the challenges ahead, and that we're beginning to move in the right direction. As we begin to think of such changes as an active choice instead of something being foisted on us, we immediately become more resilient and capable of moving on.

It is my wish that the New Year will bring a still greater awareness that "eco-anxiety" is a normal and natural response to the unprecedented challenges we face across the globe but that we can reach out to others in our community, work together to respond responsibly, and when needed find help from nearby professionals who are aware of today's realities and worked to marshall both the inner and outer resources we all need.

Samples of Recent Eco-Anxiety Google Alerts

Quiet Nature: Water- The Essential Source Of All Life On Earth By Sherry Many people are experiencing 'Eco-anxiety', due to the current Economic and Environmental Crisis. My aim is to inspire people weekly to experience shifting their attention and feel the physiological healing possible from Nature. ...Quiet Nature - http://noticequietnature.blogspot.com/
Google Web Alert for: eco-anxiety

Eco-anxiety Videos - Watch Video about Eco-anxiety on Mefeedia Watch eco-anxiety videos. Find the most recent eco-anxiety video and clips from thousands of online video sites on Mefeedia.

Soulways Center for Conscious Evolution - Melissa Pickett - Santa ...As in Fox News, Melissa Pickett is owner of the Soul Ways Center for conscious evolution. Alternative to psychologists for many symptoms such as eco-anxiety.

Green products reviews, ethical advice and eco gift ideas Blog ...Posted on Monday December 8th, 2008 at 19:19 in eco anxiety, eco humour, environmental, green energy. The petrol crisis in the UK appears to have dialled ...

How Eco-anxiety Works - HowStuffWorks - Yahoo! Buzz Lifestyle. » View all Lifestyle stories · Image: How Eco-anxiety Works ... How Eco-anxiety Works · HowStuffWorks. Made Popular: Nov 3, 2008 - While it's ...

Diagnosis: Eco-Anxiety EcoSalon - The Green Gathering Eco-anxiety: it’s a new term that’s being used to describe people’s nervousness about global warming or secret guilt about not taking canvas bags to the.

Eco Anxiety Algae fuel Animal rights bio bugs bio fuel Carbon footprint cheaper Eco Button Consumerism eco anxiety Eco balls Eco Button £9.99 eco christmas eco friendly ...

Green Gazette November 2008 - Ohlone College Most people have never heard of eco anxiety, but it is actually recognized as ... Eco Anxiety is the stress that people carry about the their impact and the ...

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008
Distribution for informational purposes only is encouraged.

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Eco-Anxiety: Parity at Last?

On October 3rd President Bush signed the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008. What does this act mean to us as mental health practitioners?

1. It means mental health coverage will be extended to about 113 million people

2. Employers are not required to provide mental health coverage, but those that offer health coverage must offer equality between mental and physical health care.

3. By equality, the act specifies:

- Co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs cannot be greater for mental health coverage

- Separate limitations for treatment cannot be applied for mental health coverage, i.e. limits for out-patient visits to treat a child's behavioral disorder cannot be less than outpatient visits for treatment should he break his leg.

4. Criteria for a health plan determining whether a mental health procedure is medically necessary must be made available to patients upon request.

5. The act does not define what a mental illness is, leaving that up to various plans and, of course, existing state law, but it is generally thought that it will apply to disorders included in the Diagnostic an Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

So what does this mean for eco-anxiety? Well, on the one hand, since eco-anxiety arises from well-placed concern about environmental problems and the economic fall-out that's occurring across the country, it isn't necessarily a mental "illness," but, on the other hand, as many of us have already seen, dealing with problems arising from these concerns can most certainly make one ill, either physically and/or mentally.

Note recent news reports such as the 90-year old woman who shot herself upon facing eviction from her home. Or the man who lived not far from where I live who killed his entire family and then shot himself due to consequences from the recent national economic meltdown.

Generally it is not the source of the distress that determine if it's effects are covered under a health plan but its seriousness. If one's stress, be it from economic, marital, environmental or other causes, lead to development an ulcer, certainly that ulcer would be treated as a medical condition. Thus an equal case can be made that if distress from eco-nomic issues results in severe anxiety, depression, substance abuse, PTSD, or any other ailment that appears in the DSM, then parity would suggest it should be covered equally.

I'm interested in your thoughts on this interpretation. Of course, we must monitor how this act actually plays out plan-by-plan and state-by-state. Please let's share our experiences as the implications of this act unfolds.

E-mail me at sewards@frazmtn.com or leave a comment below with your thoughts or any developments you encounter. I'll be post them immediately. Let's work together to be sure our clients get the best possible care. Sadly there is and will most certainly be ample need.

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Eco-Anxiety: The Good, the Bad and the Strange

Recent news report featured three mental-health-related developments of note to those of us working with eco-anxiety.

First, an article in the Los Angeles Times claims that a troubled economy can be good for our health. Sounds pretty strange, right? Well, it's a classic case of good news/bad news.

The article is based on the correlation between health trends and economic conditions in 27 countries. The good news in this article is that the general "population's physical well-being improves as just about every measure of economic health dips." The statistics show that as economies worsen, the incidence of traffic accidents, industrial accidents, obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking and even deaths from heart disease, which they correlate to lower pollution levels, all go down.

In other words, due primarily to job loss and inflation, the report explains, people are "smoking, drinking and driving less, reducing their risks of heart disease, liver disease and car crashes."

Is this really good news, or is there more to this picture? You have to wonder if this isn't in indication of how disconnected our society has become when we are in many ways healthier in bad economic times. And perhaps it validates the claims of those who firmly believe that once we get through the difficult transition from an unsustainable way of life we will indeed be better off.

But There's One Notable Exception and Some Doubt

Mental health. Stress goes up and mental health declines in bad economic times. That's bad news. Given the mind/body connection, I have to question the blanket conclusion of this article, which does include reference to the doubts of other researchers such as Ralph Catalano, economist at the School of Public Health of the University of California at Berkeley. He says, "I think the evidence is that the net effect of a bad economy is that health gets worse."

Days later another article in the LA Times would bolster Catalano's assessment. It claims today's anxiety over job security amid the current economic woes have employees wrought with fear, stress, and discomfort which is showing up as more disruptive angry outbursts, frequent absences, financial and personal problems, depression, difficulties at home, and alcoholism and drug abuse. Anxiety over rising gas prices are also cited in particular.

So can we be healthier while griped with fear and stress? A pretty strange conclusion. Certainly both articles suggest that a lot of people will be needing mental health counseling. And on that front this is additional good news.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a Mental Health Parity bill requiring health-insurance providers nationwide to cover mental-health treatment on an equal basis with medical care. The Senate also passed similar legislation in a the tax relief bill.

This should be good news, but then some claim this requirement will result in fewer employers providing health coverage, or increasing the portion of insurance paid for by the employee, causing fewer people to be able to afford health coverage. That would be bad news.

It's all pretty strange, but then, Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything predict we'll be seeing a lot of "crazy" things as an unsustainable fossil fuel-based economy is forced to powerdown.

(c)Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008
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Eco-Anxiety: Reinventing Collapse

A Must Read Book for Helping Professionals by Dmitry Orlov

Reinventing Collapse, The Soviet Example and American Prospects, is not an easy book to read. The difficulty is not in the writing. That is crisp, clear, and exceptionally well-organized. It’s the message that’s difficult to digest. Some refuse to read it; others can take it only in small doses. But as helping professionals we better be reading it. It’s a little like taking your medicine when you’re a kid. You’ll be better off for it, but you’ll have to make yourself strong before swallowing and unless you’re an inveterate cynic with an iron stomach, you may want to have some Maalox handy to sooth the after burn.

Eyewitness to the Soviet collapse during the 1980’s and 1990’s, author Dmitry Orlov, a Russian immigrant to the US, dares to extrapolate from what he saw happen there disturbing lessons for the US as our economy wilts under the pressure of heavy debt, a devalued currency and a major energy crisis. While some will find such a comparison audacious and ask what we could possibly have in common with the experiences there, he points out a host of similarities too blatant to deny.

But the real stickler is the equally blatant differences he lays out between the two superpowers. These suggest that what may lie a head for us could be even more catastrophic than what the Soviets suffered. And millions there suffered mightily.

Orlov points out, for example, that price controls kept the lights on, state ownership meant few lost their homes, and few went without heat thanks to giant, state-run neighborhood steam boilers. The extensive mass transit system continued to run throughout and, because of “the dismal state of Soviet agriculture,” many people already relied on “institutional food” and “kitchen gardens” to keep food on the table. So, there was no starvation and little malnutrition. This is in stark contrast to the issues he points out we will face in regard to these and other essentials of a modern life.

The book is by no means all one big downer, though. Some readers find Orlov’s unfailing refusal to whitewash harsh realities refreshing. Others even find his juxtaposition of wit with threat amusing. While he admits, “Many will suffer and many lives will be cut short,” he also contends human society has a way of righting itself. Latter chapters are filled with specific solutions we can garner to mitigate the effects of economic collapse. Many are unconventional adaptations we’re fully capable of making, including some hefty attitude adjustments. Others foreshadow opportunities that will most likely emerge from the most difficult of times.

Sprinkled through out the book one also finds reference to unique often-taken-for-granted assets of the American psyche we will be well served to cultivate.

Concluding on a surprisingly hopeful note, Orlov writes, "In spite of all this, I believe that in every age and circumstance, people can sometimes find not just a means and a reason to survive, but enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom.”

Forgiving the occasional meander into gratuitous partisan asides, we pass on reading this gem at our peril.

Why Mental Health Professionals in Particular Must Read This Book

“Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens.” Dmitry Orlov

It doesn’t take Dmitry Orlov’s forewarning to see we in the mental health profession had best be preparing for a tsunami of emotionally and psychologically wounded on our doorsteps. The financially distraught middle-class is already experiencing record levels of pain as the economic effects of peak oil, climate change, and environmental degradation empty our bank accounts and erode the unsustainable material prosperity and comfort we’re currently addicted to. But we haven’t seen anything yet.

That’s why we as helping professionals need to read this book. It provides a peek at the depth and breadth of just what could be coming. Having seen the emotional effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union first hand, he presents all-too-painfully just how tenuous the mental health of our US population is and how many of our most prized self-concepts, values, beliefs and aspirations lie at the heart of our psychological fragility.

Scouring Reinventing Collapse with the eye of a psychotherapist, one can glean:

1) Who will be most vulnerable. A careful analysis reveals 19 different categories of susceptible individuals covering the bulk of the US population. Many are not immediately obvious, i.e. men ages 45-55 being among the most at risk, especially those who are also movers and shakers.

2) What psychological maladies will be most prevalent. Stress, anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, criminal behavior, and suicide top the list.

3) The kind of assistance we need to be ready to provide, specifically the dramatic changes in values, attitudes, and beliefs we’ll need to facilitate and the practical hands-on aid we’ll need to offer.

Orlov makes one thing clear – we better be ready. While his book will most likely shock and disturb, it will also prove to be an invaluable guide for those willing to view the mental health horizon with a wide-angle lens.

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Eco-Anxiety: Resilience, Optimism & Learned Helplessness

One of our greatest challenges these days is how to validate the seriousness of the problems ahead for our clients without making matters worse.

Believe it or not, an August 25 LA Times article entitled "Can a troubled economy actually improve public health?" reports that our way of life is so unhealthy under normal conditions that we are actually healthier in bad economic times. What an irony! But the article points out, mental health is one notable exception. In difficult economic times mental health "worsens even for the vast majority who maintain their jobs, as the onslaught of bad news causes anger, anxiety and depression."

Perhaps this not surprising. If we're already debilitated from our high-stress, consumer-driven lifestyle, is it any wonder it's difficult for us to draw on the one human capacity we most need in the face of a continuing onslaught of bad news and increasing daily difficulty? And, that we're more likely instead to fall prey to two peculiar quirks of human physiology that make it all the more difficult to respond effectively?

What we most need to draw on in circumstance like those of today isresilience – the ability to absorb, hold together, and continue functioning in the midst of disruptive change. Humans are amazingly resilient by nature. We're all descendants of resilient survivors who have overcome massive changes throughout eons. But as Kathy Harrison notes in her new book Just in Case , we are seeing the first generation of a population that is totally dependent on a fragile network of transportation, communication, and finance over which they have little influence or control and which leaves most Americans only a few days away from hunger and a paycheck away from homelessness.

So we may be seeing a lot of people who, instead of cathecting into their natural capacity for resilience, fall prey to two aspects of our neurophysiology that block resilience.

1. A physiological craving for optimism. Just anticipating the promise of something positive or simply hearing a positive prediction of something we want to hear, floods our bodies with a cascade of brain chemicals that make us feel euphoric. In many ways this is an asset, but it also makes it difficult for us to hear bad news. We tend to seek out a positive spin anywhere we can and if we can't, we may just focus on how we wish things to be and get our chemical high from manufacturing a little "positive thinking."

But this leaves us vulnerable to another debilitating inborn response.

2. Learned helplessness. When faced with an sequence of unpredictable, inescapable negative events over which we seem to have no control, we are easily conditioned to feel helpless. We become apathetic, give up, feel depressed, and stop making efforts to respond constructively to the disruption changes we face.

Unfortunately that is exactly where many of our clients are or will be. "Suddenly" gasoline costs are too high, groceries too expensive, layoffs looming, good jobs scarce, mortgages ballooning, and property values plummeting. And often there seems to be nothing we as individuals can do to stop these events.

But, of course, what is happening now was not unpredictable. It has been predicted as early as the 1950's. If we as a society hadn't been too addicted to optimism to hear the many predictions some have been shouting from the rafters for so long, their arrival now wouldn't be having seemingly inescapable consequences.

And, of course, each day we allow ourselves to go blithely on listening to or conjuring up optimistic images of how we can go on as we have been, and continuing to grow and expand, the more unpredictable and inescapable the negative consequences ahead become.

The alternative is to help our clients embrace the "bad news" and tap into their innate capacity for resilience.

Doing this will be far easier if we can imbue what's occurring with a titillating tinge of optimism. In an effort to do this some try to sugar-coat the issues. "It won't be so bad. Some new technology will be developed." "We'll be living in a better world where everyone can concentrate on what they love most." And so forth. But as reassuring as sugar-coating may feel, and as eagerly as it is apt to be lapped up, it just leads us right back into the optimism trap where we started: unable to escape the surprises we're left vulnerable and unprepared for.

Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Cultures movement and author of The Transitions Handbook, and Australian permaculturist Geoff Lawton are among those who are bringing an optimistic twist to the bad news we must deal with. They are packing standing-room only halls with eager, enthusiastic, and excited individuals across the Western world.

Since as a people we love optimism, let's capitalize on that. Let's immerse ourselves personally in the optimistic messages and activities arising from those who are accepting the "bad news" and responding with resilience.

Let's participate in hopeful, action-oriented endeavors like theirs in our own communities. Then let's share the enthusiasm and camaraderie of these experiences with our clients. Let's bring that energy into our sessions and invite our clients get involved so they too can experience first hand the empowering force of optimism in the embrace of challenging change.

Resources

Video Clips:
Greening the Desert with Geoff Lawton
Transition Handbook with Rob Hopkins

Books:
The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins

Organizations, Training, and Websites
Transition Culture http://transitionculture.org/
Permaculture Research Institute of Australia http://www.permaculture.org.au/
Permaculture Research Institute USA http://www.permacultureusa.org/
Permablitz! http://www.permablitz.net/

CEU Courses
Six hours of interactive Continuing Education Credits are available online for The Transition Handbook and other eco-anxiety related books and DVD's at Pine Mountain Institute, http://www.pinemountaininstitute.com/

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

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