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!

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: 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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Consciousness Change and Life After Oil

In an interview appearing on Transitions Culture, psychologist Peter Russell, author of Waking Up in Time, highlights a number of valuable insights for those of us working with people struggling, either consciously or subconsciously with the unsettling impact of peak oil and climate change on their daily lives.

Russell begins by pointing out the need for an inner change of consciousness that underlies so many of our daily habits and our way of life. But he also addresses the pitfalls of getting stuck in the fear, anger, or magical thinking that we can meditate our way out today's realities, any one of which may occur when we focus too narrowly on inner work.

He emphasizes the value of personal and collective visioning about the future given these realities, while warning against the dangers of becoming attached to the ideas we envision for the future, urging instead that we remain open to unfolding possibilities. I too find envisioning to be a valuable way to move out of fear and shock into positive action.

As we've discussed here before, moving past fear, shock, or anger isn't usually an instantaneous process, though, so we need to allow ourselves and those we work time to adjust both emotionally and cognitively as we move through the stages of waking up. Trying to hurry one through this process tends only to deepen the fear, shock, or anger one needs to move on from.

Russell calls for a balance between what I consider to be inner and outer reconstruction, dealing with both the needed psychological and practical change. In terms of practical action he views provision of energy and food as our top two priorities. In general terms I would agree with this, yet I maintain the best place for a given individual to start is with their most pressing concerns and personal priorities. In many cases that may be dealing with freeing themselves from immobilizing debt.

I am interested in knowing your comments about Russell's views and those expressed here. Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: A Time to Grow-Up

A New Worldview – Leaving Fantasy Land, Entering Pioneer Land

“As someone who is studying to be a psychologist,” the young man asked when Howard Knustler spoke at the University of California Bakersfield campus about the implications of peak oil, “what can we in this field do to help people deal with what we’re facing?” Without a moment’s hesitation Knustler replied, “Help them grow up.”

I was reminded of Knustler’s reply recently when I saw an article on Peak Oil Parenting by Annie the Nanny entitled “What Happens When the Reality of ‘No’ becomes Clear to Middle-Class America?” Annie points out that as parents we say “no” a lot, because we know our children need to learn about boundaries. Like it or not they can’t have and do everything they want whenever they want. But as adults we in the US hate boundaries. We don’t like to hear the word “no.” Instead …

Over the past energy-rich half-century, the two-year old developmental task of learning to accept and live within boundaries and the four-year old task of learning to differentiate between make-believe and reality, have flown out the window. We’ve grown accustomed to a world of “Yes.

As Annie extols, ‘No’ has become “a minor inconvenience, which has rarely popped up. Yes, you can have a mortgage with no money down. Yes, you can afford that new truck. Have that trip to the Bahamas because guess what…you’re worth it! Yes…yes, you can.”

In recent years the limited possibilities of past generations appeared to disappear. Most Americans define themselves as part of a comfortable middle-class, enjoying, taking for granted, and feeling entitled to a life filled with luxuries once reserved for and others never even dreamt of by royalty.

In this Fantasy Land of limitless energy and perpetual growth, one never really has to grow up. We can savor a womb-like, climate-controlled environment and be bottle-fed every form of comfort and convenience we can afford, living in a kind of perpetual toy-land of shopping and playing in an ever-larger sandbox of entertaining and high-tech toys.

We’ve enjoyed a sense of omnipotence once reserved for spoiled two-year olds and the unlimited magical beliefs of spoiled four-year olds, thinking that with the right education, good job, family heritage, or a winning lottery ticket our dreams, whatever they might be, can come true. Somewhere out there, we can wish upon a star and find a free lunch waiting.

In his book The Dumbest Generation Mark Bauerlein of Emery University reports that “two-thirds of US undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.” (See the LA Times review “Speeding to stupidity – or not.” July 5th) But this self-absorbed you-can-have-it-all, everything-is-possible, build-it-and-they-will-come, whatever-you-believe-you-can-achieve world of prosperity thinking has been built upon cheap energy, and, of course, working longer and harder to pay for our toys and a place to keep them.

Now Here Comes Mother Nature

We’ve been bombarded with this fantasyland worldview through decades of advertising campaigns that have enticed to spend our way into massive personal debt. But a burgeoning world population, dwindling natural resources, and dramatic climate changes are bursting the fantasy. The rising price of energy has put us on an unavoidably rough and very bumpy long road ahead.

Like every young child, we’re discovering that in the natural world – the real world – neither we nor our technology are omnipotent. There are limits to our power to define reality, not matter what we believe, wish, or pray for. Also, like most children, we don’t like facing the grown-up world where not all dreams can come true. Nature is imposing some big “no’s” on us leaving us eco-nomic anxious and eco-angry at the very real prospect of being banished from Fantasyland.

As helping professionals even though we may be having some of our own issues adjusting to today’s new reality of “No,” we nonetheless need to guide our clients in cultivating a new worldview that’s compatible with a grown-up realty. Of course they’re not children so we cannot treat them as such. We can’t stand them in the corner until they wake-up or give them a swat on the tush. But we can offer a grown-up worldview that will serve and sustain us. We can assume the simultaneously firm and caring attitude good parents use to help their children learn about limits.

Yes, that may make us seem like the “mean bad guys.” But the alternative is for stark reality to be the teacher and it reality can be a mean and ruthless parent if we don’t pay attention to it. Unless we voluntarily adopt a grown-up worldview, economic realities will force us to do so kicking and screaming. That will be much harder than beginning to learn we need to learn now while we still have the resources to make the changes we need to make.

Another Familiar but Near-Forgotten Worldview Is Standing By

Fortunately there is a readily available grown-up worldview we can turn to. Having been stowed away in the cold-storage for decades, it’s a familiar story with deep roots in our national heritage. Wash off the romantized wrapping we’ve stored it in and you find not a Fantasy Toy Land, but a New World Pioneer Land of many frontiers.

Life in the “New World” our ancestors pioneered on the frontiers of yesterday was rough. Sometimes really rough. But our ancestor were tough. They lived through many hardships, yet they savored newfound freedoms from the burdens and constraints they’d suffered in the countries or cities they were fleeing. Like us today, many of them headed into the unknown because they realized that’s what they had to do if they wanted to survive.

As they stepped into unknown territories they didn’t ask, “What all do I want?” They asked, “What do I need?” They didn’t insist on comforts. Nor did they hire others to do anything they could learn to do themselves. Usually that meant they had a lot much to learn, just as we do if we are to survive the today’s new world.

They didn’t want more than they needed. They learned how to make do and how get by with what was available nearby. They relied on themselves, their families and the small communities where they settled. They helped each other, and, as the story goes, prided themselves on developing courage, ingenuity, patience, strength, and endurance. All traits of grown-up human beings.

They didn’t they toss away anything that still worked for a new one at the slightest ding or word of the latest model. They took good care of what they had, including the land, because “just get another one” or “buy some more” wasn’t usually an option. Those who survived had the greatest respect in particular for nature because they knew nature was not to be ignored. Their survival depended on understanding and accounting for its limits and boundaries. They also knew too well that, as Henry David Thoreau discovered on this trip to Mt. Kadaan, “there is a force in nature not bound to be kind to man.”

The men and women pioneers of yesterday also did many things they didn’t particularly like doing and endured many discomforts, but even at the most difficult, so the story is told, they maintained a sense of excitement, hope, and promise on their journeys, taking great deal of pride in their endurance, ingenuity, and tenacity.

This is the spirit and worldview we need to foster today. Not one of doom and gloom. Not one of denial. Not one of hedonistic fatalism or an endless search for easy substitutes. But one of hope for a new world composed of grown-ups who learn, innovate, solve problems, fend for themselves together and take on their journey with the determination and enthusiasm that a child brings to learning to walk, riding a bike, and mastering the other tasks of growing up.

There are still elders among us who remember elements of this old story. They remember times when grandparents passed on treasured, well-cared-for belongings to their grown children who welcomed and treasured them in turn. They remember times when folks were proud to make their own clothes, can their own food for winter, bake their own bread, and save for a rainy day.

We can encourage folks to reach out to this older generation and listen to their memories of the far different, nearly forgotten stories that sustained our ancestors. As permaculturist Marty Falkenstein of Falcon Ecological Design in Eureka Springs, AR, urges her clients, “Let’s return to our roots. Let’s tap into our DNA! We ‘re the descendants of survivors!

Coming soon - Helpful Mantras for Pioneering This New World
Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

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Eco- Anxiety: Why Eco-Therapy?

What It Is, What It Isn't, Why It Can Help

Recently a number of news articles have featured eco-anxiety. Often they also refer to eco-therapy as an emerging way to handle concerns about environmental change and its economic impacts. While such feelings arguably should not be considered mental illness, many people are troubled on one or more levels about what is happening with the environment. Who are they and why can eco-therapy help?

At one level many, like hunters, fishermen, outdoor enthusiasts, as well as environmentalists, are distressed about the loss of valued ecosystems like prairies, forests, and wetlands. Or the plight of endangered species such as polar bears and their cubs that are starving as their habitats degrade or disappear. Many also have concerns about re-occurring or on-going drought, floods, and other weather events their communities are recovering from.

On another level many are becoming concerned about how climate change, dwindling natural resources, and population pressure are affecting their daily life, eroding their health and threatening the comfortable lifestyle they enjoy or their hopes for the future. Rising prices of basics like food, health care, gasoline and fuel for home heating heighten concerns about rising levels of pollution and pesticide-based foods.

Still others are feeling isolated and persecuted for having such concerns, while others are uncomfortable with growing social pressures to change the way they live and are feeling judged, angry, or guilty about pursuing the life they’re accustomed to.

So growing numbers of people are seeking information, guidance, and support for how to respond both to their feelings and the pressures of today’s new economic and environmental realities. Unfortunately the examples given in many of the recent articles mentioning what eco-therapy is and how it might help address eco-concerns tend to verge on the ridiculous and provide a highly distorted image of what it offers.

It is not, for example, about getting people to change their light bulbs, take cold showers or hug a tree. Nor is it particularly “new” or limited to eco-concerns.

Just What Is It?

Ecopsychology, eco-therapy, and the natural systems thinking process (NSTP) are educational and psychotherapeutic approaches for learning to live more harmoniously with oneself and one’s environment, both natural and manmade. Though they involve interacting with nature, they can be practiced virtually anywhere and do not require individuals go to a distant, remote, or wild setting, unless they choose to.

Eco-modalities have been used with success to address a wide range of personal, social, educational, medical, and psychological issues including:

· Relieving stress
· Improving school and on-the-job performance
· Reducing anxiety
· Recovering from depression
· Healing stress-related illnesses
· Ending addictions
· Recovering from illness or surgery
· Boosting energy and relieving fatigue
· Improving self-confidence and self-esteem
· Gaining clarity on one's life
· Building community
· Getting a good night's sleep
· Finding the right career
· Simplifying one’s life
· Building healthy loving and working relationships

They have shown to be valuable tools in such programs as:

· Psychotherapy, psychiatry
· Nursing and hospital care
· Learning disabilities pre-school thru secondary education
· Substance abuse
· Holistic health practices
· Career counseling
· Personal growth program
· Career and business consulting
· Preventative health care
· Weight-loss programs

Why Ideally Suited for Addressing Eco-Concerns

Eco-modalities are particularly well-suited for responding to all types of environmental concerns for four reasons.

1. Being in a pleasant natural setting, be it a backyard, park, seaside or forest, puts one in a relaxed physiological state that’s conducive to having and benefiting from new learning experiences. Being in nature allows one to temporarily step away from the weight of daily concerns, encounter a milieu different than customary, open closed-down senses, and release rigid or distressed minds.

2. Interacting with nature through particular eco-activities provides a non-threatening way to experiencing an alternative frame of reference and value system that is more suitable to our current-day environmental and economic realities. Many of the problems we face today are the direct result of living in a society that is at odds with the both inborn human nature and the earth’s ecology. Much of the distress both the planet and we are experiencing now is a result of this mismatch. Being in and interacting with nature allows us to experience and learn about a more compatible alternative for how to live.

3. Learning directly from nature is an unmediated process. Because nature teaches in wordless, nameless ways, we can step outside the limitations of current ways of thinking, experience more harmonious ways of being, and then return to articulate them verbally both to ourselves and others in terms we understand without inadvertent or preconceived pressure or limitations by a therapist, educator or society as a whole.

4. Each nature experience is highly personal, providing opportunities to access the specific lessons a given individual needs and is willing to absorb at a given time. What is learned from a particular nature activity usually differs from person to person because we’re each attracted to those aspects of nature that will provide us with the lessons we most need and are ready to integrate.

There are many resources with information about ecopsychology, eco-therapy, and natural systems thinking. Here a few:

Children and Nature by Peter H. Kahn and Stephen R. Kellert. MIT Press, 2002.
Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World by Joanna R. Macy and Molly Young Brown. New Society Publishers, 1998.
Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind by Allen D. Kanner, Theodore Roszak and Mary E. Gomes. Sierra Club Books, 1995.
Reconnecting With Nature: Finding Wellness Through Restoring Your Bond With the Earth, 3rd edition, by Michael J. Cohen. Ecopress, 2007.

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Eco-Anxiety: A Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome

Loss of Expectations for the Future, Who We Will Be within It, and Hopes for a Semblance of Normalcy Help Predict Those Most Vulnerable

The triple-threat posed by today's impending energy, climate and financial crises can steal our conception of the future, rob us of who we believe we are, and threaten our sense of normalcy. The result is an eco-anxiety that, as Richard Heinberg has pointed out, might best be defined as a pre-traumatic stress syndrome.

Eric Berne, originator of Transactional Analysis, had another a name for our tendency to let concerns about upcoming events seep into our experience of the present and infuse it with a sense of dread. He called it Reach Back. These unwanted intrusion of frightening "flash forwards" are one of the most disruptive aspects of eco-anxiety. Why do they occur and who is most prone to them?

As we go about living our daily life, for example, enjoying a particular routine aspect of the day, eating a bowl of fresh blueberries for breakfast on a winter morning perhaps, or reaching across the console to turn on the air conditioning in the car on the way home from work when we feel a bit too warm ... suddenly, we flash forward.

We flash on how many of these things we so casually take for granted now may no longer be part of our future. We imagine sweltering days without air-conditioning or breakfasts where blueberries may not be the only thing that won’t be around to eat. Concerns may quickly spiral. Just what will we have to eat? Where will it come from? Where is the nearest farm? What do they grow? How will I get some?

Such flash forward spirals can play out mentally until something intervenes to pull us back, somewhat shaken, into the moment.

While anyone can experience such spirals once they realize the probable impact of the energy, climate and financial changes already unfolding, those who are highly dependent on, or whose hopes rest upon, a future quite similar to the present, are most likely to have disturbing bouts of flash forward moments.

They are also the ones who have the most to lose from the changes to come and will most likely have the greatest difficulty adjusting to them. They're the ones we, as helping professionals, need to be particularly alert to and prepared to reach out to for assistance, because they can be at risk for serious depression and even suicide.

Who Are the Most Vulnerable?

The first to come to mind include those with the most obvious cause to worry about the loss of dependable housing, transportation, food supply, water, sanitation, medical care, heat and air conditioning, expertise, and security:

1. The elderly, particularly those without families nearby.
2. The ill, infirm, frail, and those dependent on specialized medical treatments, advanced medication, or regular assistance to function.
3. Those who are emotionally unstable.
4. Those living on fixed incomes that could disappear or be severely cut.
5. Those who are accumulating ever-higher debt in trying to maintain their lifestyle.
6. Renters and mortgage holders who could lose their homes.
7. Those who live in communities where neighbors don't know one another and are otherwise without family or a social support network outside of their workplace.
8. Parents with young children worried about what kind of world their children will be facing and how best to prepare them for an unknown future.
9. People with a close relationship to nature who foresee cherished ecosystems and wildlife around them disappearing. This includes people with deep emotional bonds with pets they many not be able to afford to keep as is happening already to people whose homes are being foreclosed.

Another large, but less obvious, number of other people are also vulnerable to disturbing flash forwards: all those whose identities, sense of self-worth, and security are tied to participation in various elements of today’s consumption and comfort driven society.

1. Movers, shakers, and high achievers whose identity and self-value and sense of empowerment lies in the status they’ve achieved in the hierarchy of white-collar careers, especially males in late middle-age. It can be hard for people whose power resides in their position within a hierarchy, or what Eric Berne referred to as position power, to create an identify based on other criteria.

2. Those enmeshed in the health, beauty, and youth culture, who see their value connected to looking beautiful, staying young, taking a wealth of supplements, and eating hypo-allergenic and other limiting diet-specific foods in order to attain peak health. Such individuals can panic at the possibility of aging, sagging skin, gray hair, aching joints, fatigue, sleeplessness, failing memories and other age and health-related decline.

3. Highly patriotic, proud-to-be Americans who are invested in our country being the world leader that can do no wrong and will win at everything from sports to wealth and war. As it becomes clear our country has and is contributing to the problems we face and that these problems will negatively our economy, their identifies and confidence will be affected as well.

4. Those who believe their success and happiness lie in the accumulation of material riches. When it is no longer affordable or possible to get rid of last year's models and constantly replace them with more of the latest, newest, and best, the future can seem like a frightening slide in poverty reduced to worn down shoes, broken down cars, threadbare clothes and out-of-date electronics.

5. Deeply spiritual individuals who believed that God rewards those who work hard and live devote, moral lives with material riches and success. Followers of religions with this tenant could become disillusioned and feel abandoned by their God.

6. Social climbers whose view of themselves and their future prospects lie in attaining and maintaining an upwardly mobile status within the society.

7. Self-centered, competitive, highly individualistic individuals who are “out to get mine” and have no desire to work well with others.

8. Folks who are used to getting what they want, when they want it, including instant service and the utmost in convenience.

9. People who rely on others to carry out most of the essential tasks of daily living from cooking and repairing to cleaning and maintaining.

10. Those who have bought into the belief that anything and everything is possible if you just believe.

How Can We Help?

Imagining appealing scenarios for a future plagued with serious energy, climate and economic woes is challenging enough for anyone, but imagining ones that will offer assurance for those with one or more of these vulnerabilities is even more daunting. The best scenarios usually favor able-bodied people with the will and ability to be flexible and versatile, and the resources, support and wherewithal to get busy making changes in their lives and work cooperatively with others in doing so.

Yet those with vulnerabilities like these comprise a large percentage of the US population. Of course, not all of them suffer unduly from eco-anxiety. Some will remain in denial or discount coming changes, only to face them when their future actually does change. Others will find their own ways of coping without need for professional assistance.

But some are and will be suffering enough to benefit from support and guidance. Obviously being judgmental of those whose concerns may seem trivial or telling those with serious reasons for concern to simply prepare to accept their fate will not help. Nor will giving them facts about how imperative it is for them to give up their hope for a future that includes the things that matter so much to them. As a line from a recent drama reminds us, once hope is gone, dying is just a formality.

As long as we dread the future, fear losing of who we are and any sense of normalcy, our anxiety will only increase. We're left to flash flashing forward on our own version of what my colleague André Angelantoni of Inspiring Green Leadership calls a Mad Max scenario of the future - dire, depressing and chaotic.

What’s needed is a new image of the future with a new source for our identity, our raison d'etre, our place in the world. Something other than status, material possessions, looks, youth, and even the strength and ability to stand on our own. A new context for hope that springs from an ethical value system more closely aligned with the natural world, one that holds an appealing promise for a new, albeit different, tomorrow. (See A Time to Grow Up: A New World View)

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008 Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: Not a Mental Illness

Facing Facts
by Sarah Anne Edwards, PhD

Thirty-six percent of the U.S. population worries “a great deal” about global warming, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Another 26 percent worry “a fair amount.”
When asked what will be “the most important problem facing our nation 25 years from now,” Gallup respondents listed the environment third, just behind “a lack of energy sources” and Social Security, and way ahead of terrorism, education, unemployment, race relations, and the budget deficit.
All these folks are not mentally ill. They are awake to real concerns that are only now beginning to pinch our pocket-books and erode the comforts and conveniences of daily we've come to take for granted. They are the tip of an iceberg of folks who will be facing life-changing challenges that health care professionals and spiritual leaders need to be prepared to help them address. Read more!

Eco-Anxiety: An Intelligent Response

by Sarah Anne Edwards, PhD, LCSW

Articles on what is being called “eco-anxiety” have begun appearing in periodicals of late, including in the New York Times (see links below) . The term “eco-anxiety” is being used to refer to the psychological response to a constellation of environmental events such as global warming, climate change, resource depletion, species extinction, and ecological degradation. Actually the term is a misnomer in that while granted most of the articles verge on the tongue in cheek, they nonetheless are placing such concerns in the realm of mental illness and thereby seriously misunderstanding what is occurring.

The term anxiety is commonly used to refer to a vague sense of undefined discomfort, while in psychiatric terms it refers to suffering from irrational fears out of proportion to the actual likelihood or impact of the feared events. By either definition, “eco-anxiety” would therefore be something best addressed by helping those suffering from it to define and calm their fears and concerns. But such a definition and approach could not be further from understanding the eco-concerns arising today or what needs to be done in response to them.

The effects of global warming, resource depletion, and other environmental crises are neither vague nor irrational.

Though most people may not yet fully recognize the connection, these events are directly related to the worsening economic and social pressures being felt by most Americans across the country, i.e. rising prices of staples like housing, food, utilities and transportation, accompanied with falling or stagnating wages and job opportunities. The jolt of recognizing the far-reaching economic implications of our environmental issues heightens the gravity of any heartfelt concerns we have about the perils of penguins and Polar bears and other species and brings them right into our households, thereby giving the term "eco" anxiety a double-edged meaning, a concern for both our ecological and our economic survival.

If a major tornado were heading toward one’s community, we would not say those who were concerned about it are suffering from tornado-anxiety. Nor would we prescribe daily meditation, a walk in the park, or joining a support group as the best ways to respond. While the danger from what is taking place ecologically and its impending economic fall-out is not descending upon us as instantaneously as a tornado might, feeling concerned about the seriousness of its current and worsening impact is a healthy, natural reaction to our growing consciousness of a real threat. It needs to be defined and treated as such.

Not only do these concerns arise from a foreseeable future of very real and disturbing economic and social consequences, they also will soon be generating a pandemic of personal, spiritual, and psychological crises. We as family, friends, and helping professionals need to be addressing them in our own lives and be ready to offer an intelligent and useful response to concerned others.

What Is An Intelligent Response?

First, we should NOT minimize, discount, distract or otherwise suggest palliatives to ease these concerns. The more society and those around us discount the reality of the consequences at hand, the more anxious we become and the more maladaptive our responses. Just as we would affirm that approaching tornadoes are real, dangerous and potentially destructive, we need to affirm the appropriateness of concerns about what’s happening to the global environment and the significant, disturbing implications that lie ahead, including that there may be dire consequences for some.

Then we need to accept that we, and those we hope to help, will have many unsettling and disturbing feelings about these implications, ranging from fear and grief to anger, confusion, disillusion and depression – all of which are perfectly natural and normal reactions. We may wish to deny, discount, and ignore these feelings, but that we must not do. We must not ignore the tornado or our concerns about it. Instead, we must acknowledge and work through our feelings so we can mobilize. In an article entitled The Waking-Up Syndrome, Linda Buzzell-Saltzman and I have described the stages of emotional responses one can expect when facing the breadth of effects from long-term ecological/economic crises. Most important to navigating through these stages is recognizing that they are not the same as the traditional grief process we are more familiar with.

First, what we must face is not one painful, discrete event or loss to which we much adapt. We are faced with an extended series of continual losses ranging from minor inconveniences to major upheavals most likely throughout the rest of our lifetimes. Second, such losses are not limited to just certain aspects of life. Nearly every aspect of our lives will be altered in some way by these changes, eroding the familiar constants that underlie our sense of security. In other words, metaphorically our emotional “blankies” are being snatched away.

Third, unlike with the loss of a loved one, a career, health or even impending loss of life, neither those around us nor society as a whole is yet particularly sympathetic, accepting, understanding or caring toward these concerns. Instead our pain may be denied, mocked, or ridiculed. Our concerns may simply be brushed aside as too much to concern oneself with. No one, for example, tells a grieving widow that her husband is not dead. Nor do we blame and accuse her for spreading negativity when she brings up her feelings of loss and all it complications. Such responses are all too customary, though, when one brings up concerns about the effects of global environmental change.

Finally, many of the things we commonly do to assuage painful losses will either not be helpful or available, particularly if friends and family won’t acknowledge that there is even a reason for them. For example, going shopping, one of the more popular ways we in America deal with unpleasant feelings, will ultimately only aggravate, not ameliorate our growing concerns. Nor will traveling, partying, or of course, turning to drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances. The tornado is still coming and we still know it, even if we want to deny it.

So we need to respect the psychological stages we can expect ourselves and others to go through and respond to them caringly in ways that will teach us about ourselves, where we and our culture fit into the forces that are at work, and what we need to do differently as individuals and communities to protect ourselves. Relevant books and documentaries on the topic such as the Resources listed here can be enlightening. They may also escalate our concerns, though, if not accompanied by talking with others or reading blogs and posts like those listed here where others can share and discuss what they're experiencing and doing.

The best measure of whether we're responding intelligently is to ask ourselves, "Does this help me or those I’m working with better understand what’s happening and how to make sensible choices that will move us out of paralzing emotions into empowering actions?" Using this question as a test, we can quickly discard many standard anxiety reducers that make us feel better for the moment only to leave us with the same concerns as soon as we return to our daily lives.

Ecotherapy and ecopsychology, for example, are often mentioned as an approach to help those suffering from “eco-anxiety.” They can be quite helpful when used as a way to learn directly from non-verbal nature experiences what has led to our current crises and how we could live differently. But they too will fall short if they become nothing more than a temporary outdoor escape from the very real challenges that underlie our concerns.

As with an approaching tornado, acknowledging and dealing with our feelings about the coming threat of environmental concerns and their ensuing economic upheaval is vital, but the best antidote for resolving them effectively is taking protective action.

Taking Action on the Personal Level

On a personal level we need to get busy doing what needs to be done to protect our future from the fallout we’re already experiencing and the rest that’s coming by creating as secure a situation for ourselves as we can. Just as those facing a tornado, we need to start immediately readying our house, so to speak, battening down the hatches and making sure we have a secure shelter handy. For example, we need to start one-by-one putting the following safeguards in place as quickly as we can, knowing, of course, that we can’t do them all at once and must start from where we are:

1. Secure a dependable income. That means having a locally-or-virtually-based career, preferably an independent one, in a trade or service that is resistant to off-shoring, not readily replaced by technology, easily bartered, and requiring as little travel or commuting as possible.

2. Get out of debt post haste and don’t acquire any more. We will need to apply every cent we’re now doling out in interest payments to making necessary changes and safeguards, be they paying the cost of re-training programs, relocating, retro-fitting, launching an independent career, or taking any other of the following steps.

3. Reduce our energy footprint. Scale down the size of our homes and high-maintenance, materialistic lifestyles to minimize the amount of electricity, gasoline, water, and other utilities and commodities we consume. This may involve taking lots of relatively simple steps like fixing breakfast at home instead eating out at the coffee shop or unplugging appliances that perpetually draw electricity even when not in use, as well as undertaking more sweeping changes like relocating, home-sharing, energy retro-fitting our homes, or getting off-grid.

4. Locate if possible in an area with a large and dependable naturally occurring, year-round source of water and as long a local growing season as possible, preferrably in small town, village or well-defined neighborhood with a positive, close-knit sense community. In the future localities will be drawing on their own natural resources and less able to afford to sell and transport their resources elsewhere. We will each need to depend more heavily on the local resources at hand.

5. Learn how to grow food. Since the growing and transport of food will be increasing labor- and cost-intensive, the more we can grow for ourselves in our own backyards, patios, decks and rooftops using natural, energy efficient methods like permaculture, the more secure we will be.

6. Learn how to fix things. As the cost of manufacturing and transporting products and parts made from petroleum and other natural resources rises, the more important it will become for us to personally repair, restore, and maintain what we now own.

Taking Action on the Community Level

1. Get active in or help form a relocalization, permaculture, or simplicity group in your area. People in communities like Portland, OR, Bellingham, WA, Willits, CA, and others across the country are actively working in such networks to protect and strengthen their local economies by making them more sustainable. Taking needed action in our personal lives is much easier with the support, ideas and camaraderie of others.

2. Choose one environmentally-related cause you feel strongly about and contribute whatever time and resources you can. There are many national and local organizations devoted to preserving the natural environment. They all need our help. We can’t possibly respond to them all, though, so this sometimes leaves us feeling helpless to make a difference. By choosing one to devote time and energy to, we are doing our part.

3. Elect officials at all levels of government who are aware of and have a desire and willingness to:

a) Initiate laws, policies and programs that will help individuals and local, national and global
communities respond intelligently to the changes taking place.
b) Create incentives to help individuals and communities make needed changes to reduce
consumption and increase sustainability.
c) Change laws that prevent and hinder individuals and communities from taking needed
steps to reduce consumption and increase sustainability.
d) When necessary pay for needed changes with tax on commerce that exacerbates and
accelerates environmental problems.

For more concrete examples of intelligent action that can carried out at the national
policy level and the consequences of not doing so, see “Five Stages of Collapse” by
Dmitri Olov.

Summary

As we become involved day-to-day in taking which ever of these steps we can at the time to safeguard and secure our future, the pent up energy generated from anxiety about the environment and what’s happening to our economy gets channeled instead into positive action. We’re busy, we’re engaged, we’re doing what we can, we’re involved with others who share and understand our concerns. Our feelings begin to shift from dis-ease to confidence and enthusiasm for the possibilities that lie ahead.

That's how I believe we can best respond both personally and professionally to the natural concerns that are becoming known as “eco-anxiety.” This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing on this topic and I am most interested in your thoughts and reactions, as well as learning of other resources you’re aware of that should be included here.

Samples of Recent Articles on Eco-Anxiety:

"Eco-anxiety replaces dishpan hands for 'green moms,'" International Herald Tribune, 2/15/08.
"Agonising over the icecap or frantic about floods?" You may be suffering from 'eco-anxiety," The Independent, 3/20/08.
"Well, Doctor, I Have a Recycling Problem," New York Times, 3/16/08.
"Green with Worry," San Francisco Magazine, 2/2008.
"For 'Eco-Moms' Saving the Earth Begins at Home," New York Times, 2/26/08.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards 2008

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