Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change

A Clinician's Guide

Leslie Davenport

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781784503284
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Emotions in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Although the environmental and physical effects of climate change have long been recognised, little attention has been given to the profound negative impact on mental health. Leslie Davenport presents comprehensive theory, strategies and resources for addressing key clinical themes specific to the psychological impact of climate change.

She explores the psychological underpinnings that have contributed to the current global crisis, and offers robust therapeutic interventions for dealing with anxiety, stress, depression, trauma and other clinical mental health conditions resulting from environmental damage and disaster. She emphasizes the importance of developing resilience and shows how to utilise the many benefits of guided imagery and mindful presence techniques, and carry out interventions that draw on expert research into ecopsychology, wisdom traditions, earth-based indigenous practices and positive psychology. The strategies in this book will cultivate transformative, person-centred ways of being, resulting in regenerative lifestyles that benefit both the individual and the planet.

Part I

Clinical Themes in the
Era of Climate Change

Chapter 1

The Psychology of
Climate Change Denial

Awakening to the severity of climate change happens to us in many ways. For some it is subtle: we detect confusing shifts in the natural world, such as delicate spring flowers blossoming in winter, or we have to cancel our annual ski trip due to lack of snow. Initially, it is easy to find these kinds of events surprising without necessarily feeling alarmed. As we notice more shifts in the natural rhythms of nature, we begin to have a growing sense of something wrong, a quiet but fundamental unease. Perhaps these unsettling feelings are amplified by an evening news report on record temperatures, like the winter of 2015, when one temperature recorded at the North Pole hit 50 degrees above normal (Samenow 2015). For others, the truth of climate disruption rushes in dramatically when coastal waters unexpectedly submerge their family home. In whatever ways we hear nature’s distressed voice, whether it is gradual or sudden, what often follows is a flood of feelings that can include fear, powerlessness, overwhelm, grief, and despair.

Since climate change has been called one of the greatest threats facing life on the planet, and more and more people are directly affected by its disruptions, why does there continue to be a lack of sufficient engagement with this topic? It is logical that a growing body of scientific information and the increasing number of climate disasters would spur individuals, governments, and corporations to take meaningful action—but this is generally not the case. When we look at both our deeply programmed stress reactions and motivational studies, it becomes clear why climate change denial is so strongly entrenched.

Current beliefs about climate change in the United States

In March 2015, the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Communication released a survey of 1,200 adults’ attitudes and beliefs about climate change in the United States. Here are a few of the key findings.

BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES

•Three in ten (32%) say they believe global warming is due mostly to natural changes in the environment. About half of Americans (52%) think that global warming, if they believe it is actually happening, is mostly human-caused. That number jumped to 65 percent in 2016, according to a Gallup Poll (Saad and Jones 2016).

•Only about one in ten Americans understand that over 90 percent of climate scientists think human-caused global warming is occurring.

•About half of Americans (52%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming, but only 11 percent say they are “very worried” about it.

•Only about one in three Americans (32%) think people in the United States are being harmed “right now” by global warming.

COMMUNICATION

•Most Americans (74%) say they “rarely” or “never” discuss global warming with family and friends, a number that has grown substantially since 2008 (60%).

POLICY SUPPORT

•About one in four Americans (26%) are currently part of—or would “definitely” or “probably” be willing to join—a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming (Leiserowitz et al. 2015, pp.3–4).

So perhaps this survey suggests that we need more climate change facts disseminated to the public more quickly. While improved media coverage would be beneficial, the psychology of change reveals that this would not be a full solution.

Bill McKibben—author, activist, and the man the Boston Globe called “probably America’s most important environmentalist” (Mandel 2015, p.1)—reveals his own learning curve on communicating about the state of the environment. When his book The End of Nature was released in 1989, it was a bestseller that was translated into several dozen languages. He states simply, “My initial theory…was that people would read the book—and then change” (McKibben 2013, p.7). He goes on to describe spending years pursuing the same approach: more books, more articles, more lectures. But it was precisely the lack of meaningful response that resulted from his efforts, including from those who remained complacent after exposure to the hard science, that led him to become a self-described “unlikely activist” (McKibben 2013, front cover) and to search for different and more effective ways to engage others with his message. This resulted in his creation of 350.org, a “global grassroots climate movement that can hold our leaders accountable to the realities of science and the principles of justice,” that is active in over 188 countries (350.org 2016, homepage).

Psychology has long confirmed that people do not change their behavior based on data (Heath and Heath 2010). This is easily recognized in the domain of health psychology’s strategies for lifestyle change, such as stop-smoking and nutrition campaigns. Simply providing a wealth of information on the cancer-causing, disease-producing impacts of unhealthy habits rarely leads to the desired outcome. Instead, many factors for promoting a healthy shift need to complement the educational component, including focusing on the specific benefits of healthy choices, peer and professional support, practical tools for shifting deeply ingrained habits, and, most importantly, ways to address and process emotional responses and examine beliefs and assumptions that often dwell just below our conscious awareness. Without the deeper work, our underlying psychological foundation remains more powerful than the facts, blocking the most urgently needed responses and preventing engagement. This is definitely true when it comes to the lifestyle and policy changes required to impact climate change.

There are also some specific climate-related features that interface with our psychological makeup detailed through the chapter that reinforce our denial. As we diagnose the sources of resistance, they will provide the keys to effective change—individually and in the larger system.

Climate disruption and stress responses: fight, flight, and freeze

The familiar trio of adaptive stress responses that are hardwired into our body’s survival repertoire can be a useful lens for examining our reactions to climate-related threats. They are completely natural and deeply engrained responses to danger. While individuals have a primary tendency toward one of the three primitive reactions, we are fluid: we move between fight (when we believe we have the potential to defeat the threat), flight (if the force is too powerful, our impulse is to escape), and freeze (when we can neither defend ourselves nor outrun the danger). The three physiological reactions evolved for brief, immediate threats, but these reactive states are prolonged in modern-day life and have been shown to erode our physical health and contribute to emotional depletion. As our stress reactions also manifest in response to climate distress, they not only have adverse effects on the individual, they even sabotage our opportunity to create much-needed change.

The upcoming examples of stress responses to climate issues require our discernment: we need real commitment to the climate movement in order to reverse our current destructive path, but rigid engagement can become obsessional and harden into an unintended obstacle. We need self-care, but when we seek balance it can be easy to slide into distancing and avoidance.

Discernment can be subtle. The “fight” response described below is not imputed to all individuals who have an abiding commitment to environmental work and place it at the center of their lives. It also does not refer to the healthy outrage that surfaces when we respond to the magnitude of destruction that is presently occurring. Nor does it describe all those who take a stand and push back or “fight” against injustice in some way. There is a valuable seed in each of the examples, but you will see how the core benefits of activism can coalesce into a counterproductive shadow dynamic when we are primarily fueled by stress. There are subtle but distinct qualitative differences between those who have developed a clear and grounded approach to climate work and those who are primarily acting out stress reactions.

CLIMATE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE STRESS REACTION: FIGHT

The “fight” stress reaction is characterized by those who have a knee-jerk reaction to “come out swinging” when faced with a stressful situation. Some individuals in this reactive state jump into extreme activism. This can show up as excessive activity, reckless language, argumentativeness, and impulsive, obsessive, and addictive behaviors. Their personal lives may be out of balance. Those who react in this way to their distress about climate change can spend hours blasting social media posts, blogging, and news-bingeing. In some cases, their activity can even escalate into violent action. Climate advocates operating in this mode seem to believe that if they shout the information louder and more frequently, it will force things to shift (and psychoanalytically speaking, reduce their own stress). But as Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University clarifies, “Smashing heads does not open minds” (Tannen 1999, p.26).

Paradoxical environmental numbness

Many environmental activists of this type genuinely hope to spur others into taking action, but they do not recognize the limitations of their approach. Robert Gifford, Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada), paints a picture of what the outcome can be when others are exposed to this kind of activism. He reports that when people are given a great deal of information about the environmental dangers of climate chaos without having had a direct experience of personal difficulties related to it, they tend to tune out after a while, creating a kind of “environmental numbness” (Gifford, Kormos, and McIntyre 2011). According to Per Espen Stoknes of the Center for Climate Strategies in Norway, religious groups that focus on social justice can experience the same phenomenon, framed in those circles as “apocalypse fatigue” (Stoknes 2014). Strategies that arouse regret or fear were confirmed as the least effective for encouraging change in 129 different behavior-change studies (Curfman 2009). These results are clear examples of how well-intended but out-of-balance efforts can produce the opposite of the desired effects.

Solution aversion

Some environmental activists caught in the fight response also become solution-averse, using hot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword Lise Van Susteren, M.D.
• Introduction
• Part I Clinical Themes in the Era of Climate Change
• Part II Vitalization of an Ecoharmonious Life: Twelve Body, Heart/Mind, and World Wise Practices.
• Appendix: Progressive Relaxation
• References
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Copyright
• By The Same Author
• Endorsements