Toward a resilience psychology in response to climate change

The psychology of coming to terms with climate change has attracted more attention in the last few months. It's clear that many existing frameworks - such as the Kubler-Ross model on death and dying - have much to offer us in responding to the enormity of our growing understanding of the collective calamity we face. Many schools of integral and ecological psychology suggest practices of building relationship, love and inner peace that can help cultivate and inner resilience that allows us to more effectively stay present with potentially overwhelming complexity and grief in the face of mass extinction. Increasingly, interpreters of this material are making it more accessible.

One example is a useful article in Energy Bulletin which is prefaced:

Few of us are eager to contemplate, let alone truly face, these looming changes. Just the threat of losing chunks of the comfortable way of life we’re accustomed to (or aspiring to) is a frightening-enough prospect. But there’s no avoiding the current facts and trends of the human and planetary situation. And as the edges of our familiar reality begin to ravel, more and more people are reacting psychologically. A noticeable pattern of behavior is emerging.

We call this pattern the Waking Up Syndrome, and it unfolds in six stages, though not necessarily in any particular order.

As with many approaches, the authors (Sarah Anne Edwards and Linda Buzzell) outline categories of responses which they observe as common in people who progress through denial to active engagement with the almighty scale of the challenge (and opportunity) we collectively face:

Stage 1 Denial - “I don’t believe it” and “It’s not a problem” becomes “Someone will fix it” or “It’s useless”.

Stage 2 'Semi-consciousness' suggests that as evidence mounts around us and the news coverage escalates, we may begin to feel a vague sense of eco-anxiety which we might respond to by misdirecting our anger/sadness toward other things - familiar bug-bears, or media-constructed scapegoats.

Stage 3 - The moment of realization suggests that at some point we may encounter something that breaks through our defenses and brings the inevitability and severity of the implications of our collective problems into full consciousness. "At such moments, suddenly we realize no matter how we try to explain away the changes that are happening, they are and will be accompanied by huge challenges to life as we know it and cause considerable pain and suffering for many, including ourselves and those we love... we begin to understand on a visceral level that the changes taking place will have dramatically unpleasant implications beyond anything we’ve faced in our lifetimes. In fact, we realize many of these uncomfortable changes are already underway and will be growing in coming months and years, affecting most of the things we love and cherish

...Some of us become obsessive newswatchers, documentary filmgoers, internet compulsives or book readers, wanting to know more and more about what’s really happening. Loved ones may think we’ve gone nuts. Spouses may consider divorce; kids may decide mom and dad are hopeless cranks.

The more fragile or vulnerable among us may get depressed or experience panic attacks. If something about this current eco-trauma retriggers earlier traumas in our lives, we may have a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) reaction. Even the more resilient may throw themselves obsessively into save-the-planet and other activities, soon to become exhausted and weary from trying to do what no one person can."

Stage 4 - A Point of No Return, is a point in the journey into awareness when we realise we cannot pretend our knowledge doesn't matter. It can also be a place of profound aloneness - a "sense of isolation and disconnection we may feel when living in a different world from most of those around us, a world we can no longer escape from, but one few others seem to notice....

...which might lead to despair, guilt, hopelessness, powerlessness.

"Some have suggested that this stage is similar to the traditional grief process, and indeed, this is a time of grieving. But there is a significant difference between this awakening and the normal experience of grief. Grief that occurs after a loss usually ends with acceptance of what’s been lost and then one adjusts and goes on. But this is more like the process of accepting a degenerative illness. It’s not a one-time loss one can accommodate and simply move on. It is a chronic, on-going, permanent situation that will not only not improve, but actually continue to worsen and become more uncomfortable in the foreseeable future, probably for the entire lifetime of most people living today. This is what author James Howard Kunstler calls “The Long Emergency.”"

The authors (and my experience over many years of working through stages of awareness with students at the Centre for Human Ecology), sense that there is a natural unfolding into acceptance, empowerment, and action once through the 'despair' stage.

"As we come to accept the limits of our general powerlessness, we also find the parameters of the power we do have in this strange new situation. We discover we no longer need to resist our current and emerging reality. We don’t need to feel compelled to save the entire world or to hold onto a world that no longer makes sense. We are freed, instead, to pursue what James Kunstler calls “the intelligent response, ” seeking and taking whatever creative, constructive action will best sustain those aspects of life that are truly most important to us in the context of the changes unfolding around us. At this point our curiosity and creativity kick in and we can begin following our natural instincts to find what is both feasible and rewarding to safeguard ourselves, our families, our communities and the planet.

And indeed, growing numbers of people are beginning to respond with a plethora of creative, socially and personally responsible actions along four paths that are similar to those identified by Joanna Macy in her book World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal and Richard Heinberg in Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines."

There are of course many more resources on psychological responses to the global ecological news. Mary-Jayne Rust is an old friend and fast becoming one of the best known eco-psychologists in Britain. See her website for recent talks on the psychology (and eco-psychology) of climate change.

Another approach is that of climatedenial.org, whose most recent post asks "Why do the websites of progressive civil society organisations pay virtually no attention to climate change?".