A Depth Psychological Approach to Climate Change Responses
by Sally Gillespie, Phd, member of Climate Wellbeing Network
What Lies Beneath
Climate change opens up major existential questions about life and death, meanings and purpose, possibilities and limitations. It also has the potential to arouse an array of powerful and confronting emotions. How then to best engage with such provocative terrain? Depth psychology, with its focus on the relationship between conscious and unconscious thoughts and behaviours, is one helpful resource for navigating us through this challenging and newly emerging territory.
Depth psychologists are exploring the ways that climate change discussions can easily trigger unconscious defensive mechanisms of denial and shutdown in response to the arousal of intense feelings, such as anxiety guilt, anger, shame, grief and despair. They suggest that beneath the apparent apathy can lie unbearable feelings of fear or sadness. Added to this potent mix can also be our inability to reconcile inner conflicts about how to live well in a warming world as well as the challenging of cherished worldviews or ideologies, especially those which do not acknowledge ecological realities. This psychological insight into unconscious defensive mechanisms explains research which repeatedly demonstrates that when deeply held worldviews are challenged by factual information, denial only strengthens as people defend themselves from the profoundly destabilising process of questioning fundamental values and beliefs about themselves and their world.
What is crucial in helping people to creatively engage with climate change, suggests depth psychologists, is the space and support to acknowledge and discuss the intense emotions and conflicts that global warming awareness brings. When these feelings and questions can be acknowledged, validated and explored, it both supports mental wellbeing and facilitates shifts in consciousness that can respond to global warming issues with creativity and commitment.
Talking About the Taboo
Depth psychological practices are based on the understanding that conscious recognition of difficult-to-bear emotions helps us to accept and respond well to confronting realities. In relation to climate change, when we recognise our own challenging and conflicted feelings, we can also better understand and engage with the supressed emotions that lie beneath other peoples’ denials and apparent lack of concern. Acknowledging this emotional substratum in ourselves and others, also opens up the possibility for discussions that can move beyond the stalemate of polarisations such as “believer/sceptic” or “left /right wing”.
Climate change radically alters understandings about ourselves and the world. Any transition from an established worldview to an emerging one is always fraught. In order to support ourselves and others in making this transition, we need to have honest and ongoing discussions about the profound emotions, questions and confusions that global warming and other ecological destructions bring. Such conversations are needed everywhere, from the dinner table and the water cooler to within the media, academia, business and government. When we are able to create the space to safely acknowledge and explore our psychological and emotional responses, we strengthen our ability to face into and respond well to the problems of climate change.
Opening up the Conversation
Once sex was the taboo topic in social situations, nowadays it is often climate change that is the conversation stopper. How often have you brought up the subject to only be met by a quick change of topic or a joke? Or to find yourself heading into a heated argument? Depth psychological practice suggests that what is vital in sustaining a conversation around global warming is to openly invite people’s thoughts and responses. and to listen deeply to them. Of course to do this well we need to also bring into awareness our own feelings, so that we can be thoughtful about how and when to share them with others. When we can listen to ourselves and others with curiosity and acceptance for the full gamut of feelings and thoughts we have around global warming we make climate change more “think-able”.
In order to make the space safe enough for a freeing discussion about the emotional realities of global warming we need to listen respectfully and be empathic. The truth is we are all struggling with coming to terms with this reality. Acknowledging the difficulty of thinking and talking about climate change, can in itself ease the way for further interaction. Identifying common interests, sharing personal stories and being patient are also very helpful. As with so many fraught topics, climate change conversations often develop best over time as feelings of safety, acceptance and connection become established.
Some great resources for developing the art of initiating and sustaining indepth climate change conversations based on depth psychological principles include Rosemary Randall’s handbook In Time for Tomorrow? The Carbon Conversations Handbook and Psychology for a Safe Climate’s booklets Let’s Speak about Climate Change and Facing the Heat: Stories of Climate Change Conversations. For further discussion and references about depth psychology and climate change click here for Research.
Climate change opens up major existential questions about life and death, meanings and purpose, possibilities and limitations. It also has the potential to arouse an array of powerful and confronting emotions. How then to best engage with such provocative terrain? Depth psychology, with its focus on the relationship between conscious and unconscious thoughts and behaviours, is one helpful resource for navigating us through this challenging and newly emerging territory.
Depth psychologists are exploring the ways that climate change discussions can easily trigger unconscious defensive mechanisms of denial and shutdown in response to the arousal of intense feelings, such as anxiety guilt, anger, shame, grief and despair. They suggest that beneath the apparent apathy can lie unbearable feelings of fear or sadness. Added to this potent mix can also be our inability to reconcile inner conflicts about how to live well in a warming world as well as the challenging of cherished worldviews or ideologies, especially those which do not acknowledge ecological realities. This psychological insight into unconscious defensive mechanisms explains research which repeatedly demonstrates that when deeply held worldviews are challenged by factual information, denial only strengthens as people defend themselves from the profoundly destabilising process of questioning fundamental values and beliefs about themselves and their world.
What is crucial in helping people to creatively engage with climate change, suggests depth psychologists, is the space and support to acknowledge and discuss the intense emotions and conflicts that global warming awareness brings. When these feelings and questions can be acknowledged, validated and explored, it both supports mental wellbeing and facilitates shifts in consciousness that can respond to global warming issues with creativity and commitment.
Talking About the Taboo
Depth psychological practices are based on the understanding that conscious recognition of difficult-to-bear emotions helps us to accept and respond well to confronting realities. In relation to climate change, when we recognise our own challenging and conflicted feelings, we can also better understand and engage with the supressed emotions that lie beneath other peoples’ denials and apparent lack of concern. Acknowledging this emotional substratum in ourselves and others, also opens up the possibility for discussions that can move beyond the stalemate of polarisations such as “believer/sceptic” or “left /right wing”.
Climate change radically alters understandings about ourselves and the world. Any transition from an established worldview to an emerging one is always fraught. In order to support ourselves and others in making this transition, we need to have honest and ongoing discussions about the profound emotions, questions and confusions that global warming and other ecological destructions bring. Such conversations are needed everywhere, from the dinner table and the water cooler to within the media, academia, business and government. When we are able to create the space to safely acknowledge and explore our psychological and emotional responses, we strengthen our ability to face into and respond well to the problems of climate change.
Opening up the Conversation
Once sex was the taboo topic in social situations, nowadays it is often climate change that is the conversation stopper. How often have you brought up the subject to only be met by a quick change of topic or a joke? Or to find yourself heading into a heated argument? Depth psychological practice suggests that what is vital in sustaining a conversation around global warming is to openly invite people’s thoughts and responses. and to listen deeply to them. Of course to do this well we need to also bring into awareness our own feelings, so that we can be thoughtful about how and when to share them with others. When we can listen to ourselves and others with curiosity and acceptance for the full gamut of feelings and thoughts we have around global warming we make climate change more “think-able”.
In order to make the space safe enough for a freeing discussion about the emotional realities of global warming we need to listen respectfully and be empathic. The truth is we are all struggling with coming to terms with this reality. Acknowledging the difficulty of thinking and talking about climate change, can in itself ease the way for further interaction. Identifying common interests, sharing personal stories and being patient are also very helpful. As with so many fraught topics, climate change conversations often develop best over time as feelings of safety, acceptance and connection become established.
Some great resources for developing the art of initiating and sustaining indepth climate change conversations based on depth psychological principles include Rosemary Randall’s handbook In Time for Tomorrow? The Carbon Conversations Handbook and Psychology for a Safe Climate’s booklets Let’s Speak about Climate Change and Facing the Heat: Stories of Climate Change Conversations. For further discussion and references about depth psychology and climate change click here for Research.
