The Psychology of Environmentalism Being an Environmentalist during Environmental Breakdown

Sam Hall – Si Partnership

My background

• Psychology degree

• Environmental masters degree

• Psychotherapy and counselling post graduate degree • Stance – integrative - existential phenomenological, humanistic and

psychodynamic

• What I do & don’t believe about feelings and emotions etc

• Work history

Contents

Dealing with a sense of loss and bereavement

Ideas around death and rebirth, cycles of change

What it means to have environmental protection as a purpose

Our psychological connection with nature

What’s needed from us in terms of leadership

How best to appeal to people's motivations to change

What do we mean by wealth and happiness

Our connection to nature

• Genetics

• Patterns

• Physical processes

• Ecosystems and habitats

• Solacestalgia

• Biophilia

The things we value are being destroyed

Worse still we’re part of the system that’s destroying them

We’re tiny cogs in the machine

And we know time is running out

The recipe for stress

The emotions we may feel

DEPRESSION BEREAVEMENT GUILT ANXIETY CULTURAL DISSONANCE

ANGER

Dealing with loss

• Environmental loss is akin to grieving but also has its own characteristics

• Loss of species – largely remote

• Loss of wonder and the unknown – personal & remote

• Loss of our ‘life support systems’ – personal anxiety

• But this is a permanent, chronic state more akin to palliative care for the terminally ill, punctuated with lots of acute bad news… and some good news.

• Intergenerational loss – shifting baseline

• Models of grieving

• Ecosystems perspective on death – cycling and change

• Tragedy can lead to a ‘better’ place. The value of dealing with the issues is that we get a deeper richer understanding of our place in the world.

• Depressing but not depression

• A call to action

• Hope and reframing

• Denial – avoidance and the circular label

• Feeling, accepting, allowing

Receiving bad news

Purpose

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it made some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Purpose & guilt

• Internal and external values

• Direction and insight

• Time off

Purpose & Anger• It’s normal to feel angry

• Anger shows us what we value

• The challenge of sustainability gives us a purpose

• It takes strength to care

• Taking action but not ‘acting out’

Purpose & anxiety

• Anxiety like guilt and anger tell us something about what matters to us. We’re only anxious about things that have meaning.

• Our life support systems are being destroyed at an alarming rate. And its speeding up. That’s a recipe for anxiety.

• The environmentalists anxiety then is a type of existential anxiety. Anxiety about death itself.

• And not just a personal death but potentially the deaths of millions if not billions of people and species.

• Strategies for dealing with anxiety

• Time off, acceptance, mindfulness, practices

Cultural dissonance

• Swimming against the tide is tough. We’re unable to live outside of the culture and not able to fully take part in it

• Can make us judgemental, bad tempered, intolerant with others

• With ourselves this can be internalised, and can lead to guilt etc

• Awareness and acceptance is key

Leadership

• How do we become the best leaders we can?

• Controlled passion

• Adaptability of communication style

• Simple logical consistent message

• Freud – from defence to function • Denial to action • Acting out to sublimation

• Focus on mental fitness • Appreciation • Time off • Physical fitness

Motivation• Motivation seems to work best when we appeal to core

values

• What maters to the audience?

• protecting kids,

• protecting the economy,

• preventing mass migrations, famine, disease

• saving the business money,

• winning work,

• avoiding prosecution & fines

• Guilt and shock don’t work so well… and can even backfire

• Humour always lightens the message and can make it more acceptable

Wealth & Happiness

• £50k ceiling

• Affluenza & developing nations

• The Jones’s effect

• The measure of wealth £

• Harvard Study

• Gratitude

Takeaway messages

• A whole range of emotional reactions are normal in the face of the evidence

• Acceptance is key - emotions come and then go

• Being aware of and ok with emotions can lead to a deeper richer existence

• What we do is the important thing – acting with purpose not ‘acting out’

• Everyone is a leader

• Simple logical consistent message

• Motivation appeal to core values

• Happiness isn’t just about the material things

• Develop a practice – training

• Website