On…Surviving Survival Mode

How to look after ourselves during a climate emergency

For a little while now I’ve wanted to share some ideas around the way in which climate change and other unfolding global crises can push us into survival mode, and what we can do to look after ourselves. So I thought I’d share a blog post on ‘surviving survival mode’ and also give some tips I’ve found useful on dealing with the stress. 

Survival mode happens when we sense that we are unsafe. Like many things, survival mode is something we experience on a sliding scale, from a little anxious right through to panic, and sometimes through to feeling absolutely nothing at all. 

What marks survival mode is the activation of our nervous systems. We might hope to spend a good amount of our lives feeling grounded, connected and safe. This is known as our ‘rest and digest’ system, and it’s when we are able to recuperate and heal, digest both our food and also our emotions, and enjoy a sense of simply ‘being’.

We might experience safety as feeling light, seeing the world in full colour, easily experiencing curiosity, joy and humour, or feeling free of past ruminations and future worries. 

When we perceive that we are not safe, however, our nervous systems will often automatically transition to ‘fight, flight and/ or freeze’ mode. Here our bodies are preparing to protect us, either by running away, fighting for our lives, or causing us to disconnect completely as a pain avoidance strategy. 

Survival mode, biologically speaking, was never meant to be a state that we spend extended periods of time operating from. It is high energy and has profound impacts on our bodies. For example, in survival mode our bodies shut down our digestive systems in order to pump blood to our limbs so that we can better run. 

That’s why digestive problems are so often associated with burnout; we spend that long in survival mode when burning out that we can do damage to our digestive systems. 

Another characteristic of survival mode is that our more rational brains shut down in favour of the more instinctual parts of our brains. ‘Don’t think just do’ is designed to enable us to respond as quickly as possible to threats. Again, being in this mode for long periods of time can leave us struggling to communicate well or think as strategically as we might normally. 

In short, survival mode is exhausting! But chronic, existential threats such as climate change can leave us at risk of operating from this place as we constantly feel under threat. 

Many climate change campaigns will seek to activate survival mode as a way of mobalising people to action. When we are scared, we want to fight. Indeed, doing something about a problem can be one of the most effective ways to alleviate the anxiety that we have about it.

But it also leaves us susceptible to burnout because sustaining this level of anxiety and action over long periods of time just isn’t sustainable.

As climate change continues to unfold, this is especially true, of course, for those who are on the frontlines of climate impacts, and for those who are already marginalised, discriminated against or for other reasons may already be living a greater amount of their lives in survival mode.

Survival mode can be felt as a sudden shift, or a gradual creeping, but if we have spent enough time in survival mode we may not even notice it any more.

Which is why the art of knowing how to calm and regulate our nervous systems under pressure is so important; it means we have those real bursts of adrenaline fuelled action ‘in the tank’ for when we need it, but it also means that we are able to continue enjoying our lives alongside the ways in which we may feel threatened. It means we can take time out for rest, to nourish ourselves, to heal.

Why stress is political

I wanted to share some ideas for how to survive survival mode, and the ways in which we can lift ourselves out of survival mode by creating experiences of safety both for ourselves and each other, even when living in a world that often does not feel safe.

We might think of survival mode, or stress, as something that is personal to us. It’s how we eat, what time we go to bed, what we do for a living, how healthy our relationships are and what we do for downtime, for example.

But, as many personal things are, stress is also political.

At my most cynical I find myself believing that stress is used by those in power as a tool of control.

When we are stressed out just trying to get ourselves a house and job, or by the onslaught of terrible headlines, or by the feeling that life would be so much better if we had the latest gadget, fashion piece, or whatever it is, we are distracted. We are not rebelling or challenging or organising ourselves, we are surviving.

During more hopeful moments I find myself believing that the chronic stress that accompanies much of modern-day life, is instead an unfortunate side product of good intentions.

Technology has brought many incredible benefits - in recent years I particularly appreciated the capacity to video call during the pandemic for example - but it’s also left a lot of us addicted, constantly bombarded and endlessly mining the planet.

Urbanisation, office jobs and white goods, were hoped to make life easier, leaving time for more fulfilling ventures, but somehow, in our greater convenience, we’re also busier than we’ve ever been and often disconnected from the earth.

The introduction of standardisation, efficient procedures, and professionalism was hoped to bring fairness and reliability, but it has also meant the loss of trust in our intuition and our emotional selves, and many missed opportunities to connect on a deeper human or more-than-human level.

As I say, some days I am cynical, some days hopeful, but the reality is probably a bit of both, and many other factors besides.

What I do know, however, is that to be satisfied, peaceful, grounded and connected to ourselves, each other and the earth, appears to be a deeply radical act. Because when we are stepping into those things, we are also stepping into our power.

From this place we can see clearer, we can love more deeply, we can hold more complexity, we can choose more wisely, we can pursue what matters to us more sustainably.

Often, if we are climate concerned, we can feel guilty about taking the time out for ourselves that we need in order to shift from survival mode back into our more connected, peaceful place; our ‘rest and digest’ mode.

But if what is wounded in the world right now is a result either of the wilful intention to stress us out, or by the unintended stressful side effects of changes in modern day life, then rectifying that starts from within each of us.

We take the time to change what is ‘in here’, so that we might have a hope of changing what is ‘out there’.

Which is the rest of activism - the inner work, the taking time out for ourselves, the tending to our own wellbeing so that we can tend to the world’s.

So take the time for yourself that you need. Wherever and whenever you can. If you have that option, do it. The world, ultimately, will thank you for it.

The Politics of Survival Mode

But, there's no better distraction from effecting structural change than being caught up in just trying to get by.

As I’ve mentioned, the not-knowing that I wrestle with about the motivations of those in power and the way they perpetuate ‘survival mode’ for so many without power. Here in the UK, recent internal battles within the Conservatives to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, the debates between the candidates, and how climate change has been ignored throughout them, has left this question looming large for me. And the subsequent roll back of many of the UK’s most important forms of environmental protection has left me enraged.

If you are regularly visited by rage and incomprehension at how those in power can wilfully allow all that is unravelling in the world right now, such as climate breakdown, it can be easy to get fixated on whether this harm is intentional or not.

Understandably there’s something in us that wants to know if the harm being caused is intentional, a result of ignorance or perhaps something else altogether.

In my six years working closely with UK politicians on climate change it was my experience that many went into politics for noble reasons. Though I am not at all naïve to other seductive influences that play themselves out.

But just the question alone of whether or not our leaders want the best for us can take us straight into survival mode.

To not feel trusting of those who hold so much power, authority and capacity to effect change or quell it, is itself deeply stressful, even traumatic. For anyone who as a child experienced a less than loving parent, teacher or religious authority, for example, this can also trigger some of our deepest wounds.

Perhaps we are so used to feeling that way that we may not even realise the deep impact it has on our daily sense of wellbeing and safety.

And there is really only one thing that helped me to tend to the kind of distress that can come from this sense of powerlessness, and it is to take my focus off those who I wish with everything I have were making more courageous and life-affirming political choices, and back onto myself and my own power.

Rather than trying to understand the ins and the outs of why they will not change and whether it’s intentional or not, and how to make them change. I try now simply to speak my truth, loudly, boldly, with passion. In doing that I have often found that my understanding of the situation also clarifies itself in the most amazing ways.

No one can argue with your experience, with how it feels to you. An ‘I statement’ cannot be dismissed because it belongs to no one else but you. When everything else might be falling away around you, your experience of what is happening is something that cannot be taken from you.

I feel enraged at the state of the world.

I feel often engulfed in grief.

I feel guilty at my own complicity.

I cannot comprehend our collective inaction.

Sometimes surviving survival mode is simply creating the safety for yourself to be truly honest about what it feels like to be in survival mode.

Sometimes we can do ourselves a disservice in trying to pretend things aren’t that bad really, other times by losing sight of our experience because we are so lost in trying to get our heads around how someone else causes the harm that they do.

The simple fact of staying connected to our own experience, even if we so deeply wish it were different, is one of the only ways we can create safety for ourselves when survival mode really is all that is available to us right now.

In the past I have sometimes betrayed or silenced myself, telling those parts of me that are saying ‘this isn’t ok!’ or ‘we can’t do this anymore’ to just get on with it because everyone else is.

That, really, is when I have done the most damage to myself and I look back on myself then and so want to tell her that it is ok to feel that ‘no’, even if she felt she couldn’t say it, or that she should have listened to her feelings of threat, even if she couldn’t explain why she felt it.

When what we love stresses us out

When I launched the Rest of Activism, a burnout prevention and recovery programme for environmental activists, I had no idea how this idea of mine was going to go. 

Would people join?

Would they stay?

Would it help?

Even though I knew the answers to those questions because I had piloted this idea for a full year with a collection of environmental organisations, tweaking and finetuning, making sure it really brought the joy to people that I hoped it would.

But still, I couldn't shake the butterflies and the dreaming and hoping going on inside myself.

I kept calling it ‘the Thing with a capital T’. What I meant by that was, that this was the thing out of all the ideas and projects I work on, that really makes my soul feel at its most alive. It’s the thing I can see myself doing for the next decade and beyond. It is so meaningful to me, and brings me so much joy to be able to do it. 

And do you know what that brought me? Stress.

I felt so excited to launch, so excited whenever someone signed up, so excited to plan the sessions, but in my body I was also noticing I was feeling a bit worn down again. 

A month in I talked to one of my mentors about it and she introduced me to the concept of eustress, meaning ‘positive stress’. It’s when you’re doing something you love or experiencing a positive change in your life, which is generating a lot of excitement and unknowns and nerves. 

Our bodies, apparently, experience this in very similar ways to ‘negative stress’. 

Which was a huge realisation for me, because it took me another step along my burnout recovery; even when I had recovered and was back into work that I love again, I realised how I still need to put self-care at the centre of all that I do. 

Because even joyful things can take their toll by activating our nervous systems into ‘fight or flight’.

So if you’re also working on something that you love and wondering why you love it but it also takes it’s toll, maybe you’ve also been experiencing ‘eustress’ too?  That wonderful feeling of doing something you love, but that can also be kind of tiring. It’s survival mode, but kind of deceptive because it’s for something we want to give ourselves to.

Fortunately, after the launch in late spring, things settled back down for me again, but the concept of eustress has stayed with me.

Stress from things we experience as positive. Or, perhaps we might call that, worthwhile stress. Meaningful stress. 

Surviving Survival Mode tip 1: Slowing it all down

We’ve explored how stress changes the way we think, how our bodies function, why it’s political, and how even the wonderful things in our life can leave the marks of survival mode, known as ‘eustress’ or ‘positive stress’. 

I want to share with you three tips for managing stress by bringing ourselves out of survival mode. 

And the first of these is to ‘slow down and feel your body.’

When we’re in survival mode, we will often find ourselves thinking a lot more. 

Our bodies’ natural reaction to threat is to try to figure out how to make ourselves safe again.  Which can help get us out of many sticky situations, except those of chronic or ongoing stress (such as living in a climate emergency) where there often is no quick fix or certain solution. 

With these kinds of stresses, managing stress is more about learning how to live with it, and live as well as we can, as much as it is about getting rid of it. 

That’s why activism or making personal lifestyle choices are a great antidote to climate anxiety, but they can’t be our only strategy. They have to sit alongside other strategies that allow us to be present, to calm our nervous systems, to rest and to switch off. Otherwise we burn out.

Survival mode can have us going round and round, over and over, in our heads. What are our next steps? Is it going to work? What will I do if it doesn't? Am I going to cope?

Often a good way to know if we are stressed is to notice which ‘tense’ our thoughts are taking us to; a stressed mind will often ruminate on the past or worry about the future, where a relaxed mind will find it easier to be in the present moment. 

When we read the news or scroll social media and see how climate change challenges human survival, we are ourselves pushed into survival mode in some way, even if we are not ourselves at the forefront of those impacts. 

This is a complex and deeply troubling experience; we can find ourselves despairing or wanting to switch off, quickly followed by guilt, for example, because we are not currently experiencing the worst of the impacts. Maybe then we seek someone to blame, be that ourselves or those in power. Before we know it, we have spiralled. 

So my invitation to you is to slow this whole process down as much as you can by tuning into your body. By focusing the sensations that are taking place in your body, you can slow down thoughts as they spiral. 

It may be uncomfortable, but I have found that if I take even 10 seconds to simply notice where in my body I’m experiencing emotional discomfort, I can give myself a good chance of halting the cycle.

And in doing so, we can learn to notice the particular patterns as they play out within our emotional world. We can take on the role of the observer and hold them a little lighter.

Surviving Survival Mode tip 2: Playfulness and Pleasure

My second tip is to lean into playfulness and pleasure.

When I talk about ‘survival mode’ what I mean is the sense in which we cannot be fully present to much else in life beyond anything that reduces our sense of threat. 

For example, climate anxiety might lead us to burn out by compelling us to constantly campaign and work.  It might prevent us from enjoying normal activities such as gardening, exercise or enjoying food; because in survival mode, everything but working toward safety can feel meaningless.

When I talk about survival mode in this context, I don’t mean the kind of survival mode that those currently on the frontline of extreme climate impacts are pushed into. Those I couldn’t possibly speak to because I have not yet been there, but I watch on, in horror and experience a small semblance of that in my own anxieties, fears and rage. 

That’s the kind of survival mode I am speaking to in this post; and this is where I have found playfulness and pleasure to help me so much. 

Because there is nothing like setting up afternoon tea or going for a wild swim or gazing up at the stars on these cool autumn nights to bring myself out of survival mode.

Why? Because they bring me into the present moment and remind me of all that is still left to be enjoyed. When I dance round my kitchen like no one is watching or join in with my dog doing zoomies round the park, I am doing something incredibly healing; I’m signalling to my brain that it’s safe enough to switch off from all the fear, even if just for a few minutes. 

These breaks are vital because that’s how we keep going for the long haul. That’s how we come back to our work fresh. That’s how we keep facing all that is happening even if it is horrifying to behold. 

Our capacity to take breaks, rest, play and switch off is directly proportional to our capacity to show up in the world. 

So my invitation for you is to find something silly and find something delicious, and indulge yourself. Bring some softness to the harshness of the news, some joy amid the sorrow of what is being lost, some freedom amid the sense that things are closing in pretty fast.

Surviving Survival Mode tip 3: Share the Load

My third and final tip for bringing ourselves out of the kind of survival mode that climate anxiety can push us into; share the load.

Earlier I suggested slowing down and tuning into your body. I also suggested playfulness and pleasure. And these, honestly, are two of the best ways I have been able to shift my stress levels even when I can’t directly change my circumstances. 

But working with stress and anxiety, especially on a global scale such as ecological anxiety, was never something we were meant to do on our own.

We are wired to give and receive support, in community. It was always meant to be this way.

One of the biggest myths of much of modern life is the idea that we can be emotionally and physically completely independent. But if climate change shows us anything, it shows us that we are in fact interconnected and interdependent. 

Too many of us have been locked away in shame, wondering why we cannot manage on our own, when we were instead made to thrive in communities that support us and allow us to support others. To love and be loved. To hear and be heard. 

So find your people and hold them close. 

Whether that is friends or family, in person or online, local groups or religious communities. Lean into the relationships around you as a source of comfort and solidarity.

And, of course, if you’re feeling isolated and wondering where you might be able to do that, you are cordially invited to join the Rest of Activism; weekly meetings where we share the highs and lows of loving this beautiful planet.

There are still some grant subsidised places available, and you would be very welcome in this space.

About me: I’m Jo, formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.

Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.