How can we feel grounded when living with so much uncertainty?

This is the second of a series of four blog posts on mental health during a climate emergency. If you want to skip ahead, you can download my summary of the series when you subscribe to receive my blog posts to your inbox.

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Thank you to everyone who got in touch with me after I shared my journey with anxiety in last week’s post.

I put something out into the world that was very personal, and to know that others are finding it helpful is a real encouragement to keeping sharing, thank you.

Last week I celebrated meditation as a form of Grace that can alleviate eco-anxiety by helping us to reconnect with our calling as human beings (rather than human doings).

This week I’m exploring other ways of working with the intrusive thoughts or unpleasant bodily sensations associated with eco-anxiety, or any other kinds of anxiety we might experience.

How, when we may feel agitated, distracted, irritable, restless, overwhelmed or downright frightened by what is going on in the world, we can cultivate a sense of inner stability or safety in ourselves.

I think of this as a practice of finding Grounding.

Working with our Emotions

As I touched on in last week’s post, living with the weight of knowing about climate change can be exhausting.

Feelings of uncertainty about the future, guilt about whether we’re doing enough, powerlessness to do anything, are all common experiences for those living with eco-anxiety.

Much of Western culture, based in pitting the physical and emotional/ spiritual against each other, has significantly undervalued the physical impacts that such emotions can have on our brains and bodies.

But emotions are quite literally the force that animates us. They are tangible brain impulses that cause physiological changes all over our bodies. They are the lifeblood that converts raw energy into intentional movement in our loving, working, playing- in our everything.

In the first three months after a bereavement, for example, widowers have a 30-90% higher chance of dying themselves. That percentage varies depending on the type of death of their spouse, so we know that the cause is most likely significantly impacted by the emotions experienced in the aftermath of that death, rather than a single biological factor (such as change of diet or exercise).

So, it almost goes without saying that we should take good care of our emotional wellbeing as we engage with the heavy work of caring about the climate.

And yet.

Taking time out to care for ourselves whilst the world burns can be an immense psychological challenge in and of itself.

I can find myself either trying to pretend that things aren’t that bad really, or sometimes seeing no value in self-care at all because there is so much at stake.

In fact, sometimes it is when we stop to take this time for ourselves that all the difficult emotions we’ve been running from can finally catch up with us.

*The difficult emotions that the climate emergency evokes- anger, fear, grief- are exhausting to live with.*

I often experience this in meditation. My thoughts seem to whirr even faster when I sit in stillness, whipping my body up into a perfect storm before eventually, perhaps, giving way to a moment of calm.

Which is why I’m such a big advocate for this practice because it helps to develop our resilience to feeling those emotions without being drowned by them. It’s like growing a muscle.

But what if meditation isn’t for you, or you’re looking for further ways to tend to your wellbeing?

Making Space for Grounding

This week I had a go at pottery for the first time in years.

My Mum and I spent hours in the garden moulding, hitting, smoothing and shaping the clay, and we plan on firing it ourselves using the traditional Japanese method of raku.

Once our creations dry next week we’ll dig a hole in the earth, put some seaweed and glass in with the pottery to give colour, and then set it on fire.

Apparently the worst that can happen is that the pottery explodes, so I’ll let you know how it goes!

But, regardless, I am delighting in the process.

I love the feel of the clay yielding in my hands and I’m fascinated by the transformation it will undergo simply through the natural process of heat and fire.

I relished in the opportunity to gather the seaweed from the beach whilst I dreamt about how my creations might turn out in the end.

And chatting away to my Mum, I noticed how our conversation flowed freely as our minds were released from the tasks of the day and into the adventure of creating.

So my second suggestion for emotional wellbeing during a climate emergency is to take time to get out of our heads and back into our bodies.

To ground ourselves in the physical world, especially when our emotional worlds are struggling.

Art and Creativity

There are two types of Grounding that I draw on the most, and the first of those is art and creativity.

Cooking a nice meal, gardening, painting, dance, music… anything that allows me to give outward expression to what is going on inside.

This is particularly important for activist, because we are tasked with carrying such messages into the world as, ‘ten years to save the planet’ with a type of can-do attitude that will motivate others to get involved.

But the truth is, we are of course sometimes visited by despair, and left wondering whether what we do makes any difference. Whether everything is doomed to failure anyway.

So art and creativity is a way in which we can engage with the nuances of our doubt and despair, releasing them into the world so they don’t get clogged up inside us.

And in doing so, we can bring a greater integrity to our work because we are less likely to experience the profound disconnect between our outer worlds saying ‘yes we can!’, and our inner worlds desperately asking, ‘can we?’.

Grounding can also take the form of simply tuning into and moving our bodies. Not just through creative movement, such as dance, but even in a simple roll of the shoulders or a very deep breath.

Giving physical expression to difficult emotions in these ways is scientifically proven to release emotions from getting stuck in our bodies, such as in the form of muscle tension.

And, because creative processes awaken our physical senses, they can have a soothing effect on our minds too.

As I feel the moisture of the clay, taste the salt in the sea air whilst collecting materials, smell the charring wood on the fire, the ‘doing, fixing, fighting’ part of my brain disengages and can make way for a state of being not so dissimilar to that found in meditation.

This is often a pleasant experience, but it is also more than just a nice thing to do.

In fact, in order to function optimally, research has shown that our brains actually need this time of freedom in order to process background information and clear space for new ideas to emerge.

If you are worried about running out of time to save the planet, taking this time out for yourself is actually one of the most important things you can do to ensure you are as effective as possible in your work for the world. I’m currently writing a new post on this which I’ll be putting out in a few weeks time.

So the arts are beautiful, but they are also essential— especially in times of particular difficulty, such as a global pandemic.

Time with the Natural World

The second form of grounding that I find helpful is time with the natural world.

It is now so well-known that nature is good for our mental health that some GPs are prescribing time in nature as a form of treatment.

Daylight is good for our sleep pattern, being able to see birds has a direct link to lower rates of depression, large bodies of water release negative ions into the air which counteract the effects of electronics… nature is a powerful remedy for the stresses of modern day living.

And exposure to nature also has proven physical benefits including reduced blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

So nature is so much more than just a physical resource to drive our economy because the natural world is also a source of emotional renewing.

The Hidden Lives of Trees

I’ve been reading the internationally bestselling book, The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

This is an exquisite ode to our leafy friends and a truly eye-opening read.

Trees, for example, feel pain, look after their sick, create friendships, and even have the ability to learn and store knowledge. They scream when they are thirsty, warn other trees when a predator is about, and work in collaboration with different plant species to create optimal conditions for themselves.

Learning more about trees has changed how I see them, and has inspired a sense of awe and wonder that renews my energy for climate activism.

And this isn’t just limited to trees.

Observing a bird go about its day reminds me of the joy of just being in the world.

Seeing autumn approach comforts me that there is beauty even as loss approaches.

Watching the tide draw in and out helps me better understand my own ongoing experiences of loss and renewal in life.

So nature is also a source of wisdom for our being in the world, helping us to find meaning when we feel we have lost our footing.

Feeling Homesick

Having recently discovered how amazing trees are, I have been dismayed to read that they are often quite misunderstood in modern forestry practices.

Trees in man-managed forests, for example, only live a fraction of their lifespan which means that they don’t have much of an opportunity to develop and display many of their incredible attributes, and that they are even at risk of losing them.

*Trees feel pain, look after their sick, create friendships and even have the ability to learn and store knowledge.*

Which brings me to the fact that time in nature may not always be a wholly peaceful experience, because connecting with our natural environment can also mean connecting with the pain of losing it, or of being less connected to it than we would hope for.

Australian eco-philosopher, Glen Albrecht, describes this is ‘solastalgia’, or a kind of homesickness. That is exactly what it can feel like for me, especially when I spend time with nature that is particularly meaningful to me, like oceans or wild birds.

I grieve the loss of what feels like my natural habitat, knowing what is happening in the world.

But also, I grieve a loss of sense of control. A loss of faith in humanity. A loss of the stable climate I depend on, like a canvas onto which I would paint my dreams.

So the sense of deep connection that nature gives me is actually also exactly what enables me to feel a grief that is usually bubbling away anyway, but that often gets lost in the busyness of life.

And it is during those times that I often return to and wrestle with a common quote used in climate activism;

‘We are not defending nature, we are nature defending itself.’

Gratitude Even Amidst the Grief

If you experience a sense of grief of this kind when in nature, I would like to encourage you that there is something good, if painful, in this because it is a sign of your deep relationship with nature.

You know nature’s beauty, you have discovered her purpose beyond sustaining human life, you have felt her healing touch. You have experienced awe.

*‘We are not defending nature, we are nature defending itself.’*

There are many who do not have this sense of connection, either by choice or because they have not had the opportunity.

Did you know that a survey in 2016 found that more than 1 in 9 children hadn’t set foot in any type of natural environment, whether that’s a park, a forest or the beach, during the previous year?

And this is an issue of social justice also, because just 56% of under-16s who are people of colour visited the natural environment at least once a week, compared to 74% from white households.

Which is why climate action is about so much more than just trying to stop the planet from burning.

Climate activism sometimes gets a bad reputation for advocating a lifestyle of deprivation, and for shaming those who do not follow a certain way of life. It certainly doesn’t help that the media often portrays environmentalism this way.

But really, climate activism is about asking if life in its current form is really serving all people as it should. It is about redefining how we understand the concept of abundance so that we can live in a way that truly values and delights in the physical world, rather than being taught to see it as something to be extracted, used, and readily cast aside.

*Follow Climate.Emergence on Instagram or Facebook for daily reflections.*

It is taking time to savour the physical world so that it can sustain us as we try to sustain it.

Whether that is through our creative projects, time in nature or many of the other ways of grounding ourselves.

These should not be luxuries, they are essential. We need nature, as much as nature needs us.

So, having celebrated the Grace of meditation, and advocated for Grounding in nature, my next post will explore the personal and ecological benefits of cultivating Gratitude in our lives.

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**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.

On… Eco-Anxiety #2