Welcome the feelings. Question the story.
We all have our own stories of what the future might look like - how do we manage the emotional impact of them and hold the stories lightly so we can find more positivity, lightness and motivation.
I hesitated sending out this blog as I thought it was a bit heavy, but then I went for a walk with my dog (there’s a pic of us at the end) and thought if sharing my experience can help just one person feel less alone and offer a different perspective that might take a bit of weight off, it’s worth sharing, so here goes..
Living in the world right now can feel overwhelming. There’s a lot of bad news and information, data and predictions about where we are heading.
I have studied and worked in social and environmental issues my whole career so I have 15 years worth of experience absorbing news and information about the current and predicted future state of the world.
It has meant I have developed a story of how I think the world might look in the future…and it ain’t pretty (I toyed with the idea at my old company of introducing a peach emoji as a trigger warning when we would share a depressing news articles on slack that might bum people out so they could decide whether they felt mentally resourced or not to read something - so consider this your peach emoji ‘bum out’ trigger warning and if you want to skip the heavier stuff go to the next section on ‘welcome the feelings’).
Dealing with my story and being able to find hope, inspiration and motivation within that, is something I have only recently been able to do and I share two approaches that have helped me - welcoming the feelings and questioning the story.
My ‘story’ of the future
In the next 50 years - when I might still be alive - I think there will be more war, there will be a shortage of food, there might not be enough water, billions of people will migrate, economies will collapse and millions of people and living beings will suffer and die, there will be a lot of fear, hatred and violence. This is my interpretation of what I’ve heard and is informed partly from my own and the collective fear based approach we have when talking about climate change. I have also heard that scientists understate their predictions (so if they are publicly saying code red emergency for humanity - what does that really mean?) and there are tipping points where effects might happen much quicker than can be predicted or happen in unpredictable ways and I can’t even imagine what that might mean. And I wonder will I have enough food? How will I be caught up in war, hate and fear? What will happen to the people I love and the rest of the world? How many people will die?
I’m not sure I’ve ever said this out loud to anyone, yet it is the story that runs through my head. I don’t share out loud because I am aware of the emotional impact and the hopeless and powerless feelings this type of narrative can bring up for people, or even annoyance that I’m not painting a more inspiring picture of the future.
I don't necessarily think this story is true (we’ll come to that in the ‘question the story’ section) and I don't feel a strong emotional reaction to the story (I’ve practiced a lot of welcoming the feelings).
I wonder what would happen if we all shared our stories - might they help others feel less alone, might they encourage more open and honest conversations that might galvanise deeper and more systemic change. Or might they send people into despair, leave them feeling incapacitated and mean they don’t even bother trying because what difference can one person make?
But who are we benefitting if we hid them and how do they impact us if we think them but don't talk about them?
I think emotional intelligence is so important to be able to cope with these narratives and to create a detachment from the stories we’ve created, which I explore below as I share the two approaches that help me manage my story.
Welcome the feelings
We live in a society that often doesn’t welcome the sharing of feelings AND a society that has developed a socially constructed silence around talking about the metacrisis we are facing.
We need more conversation about the emotional impact of the crises in the world, it is not your problem to fix if you have climate anxiety or feel hopeless. It is a normal and valid reaction to the harm that is happening to the world, it is a collective trauma we need to feel our way through if we want to help contribute.
Our emotions need to be acknowledged. What we resist persists, so if we aren’t addressing the feelings that come, they will sit within us and affect us and our ability to respond to the crisis.
I got to the point where my climate anxiety and grief were overwhelming me, I felt completely powerless and paralysed by it.
I’d spend 20 minutes debating whether I had time and money to go to the farm shop rather than supermarket and then would debate whether I was just supporting a different middle man and if I was really supporting farmers or wondering how harmful the farming practices were. Then entering a supermarket would fill me with dread, seeing how far produce comes from, knowing there’s conflicts or water shortages in those countries, seeing all the plastic packaging and getting annoyed at the greenwashing labels, seeing how many animal products were there, feeling uncomfortable with how cheap food is when I know how much time, effort and money goes into producing it and how little farmers get paid. Buying food was not a simple, joyful activity, it was filled with feelings of guilt, anxiety, annoyance and a feeling of being totally out of control of what impact my purchases had. And it was a similar experience for a lot of everyday tasks where I was so aware of the ‘sustainable’ thing to do that I never felt like I was doing enough or that I couldn’t ‘do good’ within the system I’m part of.
It was debilitating and negatively impacted my life.
At the time, I wasn’t really aware of eco-anxiety or the fact that other people might be going through this, I never heard other people speak about the emotional impact and I wasn’t very good at expressing my emotions, so I was just living stuck in it. I was feeling guilty and shameful of my own actions and projecting that out onto others. I didn’t acknowledge what I was feeling and I didn’t know there was a way to make it better.
Talking from my own experience, climate emotions are not something you have to live with. You can manage them and lessen the impact.
I decided that if I want to spend the rest of my life trying to contribute to solving some of the world’s issues, being able to deal with these emotions would be the most meaningful thing I could do because it would mean I could show up, feel resourced and feel more inspired and action focused, rather than paralysed and hopeless.
To manage emotions, we need to FEEL the FEELINGS, so I find the following a helpful framework:
Name the emotion - see climate emotions wheel, what emotion are you feeling?
Describe it - what does it feel, sound, look like (is it a black cloud, is it a lump in your throat, is it a ball and chain attached to your foot)
Welcome it - let the emotion know that it is welcome, breathe into it
When we process emotions, they can then be used as fuel for action and they pass through more quickly. When we don’t acknowledge them, they sit with us and have a negative impact.
Other professions that deal with crises, like a firefighter, have training on how to manage and remain calm in crises.
As changemakers or just people who are living in times of global crisis, I think we also need to train ourselves to manage our emotional reactions and that takes practice, so I’d invite you to start practicing noticing and welcoming the feelings. That and knowing that it is normal to feel this way has hugely helped me stay in a more resourced and inspired place to work and live from.
Question the story
The narrative I’ve shared above about how I think the world might look is just MY STORY.
As humans we are meaning making machines. That means we interpret what we hear and make it have meaning.
We operate on stories and we think we're operating from truth or fact.
A fact is something you can agree on - something that has happened, that you saw or heard. The facts are not the issue, it is our relationship to the fact that can lead to negative outcome or a negative reaction.
Stories are interpretations of facts and opinions, yet stories is where we spend most of our time in debate or in conflict.
We seek out information that will confirm our story and we will be biased towards that information. We make a story out of the facts we’ve chosen to pay attention to. So I know now I was unconsciously seeking out more negative and dramatic stories from other people about the future (who often report it as fact/news) and I added that to my negative story and the cycle continues.
If we can start to clarify what the facts are we’re hearing and pay attention to what we are then creating into a story, and know that it’s our own perception and the meaning we make. And that our story might be wrong. We can then make the choice of letting go of that story. Perhaps we could even rewrite a new story, where we seek out the good news and create a positive story of the future to work towards.
‘You get out what you put in’ - if I let that story I have shared dominate the way I live my life (and if lots of others do that too), then that might be the outcome we get. If I question it and hold it loosely as neither right or wrong, and know that it’s no more true than a really positive story of the future then I can release my attachment to it and learn to be ok with what is. And with that comes a release of the relationship I have to the story.
On stories - this phrase helps me - ‘It is what it is’ - I have developed an acceptance for things as they are and a releasing of control for what I can’t do anything about, my sphere of control and influence is so small compared to the state of the world, so that is where I choose to put my energy. Into what I can control. And I’m learning to let go of the story I’ve created and be open to what might emerge.
On feelings - this phrase helps me - ‘What we resist persists’ - the more I resist or ignore my emotions, the more of a detrimental impact they have on me and they take away the only thing I can offer the world which is my energy and commitment to contribute to a more positive future and the care and support I can offer myself and those around me. So welcoming the feelings allows me to act from a more grounded, less emotionally charged place.
So my invitation to you is to let go of the attachment you have to the story you have about the future and be open to what might happen, live life more in the present, and practice getting to know your emotions and welcoming them so you can move through these times with more ease.
A walk in nature does a lot of good too :)
Here are a few events I’m part of, or organising, to support people on this journey and to connect back with nature and themselves:
Escape the City/On Purpose transforming eco-anxiety to eco-action talk - Wed 1st May 1pm
Conscious changemakers walk - Sunday 5th May 2pm in Surrey
Emotional resilience in uncertain times workshop - Wednesday 16th May 12pm
Resources
If you need support, there are coaches and therapists trained in dealing with climate emotions (see Climate Psychology Alliance and Climate Coaching Alliance). Here are some other resources I have found helpful:
Climate Change Coaching book by Charly Cox and Sarah Flynn
Attend a climate cafe
Here is a podcast that informed the section on questioning the story