Ecopsychology

By Rebecca Selove, Valerie Martin, & Travis Moore

Imagine this client walks into your office: Jen is a mid-30’s, middle-class mother of two, who presents with generalized anxiety and difficulty finding contentment in her overall “good” life. As she starts to open up, Jen shares her fear and grief about the overwhelm of plastic and other waste, climate change, the loss of over a billion animals in the Australian wildfires, and general distress about the world her children will inherit as adults. You also know from her intake that she experienced fear and disconnection in her family of origin, with a distant father and an alcoholic mother who never sought treatment. Where do you go with Jen? How do you conceptualize her presenting concerns?

The unfortunate reality is that many folks like Jen have their concerns about the environment minimized or misunderstood by clinicians as either simply the way an anxiety disorder is manifesting, or as a projection of her wounding that is more tangible and less scary to address than the “real” trauma of her childhood. In this paper, we offer encouragement and support to NPI members to expand their perspectives, and to address the possibility that presentations such as these align with a broader framework that extends beyond the individualistic lineage of traditional Western psychology. If you don’t already, consider framing how you interpret and address concerns of contemporary clients as always developing within an ecological –in the broadest sense - context. An ecopsychological paradigm reaches beyond family of origin systems and into our larger family of the Earth. This means that, in addition to assessing whether Jen would benefit from certain therapeutic approaches to address her family of origin trauma and help her learn skills to better cope with anxiety, we would also validate her concerns about the environment on their own merit. We would acknowledge and hold space for her pain, love, grief, and fear about what is happening to the trees, rivers, cows, and air that are inextricably connected with her own being and vitality.

In the 1990’s, psychologists and other clinicians began to wrestle with questions about how the continued destruction of and disconnection from the natural world was impacting the human psyche—and how, at the same time, that disconnection was fueling emotional distress, consumerism, and destruction of the environment. The field of ecopsychology was born. While Robert Greenway is usually credited with coining the term, 1 Theodore Roszak expanded awareness of ecopsychology with his books The Voice of the Earth 2 in 1992 and Ecopsychology 3 in 1995. Though the field has struggled to find a strong and cohesive footing, the increasing pace of climate change and environmental devastation at the hands of the human race has led to a recent increase in interest and need for researchers and clinicians to collaborate and explore how ecopsychology can support us in navigating the challenging times we and our clients are in.

The American Psychological Association published a guide for psychotherapists 4 describing relationships between climate-related disasters and more gradual changes in the ecosystem, psychological health, and physical well-being. In addition to noting ways in which people are suffering as weather patterns destabilize and intensify, the authors described the accumulating disastrous impacts of reacting to eco-stress by denying the impact of human behavior on the planet, or avoiding and withdrawing from situations in which our collective need to change and take action is discussed and facilitated. Counseling psychologist Bob Doppelt described the neurobiology of trauma as a way of understanding these dynamics in his book Transformational Resilience. 5 His approach to psychological trauma associated with climate -related disasters has been to encourage a deepening awareness of and appreciation for the beauty and complexity of our natural world, and human society’s interdependence on human and planetary systems. With parallels to the work of eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, 5 he has articulated the possibility of individual and collective transformation arising from our attention to these interdependent dynamics.

Though we may not yet see a large number of clients like Jen in our offices, we have reasons to believe that number will increase as we see further consequences of the Anthropocene—the term some scientists use to describe the postIndustrial Revolution epoch in which human actions have rapidly changed the essential nature of the planet. Like the general population, clinicians likely fall across the spectrum of concern regarding issues of climate and natural world. As of late 2018, according to a Yale study, 6 59% of Americans are either “alarmed” (29%) or “concerned” (30%) about climate change, with the remaining 41% ranging from “cautious” to “dismissive.” Of course, our job is not to validate our clients’ concerns in a way that intensifies fear or paranoia; but traditional psychology would have us err on the side of minimizing our clients’ anxiety: “Notice all the beautiful trees surrounding you; enjoy them instead of being fused with doomsday thinking that they may not be here in 100 years. That’s catastrophizing!” Our difficult job, which the work of ecopsychology can help us navigate, is to hold space for the pain and distress of the Anthropocene, while learning how to skillfully move forward, continuing to fully experience life at this time on the planet when we happened to arrive.

Canadian ecopsychologist Andy Fisher offers one definition of ecopsychology as “being fully alive in a world that is fully alive.” 7 Though this may seem fairly simple, it is actually associated with a radical paradigm shift when we consider how deanimated the natural world has become to many living in the Anthropocene: water, trees and animals are seen as commodities to be bought, sold and used rather than as dynamic, living beings, encompassed in systems within which we consciously live. From this perspective, ecopsychology is about more than just telling our clients to go for more walks in the woods (though that will certainly do them good). This type of intervention, sometimes called “ecotherapy”, 8 is a useful category under the larger umbrella of ecopsychology, which calls us to shift not just the practices we use in (and hopefully, at times, outside!) our offices with clients, but the very lens through which we see the world and our clinical work.

Although concerns about plastic in the ocean, species extinction, or the rising CO2 level of Earth’s atmosphere might not show up as clients’ presenting issues for therapists whose practice isn’t explicitly geared toward ecotherapy, we advocate that therapists ask questions as part of their standard intake to convey to clients that such topics are welcome in the therapy setting. Examples include asking what kinds of experiences a client had as a child out-of-doors, and current outside activities, as well as experiences with pets or other animals as a child and now. Such questions can be used to gauge the quality of an individual’s emotional connection with the trans-human world, and to identify potential opportunities for building resilience in response to climate change-related stress. In addition, for therapists and clients, having actual or representations of nature in office-based therapy can support awareness of the larger world from which we can draw strength. A basket of pebbles, a live plant, a photograph of a beach, and a therapy dog are commonly used to bring the outside in. Nature-based therapy is a specialized approach to ecotherapy for which there are a growing number of resources. 9 Members are welcome to join NPI’s own Ecopsychology Reading Group, a monthly Meetup discussion of books and articles to support integration of ecopsychology into office-based practice of Middle Tennessee psychotherapists. Please contact us for more information about accessing the readings we are curating for this group. Contact us at RebeccaSelove@gmail.com for more information.