Agency in climate psychology
My involvement in Climate Psychology Alliance stems from a wish to understand, with others, how humans can empower and motivate ourselves and each other to stop the destruction that we are part of.
Four weeks after the invasion started, a “Digest” about the war in Ukraine feels like an oxymoron. The terrible attrition of people and places grinds on; atrocities against the Ukrainian people mount daily.
"Our own life has to be our message" -- Thich Nhat Hanh1
I live alone in rural Maine, on native Wabanaki land. My two kids are in their early twenties, alive and well in other states. I can't imagine how their lives will engage this climate emergency.
Unconscious displacement on a global scale
I cannot get out of my head the thought that the global North's panic stricken response to Covid-19 is also a displacement of climate anxiety. This displacement would be working at the level of the societal unconscious; perhaps the most global societal unconscious displacement humanity has ever spawned.
‘In order to find your way, you must become lost.’
Bayo Akomolafe remembers this advice from his ancestors. He insists that we need ‘to fall down to the earth and listen’.
Becoming lost, as we enter the new year, how do I learn to listen to the earth?1
We are a diverse community of therapeutic practitioners, thinkers, researchers, artists and others. We believe that attending to the psychology and emotions of the climate and ecological crisis is at the heart of our work.