Can ‘The Work That Reconnects’ Help Us With Climate Anxiety?

Read my much longer version of the article here on Medium (LINK)

There’s no doubt that more and more people are waking up to the realities of the climate crisis; it’s getting harder to ignore the wildfires, heatwaves, crop failures, and floods, and even mainstream media is finally talking about climate change as if it’s an established fact (well, in most countries).

But how are we dealing psychologically with this information? 

A recent study from the University of Bath found that 56% of young people believe that humanity is doomed. There are lots of new terms on the block to describe these feelings: Eco-anxiety. Climate grief. Climate anxiety.

In the past few months I have seen more and more spaces popping up in which you can express and process your feelings around climate change.

To name a few, there are now the Climate Coaching Alliance, the Climate Psychology Alliance, the Deep Adaptation Network, and the Work that Reconnects network offering resources, spaces, and a database of practitioners to help you approach your emotional and spiritual response to the climate emergency in ways outside of the traditional, one-to-one therapy space.

The Work that Reconnects (WTR) initially evolved in North America in the late 1970s, during a time of escalating concerns about nuclear weaponry and the hazards of nuclear power as “despair and empowerment work”, when creators Chellis Glendinning, Joanna Macy, and Fran Peavey realised that “when people share their feelings of fear, anguish or despair with others, their power to act for change is released”. Read more about it and find my latest Work that Reconnects offerings here

I trained as a facilitator in early 2020, and it seems that more and more coaches and therapists, realising the limitations of their own fields, are being drawn into facilitating the work. Participants usually seem to open up and transform during workshops — even those as short as two and a half hours.

But does it really help their overall climate anxiety? And, perhaps more importantly, should we be trying to reduce climate anxiety? Don’t we risk soothing people when they shouldn’t be soothed, spiritual bypassing, and further shielding ourselves in privilege and ignorance?

I’m not going to be one of those narcissist coaches who promises to fix all your problems. What I can tell you is that I really believe the Work that Reconnects is part of the soul medicine we need — not only to “cope with” the climate crisis, but to awaken to our full potential and to come together to think of ways in which we can transform our society. We need spaces that will help us think bigger, to expand, to be more creative, to see through new eyes — and workshops like these can offer that space.