Psikolojik Danışmanlık ve Psikoterapi

* Bu yazı İsveç’te yayınlanan String Figures: Living Now and Living Otherwise dergisi için 2022’de yazılmıştır:

Crisis is a highly difficult situation that is a turning point where the current status quo cannot continue, where a change for the better or for the worse is inevitable. There are no happy endings to crises since every end comes with loss of what is past, so they require grieving. Even when we implement the decisions which we think are better for ourselves, we experience the difficulty of leaving the current situation we have been in for a long time, and leaving the comfort of familiarity. However, when it comes to the discourse on the climate crisis, there is an absence of loss (Randall, 2009). Regardless of whether the future of humanity is doomed or saved by unexpected developments, there is an absence of loss and grief in both narratives at the end. Again, either no need to think about loss since everything is lost; or there is no space for loss in a glorious story of those who survived. Losses are presented in our projections about the future as either they are being experienced out of sight and control, suddenly, and dramatically, or a salvation is fantasized in a distant future where the losses are forgotten. Both hopeful and pessimistic projections of the future exclude losses that have been (and will be or might be) experienced.

Humans’ efforts to distance themselves from the crisis are materialized as the denial of the losses of the not too distant future in the climate crisis. Distant past is desired to be buried without allowing too much questioning about what has been lost by claiming that it cannot be changed anyways. On the other hand, the near future is tried to be kept in line with the present and the recent past in order to delay the change as much as possible. To illustrate the result with an example: the question of what we can do today to prevent wildfires that will come back again next summer does not receive as much attention as the question of how we will survive 30 years from now in a world where air pollution has reached extreme conditions. In this text; instead of fantasizing about a future that can be reached without staying with today’s troubles, I will try to emphasize the importance of mourning the losses of the past, the present and the future in overcoming the social inertia about the climate crisis.

Ecological Grief

Grief is often associated with the emotionally intense process and sorrow experienced after the loss of a loved one. Therefore, it is not easy to adapt the concept of grieving to a global situation such as the climate crisis, which shows its effects at a speed that is difficult to perceive at the human scale, and whose common visualizations and media representations are very reductive. However, in recent years, the concept of ecological grief has been used in the literature to describe the feelings of damage to the ecosystem, losses of humans and non-humans, and possible damages and losses in the future (Running, 2007). The concept of ecological mourning, in essence, represents the expected or unexpected loss of things we hold dear about the earth we live in, locally or globally. All the emotions that arise when people think they have lost something precious to them forever bring about a natural emotional response, the grieving process. If what is lost or to be lost affects the network of ecological relations, including human life, this process is expressed as ecological mourning.

In order to talk about ecological grief, it is necessary to define different types of loss, because the concept of loss is generally used in the context of the climate crisis to express disappearance of external objects, forever. Some of examples of these external objects may be: forests lost in global wildfires, different species disappearing with decreasing biodiversity, habitats and housing lost by rising water levels, humans who died since they have to work outside while everyone stays at home during the pandemic, lives lost in hurricanes and floods in addition to residences and vehicles etc. According to Judy Fahys’s report from a support group in Utah, called Good Grief, that helps people to cope with anxiety and overwhelming feelings related to climate crisis, one of the members, who used to be a climate denialist, shares: “I think I came to the conclusion that it was the loss of the future — the future that I had lived knowing was going to be there — all of a sudden is gone… And that is really disorienting” (Fahys, 2017, para. 5). I think, in this case, that it is not only the loss of an external object anymore. The loss is also a part of ourselves and it creates a difficult situation in our inner reality to cope with. The ecological grief manifests itself where the divide between human and nature. And the pain that comes with grief is bridging the human-nature gap. Together with these ecological losses, humans are losing the sources of information provided by their interaction with their surroundings including all the living, non living, human and non human world. Moreover, with the changing lifestyle and culture — which doesn’t have a choice but change as a result of ecological losses — humans lose a part of their individual identity since their identity is very dividual and connected to others after all.

Different Shades of Loss

The climate crisis brings with it both external and internal losses to the human world. However, independently of the relationship of loss to human subjects, we can look at its relationship with time and with different possibilities of change. Rosemary Randall categorizes these loss types as absolute loss, transitional loss and anticipatory loss in her study Loss and Climate Change: The Cost of Parallel Narratives (2009). Absolute loss is the most commonly used form of loss, and death may be the most representative example of this category. It represents irreversibility and loss over which we have no control. The hitherto extinct species could be an example.

Transitional loss, on the other hand, defines the losses we experience while passing from a certain stage to another in our life or the process of losing in order to pass. The transition from a known current state to an unknown new phase can often bring with it a certain amount of emotional ambivalence. For example, usually the transition from adolescence to adulthood is embraced more enthusiastically in comparison to the transition from mid-life to old age. The more attractive the new phase is for the person (it may have various reasons), the easier it will be to overcome the ambivalence experienced in leaving the current situation. Randall says, “giving up smoking means exchanging a known pleasure and support for the unknown benefit of better health a long way in the future. Whether the transition is achieved is often dependent on whether the elements that are lost can be mourned and let go of”(2009).

Therefore, while humans of Western world have to leave their various luxuries and lifestyles behind in order to cope with the climate crisis, it will be very difficult to deal with the ambivalence of losing them on an emotional level. It is therefore unrealistic to expect people to switch to more sustainable and low-carbon lifestyles without acknowledging and mourning these losses which I will elaborate more about in the next sections. On the other hand, as humans postpone the transition to a sustainable lifestyle that requires abandoning many of the luxuries of modern life, the complexity of the emotions that transitional loss will cause and the intensity of the grief that needs to be kept increases.

Anticipatory loss, another form of loss, is used to describe situations in which loss is anticipated such as terminal illness. Anticipating the loss and preparing to face it in advance can ease the process psychologically (Parkes, 1975). But grieving in advance does not mean that there will be less grief after the loss. While various losses that are known to occur if the necessary measures are not taken in the context of the climate crisis are in this category, what can be done to prevent these possible scenarios from happening is in the transitional loss category. for example; according to the World Bank report, in the absence of action, approximately 140 million people in 3 regions that represents almost half of world population (Latin America, South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa) will be forced to migrate because of drought, storm surges and rising sea levels by 2050 (United Nations, n.d.). Actions to be taken to prevent these migrations and the loss of people’s living spaces require a radical change in the comfortable lifestyle of the Western world. On the other hand, even in the case where all possible actions are taken, there are already extinct species whose loss cannot be prevented and habitats that will be flooded in the near future.

The Culture of “Uncare”

There is one word that US citizens excessively searched for its meaning in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary after every big catastrophe in 21th century: “Surreal”. It was one of the words that is searched the most after 9/11, Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting (2012), Boston Marathon bombing (2013) and of course after COVID-19 pandemic (2020). Those are times when people need to ground themselves around events that feel hard to comprehend because it shakes their sense of order and understanding of the world. There is denial in the word “surreal”.

The realization of that human actions have a major impact on the climate crisis can present a threat for people’s psychological integrity as well as their material interests. A threat to material interests of people with comfortable lifestyles can provoke denialism, the denial of the scientific evidence for the sake of self-interest. Similarly, denialism can manifest itself by organizations and institutions such as fossil energy companies that actively spread misinformation about the climate crisis (Oreskes and Conway, 2010). But the climate crisis also provokes other emotions which are hard to deal with and may trigger subtler defense mechanisms. What is important to consider is whether the responses stimulate pro-environmental action and support psychological adjustment, or they serve as short term protection and disable people from taking significant action (Andrews and Hoggett, 2019).

Facing any kind of loss (independent of whether internal/external or future/past/now oriented) is painful and requires grieving. However, avoiding grief and messiness of the overwhelming feelings that comes with it, is common as a defence mechanism. Facing loss reminds us of our own death and as the following research demonstrates, it is not our favorite topic. Existential neuroscience researcher Yair Dor-Ziderman said in his interview in the Guardian about his research on neural mechanisms for encountering existential threats: “The brain does not accept that death is related to us… We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it… We think of it more as something that happens to other people.” (Sample, 2019).

But there are also cultural factors involved in the coping responses since they are not isolated but a psycho-social phenomenon. Coping and defence mechanisms are culturally sanctioned and maintained by structures and social norms (Norgaard, 2011). Nowadays, the global north’s dominant culture is at war with humans’ capacity to care. Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe calls it, the culture of “uncare”, and argues that this culture performs an ideological function by attacking frameworks that support care:“Our current way of life is largely dictated by the needs of a globalised deregulated economy, founded largely on the principle that the polluter never pays, short-term profit is all, and true costs are discounted” (2021). While it is important to be aware of the political reality, on the other hand, shifting responsibility to others (politicians, billionaires, executives and other nations) makes us feel better in the short run, but basically sinks us into our feelings of helplessness and apathy.

After all, we find ways to get away from the idea that we are within the culture and personally involved in the problem by not taking responsibility. Believing that each of our individual actions is so small that it is insignificant, blaming others, believing that we do not have the power to change, believing that even if climate change is a threat to the future, the damage will be repaired suddenly with rapid technological advancements could be some of the examples. Then, how is it possible for people to get rid of the influence of the culture of uncare? I suggest that we need to reconnect with the human and more-than-human world but first, we need to grieve for the consequences of losing our connection. Because without facing the intense anxiety, fear, sadness, guilt and other difficult feelings experienced on an individual level, it will not be possible to face the frightening reality on a collective level.

5 Stages of Grief: Kübler-Ross Model

Before explaining the model, which is developed to understand the grieving process and how these models deal with the concept of ecological grief, it is important to remember that there is no right way to experience ecological grief, as in all types of grief. Also, the length and characteristics of everyone’s grieving process are unique to each individual. One of the most widely used models to understand the grieving process of humans is known as the 5 stage grief model developed by Kübler-Ross (2005). These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, as they are quiet shortly and successfully summed up by Homer Simpson in the video below:

Even though the model was developed in the late 1960s as a result of studies with terminally ill people, Stephen W. Running adapted this comprehensive model to the concept of ecological grief and used it to better explain the process (2007). Then, what does the Kübler-Ross grief model applied to ecology tell us about this process? What stages do we go through when we experience ecological grief?

1. Denying climate change and its consequences

This stage of ecological grief often represents the experience of people who choose not to believe the scientific evidence of climate change because they fear the consequences, or who believe the scientific findings but ignore the potential consequences and the need for urgent action. A certain degree of denial may be necessary for all of us to continue living in the midst of the enormous crisis we face. However, denying the reality of climate change-related losses simply because it scares or upsets us will not be functional. Such denial ignores the need for action and can lead to greater losses by hindering the steps we need to take to tackle the climate crisis.

2. Anger

Some theories of emotion in psychology claim that emotions like anger, in some cases, replace very intense emotions such as sadness, hopelessness and confusion that negatively affect one’s mental health, to make it easier to cope with them (Shirai & Suzuki, 2017). For example, in the context of the climate crisis, climate deniers can direct this anger at climate activists for forcing them to confront emotions for which they are not ready to face. For those who are trying to do everything they can to create an emergency action plan regarding climate change, anger can be directed at the status quo, state institutions that take no precautions, the capitalist system that consumes the world’s resources, other people who have opposing views on social media, the unawareness of the society, and even themselves.

Anger is an emotion that can be extremely helpful in coping with situations such as the climate crisis that leave damages that are sometimes too deep to deal with, and emotions such as helplessness, hopelessness, sadness but anger often functions as a catalyst for action. Anger becomes a problem when we get stuck with that emotion, misdirect it, and use it as an excuse to cover up other emotions such as sadness and pain that we need to process to get through the ecological grief.

3. Bargaining

When people’s approach to the climate crisis is to bargain, it can lead to underestimating the potential consequences of the crisis and even focusing on the so called “positive” aspects of climate change in the tragicomic mental distortions. For example, while I am writing this article during a cold and dark Swedish winter, I started to have more conversations with people about the climate. I heard people joking that “I’m already freezing, so it would actually be nice to have a warmer winter here”.

People tend to think that they are saving the world by switching to electric cars, not buying water in a plastic bottle, carrying our water in a water bottle and recycling our garbage etc. However, they might be missing the fact that we need to take bigger steps and change our consumption habits on a much larger scale to tackle the climate crisis. The most prominent feature of this stage of ecological grief is the tendency to try to make ourselves feel better through ostensible efforts and thus avoid facing loss.

4. Depression

This stage begins when the reality of the crisis and its frightening consequences are accepted. But it makes people feel pessimistic, helpless, and hopeless that they can cope with the consequences of this reality. Along with individual thoughts such as “How can I deal with such a big problem alone?” more societal and global critiques such as “Humans are selfish and that will never change” and “There is nothing we can do to stop the devastating consequences of climate change” may come to light at this stage.

Individuals trying to cope with ecological depression may lose hope for the future, believe that a solution cannot be found, and may not find the necessary motivation to take action. It is observed that climate scientists and climate activists, who stand in the middle of this reality, mostly experience this stage of mourning. These people may neglect their self-care, feel exhausted, and be surrounded by feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

5. Acceptance

In the original model of grief developed by Kübler-Ross, this stage involves the calm acceptance of the inevitability of death. However, the grieving process experienced due to a terminal illness differs from ecological mourning in both the certainty of the outcome and the inevitability. From the perspective of ecological loss, species’ extinction is not the inevitable end, and all species that can adapt to changing conditions are likely to survive.

Although the losses caused by human actions until now cannot be recovered, there is still a chance for others. However I don’t think that acceptance is the last stage of ecological grief. The continuation of life with adaptation requires grieving but I would like to end my article with a call of action by proposing that after accepting the reality, we need to show courage to adapt to it and develop a new sense of self.

Ecological Self

Adapting to the crisis, and staying with it, is about developing a capacity to engage with reality and fostering a resilience to our collective troubles. If what we have lost in this crisis is not only other living beings but is a part of our way of life, our habits and fragments of ourselves, then grieving for those parts of ourselves is part of the last stage of ecological grief. We can only adapt to the crisis after we let our unrealistic fantasies of the future change, then bury a part of ourselves next to it, and mourn all this.

If ecological grief is not what the nature out there has lost, but what we have lost together with the nature we are part of, then our sense of self must transcend the human/nature binary and gain an ecological meaning in order to face this crisis. I suggest that ecological self is basically a more relational self. When we put together different aspects of the crisis such as the magnitude of our losses, the complexity of emotions around it, the “uncare culture”, the multi-causal nature of it and the invisibility of its counterparts in daily life, if there is a chance against the crisis, it may be to face them together in solidarity. To the extent that the lives of all humans and more-than-humans are equally grievable, we may have a chance to build resilience in the face of crisis. But for everyone’s life to be equally grievable, we must all first develop our capacity to grieve.

Before ending this article on the individuals’ relations to losses that are not embraced and mournings not carried out, it is important to note that individual‘s unwillingness to face the crisis cannot be used to justify the neoliberal economy’s attempt to impose responsibility on individuals while damaging all life support systems globally. On the contrary, this intervention is meant to be an encouragement for those who continue to struggle with overwhelming feelings of climate crisis. This is an attempt to show solidarity with those who try to take responsibility despite the fact that they are not equally responsible and not as influential as transnational corporations. In the context of neoliberal political order, individuals are facing psychological barriers that are constantly reinforced by diverse political apparatuses which complicates to confront overwhelming emotions loss and grief bring. Therefore, we mustn’t forget that the necessity of changing the unsustainable current situation required by the nature of the crisis is asking for changes not only at the individual level but also at the structural level.

References

Andrews, N., & Hoggett, P. (2019). Facing up to ecological crisis: A psychosocial perspective from climate psychology. Facing up to Climate Reality: Honesty, Disaster and Hope; Foster, J., Ed, 155–171.

Fahys, J. (April 22, 2017). First Step To ‘Eco-Grieving’ Over Climate Change? Admit There’s A Problem. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2017/04/22/524557600/first-step-to-eco-grieving-over-climate-change-admit-theres-a-problem?t=1638208739768&t=1640951132363

Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Simon and Schuster.

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Parkes, C. M. (1975). Bereavement: studies of grief in adult life. London: Penguin.

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Running, S. W. (2007). The 5 stages of climate grief.

Sample, I. (2019. 19 October). Doubting death: how our brains shield us from mortal truth. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/19/doubting-death-how-our-brains-shield-us-from-mortal-truth

Shirai, M., & Suzuki, N. (2017). Is sadness only one emotion? Psychological and physiological responses to sadness induced by two different situations:“loss of someone” and “failure to achieve a goal”. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 288.

United Nations (n.d.). The Climate Crisis — A Race We Can Win. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.un.org/en/un75/climate-crisis-race-we-can-win

Weintrobe, S. (2021). Psychological roots of the climate crisis: Neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The theory of the parent-infant relationship. In Winnicott, D.W. (1976). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: studies in the theory of emotional development. London: Hogarth Press.