16/01/2025
How do we find meaning when the climate crisis seems to hang over everything we love, everything we hope for? A couple of my favorite folks from the climate mental health space came together a number of years ago for a conversation about how to take care of ourselves and each other in the midst of eco-anxiety. If you’re not subscribed to Gen Dread, please check it out!
Here are a few of the quotes I keep coming back to from the interview between Dan Rubin and Britt Wray:
“I want to help people get to the Goldilocks zone of anxiety. That means that you’re feeling like oh I’m worried about this, but you can still live your life and be proactive. If there’s too much anxiety, then you can’t do anything, and if there’s too little anxiety, then you’re not actually paying attention. So there’s a Goldilocks zone for different people, and that’s what I’m curious to find.”
"Part of my work with trauma and climate trauma is about how we can relate to uncertainty and how we can begin to participate in an uncertain world. No matter what we do with the climate, it is not going to get 100% better, but still we can make things 5% better. 5% is better than 0%. It is the same with other kinds of trauma. With some people’s personal trauma, they’re never going to get 100% better, but 0 to 5 is huge…This idea that we are all fu**ed can get so conceptual. We need to know that our real lives are meaningful and we don’t need to be perfect, but we can get five percent of goodness somewhere."
"I’m convinced that if people get in touch with their natural aliveness, whatever they do is going to be activism…This is an opportunity for experimentation and spontaneity and aliveness. So I am interested in different ways we can embrace the weirdness."
"I think there is also going to be a lot of healing and wounding at the same time."