Emergent Resilience is an answer to the questions we hear too many ask:
How do we manage the fear, stress, anxiety, guilt, and overwhelm caused by climate change and other systemic crises?
We feel hopeless and powerless; is all of our work to stop climate change pointless?
How do we deal with people who don’t recognize how bad things are or, worse, deny that climate change is a problem?
How do we bear the guilt caused by our own unavoidable contribution to the problems?
What do we tell our children?
How can we find meaning and purpose in a world so full of uncertainty and doubt?
How can we be part of the solution?
How do we actually create change?
Climate Distress iS HEre…
Climate change is here, now. Its impacts are felt around the world in ways large and small. Most obvious are the rising seas, massive storms, apocalyptic fires, unending droughts, hundred-year floods, and species extinctions that are seemingly daily occurrences, affecting more and more of us directly each year.
More subtle, yet no less insidious, are the ways that present impacts and threatened future disruptions can affect our psychological health. The statistics are startling: 66% of Americans are either “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change; 53% feel “helpless;” 43% are “afraid;” and 30% of Americans are “very worried.”
…And Causing widespread Impacts…
Climate distress goes by many names and results in a wide range of symptoms, including “PTSD, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, attachment disorders, and substance abuse.” This distress then flows outward, affecting larger social structures - businesses, schools, social groups, communities, and even whole societies - through the individuals that inhabit them.
Compounding those effects, climate change interacts with social systems (economics, politics, culture, health, etc.) in ways that place additional pressure on individuals and systems already suffering from severe structural problems like racism, sexism, economic inequality, and extreme workplace stress. It’s likely that these compounding effects contributed into the recent, concurrent rise of the social justice movements Black Lives Matter and Me Too.
And this is just the beginning. The pressure on individuals, families, businesses, institutions, and communities from these combined stressors will only increase as the climate crisis accelerates. In fact, experts project that in the near future more than 200 million Americans will face serious psychological impacts from climate change. This metastasizing burden will drive a dramatic increase in the $300 billion American businesses, governments, and individuals already spend on mental health care every year.
…So We Must Become Climate Resilient.
We have two choices.
The first is to continue to live reactively, to allow past experience, old patterns, and outdated cultural narratives, norms, and values to drive ever more dysfunctional responses to accelerating disruption. Down this path, climate stress will continue to build, placing added burdens on individuals, families, organizations, and communities already beset by significant personal and systemic stress and trauma. The combined impacts will reduce our collective capacity to cope, drastically diminishing the potential for positive change. As a result, climate mitigation efforts deteriorate, climate disruption accelerates, and the cycle continues.
The other option is resilience. Down this path, we build resilience by proactively developing our capacity to weather dramatic changes and to find meaning in times of challenge. The resulting awareness, skills, and wisdom provide immediate benefits in the climate context, while also improving our capacity to address pre-existing structural stressors. The decrease in disruptive impacts from climate change and systemic problems at all levels of society frees additional capacity to mitigate the causes of climate change and other stressors, leading to decreased disruption from climate change and systemic social problems, continuing a positive feedback loop that leads us toward a better world in which all can flourish and thrive.
Join us on the path toward resilience today.
Learn more about how we can support your journey here: