These notes were taken during one of our Climate Conversations. Unfortunately, they might not mean much if you weren’t there! You may find the conversation guide and resource list helpful if that’s the case.
Introduction
This meeting was a repeat of the previous meeting’s topic, for the benefit of those who hadn’t been able to come. It turned out quite differently. Those of us who had been at the previous meeting had new experiences of practising distancing over the last fortnight so we produced a new and (I think so anyway) rewarding conversation.
Describe where you’re at with distancing right now.
Would you describe it as avoidance? Self-care? Or something else? Are you overwhelmed or do you step back easily?
- It’s changed since last time! And it’s not good.
- I’ve learned about microplastics and now I see plastic everywhere.
- I can’t get any distance from it.
- I’m very distressed.
- I’m not very good at distancing.
- I’m reminded by emails etc.
- I’m skimming and cherry-picking.
- I feel some guilt but I’m doing what I can now.
- Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.
- I try to manage my expectations of what can be achieved by an action.
- I’m improving a little
- I remember a quote from the Climate Change and Happiness podcast, “do your work and step back”.
- There’s some automatic avoidance going on.
- I’m making some time for things I love doing.
- Everything feels contaminated. There’s nowhere I can go where I won’t be reminded of what’s happening to our world.
Techniques for distancing
We talked about a technique for containing worry called worry-time, and tried it out together. We also experimented with using a worry tree to process the things that are troubling us.
We considered what we might do to wrap up our worry time and move on. One suggestion from the group was to take a deep breath to let go of our worries.
Our thoughts about the worry tree:
- The worry tree is helpful because my worries are like a big ball and feel overwhelming. The worry tree helped break it down.
- It helped crystalise things.
- I struggled a bit when it came to big climate problems. I don’t know if they’re hypothetical or not. And there may be things I could do for each thing I worry about but I can’t do all those things. Maybe I should adapt some of the questions.