Engaging with our emotions about the climate crisis
Introduction
This week’s conversation was about how we feel at this particular moment in the unfolding crisis. The idea was to give ourselves a chance to talk about how we’re feeling, and a little time to connect with what we’re feeling and express it.
It seemed to me that a number of significant and scary stories had appeared in the press in a short space of time. It’s affected me emotionally. I pulled a few stories from the news that helped create my sense of a rapidly deepening and urgent crisis over the last couple of weeks.1I’ve not tried to create a representative sample or check if the news has really got worse or if it just feels that way. These headlines are just examples of what stood out to me from what I read online or in newsletters.
How are you feeling at this point in the crisis?
We had a little time to think and then took turns to talk about how we felt. We didn’t make notes for this part of the session, to allow us to give our full attention to the person talking.
Ways to feel and release our emotions
We brainstormed different ways we could connect with and express our emotions. The ideas come from our own experiences and from recommendations we’ve come across in the past. We weren’t sure about some of these. For example, is it helpful to punch a pillow? And we thought some of the ideas might be more of a distraction from emotion than a way to feel it and then let go. I think we came up with a good list of ideas with quite a bit of variety.
- Music
- Dark humour and laughter
- Crying
- Scream into a cushion
- Punching a pillow?
- High energy activity
- Meditation
- Focus on physical sensations
- It is easier to express positive emotions
- Talking stuff through
- Writing
- Worry dolls
- Singing
- Art and crafts
- Talking to the Samaritans
- Walking
- Running
- Shouting at people who deserve it – you’ve done something
- Do something
- Deep dive into an issue – face the facts, confront the issue
- Getting closure
- Rituals e.g. funerals, the cairn of mourning in Active Hope
- Quotes
- Poems
- Stories
Conclusions
Lastly, we reflected on our conversation, thinking about what was useful or interesting or what wasn’t helpful to us.
- Validation. It’s good to know other people feel the same.
- There’s a taboo around the topic. You can’t have conversations like this with colleagues, for example.
- Taking part in actions has helped me. There’s a social element to them.
- It gives me time to think properly.