Episode 86 Eco-anxiety and connection

We're here to raise awareness and inspire meaningful action by sharing stories, knowledge and conversations with thought leaders and change makers from sustainability to wellbeing and everything related to conscious living. Our mission is to empower you to be the change that you want to see in the world. Welcome to this conversation on eco anxiety. It's um, wonderful topic to unpack and to have a beautiful conversation during this times that needed.

And especially during this weeks that we're going through the Auckland climate festival. This topic for me is really important because I've been working in this space through conscious action for, especially through conscious action for the last four years. But even before that, For the past 15 plus years that I've been in the space of wellbeing. This is a really interesting intersection of what is happening both in the world with our climate. And what's happening with us in response to that.

For me, one of the key aspects of what many are calling eco anxiety, the main aspect of it is disconnection. How disconnected we are from ourselves, from others and from nature. And a lot of the issues that we're having both from our own personal wellbeing and the climate crisis that we're in. Those are the symptoms of that disconnection. So because we are disconnected from our mother earth. We are not understanding our relationship.

Then, then we are behaving in ways that is not conducive to that relationship, to that giving and to that receiving, therefore we have the climate crisis that we're seeing at this moment. We have that disconnection in our communities and with each other, therefore we are creating this separation that doesn't enable us to come together to understand how to be, how to collaborate and how to engage with one another in ways. That are nourishing for the collective.

And we see a lot of the symptoms of that disconnection on the ways that we behave with people in different countries, people of different colors, different ethnicities, different cultures, different socioeconomic status. And then we have the disconnection from ourselves and the symptoms that we are seeing, anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies. These are all symptoms of that disconnection. So that disconnection is at the root of all of it.

And eco anxiety as I've been discussing this topic with many people in events and workshops, especially with the younger generation. And I see this teaching at university, lot of us, we haven't received. An education that enables us to develop the inner resources that we already have. And therefore we don't know how to cope and how to be with our experience. And because now the experience and what we are seeing with our climate crisis is so daunting that is creating even more anxiety.

And when we are in that space of seeing the facts and seeing the news of what is happening around the world, it's easy for us to be overwhelmed, to feel helpless, to feel powerless, to be, even be angry or to feel numb, to be disconnected. Because the reality is that things are not normal. What's happening in the world is not normal and it's okay for us to get to that place. So the first thing that I wanted to acknowledge is that it's okay. If that is your experience, it's okay to acknowledge.

From our own perspective when something is overwhelming and it has been my experience that one of the biggest things that we can do for our own wellbeing is to acknowledge where we are, what is happening in our experience. And to be able to share it, to be able to talk about it, to be able to express it in a way that isn't going to be helpful for us. Because a lot of times when we're able to do that, we're able to bring that into the space and we're able to see it from a different perspective.

We're able to relate to it differently. And one of the things that I have noticed through the years working in this space is that a lot of times people don't feel safe to be in that opening, vulnerable state of sharing, how they are sharing their feelings, sharing their perspectives. A lot of times when we want to share. All that we want is others to listen and to be present.

And most of the times we are high checking others people's experiences and what they're sharing, we're trying to fix them. We think that we have the solutions for them. One of the key things. With what is happening in the world now with our climate crisis is that for the ones that we are aware of, it perhaps work in this space or care about it in a way that we're going to research it and to check the news and check new facts and check new research that has been done is that.

That can create even more tension and stress because a lot of times what we are seeing is that there is this sense of urgency and that is adding to the stress into the anxiety that many are feeling. As we go into these rabbit holes, spiral through hours of research, perhaps on YouTube or surfing on the way of any way that we are doing that, that sometimes is adding to that anxiety. And even though it's nice to be able to be informed, we need to understand.

How to take care of ourselves, how to be in relationship of what is happening and the circumstances that we're in nowadays. Because as I said before, what's happening is not normal, so it's okay to feel overwhelmed as we understand ourselves. And we understand each other in relationship to each other.

We can start to find ways through this crisis because we need all of these different voices, all of the different players to be able to be included, something that, as I mentioned before, we have created that separation. When we know ourselves more, when we develop our sense of presence, understanding, creating the space for our own wellbeing, we're able to show up differently and all of us, regardless of our background, Regardless of where we live.

All of us, we're bringing a huge amount of baggage into this space. That trauma intergenerational trauma that we're bringing into this space is something that needs to be acknowledged and something that needs to be acknowledged both individually and as a collective. When we're able to do that, we're able to start to go through the process. And sometimes that process means grieving. Sometimes that process means transforming. Sometimes that process means healing.

There's different stages and that process of how to deal with that trauma. But what comes on the other side of that? It's openness, it's creativity. It's being able to see things differently. So we need to be able to stay present with what is, even though it is a lot, it can hurt. It can be overwhelming. Yet, we need to be able to find how to reconnect with our inner resources, because we have the capability of being, of being resilient, of being able to be courageous.

To be able to have skillful conversations with others, to be able to be creative. Openminded we have those capacities, but we need to understand how we are. We need to do the inner work that is necessary for us to deal with this as there's so much happening. We all have different responses or reactions to what is happening in the circumstances in our lives. So it is important for us as we develop more and more awareness of how we are to understand what it's called the window of tolerance.

This is how much stress and overwhelm your body can take until it gets to that point that it cannot integrate it anymore. That it's too much. So understanding what's that threshold for each of us is really important. Understanding that the more that we develop a relationship with ourselves, the easier it is to deal with things, even if they are really difficult and challenging. And in this space of climate crisis in this space is really important for us to understand how are we feeling?

So I invite you to take moments just to notice, what are you feeling with what is happening with the climate crisis on top of everything else that is happening in your life. And I invite you to stay with the feeling and not with your thoughts or your opinions of what is happening. How are you actually feeling what is going on in your body? Because we tend to live in our health and our health are amazing.

They allow us to bring in all of the knowledge intelligence and the creativity for all of the ways that we can work through this climate crisis. And as well with ourselves yet, as I was saying at the beginning, we are disconnected. We have been living from the head up and we need to start to integrate how our body is feeling. What are the sensations that we're having because our body speaks to us and it speaks. In ways that is different to our heads.

And when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel this anxiety coming back to the body, noticing the feelings, noticing the breath, the breath is a wonderful measure of how we are. When we get to the place of stress of really high stress and anxiety, our breath goes faster and goes a little bit more shallow. So just noticing a lot of times how you're breathing helps to stay with the experience or to be able to integrate it and to move through it.

So it's really important to be able to understand how are you feeling? Another aspect that is really important in this is that our modern society has created this model of individuality. We add all separate. As I mentioned before, we all are acting in ways that don't serve us. How are we in relationship to the people in our lives to our community, to the collective?

Because when we are taking actions, especially on this space of the climate crisis, people that are actively taking actions, a lot of times they can feel like they are the only ones. They can feel like whatever they are doing is not going to be enough. And then significant. And I saw this cartoon a while ago that there was this little kid and he was going to the grocery and he had like his own little reusable flag and, and a few glass charts.

And this other person saying like, Oh, why, why are you doing this? You're all by yourself. And the little kid says I'm not by myself. It's million of us. We just don't know where we are. And that sense of connectedness, that sense of understanding how we are connected, enables our own individual actions to have a far greater effect than when we think that it has. But being able to understand how are we connecting to each other? Because our collective action is what is going to change things.

We to understand this from, um, intersection of space, intergenerational space here in. New Zealand. We have the amazing knowledge of the Maori people. It's something that I'm learning about and the model of wellbeing of how, how order that is something that we can integrate into our practices. Into our perspectives of how we are being with our bodies, with our mind, with our feelings, with our pH, our people, our community, with the land.

When we understand wellbeing from this whole perspective, we're able to show up differently. And it's important to acknowledge that a lot of times, the knowledge of how we are going to move forward is already here and by opening ourselves up to the different voices that have been put down a lot of times and have not been listened to. We're able to start to create that connection that I was talking at the beginning, how we create more awareness, how do we care for others?

Creating space for equality and equity. That sense of belonging as well, makes us not feel alone. This is generally, but well in this space when we are so aware of all of the negative impacts that this climate crisis is having. And I was talking a while ago with this young. Young girl that she had just traveled around some places in Latin America. I grew up in Latin America. So I, I knew what she was talking about and she felt so much shame and she felt so much guilt from what she was saying.

Her privilege, white, like pack her life here. Comparing to what she was seeing with all of those people in poverty, in the slams and how the impacts of the climate actually was having on those people. And one of the things that, and this is what, I'm one of the things that we are exploring here. And I told her was. Our feeling of guilt and shame is not a helpful feeling.

It's not a helpful framework for us to be able to move into this space because when we want to take action, guilt and shame brings us to a space of freeze. Of not knowing what to do. We are not going to usually take action or the action is not going to come from a positive intention. So when we understand more our feelings, we understand that that guilt is an actual feeling. Somewhere in the body, we can start to work with that feeling and that feeling can be the fuel that moves us into action.

That is informed with that experience yet it is not holding us back. How can we connect with those people that are more impacted now in places in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in different areas, even here in New Zealand and in Auckland, how come we. Show up differently for them as one. How can we integrate all of that? So it's really important to develop more of our inner resources that we already have.

However, that looks like in my experience in the more than 15 years of working with this. We all respond to something differently. Some of us need to do some movement to move what's happening. Some of us need to do sitting meditation, yoga, mindfulness practices, connecting to other people, going into nature. How that looks like is different for each of us. Yet, we need to do something to reconnect with our inner resources. They are there already. We just haven't tapped into them.

And as we do that, accepting what is happening, accepting what we can control and what we cannot control, what we cannot control. Letting that go. There's nothing that we can do about that yet. There's a lot of we can do and what we can do taking action and that taking action can be really small or it can be huge in not outside our perspective, what matter system, what we are doing, what are we doing today tomorrow?

And each single day to move us to how we want to be, how we want to show up in the world, accepting that there's symptom we cannot do anything about and other people are doing that. Or perhaps no one else is doing that and taking action on what we can control, trying. When we allow that to happen as well, when to bring in a different perspective all of the time nowadays, we are talking about the new normals, the new normal, the new normal, every time it's the new normal.

Well, the normal is not good enough. It hasn't had something normal before. How can we go from a normal perspective to a natural perspective? Natural perspective looks like not human centric, but it looks like nature based risk narrative with an understanding of biodiversity. Understanding one, the collective as well in terms of people and animals and our cities and how we are moving around. And what are the spaces that we are creating for nature? How are we incorporating our lives in nature?

When we are able to see things differently as well, we can open up to different perspectives because I was saying earlier that sometimes when we look at all of the news of what is happening, you know, in earthquake here, like flooding there, all of these things, they can be quite overwhelming. Can we also have a perspective of a future that is. An amazing, wonderful, thriving future. How does that look like? We have too many movies and too many articles of the doom apocalyptic future.

We don't know what will happen. Yes, we can create scenarios of that, but we dunno what will happen. But if we reimagining the future a beautiful future, when there's inclusion, when there this social and environmental justice, when there's equity and equality, where nature and people are thriving, how does that look like? Because then.

We have a path forward, then we know, okay, how do we get there instead of trying to fix the things that are not working now, how do we go to something that is working for me? It's a really different perspective. They trying to get out of something that doesn't work. Then going towards something that does work. So being able to create a perspective and a path to ask ourselves, how does that look? Like? How can we thrive? How can we imagine things? So then we have a path to go there.

As we have that as well. We are creating a sense of hope and positivity, and it's not a false positivity. There is actually a seed that we can plant for that future that we want that hope. It's very different than the anxiety and the are one that many are experiencing. Now, when we change from an individualistic approach to one where we connect with others, one where we include our community, our elders, our young people.

And everyone in between when we include all of the wisdom that there already is, especially from our indigenous peoples. When we include all of that, when we come together, we can support each other. And as we understand ourselves more, And we understand all of the trauma that we are having, or that we are carrying all of the anxiety that we might be experiencing. We can understand that others might be experiencing something similar when we approach others from a sense of connection.

And not in divisiveness, we can meet them from a kind compassionate, loving space. When we allow that to happen, we can allow that support system for us and for each other. That is a way that we can thrive. When we know ourselves more, we can meet others. Where they are when we develop the skills of communication to meet others, where they are, we stop judging them. We can listen, we can engage in a skillful communication attempt. We need to create more of those spaces.

Because we need to thrive as people, we need to thrive as a collective and we need the earth to thrive. So we need to bring all of these different elements into place. What did you like the most about this episode? Take a moment to think about what change you can make in your life. Share your conscious action on social media using hashtag conscious action and ting at conscious action and said so we can celebrate your impact on the world and create a ripple effect. One easy action.

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