Beth Hill on getting in touch with your climate feelings
When we talk about taking action on climate, we hear a lot about renewable energy, climate finance, sea walls and sustainable agriculture. In other words, we hear a lot about our external worlds. But what about our internal worlds? For Beth Hill, program developer at Psychology for a Safe Climate, climate action begins with understanding our feelings about climate change and what we can do with them. From here, we can build up our mental resilience to better cope with the challenges of our time and clearly see what levers we are best placed to pull to help transform the world into something more liveable.
Beth Hill lives on Wurundjeri Country
The climate solutions we usually hear about have to do with politics and economics. Why is it important we look more closely at climate from a psychological point of view?
The psychological perspective on climate change matters deeply. We relate to the environment and to each other via the complex ecosystem that each of us is, with layers of emotions and thoughts and histories and experiences. If we silo away climate change as just an economic issue or a political issue we miss the rich complexity of all the responses that are actually needed to to effectively turn the climate crisis around. And the solutions can’t just be about what we do, but how we do it. That question of 'how?' requires a level of understanding of ourselves and each other, and that takes time and reflection.
PSC is steeped in traditional psychology, but through the lens of the impact of culture on social change movements. What does that look like on a practical level?
We understand climate distress as a psycho-social-cultural phenomenon. So it’s about looking at what shapes our understanding of who we are and the kind of action we think might be possible. We offer direct support with our community workshops and Climate Cafes to help people work through difficult emotional barriers to engaging constructively with climate change, like grief, anger, fear, feelings of powerlessness. We support people working within the climate movement to become more psychologically aware of how people respond to climate change and the personal impacts of undertaking this work, especially burnout. And we work with mental health practitioners to help them understand the climate reality as a mental health issue that they can work on in their professional practice.
We give a lot of consideration to the impacts of climate change on our physical world, like damage to our reefs and melting glaciers. But we don't talk much about the impact on our internal worlds and mental health. Why is that?
I think one of the reasons is most people don’t see the link between the two. Even though people understand the science that literally tells us we ARE nature, even though we love the natural world and are upset by climate change and what’s happening to the environment, there's still a deep cultural conditioning that says ‘I am in here and nature is out there.’ This is what allows us to go out and log a forest or blow open a mountain to extract coal. When we do this we are causing irreversible damage to those beautiful places that matter ecologically, but we are also wreaking havoc on our own psyches that are intimately connected to those places and ecologies.
This myth of separation is a total construct, particularly in modern Western cultures. If you look at Indigenous cultures all over Australia, that separation doesn't exist – when Country is sick, you are sick as well. I know that’s quite a philosophical leap for some people, but I actually do think it's very relevant because the more we can understand this, the more we can begin to restore our mental health. So, being engaged, taking action, finding connections and reparative actions that are meaningful in your local environment can be deeply restorative to those feelings of grief.
How can we deal with our grief better and use it more constructively?
Feelings are information. They tell us things about ourselves and the world. If we're not really willing to engage with how we feel, we're actually missing a whole slice of the informational puzzle. While grief is painful and overwhelming, it actually has a really practical function. It’s one of the key ways that our system makes sense of loss and comes to terms with loss. To see what action is needed we have to confront and integrate the loss that's happening and stay grounded in that reality.
There’s another aspect to this, something the activist and elder Joanna Macy talks about, which is that the depth of our grief is the measure of our love. When looked at like this, you can begin to feel the power behind grief. At PSC we emphasise the importance of making space and time to grieve together. To feel heard in our own struggle, and to listen to others in their pain for the world, can have this paradoxical effect – it reconnects us to each other and to the earth. This is what actually brings us back to life, and that's where we can find a lot of motivation and energy to act.
There are a lot of people who are feeling freaked out about climate change and want to do something meaningful about it, but are totally overwhelmed and not sure where to start. What advice would you give them?
The only way to turn things around on climate change is if we all step up, so finding action you can take really matters. If you're struggling with overwhelm, the first thing to do is to pause and make space to process how you’re feeling. The feelings (and origins of those feelings) that lie underneath the overwhelm can be important clues about what actions you might take that are both personally meaningful for you and make a real difference in the world.
This is not just a one-off journaling activity though. I’m talking about deep personal reckoning where you ask yourself questions. Like, who have I been so far in my life? Who do I want to be in the next twenty years given the reality of the climate crisis? What are my skills? What feels meaningful and sustainable to me? Navigating these questions can be ambiguous and complex. They are life-long questions. I don't think it's something you can do alone. You need supportive people around you, which is something we provide with our workshops and Climate Cafes.
Also, if you spend a lot of time reading all the intense and depressing climate science and news, it might be time to take a step back from that. You probably understand enough to know that something needs to happen, so get out into nature and find sustenance and meaning there as a part of how you figure out what you want to do.
Kids and teenagers are coming of age at a time when there’s a lot of scary stuff in the news about climate change. Some young people are experiencing extreme weather events first hand. How can we emotionally support this generation through all that’s happening?
It's really complex. The kids of this generation are holding a lot. Sometimes I feel like adults think they need to have all the answers for their kids, like that's going to allay their anxiety. But I don't know if that's what most kids want. I think parents and kids having honest conversations about how they’re really feeling about this crisis with each other is an important form of emotional support. And I think kids want to see the adults around them taking responsibility and real action on this issue. To see a response from adults that is commensurate with the climate reality that they’re aware of. It’s our responsibility to step up and lead the way where we can. And accept when we can’t, which is sometimes harder.
Working in climate can be gruelling. On the hard days, what keeps you going?
What keeps me going is the connection I feel to the places and people that I love. Standing barefoot in my backyard. Sitting by my local creek and deeply listening to what that place has to tell me. What keeps me going is remembering that I am a part of something bigger than myself, something beautiful-ugly, complex and mysterious. Something that needs me as much as I need it – and that responsibility and connection is full of grief and full of love. Love keeps me going.
