“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge” – Audre Lord (p. 248)
The week of September 9th, Cathexis team members met to discuss the chapter “Feel” from All We Can Save (Johnson & Wilkinson, 2020) for our Summer Reading Circle. The section contained essays and stories about the emotional toll the climate crisis presents. It addressed topics such as mental health, raising children, and managing our emotions as the effects of the climate crisis manifest in our daily lives.
The readings prompted our group to discuss the emotional implications of the climate crisis and how we can support each other in the workplace. We enjoyed Susanne C. Moser’s piece “The Adaptive Mind” (p. 270) as we found the sections on “Raising Recognition of Psychological Distress” (p. 273) and “Taking Care of Ourselves” (p. 275) particularly helpful.
The section prompted some of us to reflect that our thinking about planning for long-term goals and retirement have changed or may differ from what culture is telling us we should be working toward — and it takes time to work through how we feel about this. As colleagues, we can acknowledge how tough this is, and offer each other advice and encouragement for managing the tough emotions brought on by climate events. We also realized we must do more to investigate what resources are out there to refer coworkers who may be experiencing stress, anxiety, and grief related to the climate crisis.
Stay tuned for our final blog post about our learnings from the last sections of All We Can Save!
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Resources we like:
- Resources for working with climate emotions – resource page on All We Can Save website
- How your climate emotions can save the world – TedTalk by psychologist Katharina Van Bronswijk