Season 1, Episode 2:Holding Space
image credit | Miguel Bruna
Season 1, Episode 2: Holding Space
Safe spaces are crucial for the expression of climate feelings. Thomas and Panu talk about the loneliness people feel about climate experiences. What does it take to “hold space” for climate feelings, to “stand one’s ground” and “contain” experiences of sadness, grief or rage; and to practice “climate cosmopolitanism”? Panu looks back to pioneering work by Chellis Glendinning and shares Tim Jensen’s more recent concept of “ecologies of guilt.” Thomas reminds us of the role of values and that “We hurt where we care” echoing the writing of psychologist Steven Hayes, and classic insights about the “pains of an ecological education” going back to Aldo Leopold.
Links
Pew Research Center: Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate.
Yale Program on Climate Change: Climate Change in the American Mind: April 2020
Chellis Glendenning My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization
Tim Jensen (2019) Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics
Panu’s blog: Questions for Discussion about Eco-emotions (2020)
Upcoming Episodes
In Episode 3, Thomas and Panu explain “eco-anxiety,” the history of the concept, how to manage eco-anxious feelings, and how to understand climate anxiety as a primal emotion, a cultural idea, and a mental health diagnosis. Also, look forward to guests like Québécois psychologist and ecotherapist Karine St. Jean in Episode 4, and noted conservation psychologist and IPCC author Susan Clayton, and global women’s health researcher Jade Sasser later in the season.
Transcript
Season 1, Episode 2: Holding Space
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.
Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I’m Thomas Doherty.
Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, our podcast. It's a show for people around the globe who are thinking deeply about the personal side of climate change including your emotions, how you feel about the issue. We know that what the research tells us is most of you listening — 70% or more — really care about this issue, climate change, and want to do something about it, but, you know, only a small percentage of you actually talk about climate change in your lives, publicly. So we invert that ratio and we talk about climate change all the time here and our emotions and mental health and our feelings and that is our job here.
Panu, today I want to, I just want to talk about this idea of holding space. This came up after our last conversation. Holding space for something. Holding space, in this case we’re holding space for emotions about climate change and I know in my work around environmental issues and psychology and ecopsychology and ecotherapy and outdoor therapy. Many times over the past years I’ve consoled myself that I’m holding space for these topics. I am creating a space, I’m trying to hold it so that we can talk about it and make it safe for others to come in. I think it's a really juicy concept for all of us.
We don’t have to have all the answers when we’re holding space, we don’t even have to have a long term direction when we’re holding space. But we know something’s important and we want to protect the space to feel and think and be about it ourselves and with others. And I’m just wondering what you think about that in relation to your work around climate change and climate emotions and all the many things that you’re doing?
Pihkala: Yeah, I think that’s a very important concept and phenomenon. So, very often at first people feel quite lonely if they recognize climate emotions in themselves especially because in most societies and communities there’s been so few opportunities to discuss or reflect on them. That is luckily changing now rapidly in many places but there’s still that condition in many places and has been in this history. So the need for safe spaces and for someone or something to hold that space so that it becomes possible to be in touch with your emotions and feelings that’s a crucial thing in our eco-emotional work I think.
Doherty: Yeah, we have so many emotions and you know they’re all happening all the time and it’s like a train you know. As I say, when we see the car passing on the train, the engine is far away, far ahead of us and by the time we catch up on one of the cars or whatever we’re feeling we have to realize we’ve felt all kinds of things previous to that and we’ll feel more after. But one of the things that comes up to me is almost a warrior energy, almost like a peaceful warrior energy. Certainly stubbornness, but more of a resolute kind of feeling that I am going to hold this space. You know, kind of a bravery, a courage, but also a toughness. You know toughness, I’m going to be here and I’m not going to be scared away, you know, by social pressures or someone looking askance at me. Certainly in academia there’s a holding space when you’re trying to start a new project. You know, so that’s something I’ve felt a lot. What kind of emotions come up for you or have seen in terms of the different emotional tones that come with the idea of holding space?
Pihkala: Yes, that idea of sort of standing on one's ground is one very interesting aspect of this. I often tend to think of holding space in relation to containment. That concept from psychology where something is able to be contained enough so that it can be faced with or without naming it. Even better if it can be named. But of course many climate emotions and feelings, for example, are so ambiguous and conglomerates of different feelings that it may be rather hard to name them exactly. But at least naming some main tones of that would be already very useful. And sadness or grief is one that comes up very often which is very understandable because there’s so many changes and losses happening around, and as we’ve many times discussed with you, it’s tricky because the societies around us are not especially attuned to validating grief and sadness. It’s more like: Be happy, don’t be sad attitude that one tends to find in industrialized countries, and often the people I meet have strong problems with ecological grief because of these cultural attitudes. Does that come up in your work, Thomas?
Doherty: Yeah, no I can resonate with that very much. A holding space is sort of a … How would I say it? Most people rush, they are impulsive about a lot of this stuff and they rush into things and they try to grasp onto certain… Whatever the certain feelings are or fit in with others, and they haven’t quite done the work, I guess, to really sort out all of their feelings. I mean one of the metaphors I use with my counseling and therapy clients is “emptying the bag, emptying the sack.” You know, we carry around this sack of all these thoughts and feelings and impressions and goals and values and it just, you know, empty it out, dump it out on the table. Let's sort out all of this and so emptying out the sack of our environmental emotions can be really helpful and it's a pre step. We don’t have to work on expressing or even understanding, but you know we create space, a white space so to speak, a blank slate and then we can empty out our sack and see what the heck is in there.
Pihkala: That’s a really great metaphor I think. Probably, usually people find many surprising objects on the table after that I would suppose.
Doherty: Yeah, there’s some beautiful seashells in there and all kinds of stuff. And then there’s also, you know, bricks that we’ve been carrying for 25 or 30 or 40 years or ten years or whatever in there as well. But yeah, how to get people to, part of this is physiological, being in your body and breathing and slowing down and being present. As our stress level rises like an old mercury thermometer, you know the mercury is rising, and our bandwidth and our creativity space is getting smaller and smaller. So by the time we’re super stressed we have a very limited bandwidth and we’re very tunnel visioned, you know, and so it's backing off on that stress level and opening up that spectrum of creativity, bandwidth, expression. To see what's all in there.
Pihkala: Yeah, that reminds me of the etymology of the word stress having to do with pressures and weight that one experiences and certainty unrecognized ecological grief can be a big part of those burdens. But then of course guilt, sometimes even shame, is a big part of that in many people’s lives that I meet. And that’s one emotional tone that really needs public recognition and holding safe spaces and it's very complex because, after all, the relationship between individual responsibility and structural responsibility — that’s a tricky one.
Doherty: No indeed, and what’s in the background in all our talks is who’s responsible and culpable for climate issues and, you know, so much of this is, you know, my term of being a “climate hostage,” people are climate hostages. Even wealthy people in affluent countries are still hostage to small groups that have kind of stymied our abilities to address the issue of climate and it's really a global injustice. And so it's that spectrum, injustice is hanging over us all the time. But the holding space, you know, as you say for shame and guilt and some of these things. And then, you know, holding space is an odd welcoming: Come on in, you know, let’s let these feelings come in and have their own value and respect. I was reading a quote from Stephen Hayes, a psychologist that’s done a lot of work around therapy creation here in the United States. He had a quote about, you know, we hurt where we care and we care where we hurt. Right, we hurt where we care, and we care where we hurt.
It’s a helpful one to think about particularly if we’re hurting. It’s because we care about something. If we’re hurting it’s because there’s a value there. You know and so again as we dig through our sack we realize underneath the guilt and the shame there’s other things there, other healthy feelings like pride and respect and health and, you know, also our values about justice and ecology and sustainability and all this sort of stuff. But yeah, so you know it's poking into these. It’s painful. Let’s just be honest, it's painful to do this work. It's not easy.
Pihkala: That's a very profound thing again that you mentioned, Thomas. There’s a couple of good books about ecological emotions which make this point I’m thinking of Tim Jensen Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics from 2019 where he makes the argument that even though people normally think that when they feel ecological guilt it is because they have failed, but in fact, it is because they care. So exactly the point that you were making Thomas and this can be a real discovery to many people that “hey it's actually a sign of care, empathy, compassion,” even you know love if you use that big word and the same for grief. I remember a talk that I was giving in early June to environmental educators in Finland and then saying that ecological sadness is the price of caring, and a couple of people emailed me afterwards and thanked me for saying that out loud. That was also a good reminder for me that one really needs to repeat these sort of very basic and important messages even though, you know, after being involved with this issue several years one gets so used to this, even the most important ones. But I think we really need to keep reminding ourselves and others of them.
Doherty: Indeed that’s something to take for granted and in our listeners we need to — all of us — we need to think about this. Some of you listening have been holding space for many years, maybe even longer than I am alive, and so a lot of our listeners can resonate with this and they’re holding space. So I want to honor you all — people who are holding space around the world, people who might be listening, holding space in various ways. So I want to just honor you all and thank you. So, I think it’s important to really take that in for all of us. If you’re listening you can put your hands over your heart and you can take some deep breaths and you can say yes, I’m holding space, I’m holding space just for myself, for my family, for my community, for others. You know, really just be with that, you know, and I appreciate it and you are appreciated and this is a sign of love and a sign of care.
You know, these — I love that title Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics — that’s a great way — you know in our intellectual work, you know, we have these ecologies of guilt but in emotions we are here and we’re present and we’re holding space, so I just kind of want to get that out there. The price of an ecological education is living in a world of wounds. Right, you know, the Aldo Leopold quote. You know again, so like you say, Panu, we have to keep coming back to these, you know, these wisdoms, these nuggets of wisdom that we might have known for a long time but we need to keep repeating it for ourselves. But also for the new generation that are coming in here.
Pihkala: Yeah exactly.
Doherty: They haven’t spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years holding space and, you know, being with this sort of stuff. It’s all new. They’re on their first run around the track here. First lap in this crazy world.
Pihkala: Yeah, yeah that’s a very hugely important point and also my strong gratitude to all of the folks around there, some who have done for a short time and some for a very long time. My earlier dissertation research dealt with environmental history and that was a time when I really learned to respect those pioneers in the late 19th century and early 20th century who already tried to make an impact. Sort of bridge building work between generations. That’s something close to my heart also. And now in 2021, when awareness about climate emotions is spreading, luckily, so then some of these early people like Chellis Glendenning, who you have mentioned Thomas yourself, who not too many people of this new generation know about. So there’s some important wisdom in books 25, 30 years old and then not to mention Aldo Leopold and those folks back then.
Doherty: Yeah, yeah Chellis Glendenning — in her book My Name is Chellis and I’m In Recovery From Western Civilization — good job Chellis if you’re out there. Yeah, I got a chance to see her speak years ago at an ecopsychology conference. Yeah, so holding space, so it’s good to honor. I’ve got a bookshelf here with just tons of books and I’ve got all these people that have been talking, you know, it's, there’s such a …I have to vent, you know, a little bit. I talk to reporters and I know you do too and they come at this issue as if it's just brand new as if it just arrived like an egg this morning from, you know, from a chicken and it’s like, No this is — come on wake up you know we’ve been talking about — people have been talking about this forever and certainly in our, you know, we’re so ahistorical in the United States. Its terrible, you know, people forget everything that didn’t happen more than a year ago and, you know, I’ve got all the ecopsychology writers and the ecotherapy writers. I’ve got books you know on ecotherapy and ecopsychology that are you know 30, 40 years old and you know people like Joanna Macy who has been doing this, you know, doing this work for years and, you know, so there’s just more people than I can name out there, and there’s a whole new generation. I’ve got books in front of me I’ve been looking at from the library, you know, this new book by Gus Speth, They Knew. It’s about the history of fossil fuel, you know, government supported the fossil fuel system in the US through all the presidential administrations going back to the 60’s. And you know David Wallace Wells, Uninhabitable Earth, you know he’s holding space. I believe I was talking to you or it could have been someone else who knows a lot of people holding space for doom. They’re holding space for gloom, doom, the worst case scenarios. I think of David Wallace Wells as doing that really in a tragically beautiful way in his writing you know. But then I’ve got Bill Gates’ [book] — a realistic but optimistic take on how to avoid climate disaster. So he’s holding space for innovation and you know clean energy and things like that. And that book that you mentioned in one of our recent talks — Healing Through the Dark Emotions – I picked that up and I’ve been looking at that, so Miriam Greenspan, a therapist, you know. Again in the therapy world people have been holding space for, you know, that is part of the therapy, a therapist’s basic job is to hold space.
An Ecotopian Lexicon by Schneider-Mayerson and Bellamy – that’s a great book where we look at all these different, you know, “eco” words.
Pihkala: Yeah, I guess one could speak of an ecology in the sense that also there’s a need for different niches and different creatures in different parts of the system. And, I also respect many kinds of writers on eco-emotions. Of course, it would be important to practice this climate cosmopolitanism, one of your terms Thomas, so that we wouldn’t require from others that others adapt the exact same approach as we do. That kind of binary thinking is dangerous. Of course, there’s room for many different kinds of takes on related matters.
Doherty: Yeah, exactly yeah. I think we can segue a bit to how do you do the holding space and a little more practical thoughts. And part of it is having that sense of what I call “climate cosmopolitanism” which is not a common term, but it's something I’ve kind of adopted, and by necessity for my own survival, because I don’t agree with every approach in the climate world. But I do recognize that we have to build coalitions and we have to work together and so climate cosmopolitanism is recognizing that we have billions of people on this planet and they’re going to approach the issue of climate change in very different ways, even if they agree that it’s a pressing crisis, and they’re going to come into their Politics of the Earth (which is another classic book), so they’re either going to come at it from technology or politics or from economics or from social movements or from spirituality or from the therapeutic side. Even within those silos there’s going to be variations on the theme, you know, in terms of the ecomodernists and back to the land people and the social justice people and all this sort of stuff. So we have to realize not everyone is going to do it exactly my way.
Pihkala: Yeah, totally agree on that point and in this research about emotions and feelings and environmental matters also sometimes people have the hope that if we would just find the right emotion, some people think that it might be fear others think it might be anxiety or anger, outrage perhaps, even you know guilt, or then pride. If we only could find the right one then we could do environmental communication right. Luckily, this has been challenged by emotion researchers that it's not so simple. In some circumstances anger or some valences of anger work. In others they don’t. In some instances guilt can get people move forward and in other instances it can paralyze them. So, I really think that we need sensitiveness to context and the very different conditions that people live in when talking about any practical dimension of which emotion or feeling we want to cultivate.
Doherty: Yeah, let’s — I’m going to — there’s an instrumental view about this. There’s okay, yeah, there’s a right key to the lock if we can just, you know, and so let’s respectfully back away from that for a moment. I’d love to chat about that in another episode but I think it's — there’s a danger of collapsing this holding space when we do that or when we violate that by saying I’m doing this for a reason, you’re just a tool. I understand why people want to find the right emotions and they desperately want to communicate this so I do understand that and I want to hold space for that. But you know I think practically holding space is — it’s always stepping back. It’s always taking one step backward and another step backward. You know one of my critiques of some of the, you know, big ecopsychology writers that I’ve read is that they’re not big enough. They have to step another back because they have their view. Anyone who has their big view of the world and why things are then they have to say and that is my view and I’m going to take one step back from that. And that’s hard to do because we get attached very much to our views, particularly if we’ve spent a lot of time nurturing them and holding space ourselves. We want them to be in the world and I want my voice to be heard, you want your voice to be heard. So I totally, I totally get that. But you know holding space is creating emptiness, it's creating, like you say, the container and it has to be a big container not a little container and it has to be as big as the issue so we have to keep, you know, backing up, backing up, backing up. You know, making more room. At the end of one of our recent talks you brought up the Greek word “thumos” and I wanted to hold that because that was really — I love when these really — thumos is an ancient concept and you know I was thinking about that in terms of holding space because I think that thumos is like, the way I understand it, it’s spiritedness, it can be anger, it could be righteous anger, but it's also just our heart and our spirit and - how do you understand thumos?
Pihkala: Yeah, along very similar lines and sometimes it's translated quite directly as anger but that doesn’t capture it all. I think this certain whole-heartedness or feeling which in English language when somebody’s really spirited about something I think that captures important aspects of thumos and regarding this discussion about various ecological emotions or climate feelings. I think that thumos can arise as combination of many emotions but what would be really needed is that is arises because then it means that we are not locked, we haven't blocked a way to many emotional energies, but I do make a separation between you know violent rage and thumos so I am not speaking about violent rage here, I’m speaking about a spiritedness which also still has some guidelines from compassion and respect towards others.
Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, so one of these words that we can keep developing and thumos, our classical — this brings me back to my undergraduate classical, you know, classical history training and my professors Wallace Gray and Authur Danto and some of these professors I had when I was in my undergraduate program teaching us classical civilization and thumos. You know, a lot of people think of it in terms of, you know, Achilles, you know, anger of Achilles in The Iliad there but that was rageful. So, I guess our spirit can become enraged, you know, when we know when this natural spiritedness can, we wrankle against injustice and we want to stand up for, or against, injustice and that’s one way that this fire comes out. But you know when we’re wronged or betrayed it can turn into a vengeful, a very vengeful energy and even a blind rage, and so obviously there are some listeners that’ll feel that way around climate change and around the injustices that are happening here. So that is something to make space for here, you know, that we feel wronged and you know we need, we want to avenge that. So you know um, and then I was thinking of “arete,” another juicy Greek word, you know, overall excellence. You know how we balance all of our skills and really present ourselves in a really integrated, excellent way and so, you know, climate arete you know. Certainly climate thumos, people can get around that pretty quickly. I think but climate arete, about excellence, and it’s about being our best and showing our strengths. You know like an athlete showing their best and being just on time, like an athlete or a musician or something like … so anyway our excellence.
Pihkala: Yeah, that’s another great concept and linked of course with virtues and cultivation. And one of the projects I’m finishing is with anxiety philosopher Charlie Kurth and that’s about a, sort of adaptive dimensions of eco-anxiety and the sort of need to cultivate anxiety in the context of ecological crises. So eco-anxiety as a moral emotion. So that comes to my mind from that and I do think that we need more discussions about the moral emotion framing of many climate emotions and eco-emotions. So thanks for bringing arete up. I’ll have to do some checking about that too.
Doherty: Yeah. Well you know we’re into this stuff and we know these words are really magical and these feelings are magical and they get into us. So this is a really great conversation and I look forward to some more very soon. You know in our personal conversations Panu and I, we talk about our families and our life. Panu’s in the evening in Finland and I’m in the morning — I just got my daughter off to her high school. She's in ninth grade. She just started, so she’s still nervous about going and it’s a big rite of passage for her. How are your boys? Panu, do you want to just — without unpacking everything, you want to just say a little bit about what you’re coping with there?
Pihkala: Yeah, yeah I might as well so.
Doherty: Yeah.
Pihkala: So this is Autumn 2021, and in Finland where we are the situation is that as 40-year-olds, as me and my wife, we’ve had two [COVID] vaccinations shots - that’s another issue related to global justice we know - that still the variant is spreading and our youngest son caught it from pre-school so now half of the family is confined inside and I and the older son can luckily still go out to play some Finnish baseball. So it’s a sort of special time. But luckily the symptoms are mild but it’s a strange time that we are living. But luckily Autumn is coming and the beauty of the colorful leaves cheers me up.
Doherty: Yeah, yeah so Jakob got COVID-19 and he’s 11 did you say?
Pihkala: No, Jaakko (Jakob) the younger one is 5 and older one is 8 so.
Doherty: Well anyway listeners can unfortunately identify with that as well. I mean we’re dealing with all this stuff as well. I’ve been lucky in my family not to be touched directly by COVID-19 but that’s a thing. So even you, Panu, even you being vaccinated and doing your best it’s gotten into your family so I’m so appreciative you were able to make the time this evening.
Pihkala: Yeah it was lovely to discuss with you Thomas, again.
Doherty: So this is Climate Change and Happiness: Climatechangeandhappiness.com. As we get this podcast set up please reach out to us, let us know what you’re thinking and just let us know what you think about our conversations and we’ll talk more again soon. You all take care.
Pihkala: Bye bye.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
