Season 1, Episode 5: Synergy = Energy
image credit | Vonecia Carswell
Season 1, Episode 5 | Synergy = Energy
In this episode, Thomas and Panu talk about connections and meaning-making—looking at climate feelings through the lens of synergy. They are constantly surprised at the positive energy they discover as they meet and collaborate with others around the world—such as during Panu’s work on the recent Lancet global youth study—and the validation they gain from learning about those who made similar discoveries in the past. In order to navigate this time in history with its dark ecology of overlapping crises, from climate to COVID to armed conflict, we need to open toward shared energy, efforts, and resources that sustain us. In a timely lesson, Thomas describes how to go on a “media diet”—engaging with media intentionally rather than in an impulsive and uncontrolled way—one tool for centering yourself and broadening engagement with your local place. He reminds listeners that ultimately their life is the most important news. Through positive synergies we can find meaning in the time we are given. Join us!
Links
New Report: Climate Change & Youth Mental Health
Marks, Hickman, Pihkala, et al (2021) Young People's Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon
Amy Lykins, University of New England Australia: Distress, depression and drug use: young people fear for their future after the bushfires
Carl Jung, Synchronicity
Shierry Weber Nicholson The Love of Nature at the End of the World
Paul Hawken Blessed Unrest
J.R.R Tolkien, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”
Transcript
Season 1, Episode 5: Synergy = Energy
[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: Hello, I am Thomas Doherty …
Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, our podcast. A show for people around the globe who are thinking deeply about the personal side of climate change, particularly their feelings about climate change. Their emotions about climate change. How it’s affecting them personally. How it affects their actions in the world. And we are welcoming all of you listeners to be with us and as Panu and I talk about these things for ourselves personally and in our professional work.
Panu, today I’m really struck with this concept. In one of our recent episodes we talked about holding space and today I’m struck with this idea of synergy. Of things happening that are related. I mean you and I have been having a synergy in what you’re doing in Finland and what I’m doing here in the US. A brief example, I was speaking to Beth Karlin and Larissa Dooley at the See Change Institute here in the US. Beth is a colleague of mine, a psychologist, and they’re doing behavioral change work here in the community. And they were approached to do a study on youth in California, particularly Black Indigenous and People of Color - BIPOC youth, around climate anxiety and they had reached out to me and we were chatting. I referenced the big study, the Lancet study, that you’ve been involved in.
Just this morning I got a reviewer invitation to review a journal article on someone doing, you know, psychological support groups for young people, students dealing with climate change distress, you know, in classes, in environmental studies classes. Listeners who have taken environmental studies or conservation science classes know that doom and gloom really comes into those classrooms and it can be really tough. And so, you know, there’s this positive synergy of us working together. I was able to connect Beth with Amy Lykens in Australia who’s doing research on young people in Australia around the fires in Australia and the wildfires and also research in Fiji and the Pacific Islands.
So there’s a community of us doing things. And there’s a positive synergy. And that’s just one thing that people might come across when they’re working on climate change. There’s negative synergies, and we’ll get to those too, but there’s positive ones too. Or just there are synergies and we can put away that labeling of them.
Where does that - how does that hit for you in terms of this, any synergies or what you’re experiencing in your work?
Pihkala: That’s a very interesting concept. In the Finnish language, we have many original words, but, you know, synergy with a synergia. So that’s a very literal anglicism just picking it up. Of course synergy itself comes very closely from more ancient languages than English and I do experience it a lot in my work, luckily. Of course there are also times when it seems hard to find. I’m thinking, for example, in those early years when I started to focus heavily on eco-anxiety research in 2015 and 2016. And everybody thought I was really strange to change research topics to that one, but lately and during the last three years there’s definitely been great synergy going around. And that gives you energy. You know, literally syn-ergiaa, energy, so it’s a global thing and I think it’s very important that we keep matters open and flowing.
Another thing that instantly comes to my mind is the way that in the universities, unfortunately, competition culture has grown even more intense in the 2000s. And many people blame roughly neoliberalism for it. Of course it’s easy to blame neoliberalism for everything, but there’s something there. And that’s of course something that I really detest and dislike, but I’ve rather tried always to be open to various synergies and not to be picky about sharing some ideas and research and so on.
Doherty: Yeah, yeah, so yes synergy, you know, I’m glad you made the connection with energy which I wasn’t obviously making, but it is, it is shared energy right? And, you know, that’s what we need, that’s what all of us need to survive right now is shared energy and shared direction, because that is mutually advantageous. I’m looking at the dictionary, you know, mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct participants, you know, and so resources and efforts. So we need shared efforts, shared resources. We all need to be careful about those aspects of our life that tend to limit sharing. Limit cooperation. And there’s unfortunately a long list of those kinds of things including the kind of competition and scarcity mentality that comes, you know, in some of these kinds of capitalist, neoliberal kind of situations, you know. The fights are so bitter because the stakes are so small, you know, as they say in academia people are fighting for their funding. And that’s a piece, so I know some of you all are thinking about that.
But yeah synergy—and some of it it’s coincidence and it just happens to be. I—listeners might know, you know, I do my own counseling and therapy work as a psychologist and I see clients. And I’ve been getting more—in the old days I would say, you know, true eco-therapy clients or true clients that were coming in specifically because of the environment, nature, climate change were relatively rare, say like ten years ago. I mean they were out there and people would find me, but most people would come into the actual counseling because of a much more proximal thing like they lost their job or a relationship break up or they were depressed or anxious or had difficulties parenting. All the life, the catastrophes, the daily catastrophes of life that we cope with, you know, that’s what really brings people in for, to seek that help. But now it’s changed and people are coming in specifically because of climate and issues.
And I happened to have two people come in. New folks to me that, one after the other, independently, both had connections with the Chernobyl radiation—the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. One person was Austrian and relocated to the US. And another person had, was also in the US, but they had been born in Belarus and had come to the US when they were younger. And both of them cited Chernobyl as an instigating factor in their environmental identity and their sense of themselves and nature because they both had childhood experiences of being afraid of the radiation. As someone growing up in the US, I don’t know anything about that. I know about it just intellectually that I know that problem happened. But they spoke to the actual, you know, experience of that. And, you know, that was an interesting coincidence as well and it brought into mind, you know, how we get primed for different, you know, when we talk about eco-anxiety and things, you know, people have, are primed. So there’s these different, different kinds of synergies.
Pihkala: Yeah, that’s very interesting, Thomas. And actually living in Finland, the place where I grew up got some fallout from Chernobyl because of the direction of the wind it came to Finland. Not even nearly as bad as in Belarus, for example, but still there’s been a long-standing discussion about the effects of the radiation. And in some areas still if you pick up mushrooms, you should boil them one extra time because they have still deposited radiation from Chernobyl, so that’s sort of close to me.
And that brings me to another aspect of synergy. Or close to it as a word is synchronicity. This old concept of two things happening roughly at the same time or in some connection with each other so that for the person there is a meaning born in relation to that connection. I think it comes from Jungian psychology. I don’t know if it has even roots. It may have, but once I was thinking about radiation and, you know, as a research theme so-called nuclear anxiety and eco-anxiety, that’s been one of the things I’ve been thinking about. And then I turned on the radio and it started with a news item about radiation and going back to the history with Chernobyl and so on. So that’s a real synchronicity which happened something like five years ago. I’m now reminded of it. And of course many of these things people can say they are just coincidences and so on, but still they are part of numerous people’s lives in complex ways.
Doherty: Yeah, so it’s a meaning, you know, so we’re all making meaning about these connections. And we live in systems, we’re embedded in systems and there’s things that are happening. So yeah so I think, you know, for everyone who’s listening, just kind of sitting, taking a moment and just thinking about yourself and feeling in the moment. Again, taking a breath and saying okay here I am. I’m embedded in all the systems of my life. And there are potential synergies that are happening. There are these bad memories. And dangers. And technological disasters that poison our lands and it's something that we have to live with. And, you know, we are making meaning by how things come to us, you know. So it’s something to be aware of.
One synergy that can be problematic is synergy of the media. Taking in media, imagery and social media and the news and being, you know, like a news junkie, as we might say in the United States, you know. That floods us with all kinds of disparate information and factoids and ads and headlines and things like that. Which can create all kinds of synergies. Some of which are really overwhelming, you know. And it overwhelms our nervous system if we take in too much, you know. If you take in too much disparate, troubling information that you don’t have any direct connection to or control over, it’s just a perfect recipe for a sense of global anxiety and global angst.
Pihkala: Exactly.
Doherty: Weltschmerz as we say. And so, there’s a synergy. Now, if I’m more mindful of what I’m taking in and directing my attention toward news or research or things that are interesting and helpful to me, then there could obviously be a positive synergy. And we can all get on that positive synergy of finding things that are really fascinating and inspiring.
Pihkala: Yeah.
Doherty: So, again, yeah.
Pihkala: I’ve heard and read from you, Thomas, at quite an early point during the 2010s this advice to limit one’s climate [media] diet. And, of course, now both in relation to COVID-19 media coverage and eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. That advice has become more widespread. But I link you with one of the early advice givings of that and I strongly resonate with this energy also in the news cycles. And there’s some conscious design, I think, especially of the American news culture that tends to suck one in and, you know, even causing some addiction and so on. It can take strength of will. That’s another thing that we might discuss more some time this old idea of strength of will. And social support can help a lot in that of course. But that’s something that I personally do also. I don’t actually usually read the news in the morning. I start my mornings more gently and do some research and reading and only then check out the news. Of course I’m in a sort of privileged position that there’s no instant threats coming my way, but many people in the world are sharing that same position. It’s not obligatory to immerse yourself right after you have woken up to the news cycle.
Doherty: Yeah. I would second that. Speaking as a clinical psychologist and a doctor I would second that very much. That prescription of not immersing yourself. No, it’s—it can be really toxic. And some people can surf that wave for a while, but I think eventually you’ll be inundated by it and it becomes an addiction. It becomes an addicting kind of situation. And, yeah, we don’t really have control of the medium. It’s a machine that’s much more powerful than us. And I don’t think, you know, our frail human psyche and our senses can get overwhelmed.
Pihkala: Yeah. I very strongly resonate with that. Thanks for underscoring that. And in the workshops and lectures that I am giving as part of what I do, I’ve, in an increasing manner, met people who are very compassionate and passionate about environmental concerns and who have trouble facing the news or staying in touch with the news. And, of course, there I’m trying from my part to share that advice for them. And sometimes people have creative solutions like one person who had sort of given the responsibility of following the news to her husband who was more okay with that. So, then the husband sort of distilled the news in a not so striking imagery fashion so that it was easier to take in. So, there’s some creativity around this but I, that’s a problem in Finland I would say too.
Doherty: Yeah. And I think teaming up, teaming up can be helpful. That example has kind of a quaint Victorian kind of flavor to it. So some of our listeners might rankle against having someone, you know, distill the news. A male, distill the news for them. But I think it’s really more about the teamwork. And the synergy. And taking the time, you know.
We should probably just spend a moment on this since we’re here at this topic. The idea of a news, what is a news fast or, like you say, a climate diet, you know. It is really about just in the same way that we would think about how we would become reflective about any other aspects of our diets, like what kind of foods that we eat. I might want to be more conscious of what kinds of foods I eat. How much sugar do I consume? Or coffee. Or caffeine. Or alcohol. Or dairy products. Or bread. Or anything like that. And we might eliminate certain things from our diet just to become aware of their effects on us. And it’s a short-term project to see what makes us healthy.
And so, that’s something to keep in mind when you’re doing a news fast. Like if you decided to not listen to the news for a day or a week. Sometimes that will happen naturally if you’re traveling or if someone is doing some kind of outdoor adventure where they’re away from, you know, from phones and the internet. But, you know, again it’s an activity to help you be healthier. And it’s an experiment. And it’s a systematic activity.
Because the first sort of voice that comes up in a lot of people’s heads is well I don’t want to be uninformed. I don’t want to be uninformed. Or somehow it’s unethical for me to, you know, let go of the news. But that’s not really the case. And if you try it, as I’m sure you’ve known Panu, I actually feel more informed, you know, when I break from the news for a few days. I’m much more informed about my life. What’s going on around me. What other people are saying. And I actually know that I will hear important events that are happening in the world through my social interactions. And so I am not, I am in fact, I feel more informed. A sense of integrity. A sense of stability, you know. So there’s a lot of ways to think about this. But you’re not burying your head in the sand. You’re actually, in some ways, burying your head in the sand when you’re just immersed in news all the time.
Pihkala: Yeah. I think that’s very well said, Thomas. And was it Henry David Thoreau who said what’s so new about news anyway? From a sort of classical humanist position, we sort of know that there’s both joy and sorrow going on. And reading Shakespeare or the Old Testaments sort of gives the basic idea. Of course one needs also to follow it but it’s not obligatory to stay there all the time.
And a sort of second advice that I usually try to give is related to what I’ve been calling binocular vision or skill of seeing two levels. Binocular vision comes from Bion. This pioneering psychotherapist. I’ve been using it in the sort of media literacy sense that focusing your eyes and senses both on the good and the bad and realizing that the news flow is geared towards the bad and threatening. For some good reasons and for some bad reasons, you know. Like trying to get more viewers and readers by showing graphic imagery of violence that’s usually not necessary in an ethical sense, for example. But so this skill of seeing two levels is something that some Finnish psychologists have picked up in their recommendations related to eco-anxiety also. So, and that there’s some commonality of the problem in more strong forms of eco-anxiety where it can easily feel that there’s nothing good happening in the world and it’s just all going down down down.
Doherty: Yes. Binocular vision. Wilfred Bion. A British psychotherapist. Shierry Weber Nicholsen in The Love of Nature at the End of the World—that’s one of my all time favorite books—she talks about that binocular vision in the therapeutic realm as well. And, again, it’s people that are counselors or therapists who know that we have binocular vision. We both hold our own thoughts and feelings within the interaction and then we’re sitting with the other person’s thoughts or feelings as well. And so that kind of observer self is a very important piece of a lot of modern, you know, therapies as well. Acceptance Commitment Therapy and things like that is having that binocular vision.
So yeah, you know, like you say Thoreau. I mean I think he said, you know, what, he wants to know “what was never old.” Is what he says I believe, right? He wants to know what was never old. And he’s railing against the telegraph in 1848, you know. It’s the telegraph and everybody suddenly realizing they have to know what’s news and what’s happened in Europe and things like that. So yeah, these issues on media are not new. Like a lot of the issues where we’re talking about are not new at all. But another thing I say is, you know, we are the news. So like we make our own news. So my life is the news. So when I am not looking at the media that means I am focusing on my own. So I challenge clients to be the news. You know, you’re the news. Don’t look out, don’t look to other places for the news. You’re the news. Your life is the news. Your family. Your children. Your work. Your community. That’s the news for you. And I think that’s another way of thinking about it to get out of this corporate, capitalist kind of thing. You know, you can own the news. Make your own news, so to speak
Pihkala: That’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. And that news is new every morning so there’s also that sort of, you know, everyday at it’s time I’m reminded of that with this emphasis on focusing on what’s close by and most important. And I do think this links with the synergy, also. And that’s part of this skill of seeing two levels is realizing how many people there are actually all over the world who are making all kinds of efforts to build better communities and better societies and to protect the environment and build more holistic relationships with the more than human world and so on.
Paul Hawken has this book Blessed Unrest which is one attempt to bring out how ridiculous a number of environmental NGOs there are, for example. And that requires a certain focus. We don’t usually come across that information. Luckily, of course, there’s been the rise of solutions journalism and journalism which brings out also the good news. In Finland we have a Facebook group called good news about sustainability. Where a bunch of people have committed to share also the many good news because otherwise it might be missing from the news cycle. But the idea that there’s a lot of synergy around and there’s a lot of people who are actually doing a lot of things and trying. So that is very comforting for me at least often.
Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, there is a lot, you know, that speaks to more how do we direct our search light into the news and be more selective. A couple of other practical things, you know. Analog news is different than electronic news. So reading the newspaper which I know is an older concept for people and sometimes it's even hard to get a good newspaper. But, you know, reading paper news is a different experience to our nervous system than a web news. And so, it's a great experiment to try.
Take a well-known, any well-known reputable paper I’ll just name, well reputable is questionable depending on what our listeners think about the news. But just say a seemingly known paper like The New York Times. Now it’s one thing to get on the New York Times website and drill down into all those stories, but could often leave us drained and exhausted and, you know, confused. But if I sit down with a paper and look through it, the information comes at me at a different pace and I see more of an ecology of different things going on in different aspects of the world. And there’s a pacing there. I’m not being force fed electronically into my nervous system the information. I’m taking it in and reflecting on it in real time. So, there’s different ways to take in, to take in information.
I was in another form of synergy. I was approached by a person named Chris Pallatroni who’s an entrepreneur. He’s working on an app that helps people share advice about life that they think is important about their life so others can hear it. And he’s got an idea for this kind of app. And he’s trying to reach out to certain influencer type people that might want to contribute like personal advice. Something that they do personally in their life that works for them and he’s, you know. So we chatted about that a little bit. And, you know, it’s a provocative question, you know. What do you personally do that you think is helpful and makes you a better person, you know? And so that’s a great question for our listeners and for all of us to think about.
You know, one of my news practices that I do, I have a couple of things daily. I say “No news before noon.” That’s one of my rules, personally. So I try not to look at any news, particularly any online news, before 12:00pm. So my, you know, and that works pretty well for me and I’ve learned to sort of buffer my intake of the news. So first thing in the morning I devote to other things, again, myself. And then after noon, you know, I’m free to start surfing the web, you know. But that’s just a personal rule that I have, no news before noon, you know. And I say “No irony before nine” is another one. 9:00am. So like in the morning I try not to, even if I’m listening to music or I’m doing other things I try not to get ironic and sarcastic and sardonic. Even like the music that I’ll listen to, for example. You and I are music listeners and things like that. So I’m going to choose something that is healthy and uplifting first thing in the morning. So, no irony before nine, no news before noon. That’s just a - I’m not pushing that on anyone else, but I’m just giving an example of a habit. You know, we can develop these habits.
Pihkala: Yeah. Yeah, I strongly resonate with that and habits are difficult to change. Everybody who has some habit which they deem bad know this, but then again the good side is if you manage to construct a good habit in your life, that also sticks. And I’ve seen that happening also in my relation to news and also to some other daily practices. The COVID-19 working remotely from home thing, for example, has brought me a routine of going out everyday at about 10:00am. So that’s a sort of middle break in morning work and walking in the nearby woods and so on. So that’s a habit that took some time to form it into a routine and now it happens sort of semi automatically.
Doherty: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah, and so yeah, and listeners we’ve all developed our COVID era habits and I know you’ve got. We’re going to be talking more about COVID-19 and your research on COVID anxiety and, you know, how it’s affected our personal lives. So that’s something to look out for coming up here in one of our future discussions. Yeah Panu, and so I think I would like to keep some of these big ideas. Like holding space. Like synergy. Some of our themes because we’ll return to these. I don’t know much about the future, but I do know there’s going to be more synergies. Both negative and positive coming up here. And all of us are going to be riding those waves.
You know, you mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien and the idea of using the time that we have. And so I had to kind of go back to my Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, you know, where Frodo is talking about not, wishing some of these things had not happened in his time. And, you know, Gandolf’s character has that great line, you know, “so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,” you know. And so, yes we all wish we were seeing something else, but all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And that includes our mornings, you know, how we wake up. How we greet the day. How we spend time in our community. And so, thinking in those big thoughts, you know, I think can help with some bolstering against thinking about the media and the media diet which is so trivial really in some ways compared to what’s so important in our lives.
Pihkala: That’s a great quote. That’s a great quote.
Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. So great, so again, a synergy. Panu and I are having fun with this. And listeners, I hope you are enjoying our conversations as well. And it’s climatechangeandhappiness.com. Please reach out to us. Please let us know what you are thinking. We’re going to be doing more of these conversations and Panu I hope you have a great rest of your evening.
Pihkala: And thanks for the lovely discussion again, Thomas. Have a good day there where the sun is still shining a bit higher.
Doherty: Yes, we’re celebrating the equinox today and so that’s a beautiful time of the year. Take care.
Pihkala: You too, take care. And thanks to the listeners.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
