Climate Anxiety - The Panic - Action - Freeze trap
- HeardinLondon
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 192
It's been kind of hot lately, huh? I don't know about you, but I have found myself surrounded by people who are extremely tired because they're not sleeping very well, being over hot and irritable because everything feels too much in this kind of heatwave, and also people who are both not wanting to whinge about it being nice and sunny, and also people who are very frightened about climate change.
These kind of moments that we're in right now, it's very hard to ignore what is happening in our environment, and I'm old enough to remember when global warming just used to be hippy bullshit. I want to tell you about a solution that I have to be able to support you as we go through these kind of global changes, and on the 4th of August, I am hosting a workshop on climate anxiety. If you're someone who reads and sees a lot of the news and just wants to switch off, and you're also someone whose heart breaks every time you can see something going on, either in another planet or in your own garden, and we can see the causes and it doesn't seem like anyone in power is making any changes whatsoever, this is gonna be a workshop that's really useful for you.
What I find a lot of people do is they get very informed on their subjects. They're really aware of what is going on, and this causes such conflict internally that me- that mix up between what , your head's seeking more and more information, and you feeling utterly exhausted and like most actions that you take are quite futile, causes such a conflict between what we want to be doing and a need to just shut down.
I've heard it referred to as, " people are perpetually building new power stations, and we are out here rinsing out our yogurt pots and how is this gonna make a difference?".
This is gonna be a workshop that helps you get back into your sense of agency and your sense of power so that you can make conscious choices about the kind of actions that you want to take.
And this isn't just some cute whitewashing of, environmental Armageddon. This is coming from someone who has a long history of roots in social justice, protests, activist work, and I really believe that one of the key steps that we need in all of this is to be able to have tools to manage the big emotions that come up around this stuff, otherwise, we have no way to navigate things.
The reality is that not only are we dealing with a crisis, we're also dealing with a number of people who pretend that it's not going on, a huge number of people who have a lot of power to change things who don't seem to do anything, and we still have to be out here managing our inbox, the laundry pile, and the washing up, whilst wondering if water's gonna run out within our lifetime.
Things feel massively overwhelming, and I think that all the tools that we can get, to help us manage our brains and the way that this stuff sits in our bodies, as well as the grief and the horror at seeing things that are going on to people because of these lack of action from those in power.
Finding tools to help us navigate this stuff is, I believe, the only way that we can create impactful change.
I don't believe that there's anything wrong in feeling abject horror at what is going on in the world. I think that's a perfectly normal response. And I do think that it's useful to have tools to be able to navigate your way around some of the big feelings that come up about what feels like a very bleak horizon that we seem to be rushing towards.
A lot of work that I've seen around this looks at trying to toxic positivity our way out of there, and think about new ways to frame this. And that's not what this workshop is. This workshop is looking at the way that we talk to ourselves so that we can empower ourselves to make more conscious choices.
This isn't about denial. This is about creating sustainable change.
What I often find for people is when they get into that state of thinking how bad things are gonna be or thinking about the future and not being able to see any escape routes or any way out, quite often our brains go into these doom spirals. We get caught in that fear and panic about the future, and all that leads our brain to want to do is to be able to soothe ourselves and get away from that problem as much as possible.
This worksh shop is going to help you untangle some of that stuff, so that you can both feel the enormity of what is going on and also to make choices that are aligned with your values, your ethics, that feel like you are making impactful change.
Now, that might seem like absolute nonsense because we're all little ants out here and the big boys are pulling all the strings, but that kind of level of futility, I believe, only leads us to feeling more of the despair.
This workshop on climate anxiety is gonna be teaching us how to feel hopeful again.
If decades of being an activist have taught me anything, it's that creating that kind of hope and gleaning new ideas happens faster and more effectively within community.
What we want to do is both keep our awareness and expand our capacity to act without adding to the overwhelm. That's what this workshop is for.
I'm gonna be teaching some tools that are gonna be really useful to manage your mind when things feel like they're all a bit overwhelming. And you'll be able to watch other people get coached and learn things from the way they are processing similar situations to what you're going through, and we learn a lot about ourselves that way.
And you're gonna leave with practical tools that you can use when that panic sets in, or we reach the 23rd heatwave of the summer.
This workshop is less let's have a hosepipe ban and more let's stop the floods.
You're gonna have a better understanding of how specific climate change thoughts impact the way that you think and feel about your own future, and the future for those around you, and cultivate your sense of hope. And you're gonna leave with tools that you can use right now, today, and the next time that you feel like it's all a bit too much.
And all of the tools that I'm teaching here can be transferred through to any kind of anxiety that you feel. What you're actually gonna leave with so the next time that sense of trepidation arises, you're gonna have a better idea how to manage your own brain.
This is gonna be a deep dive, especially for people who've already tried to work on this stuff through meditation, reading 200 research articles, Going on a protest, signing all of the petitions, and all of those feeling good, but also your brain is still running on overdrive.
It's a one-hour workshop, so even if you're really busy, I mean, you can sign up, you can get the replay, you can listen to it on double speed. You don't get the coaching that way. But it is possible to do it and to fit it into a busy life.
And it also means that if you can't make it live, you will be able to still participate £11.11. And if you can't afford that, I have bursary spaces available. You can let me know.
This is a key tool, I believe, in trying to create sustainable change. If you are someone who is really worried about the future, both for yourself and others, I believe that it is critical that we learn how to manage those big emotions that come up so that we can take ourselves out of our desire to numb out about all of that stuff, and put us into a place where we can create the kind of future that we want to see.
I would love to see you in the workshop:
It's on the 4th of August, and if you're listening to this after the 4th of August, the replay will still be available. Do message me for that. There'll be a link below
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