Chris Johnstone, Resilience specialist, CollegeOfWellbeing.com

Published in JHH16.1 – Nature connections

I’ve run workshops designed to help people respond to their concerns for the world with courage, creativity and compassion for more than 30 years. I’ve worked closely with US author and activist Joanna Macy in this work, and in Active Hope, the book we wrote together (2012), we describe the transformative journey the workshops guide people through. The approach we use draws strongly on systems thinking. A central idea is that systems act through their parts – whether a family or team acting through its members, or the planetary system of Gaia acting through us. I’ve found this idea to be enormously empowering.

At the time, 2014 was the warmest year on record. Then 2015 was hotter, and 2016 saw higher temperatures still. Alongside these years, 2017 and 2018 were also among the five hottest since records began (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Instrumental_temperature_record). The heating trend on planet Earth has seen each decade over the last half-century warmer than the one before, with record-breaking heat[1]waves, wildfires, floods and droughts appearing much as climate scientists told us years ago they would. With the disturbing changes happening to our world climate system, and the weather-related disasters linked to these, it is no surprise that terms like ‘climate anxiety’ are increasingly used.

More than 40 years ago, a form of groupwork developed that provided a forum for sharing concerns about global issues. Then, as now, many people felt overwhelmed when facing problems experienced as too huge to address in a meaningful way. Yet being able to acknowledge and express such feelings about the world within a supportive setting was found to be liberating, especially when people experienced their concerns as shared by others. Some of the hopelessness shifted, leaving participants more energised and empowered. As these workshops aim to help participants strengthen their sense of connection with the larger whole of life on Earth, as well as with their capacity to make a difference and a community of mutual support, the approach is known as The Work That Reconnects. It has spread throughout the world, and hundreds of thousands of people have taken part.

More than 40 years ago, a form of groupwork developed that provided a forum for sharing concerns about global issues. Then, as now, many people felt overwhelmed when facing problems experienced as too huge to address in a meaningful way. Yet being able to acknowledge and express such feelings about the world within a supportive setting was found to be liberating, especially when people experienced their concerns as shared by others. Some of the hopelessness shifted, leaving participants more energised and empowered. As these workshops aim to help participants strengthen their sense of connection with the larger whole of life on Earth, as well as with their capacity to make a difference and a community of mutual support, the approach is known as The Work That Reconnects. It has spread throughout the world, and hundreds of thousands of people have taken part.

The approach was first developed by Joanna Macy, an activist and teacher of world religions in the US. Her doctoral thesis had explored the parallels between systems thinking and Buddhism. This background helped her build a framework for the workshops that integrated systems thinking perspectives from science (like Gaia Theory) with spiritual practices and psychological insights. At the core of The Work That Reconnects is a reshaping of psychology based on applying a Gaian understanding of who and what we are. In this, the way we deal with our feelings about world events is seen as one of the keys to finding our power to make a difference.

Gaian psychology and pain for the world

Gaia Theory proposes that the living Earth functions as a self-regulating whole. In a striking parallel to the way our bodies control the temperature of our blood, the temperature of the atmosphere appears to have remained relatively stable over the last three-and-a-half billion years, in spite of an estimated 30% increase in the energy coming from the sun over this period (Lovelock, 1979). Atmospheric oxygen levels and the salinity of the oceans also appear to have remained remarkably stable for many millions of years, with evidence growing that these have been actively regulated by life itself. Rather than viewing our planet as a dead lump of rock that we and other species happen to live on, Gaia Theory suggests that Earth is better viewed as a self-regulating living entity that we are part of.

The importance of Gaia Theory psychologically is it challenges the view that we are just separate individuals. It becomes possible to think of ourselves as similar to cells within a larger organism, or as members of a planet-sized community of the whole of life on Earth. Emotional reactions to threat, loss and injury elsewhere on the planet are seen as expressions of this wider and deeper ‘ecological self’. Making room for these feelings becomes a way of experiencing and deepening our connectedness with life.

If someone in our family dies, feelings of grief are regarded as normal and healthy. The pain of loss, though uncomfortable, is a product of our relationship with, and belonging to, the larger system of our family. Likewise, if a relative has been attacked, we might feel angry, sad, alarmed or concerned. These ‘family feelings’ motivate people to act for the wellbeing of the family system they belong to. The family is a self-regulating entity that acts and feels through its members.

Some indigenous tribal cultures have a relationship of closeness to nature where other species are regarded as close relatives. Although that depth of connection has to a large extent been lost in modern industrialised societies, it has not gone completely. When people are given an opportunity to give voice to their feelings for the world, it allows the expression of that part of their being that still feels connected. That brings the world closer, deepening our relationship with it.

When we feel strongly about something, our emotions provide a source of energy that we can tap into. But if we avoid looking at world problems because the feelings they arouse are too painful, we block the motivating signal that might rouse us to respond. That can lead to apathy and disengagement within a culture psychologically alienated from the larger community of life on Earth.

An essential step in the workshops is to offer a different way of understanding the distress we may experience about disturbing events in the world. There is a shift in the meaning we give pain for the world when we value it as evidence that we are connected to a bigger life than just our own. With this view, we can recognise the life-preserving function of uncomfortable emotions as signals that can alert and energise our response to danger.

Building on this understanding, the workshops offer structured processes and a supportive environment for people to hear themselves give voice to their anguish and concerns. Research has shown that having opportunities to talk through feelings of distress about traumatic events can improve health outcomes (Pennebaker and Beall, 1986). Yet even though distress about traumatic world events is common, these feelings often remain as an unspoken unsettledness within us. To give room for their expression, participants are invited to talk in pairs or groups, completing sentences that start with phrases like, ‘When I consider the condition of our world, I think things are getting…’ and ‘Feelings that come up when I think about this include…’

Pain for the world, an umbrella term for the variety of ways we experience distress about upsetting world events, is only one side of the coin. The other side is the depth of our caring and desire to play our part in a constructive response. Within Gaian psychology, the interconnectedness that links these also points to a systems-based under – standing of our power to make a difference. Of central importance here are the concepts of synergy and emergence.

Finding our power to make a difference

If you look at a newspaper picture through a magnifying glass, you might only see a collection of tiny dots. It is the way these dots act together – in synergy – that leads to the emergence of the picture. In a similar way, a whole person is so much more than just a collection of cells. Moving up a level, a well-functioning team can achieve things that might seem impossible for less connected individuals. The whole is more than the sum of the parts because the synergy of parts working together allows for the emergence of new abilities.

Just as newspaper pictures happen through dots, so stories happen through people. When we look up close at individuals going about their daily lives, it is difficult to fully appreciate the power – for better or worse – of the larger stories happening through them. We are living at a time of a mass extinction event caused by human activity. In this story, which we can call ‘The Great Unravelling’, our species is threatened too.

Gaian psychology involves a shift in identification, where we see ourselves not just as individuals, but also as part of a living planet that seeks to heal itself. Systems act through their parts, and just us healing in an individual involves the actions of that person’s cells, so the larger Gaian psychology in practice: An outcome study of groupwork to address concerns about the world EDUCATION © Journal of holistic healthcare ● Volume 16 Issue 1 Spring 2019 9 story of our world healing itself could involve us and happen through us. Stories of recovery from life[1]threatening conditions have turning points where the balance shifts towards recovery. What would a ‘Great Turning’ story of the recovery of our world look like if it were to happen in and through our lives? Important elements might include the noticing of problems, experiencing the alarm call of emotional distress, and then seeking to play a role that made a difference. The work[1]shops aim to strengthen people’s capacity to find and play their role, and the final part focuses on supporting participants to explore what their role might be.

The outcome study

There are times I’ve felt powerfully connected to this sense of life acting through me. These workshops have strengthened that experience, in ways that have been life-changing. Over 25 years ago, I wondered whether other participants had felt this too, and what difference these workshops made. To find out, I decided to carry out a follow-up study (Johnstone, 2002).

I sent questionnaires to all participants of residential workshops I had run between December 1992 and November 1993. I sent them a year after each event, so that I could get an idea of longer-term outcomes. I asked people to rate their responses to a series of questions on a five-point scale that included the following options: not at all, slightly, moderately, quite a lot, very deeply. I also asked for additional comments. The questions I asked were:

• Did the workshop give you an opportunity to express your feelings about the state of the world?
• Did the workshop help you strengthen or deepen your sense of connection with the Earth/life on Earth?
• Was your experience of the workshop in any way personally healing or beneficial for you?
• Was your experience of the workshop in any way harmful or damaging to you?
• Did your experience of the workshop help strengthen the feeling that you can make a difference to the state of the world?
• Overall, has your experience of the workshop in any way changed your life?

I received 31 replies from 40 questionnaires sent. Everyone replied that the workshop had provided the opportunity to express their feelings about the world, and more than 70% said that this had been ‘quite a lot’ or ‘very deeply’. More than 90% replied that the workshop had helped strengthen both their sense of connection with the world and their feeling that they could make a difference within it. For over half the respondents to both these questions, this had been either ‘quite a lot’ or ‘very deeply’. More than 80% replied that the experience of the workshop had changed their life, and for this, more than 25% had marked the response ‘very deeply’.

This small-scale study was carried out more to satisfy personal curiosity than academic rigour. To get a more comprehensive view of outcomes, a much larger sample size would be needed. However, it does support the view that these workshops can offer an empowering experience that deepens participants’ feeling of connection with the world. A small proportion – in this case about a quarter of those replying – found the workshop to be an important turning point that very deeply changed their lives.

Personally healing

A striking finding of the questionnaire was the high proportion of people who found the workshop to be personally healing. More than 90% of replies rated this area as ‘moderately’ or more, and more than 75% marked the responses of either ‘quite a lot’ or ‘very deeply’. This made it the most highly rated positive outcome of the workshop. Several participants wrote in their comments that the workshop had been healing in helping promote a sense of integration with a wider picture, one person writing: ‘I remember an uncommon and wonderful sense that I did (do) have a place in the world’.

Other factors described as healing were the experience of not being alone in feeling distress for the world and having this distress validated as an appropriate emotional response to world problems. One participant, listing what she had found beneficial, wrote: ‘permission to feel, to grieve, to hate, to rage, to cry – validation that I am not “odd” but responding to an unhealthy situation in a healthy way’.

Are they safe?

I added the question about harmful effects because sometimes people fear that opening to feelings about world problems might be harmful. I wanted to check whether there was any evidence of this. More than 80% replied ‘not at all’, nearly 10% put ‘slightly’, 3% (one person) marked ‘moderately’, 3% ‘quite a lot’ and 3% marked the response ‘very deeply’. Every one of these people also marked that they had found the workshop as much or more personally healing. No one mentioned feeling depressed or traumatised by their feelings about the world. The negative effects people identified fell into two categories: personal issues brought up by the work[1]shop, and factors to do with being in a group.

The one person who had marked ‘very deeply’ harmful also replied that she had found it ‘very deeply’ personally healing. In her additional comments she said the workshop had brought up a lot of previously unexpressed personal grief, and that afterwards she had gone into therapy and been able to move forward with this. She had also left the workshop early, and so missed the integrating potential of exercises used towards the end of the workshop. Other people had also commented on personal grief issues being brought to the surface, and they had identified this as a factor in the workshops that was personally healing.

One person commented that they had felt rejected in the group. They also replied that they had found the workshop a moving experience that was personally healing. Other studies have also identified that people feeling rejected by others is a potential adverse effect of intensive groups (Lieberman, Yalom and Miles, 1973). Groups can sometimes painfully recreate earlier difficult life experiences, and as this type of workshop is not a personal therapy group, some of these issues may get missed. However, the solidarity of facing a common threat together can help lift people above their personal issues, while also breaking down some of the barriers that lead to exclusion. One participant listed the positive effects of the workshop as including, ‘Increased affection for, under[1]standing and tolerance to other humans, replacing the rejection and hatred and blame I had fomerly felt’.

Returning to the question of safety, these findings suggest that rather than it being harmful to open our feelings about world problems, when this is done in a supportive setting it can be a deeply healing.

An assessment of safety also needs to include the question ‘is it safe not to do this?’ While these workshops are only one of many possible ways of responding to the feelings brought up by global issues, a danger of not listening to our emotional reactions to world events is we might miss an alarm call alerting us to danger.

Choosing what happens through us

Thanks to photos from astronauts, we are among the first generations of humans ever to have seen images of the Earth from the outside: in a way that makes it easier for us to think of it as a whole. The branch of psychology becoming known as Gaian Psychology invites us to see ourselves as part of our world, of Gaia, rather than separate from it. The workshops introduced here apply this new psychology to one of the major challenges of the 21st century – how to face and respond to the problems of our world with courage, creativity and compassion. The results of the study suggest that these workshops not only strengthen our belief that we can make a difference, they are experienced as personally healing. In supporting our capacity to take part in the Great Turning, they help us find our power to shape the flow, and choose the narrative, of the story that happens through us.

References

• Johnstone C (2002)’Reconnecting With Our World,’ in Chesner A and Hahn H (eds) Creative advances in groupwork. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Lieberman M, Yalom I and Miles M (1973) Encounter groups: first facts. New York, NY: Basic Books.
• Lovelock J (1979) Gaia – a new look at life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Macy J, Johnstone C (2012) Active hope. Novato, CA: New World Library
• Pennebaker JW, Beall SK (1986) Confronting a traumatic event: toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 95(3): 274–281.