(sirens blaring) - [Announcer] Apocalyptic scenes from California wildfire season.
- [Announcer] Over 8,000 wildfires since the beginning of the year have taken a disastrous toll on the state.
- [Announcer] A year-round fire season.
(fire crackles) (concerned music) - [Sindha] Last fire season, I wasn't sleeping very well.
I was having nightmares about natural disasters, crying a lot, lost my appetite, couldn't really write.
I felt so upset all the time, and it made me wonder.
(keystrokes clicking) It turns out climate psychology is an entire field.
So I called a bunch of climate psychologists, (phones ringing) and they all said the same thing, that I'm not special.
75% of young people say they're afraid of the future.
- [Leslie] The emotions, in and of themselves, are not a problem.
In fact, they're our allies.
There're signals telling us that something is terribly wrong.
- [Sindha] That's Leslie, she's a climate therapist.
And before focusing on climate change, Leslie ran a hospital psychology clinic for 25 years.
Working with terminally and chronically ill patients.
Which meant a lot to me because I've been living with chronic illness for most of my life.
I liked Leslie, she laughs a lot.
(Leslie laughs) And I just really love the way she says.
- [Leslie] Mmhmmm, mmhmmm.
- [Sindha] So I asked her to be my climate therapist.
- [Leslie] Well, I'm glad we finally get to start.
- [Sindha] Right away, I had to admit something.
To be honest with you, I'm not really sure what my goal should be.
- [Leslie] Um-hm, so conventionally, emotional resiliency is described as the ability to bounce back to our baseline after a stressful event.
I don't think that definition works very well anymore as we face climate change, because there's really not a going back.
So rather than uh-uh-uh, it's happening to me, I can't do anything, what shall I do, you know, I'll just have a glass of wine.
I believe we need to almost make an evolutionary leap together to remain more present, grounded, clear-minded, empathetic in the face of increasing distress.
(phone ringing) - [Sindha] Would you consider me to be a calm person?
(Sindha laughs) I can't even say it, a calm person?
- [Ex-Boyfriend] If by calm you mean constantly thinking of worst-case scenarios to the point that it's actually kind of impressive that you can function as a human, then yeah, you're pretty calm.
- [Sindha] Okay, well thank you for that.
I definitely had some room for improvement.
- [Leslie] Have you landed on kind of what you anticipate the future to be?
- Um.
(dramatic music) (beeping) - [Sindha] Lately, I've noticed when I wake up in the morning, my first, it sounds kind of dramatic, but my first thought is... "What is the point?"
What is the point of getting out of bed?
What is the point of showering?
What is the point of eating, working?
What is the point of any of it?
Leslie said, "The way I think about climate change is what's called doomism."
- [Leslie] You know, it's hopeless, there's nothing we can do anyway.
It's kind of a different... - [Sindha] Which she said, psychologically, is actually not that different from denial.
- [Senator Inhofe] We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record.
I ask the chair, "You know what this is?"
It's a snowball from outside here.
- [Leslie] In a way, it's harder, emotionally, to be in the - this is an unfolding story, there's some really big threats, we're not sure how and when... - [Sindha] Our brains hate uncertainty.
Some studies have even shown that we're calmer when anticipating pain than when we're uncertain about the future.
- [Leslie] It's like, medically, sometimes when people get a not good medical diagnosis, there's almost a relief because it's like, ugh, okay, I know what this terrible thing is.
- [Sindha] But my so-called doomism about climate change had led me to become disengaged.
And there was another problem with my cynicism.
It was leading me to feel pretty empty in the rest of my life.
- [Leslie] Especially if we go to that numbing place, that dissociative, checked out place.
It doesn't just remove us from the pain, it removes us from life, including the beautiful things.
- [Sindha] Um.
What can I do about that?
Is there a way to like renovate your brain?
(gong reverberates) (waves crashing) - [Leslie] All right, so if you can do this, let the soles of your feet rest against the floor, and begin to feel yourself present in your body, (slow paced music) and just almost feel like daydreaming, letting yourself feel the distress while you track my hand with your eyes.
- [Sindha] Leslie began asking me to visualize my feelings - [Leslie] As a place, an environment.
- [Sindha] That I could physically inhabit.
The fear, the hopelessness, the anger, the guilt, the cynicism, the grief, the uncertainty.
- [Leslie] See what else you can tell about it.
The depth, and what about the temperature?
What about the breadth?
Anything else that you can learn about its characteristics?
- [Sindha] I am in the middle of a field and I feel like, in some ways, the smallest thing.
- [Leslie] Okay, good, good.
Just take a moment with that.
What else do you become aware of?
- [Sindha] Then Leslie would ask me to look around and see if there was anything I had missed, anything I could pick up, or crawl inside, or climb on top of, anything that would keep me safe.
- [Leslie] And because it's dark and scary looking, is there anything that you're needing right now to feel safe or comfortable as we continue to explore?
And whenever something begins to take shape, I'd like you to describe aloud what you notice while you keep your eyes closed.
- [Sindha] I notice a bed of bright green moss.
- [Leslie] Okay.
(rustling) - [Sindha] And imagined laying down on it.
- [Leslie] Okay, okay.
(peaceful music) - [Sindha] I have been feeling calmer, but I'm also feeling a bit guilty about that.
I can't help but feel like it's selfish to tend to yourself in such a collective crisis, if that makes sense.
- [Leslie] I'm really fascinated by this new development that's coming into psychology now called polyvagal theory, where we're learning that our nervous systems start to sync up with each other.
So in other words, we're kind of emotionally contagious.
To the degree that we can attend to ourselves, regulate ourselves, it is a generous act for other people, because others are gonna experience the benefits, in their own nervous system, by catching on to what we've been able to do for ourselves.
(shutter clicking) - [Sindha] There's this Virginia Woolf essay I love, called "On Being Ill." In it, she says that only the chronically ill are initiated into a sort of secret knowledge, a truth about the future that plays out in the microcosm of a sick body.
"What?, After all," she writes, "Nature is at no pains to conceal.
That she, in the end, will conquer.
The heat will leave the world.
The sun will go out."
- [Leslie] One thing that's coming to mind, before I was focusing on climate, I worked for about 25 years in the hospital.
So I was working with people with life-threatening illnesses.
And when someone gets a diagnosis like that, there's, kind of similar to climate change, people kind of hope for a cure that may or may not come in the right time.
And so there started to be a conversation about the difference between healing and curing.
Where curing would be, "Okay, we're gonna beat this cancer, you know and life's gonna go back to normal."
And healing being more, where we don't turn away from the unknowns, a growth into all the possibilities, for whatever duration of life there is, that has meaning, that has purpose, that doesn't require knowing an outcome.
- [Sindha] In her essay, Woolf says, that "While on the one hand, the sick are aware of a kind of darkness that's concealed from healthy people, they also understand better than anyone where they can go to find the light."
This place, she says, "Is kind of like heaven, but it isn't above us, it's within us, some green isle for the mind to rest on," she writes, "Even if the foot cannot plant itself there."
Climate change is the diagnosis, and like any serious diagnosis, it threatens to crush our sense of hope, our will to keep going, our desire for the future.
To cope, our minds have to evolve.
We have to learn, like Virginia Woolf learned 100 years ago, or Leslie learned in the hospital clinic, that even when there's no cure, it's still possible to heal.
(peaceful music)
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