My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

Adrienne Rich[1]

Psychologists report that patients now come to their offices complaining of “climate anxiety.”[2] In response to their symptoms, ranging from denial to despair, therapists offer a mix of emotional management to keep things in perspective and encouragement to take small actions to allay helplessness. Yet, for tens of millions of people, anxiety barely begins to describe the severe crisis of ever more extreme weather, floods, heat waves, unbreathable air, and 95-degree ocean temperatures.

The reality is that we face progressive loss of life, habitat, food production, land and sea flora and fauna, and even beliefs, including the reasonable belief for a future. With over 21 desperate million people displaced annually by climate change,[3] we are certainly well beyond anxiety; we are facing what is increasingly referred to as climate trauma.

Just one part of the difficulty in comprehending and addressing this trauma is the way we think about trauma and its treatment. Traditional psychological treatments for PTSD focus on “healing” the individual from anxiety. They provide a reassurance of something that has ended with the promise of returning to normalcy. This is not possible with climate trauma. There will be no simple “getting over” climate trauma and returning to “normalcy.”

Furthermore, current trauma treatments already ignore the victim’s natural, moral response to injustice and betrayal. While victims empathically connect their suffering with the dangers that continue to threaten others, they must do so in spite of therapists, not with therapists’ guidance and encouragement. Some victims of PTSD become Menders, people who become politically and morally activated to protect and care for others. How does this connect to the climate? In order to help address the inter-connected, no-one is immune climate, we must change fundamental lessons we keep teaching about the human response to trauma.

Instead of thinking about trauma as isolated, linear experiences of separate individuals, to face of the global climate trauma, we must expand our moral imagination[5] to encompass a moral ecology, one that elucidates shared values in the face of common danger – even extinction – and respond with systematic change. We have to go beyond thinking that wisdom lies in the proverbial body keeping the score: Our commitments to each other will determine our survival.

One Man's Words

Of the many wise people I interviewed to understand Menders, only one person was too distant to meet in person: The Honorable Dana Tizya-Tramm, Chief of Vintut Gwitchin Government in Old Crow Yukon. He leads a small First Nation of indigenous people who live beyond the Arctic Circle where they follow a traditional life based on migrating caribou herds. The herds are their life. Chief Tizya-Tramm testified in congress and is an outspoken prophet warning about the impact of climate trauma descending on his people. Without the constraints of psychological models on trauma, his words draw on a moral ecology lived in intimacy with nature.

I was born at the intersection of this old world being encroached on by the new…Everything that I do is in a world coming to its knees in a sixth extinction through tumors of ill-formed thought based on a philosophy of domination and fear. My grandmother was one who never fell from grace. When I die, I want to be able to look her in the eye and have no shame.

We know the climate is changing. Everything now comes a month late and everything is freezing differently. Everything is changing. We will be surrounded by animals but we will not be able to touch them. It is said that in the future, thousands of people will come up to our land. We have to be here to help them.

Traumas are actually doorways into different ways of being, and different interactions with the world. Since nature works on banking on diversity and rewarding cooperation, trauma is needed. It’s actually a major part of our human disposition. It allows us greater capacity to reflect on ourselves and reality. Otherwise, we don’t ask questions. It’s only when something happens to us, something negative, that we ask ‘Why? Why did this happen and how can I stop this in the future?’ Traumas weave themselves into our national consciousness. But if we don’t learn from them, and if we are not honest with ourselves then we are never going to grow from what is happening. We will be doomed. They will be bricks and mortar of our own prisons, opposed to bridges to the holy lands, which we mistakenly think of as physical places.

In her writing, Elizabeth Kolbert[6] explores how we must rethink how we approach our technologies to imagine a new future, one different than ever imagined. To help in the moral re-imagining of our lives in the midst of climate trauma, psychologists can pivot from the constraints of the anxiety construct to explore and champion the deep devotion and caring that people often find in response to horrible suffering.

We can contribute differently to an evolving moral ecology that could be adequate to the overwhelming trauma that is upon us. In short, we need to become Menders, which is possible because Menders have shown that it is possible to mend the world after calamity throughout history. In Chief Tizya-Tramm’s words, can we refuse the opportunity to see this trauma as a “doorways into different ways of being and different interactions with the world?”