TUHO: paliativni proces
The national conversation we urgently needed to have following our Black Summer never happened. Our collective trauma was sidelined as a deadly pandemic took hold. Instead of grieving our losses and agreeing on how to implement an urgent plan to safeguard our nation’s future, we became preoccupied by whether we had enough food in the pantry, whether our job or relationship would be intact on the other side of the lockdown. We were forced to consider life and death on an intensely personal level.
When our personal safety is threatened, our capacity to handle the larger existential threat of climate change evaporates. But just because we can’t face something doesn’t mean it disappears.
As many trauma survivors will tell you, it’s often the lack of an adequate response in the aftermath of a traumatic event, rather than the experience itself, that causes the most psychological damage. And if there is no acknowledgment of the damage that has been done, no moral consequences for those responsible, it’s as if the trauma never happened.
How can we ever re-establish trust in the very institutions that let things get this bad? How do we live with the knowledge that the people who are meant to keep us safe are the very ones allowing the criminal destruction of our planet to continue?
Perhaps part of the answer lies in TS Eliot’s observation that “humankind cannot bear very much reality”. To shy away from difficult emotions is a very natural part of the human condition. We are afraid to have the tough conversations that connect us with the darker shades of human emotion.
We are often reluctant to give voice to the painful feelings that accompany a serious loss, like the one we all experienced this summer. We quickly skirt around complex emotions, landing on the safer ground of practical solutions like renewable energy or taking personal action to feel a sense of control in the face of far bleaker realities.
As more psychologists begin to engage with the topic of climate change, they are telling us that being willing to acknowledge our personal and collective grief might be the only way out of the mess we are in. When we are finally willing to accept feelings of intense grief – for ourselves, our planet, our kids’ futures – we can use the intensity of our emotional response to propel us into action.
Grief is not something to be pushed away; it is a function of the depth of the attachment we feel for something, be it a loved one or the planet. If we don’t allow ourselves to grieve, we stop ourselves from emotionally processing the reality of our loss. It prevents us from having to face the need to adapt to a new, unwelcome reality.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture where we actively avoid talking about hard realities; darker parts of our psyche are considered dysfunctional or intolerable. But trying to be relentlessly cheerful or stoic in the face of serious loss just buries more authentic emotions that must eventually come up for air.