Advice from a climate therapist: Touch grass. (No, really.)

In my years as a psychotherapist, I’ve worked with many people facing similar struggles. One such pattern is embodied by a client I’ll call Emma (whose real name and identifying details I’ve changed for privacy purposes). She came to see me because, despite pursuing a climate career aligned with her values, practicing good self-care, and having a close community of friends, she couldn’t shake a persistent feeling of being “low.” She didn’t know what was missing. Emma was invited to an event at a scenic destination — let’s say, for your mind’s eye, that it was a wedding in Alta Lakes, high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Imagine a scene something like this: The cool scent of spruce and fir drifted through the open windows, along with the thin, mineral clarity of mountain air. Now and then two owls traded low hoots through the dark, and something slapped in the water out on the lake. Emma lay listening for a long time. For reasons she couldn’t name, tears began to slide down her face, and soon she was sobbing. She wasn’t sad or upset. She described a welling up of joy, a sort of homecoming moment — a deep remembering that felt familiar yet beyond the reach of words. It was, she said, like “drinking clear, cool water when you didn’t know you were thirsty.” Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here! Emma spent most of her workday in an office building. She loved to run, but usually on city streets with a podcast playing in her ears, or on a gym treadmill. Like most of us, she lived by a daily routine whose steady stream of input kept her separate from the natural world. She cared for nature, but it was cognitive, not visceral. Our work focused on integrating what had lifted her mood during that experience in Colorado and keeping that connection alive in her everyday life. We don’t need to go to the mountains to touch the living world within and around us. For Emma, it started small. She left her earbuds at home on some runs and let the wind and birdsong keep her company. She began each morning with a moment at the window watching the sky before opening her laptop. At lunch she found a beautiful tree in a nearby park and made it her regular spot to pause and sit, watching it change through the seasons. I was reminded of Emma, and the other clients I’ve seen who were similarly feeling the sorrow of this detachment, when I read a question that came through the Ask a Climate Therapist form: “Why is it that working with animals and tending to plants helps process the grief, anxiety, and depression?” This question-asker found the answer that Emma and others were seeking, but wanted to understand the “why” behind it. I can point to some of the science that backs this up: Compounds released by trees can boost the activity of our immune cells. Stroking an animal lowers stress hormones and can raise oxytocin. But I would also say that we don’t need academic journals to know these things. We feel better working with plants and animals because we can sense directly how life flourishes as a complex, interwoven system that we’re part of. When you water a garden or care for an animal, you’re practicing a form of reciprocity that’s also a way of caring for the future. And so for you, reader of this column — wherever you may be at in your journey of connecting with, caring for, and feeling a sense of belonging in the natural world — remember that engaging with nature brings more than just joy; that restoration of connection actually supports and sustains your ability to do the larger work. Below, I offer just a few practices to begin to cultivate that more mindful relationship. I would love to know about your regular practices, too. How do you create moments of connection and kinship with nature in your daily life? Reply to this email or reach out to [email protected] to share them with the Grist team, and with me. Practice tips: There are many ways to cultivate an awareness of our place in the living world. Listen to the mp3 “We are Nature” — a free resource I created to accompany my book, Transforming Climate Anxiety — for a guided experience of connection. Take a daily sensory pause. Once a day, stop for one minute and notice what’s alive around you: Take the temperature of the air on your skin, notice a bird call or the smell after a rain. As you breathe, remember that the Earth’s trees and plants created the oxygen you’re taking in, and that your exhale feeds them in return. Tend something — and say thank you. Water a plant, fill a birdfeeder, or care for a patch of garden. Reciprocity is how we take our place in the web of life: We receive and we give back. Leave the earbuds at home from time to time. Try a walk or run with the wind, neighborhood sounds, and your own breathing as the soundtrack. In this with you, Leslie I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column.