Transform Eco-Anxiety Pod: Grow inside to change outside

The climate reality of the last few years seems to be moving coaching towards facing the challenges of overcoming eco-anxiety at scale. Accelerating patterns of climate change call for simple and concrete teachings that can help large populations (especially the youth) discover well-being and happiness in the mid-twenty-first century. A study of the sequence of (1) becoming informed by information, (2) choosing to allow that information to bring about inner growth and a shift in consciousness, and then (3) becoming engaged in a practice that brings about personal fulfillment will be carefully examined in this meeting. Once you have become eco-active, you completely understand why. 

Pierre-Eric Sutter, a French existential therapist, offers a road map with eleven stepping stones that can take an eco-anxious person through adjustments that enable a complete change of worldview. Studying these ideas for a few hours and then practicing them for a few weeks can lead to overcoming eco-anxiety as inner growth brings about outer change. 

After several years and thousands of interviews with people who had become completely demoralized after learning about “collapsology” in France, Sutter noticed that many of the demoralized people were able to transform their state of being and generate positivity and happy living despite the collapses that they witnessed around them (climate, diversity, democracy, politics, supply chains, etc.). He discovered that many eco-anxious people had first become thoroughly depressed and then somehow worked through it all to become “transformed”. Last summer he wrote “Living Well With Your Eco-Anxiety: Take care of yourself by taking care of the world” (Bien vivre son eco-anxiete: Prendre soin de soi en prenant soin du monde, 2023), which carefully maps each step and provides 28 exercises that can lead to a transformation in how you think, feel, and act as you experience accelerating climate change.

The Transform Eco-Anxiety Pod meeting, usually on the first Tuesday of the month, will be on June 11th this time to allow participation in the CCA “The Week” events of the previous week. This session will include a breakout-room opportunity as well as a general discussion. For those who are already familiar with Sutter’s ideas, a “Level 2” discussion will be held on Wednesday, June 12th at 11:00am PDT. If you are interested in registering for that, please email Robert Bell (rfbbbbb@gmail.com) for the link.