Avoiding Climate Burnout

Climate trauma survival tips from Dr. Lise Van Susteren

The Dos

• Take care of yourself physically and spiritually, through healthy living and maintaining a balance in your professional and personal life.
• Physical exercise is essential — endorphins, the body’s natural pain killers, are secreted in response to exercise. Endorphins help fight psychic pain, too. Exercise also boosts your immune system. If you are stressed out and getting sick a lot — you need regular exercise. Swimming can be very soothing.
• Get out of doors as much as possible — connect with the forces that drive you and give yourself up to the beauty of nature in the present. Your energy to continue the battle will be rejuvenated.
• Remember that you are not alone. There are lots of other people who may be just as traumatized as you are — they just aren’t talking about it. Some people are distracted by jobs that don’t constantly expose them to the realities. Unlike you, they can get away from it for a while.
• Diversify your work and your life: force yourself to participate in activities not related to climate.
• Reinforce boundaries between professional work and personal life. It is very hard to switch from the riveting force of apocalyptic predictions at work to home where the problems are petty by comparison. If you haven’t found another solution: Take 10 minutes, close your eyes, shut your brain down. If you don’t know how, Google “How to meditate.”
• Connect with your fellow climate warriors: Gather — Play games, dance, tell jokes. There is nothing like a laugh. Don’t talk about climate!
• Your fears are realistic. But what you can do, or what you expect you can do, may not be.
• Personal therapy can help. You wouldn’t be the first person to conflate some personal problems with what is happening to the planet. Although “we” are working on it, many professionals may not yet “get” the problem with climate.

The don’ts

• Don't Overwork
• Don't do climate work at night. Having trouble sleeping? Avoid climate related work at night. Make sure to cut off the computer at least 2 hours before bedtime. The blue light emitted by computers suppresses a hormone that triggers sleep more than light from other parts of the spectrum. Additionally, turning out lights is not only good for the planet — the resulting incremental darkness sets the body up to sleep. Also, did you know that it can take as many as 9 hours for your body to completely break down caffeine?
• Don't believe that you are invulnerable. In fact, admitting what you are going through makes you more resilient.
• Don't Ignore signs and symptoms of burnout. Like an overused muscle — without some kind of rest or intervention burnout will only get worse.
• Don't Forget that understanding the material does not require that you actually experience what is being spoken about.
• Don't lose focus on the essential tasks.
• Don't give up! Despite the forecast — we are working together like never before.

Read more at 16 Tips for Avoiding Climate Burnout

How I Want To Live

"I want to live my life as if it really matters, to live my life as if I'm alive, to live my life as if it's real." Derrick Jensen, Walking on Water

"This is what democracy looks like"

"Collapse," Apocalypse, Suicide Notes, Pain, Meaning

I got caught in a rabbit hole of inspiration, depression, truth, and death on Friday.

It started during the day at work when my co-worker suggested I watch the documentary, "Collapse." I watched it Friday night and then started tweeting about Michael C. Ruppert, the activist/whistle-blower/author, speaking throughout the movie.

The Twitter world told me he was dead. I searched how Michael C. Ruppert died.

The interwebs told me he shot himself only a few weeks ago (13 April 2014). He left two suicide notes. Ruppert's attorney left a comment: "He absorbed the pain of the world on a daily basis until he could not take it any longer."

I also found out Vice Media, Inc made a special series about him, "Apocalypse, Man." The first two minutes highlight the tension and the pain that Ruppert was living with. "I'm tired. I'm ready to die," said Ruppert. Right after that comment, a teary-eyed Ruppert expressed his love for this broken, dying world. Tension. Pain. Grief.

Finally, I listened to the radio show that Michael C. Ruppert recorded shortly before killing himself. Twenty-two minutes into his show, after giving shout outs to those who have been "doing the work," fighting for the world and acknowledging climate change and social collapse, Ruppert shared the song, "Calling All Angels," by Jane Siberry and KD Lang. (Listen to it, you won't be disappointed.) Such weight in the lyrics and sounds.

What hits me hardest is how worn down Ruppert must have been. I caught glimpses of his despair throughout his videos/radio show. There were scenes of him breaking down, of his hopelessness coming through. Ruppert also said that he moved to Colorado "to die or to commit suicide."

I try to imagine 35 years as an activist, whistle-blower, author and truth-seeker. I'm not even 30 yet and feel isolated and tired. In the "Apocalypse, Man" series, Ruppert commented on how he found a community of support. "I'm so not alone anymore," he said. However, we're all ultimately alone. As much as we can grieve for the state of the world in community, we wake up and fall asleep in our heads. If we can't work through our own feelings, a community won't be much help. We have to do our individual grief work to be able to process such heavy, overwhelming feelings.

Ruppert's friend, Carolyn Baker, speaks of the importance of inner work and of finding peace and love. There's no doubt in my mind that Ruppert had to have done serious inner work over his years of activism. What is heart-breaking is that it wasn't enough. Grief and despair wear you down, break you down. How can we learn to sustain ourselves in a world that is constantly compounding bad news?

How can I find meaning in my present life knowing that we're committed to global climate change, to social change, to suffering? This is the question I'm researching and writing about for my thesis. Seems so important, but it requires sitting with tremendous tension and few answers.

My thesis chair tells me to sit with the tension, to find answers in the process.

Wish me luck.

Final thought: "An entirely new level of human consciousness is needed right now, or we're all dead." Michael C. Ruppert