Reframing Eco-anxiety with The Work That Reconnects

The age of eco-anxiety is here. Psychological distress about climate change and the inter-related political and social problems of the “polycrisis” have more than 60% of people ages 16-25 reporting feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, fear, sadness, and anger according to a 2024 Lancet report. How are you holding up, facing news of extinction, war, and injustice every day?

The Work That Reconnects (WTR) is a framework developed by Joanna Macy that includes rituals, stories, reflective practices, and structured conversations to help people safely access their intense feelings about the climate crisis and transmute them into creative action. Before she passed away in July of 2025, Macy was an environmental activist and a scholar of systems theory and Buddhist theology, but her methods match up with interventions from the field of mental health.

One of the most impactful aspects of The Work That Reconnects is the reframing of our pain for the world as something meaningful and powerful. A mainstay of cognitive behavioral therapy, reframing takes the same set of facts and assigns them a different valid interpretation, one that fuels resiliency instead of despair, opens possibilities instead of closing them. For example, someone going through a breakup may conclude, “I’m unloveable.” A therapist could work to help the person reframe the situation as, “We weren’t the right match” or “I learned a lot from this relationship.” Same circumstance, different stories, with very different emotional signatures.

This is not some short-cut of toxic positivity. Joanna Macy specifically does not want to downplay the pain of the climate crisis; in fact, she believes feeling it is the key to imagining novel solutions. In reframing, the picture itself doesn’t change, just the context of how we hold it. Macy writes, “Facing our distress doesn’t make it disappear. Instead, when we do face it, we are able to place our distress within a larger landscape that gives it a different meaning.”

The Work That Reconnects reframes the pain of climate anxiety by asserting that it is evidence of interconnection and caring. In Active Hope, Macy says, “When you experience pain for something beyond your immediate self-interest, this reveals your caring, compassion, and connection—such precious things.” We only feel pain for people we have never meant, species we have never seen, places we have never been because we are all fundamentally interconnected. Our pain isn’t meaningless suffering without impact. Interpreting our pain as meaningful proof of interconnection fortifies a worldview based in kinship, an antidote to the individualism and competition that drives the climate crisis.

Joanna Macy and WTR also remind us that feeling our pain inherently disrupts the status quo. The systems that drive injustice and climate change want us to ignore the urgent signals our nervous system is sending that something is wrong. Again in Active Hope, Macy recounts the tale of the knight Parsifal, who encounters a king with a wound that will not heal. Parsifal initially does not acknowledge the wound, bound by a vague social pressure to ignore the obvious. But ultimately, Parsifal is brave enough to ask the king, “What aileth thee?” and thus breaks the spell, allowing the king to heal. By speaking our climate fears aloud, we break taboos and disrupt the “business as usual” mentality that allows atrocities to continue.

As a systems theorist, Macy explains that complex systems need all forms of available information in order to regulate themselves. Feedback loops take in information from the environment and make internal adjustments to adapt effectively. If important sources of information, such as pain, are cut off or ignored, a system’s ability to right itself is impaired.

When we open to pain-as-information, as intolerable as it may feel, we can course correct, both personally and societally. Our pain is a portal to creative ideas and outcomes. The effort it takes to suppress pain drains our energy. We fear that opening to it will engulf us. But Macy observes the opposite occur, again and again: “It is our consistent experience that as people open to the flow of their emotional experience, including despair, sadness, guilt, fury, or fear, they feel a weight lifted from them and … an increased determination to act.”

Macy’s assertion that strong emotions open up novel problem-solving capabilities is backed up by cutting-edge affective neuroscience. The work of Allan Schore, PhD, explains how intense emotional experiences activate areas of the brain that take a “panoramic view” and access our deepest “adaptive resources and resilience.”

My first exposure to Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects was a ritual called The Truth Mandala, which uses objects to represent the emotions of fear, grief, anger, and emptiness. The facilitator explained Macy’s view that each of these feelings also contains its opposite. Fear includes the courage it takes to face what scares us. Grief only exists for the things we deeply love. Anger reveals our passion for justice. And emptiness creates a space of potential for new forms to arise. These simple yet powerful reframes fortify us to experience the emotions with strength.

If you are experiencing anguish amid climate change and the polycrisis, I invite you to read Active Hope and visit workthatreconnects.org. Joanna Macy reminds us that every great adventure story begins with humble heroes facing what look like insurmountable obstacles. The very challenges that threaten to overwhelm us draw forth our deepest capabilities and forge the closest communities. When you need respite from the intensity of modern life, reframing our reactions is a powerful move. If you’d like to explore this and other approaches to eco-anxiety in therapy, please get in touch.

References:

Lewandowski, R. Eric, et al. "Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events." The Lancet Planetary Health 8.11 (2024): e879-e893.

Macy, Joanna, and Chris Johnstone. Active hope (revised): How to face the mess we’re in with unexpected resilience and creative power. New World Library, 2022.

Schore, Allan N. "Right-brain affect regulation." The healing power of emotion (2009): 112-144.

It feels mean to say no.

We know that setting boundaries reduces anxiety, that saying no protects our peace. But so often, I hear some version of, “If I set this boundary, the person will be upset, and I will feel guilty, so it’s better for me to continue having panic attacks/taking seven medications/crying all the time/hating my life than to face this conflict and guilt.”

Guilt operates to confine us and control our behavior. The second we try to escape our role as pleaser, guilt puts us back in our place. Guilt is our punishment for daring to be autonomous.

We can retrain ourselves to interpret guilt as pointing out something we need to do to grow. “If I don’t go out to lunch with my aunt when I’m in town, I will feel so guilty.” Great! Don’t go to lunch with her. Guilt signals that you are heroically disrupting a dysfunctional pattern—so move towards it.

It is much easier to deal with the guilt of setting a boundary than it is to manage the fallout that comes if you don’t. People say, “I can’t skip [holiday] at home because I will feel too guilty.” So they go, and then we end up dealing with the trauma from that visit for the next four months in therapy.

We should feel guilty when we actively do something mean. We should not feel guilty for simply living our lives. So here’s a pop quiz. Are the following acts a) mean or b) just authentic and not at all mean even though some people may react as if you are evil and intentionally murdering them?

1) Moving away from home

2) Punching someone in the face

3) Declining to go on a family vacation

4) Spreading a false rumor that your neighbor is embezzling from the PTA to fund their Afrin habit

5) Requesting to be called by your name and not your childhood nickname

6) Stealing your cousin’s puppy

7) Not answering the phone when you’re busy or not in the mood to talk

8) Throwing your sister’s car keys down the storm drain

9) Asking someone to please drive a little bit slower


Answer key: 1) b, 2) a, 3) b, 4) a, 5) b, 6) a, 7) b, 8) a, 9) b

How’d we do? Easy to differentiate, right? So why is it so confusing real-time when someone tries to make you feel (a) for doing (b)?

Very commonly, family “logic” goes like this: I have come to depend on your soothing. When you stop soothing me, I feel pain. Ergo, you have caused my pain, you horrible mean person. Incorrect! Unhealed pain is exposed, yes, but the cause of that pain has nothing to do with the person being blamed. The only person who can heal someone’s pain is themselves. If they are counting on someone else to do it, that is not only unfair but ineffective. I get why people would rather be soothed than face their pain. It’s fucking painful. But it’s what adults do.

I wish we could send a memo to our nervous systems when we achieve independence that says, “You can shed those people-pleasing survival patterns because I no longer need those relationships to survive. At this point in time, if they reject and shun me, that would be very sad, but I would not die.” Therapy is a long, slow way of trying to get this intellectual understanding into our cells.

Let’s try another quiz, the flip side of the last one. Are the following acts (a) people pleasing or (b) authentically being nice?

1) Loaning your friend your car when you don’t need it that day anyway

2) Loaning your friend your car even though you actually need it and they returned it full of trash and empty of gas last time, but if you don’t, they will give you the silent treatment

3) Going to your friend’s performance because you love spoken word

4) Going to your friend’s performance even though spoken word makes you want to stab something and the event is four hours long and you’re going to be in a terrible mood the whole time and likely make passive-aggressive comments

5) Throwing your parents a mellow anniversary party with your siblings’ help

6) Throwing your parents a lavish anniversary party with no help from your siblings and paying too much money for it because your dad has been dropping hints that he wants an ice sculpture

7) Taking your brother to the airport at a time that works for you

8) Taking your brother to the farther away airport at 4am on a day you have an interview because you feel indebted from when he changed your light bulb last month

Answer key: 1) b, 2) a, 3) b, 4) a, 5) b, 6) a, 7) b, 8) a

Clear distinguishing features, right? Being nice doesn’t arise from a sense of obligation, debt, or fear of punishment. Being nice doesn’t harm you in any way; in fact, it feels good. It gets blurry because hardcore people-pleasers stopped asking themselves long ago what would feel good and exclusively started asking, “What will placate others, ie keep me safe?”

Slowly, we start to discover what you would do if it didn’t feel like life or death when someone might be mad at you. If love were granted unconditionally, not contingent on pleasing, how would that free you up? We come to understand that your worth and beauty and lovability is based in something much deeper than your willingness to sacrifice yourself. And though the guilt may never completely vanish, it becomes a guide rather than a plague.

How to stop yelling at your kids.

You are in a big box store with your child. You try to avoid the toy aisle, but they find it. They want a nerf gun. You say no, calmly. Your child grabs a nerf gun off the shelf and holds it tight to their chest. You take a deep breath. You’ve already dealt with vomit and Comcast today. You dig deep and validate their feelings of frustration and disappointment. But guess what? Your child doesn’t want validation. They want the nerf gun.

They bolt for the exit. You sprint after your child and grab their arm too hard, as you have vowed not to do. Shame accelerates the anger and ignites. You rip the gun from their arms and explode. Your child is screaming and flailing. Your heart is pounding and breaking.

At home, you sob and type “how to stop yelling at your kids” into the search box. The answers, like “get more exercise,” are both obvious and impossible.

Fear not. This article will never tell you to count backwards from ten. Instead, we will name the deep stress of living in a sick culture that creates the conditions for yelling. To reduce yelling, we will not splash ice water on our faces. We will rebuild the world to sustain us all. Following this simple six-step plan, we will be parenting with grace in no time.

Step 1: Start receiving universal basic income (UBI)

Universal basic income means we no longer have to exchange our essential life force for survival under capitalist overlords. The assets of corporations and billionaires have been redistributed so that everyone receives enough money to cover the necessities of life, like food, housing, healthcare, education, childcare, and transportation.

You know how we yell every single day at 7:48am when our child is not putting their shoes on because we are going to be late for work? Our kids don’t need to hurry up. Our economic system needs to slow down. When everyone’s wellbeing is guaranteed, when no one is denying our vacation request, lo and behold, we are not yelling.

Our souls incarnated to fulfill a specific role in the cosmic dance. With UBI, we are free to pursue our purpose whether it is deemed worthy of remuneration or not. We can say, “Oh, I’m a breather, I’m a respirateur, isn’t that enough?” like Marcel Duchamp. Feeling a true safety net, the impulse to yell naturally recedes.

Step 2: Enroll your child in your local year-round, publicly funded school run on a non-authoritarian model that cultivates students’ intrinsic motivation and deep empathy

These schools reduce yelling because kids’ behavior improves dramatically when they are affirmed as uniquely valuable humans, when their needs for movement and autonomy are met, when the learning is relevant to their existence. Their expansive, psychedelic mind is no longer shoehorned into a Cartesian, de-animated hellscape of linearity and presumed objectivity, and they mellow out.

We aren’t yelling about homework because guess what? There is no homework. Their homework is to play with the baby. Their homework is to chop carrots. Their homework is to sit by the fire and gaze into the flames.

Before, when we were snapping at them to pack their g-d backpacks already, underneath that annoyance lurked the fear that sending them to school could be sending them to their literal death. How can we be calm when we got an email last night about how to talk to our kids about today’s lockdown drill? We don’t want verbiage on how to talk about it, Mike. We want to live in a society that doesn’t require our babies to cower in terror in their place of learning.

Luckily, at our new school, there is no fear of a school shooting because everyone in the greater community is known, valued, and seen. The spiritually desolate conditions of alienation that led people to think they needed assault rifles to be empowered have been replaced by conditions of support, belonging, connection. We are yelling so much less now knowing we can send our children to school confident that their small, soft bodies will return in tact.

Step 3: Live in co-housing

Yelling happens when we have too much to do, too many roles to fill. Once we are settled in affordable, attractive co-housing, the kids have access to so many different people that we don’t have to be their therapist, nurse, chauffeur, tutor, playmate, chef, and wise sage. Socializing doesn’t require color-coded calendars, just  opening the front door. Birthday parties happen effortlessly because someone is a baker, someone is a magician, and everyone is already hanging out in the commons. Pale pink flower petals shower down gently from the sky. Yelling is the furthest thing from our minds.

Step 4: End climate change

The nexus of all stressors is knowing that we are on a path to a biosphere incompatible with human life. What even is parenting in this insane context? We read about impending water wars while our teen takes an hour-long shower. They want Takis, we envision the Pacific garbage gyre. No wonder our shit is lost. “For the hundredth time, put your laundry away!” as if that keeps the micro plastics shed in the wash out of their bloodstream.

So instead of yelling at our kids, we yell at our state senators. We yell as we smash a JP Morgan effigy piñata in the town square. We yell “Land back!” We yell to end fossil fuel subsidies. We yell that Amazon doesn’t pay taxes. We yell that we can’t use a reusable container at the deli or bring our water bottle into the WNBA game. We yell with our neighbors at the hearing about the refinery. We yell with our co-workers that we want 401k options that don’t include investing in weapons manufacturers. With all this yelling directed at the true bad actors, boom! Not yelling at kids. Easy peasy.

Step 5: Process all of our personal and intergenerational trauma

Yelling signals that our trauma has been activated. Is our child being rude? Or is the nervous system signature of fleeing Poland three generations ago being rude? The pain of our ancestors has had no reckoning, so it erupts through the mundane modern cracks of car seat installation, wet towels on the floor, spilt milk.

To stop yelling at our kids, we must heal intergenerational trauma. No problem. All we have to do is call our local fully staffed, low-fee mental health clinic with appointments available next week for individual, couples, and family therapy. Mental health cooperatives have also developed community-wide culturally and historically informed rituals to structure larger-scale society-level trauma metabolization—fun!

After a few quick decades of CBT, DBT, EMDR, ACT, MBSR, EFT, somatic experiencing, Jungian psychoanalysis, narrative revisioning, Gestalt therapy, humanistic therapy, and expressive arts therapy, we will have processed all of the personal, collective, and intergenerational trauma, and incidents of yelling will decrease markedly. Just wait and see.

Step 6: Hie thee to the red tent

Anyone who menstruates or loves someone who does knows that the intensity of irritability and yelling follows a cyclical pattern. For most of the month, the righteous rage lies quietly under a weighted blanket of estrogen. Then it is briefly unmasked and seizes the hormonal moment to tell the hard truths that drive evolution. It just needs the right space to express its full power.

Inside the red tent is a reprieve. We are cared for, rather than caring for. It’s bonbons and romcoms all day, baby. Soft lighting, Mayan uterine massage, the darkest of chocolates, the softest of blankets, all the heating pads and cramp bark tincture and NSAIDs anyone could ever want. We twirl tampons over our heads by the strings and ululate. If it looks like a crime scene, that’s because we’re manslaughtering the patriarchy.

We emerge from the red tent spiritually exfoliated, crackling with wisdom, calm and centered. Supported in this way, our rage is wielded and channeled so that it doesn’t misfire as yelling at the innocent. So ask around to find out where your community’s red tent is hosted, likely right there in your new co-housing community.

Once we are all receiving UBI, attending a nurturing school, living in co-housing, frolicking in a stable biosphere, healing intergenerational trauma, and bleeding in peace, we predict that yelling at kids will be close to zero. We will be freed up to create a positively reinforcing galactic spiral of hope and action begetting more hope and more action, iterating hasta la victoria siempre, until the only yelling is shouts of triumph and joy.

Do you have climate anxiety?