04/22/2026
https://kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/softening-rhetoric-what-therapy-teaches-us-social-change/
“eco-anxiety, a form of extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change, was that people benefited greatly from having group spaces in which they could discuss all their paradoxical emotions about climate change and, more importantly, what made it easier to change in response. They craved a space for the kind of inner questioning that asks things like I really connect with the fact that airplane travel is harmful for the environment, and I also live an ocean away from my mother and it’s so important for me that we get to connect physically at least three times a year. What do I do?”
“…group spaces already exist that encourage us into action, and do so strongly. What people sometimes report, however, is that those spaces can feel so intensely committed to a cause that they leave no space for emotion or complexity. And that doesn’t mean disconnecting from action. One study showed that when people had the space to be seen in their conflicting desires and complexity without judgment, they were able to connect with practical action and to stay connected with it (Baudon, 2021).”
This essay was born out of a decade of training and practicing in the mental health and social justice fields. It is an essay about the ways we wish change happened versus the ways it sometimes actually happens. It’s also an essay about how, when we think about change, we tend to disconnect the wa...
