The "Greening" of Counselling: Partnering with Nature, Bridging the Disconnect

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The "Greening" of Counselling Partnering with
Nature, Bridging the Disconnect

• Ken MacLeod, MTS, RMFT
• AAMFT Clinical Member
• Student Counselling Services
• University of Saskatchewan
• Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5E8
• ken.macleod_at_usask.ca
• June 12, 2007

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Ideas, Theories ConceptsInformingEconarrative
Practices

• From Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism
• Deep Ecology
• Self Identity
• Narrative Therapy

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A Global Mind Shift All is One . . .

• http//www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
• Wombat Philosophy

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All is One A Paradigm Shift From
Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism

• We have forgotten who we are
• We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding
  of the cosmos
• We have become estranged from the movements of
  the earth
• We have turned our backs on the cycles of life.
• We have forgotten who we are.
• (United Nations Environmental Sabbath Program as
  found in Glendinning, 1994, p. 55)

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Ecocentrism

• Ecocentrism goes beyond biocentrism with its
  fixation on organisms, for in the ecocentric view
  people are inseparable from the inorganic/organic
  nature that encapsulates them. They are
  particles and waves, body and spirit, in the
  context of Earths ambient energy (Rowe, 1994, p.
  106).

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Ecocentrism

• The ecocentric argument is grounded in the belief
  that compared to the undoubted importance of the
  human part, the whole Ecosphere is even more
  significant and consequential more inclusive,
  more complex, more integrated, more creative,
  more beautiful, more mysterious, and older than
  time. The environment that anthropocentrism
  misperceives as materials designed to be used
  exclusively by humans, to serve the needs of
  humanity, is in the profoundest sense humanitys
  source and support its ingenious, inventive
  life-giving matrix (Rowe, 1994, pp. 106-107).

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Ecocentrism

• The two belief systems, the anthropocentric and
  the ecocentric, do not so much pose an either/or
  choice as a priority choice. Everyone agrees
  that we people have our just place in the world
  and that as heterotrophic animals we must use
  surrounding ecological systems to obtain lifes
  energy and materials. Likewise, a consensus is
  emerging that the world environment is important
  its beauty, diversity and permanence ought not to
  be destroyed, and we degrade it at our peril.
  Putting the two together, can we not agree that
  people of inestimable value exist within an
  Ecosphere of inestimable value (Rowe, 1990, p.
  39)?

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Ecocentrism

• In the words of Capra (1996), When the concept
  of the human spirit is understood as the mode of
  consciousness in which the individual feels a
  sense of belonging, of connectedness to the
  cosmos as a whole (and, my addition, to the
  Earth in particular) it becomes clear that
  ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest
  essence (Rowe, 2000, p. 9).

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What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of
water, earth, air and fire, thats what I am,
thats what you are.Water

• blood, lymph, mucus, sweat, tears, inner oceans
  tugged by the moon, tides within and tides
  without. Streaming fluids floating our cells,
  washing and nourishing through endless riverways
  of gut and vein and capillary. Moisture pouring
  in and through and out of you, of me, in the vast
  poem of the hydrological cycle. You are that. I
  am that.

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Earth

• matter made from rock and soil. It too is pulled
  by the moon as the magma circulates through the
  planet heart and roots suck molecules into
  biology. Earth pours through us, replacing each
  cell in the body every seven years. Ashes to
  ashes, dust to dust, we ingest, incorporate and
  excrete the earth, are made from the earth. I am
  that. You are that.

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Air

• the gaseous realm, the atmosphere, the planets
  membrane. The inhale and the exhale. Breathing
  out carbon dioxide to the trees and breathing in
  their fresh exudations. Oxygen kissing each cell
  awake, atoms dancing in orderly metabolism,
  interpenetrating. That dance of the air cycle,
  breathing the universe in and out again, is what
  you are, is what I am.

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Fire

• fire from our sun that fuels all life, drawing up
  plants and raising the waters to the sky to fall
  again replenishing. The inner furnace of your
  metabolism burns with the fire of the Big Bang
  that first sent matter-energy spinning through
  space and time. And the same fire as the
  lightning that flashed into the primordial soup
  catalyzing the birth of organic life.
• You were there, I was there, for each cell of our
  bodies is descended in an unbroken chain from
  that event.
• (John Seed and Joanna Macy in Earth Prayers,
  1991, p. 130-131)

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DEEP ECOLOGY

• Deep Ecology is a holistic approach to facing
  world problems that brings together thinking,
  feeling, spirituality and action. It involves
  moving beyond the individualism of Western
  culture towards also seeing ourselves as part of
  the earth. This leads to a deeper connection with
  life, where Ecology is not just seen as something
  'out there', but something we are part of and
  have a role to play in.
• http//www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/johnston
  .htm

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Why Deep?

• The term 'Deep Ecology' was first introduced by
  the Norwegian activist and philosopher Arne Naess
  in the early 1970's, when stressing the need to
  move beyond superficial responses to the social
  and ecological problems we face. He proposed that
  we ask 'deeper questions', looking at the 'why
  and how' of the way we live and seeing how this
  fits with our deeper beliefs, needs and values.
  Asking questions like "How can I live in a way
  that is good for me, other people and our
  planet?" may lead us to make deep changes in the
  way we live.
• http//www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/johnston
  .htm

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Why Deep?

• Deep Ecology can also be seen as part of a much
  wider process of questioning of basic assumptions
  in our society that is leading to a new way of
  looking at science, politics, healthcare,
  education, spirituality and many other areas.
  Because this change in the way we see things is
  so wide ranging, it has been called a new
  'worldview'. It tends to emphasise the
  relationships between different areas, bringing
  together personal and social change, science and
  spirituality, economics and ecology. Deep Ecology
  applies this new worldview to our relationship
  with the earth. In doing this, it challenges
  deep-seated assumptions about the way we see
  ourselves, moving from just seeing ourselves as
  'individuals' towards also seeing ourselves as
  part of the earth. This can increase both our
  sense of belonging in life and our tendency to
  act for life. (http//www.rainforestinfo.org.au/de
  ep-eco/johnston.htm)

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You Cant Go Back.Now What?

• A human being is part of the whole, called by us
  "universe," limited in time and space. He
  experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as
  something separated from the rest - a kind of
  optical delusion of his consciousness. This
  delusion is a prison, restricting us to our
  personal desires and to affection for a few
  persons close to us.Our task must be to free
  ourselves from our prison by widening our circle
  of compassion to embrace all humanity and the
  whole of nature in its beauty. (Einstein, A.)

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Self Identity

• We still locate the psyche inside the skin.  You
  go inside to locate the psyche, you examine your
  feelings and your dreams, they belong to you.  Or
  its interrelations, interpsyche, between your
  psyche and mine.  Thats been extended a little
  bit into family systems and office groups but
  the psyche, the soul, is still only within and
  between people.  Were working on our
  relationships constantly, and our feelings and
  reflections, but look whats left out of that
  Whats left out is a deteriorating world.  So why
  hasnt therapy noticed that?  Because
  psychotherapy is only working on that inside
  soul.  By removing the soul from the world and
  not recognizing that the soul is also in the
  world, psychotherapy cant do its job anymore
  the sickness is out there.
•             James Hillman, Weve Had a Hundred
  Years of Psychotherapy and the Worlds Getting
  Worse

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An Ecological Sense of Selfhood

• This ecological sense of selfhood combines the
  mystical and the pragmatic. Transcending
  separateness and fragmentation, in a shift that
  Seed calls a spiritual change, it generates an
  experience of profound interconnectedness with
  all life. This has in the past been largely
  relegated to the domain of mystics and poets.
  Now it is, at the same time, a motivation to
  action. The shift in identity serves as ground
  for effective engagement with the forces and
  pathologies that imperil us (Macy, ed. Plant,
  1989, p. 202).

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The Ecological Self(as coined by Arne Naess)

• The ecological self of a person is that with
  which this person identifies and We may be in,
  of and for nature from our very beginning.
  Society and human relations are very important,
  but our self is richer in its constitutive
  relations. These relations are not only relations
  we have with humans and the human community, but
  with the larger community of all living beings.
  (Seed et al, 20-1) (http//www.rainforestinfo.org.
  au/deep-eco/johnston.htm)

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Unique but not Separate

• We are unique but not separate we are connected
  to each other and to the web of relationships
  that constitute our universe. When one suffers,
  we all suffer when the earth is poisoned, we are
  all endangered. We are in relationship not only
  with our selves, our families, and our human
  community but with that which constitutes us,
  supports, and depends on us the earth, the air,
  all that is known, and that which is unknown
  (Moules, 2000, p. 235).

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Narrative Practices

• Its all a question of story. We are in trouble
  just now because we do not have a good story. We
  are in between stories. The old story, the
  account of how we fit into it, is no longer
  effective. Yet we have not learned the new story
  (Berry, 1990, p. 123).

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A Different Way of Thinking about Problems and
Identity

• Principles and Catch Words
• Curiosity
• Asking Questions you Dont Know the Answers to
• Respectful Collaboration
• Non-blaming
• Non-pathologizing

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A Different Way of Thinking about Problems and
Identity

• Transparent
• Therapeutic Conversations taking many possible
  directions
• Draws on Narrative Metaphor
• Multi-Storied Lives
• The Problem is the Problem, Separate from Person
• Location, Location, Location

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Narrative A Storied Therapy

• Our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with
  narrative, with the stories we tell and hear
  told, those we dream or imagine or would like to
  tell, all of which are reworked in the story of
  our own lives that we narrate to ourselves in an
  episodic, sometimes semi-conscious, but virtually
  uninterrupted monologue. We live immersed in
  narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning
  of our past actions, anticipating the outcome of
  our future projects, situating ourselves at the
  intersection of several stories not yet
  completed. (Brooks, 1984, p. 3)

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Narrative A Storied Therapy

• The Narrative Metaphor
• Meaning Making Creations, Interpreting Beings
• Events
• Linked in Sequence
• Across Time
• According to a Plot

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The Language

• Re-authoring
• Externalizing
• Preferences, Preferred Ways of Being
• Rich Stories
• Thin and Thick Stories
• Dominant Stories

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The Language

• Deconstruction
• Alternative Stories
• Maps Statement of Position Map, Re-Membering
  Map, Re-authouring Map
• Postmodernism
• Post-Structualism
• Social Constructionism

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Concepts, Ideas, Theories and Philosophies

• Concepts of Self and Identity
• Ideas have a History and Context.
• Theories of Postmodernism, Post-Structualism and
  Social Constructionsim
• Philosophy of Michel Foucault

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Postmodernism

• an era, a cultural movement, a social
  condition, a belief system, and a way of being in
  and understanding the world. The end of a belief
  in one single worldview, it is a resistance to
  single explanations, a respect for difference and
  a celebration of the regional, local and
  particular (Jencks, 1992, p. 11) (Moules, 2000).

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Postmodernism

• Postmodernism basically states that events occur
  in the physical world, and people give meaning to
  those events. In this paradigm there is no
  objective meaning, and no objective explanation
  (Waldegrave, 1993).

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Social Constructionism

• The belief that reality is constructed within
  social relationships and, therefore, self is a
  concept, process, and activity that occurs
  between people. As a result, people constitute
  each other (Freedman Combs, 1996)
• ( as found in Moules, 2000).

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Econarrative?

• Our social and environmental degradation shows
  that we desperately need to create believable
  holistic stories, stories that reconnect us with
  sensory global congress.
• (Michael Cohn, Reconnecting with Nature)

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A New Story

• Tell me the story of the river and the valley and
  the streams and woodlands and wetlands, of
  shellfish and finfish. A story of where we are
  and how we got here and the characters and roles
  that we play. Tell me a story, a story that will
  be my story as well as the story of everyone and
  everything about me, the story that brings us
  together in a valley community, a story that
  brings together the human community with every
  living being in the valley, a story that brings
  us together under the arc of the great blue sky
  in the day and the starry heavens at night . . .
  (Berry, p. 171).

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Reconnecting

• To reclaim is to recall or bring back. I speak
  of reclaiming connection as recalling the right
  to acknowledge connection, meaning, and
  community. It is the prerogative, in an era that
  is fraught with particularity, to claim a
  commonality, a communion, and a sacred and
  spiritual unity that ties us to each other as
  humans and intimately ties us to a world that is
  greater than or certainly more than human (Abram,
  1996). It is the privilege to reconvene and
  summon a tentative and larger-than-me meaning,
  significance, and connection about that which is
  mysterious, sensual, and unknown. (Moules, 2000,
  p. 229)

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So, what could it look like?

• Ecopsychology
• Ecotherapy
• Econarrative?

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Ecopsychology

• Once upon a time, all psychologies were
  ecopsychologies. Those who sought to heal the
  soul took it for granted that human nature is
  densely embedded in the world we share with
  animal, vegetable, mineral, and all the unseen
  powers of the cosmos....It is peculiarly the
  psychiatry of modern Western society that has
  split the inner life from the outer worldas
  if what was inside of us was not also inside the
  universe, something real, consequential, and
  inseparable from our study of the natural world.
• Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth (1992)

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"There is no inner world without the outer
world."(Thomas Berry)

• . . . the basic challenge of ecologically
  responsible psychotherapy is to develop ways to
  work with the purely personal problems brought
  by clients so that they can be seen not only as
  unique expressions but also as microcosms of the
  larger whole, of what is happening in the world.
  The goals of therapy then include not only the
  ability to find joy in the world, but also to
  hear the Earth speaking in ones own suffering,
  to participate in and contribute to the healing
  of the planet by finding ones niche in the
  Earths living system and occupying it actively
  (Conn, eds. Roszak, Gomes, Kanner, 1995, p. 164).

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Ecotherapy

• . . . a missing dimension of most (therapy)
  theories is that healthy identity includes a
  strong sense of being firmly grounded. This
  means discovering the reality of our
  body-mind-spirit self being deeply, securely
  rooted in the biosphere. Such groundedness tends
  to enliven inner feelings of security and
  strength. It also can serve as a bridge to
  integrating awareness of the interconnectedness
  of all aspects of the self mind, body, spirit
  and interactive connectedness of these with the
  external world of relationships, culture,
  society, and nature. Such grounded identity has
  an anchored awareness of organic relatedness with
  ones body, with the earth, and with the other
  living creatures that share the biosphere with us
  (Clinebell, 1996, p. 33).

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Interconnected

• "We have given up the understanding -dropped it
  out of our language and so out of our thought
  -that we and our country create one another,
  depend on one another, are literally part of one
  another that our land passes in and out of our
  bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our
  land that as we and our land are a part of one
  another, so all who are living as neighbors here,
  human and plant and animal, are part of one
  another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone
  that, therefore, our culture must be our response
  to our place, our culture and our place are
  images of each other and inseparable from each
  other."
• Wendell Berry

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The Practice

• To do ecopsychology and ecotherapy, one of its
  healing-directed applications, is to practice
  art, lore, craft, ethics, philosophy, and science
  simultaneously, emphasizing now one, now another,
  and often many together.
• Craig Chalquist, MS PhD, Mind and Environment
  Psychological Survey of Perspectives Literal,
  Wide, and Deep http//www.terrapsych.com/mindanden
  vironment.html

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Maps for the JourneyMapping Narrative
Conversations (White)

• Statement of Position Maps 1 2
• Mapping Externalizing Conversations
• Mapping Initiatives
• Mapping Re-Authoring Conversations
• Mapping Re-Membering Conversations
• Mapping Outsider Witness Re-tellings

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Definitional Ceremony and Outsider-Witness
Responses (White)

• Definitional Ceremony
• Outsider-Witness Responses
• Mapping Outsider-Witness Re-tellings

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Mapping Outsider Witness Re-tellings (White)

• Possible to Know
• 4. Acknowledging Transport
• 3. Embodying Responses
• 2. Describing the Image
• 1. Identifying the Expression
• Time
• Known Familiar

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Outsider Witness Questions (White)

• Identifying the Expression
• As you listen to this persons story, which
  expressions caught your attention or captured
  your imagination? Which ones struck a chord for
  you?
• Describing the Image
• What images of their life, of his identity, and
  of the world more generally, did these
  expressions evoke? What did these expressions
  suggest to you about their purposes, values,
  beliefs, hopes, dreams and commitments?

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Outsider Witness Questions (White)

• Embodying Responses
• What is it about your own life/work that
  accounts for why these expressions caught your
  attention or struck a chord for you? Do you have
  a sense of which aspects of your own experiences
  of life resonated with these expressions, and
  with the images evoked by these expressions?
• Acknowledging Transport
• How have you been moved on account of being
  present to witness these expressions of life?
  Where has this experience taken you to, that you
  would not otherwise have arrived at, if you
  hadnt been present as an audience to this
  conversation? In what way have you become other
  than who you were on account of witnessing these
  expressions, and on account of responding to
  these stories in the way that you have?

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Richer Stories of Peoples IdentitiesRe-Memberin
g Ecostories

• Possible to Know
• 4. Implications of this Contribution for Nature
• 3. Persons Contribution to Nature
• 2. Persons Identity through Eyes of Nature
• 1. Natures Contribution to Persons Life
• Time
• Known Familiar

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Statement of Position Map 1

• Possible to Know
• 4. Intentional Understandings of Experience
  Understandings about What is Accorded Value
• 3. Experience of this Development
• 2. Problem in Relationship to Nature
• 1. Characterisation of Problem
• Time
• Known Familiar

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Statement of Position Map 2

• Possible to Know
• 4. Intentional Understandings of Experience
  Understandings about What is Accorded Value
• 3. Experience of this Development
• 2. Outcome/Insight in Relationship to Self/Nature
• 1. Characterisation of Unique Outcome/Insight
• Time
• Known Familiar

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Re-Authoring Conversations (White)

• Re-Authoring Conversations Map
• Landscape of Consciousness (Identity)
• Landscape of Action

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Questions to Consider(Trudinger, M., Maps of
violence, maps of hope Using Place and maps to
explore identity, gender and violence, The
International Journal of Narrative Therapy and
Community Work, 2006, No. 3)

• How do individuals and communities relate to
  the places they live in?
• How might place be constitutive of identity?
• How might some places be experienced as
  enabling different ways of being?
• How does the negotiation of identity in place
  alter both places and identities?
• What might happen if we asked questions not
  just about peoples identities and relationships
  with others over time, but relationships with
  places over time?

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Questions to Consider (Trudinger, M)

• How might we be able to listen more carefully
  for implicit or explicit references to spaces and
  places in our conversations with people, and the
  possibilities this may open in our work?
• How might people prefer to relate to the spaces
  in their lives? How might they prefer the spaces
  to be different?
• How might the meanings of place change over
  time for people?
• What places do people find help put them more
  in touch with the preferred accounts of their
  lives? What places might people experience as
  being therapeutic for them? (Why?)

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Questions to Consider (Trudinger, M)

• What places might be experienced as calming,
  generative, renewing, exhilarating, encouraging
  of reflection, and so on?
• How might we be able to bring these places
  into the therapy room, as we bring in other
  people and characters?
• How might physically changing place (for
  example, in moving to a new town or school)
  recently happened, and be available to peoples
  concerns about these?

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Questions for Re-authoring Conversations
(Trudinger, M)

• Where were you when this development happened?
• Where were you when you were leading up to this
  development ?
• When you want to get some distance from the
  problem is there somewhere that you physically
  go? Somewhere that you pop into for a few
  moments, somewhere you visit for an hour or so,
  somewhere you go on a holiday to ?
• Are there other places like this where these
  kinds of developments have occurred?

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Questions For Re-authoring Conversations
(Trudinger, M)

• Is there a common theme in each of these
  places? Is there a reason you specifically go
  there? Is it being surrounded by nature, or
  certain kinds of people does the place evoke
  something special for you ?
• In your plans in relation to this, is there
  somewhere that you have in mind for trying out
  your next steps? Why would you choose there?
• How is that you were able to step more into
  these other ways at this place? (For example
  How is it that you are able to care for yourself
  more when you visit the beach?)

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Questions For Re-authoring Conversations
(Trudinger, M)

• Is there something about this place itself that
  allows you to?
• Is going to this place to get away from it
  all or to reflect on life, or whatever
  something that you had done before, or was this a
  new idea?
• Has going there helped with other times in your
  life?

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Questions For Re-authoring Conversations
(Trudinger, M)

• What other possibilities for your life become
  available to you when you go to this place? What
  wishes for your life are you more able to get in
  touch with there?
• As you step more into these other ways of
  being, are there places you can imagine that you
  will spend more time in?
• If this could work for you in other places,
  would that be positive or negative, or ?

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Questions For Remembering Conversations
(Trudinger, M)

• What places are special in your life?
• What do these places mean to you?
• How do you relate to yourself (or the problem
  in question) differently when you are at that
  place?

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More Place Questions (Trudinger, M)

• Where are the places you go to relax?
• Where are the places you go to take care of
  yourself?
• If youre getting stressed and angry, is there
  somewhere you go to get away from it all?
• Why do you go there and not somewhere else?
  Whats the appeal of that place? Does it have a
  broader meaning for you?
• Do you go there on purpose when youre thinking
  of the other things that might be different in
  your life?

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More Place Questions(Trudinger, M)

• How does going there feel?
• How does going there help in your quest to be
  someone other than a tough jock or whatever
  the naming of the dominant plot has been?
• When youre at this place, how does it have you
  thinking about how you might do other things in
  your life differently, or other wishes that you
  have for your life?
• Does this place remind you of other places
  where this happens for you?

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Environmental Ethics

• "We are a part of the Creation - the living world
  - in body and spirit. We belong on this planet as
  a biological heritage, and we have a sacred
  personal duty to keep it intact and healthy.
• E.O. Wilson

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Reconnect and Nurture

• "Nurture your felt love for nature never deny
  it. In our nature conquering society it is an
  unconquered vestige of your inherent connection
  with nature's ancient, unifying, essence. For
  eons this essence has peacefully organized,
  preserved and regenerated life relationships in
  balance. The loss of our felt love of nature in
  our daily thinking produces much of our
  destructiveness and imbalance.
• Michael J. Cohen

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• "The natural world is the maternal source of our
  being as earthlings and the life-giving
  nourishment of our physical, emotional,
  aesthetic, moral, and religious existence. The
  natural world is the larger sacred community to
  which we belong. To be alienated from this
  community is to become destitute in all that
  makes us human. To damage this community is to
  diminish our own existence."
• Thomas Berry

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The Earth Charter

• "Recognize that peace is the wholeness created by
  right relationships with oneself, other persons,
  other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger
  whole of which all are a part.

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A Global Mind Shift All is One . . .

• http//www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
• Get it in Gear!
• All is One.

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Permaculture

• A design system that attempts to reconcile human
  communities with the ecological imperatives of a
  living planet. Permaculture design may be used
  to restore ecosystems, create sustainable human
  habitats and healthy towns, and promote economic
  systems that support the care of the Earth. It
  provides an ethical and holistic foundation for
  sustainable culture. The principles are derived
  from three basic ethics care for the earth care
  for people limit needs and reinvest in the
  future . . .
• Permaculture is a body of knowledge, susceptible
  to learning and teaching. But it is also a way
  of organizing knowledge, a connecting system that
  integrates science, art, politics, anthropology,
  sociology, psychology, and the diverse
  experiences and resources available in any
  community.
• (http//www.permaculture.net/about/definitions.htm
  l ).