Coaching for Expression: Expressive Writing and the Climate Crisis

What would you write about your relationship with the climate crisis? How might such writing change and inform your relationship to this challenge, and what new perspectives might it offer you about how you could move toward effective action?

This week I was fortunate to attend an expressive writing workshop on just that topic, led skillfully by one of my coaching friends and colleagues, Elizabeth Matteson Bechard, NBC-HWC. Her work includes research on writing about emotionally significant issues with therapeutic intent. In a six week study, her team showed that expressive writing as a trauma intervention improved resilience, reduced self-reported perceived stress levels, and reduced rumination and depression.

As the climate crisis looms, some have coined a new term for how we are reacting as Pre-Traumatic Stress. So why not apply the expressive writing methodology and see whether there are similar benefits? Not to spoil the surprise, but I found the exercise immensely helpful, even redemptive. And I will outline how and why below.

We were given the option to type or write longhand, as their research showed benefits either way. I chose to write longhand. By the end of an hour and a half I had written five solid, unlined pages, almost flat out. I could not recall the last time I spent that much time writing something that wasn’t an email, but I’m sure it was before COVID. How had I not noticed the loss of this creative outlet? Herein lies the first lesson of the workshop – I love and need to write, and I had no idea how much I missed it.

Returning to the writing workshop: we had six prompts of 5-10 minutes each, with brief reflection in between. The prompts carried our focus in an arc over the hour and a half, with detailed reflection on:

• a specific location in nature that speaks to our heart
• the difficult and challenging emotions and worries we have around the climate crisis
• what resilience means to us, individually and collectively
• taking a radical new perspective on the crisis, and the future we want to see
• cataloguing our strengths and resources we could bring to bear
• summation of what we wish to make manifest in the world

I admit I started the workshop from a relatively bleak and panicked place, one that I’m sure many of you would recognize. Beginning that first prompt with a cherished memory from childhood helped to connect me with my own resilience and my direct experience with the natural world. There was a tree in our neighborhood I climbed at least once a week, from the time I was barely tall enough to reach its lowest branch, until we moved away when I was twelve. I have no idea how much time I spent up there, being rocked by the breezes, at one with the dappled light and the sound of the wind in the branches. My words flowed effortlessly as I explored all the senses from those memories. And I began to feel more whole, and less panicked. Therein lies the second lesson of the workshop: the answer to our sense of disconnection and alarm is to practice reconnecting with the natural world, whether in our memories or in person may not matter.

Via the second prompt, visiting all my fears and concerns about the climate crisis allowed me to catalog them, and recognize they were finite. When they had still been a swirling jumble of impressions, they felt almost insurmountable. In a neat row on the page they are far less overwhelming, and are immediately subject to problem solving, and to aligning my efforts with doing just that. Similarly, the ten minutes reflecting via the prompt on what resilience looks and feels like helped me reconnect with and reaffirm the resilience practices I have built these past two years, which are the very things that have carried me through this pandemic (meditation, artwork, music, community, family).

The real pivot-point for me in the workshop was this expressive writing prompt: “Explore the perspective of a future version of yourself, a wise friend or elder, a child or a divine ally. Who would you see the situation differently? What unseen opportunities or gifts might be present in the challenges you are facing? How can you view the climate crisis from a radically different perspective?” I spent only a moment picking from those options, and as soon as pen hit paper, words simply poured forth. Only this time there was no memory to be used as a roadmap, just this Elder perspective:

All this has happened, and all this will happen again. We each have our part to play in the dance. We can be most effective when we work from our core values, and our soul’s purpose. From the perspective of the relative and the absolute, there is a pressing crisis and there is also no problem at all. By relaxing into not knowing, bearing witness, and compassionate action, we can move forward with ease and joy. We can work towards the vision without attachment to outcome, while also embodying that vision right now, and in every moment. The truth is that future is here, now, where it has always been. The only moment that has ever existed. As doubts or resistance may occur, simply revisit those core values, the north star. Recenter in this moment, and proceed with poise and equanimity. We meet this situation with love, not with fear. In our dignity, in mutual respect and reciprocity, with safety and connection for all.

The complete ease with which all the above appeared was an affirmation, and a reassurance. And therein lies the next lesson from the workshop: that such a fundamentally wise and holistic perspective is available to me, and to all of us, in every moment.

The final prompt invited us to write about what we wanted to see manifest in the world, starting with statements like “I believe…” “I will…” “I will leave behind…” and “I am committed to…”

I believe in a world where we live as the integral and interdependent part of the whole of nature that we are – as in Braiding Sweetgrass, with the honorable harvest, asking permission, the circle of gifts given to us by nature and of gifts given by us in return to nature, as an integral part of nature. Giving more than we are given in return, giving thanks, being in right relationship with ourselves, each other, and our lived environment – our relatives, brothers, sisters in the forests, the lands, the oceans and the skies. I will use my gifts to manifest that future now and in every moment, even as we work towards realizing this vision more fully, without attachment to outcome. I will advocate for and work in collaboration towards a just and truly inclusive transition where all may thrive. With enough to cover our needs, but not all our wants. I will advocate for creativity, love, inclusion, compassion, equity, justice (“what love looks like in public”). I will leave behind nothing but the ripples as they may be amplified or resonate with others to create the song of our shared future. I am committed to all this, and to inspire and nurture this awareness in others and myself. For all these things I am grateful.

While I did write all of that, and more, about the climate crisis, you can see where I was left at the end was with gratitude. Gratitude for the workshop process, gratitude for this one precious life, gratitude for the restoration of my health to the point where I can be of service in these ways. Herein lies the last lesson of the workshop: expressive writing is an effective door through which we can step from our feelings of isolation, overwhelm and grief and to step into right relationship with those feelings. And from there, to launch into effective collaborative action; into that inclusive and sustainable future which we seek to embody.

What would you write about your relationship to the climate crisis? And for what are you most grateful?

This article is part of a series of posts on life and coaching, with particular focus on the intersection of coaching with our sense of meaning and fulfillment, aligned with what the world needs, and how we can embody leadership (as defined by Master Somatic Coach Amanda Blake: leadership “… as a process of connecting to what matters, envisioning what could be, and taking action to bring that vision to life. When you care about something enough to ask others to care about it with you and you effectively collaborate with others to co-create a new future, then you are leading.”)