Integrative Ecotherapy: Expanding the Circle of Care

? 2024 Linda Buzzell

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The Zoom Out is a simple ecotherapy practice you might want to try. Choose a painful or stressful issue that’s up for you in your life right now and then zoom out in concentric circles (or spirals) from this initial narrow focus to unpack it at progressively expansive levels. These levels can be seen as concentric circles of care.

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1.??? Individual pain. In Western culture we usually start with the individual psychological level – often cognitive, behavioral or even medical. This can be very helpful in identifying the immediate practical problem, but it’s sometimes limited. Other Western psychological modalities are slightly more expansive. For example, we may look at family of origin dynamics, childhood experiences and current emotional and cognitive experiences including fantasies and dreams. Medical and even neurological issues might also be explored. But the focus is usually individual, perhaps because we live in a highly individualistic culture.

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2.??? Family and interpersonal therapy may expand things further. Perhaps we may even invite the immediate or expanded family into the session or discussion. But we’re still focused entirely on closest human relatives.

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3.??? The Ancestors. Some therapies like family constellation work may also expand the exploration of family dynamics into the past, looking into ancestral influences and even intergenerational transmission of trauma. What are the ongoing effects of our forebears’ life struggles? What secrets were held that have not yet been exposed and may still be affecting us?

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4.??? Genealogy and DNA sequencing can expand this further. Daily we see newspaper stories about people whose lives have been upended by unexpected results of these investigations, leading to discoveries of unknown relatives, various infidelities and hidden secret lives.

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5.??? Community. If we expand the circle of discovery even further – but still at the humans-only level – we may look more deeply at the impacts on the presenting problem of surrounding community (or lack thereof) in present and past locations where we’ve lived. Loneliness and isolation are epidemic in the world’s techno-industrial cultures.

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6.??? Wider social and economic systems. Zooming the lens even further back, we might also take a deeper look at the social, economic and cultural systems we're embedded in. How might issues like individualism, financial stress, corporate culture, racism, classism, patriarchy, various bigotries, social media, consumerism, capitalism, war and even fascism be impacting our specific “individual” pain? How much of so-called individual mental illness in the corporate, techno-industrial world is directly caused by sick, selfish systems that affect not only our own individual human life but the lives of millions of other humans (and other living beings) around the planet? And what is our part in perpetuating these sick systems? Awakening to these difficult truths is a powerful endeavor.

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It's interesting to pause here and realize that we now find ourselves a full six levels out from our initial starting point in this exploration of a specific psychological pain we are struggling with. And yet we haven’t really begun to understand and delve into the impacts of our embeddedness in the whole of nature!

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7.??? Ecotherapy. At this level we begin to explore our connections (or lack thereof) with the rest of the living and natural world. This is the realm of ecopsychology and ecotherapy. As human animals – body, mind, soul, spirit – we have evolved to thrive as an embedded part of the natural whole. We are part of a living Earth and cosmos, having evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in daily contact with the rest of nature. We depend on our mother planet for life and yet find ourselves in a situation where many of us are deluded into believing that humans are somehow magically separate from and superior to the rest of nature so what happens to nature has no effects on us. Some of us suffer from nature deprivation disorder (Louv, 2008). Like zoo animals in small cages, we find ourselves going mad from the unnatural separation from our natural habitat and our natural kin. Some call this human zoochosis (Bradshaw, 2021). We long for the natural places we evolved to live in; we mourn the loss of our wild animal relatives and cherish our companion animals to fill that void. We can experience pain relief and deep joy from various nature-connection practices.

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8.??? Beyond eco-narcissism. Now we can move from Level 1 ecotherapy (individualistic, narcissistic – focused on our own pain and the evidence-based fact that various nature contact practices can have measurable healing effects on that) to Level 2 – the reciprocal circle of healing (Buzzell, 2016). Rather than merely “using” some aspect of nature contact for our own healing, we begin to inquire about the health of Earth herself (Canty, 2022). It’s an axiom of ecotherapy that there can be no human health on a sick planet. This helps us move beyond our initial focus on our own pain. And at this level we need community support and help to process the shock, eco-grief, eco-anxiety and shame that arise as we truly fathom what humans have done both to ourselves and to the rest of the living world.

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9.??? Ecospirituality. A final stage of our recovery may now evolve. Many people are astonished to discover and experience the many ways that nature connection can offer not only demonstrable healing benefits but also open up an additional, spiritual dimension in our lives. We sense that somehow we’re now in contact with the sacred, however we understand that. Experiences of awe while watching a sunset, smelling a flower, walking silently through a forest, swimming wildly in the ocean, being nuzzled by a wild horse… these can all open a final, transcendent wide lens through which we glimpse and experience things way beyond our initial focus on our own pain. We may rediscover the power of collective dreams, meaningful ceremony, rites of passage and ancestral presences at this level. The inspiration and life guidance that can come from a deeper, loving relationship with place, plant, animal, water, earth, air and sky offers deep connection to an ultimate healing presence that can enrich our lives and the lives of the many others (human and more than human) with whom we share every moment on Earth.

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Resources

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Bradshaw, G.A.? Enculturated Captivity, Zoochosis, and Collective Trauma. Psychology Today, June 17, 2021. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bear-in-mind/202106/enculturated-captivity-zoochosis-and-collective-trauma

Buzzell, Linda (2016). The Many Ecotherapies, in Ecotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, Martin Jordan & Joe Hinds, eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Canty, Jeanine M. (2022) Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet, New York: Penguin Random House.

Louv, Richard. (2008) Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin.