Emotional Responses to “Too Much”
““It’s almost hard to focus on something like climate when there’s sooooo much other bad shit happening in the world.””
This anxiety hits very close to home. The above sentiment is a direct quote from one of my best friends (who I met working in the climate justice movement!) during one of the many conversations we’ve had about climate change; always in these chats, we seem to come back to this anxiety that the “real world” is already too much - how can we even attempt to focus on any one social justice issue?
Balm of Intersectionality
This balm draws on frameworks of movement and social interaction to remind us that all justice work is connected. By developing a perspective that helps us see how one social justice movement engages with others, we can find new meaning and importance in our work, and come to our social justice practice with a sense of renewal of purpose!
This framework of intersectionality comes from the work of Rev. Elias Farajaje Jones around engaging with multiplicative identities through religious education. In developing his perspective, Jones calls us to discard “binary” modes of thinking to accept a more intersectional, interconnected worldview; “We can hold more than two things at a time,” writes Jones, “in creative, dynamic tension. This will affect how we approach race, gender, class, embodiment, sexualities, spiritualities, etc.; it will influence how we can show how they interconnect and intersect constantly.” This shift to an interdependent way of seeing the world also changes how we view justice movements, argues Jones, envisioning a world where, through this intersectional framework, “the struggle for the restoration of sacred lands…is our struggle; where labor-union issues, immigration, literacy, unemployment, health care reform, dismantling the state-sanctioned death penalty and the prison-industrial complex, crimes of violence against women, women’s health issues, access and accessibility for all, single parents, child custody, hunger, homelessness are all of our issues.”
Within this framework, then, we cannot draw concrete boundaries between the work of one justice movement and another, just as we cannot rely on a binary understanding of the world; instead, Jones invites us to “take into account the multiplicities of human experiences, acknowledging that we all live and move constantly in the in-between spaces, that we are all more than one thing at a time.”
Relating this framework directly to social justice praxis, we discover a perspective that soothes the anxiety that we must work directly in a social justice movement to have an impact on the problem. Instead, through this intersectional framework, Jones invites us to think about all justice work as connected, and invites us to see our motivation through the new lens of relatedness; to analyze our drive to work for justice through the lens of connected movements. In this way, we can make space to focus on the work that matters personally to us with an understanding that working for justice in any sphere helps to create justice for all.
Balm of Trauma Stewardship
This balm draws on frameworks of trauma stewardship to affirm the self-care dimension of justice work. By understanding how our individual “real-world” challenges affect the ways we can make change in justice work, we can open the doors to a healthier, more effective, and more engaged approach to the climate justice movement!
The framework of trauma stewardship comes from Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, an author writing about self-care and mental health as they relate to working for justice. Lipsky’s work draws a connection between experiences in justice work and personal self-care, underscoring the idea that trauma experienced through our work for justice has an impact on us personally; “The fact that we are affected by the suffering of others and of our planet,” writes Lipsky, “that we have a trauma exposure response - is universal.”
Exposure to this type of trauma can have a negative impact on an individual’s mental health, leading to anxiety, stress, and even burnout. Lipsky further links these experiences of secondary trauma (trauma experienced as an “external” participant to an event) to an individual’s physical health, adding that people acting in service roles often “suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, a compromised immune system, and other symptoms that can be linked to prolonged exposure to elevated levels of stress hormones.” Working for social justice, then, has the potential to expose us to many different types of trauma that can impact both our physical and mental health.
Thankfully, Lipsky has an answer for how to address these types of trauma responses! Through her trauma stewardship framework, Lipsky underlines self-care and addressing trauma exposure as critical first steps in engaging in justice work, calling us to think of trauma stewardship as “a long-term strategy that enables us to remain whole and helpful to others and our surroundings even amid great challenges.” Within this framework, Lipsky also invites us into the perspective that caring for ourselves is a type of service, an opportunity to best prepare ourselves to enact effective and just change; “To participate in trauma stewardship,” writes Lipsky, “is to always remember the privilege and sacredness of being called to help.” This perspective opens the door to centering personal self-care as a valid and necessary aspect of any justice work.
How do we integrate this trauma stewardship framework as a balm for social justivce anxieties? From one perspective, Lipsky’s words affirm our need to focus on the “bad shit” happening in our worlds; as a prerequisite for justice work, we are called to address the personal and mental health challenges that block us from engaging with the movement. Within the context of climate justice work, such a perspective once again reduces the pressure on the individual within the movement and reminds us to take care of ourselves - first.
Equally valid within this framework is the perspective that caring for yourself also serves the greater “whole”; as Lipsky reminds us, trauma stewardship is necessary in preparing for the “great challenges” of working for justice. She also explicitly names the collective experience (thinking again about concepts of relatedness) of trauma stewardship, writing that “by consciously staying connected with others, we are taking an important step toward trauma-stewardship.” As this concept relates to social justice, we can once again see an invitation to turn our focus towards the whole; to help others in our justice movement address their stressors outside of justice work. This framework calls us to remember that self-care and any justice movement are inherently linked, and to create liberation, we must all be prepared to tackle the “bad shit” that comes our way.