Witnessing Professionals: On the Difference between Acting Out and Activism

“In creating networks of supported clinicians, I see another role for CPA-NA; that is, to encourage new ways of imagining the clinical role as activists. ”

By CPA-NA Co-President Rebecca Weston

As Co-President of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, I have been thinking a great deal about what the mental health field can offer in this moment of escalating and overlapping crises. Focused on "climate psychology," CPA-NA exists at many intersections: between the internal and external, between the individual and the systemic, between the human and more than human, between an awareness of psychological defenses and the liberatory potential that can be found through new ways of relating to our social and environmental systems. To all of this, I'd add that we should also exist at the intersection of reflection and action.

Witnessing Professionals and Reflection:

Within the organization, we talk about what Robert Jay Lifton calls the "witnessing" aspect of our work - the part that honors the need for reflection, for slowing down, bearing witness, and holding exceedingly painful and dysregulating emotions. The part that needs to validate and attune to the profound existential questions that are arising out of the here and the now. Indeed, most of our events and clinical offerings aim to support precisely those aspects of our work.

Photo credit: Rebecca Weston

And I believe in them deeply. I believe in that reflective space, and I share our profession’s focus on the reflective mind and on the interpersonal process of seeing and being seen; the neurobiology and psychology of attachment; the “containing” function of validation and attunement. I do believe these reflective individual and interpersonal ways of being help us to feel secure in this moment, to not “act out” hard feelings destructively or manically. They are crucial for resilience, tolerance, and empathy - all things sorely needed in these treacherous and polarizing times.  

 

Differentiating Action from "Acting Out"

But as we know, the climate crisis is a systemic crisis at all levels (ecological, economic, political, social, cultural, institutional, medical and spiritual). It is also a psychological and mental health crisis. Insofar as I also take quite seriously the systemic nature of this crisis (and the intersecting crises of racism and patriarchy) and the ways in which neo-liberalism nurtures the uncaring aspects of the human psyche, I think we must contend with the limits of our profession as currently practiced. Just as these systems will not change simply through individual reductions in our carbon footprint, they will not change simply through therapeutic reflection behind closed doors. Our alienated psyches will not adapt in healthy ways to what’s coming without the transformative, enlivening and often validating processes of active and collective engagement.  

Beyond containing (in the best sense) climate distress, I think this crisis behooves us to think with ourselves and with our clients about how this distress can be expressed, how it can be mobilized, how it can be empowered. Indeed, we need to make room for the opposite of “contained.”  

“Thinking of ourselves as clinician activists raises lots of questions, pushes outside yet other comfort zones of expertise and ways of being, opens possibilities for making an impact as we see and anticipate more collective trauma.”

Too often, in analytic spaces, “activism” gets a pejorative or judgmental side-way glance, a “Hmmm … are they acting out, defending against, avoiding feeling?” Or if not that, it is seen as secondary, as the impulsive and restless juvenile sibling of the more adult reflective function. 

While I think those questions are all very much worth considering, I also think they risk exacerbating youth anxiety (which is in part stemming from the failure of adults to act), colluding with the fantasy that “others” will do the messy work of demanding change, and missing the ways in which collective action and engagement can be a wider scale witnessing and a wider scale attuning that helps individuals access their hope-ful, caring parts. It is worth remembering that mindfulness is not the opposite of action. To the contrary, it is what enables action to be intentional.  Directed. Sustainable. Effective.  

Showing up as Clinician Activists

Photo Credit: Rebecca Weston

In this context, in creating networks of supported clinicians, I see another role for CPA-NA; that is, to encourage new ways of imagining the clinical role as activists. Arising out of conditions that are already traumatizing to many, the climate related mental health crisis will only grow in scale and complexity. It is far bigger than any one approach, organization, model of care or solution. It shines a light on our good intentions and amplifies the glaring weaknesses of our current mental health system (in terms of access to care, how mental health needs are defined, whose needs are met and how mental health care is delivered). Thinking of ourselves as clinician activists raises lots of questions, pushes outside yet other comfort zones of expertise and ways of being, opens possibilities for making an impact as we see and anticipate more collective trauma and dangerous splitting and defending and avoiding. Indeed, just as climate scientists are stepping out of their stoic neutral roles, it is time for clinicians to step out of our contained office spaces. In this moment, it is time for our profession to join others and actively “show up.”