Even before the brutal murder of George Floyd unleashed global unrest and a demand for social justice, many Americans were feeling overwhelmed, anxious and full of grief.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down everything we knew as normal and quickly transformed a health crisis into an economic one. Weve lost loved ones, jobs, the rituals of life, a sense of security.

For Rene Lertzman, how weve been reacting to it was both expected and unexpected.

Its been fascinating to watch people waking up to the way that our lives, what we take to be normal day-to-day life, in reality is actually made up of all kinds of relationships and phenomena, says Lertzman, of San Anselmo. I remember that moment when the schools started to be closed and all of a sudden people realized that were many children who relied on school lunches and then another thing and another, and all of a sudden the web, the incredibly complex systems that were embedded in living, suddenly became very visible and suddenly became very real.

As a globally recognized psychologist and strategist who researches the intersection of human experience, climate and the environment, Lertzman spends a lot of time thinking about those webs and system-level collapse and change.

Getting through the pandemic at the same time that we are experiencing climate change is presenting us with two unprecedented challenges a need to explore how we got here and what kind of humans were going to be as we move forward.

It is, she admits, a cognitive leap.

Were going through a profoundly traumatic collective experience. When theres a trauma response, it is very hard to think systemically, it is hard to think in a more expansive way. Were contracted, were just trying to cope, to survive. A lot of cognitive energy is simply going into processing day-to-day life and that in itself is taking a tremendous toll, she says.

But one thing we need to recognize is that the pandemic isnt something that just happened to us its directly related to human choices, which have also contributed to climate change. We have helped to create this moment.

These things are being experienced as separate, but theyre not. Nothing is truly separate in the world. Were embedded in highly complex systems that are interrelated and mutually influencing all the time, says Lertzman, who helps companies and organizations shape their climate and sustainability initiatives. Its directly related to human encroachment on wildlife and its exactly the kind of thing that has happened and will continue to happen as human development grows and our interface with wildlife mingles. But its hard for people to go there. Its kind of a cognitive leap for people because were feeling so traumatized.

Thankfully, we dont have to experience it alone. In fact, she says, we shouldnt. That only compounds our sense of being alone in our fears for the future. But we all have them, especially now.

Instead, she says, we should be talking about it with others openly, without judgment, shame, blame or guilt. Admitting were scared, overwhelmed, angry and feeling powerlessness. Acknowledging all our losses.

Talking is what got Lertzman through her own existential crisis in 1986 after her college environmental science professor laid out a horrific gloom-and-doom view of what was ahead famines, flooding, mass extinctions, all because of human consumption.

She got really depressed. But when she went on a backpacking trip that summer as part of a environmental philosophy and religion course with 11 other people, and they started sharing their fears and anxiety about the future, she felt better. What she experienced is whats known as the talking cure, a psychological term rooted in the ideas of Freud that says talking about things that are making people anxious and depressed can help them put it in perspective.

That has driven her work ever since. And it can lead people to action, she says.

Psychoanalytic work is one of our greatest untapped resources when it comes to meeting our environmental crisis more effectively, she writes in her 2015 academic book, Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement. This is because we must understand on the deepest levels possible the workings of human behavior, including unconscious processes such as denial, projection, splitting, disavowal and apathy.

Just as there is denial about climate change, there is also denial around the coronavirus, which is why some people are refusing to wear masks or practice social distancing. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who dont believe in climate change are also not playing along with the pandemic rules.

Its a style of refuting whats real and a profound distrust of authority and science, which comes directly out of people feeling fearful, people feeling vulnerable, feeling aggrieved, lonely, left out, says Lertzman, who helped create the Climate Psychology Alliance, a group for professionals and others interested in the intersection of psychology and climate change.

But shaming, dismissing or ostracizing people who feel that way is not the way to alleviate their fears and get them to do what science says is the right thing, she says.

Its natural to feel sad and angry but I think its really important for us to always remember that underneath the sort of irrational, destructive behavior is a lot of pain, she says. Try to tune into that, to be curious if at all possible, which is really hard when the stakes are high. Its hard to meet that with curiosity and compassion, but I dont see any other way around it. It doesnt mean condoning it, it doesnt mean fighting it, but it does mean coming from that spirit of, wow, whats going on in their lives that would lead them to behave in this way and is there anything I can do to address that?

Curiosity and compassion come in handy no matter whom youre discussing the pandemic and climate change with. Just please do discuss it, Lertzman says.

Starting with asking questions. How are you? How are you doing? What is life like for you right now? What are you scared about? What are you feeling excited about? Coming from a place of, Im curious about you. I want to know what your experience is, she says.

At a time like this, when everything has been shaken up, people who have been working on climate change for a number of years feel like, this is our moment, this is our time to finally make profound changes in our lives and the world because theres such a level of disruption. Its a trauma and an opportunity.

Just like we dont have to experience the pain were feeling from the pandemic by ourselves, we can look to people in Marin who have experience with trauma and learn from them, she says.

This is the time to dig into those resources and leverage them, so that we can recognize what it is to navigate trauma with resilience and capacity and compassion, she says. There are resources in our community, leading people in the world who have spiritual practice, who have trauma practice, who have spent a lot of time understanding human consciousness and the mind. All those things we think are so Marin, well, now we need that happening, grounded in real life and connecting the dots with inequity, privilege and elitism.

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How to get through coronavirus and climate change grief - The Mercury News