CIIS Public Programs Podcast

Transcript

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

In her work, CIIS professor Jeanine Canty uses the lens of ecopsychology to show that the pervasive and extreme forms of narcissism we find in many modern societies are the result of alienation from the natural world. In her recent book, Returning the Self to Nature, Jeanine shares how we can move beyond a world that revolves around selfish and disconnected identity models, and step into healthy relationships with ourselves, our communities, and our planet. In this episode, Jeanine is joined by Leslie Davenport, who is the program co-lead for the Climate Psychology Certificate at CIIS, for an inspiring conversation on visualizing and embodying the wild naturalness of being human, and how to gain skills to begin experiencing a courageous, pluralistic, and ecological self.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 8th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

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Leslie Davenport: Welcome back everyone. Well, in addition to this rich conversation that we'll have tonight, we know that it's also about integrating experience and taking in information in different ways. So, Jeanine, I hope you'd be willing to start us out with a practice from your book. I'm thinking of the one towards the beginning that's called a routine. [Jeanine: Sure.] Sort of gather together. 

Jeanine Canty: I would love to. Yeah, and yeah, and I also want to acknowledge, I’m coming in from, I live in outside of the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. So, I do want to acknowledge that I'm on the ancestral lands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute peoples.  

So yeah, it's probably evening for most of us, but it could be a different time of the day when folks are watching, listening to this. So, we'll just root right now. So, I would encourage everyone to get into a comfortable either seated position, whether you're on a chair, or you can sit on the floor, cushion and it's also perfectly fine to stand up if that's what's calling to you in the moment. And just get grounded and we'll get a bit grounded. And what I will encourage you to do is that you can make your eyes soft, or you could also close your eyes. I tend to keep my eyes a little bit open, but any way is fine. But if you do have your eyes soft, keep them soft without staring at anything or anyone. And you can even close your eyes and then let your body be heavy. Let your legs, your sit bones, your feet, your arms, everything to relax and to feel supported by the ground below you. I like to make contact with my feet on the ground in some manner.  

Taking a deep breath. Imagine that you have deep roots that form from the base of your sit bones, your seat that plunge deep into the Earth, whether through the carpet or the floor below, through any stories at levels through the cement, eventually finding rich Earth. And allow your belly to be soft. And begin taking some really deep breaths that come deep in your belly and start to generate heat. Let your inhales and your exhales be deep. Taking in cleansing air. Notice your posture and let your torso be upright. Elongate your neck and slightly tuck your chin.  

Relax your mouth and your jaw and you might even want to stretch out your mouth and even stick out your tongue for a moment. Relaxing your face, relax your eyes once more. And then just as you imagined that you have roots, plunging below you and to rich Earth. Imagine that from the crown of your head, you have long branches that are reaching towards the sky, that mirror your roots below. And taking those deep breaths.  

Notice if there are any areas of pain or discomfort in your body. And taking a deep breath, send your breath to all of these spaces. And then touch into your heart. And notice if there's a dominant emotion that's arising for you. Don't spend too much time thinking about the emotion, just be with it and silently, silently name this emotion. Honoring it and really acknowledging that this feeling is just one of many lenses that you're experiencing right now. And breathing, we’ll sit in silence for a moment or two.  

And then gently come back to your surroundings. [Leslie: Hm.] Yeah, thank you for asking me to share that, Leslie. 

Leslie: So beautiful. So beautiful. It would be great to hear even a little more about your background and especially what led you to write this book that's coming out on narcissism and returning the self to nature.  

Jeanine: Yeah, and it’s so hard as, especially I think, as we get older to you know, what is my background, but I guess in a short snapshot, a lot of my kind of stories, my life stories have intersected around being a person of color in the US. I identify as African American, Black, multicultural, I have a kind of a bricolage of cultural background. So, I've always been very aware of social injustice, social justice issues. And at the same time, I’ve been really always found kind of nourishment, comfort, guidance with my experiences with nature, the more than human world and those things are so related and intersect.  

And so, as a young person, I definitely had just a lot of questions of, particularly with race issues, why were adults so kind of cruel, you know, what was wrong with the world? As I was witnessing so much social stratification and suffering, and as I started exploring that more and in studies and I just really started to link that with a lot of ecological issues, particularly with my educational pathways and kind of the surroundings that I found myself in. And that's a whole bigger, bigger story.  

In terms of the book, and I'll hold up, I have an advance copy from my publisher. It's not the full piece, but it's cool just to actually see the cover, or the yeah, and so it's called Returning The Self to Nature: Undoing our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet.  

And I had a personal encounter with someone who could probably be labeled as a narcissist, although really, and I know you know this as a licensed clinical psychologist, that only someone of that caliber and that background could actually diagnose who is a narcissist and even with that level of training, it's a really hard condition to diagnose. But I found myself, well, I'm jarred by my experience but also really perplexed and curious because within the larger landscape of our society at that time and definitely in present, narcissism is such a buzzword, and I found that the kind of mainstream information and also the research was fascinating and also really sad. Because it's classified as such a personal affliction and that if you have an encounter with a narcissist, the best thing to do is to just cut them out of your life.  

And I definitely come from both professional and also spiritual background, where if one person is suffering, it's actually a reflection of our larger community and I recalled in a lot of the early ecopsychology literature, particularly with the work of Gomes, and Kanner, Mary Kanner, Alan Kanner, Mary Gomes, as well as others, and Christopher Lasch, there's a little bit around narcissism and linking it to our high levels of consumerism, and I started really connecting those links between the narcissism that we're seeing in our current society as a social pathology and how it was really a collective, a collective endeavor. 

Leslie: Mhm. And you know, you one thing I really appreciated in your book is how nuanced you really get about narcissism, that there's so many flavors, you know, whether or not they're, you know, all named in something like the DSM. But you know, you talk about variants that we all have and covert versions and really extreme malignant versions. And then moving into this collective area. Can you maybe shine even a little more light on some of those different aspects, types of narcissism?  

Jeanine: Oh sure. And yeah, hopefully what I say will make, make sense even to me. [laughs] But yeah, I mean it is fascinating. I spent so much time researching just the condition of narcissism, and there is so much, both kind of in pop culture and then more academic scholarship and not all of it aligned. So, I think it's going to be an area that we just keep surfacing. And it's going to look very different in terms of diagnosis and treatment and all of the literature in the future.  

But well to start with healthy narcissism because people use the word narcissism and it's immediately thought of as a bad thing and there's a particular, I think there's Craig Malkin does work in terms of looking at the narcissist spectrum where there was a scale of 1 to 10. You know really, we want to be kind of in the four to six range. So, everyone should have a healthy sense of ego, you know, really showing up being having self-love, being able to express themselves, and yeah, feeling their unique identity, but and then, we obviously don't want to be on the very low scale with little to no self-esteem, but we don't want to be at the extreme level.  

And at the extreme levels is where you would find the category of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is also usually called NPD. And that's where you have the whole categories of different narcissists and it is a one of several cluster B disorders, but NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the only one that from my understanding isn't genetic and we may find more about that in the future, and there are some people that say it does have a biological component but in general, it surfaces from basically early childhood and faulty caregiving by the primary caregivers and child not developing a healthy sense of esteem and so within those NPD category, there's a slew of different kind of characteristics, character types of narcissism from gosh, there's so many, there's like a malignant, there's more of a covert or introverted narcissist. One of the ones that I find kind of interesting is there's a communal narcissist, and that's actually someone who could be like a do-giver, do-gooder, really service oriented, but it's just doing that because it, you know, they feel good about themselves. And, and yeah, so and that's I think a very small percent of the narcissists. So, there's all sorts of categories with that. 

Leslie: You know, you've spoken to it a little bit already, but I think it's really worth going into more deeply that even though narcissism can be extremely damaging to other people, and we'll talk more about the environment, you also have this kind of compassionate lens. So, you know, like you said the advice is just to cut people off. And yet you're recognizing that it's emerging from a place of being and that, you know, just to cut that off, isn't really a healing response or kind of what it takes to shift things in the direction they need to go especially because of this larger collective component, so maybe can you, I don't know, say more about that, on the one hand, what's a healthy boundary? Right? Because we need that around, you know certain people and yet not to banish. Not to banish. 

Jeanine: Yeah, gosh, and there's, there's so much right in that question, so you might have to jostle me if I forget a part of that because I, so much comes out for me, in my, I guess back to my own experience with a narcissist or someone who could be labeled as a narcissist. One of the saddest parts I found was that I realized that people in my community knew about the dangers of this person. And there was a- narcissists can be really damaging to not only one’s self-esteem, sometimes even one’s safety because of they can alienate you from loved ones, so many different and we'll talk about, I think probably some of the traits of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and so what happens if you look at a lot of the literature people will talk about the victims of a narcissist.  

And what happens is a narcissist will actually cycle through different people, almost like satiating their need and then they'll toss a person away and sometimes they'll come back and try to pick that up and so it can be a cycle of damage and um, often the you know, someone says you should definitely break ties without person, but when that happens, they're also going to be then looking for their next kind of source of feeding. And so, there was a sadness that if I cut off from a narcissist, it's actually now I'm kind of, it's almost like a not my backyard situation. I'm, you know, putting it onto someone else now, going to have to deal with this person and I think about how many people in the, you know, in, our US society but worldwide, this is happening and that's not, seemed really maddening.  

And then in more compassionate framework, which is that what I'm really more, care about is, that it is someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or extreme narcissism is someone who has had a lot of trauma and damage, particularly as a child. And so, to really demonize this person isn't recognizing that they have these really deep wounds that need to be attended to and maybe it's not a one-on-one attending, but we have to look at our larger society that we, a lot of the research says that we're having increasing numbers of narcissists. And so that means we're having increasing numbers of damaged children.  

And so, and I mean, we can link that to so many things. We're seeing young people with so much rage, so much suffering, so much pain, that's being put out into the larger society and not just on themselves. So, I yeah, I remember the recently passed wisdom holder Malidoma Somé talked about how if someone in a community is ill, it's not about that person. It's about the larger society. So instead of making this one person, or all these separate narcissists, we need to look at what is this saying about our larger society? Our communities? 

Leslie: Yeah, I want to pick up on a thread of something you said about, you know, a classic narcissist sort of uses people. They’re a form of food almost. I don't remember what word you used like food, and there's a real dehumanizing aspect of that and that I think is a really good segue to the intersectionality around narcissism and environment, narcissism and racism, narcissism and whiteness. And so, do you want to begin to connect some of those? 

Jeanine: Oh, wow ok. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a lot right there. Yes, there's yeah, so and I'll maybe just start with some basics, it’s probably, it’s helpful just to know some of the traits of what someone who's a kind of classic narcissist, someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and these are some just sweeping patterns, but this would be someone who's got this grandiose sense of self, comes off very arrogant, has very low empathy for others, like literally has trouble reading the emotional levels, cues from others, and even when they may come across, they're not really that concerned on what's going on with others. It's kind of like you, all of us probably have that family member or friend who maybe you see them, or you talk on the phone, and they don't ask you at all about yourself or if you bring up something about yourself, they redirect the conversation because it's not an interesting conversation unless it's about them.  

And then another trait is that just kind of shamelessness, this feeling that they just can't do anything wrong, they're just kind of perfect and if something is a problem, it needs to be about the other people and not them and then there's kind of a kind of switch in terms of patterns because there's also key pattern is a fragile ego. And so, this really deep rooted insecurity. Another trait is a hypersensitivity to critique. If you critique a narcissist often, they'll get really angry, you know, even rage, get into bouts of rage, refute it. Yeah, and then there's the last you know, general pattern is just this over- overall constant need to feel more special than others. And so not just special, we should all feel special, but more special than others. So, this hierarchical category and it's like every day is your birthday and you're the only person that could have a birthday.  

And so, when we connect this to collective narcissism, it's a- really looking at that and I'm very US centric, so I'm really speaking from what I witness and experience as a person living in the US and this translates also more to a lot of western and consumer-driven societies. We shift narcissism from the individuals to our larger society. And really looking at the way that we’re treating the Earth with collective narcissism, we, we’re in this society of self-centeredness. We have these traits of fierce individualism that has been part of the story of being, you know, American, this constant vanity, consumerism, success driven that pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the ladder of success, everyone can be a millionaire if you just work hard enough, which obviously is not true. But this hyper-competitiveness, constant need to feel special, more special than and this like other countries, like we're number one.  

And so, looking at that and then in, as we were talking about with Narcissistic Personality Disorder on the individual level, it happens when a person has, in their early childhood, primary caregivers that are not really doing their jobs or not giving supportive relationships to that child and there's two faulty patterns that people talk about in terms of Object Relations Theory. And one is when there's too much attention given to the child in a way that the child needs to be hyper-vigilant to the adults’ needs rather than their own. And so that's one pattern. And then there's another pattern where the adult doesn't give no, barely any attention to the child. And so, the child is left needing attention, needing to be seen, and not being. And so, both of those patterns really result in a sense of, not a sense, an actual damaged trust, within the young person, the child, the developing child. And so, with having that damaged trust in the world, the child replaces their kind of reality and constructs like a bubble reality that makes them feel safe. And so, they're really in this kind of false, constructed reality.  

And so when I look at it at the collective level, instead of having the primary caregiver as a parent, or some sort of relative, some sort of adult, in our society, our primary caregiver has really shifted authority, to global corporate culture, where that's so much of our dominant world view of always having a successful bank account, all of this ever increasing GDP of the United States of- corporations now have, can classify as individuals. All of these things that we've really pledged our legions to unbridled consumerism and commerce and capitalism in a really detrimental way.  

And, so, with that, instead of having these kind of community relationships, in the work I do with ecopsychology, we look so much about the damage that's happening to each, pretty much each and every one of us through our separation from nature, through those rites of passage of being connected to land, to communities and now we've shifted and given that authority to this global corporate culture. And even if we don't believe that, we're constantly bombarded with messages from our ads on our cell phones or iPads, you know, wherever we go, there's all of these things that keep us hyper-vigilant to this larger thing of like, do I look do I look good enough? Do I have the right clothes, or I have the right job? Do I have the right family members? The right and so many different things. Am I the right size or have the right shoes?  

All of these things and so we’re so outward-focused on these material and very superficial things that we are living in a way that is so hyper-vigilant to these other things that we've forsaken the most precious and also most important responsibilities that we have. And so, living in the society where we need like the best, the highest, the most, we're constantly in this kind of hierarchical and competitive nature and we become overly prideful and arrogant, and it cycles and cycles. And so, we end up living in this kind of false reality where we are so hyper-focused on the- what other people think of us or this image that we’re, you know, constant selfie of who we think we're presenting to the world that we have such little time to think about our fellow humans and in particularly about our Earth and all living beings.  

We've really dropped the ball on our responsibilities to the larger world and I would really like to, I know I can keep going on and on but one thing that there's so many different things, but I was so excited to have this opportunity to connect with you, Leslie. When you first reached out to me about doing some teaching in your Climate Psychology Certificate that’s starting this fall, we didn't know each other, but you didn't know that I had read your book Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change, some years ago and one of the communities that you spotlight, Jamestown, Colorado, is right near where I live and I was deeply affected by the flood and I've used some of your work in my ecopsychology classes for years, so it's like, oh, I'm so excited. So, I wonder if I could ask you a question.  

Leslie: Yeah, I’d be delighted. 

Jeanine: Ok, yeah, so well in your the book that I mentioned, Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change, you've really done all of this work studying different communities that have experienced climate change disasters, including the one I mentioned near my community, and you use this term, emotional resiliency, and I wonder what this means. Well, I know a little bit, but if you could share what it means and what you've been learning from these communities. 

Leslie: Sure, sure well emotional resiliency’s getting a new definition in the face of climate change because the conventional meaning and what you'd still find most often if you look it up on the internet is the ability to bounce back from a stressful life event, like the floods or fires, or any number of things. And how quickly can we get back to our baseline.  

But with climate change, we are, there's no baseline in the sense that we're on this moving trajectory, right? The ground is shifting under us. There's going to be more difficulties that we all need to face and learn how to be with as we do our part toward creating a more just, safe world. So, I am call- I'm saying now that emotional resiliency is cultivating the capacity to be empathetic, clear-minded, and present in the face of growing distress. Because, you know, it's part of how our nervous system is built that when stress is high, it actually kicks us out of our reasoning mind, we can't modulate the same way. We get really reactive, or we drop out and dissociate and want to numb out and check out.  

And until we learn these, you know, more tools, more ways to regulate and remain present with each other’s suffering, with each other's pain, and that kind of goes back to what you were saying about narcissism too. As we did, you know, there's this tendency to, like, cut things out, but what does it require of us to be a little more open-minded? A little more open-hearted, a little more grounded and take on the task of this stretched self?  

Jeanine: Yeah. Mmm. Yeah, yeah. I love your work. And yeah, these intersections. Yeah, I mean what you're talking about is so essential just to keep naming and that's something that comes up a lot in ecopsychology, is that with so many of these, you know, traumas and the past, it's been such a, like a personal thing and it was a trauma, hopefully it ended. And now we're doing the healing. But in this era of climate change, and, and I think both of us when we're talking about climate change, it’s what's happening to the Earth, but it's also all of these collective injustices and traumas and even we can, you know, talk about the bring in the role of the pandemic into that. And these wars that are going on, but there’s no like it started and ended. It's still happening, and we don't know, probably in our lifetimes, it's not going to end. But this emotional resiliency that you're talking about, it is a community it’s resourcing, but it really requires so much of being able to stay with our emotions and, and also having so many means of resources and support and connecting with one another.  

Leslie: And you know, it ties in so well to what you were talking about of this split with narcissism between losing touch with a more authentic self, which is by nature, you know, connected to everyone to everything versus this world self, which is kind of like instead of looking out or connecting out it’s like this mirror that bounces back at the person, right? So, it's why it even blinds us to behold who we’re with or where we are. 

Jeanine: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely an essential factor within narcissism is this false self and it's got so many different kind of nuances depending on whether it's being spoken about within clinical psychology or ecopsychology or, but so much of it is what you're talking about is this creation of almost like a plastic self where everything's always okay, but there's this constant numbness because it's a protective shell, in a lot of kind of Buddhist traditions we talk about a cocoon, this kind of staying in the safe space and not being able to peer out because it's just too painful.  

And while probably most of us, don't, may not be able to see how we have false selves, we can kind of start unraveling that a bit and know so many people that can't handle like the news or listen to viewpoints that are different than their own, or feeling their emotions, or being in one's body, or even within the ecopsychology and climate psychology worlds, like being in nature, getting, you know, dirty being porous. Like so many experiences. And with a narcissist it’s so much about control because if we, if one let's that false self crumble, then chaos might ensue, yet it can be a really joyful chaos and a place where we suddenly start having all sorts of interactions and healing and new capacities.  

One of the antidotes to the false self is developing one's ecological self, which we all need to be doing. And probably most of us watching right now, or in this space are doing, and that's when we really start developing affection bonds to beings within nature. And so maybe it's a bird outside, or a special body of water, or being in a rain shower, just having those bonds and starting to step beyond our like small ego self and kind of peering out. And then, as we start peeling back, kind of like the layers, we start developing our multicultural selves or more transpersonal selves, like there's so many levels of self, that’s so much about the healing work that we need to be doing right now.  

Leslie: Yes, and you know, part of the way I think of what you're describing is, you know, we, our western culture really identifies with being rational in control decision-makers, you know, and that’s such a small part, right? There's these unconscious things that bubble up. There's a different kind of knowing that happens when you're in your ecological self and connected with nature and so much of what you've spoken about community or communal wisdom and the, even the self-regulation that happens, we are, they're discovering our nervous system sync up with each other. Very similar to what happens with the root systems underground in a forest.  

Jeanine: Yes! Yeah. Yeah, and it's yeah, we started to remember that yeah, that we’re always interdependent or Thich Nhat Hanh says interbeing a no man- no man, no woman, no being is an island unto itself. Or maybe we are- we're an ecosystem. So, we're always interacting, and our sense of self is connected, and embedded in these other beings. I love when we eot really philosophical, and this idea, like, well, there is no self because if you said, you know, what, part of me is just me like, nothing because I can't exist without air and water and warmth, and so many. Yeah, we're living systems. 

Leslie: You’re getting to it already, but is there more you can say to, you know, kind of what it takes to turn things around, you know, you describe this growing narcissism and I think it is easy to see and the way you described it playing out in our society collectively and damaging the Earth. And what do we what can we each do? And what, what do we need to do to engage?  

Jeanine: Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's funny as you're saying that to you. I realized when we were talking before, I never even got into like the connection between narcissism and racism, which I write about a lot in the book. And there's, there's so much in terms of the kind of breakdown of all of the isms around collective narcissism and how they play out. But yeah, I do want to shift into some of the kind of healing around that because it's so important.  

And yeah, and I think something in terms of healing is that there's, you know, there's no one-size-fits-all, everyone's healing path is going to be different and healing, I believe is dynamic. It's collective. It's systemic. There's so many different pieces with that and it's yeah, there's no one-size-fits-all. So, within this, I have things that I offer and I know I'll ask you about this after I talk because you have some wonderful offerings around this as well. And I think our work there's so much overlap with these pieces around healing and tools and skillfulness. But definitely we've talked about the attending to our emotions. And there's so many the work of Joanna Macy and Miriam Greenspan and Pema Chödrön, and so many folks, but just that importance of honoring what's actually surfing- surfacing for us instead of trying to either suppress it or just make it better. That the pathway, you know, the pathway is through feeling our emotions.  

At the beginning of our conversation, you were, we were talking about the kind of narcissistic scale or spectrum and the importance of actually having levels of narcissism. So, another pattern there is just the importance of loving ourselves. So many people within our society, and probably all of us at certain points or you know, even everyday moments have these kind of negative thoughts about ourselves and these kind of constant critics and critiques. And we forget the importance of really having self-love, being having gratitude and appreciation for our capacities, our goodness, our abilities to show up for so many different things and it's so easy to lose that. So, we want to honor our uniqueness and our specialness, but just not in a way that we think we are more special than others.  

Definitely the work with mindfulness is so important. I think having a meditation practice or, you know, going out and walking in silence. There's so many different, doing yoga or, you know, just even mindfully, whether we're cleaning our houses or doing service, just being mindful about it. And another one I talked about earlier, was that developing our ecological selves and of course, enlarging our compassion towards others when we're so caught up in the me, me, me or even the self-critique. It's a great practice to just turn out like, how can I be useful? How can I make someone else have a better day today? How can I be of service?  

And then the last piece that I think is so important is this idea of race. And that's the opening up to something greater than our really small sense of self and it gets a little like, whoa, what are you talking about? I think probably folks that are in this space are probably more aligned with being spiritual beings and whether it's religion or spiritual, but not religion, but just being able to recognize that there's something much bigger than the human world. And also, there's something bigger than just even the visible material world and being able to drop into that and really having some guidance there.  

So, I really would love to before we, for you to talk a little bit about the components in your work that bring about the healing. And I know you do a lot about grief and all sorts of tools. So, I would love for you to share that because it's just so amazing. 

Leslie: [laughs] Thank you. Yeah, it's I think you were describing this earlier as you speak, I have about, you know, ten things going off, at one point, I think we’re so aligned in this. You know what you were just describing around, you know, how to access wonder and joy as being core human capacities of human experiences and we've got these complex emotions too, right, that come out of, like you said early childhood wounding or experiences we encounter through our life and so it's such a both, and, right? To not do, and I appreciate the way you bring that emotions and not to do a spiritual bypassing that it's only okay, right? To be, to feel certain things, and there's emotions we want to avoid but that, you know, especially in the face of climate change, you know, there's so much now, talk about eco-anxiety, eco-grief, rage, frustration, despair, dread. Not because there's anything wrong with us and feeling those things or those emotions are wrong, but because if we are empathetic and care and pay attention to the damage that's happening, that’s how we respond, and we don't want to just feel under the weight of that all the time.  

We've talked about skillfulness too, but how to at least begin by honoring, you know, that's us enduring the pain of the Earth, the pain of people, the nonhuman world. I mean, the whole thing that's riffling through us through those in the. And so, to really be tender and validating towards these really difficult feelings. And, and that, that is part of, you know, this larger picture that also includes this essential life, force, and joy. And that our joy is, doesn't have to be dependent on things getting solved. You know that it also has its own sovereignty in a way.  

Jeanine: Yeah. That's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's such a, what you're talking about, I think invokes so much tenderness too, when you’re talking about eco-anxiety, and we can spread that to just like the general anxiety probably most of us are feeling right now and sometimes it's like oh, there's no pinpoint of why. And so, it's like well, you know, I've got, you know, everything's working in my body or, you know, you know what's going on. And I think in mainstream psychology, it's well, you know, what's your relationship with your father, or your, you know, your mother or that it needs to be a personal thing rather than now we're really waking up and realizing how bound up we are together and how interdependent and so that kind of fine sensitivity that so many of us are aware of now. It's, for me, it's just kind of beautiful that we’re feeling like the anxiousness and the pain and the sadness because it's so deeply rooted in love and caring. And when we can like actually name that, see that and start engaging with one another, that actually turns into something really beautiful and something that can be held because what we see that we're not alone. Oh, this isn't about some personal pathology, like, what's going on in the world is that'll be validly tragic and painful and alarming. And I'm awake and alert. And I'm ready to attend to this. 

Gosh, I yeah, I just want to express my gratitude to be in conversation and just connection and community with you. It's definitely bringing me a lot of joy and I just, yeah, I feel, feel- yeah, I just feel so deeply honored and obviously honored with our larger circles and community and I'm really looking forward to deepening our connection this fall with being part of your Climate Psychology certificate. And then also yeah attending to just the greater work and joy, yeah. 

Leslie: Thank you, and I feel exactly the same way, so grateful for this conversation tonight, and that we do have these ways of working together coming up as well, with the certificate program. And thanks to all of you.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, and Nikki Roda. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  

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