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In This Article

• Why denial is a natural psychological defense mechanism
• How misinformation fuels climate change denial
• The role of anxiety in avoiding uncomfortable truths
• Ways to transition from denial to conscious awareness
• How presence and interconnection help dissolve denial

Finding Refuge in Denial: Why We Resist Climate Reality

by Lynne Sedgmore, author of the book: Presence Activism.

To take threats seriously, most people need to feel fully informed before they can offer a well-considered opinion. The abundance of contradictory information on climate peril can be overwhelming or confusing, making it very difficult to form your own, clear opinion. Overwhelm and confusion can lead to denial.

Denial can stop us from feeling anxious through being out of touch with what is really happening in the world. In some ways, it is a useful defence mechanism. However, maintaining denial in the face of overwhelming evidence and information on climate peril can be exhausting.

Denial: A Protection Mechanism

Denial has a survival function, as it is an important mechanism for helping us to protect ourselves from too much anxiety, fear and overwhelm. Our brains cope well with immediate threats, yet we are not wired to perceive the dangers of long-term, systemic threats.

We are the boiling frogs who are being informed and affected so gradually by climate information, issues and impacts that we constantly absorb, rationalise, habituate and minimise what is happening. The result is a denial that enables us to carry on with our lives and to function.

Most people are averse to change and hang onto the status quo or find ways of denying and avoiding what makes them feel uncomfortable. It can be difficult to face the possibility of our lives being severely disrupted and changed for the worse, so we reject this as a possibility.

False Information Encourages Climate Denial

There are a range of organisations and think tanks engaged in campaigns to encourage climate denial. They actively disseminate information serving their own self-interest, and deliberately deny or distort the scientific data on climate peril.

The data, science and modeling of climate impact is very complex, contradictory, controversial and variable, making denial a less anxiety-inducing option than choosing to see a potentially disastrous future.

Mark Maslin, in How to Save Our Planet: The Facts (2021), illustrates deliberate attempts from scientific, political, economic and humanitarian perspectives to deny that we are in a deep crisis and need to act. His focus on the many forms of denial is illuminating. He emphasises how denial is a “very human emotion” and “facts are power.”

Clive Hamilton, in Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (2010), feels that continuing in denial eventually “becomes perverse,” requiring one of following denial approaches: “a wilful misreading of the science, a romantic view of the ability of political institutions to respond or faith in divine intervention.”

I have always been fascinated by how we live each day with death all around us and yet we are able to carry on and live our daily lives. There is a Hindu saying that we wake up every day thinking we are immortal when all around us is death. We all accept, on some level, however unconscious, that we will die, that death is an inevitability, yet it’s only when death is imminent that we fully face our own individual immortality.

To come out of denial we need support to face the psychological, emotional and physical impacts that can arise. In my approach, the antidote to denial is having illuminations that shift us from feelings of separation and isolation into the perception and truth of interdependence, different views of realities and different senses of self. When in presence, Denial is dissolved by Illumination.

The Three Anxiety Denial Results

We live in Denial through the three Anxiety Results of Shadow Personality, Inner Critic and Separation.

Shadow Personality

The word shadow is a mythological name invented by Carl Jung. A useful metaphor is “our shadow bag,” a term created by Robert Bly in A Little Book on the Human Shadow (1988). Our shadow bag fills up in the first half of life, as a depository for all those characteristics of personality that are disowned.

We may spend up to twenty years putting content into our shadow bag and the rest of our life retrieving, revealing and healing the contents to restore our wholeness. We may be placing aspects of our relationship with climate peril into our shadow bag. I wonder what the shadow bags of Generation Z are filled with.

Our unconscious bias, constrictions and reactive personality qualities are called the shadow because you cannot see them. They sit beyond sight, in unknown or unseen parts of ourselves.

Shadow is usually associated with negative aspects, yet we can also hold our finest qualities in our shadow. By refusing or being unable to own either, we project them on to others. Our shadow includes the things about ourselves that we deny and the things our caretakers, culture, peers or communities didn’t want, approve of or accept: anything subdued, criticised or deemed unacceptable.

It helps to identify, to be present with, then to move through and dissolve our destructive behaviours, thoughts and actions. Shadow work is an important part of learning to be deeply present, skilful, authentic and responsive.

Understanding and releasing our shadow can help us access presence more easily, as there are less blockages in the way of essence arising. It also increases our energy and frees us, mentally, emotionally and physically. We experience greater inner freedom to pause, to be in presence and to make conscious choices, accepting both the light and dark in ourselves.

When we can access different senses of self and realise that we are not only our constructed personality, then we can see, heal and move beyond our Shadow Personality. Our Shadow Personality is dissolved by expanded Senses of Self.

Separation

Separation means the moving away of something, being apart from something or someone, not being together, being divided, being pulled apart or not united. In separation, there is a gap between two or more people or things.
Everything in our society leads us to believe that we are separate entities; we live inside our bodies and minds while others live in their bodies and minds which are different and separate. I am me; you are other.

We learn to think and speak in a subject and object paradigm, and that becomes our reality. We see the world through discrete, separate objects. This leads to constant comparisons, competition and judgement. Separation is a useful way of navigating the conventional world, but it is not the only reality.

Part of the mythology of separation is the perspective of nature-as-thing, generating the belief that only human beings are possessed of full selfhood. This is what licenses us to exploit nature for our own ends, and to see everyone and everything else as “other.”

If we drop out of the interconnection view of reality, we cannot see beyond opposites and separateness. We lose all sense of deeper realities that can help us to cope with climate anxiety and solve its negative impacts. We may feel alienated, isolated and unable to connect to people, animals, nature and the planet as a living breathing entity that gives us life. The potential ending of the world, the climate peril, feels like an utterly horrible catastrophe that is the end of everyone and everything.

Steve Taylor’s book, Disconnected: The Roots of Human Cruelty and How Connection Can Heal the World (2023), views connection as the most essential human trait for goodness, right action and well-being. He explores how cruelty and pathocracy are a result of disconnection and separation, leading to toxic, dominator, oppressive, patriarchal, hierarchical and warlike societies. He argues that connected societies are more egalitarian, democratic and peaceful.

I agree with him that regaining awareness of our connection (or interconnection) is the only way in which we can live in harmony with ourselves, one another, the world and our planet. Interconnection, beyond all sense of separation, is a key perspective of Presence Activism. In presence, Separation is dissolved by Interconnection.

Inner Critic

The Inner Critic is an internal voice that berates or criticises us for doing whatever action we are doing, or for having any experience we are having. All of us have an inner critic voice. It is constantly attacking, judging and making us feel wrong, bad or deficit. It can heighten anxiety, depress energy and make us feel negative, guilty, ashamed, hopeless, devalued, small and vulnerable. Significant obstacles to presence include all the beliefs, structures, judgements and childhood conditioning whirling around inside our heads, criticising us and holding us back.

Once, our inner critics were useful to us, especially in our early childhood because they helped us to identify, clarify and organise our experiences. As we get older, we find that anything within our inner critic that no longer serves us can be restricting, debilitating and blocking, causing significant suffering. It gets in the way of accessing presence and pursuing a deeper inquiry into our different senses of self.

Fighting or going against my inner critic has not worked for me. Rather than going rigid and defending against my inner critic, presence has dissolved it in a way that is gentle, loving and enhancing. Living in presence has enabled me to gain a deeper sense of compassion towards myself and to stop saying and thinking harsh words. I have become kinder to myself and others.

Accessing different and expanded views of reality has prevented me from becoming stuck inside the negative, repeating voice and patterns of my inner critic. They have let me see that the worst aspects of my personality are not fixed. In presence, my inner critic disappears. When in presence, our Inner Critic is dissolved by different Views of Reality.

Anxious Inner States and Blocked Energies

In addition to all the things we have to face externally regarding climate peril, we also need to face these anxious inner states and blocked energies. Moving deeply into, and through, all these anxiety states and experiences will liberate us into skilful activism.

We need to face the depths of our anxiety, to journey again and again from anxiety into presence to allow the presence essences to dissolve our anxiety. When we can allow the most appropriate essence(s) to arise in any situation, we can make conscious choices and respond in skilful ways as Presence Activists.

Copyright ©2024. All Rights Reserved.
Article adapted with permission
from the book: Presence Activism

Article Source:

BOOK: Presence Activism

Presence Activism: A Profound Antidote to Climate Anxiety
by Lynne Sedgmore.

In this book, author Lynne Sedgmore integrates presence, climate activism, and the alleviation of climate anxiety in an innovative and unique synthesis and new term - Presence Activism. By offering a profound solution with new perspectives, Presence Activism: A Profound Antidote to Climate Anxiety is steeped in a presence that moves activism beyond metaphors of war, enemies, and destruction, as well as the illusion of separation, into the visceral knowing of presence and interconnection, thereby making presence an important part of the way forward for current and future activism.

This book is a compendium of different perspectives and experiences of presence, as well as a powerful conceptual and thoughtful analysis of the fields of presence, climate anxiety, and climate peril.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

Dr. Lynne Sedgmore CBE is an activist, executive coach, non-executive board member, priestess, interfaith minister, published author, poet and former chief executive. She Chairs the Glastonbury Town Deal investment of £25 million. She has been involved in environmental and feminist campaigns and numerous protests since the 1970s. She bridges mainstream organisations and spiritual communities. She coaches individuals and senior teams in charities and organisations that inspire her. She lives in Glastonbury, UK.

Article Recap:

Denial serves as a defense against overwhelming climate anxiety, allowing us to avoid difficult truths. However, remaining in denial hinders our ability to act. By recognizing its psychological roots, confronting misinformation, and embracing interconnection, we can dissolve denial and step into a more conscious, empowered approach to addressing climate change.

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