ECOLOGICAL GRIEF GROUP
a monthly virtual drop-in group to collectively process ongoing environmental collapse
First Thursdays, 6-8pm EST
registration deadline is the Sunday prior
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DPI’s Ecological Grief Group is a monthly virtual drop-in group designed for emotional and somatic exploration of what it is like to live through ongoing environmental collapse. The group will use Internal Family Systems therapy to explore the parts of ourselves that are reacting to climate change and its accompanying losses: past, present, and future. The intention is to make space for collective processing of anxiety, grief, anger, and other emotions that can be harder or impossible for people to hold in isolation. There is also an intention to support activist work, not through planning political actions, but by supporting our resilience by allowing for the expression of stuck feelings related to climate change. By doing this work, group members may find more energy and capacity to grow or maintain their activist practices.
What is Internal Family Systems (IFS)? IFS is a type of therapy that is predicated on the notion that all of us are made up of many parts, which have different perspectives and different stories to tell. The mechanism of healing in IFS is putting parts of ourselves in connection with what IFS calls “self-energy” - a core of compassion, curiosity, connectedness, and calm that we each have inside of us and that we can lend to one another. The process we will use in this group involves a form of meditation called “insight” in IFS, in which the volunteer will be guided to find and befriend their parts. By giving somebody the stage to go in-depth into their parts related to eco-grief, the rest of the group receives the gift of their vulnerability to assist with exploring our own eco-grieving. |
LOGISTICS:
•TIMING: The group meets monthly over Zoom for 2 hours on Thursday evenings on the 1st Thursday of the month from 6-8pm EST. Sign up by the weekend before - registration closes at 9am on the 1st Monday of the month.
•FEE AND DONATIONS: $10 base fee, plus additional donations are encouraged. DPI recognizes the importance of this work and contributing materially to efforts to stop the climate crisis. As such, this is a group organized around fundraising, and after paying staff a reduced rate for their work* all profits generated will be donated to the Sunrise Movement.
•CANCELLATIONS: The group will run if it reaches a minimum of 3 participants and $60 on any given month, by the Monday prior. * facilitator receives $25 / hr and DPI receives $5 / hr
•DISCLAIMER: This is not a therapy group and should not be used instead of therapy. Rather, this is a group meetup with a skilled facilitator that makes use of Internal Family Systems tools.
WHAT WILL THE GROUP BE LIKE? (AN EXAMPLE)
Each week, after a brief introduction to the ground rules, a volunteer will be the focus of the group. The facilitator will guide the volunteer through a process of exploring parts of themselves that are present related to ecological collapse. Here is an example of how this dialogue might begin:
Facilitator (F): What are you noticing arise in you in this moment when you think about climate change?
Volunteer (V): I’m not noticing anything, I feel numb
F: How would you describe the numbness?
V: There’s a vacancy, and a feeling of denseness, like a big blank wall.
F: Take a moment to breathe into this blank wall feeling. Do you notice any emotions, sensations, thoughts or memories emerge? Take your time.
As the process unfolds, the rest of the group will share their resonances and reactions through drawing and writing in the chat. Rather than evaluating or commenting on what the volunteer is saying, the group will share their own process and what the volunteer’s experience brings up for them. This allows the group to make use of the volunteer’s vulnerability to access their own, and to reciprocate that vulnerability and let it reverberate through the group as a whole. For example the group chat might look like this during the excerpt above:
Sarah: I’m feeling numb right now, too
Ronnie: The association I have with this is whenever I’m put on the spot regardless of the subject, I experience some kind of shutting down
Theo: I'm angry - I don’t want people to numb themselves
Sarah: I have a dull ache in my stomach and I'm thinking about a memory of a big blank wall
Rather than read the group’s chat as it happens, the volunteer will be asked to focus on their own process so that they do not get too side-tracked or distracted. At the end of each group, there will be a brief closing ritual of silence followed by reflections, during which the volunteer will have a chance to hear reflections from the rest of the group.
•TIMING: The group meets monthly over Zoom for 2 hours on Thursday evenings on the 1st Thursday of the month from 6-8pm EST. Sign up by the weekend before - registration closes at 9am on the 1st Monday of the month.
•FEE AND DONATIONS: $10 base fee, plus additional donations are encouraged. DPI recognizes the importance of this work and contributing materially to efforts to stop the climate crisis. As such, this is a group organized around fundraising, and after paying staff a reduced rate for their work* all profits generated will be donated to the Sunrise Movement.
•CANCELLATIONS: The group will run if it reaches a minimum of 3 participants and $60 on any given month, by the Monday prior. * facilitator receives $25 / hr and DPI receives $5 / hr
•DISCLAIMER: This is not a therapy group and should not be used instead of therapy. Rather, this is a group meetup with a skilled facilitator that makes use of Internal Family Systems tools.
WHAT WILL THE GROUP BE LIKE? (AN EXAMPLE)
Each week, after a brief introduction to the ground rules, a volunteer will be the focus of the group. The facilitator will guide the volunteer through a process of exploring parts of themselves that are present related to ecological collapse. Here is an example of how this dialogue might begin:
Facilitator (F): What are you noticing arise in you in this moment when you think about climate change?
Volunteer (V): I’m not noticing anything, I feel numb
F: How would you describe the numbness?
V: There’s a vacancy, and a feeling of denseness, like a big blank wall.
F: Take a moment to breathe into this blank wall feeling. Do you notice any emotions, sensations, thoughts or memories emerge? Take your time.
As the process unfolds, the rest of the group will share their resonances and reactions through drawing and writing in the chat. Rather than evaluating or commenting on what the volunteer is saying, the group will share their own process and what the volunteer’s experience brings up for them. This allows the group to make use of the volunteer’s vulnerability to access their own, and to reciprocate that vulnerability and let it reverberate through the group as a whole. For example the group chat might look like this during the excerpt above:
Sarah: I’m feeling numb right now, too
Ronnie: The association I have with this is whenever I’m put on the spot regardless of the subject, I experience some kind of shutting down
Theo: I'm angry - I don’t want people to numb themselves
Sarah: I have a dull ache in my stomach and I'm thinking about a memory of a big blank wall
Rather than read the group’s chat as it happens, the volunteer will be asked to focus on their own process so that they do not get too side-tracked or distracted. At the end of each group, there will be a brief closing ritual of silence followed by reflections, during which the volunteer will have a chance to hear reflections from the rest of the group.
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Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) will be facilitating the eco-grief group. Netta is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer.
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