Eco-Spiritual Helping and Postmodern Therapy: A Deeper Ecological Framework

Abstract

Along with some substantial benefits of important scientific and technological advancements in the modern era, we have experienced a significant alienation of humans from the rest of the natural world, manifested by many forms of violence against nature and other living beings. Modernistic therapy approaches and models tend to fragment the person as a whole, focusing on the individual human intellect and/or emotion as being superior or more fundamental than the other natural living processes of our collective world. In this article we propose an alternative model called Eco-Spiritual Helping (ESH) for expanding human consciousness of, and creating reconnection with, the natural world. Historical roots of the model are presented along with the central themes. A composite case example illustrates how ESH can partner with postmodern therapeutic approaches in order to create a deeper ecological approach to helping. We conclude with an appeal for mental health professionals to aid in the reconnection of humans with the natural world.

Introduction

Mental health practitioners assume that clients possess internal and/or external resources that can be mobilized in the helping process (Cowger, 1994; De Jong & Miller, 1995; Poulin, 2000; Saleebey, 1996, 1997, 2000). Pushing beyond the notion of simply helping clients with their individual troubles, ecological models of therapy and social work practice and recently growing spiritually-diverse practices are yielding integrative perspectives for fostering client change while simultaneously promoting social justice and ecological sustainability (Besthorn, 2002a; Bullis, 1996; Canda, 1998, Canda & Furman, 1999; Dudley & Helfgott, 1990; Gottlieb, 1999; Hoff, 1998; Russel, 1998; Sheridan, 1999). Conceptualizing therapeutic practices as not only helping clients with their specified individual problems but instrumental as well in improving our communities and the social and natural world more generally is a significant development within professional counseling spheres (Doherty & Beaton, 2000; Doherty & Carroll, 2002; Waldegrave, 1999, 2000; St. George & Wulff, 2006).

A recent approach, building on this new emphasis, is the work to link therapeutic practices with spirituality, social justice, and a deeper ecological awareness (Bartlett, 2000; Besthorn, 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001; Besthorn & Canda, 2002; Coates, 1999, 2000; Moules, 2000). Mental health service provision is enhanced through practices that utilize the connection between personal change and larger change (community and ecological). Proponents of recent professional initiatives (Global Alliance for a Deep Ecological Social Work, 2002) identify the natural world as critical to the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being of all human and nonhuman species. They stress that practices of the modern, Western, socioeconomic tradition have wreaked havoc on the world to the lasting harm of eco-systems and disadvantaged groups everywhere. A deep ecological perspective to mental health practice is not simply about asking practitioners to be more sensitive to environmental issues and community relationships. Rather, practitioners are invited into an earth-conscious, anti-oppressive ecological awareness rooted in a full reclamation of humanity's ancient relationship with the natural world and thus with each other. It offers a distinctive vantage point and greater depth of content from which to view human potential in a changing global context that has recently included a rise in interpersonal and cultural terrorism, repercussions associated with global warming, and the worldwide economic recession.

Eco-Spiritual Helping (ESH) is a multidimensional ensemble of ways to encounter life's challenges and to incorporate change processes cultivated and sustained in healthy interaction with nature that are closely aligned with postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapy represents a constellation of ideas, approaches, and practices that allows us to deconstruct the received knowledges that our modern world provides and to imagine alternatives. ESH builds upon postmodern therapeutic ideas and provides practitioners the opportunity to explore a full spectrum of client resources for healing and social transformation (Besthorn, 2002a, 2002b; Besthorn & McMillen, 2002; Besthorn & Tegtmeier, 1999; de Shazer, 1988; Macy & Brown, 1998; Moules, 2000; Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 1998). A central premise of ESH is that the ongoing ecological alienation of individuals and societies from their ancient moorings to their natural place on earth has a decidedly negative impact on healthy functioning of all individuals and communities (Berry, 1988; Clinebell, 1996; Fox, 2000; Howard, 1996; Kahn, 1999; Wilson, 1984). ESH focuses on the complete mind/body/spirit/community relationship matrix of living rather than narrowing the focus to problems associated with internal individual pathology (Metzner, 1999).

Postmodern therapies and ESH are grounded in the belief that therapy as traditionally practiced may encourage normalization and conformity to societal norms that may actually inhibit opportunities for personal and contextual transformation. ESH and postmodern therapy practitioners maintain an ethical stance with the client by creating sacred places for discovery (Swim, St. George, & Wulff, 2001) in lieu of diagnosing that which is purportedly diseased or abnormal. The practitioner utilizes what Walter and Peller (1992) call a “total model” (p. 6) of interactively thinking about and constructing solutions.

In this article we extend conventional ecological models, broaden our therapeutic narratives, and make applications to mental health education, direct practice, and social justice. By utilizing ESH, practitioners can approach their work with clients with greater depth and relatedness to the client's lived experience than traditional mental health practices. Our contribution rests in providing conceptual insight for combining central premises of ESH and postmodern therapy and implications of incorporating these in mental health practice.

Care, Helping, and Nature in Prehistory

Contained within ESH is a multifaceted grouping of healing assumptions that is cultivated and nurtured in healthy interaction with nature. A central theme of ESH is the necessity of addressing modern humanity's ecological alienation from their primordial moorings to the natural world. An individual's growth and transformative potential in everyday dimensions of life are strengthened through engagement with the restorative capacity of nature. ESH is an ideal blend of helping individuals and families while simultaneously positively impacting the natural world in which we all live.

ESH has deep and ancient roots in sociocultural traditions from around the world. A growing body of research confirms that prehistoric societies utilized ritual practices of collective and individual healing which fully utilized the life-giving and sustaining capacities of nature (Diamond, 1987; Johnson & Sandage, 1999; Moules, 2000; Oelschlaeger, 1991). Indigenous cultures, even to this day, maintain initiation rituals (e.g., vision quests and medicine man initiations) which appear in Western minds to be designed to terrorize the initiate, but, from the indigenous point-of-view, are ways of connecting the initiate to a greater whole beyond the self (Benedict, 1923; Dugan, 1985; Elkin, 1994). The natural world was instinctively recognized as the perennial life force energizing all endeavors. Nature was not a mental abstraction—all of nature was alive and could be known through experience. Indeed, it is, in its essence, relational. Nature is in our bones, our cells, and in our dreams. Ancients knew and traditional indigenous cultures know yet today that, in the solemn moments of their deeper awareness, humans are nothing but the stuff of nature. As Chard (1994) notes, “All our parts, including our brains and consciousness, are crafted from the raw materials of the Earth” (p. 19).

As illustrated by Table 1, early cultures shared intuitive awareness of the unique connection between humans and all natural or organic processes. This connection included everything that exists from soil to sun and beyond, the magna mater (Oelschlaeger, 1991). These organic ways of viewing the self in relationship to the rest of the earth ordered the lives of pre-enlightenment peoples. They were imbued with deep spiritual significance, which was revealed in the visible world around them. It was a spirituality of intimate relationship with place, land, animals, and the rhythmic cycle of the seasons. Through ritual, one dies to the illusion of self disconnected from the whole:

At the end of the ritual journey, with its trial, loneliness, “death,” revelations, and rejoicing, he can say: “Whereas previously I was blind to the significance of the seasons, of natural species, of heavenly bodies, and of man himself, now I begin to see; and whereas before I did not understand the secret of life, now I begin to know.” (Elkin, 1994, pp. 3–4)

Table 1.

Hunter-Gatherer Ideas of Wild Nature

• Nature was home, irrespective of specific place or location.

• Nature possessed feminine qualities.

• Nature was sentient, alive, possessed of being.

• All of nature - land, animals, plants - was sacred and worshipped in ritual.

• Divinity resided in nature, moved through nature and could take natural form.

• Metaphor was the mode of divine access.

• Time was synchronous, nested into an eternal and mythical present.

• Ritual was essential to maintaining the natural and cyclical order of life and death.

• Nature was beneficent, but was to be respected, honored and negotiated.

Adapted from Oelschlaeger (1991)

The earth consciousness of early cultures determined their values and provided the context for their sense of collective identity. Earth provided medicinal and nutritive resources for both physical survival and emotional well-being as well as inspiration for individual and collective action. Merchant (1992), for example, observes that the analogy of earth as a nurturing, sustaining, and benevolent mother permeated many early societies through the Renaissance period. This earth/mother metaphor prescribed acceptable and unacceptable action because

one does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold, or mutilate her body. As long as the earth was conceptualized as alive and sensitive, it could be considered a breach of human ethical behavior to carry out destructive acts against it. (p. 43)

Modern Psychotherapy

With the beginning of the early industrial period, views of ancient, earth-based culture tended to reflect the anthropocentric and enthusiastic, techno-utopian dreams of the time. Late 19th and early 20th century attitudes quite erroneously envisioned early peoples as wanting desperately to escape their primitive wilderness and wandering, monotonous lifestyle. They clearly must have hoped for a more civilized, technological, economistic, progress-oriented, and self-actualized existence which the industrial period was now about to usher into daily living. This view of peoples being very different or indigenous cultures as primitive underlies Western society's current views, even as expressed in the popular language of third and fourth world cultures.

The modern industrial mind finds it difficult to imagine a form of existence or definition of human-beingness except her own. From this vantage point, prehistory is little more than quaint anecdotes of debased barbarians living lives that were nasty, brutish, and short (Oelschlaeger, 1991). This view represents a subtle, collective histio-centrism that fails to conceive of a positive alternative framework to explain ancient realities because modern culture is so bound up with its own sociocultural perspective. It also marginalizes current struggles of Aboriginal and Indigenous groups to keep alive their holistic approach to the interrelatedness of all things and to protect their sacred lands from the ravages of industrial development carried out by rapacious, transnational, corporate conglomerates (Kinsley, 1995; Knudtson & Suzuki, 1992).

Early psychology and psychotherapy entered onto the world's epistemological stage at about the same moment that early industrial culture was feeling most flushed with its potential and place in the hierarchical ordering of the universe. Collective care had diminished, personal rights was the new mantra, and helping became individualized, resting primarily on a secularized view of an isolated me nested within the confines of the physical skin and direct consequential behavior. As Hillman (1995) notes “the subject was simply me in my body and in my relationship with other subjects” (p. xvii). Transcendence was replaced with immediacy, spirit with ego, and outward relationship with inward familiarity.

Early modern psychology and psychotherapeutic regimens did little to challenge the prevailing idea that ancient peoples were primitive because of their nature-inspired ethos of communal life, mutual helping, and inspirited animism (Gross, 1978; Hillman & Ventura, 1992; Roszak, Gomes, & Kanner, 1995). These views still go largely unchallenged in most sectors of modern life and in most psychotherapeutic protocols (Chriss, 1999; Metzner, 1999; Moules, 2000). Modern society tends to presume that dominant psychotherapeutic ideas of self-contained egos and cultural icons of fast-paced, competitive, consumer-oriented civilization have triumphed (Durning, 1995). Most current therapeutic models continue to reinforce the prevailing value structure that encourages us to think of ourselves as exquisitely rational, primarily independent, and therefore ultimately superior, because we have achieved a scientific understanding of the world, subdued nature through technology, and abandoned our mythological beliefs and collective practices (Oelschlaeger, 1991). So our societal system of psychotherapy, which is dedicated to helping people with their personal struggles, is based upon an understanding of humans as individualistic and primarily cognitive, thereby reinforcing (through this therapeutic process) the notion of human separation from nature and all context.

Riane Eisler (1987) and more recent scholars (Capra, 1996; Griffin, 1995; Macy & Brown, 1998; Merchant, 1990; Wink, 1992) suggest that the current Western cultural crisis of identity and world wide struggle for a more equitable social transformation have been a part of the Western ontological and epistemological counter-tradition since at least World War I. There has been a growing awareness of the limitations that the dominant Western world-views have embodied and a global desire to develop legitimate alternatives to the atomistic view of persons. There is an increasing collection of various movements that share a common critique of rampant individualism and all its harmful and divisive consequences.

Principles of Eco-Spiritual Helping

One of the effects of the modern industrial, techno-scientific worldview is the constriction and elimination of language to communicate views of reality inconsistent with the dominant worldview. In this article we address this deficit by introducing a new phrase to explicate an emerging interventive framework: ESH. ESH is neither a discreet therapeutic technique nor does it represent a single truth claim relative to the provision of therapeutic services. It can include a variety of concepts, methods, and skills, but is fundamentally a meta-narrative that speaks to the reclamation of relationship—the right to acknowledge and live out of connection, meaning, and community. ESH has modern roots in the environmental psychology and eco-psychology movements of the 1970s and late 1980s (Clinebell, 1996; Fredrickson & Anderson, 1999; Metzner, 1999; Roszak et al., 1995) but, as we have suggested, shares resonance with ancient cultures and healing practices.

It is sometimes referred to in terms such as earth-centered therapy, green psychology, psycho-ecology, transpersonal ecology, ecotherapy (Clinebell, 1996; Metzner, 1999; Nebbe, 1995) and other, less formal, vernacular too numerous to catalogue. Our preference for the use of Eco-Spiritual is an acknowledgment that this revisioning of ancient models of helping have two focal elements: ecology and spirituality. We use Helping because as social workers we believe that terms such as psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic have come to have denotative meanings that have almost exclusively associated them with micro-level intervention. Helping, on the other hand, implies a much broader spectrum of possibilities aimed at every level of the system, from individual change to global transformation. It includes psychotherapy but is not limited to it. Helping takes place in the context of our everyday lived experiences as parents, citizens, professionals, and teachers. For example, whenever we recycle, plant a tree or introduce a child or a client to the gentle beauty of a daffodil, we are helping. Whenever we see injustice and challenge its hidden agendas and subtle assumptions in an effort to change it, we are helping. Whenever our community, our church, or our neighborhood solicits our support to find better ways to enrich our collective lives through artistic endeavors rather than compulsive buying, we are helping. Whenever we make an effort to encourage our agency or organization to install energy-efficient lighting or to use recycled paper, we are helping.

While much recent work in social work is emphasizing ecology and/or earth awareness and their relationship to human well-being (Besthorn, 2000a, 2001, 2002a, 2002b; Coates, 2003), until recently there has been less spotlight on the role spirituality plays in the way humans understand and experience their relationship with the natural world. There is currently a renaissance of efforts to integrate spirituality into practice (Bullis, 1996; Canda & Furman, 1999; Canda & Smith, 2001; Sheridan, 1999; Sheridan & von Hement, 1999) but there have been only very recent efforts to conceptually link spirituality and ecology and then to integrate that construct into the healing enterprise (Besthorn, 2000b, 2001; Lysack, 2008, 2009). ESH builds on traditions of past and present to help us create an alternative strategy of care. It is, arguably, a part of one of those oft-occurring cultural reassessments, spoken of by Eisler (1987), to revisit or reclaim a long misplaced capacity for connection, relationship, and wholeness.

Eco-Spiritual Helping has three primary organizing principles which offer an alternative to more fully understand the human condition and intervention strategies. ESH is not the only alternative or the ultimate truth, however, it is one that we have found to be quite helpful. The first principle is to facilitate healing of individual alienation from the earth by enhancing openness to being nurtured by nature in a manner that is both intentional and frequent (Clinebell, 1996; Cohen, 1997; Macy & Brown, 1998). This is plainly a micro-focus, but the center of attention is not simply the isolated ego. Rather, the intent is to assist the whole person in developing an ongoing, outward, loving, and respectful relationship with the natural world. In the process of helping people to allow nurturing by nature, it often becomes necessary to challenge normative assumptions regarding human relationships with the natural world and with other persons. Howard (1996) calls some of these assumptions toxic beliefs or killer thoughts. Table 2 lists some ideas comprising current normative assumptions of the dominant world-view. Unacknowledged and unchecked, they diminish human capacity for compassionate action toward nature and dilute the ability to receive munificent expressions from nature. Ultimately, these toxic thoughts lead to personal deadness toward nature and its ways and to the earth's ultimate biospheric destruction.

Table 2

Toxic Thoughts of Current Dominant World View

• Consumption will produce happiness and consumption is critical for societies to function.

• Human beings competitively maximize their existence even at the expense of other humans. Competition rather than cooperation is the essential character of human beingness.

• The future is steeply minimized. The present is all that matters. Future generations shall have to be responsible for themselves.

• Present consumption is preferred to investment in preservation/conservation for the future.

• Growth and progress are always good; an undeveloped resource is a wasted resource.

• Free-market capitalism has proven to be the best system. Indeed, TINE (there is nothing else).

• Greed is good.

• Paying less is always better than paying more no matter the consequence for eco-systems.

• If it isn't broke-don't fix it. No need to act in the face of unproven speculation. Global warming is not an unequivocal fact so there is no need to reduce green house gases. Unless science can prove harm without doubt there is no need for society to act.

• Technological innovations can solve ecological problems and overcome the limits of nature.

Underlying the first principle of ESH is the view that the earth has restorative and healing potentials to be sure, but that earth systems also have finite carrying capacitie, which under prolonged stress and exploitation will fail. Janet Abramovitz (2000) makes the argument in her in essay, “Valuing Nature's Services,” that the natural world's so-called free resources and free services form a kind of natural economy that if not valued and nurtured will one day fail us. For our entire lives, we have expected the oceans and lakes to provide us fish, the insects to pollinate our crops, the birds to sing and keep pesky mosquitoes in check, and the rivers to provide us with clean water to drink. We have grown accustomed to expect that when timber is needed it may be harvested, when waste is created it will disappear, and when the wind blows it will bring clean air to refresh our lungs and restore our imaginative capacities.

Yet, our modern cultural ethos unwittingly and intentionally provides unceasing justifications and incentives to misuse and destroy the very bounty that ensures our survival as a species. Chris Bright (2001) points out that we may one day be very surprised at the rapidity with which these life-sustaining resources can collapse and threaten the very existence of life itself. The intricate balancing act that protects ecosystem health is vulnerable to a plethora of overlapping and interacting discontinuities and synergisms that make our ability to predict potential disintegration tenuous at best. In reality, ecosystems can and do decline with a speed that surprises even the most optimistic observers. For example, even a small increase in the atmospheric level of nitrogen (an element essential to life) coupled with other climatic changes will trigger a kind of nitrogen poisoning that will profoundly limit the growth of forests, stunt plant growth cycles, increase global warming, reduce cloud cover, and differentially change both the frequency and intensity of rain events. And these are just a few of the known consequences. Thousands of other looming disasters may exist but remain hidden because of the unfathomable complexity involved in predicting the synergistic impact of compounding environmental problems. We have become complacent in our expectation that environmental decline is gradual and predictable and that there will always be time for us or our children to muster a technological fix. While this may be a soothing belief, it masks the very real possibility that nature may have some very nasty surprises awaiting us.

Devereux (1996) also reminds us that it is not the earth that needs saving, but humankind. If certain cultures and socioeconomic systems make the earth uninhabitable for humankind, the earth will live on and have millennia to heal:

The truth, surely, is that what we may ultimately come to do is to destroy the particular type of planetary environment that sustains us and life as we know it. If that happens, then, of course, our species would die off (alas, taking many other species with it): in the grim, final analysis, the problem would be self-correcting. The Earth can be a stern as well as a bountiful mother, and were we to disappear she would have the ages that belong to her in which to restore herself before giving birth to other orders of life. Earth's song will go on whether or not we are a part of it. (p. 16) (italics in original)

A second principle of ESH is to enable clients to become more aware of the spiritual or transpersonal dimension of their experience with the natural world. ESH recognizes that humans share a common spiritual and sensual destiny with the earth (Besthorn, 2000b; Clinebell, 1996; Metzner, 1999; Walsh-Bowers, 2000). Spirituality is inherently ecological and ecology is inherently spiritual. This spirituality acknowledges that humans belong to a constantly emerging cosmic/spiritual process. Humans emerge from, are dependent upon, and shall return to, an underlying energy or divine presence pervading all reality. Nothing exists outside of this relationship cycle. Humans are embedded in a cosmic/spiritual web that is shared with a host of mutually interdependent beings, human and nonhuman. Although much of the dominant Western world-view, both secular and religious, regards human beings as the pinnacle of the created order, ESH assumes the potentiality for individuals and collectives to advance beyond this anthropocentric or human-centered orientation to reality.

The third principle of ESH is to assist clients in adopting a more earth-caring lifestyle and belief patterns that focus on contributing to an ecologically and socially just and sustainable society. This macro-dimension of ESH implies an interconnected association between awakening people to the ecological, political, and economic contributors to their personal or familial pain. ESH assists clients to recognize that social injustices and ecological injustice are interwoven in a dynamic interplay of mutual involvement. Poverty is experienced not only as personal anomie or the lack of financial assistance and social support infrastructure. Poverty is also experienced in polluted water supplies, poisoned air, and unhealthy living quarters. The most vulnerable targets of systemic violence and exploitation are nature as well as children, the poor, women, and the disabled. These all are defined, in one respect or another, as less important, less desirable, and less powerful. Issues of environmental degradation and concerns for ecological/spiritual consciousness cannot be separated from those systemic forces that function to maintain all forms of injustice, whether toward nature or other human beings. The strong social and ecological justice component of ESH is premised upon the deep interrelationship that exists among all phenomena. Struggles against oppressive, systemic forces that denigrate nature are intertwined with struggles against all forces that also oppress humans. ESH also helps us to conscientiously and compassionately reconsider the impact that oppression has on the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

The foregoing principles of ESH act as one possibility for assisting clients in deepening their sense of relationship with nature, with themselves, and with those around them. ESH may evolve a variety of techniques and skills to facilitate healing and growth in the principle areas just identified.

Postmodern Therapy

Postmodern therapies arose out of an interest in identifying and supporting those conditions and relationships important for a client in pursuing the change(s) that they desire (Andersen, 1987; Anderson, 1997; Hoffman, 1993; McNamee & Gergen, 1992). Walter and Peller (1992) identify various questions that have guided various therapies over the years. Psychodynamic theories have asked the question what is the cause of the problem? Structural family therapy (Minuchin, 1974) has focused on what maintains the problem? Postmodern therapies inquire as to how do we construct problems and their consequent solutions? Within this narrative tradition, therapists investigate the ways in which problems oppress people and keep them from being the persons they want to be (White & Epston, 1990). Collaborative therapists ask, what are the conversations that are needed and helpful (Anderson, 1997)?

Those familiar with postmodern therapeutic approaches recognize that years can be spent searching for a “cause” of the problem or dissecting the patterns of problem maintenance, neither of which may result in movement toward the client beginning to heal the pain experienced or create the experiences they desire. The clinicians developing postmodern approaches became increasingly aware that effective therapeutic interventions need not be based on an extensive knowledge of and analysis of the presenting problem (Anderson, 1997; Berg, 1991; de Shazer, 1988, 1991). Postmodern therapy embraces a holistic, client-centered, strengths-based approach in which the helper engages the help-seeker with the mindset that internal and external resources are available that the client can access to deal with the presenting problem. Stated differently, within the apparent chaos there lies infinite potential for growth, change, and transformation. The helper's goal is to collaborate with the client to find alternatives in his or her life, develop hope, and gain self-agency, and with those be able to begin practicing some new approaches to living.

For purposes of providing context to the illustration presented below, we are suggesting the following as the intent of therapeutic process:

as a collaborative process … the therapist participates with the client in deconstructing the universal truth story that the client brings to therapy and collaborates with the client in constructing a new story that solves/dissolves problems defined by the presenting story. (Becvar & Becvar, 2009, p. 250)

In addition, White and Epston (1990) note that it is critical for client and therapist to pay particular attention to both the positive and negative impact that environmental contexts (social, political, cultural) can have upon healthy functioning. Individual struggles often reflect battles between the person and oppressive institutions, debilitating environmental circumstances, subjugating narratives, and unequal power differentials. The following conversational exchange in therapy from a composite case example, illustrates one possible scenario that an ESH practitioner might encounter in his or her efforts to integrate principles of ESH and postmodern therapy.

Integration and Application

Jack, a 35-year-old man, is referred by his physician for therapy. Jack has been working the last 4 months with his physician on his “depression,” trying a couple of different medications to address the problem. Jack asked for the referral after becoming dissatisfied with “the way the medications make me feel,” reporting that the lows are not as low, but being on the medication has also taken away some of the joys or highs he would have expected to experience.

ESH Helper:

Hello, Jack. What brings you here today?

Jack:

Well, the doctor calls it depression, but I would say I have lost the joy in life. Nothing seems to get me excited about living like it used to.

Could you tell me a bit about what it was like before?

Well, when I was younger, I was all excited about what life would bring and how I would work to make myself successful. I am 35 now, and for the most part, feel like I have achieved most of the goals I set for myself and was so excited about. I have a beautiful wife, two great kids, a moderately successful career as a banker, and am comfortable financially. So I am supposed to be happy, right? I mean, I have achieved success as I defined it. (Pause) It just feels like my life is mundane—like I go through the motions and the juice is sucked out of it. And I guess I feel guilty about feeling that way. I have a loving family, my friends look at me as a success, I have all the toys and possessions I want, and I still want more out of life.

Is it possible that you might be at a place in your life where you are setting some more goals for yourself—perhaps goals that you could not envision when you were younger?

Perhaps, but I possess “the good life” by all the standards of society. What more could I ask for?

I don't know specifically, but it sounds like you are still a searcher, a do-er, a person who values striving for things.

(Thinks for a few moments) I guess I am. But should not I be satisfied with what I have? Are not I being selfish to want more?

Do you believe that there comes a time in one's life when you should no longer reach out for more? A place where you should come to a stop?

Well, no. I think we need to always be growing and developing as persons.

Do you have some inclinations about what you would like to grow into?

Not exactly. I have some interests but I do not know if I would call them significant enough to want to, as you say, “grow into.”

Perhaps you do not need to envision grand or elaborate plans—could it be that you might follow your intuition and see what happens?

That sounds reasonable.

What might some of these interests be that might be worth looking more closely into?

Well, one of the things I have always loved to do is to go hiking in the woods or along a beach. I used to do it all the time before I met my wife and became a family man.

Okay. When was the last time you did this? What was it like?

About 6 months ago, I got a chance to go for a walk in the woods. Both the kids were over at friends' houses for an overnight stay and Laura had gone to visit her mother. I had just dropped the kids off and thought, “What the hell?” It's a beautiful day, nothing to do and no one to report to for a couple of hours, so I drove to the national forest access area 45 min from here and laced up my hiking boots and took off. As I started, I felt, well, guilty, I guess. The farther I went, it was like the cares and responsibilities I carry started to peel off, and they were replaced with a sense of peace.

Sounds very cool.

Yes, it is (laughs) … was. I get this sense that I am not alone. Not like someone is following me, but more like I am part of something bigger. It's like knowing there's more to life than everything everyone is always chasing and encouraging me to chase. I don't know how to say it. I have never been very religious, but I imagine it is like the feeling some people get in church, although I never had that feeling in church. It is like the stuff I focus on and stress over on a daily basis becomes insignificant in the presence of something bigger.

Sounds like a very important moment. Do you think this is something that would be valued by Laura and/or your kids? Or is its solitary nature that makes it so special to you?

I think Laura could understand it and enjoy it as well. The kids probably would see it as a drag and would be miserable. I really think Laura would find it as valuable as I do—we have actually talked about doing it together but our busy lives have always gotten in the way!

It sounds like one of those things that could be valuable for an individual or with someone else. Do you think that your busy lives could accommodate activities such as the one you described?

For sure, but it would require being planful about it. If we did not deliberately set up some time for it, our busy schedules would overrun all possibilities for it. I think I will mention it to Laura today and see if we can go for a walk like this together this coming weekend. In fact, we have recently been talking a lot about how we are feeling more isolated as a couple—we do our own things and we both miss doing things together. Perhaps this could be good for our relationship as well as a nice breather from the rat-race. Getting out into the woods just makes me feel like I am a “real” person—not a 9-to-5 widget!

You sound like you have a super idea and plan.

I really think I do too. Maybe my feeling of wanting something more out of life gave me a chance to have a wake-up call, a chance to add something to my life. You know, I am now glad I had that uneasy feeling of wanting more out of life. Maybe if I should have those feelings again, I will get excited by knowing that a new possibility is getting closer!

As illustrated by this brief composite example, ESH uses techniques of postmodern therapy to encourage clients to trust themselves and to build their lives on the building blocks of what has worked for them before. In Jack's case, he had experienced some moments in nature in his life that had always been significant for him. Consistent with the first principle of ESH, therapists can encourage the intentionality and frequency of this previous nurturing connection by: (1) using metaphors in the therapeutic discourse that support consideration of the natural world (e.g., grow into, clearing the air, planting seeds, nourishing/nurturing, tending the garden, giving life to, watering, raining, storm clouds), thereby introducing language that metaphorically honors our deeper ecological existence. Consistent with the second principle of ESH, therapists may also (2) support therapeutic activities that encourage clients to get out into nature where they can experience its healing potential and become more aware of the transpersonal dimensions of their experience with the natural world. In this specific example, Jack already had some of these deeper nature experiences that could be tapped into. Consistent with the third principle of ESH, therapists may also (3) support local social and ecological activism for clients as an encouragement for them to get “out of their troubles” and “into the world” where they can be proactive with others. If Jack and Laura were able to build walks in the woods into their lives, their relationship to these locations would deepen and perhaps out of that connection, they might develop more interest in protecting these sorts of places in the world. Jack had all the outward markers for success in Western culture, and, although he did not have words for it, felt something was missing and perhaps it was a disconnection from the greater whole. Our bodies and minds will tell us a lot about what we need to heal us if we simply pay attention to them, and Jack came to the point where he began to trust his internal voice that said “something is missing.” Jack and Laura did build regular times in their lives for these walks. Jack reports that he feels whole again and his relationship with his wife has never been better. They are now planning frequent vacations around some intensive outdoor hiking and rafting experiences and have joined a local hiking association. All discussions about antidepressants have ceased. Over time, he became better able to articulate what he was experiencing, referring to his walks in the woods as a deeply spiritual encounter—much like “going to church.”

Conclusion

We have made a case that everyone is involved in the life and rhythms of the natural world—whether or not they want to be or even recognize that they are. Every species, every human, every institution has a role in and an obligation to the global nest that protects and nurtures us. Mental health professionals have the opportunity to help transform consciousness concerning the crises of the earth in the course of their work to alleviate individual alienation and collective marginalization. Our efforts have focused on creating an initial platform to both understand and launch these efforts. Much work and research remains to be done, but exploring linkages between ESH and postmodern therapeutic practices provides an initial framework to enliven earth consciousness and heal estrangement that exists in us, between us, and within the earth community.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

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