Palmer: How can we maintain our ‘eco-motivation’?
A positive psychology approach underpinned by climate science and cognitive behavioural and solution focused techniques can help clients stay motivated to tackle climate change.
Maintaining ‘eco-motivation’ is difficult, with many falling prey to debilitating climate change worries, eco-anxiety and ‘eco-depression’, said Professor Stephen Palmer in his keynote as part of the Anthony Grant Lecture. Speaking at the 11th International Congress of Coaching Psychology, he welcomed the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ refusal this year to pathologise eco-distress, categorising it instead as a meaningful response to the climate and ecological emergency.
Palmer, a chartered biologist as well as psychologist, presented results from the ISCP International Centre for Coaching Psychology Research’s survey: Tackling climate change issues raised within coaching and coaching psychology practice. It showcased client concerns about climate change, including preparing for the collapse of society, overwhelming feelings of empathy for the earth, inaction by governments, impact on family life and what they can do personally to mitigate changes.
Helpful coaching techniques and frameworks include systemic approaches, mindfulness and resilience, compassion-based approaches, sustainable leadership, motivational interviewing, digging deeper into values and legacy, strengths-based and Gestalt, according to the survey.
While a third (33%) said they would bring to supervision a climate-change concern related session, another third said they wouldn’t. “I’m curious about why people wouldn’t bring such a session to supervision,” said Palmer.
Palmer also talked about some common defeating ‘eco-anxiety thoughts’ through a cognitive behavioural coaching lens, including: fortune-telling – ‘it’s going to turn out really bad’, ‘all-or-nothing thinking- ‘whatever I attempt to do…is a waste of time’ and discounting the positive – ‘my family and I are doing our best… but it’s not enough’.
Support students to flourish
Coaching psychologists need to play an integral part in supporting students to flourish, said Dr Gisele Dias.
“There’s a very marked need for resilience and wellbeing to be part of the centrepiece of academic practice at university, partly because the transition to adulthood is so challenging,” she said in her keynote at the conference: Towards a coaching psychology-based space for empowerment, agency and wellbeing in higher education.
Poor mental health in the student population is increasingly prevalent, she said.
She shared a case study of a resilience and wellbeing programme at King’s College London, on campus, then virtual. The programme, Time to Thrive, was developed around Seligman’s PERMA model (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishments/Achievements), and focuses on areas such as overcoming procrastination and relaxation techniques.
Preliminary data from a randomised controlled trial and other evaluation indicates an increase in wellbeing as a result of participating.
Wellbeing coaching on the up
We’re seeing the rise of wellbeing coaching, partly as a result of the pandemic, said Professor Suzy Green in her keynote: Coaching for wellbeing: Updates on science and practice.
Coaching has always been about wellbeing but there now appears to be greater permission to be explicit about this being the case, said the founder and CEO of The Positivity Institute. She said: “When I first started practising as an executive coach, I wouldn’t have dared mention the word wellbeing.”
Green talked about Anthony Grant’s Wellbeing & Engagement Framework (2012) in the light of the pandemic, a four-quadrant model which also draws on the work of Corey Keyes (2007).
Rather than looking at mental health and wellbeing being on one continuum (low to high), it also looks at engagement/ goal striving (low to high.) In the top left quadrant is coasting and in the top right, flourishing. In the bottom left is distressed and disengaged, and the bottom right, distressed and functional.