Reframing Eco-anxiety with The Work That Reconnects
By Carson Brown, MD
The age of eco-anxiety is here. Psychological distress about climate change and the inter-related political and social problems of the “polycrisis” have more than 60% of people ages 16-25 reporting feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, fear, sadness, and anger according to a 2024 Lancet report. (1) How are you holding up, facing news of extinction, war, and injustice every day?
The Work That Reconnects (WTR) is a framework developed by Joanna Macy that includes rituals, stories, reflective practices, and structured conversations to help people safely access their intense feelings about the climate crisis and transmute them into creative action. Before she passed away in July of 2025, Macy was an environmental activist and a scholar of systems theory and Buddhist theology, but her methods match up with interventions from the field of mental health.
One of the most impactful aspects of The Work That Reconnects is the reframing of our pain for the world as something meaningful and powerful. A mainstay of cognitive behavioral therapy, reframing takes the same set of facts and assigns them a different valid interpretation, one that fuels resiliency instead of despair, opens possibilities instead of closing them. For example, someone going through a breakup may conclude, “I’m unloveable.” A therapist could work to help the person reframe the situation as, “We weren’t the right match” or “I learned a lot from this relationship.” Same circumstance, different stories, with very different emotional signatures.
This is not some short-cut of toxic positivity. Joanna Macy specifically does not want to minimize the pain of the climate crisis; in fact, she believes feeling it is the key to imagining novel solutions. In reframing, the picture itself doesn’t change, just the context of how we hold it. “Facing our distress doesn’t make it disappear. Instead, when we do face it, we are able to place our distress within a larger landscape that gives it a different meaning.” (2)
The Work That Reconnects reframes the pain of climate anxiety by asserting that it is evidence of interconnection and caring. In Active Hope, Macy writes, “When you experience pain for something beyond your immediate self-interest, this reveals your caring, compassion, and connection—such precious things.” We only feel pain for people we have never met, species we have never seen, places we have never been because we are all fundamentally interconnected. Our pain isn’t meaningless suffering without impact. Interpreting our pain as meaningful proof of interconnection fortifies a worldview based in kinship, an antidote to the individualism and competition that drives the climate crisis.
Joanna Macy and WTR also remind us that feeling our pain inherently disrupts the status quo. The systems that drive injustice and climate change want us to ignore the urgent signals our nervous system is sending that something is wrong. Again in Active Hope, Macy recounts the tale of the knight Parsifal, who encounters a king with a wound that will not heal. Parsifal initially does not acknowledge the wound, bound by a vague social pressure to ignore the obvious. But ultimately, Parsifal is brave enough to ask the king, “What aileth thee?” and thus breaks the spell, allowing the king to heal. By speaking our climate fears aloud, we break taboos and disrupt the “business as usual” mentality that allows atrocities to continue.
As a systems theorist, Macy explains that complex systems need all forms of available information in order to regulate themselves. Feedback loops take in information from the environment and make internal adjustments to adapt effectively. If important sources of information, such as pain, are cut off or ignored, a system’s ability to right itself is impaired.
When we open to pain-as-information, as intolerable as it may feel at times, we can course correct, both personally and societally. Our pain is a portal to creative ideas and outcomes. The effort it takes to suppress pain drains our energy. We fear that opening to it will engulf us. But Macy observes the opposite occur, again and again: “It is our consistent experience that as people open to the flow of their emotional experience, including despair, sadness, guilt, fury, or fear, they feel a weight lifted from them and … an increased determination to act.”
Macy’s assertion that strong emotions open up novel problem-solving capabilities is backed up by cutting-edge affective neuroscience. The work of Allan Schore, PhD, explains how intense emotional experiences activate areas of the brain that take a “panoramic view” and access our deepest “adaptive resources and resilience.” (3)
My first exposure to Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects was a ritual called The Truth Mandala, which uses objects to represent the emotions of fear, grief, anger, and emptiness. The facilitator explained Macy’s view that each of these feelings also contains its opposite. Fear includes the courage it takes to face what scares us. Grief only exists for the things we deeply love. Anger reveals our passion for justice. And emptiness creates a space of potential for new forms to arise.
If you are experiencing anguish amid climate change and the polycrisis, I invite you to read Active Hope and visit workthatreconnects.org. You can also visit my website carsonbrownmd.com for more support. Joanna Macy reminds us that every great adventure story begins with humble heroes facing what look like insurmountable obstacles. The very challenges that threaten to overwhelm us draw forth our deepest capabilities and forge the closest communities. When you need respite from the intensity of modern life, I hope these reframing perspectives can sustain you.
References
Lewandowski, R. Eric, et al. "Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events." The Lancet Planetary Health 8.11 (2024): e879-e893.
Macy, Joanna, and Chris Johnstone. Active hope (revised): How to face the mess we’re in with unexpected resilience and creative power. New World Library, 2022.
Schore, Allan N. "Right-brain affect regulation." The healing power of emotion (2009): 112-144.