Healing Trauma is Environmental Work

I remember the first day of my master’s studies at Chalmers University, in a class for Industrial Ecology. The professor asked how many of us believe that nature has intrinsic value, a worth in itself, not just a worth for providing humanity with services. I promptly raised my hand, expecting everyone else to do the same, as we were all taking a masters in sustainability. Only very few did... It was the first time I became aware of how different we all are on the inside. We can fight for the same cause, for entirely different reasons and motives. I didn’t know back then what it meant for me to believe nature has intrinsic value, or how I came to believe it. I just knew I could feel a deep connection to nature, deeper than to other humans, and an innate knowing that we are not separate.

I have been working in the public sector for many years since, trying to make sustainability an important parameter in construction projects. I have been producing rules, guidelines and criteria. Educating people, giving people hope, trying to make it easier and to explain why it matters. Impacting public procurement and public building maintenance, hoping to change the ecological state of the world for the better.

When I had children of my own, I suddenly had bigger fish to fry. I realized that unless I radically changed something, I was going to pass on my traumatic childhood to them. I refused to participate in this generational passing on of hurt and shame. After therapy, parenting courses and pq-reps, I finally found what worked for me. Lion Goodman and his Clear Beliefs methodology. I never knew how much this new path was going to affect not only my personal life, but also my professional life.

Since becoming a student of Lion, I have learned to understand the inside of our human brain. I had dealt with the external results and products of this internal world for a long time. I had never been able to understand the actions we humans take. I have felt a distance and almost a distaste towards my own species, and the damage we are collectively doing to our planet, our home. A distance that in part comes from my own troubling childhood and abusive father, and in part from growing up in the countryside, finding salvation in the green grass and fairy rings of Ireland. A distance that my own children are healing, one resolved conflict at a time.

There is still so much I don’t understand, entire universes of unknowing. However, I have learned that what I thought was greed, hate and cowardice are deeply programmed truths, patterns, structures and automated reactions. Traumatic situations in childhood shape our brains for the rest of our lives. Traumatic situations a mother experiences change her DNA and are passed on to her children for generations to come. Once our brain has learned a successful reaction in a stressful situation it will keep using it. So the grown-ups in the meeting room with me – are making decisions and taking actions based on their childhood survival patterns. And I am doing the same.

Lion taught me that the mind is malleable. We can change our beliefs, patterns, automatic reactions, and we can choose our subconscious beliefs. The Clear Beliefs toolkit is surprisingly effective at doing this. I have personally experienced the changes in my parenting and relationships. And I realise increasingly, that our society, as it grows and suffers and blooms around us, is the sum of our collective inner state. It is our actions and decisions that are affecting our world, and these are caused by our beliefs and stories – which can be changed. I am starting to believe I can make a bigger difference working with people’s minds than with society’s structures.

Because here I stand, after a decade in the public construction sector, achieving minimal if any, positive changes for the environment. For let’s be honest, it’s mostly about negative impact mitigation. The real positive effects for the environment in recent years have come from the dips in our economy during, for instance, the pandemic. Because for every dollar spent, carbon gases are emitted, untouched nature is farmed, air is polluted and water is dirtied. The massive losses for nature are the wars. The bombs falling emit more carbon gases than entire countries. There is so much grief here. For the people suffering the effects of other people’s suffering, generation after generation. For my mission to protect nature, quietly driving me since childhood, being nearer a failure than ever before. Grief for our beautiful world being torn to shreds. And it brings me to a decision I can no longer ignore, shove to the back of my mind, and save for a different day. Change starts within. Awareness starts within. Decisions and actions are changed within. And the results of our actions are what are affecting our surroundings and our planet, on a local and global scale.

So, I find myself changing my profession. Changing people’s inner worlds. Helping them release suffering, to feel more love, to see more beauty... Because it is us, we people, that make up society. And touching people’s lives with love, will make a bigger positive impact on the environment than the boldest of procurement criteria. The same cause still drives me. A healthy earth, full of diversity, resilience, clean air, clean water and open hearts. A world of love, learning and freedom. Walking the same path as before, protecting the earth from my own species. Paradoxically, it brings me into deeper contact with my own species, than I’ve ever been before. And my own feelings of separateness heal. Because just as I feel my connection with nature, I increasingly feel how deeply I am connected with other people.