Ecological Emotions
The primal affection of the mammalian body in symbiosis with the territory it inhabits.
Ecological Emotions are a living and paradoxical territory, living in the body and the interconnected relationships with all non-humans. Essentially, they are profoundly invisible, culturally devalued, and viscerally silenced.
In a deeply anthropocentric and hyper-individualistic cultural context, we don't have the words or articulation to even acknowledge their existence. Thus, these visceral and overwhelming emotions go unnoticed, having no defined contours or safe spaces where they can be experienced, expressed, and much less validated. I often encounter a profound illiteracy of ecological emotions, manifesting through a complex cultural taboo. A dense membrane of silencing and invalidation of ecological, visceral, and relational emotions. Despite their complexity, these emotions are not new, but they challenge us collectively to accept what we normatively tend to leave out.
In the living processes and unlearning of Ecopsychology and Eco-Mythology, we talk about and experience pain and mourning. Throughout cycles and layers of unlearning towards Ecopsychology and Eco-Mythology, some participants ask, “what to do with this pain?”; paradoxically, they also mention how they discover new resources, relationships, and articulations, lived and felt, of words and concepts, which allow them to navigate the rough and disturbing waters of mourning and pain. Something that goes against the grain of everything we've been taught to do, through the multiple ways of covering up, silencing, and ignoring what hurts.
Many people who (un)study with me say:
“I've always felt this way, but I didn't have the words to express myself.”
“feeling how valid my emotions were with the places brought me more encouragement.”
“it was like coming home, where what I feel and carry in my chest was recognized and honored.”
“it's the first time I've found a space where these emotions can be expressed and valid in their own right.”
These ecological emotions are no different from those we are used to feeling (which we constantly devalue, send away, or lock away in a little box). They are as banal as our anger or grief, as urgent as our joy and love. We were never machines in an impenetrable box from which we see the world outside and far away.
We are body, ground and stars, forest and desert, mycelium and root.
We need to rescue the kaleidoscope of emotions and affections that connect us to where we are. It's essential to give voice to these emotions that don't follow the limited lines of the human, but resonate and vibrate with deeper and broader relationships — the rich and wild ecological relationships. When we allow it, these emotions express our most primal relationships: kinship, love, belonging, sovereignty, reciprocity, and visceral responsibility. Whether in affective relation to the tree next door, the stream down the slope, or the mountain under our feet. The primal affection of the mammalian body in symbiosis with the territory it inhabits.
Dignifying the value of taking on ecological relationships and emotions that connect us to the living territory is essential to return in times of deep fragmentation and crisis.
REFERENCES:
BATALHA, Sofia. Guilt, Sorrow and Anger in {cadernos de oikos-psykhē} - Volume I - Ecopsychology, Author's edition. ISBN: 978-989-9152-73-1. 2024
BATALHA, Sofia.Let's Talk About Pain in {cadernos de oikos-psykhē} - Volume I - Ecopsychology, Author's Edition.ISBN: 978-989-9152-73-1. 2024
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