Turning Eco-Grief into Positive Life Strategies – 4 Key Points to Turn Eco-Grief Around.
- Finding Meaning
Finding meaning in the environmental loss of animal, land or culture is critical. Viktor Frank, a neurologist, hypothesised on the topics of finding meaning in loss. Two types of meaning were specified: sense making & benefit finding.
Sense making is an aspect of finding meaning in a stressful situation; this consists of discerning the environmental stressor is something that is predictable, controllable and non-random – something consistent with our expectations of the world. This involves working through the loss, trying to rationalise the loss.
Benefit finding involves discerning some benefit from the stressor, despite being in a stressful situation (i.e. the flooding that occur in 2013 at the Ghost Valley).
To complement the two ways of finding meaning, social support is a good antidote to help a person cope with adversity. This includes providing resources to help an individual cope with ecological grief and having a good social support network to help a person cope with ecological grief.
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