Turning Eco-Grief into Positive Life Strategies – 4 Key Points to Turn Eco-Grief Around.
- Problem-Focused and Emotion-Focused Coping
To confront grief, there are two ways to healthy coping: emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping.
Emotion-focused coping involves measures to regulate your emotional response to the stressor. Ways to use an emotion-focusing coping approach consists of pinpointing the feelings within you along with eco-grief and finding ways to control your emotional response. It is of paramount importance that emotion-focused coping mechanism should be targeted. One example of a poor approach is rumination. Rumination involves dwelling on negative thoughts (i.e. envisaging how badly the nature park will be damaged by the environmental crisis in the future). It risks put our immune system into further jeopardy. Emotion coping can help one to calm down.
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- In times of distress, emotional techniques can be an effective way to help one to remain calm. The EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a way to help a person process the eco-grief with calmness.
Problem-focused coping involves taking measures to resolve the stressor upon seeking clarification what is the stressor (i.e. Determine what cause eco-grief: Is it the loss of a species, culture, knowledge or habitat?). Being in a situation that is like the stressor will allow you to reflect and contemplate on ways to deal with the eco-grief.
The two coping styles can complement and work together. (i.e. To cope with a loss portion of the grassland, the grief and emotion felt may overwhelm the person. It may inhibit the person ability to concentrate effort or attention to deal with the stressor). Being calm and prepared can help the person to think more clearly.
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The emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping is part of a larger theory coined by Richard Lazarus. The psychological stress theory posits that we appraise the stressor based on our ability to cope; this involves how we appraise the stress. The stressors that individual who suffer ecological grief include the cataclysmic event (eg: the flooding in the Ghost Valley) and ambient stressors (eg: loggers present around the trees in Ghost Valley) The theory states that people will act if they deemed the environment threats as something that causes serious concern and likely think they can make a difference as capable of doing so. However, if a person knows of effective behaviour and but is not capable of executing it, maladaptive coping efforts may be adopted (including rumination). These include: “avoidance of issue”, “denial and depression”, “wishful thinking”, “resort to religious faith” and “fatalism”. |
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