This page was created following a question received by a person from the HUB community: "How can we take care of ourselves as activists, when the resources and support available reinforce the systems we want to dismantle?" The following are covered: capitalist approaches to mental health, eco-anxiety, eco-whitewashing, individual empowerment, burnout, community care and individual practices within communities. This page will be continuously added to.

Mental Health

In capitalist society

In our capitalist society, mental health is presented as an individual matter and for us to work on or it is treated as a matter to be medicated. We live in interdependence with the people and situations around us. Individual mental health and the window of tolerance one has to manage stress is affected by, for example:

the oppression the individual experiences; includes things like environmental factors in our upbringing or present (e.g. living conditions, access to opportunities, microaggressions etc).
the difficulties faced by people around them
the variety of ways our brains function
our parents upbringing and the influence this had on the parenting we received

Mental health is a collective issue.

Facing the climate crisis

Why seek psychological services if the person I see does not understand what I am going through and is not also trying to dismantle the system in place?

Will going to see a therapist will just make me even more angry? I don't want to educate him on the systems of oppression and the seriousness of the crisis...

The multiple crises that surround us, exacerbated by the climate crisis, awaken emotions that are also influenced by:

Dominant discourses on the climate crisis	Greenwashing. Green technologies. Green growth. A focus on fear. Carbon footprint and individual actions. On the discourse of individual gestures - The discourse saying that we must reduce our ecological impact, or our "carbon footprint" associates individual behavior with the climate crisis. It says a person who consumes is an enemy of nature. Individuals feel guilty and helpless. It also says all of humanity is something that harms nature. In truth, it is the capitalist economic model and it's exploitative mentality that destroy nature; not individuals who are born and socialized into this system. While we are talking about individual gestures, business leaders continue to make profits by selling “reduced impact” items and exploiting people and the planet.
Dominant discourses on eco-anxiety	Be careful not to describe young people or marginalized groups as “victims” that need to be helped. It creates a saviour narrative. Saviourism draws autonomy away from these groups, and describes them as powerless. Focus on the people, groups and systems who are perpetrating the climate crisis and that need to be held accountable.
Individual responsibility for care	“People talk a lot about taking care of yourself, but that means doing what you individually can outside of your job while the big structures that reproduce inequality remain firmly in place."- Janey Starling & Seyi Falodun-Liburd ^[1]

Countering the dominant discourse

Faced with this reality and these discourses that feed distress, it is important to nurture a counter-discourse that centers the real causes of the climate crisis and the collective action necessary for climate justice. These counter-discourses speak of social movements, popular organization and collective power.

To learn more about the different components of social movements, see movement ecology .
To better understand how what you feel is related to the climate crisis, see @environmentalist.affirmations who popularized the content of the book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety by Sarah Jaquette Ray
See also our page on eco-anxiety.

In activism

Burnout

Burnout is physical or emotional exhaustion caused by overwork or stress according to the Chambers Dictionary. This is a lived reality in almost all militant circles. It can be the result of an imbalance between aspects of our activism and our life.

Here are some causes of activist burnout mentioned by Sophy Banks of Transition Network

The stakes are high, urgent and very important	“…in a society where a portion of the population is causing the problems, the people who feel responsible for solving them may be a small minority with few resources.."
Doing is more good than feeling	If we don't realize how we feel, it's possible that our feelings... push us to act beyond our limits solidify as numbness or illness
Giving more value to actions than to the state of people	Only giving value to what is “productive”. This is a form of internalized ableism and it is damaging to our mental health.
Act according to “heroism”	Overdoing and not letting other people do important tasks, i.e. not sharing leadership
Succumb to time pressure	“What do we lose when we go too fast and do too much?"' We lose: Time to fix communication issues. Time to listen to the points of view and needs of groups and people who are not part of the dominant group. Time for evaluation and reflection: an inability to adjust strategic direction, (activities can become more risky and/or less relevant. Time for learning, personal development and deepening.

Collective support

Systems of oppression create great hardships for each person to go through. If we collectivize care, we include the most precarious people and we learn to use our greatest tool in building a world without violence. ^[2]

"Prioritising care is a refusal to abandon oneself and the others around us." ^[3]

In the face of the climate crisis and the many social crises we face, we can support each other collectively through community care and a regenerative culture.

Community care

Community care is the shared responsibility to offer and receive the emotional, physical and structural support we need in order to live more lovingly and liberatedly. It's also the way we improve our groups to meet our aspirations.

Communal care within a group includes...

Space to arrive as a human person with personal challenges.
Building a culture in our spaces and relationships rooted in trust and mutual compassion

Community care is not opposed to discipline or rigor. Instead, we use our energy more strategically because “our battles are too important for any one of us to burn out." ^[4] Thus, community care is integral to team functioning so we can carry out our fights with more ease.

Patriarcheal systems today suggest care is largely assumed by women in our societies. If we wish to develop community care in our spaces, this work must be done and organized in an explicit way so that the mental load is not assumed by women and femmes, or by those experiencign other forms of oppression (ableism, racism etc).

Putting community care into action

Bringing the ingredients of a culture of care to life

These ingredients are taken from the article We need a climate movement that addresses the trauma of fighting for a burning planet by Waging Nonviolence.

Note that the actions for the different ingredients described may be different from one group to another.

Ingredient	Examples
Ease *ingredient added by the HUB	This ingredient allows people to take action accessibly; it's less complicated, less energy-consuming, and less reserved for people who know how things work. In a context where many activists tell us that their mental health improves in action, facilitating it has its place as an ingredient of community care in the context of activism. You can contribute this ingredient to your grop by: Creating documentation answering potential questions for new joiners. Creating a meeting calendar to remove the collective burden of planning a new meeting date after each meeting Adding opportunities that makes it easier to get involved (i.e. makes certain tasks, project management, meeting organization, etc. less energy-intensive).
Space	To rest, reflect, recover and heal. Contribute to this by: Planning campaigns with low points (that is, easier lift actions or time off) Holding sharing and learning circles. Planning rest times.
Love	This might include: Regular compliments, positive feedback, and celebration of people and their work (“I separate people from their work, because we need to better celebrate the inherent value of people, regardless of their work”). ^[5] Put time into the personal growth of members. Regularly check in on people's well-being. Create communities of support for people going through difficult times. Mentoring and pairing.
Diversity	Encourage diversity of perspectives and respectful feedback.
Limit	Try: Asking rather than assume that some people are able to take on more work. To have clear objectives to avoid feeling like you have to do everything. Encouraging people to set their own boundaries and communicate them.
Awareness	Create spaces to address different issues (unconscious bias, trauma, feedback and reflection, etc.).
Compassion	Encourage: Seeing mistakes as part of learning. Knowing the needs of the people around us. Avoiding judgment.
Vulnerability	Suggest: Honesty when you make mistakes. Taking time to welcome people with their strengths, fears and needs. "Demanding and striving for what is needed, not just what [one thinks] can be achieved, despite fear or outside attacks." ^[6]
Joy	This includes: Taking time to play, “time without a goal”. Recurring social time and moments of celebration. Identifying the types of work that are associated with joy and find ways to incorporate them.
Fluidity	Encourage this by: Having an openness to change according to what surrounds us. Sharing and learning from others in order to “contaminate” ourselves with our knowledge.
Imagination	Try: Welcoming more art and artists to our spaces. Learning from people outside our circles.

Establish a feedback mechanism ^[7]

A work team can be mandated to conduct this process on an ongoing basis. Roles related to supporting the process should be clear and ideally, rotating to sharing the emotional load.

1. Space for receiving feedback and needs	Have spaces to take and receive feedback from members on group activities and on people's needs related to group activities.
2. Evaluation of feedback received	Discuss what the feedback means for the group.
3. Taking action	Create an appropriate care response for people in the group or community. Examples: meeting every two weeks rather than every week, creating moments for congratulations, hosting activities, organizing recurring social activities, creating a support and sharing group etc.
4. Counter resistance	At this stage, we try to go beyond the old comfort zone of the group to create a new one. Collective effort must be made to support the actions needed to respond to the feedback of the group.
5. Assess	Ask whether the action(s) were able to respond to the feedback or the needs expressed.

What sustains activists around the world

Uplift experiences and strengths

Give space for, and uplift, people's experiences and strengths, rather than flattening these to achieve 'pure' horizontalism.

Consider power dynamics for each role

Consider a) how you'll prevent new members with high levels of experience from taking power, and support them in working within the established protocols of the group and b) how more experienced members can support less experienced members.
Mentorship, skill-sharing and role rotations help to avoid harmful power dynamics and hierarchies (see below).
Caretaking roles or admin/logistics (like note-taking, check ins etc.) can be roles that people avoid when members do not place value on them. This is a larger power issue. Group discussion should be had on why care and logistics roles are avoided if it is a recurring problem.

Hold space for reflection

Question at the beginning of your involvement (or at the beginning of each season): What would you like to do in your activism? What would you like to develop? (E.g. maybe you want to be the one to kick off circles of care?) (Translated from french)

Identify recurring roles and rotate them

Identify roles that are consistently performed in your group. Ideally, try to make some or all of these roles rotatable, rather than assigning the same person to each role indefinitely. E.g. you could rotate roles such as meeting facilitator, note-taker, 'vibes-checker' etc. monthly.
Share in advance who will be next doing each role so that there can be an intentional and focused opportunity for up-skilling.
"We used a rotation system where we all starred (*) the roles/tasks in an excel sheet we would be interested in rotating into, leaving the ones we weren’t comfy taking on blank. If no one was interested in or down to take something on, someone who has taken it on before would buddy with someone new to the role until the next role rotation."

Example spreadsheet:

	Ally	Arnold	Abba
Facilitator	*
Outreach		*	*
Social lead	*	*

Build cultures of skill-sharing

If several people want to learn about the same thing, organize a training/process. Make room for learning. Even in the rush of organizing, see it as a priority.
Embrace skill-sharing in the group culture. For example, every 2 weeks, hold skill sharing sessions where anyone can teach anything they know.
Keep documents that include ‘best practices’ or 'things to know' for each role, if relevant to support people trying it for the first time.
More experienced or knowledgeable members can create a workshop to share knowledge in a more interactive way with members.
Ensure every working group or role has teachers and those excited about gaining new knowledge.

Encourage and support trying new things

"Creating a culture of trying new things! Members who are more experienced can regularly invite new members, and even older members to bottomline something they wouldn’t usually do, sharing resources or mentoring so this person has support."
If you put it at the centre, it will be taken care of. Name roles that need to be filled, and someone will likely be willing to step up!
Encourage everyone that group life should include 1 thing you're passionate about, and 1 thing that just needs to get done.
Emphasize the importance of resilience in your team (i.e. more than one person who does a certain task / knows how to do a certain task). This should encourage folks to try new roles/tasks (with support from things such as skill sharing or buddy systems)!

An article by Helen Cox summarizes what activists said they do to support their activism. They shared their individual care practices alongside creating community care mechanisms.

Their answers could guide reflections related to...

commitment capacity
exercise
sleep
food
nature
time management and breaks
group dynamics
meditation practices
non-activism relations
mentoring
social networks
long-term vision and thinking
creativity
spirituality

A report following focus groups with trans and non-binary activists in Columbia describes some of their individual, collective and grassroots care practices. Those that participated were part of a community network that mobilized during the pandemic to support trans sex worker communities. Apeer support group was created to use their own ways of addressing emotional distress from the daily violence they experience. Some takeaways were:

Care is a practice. It is constructed in practice through relationships or one-to-one agency.

Care is "Research and active listening (...) so we know how to take care of others or take care of ourselves (...) it is also listening to ourselves, listening to our body, because our body is one of the first ones that starts to show signs when something is wrong when we self-medicate or our mental process declines” (Focus group member). ^[8]

Offer support groups or sessions. Hold space for grief, for raising difficult feelings.

We build relationships, connection and trust in these vulnerable moments. Relationships and holding each other through violence sustain us.

Ulex Project in Spain has several collective and personal tool suggestions to make activism more effective and sustainable (avoiding burnout).

The action learning cycle for reflection.

Using the Action Learning methodology enables us to take the time for deeper reflection as a basis for enriched analysis and future planning. Act, reflect, analyze and learn, plan and act.

Encourage the practice of mindful awareness in groups.

"Mindfulness can be brought to our experience of the body, the senses, our emotional experience, behavioural tendencies, and to enable us to become more conscious of our thoughts and how they frame our experience. In addition to awareness of our own body, mind and heart, mindfulness is also a key factor in increasing awareness and understanding of others and our interactions with the world." "Body and breath based practices can support this kind of mental training." -Ulex Project. Body and breath-based practices that could be included in teams include holding brief meditations together (there's many free apps or youtube for this), or something as simple as 'shaking it out'.

Hold space for open dialogue on the emotional experiences people are having.
Raise power dynamics. Name them in your group.

This is necessary "to explore how to transform unhelpful power dynamics, how to distribute power appropriately, as well as how to use it well and consciously." -Ulex Project

Consider decision making processes.

It is "common enough to find that attempts to replace traditional hierarchies with horizontal flat structures which fetishize consensus processes can also lead to deep frustration, stagnation or dissipation. Developing greater agility in adopting differentiated and distributed forms of decision making can often help us to better express our values and free up energy and initiative." -Ulex Project

Face conflict and understand it as necessary for growth.

There can be creative solutions and directions from conflict. But too often it becomes entrenched, or is hidden.

Build a culture of feedback.
Consider your group's capacity when planning actions; reflect each time you act on whether you were stretched thin, and how to improve this the next time.

Recognize you will need to apply some time and energy to strategic objectives that increase our internal capacity, secure further resources, and gain us time and potency.

Balance!

Balance "productivity with uselessness, action with reflection, output with nourishment and work with sheer enjoyment! These are all crucial aspects of long term and effective engagement."-Ulex Project

What sustains activists in the HUB community

Here are some responses from activists in the HUB community to the question "What makes you feel good about activism?"

"Community "	"The interconnection"
“Feeling the influence we can have”	“More people are starting to get involved in activism”
It can allow you to "free yourself from certain frustrations or anxieties."	"Hearing from movement elders. It's a reminder these are intergenerational, long-term fights."