Climate Circles: Offering Safe Spaces for Co-Regulating Our Emotions
- Sara
- Apr 3
- 3 min read
How do you take care of your heart? How would you describe your self-care practice? Learning to self-soothe and finding comfort within yourself in distressing situations is a life-long journey in itself. It is also a lesson for us to learn when to self-regulate and when we should lean on others which may actually serve us at a deeper level.
Let's face it: none of us are robots and we are not immune to life's challenges. Especially if we work in a field that constantly reminds us about the alarming issues. If you are reading this, I urge you to ask yourself a question - have you ever gone through a wave of emotions, and felt like there is absolutely no space or person whom you could express them? Maybe you did not want to bother people or maybe you felt that nobody would understand. Or maybe our culture makes a sharp distinction between "intellectual" professional life and "emotional" private life.
Expressing emotions, in general, carries a lot of stigma. We often associate positive emotions such as joy and excitement as 'good emotions' and negative emotions including sadness and frustration as 'bad emotions'. In reality these are all just emotions. Today's world does not encourage people to share their emotions holistically, so we often start suppressing our innermost feelings and might end up with secondary emotions such as anger, and then we have no idea where they are even originating from.
To regulate our own emotions, it's extremely important to have our individual go-to rituals to acknowledge, process and release. Whether that is meditation, journaling or moving our bodies or something totally different. However, have you ever heard about co-regulation?
In its essence, co-regulation simply means 'coming together to help each other navigate their feelings and behaviors, creating a supportive emotional environment. Each person contributes to the emotional wellbeing of the other, offering support, understanding, and encouragement.' While it sounds like a very natural part of our lives, it is surprising how rare truly emotionally safe places are in our society. Perhaps this is why we see such a rise in therapy and counseling services.
If you work in a sector that deals with crisis management you probably have received a training to cope with difficult emotions that may arise. Maybe it helps. But what if your work is less hand-on job where the crisis is global and sometimes a little abstract? How do you feel about having to keep up with the news that very seldom have anything positive and hopeful to tell us? We can disassociate and intellectualise to a certain extent but once again we are not robots.
It is clear that our world today is dysfunctional when it comes to our sense of connection with others and the world. Climate Circles were developed for this exact purpose. They are open to everyone and gather people together either in-person or virtually to sit in a circle to share openly about injustice, exhaustion, frustration, grief, but also joy, hope and critical experiences, within a supportive community of purpose. They are based on deep listening which is a new concept for many (at least it was for myself).
I have been to a couple of Climate Circles and I was personally so moved by the experience that I decided to train myself as a host to be able to facilitate one myself. There really is something about sitting in a circle with people and feeling safe to express yourself without judgment or interruptions. In our daily lives, we are so used to relying on our established personal relationships, networks and ourselves but it can be uniquely refreshing to surround yourself with new people to understand that we all experience emotions and that we are interconnected beyond our personal experience. It increases empathy towards other living beings and makes us feel less alone.
If you are curious to try a Climate Circle, we will be hosting an in-person session in a couple of weeks in the Climate Wellness Retreat. Details to sign up can be found below.
I wish light in your day,
x Sara
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