Confronting People in Denial: An Environmental Intervention and Psychology Tool to Further Responsible Relationships.

November 08, 2004 — By Project NatureConnect

Whole-thinking people recognize that if you take a section out of the side of a ball, you make both the section and the ball dysfunctional. Neither ball nor section will roll with the same perfection of the ball when it was whole. Similarly, although people are part of nature, our society is excessively separated from nature. We live extremely disconnected from the perfection beauty and recuperative powers of that ball of nature we call our planetary home, Earth. On average, we spend over 95 percent of our time indoors. Is it any wonder that we suffer our dysfunctions?

In our estrangement from nature, we disconnect our mind from its nurturing and healing origins in our planet's natural systems. This breach prevents us from thoughtfully enjoying the health, purity and balance of nature's wholeness. Over 99 percent of our thinking is disconnected from and out of tune with authentic nature so we seldom acknowledge that nature rarely displays our troubles as it harmoniously produces its optimums of life, diversity, cooperation and peaceful transformation. We ignore that as part of nature we inherit this ability but we don't nurture it.

Nature's profound absence in our lives causes our mentality to suffer the troubles that today limit our thinking and produce the insanity of our civilization's personal, social and environmental disorders (1). In our disconnection we also lose nature's ability to help us reverse these psychologically based malfunctions.

Our nature-disconnected reasoning is painfully unable to admit that it creates the immoral, abusive, pollution, stress, isolation and war that we cause from the separation of our mentality from nature. Our thinking denies that it and its disconnection from nature's paradise is to blame for our dilemmas. In denial, it instead calls the situation "progress," "normal" or "economic growth." We must begin to address our denial if we are to live in the well-being of balance.

You, dear reader, are a member of our nature-disconnected society and I suggest you recognize your personal problem. Please forgive me for your discomfort from my intervention here, but you are in denial of the role your nature-disconnected thinking and relationships play in our dilemma (2). You can't desist from being part of our problems because, like most of the rest of us, you deny your addictions (3). You deny that through rewarded repetition your mind is psychologically bonded to our culture's environmentally and socially harmful technologies, substances and relationships. You deny that they can't responsibly satisfy your sensory needs and that they produce discontents. You deny that nature designed your psyche to enjoy environmentally sound fulfillments in nature's attractions and restorative powers, not in our detrimental substitutes for them; any good experience you have had in nature demonstrates this. Why deny the truth of your experience?

While in denial, like a vast majority of us, you: - deny that to reduce your destructive relationships it is imperative that your nature-disconnected addiction obtain psychological treatment because addiction is a psychological problem. -deny that genuinely reconnecting your psyche to nature helps you provide the rewarding psychological satisfactions and solutions you need to recuperate.

-deny that what you need to help your situation is a powerful nature-reconnecting tool that is easily accessible to you. At Project NatureConnect, the process of this tool enables you to benefit from genuinely reconnecting your thinking with nature to responsibly strengthen your personal and professional hopes and wellness, and to help others do the same.

And, if perchance you think you are not in denial about your, and our, detrimental addiction to nature-disconnected thinking, how do you explain that you are not now using a Project NatureConnect tool to provide assistance and gain success in a more balanced and supportive way?

In other words, to become more well whole and sane, let's get on the ball. For further information: www.ecopsych.com

1. Our civilization can be seen as an ancient addictive story that says "For our survival we must conquer nature and grind it into economic resources and values." That story rewards and empowers us to abuse and exploit natural systems that flourish everywhere, in wilderness, habitats, native peoples, men, women, children, foreigners, protestors, independent thinkers, the poor and the planet.

2. Although it is often uncomfortable, intervention confronts an addict in order to bring into their awareness their denial of their addiction and the detrimental effects of their addiction on themselves and their relationships.

3. Denial is the primary psychological symptom and automatic unconscious component of addiction. Addicts are often the last to recognize their disease and they blame everything but their addiction for their problems and their destructive effects. Denial is why recovery from addiction is usually ineffective. We cannot work on a problem unless we accept that it exists.

For more information, contact: Michael J. Cohen
Director
Institute of Global Education, Project NatureConnect
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
www.ecopsych.com