Beyond the Self
Part 4: Community, Ethics, and Action in Eco-Wellbeing
Adapted from thesis research on nature connection, values, and meaning-making in ecological contexts. This is part four of a four part series. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
While much of contemporary psychological discourse focuses on individual distress and coping, there is increasing recognition that wellbeing is shaped by broader relational, social, and ecological contexts. Mental health cannot be fully understood, or supported, without attending to the systems in which individuals live. Nature connection, often positioned as a self-regulatory resource, also has implications for ethical orientation, collective identity, and civic action.
This article extends previous discussion of nature connection by examining its role in shaping ethical engagement and values-based responses to ecological disruption. It argues that therapeutic work situated in ecological awareness requires not only attention to regulation and meaning-making, but also a willingness to hold complexity, contradiction, and collective responsibility.
Nature Connection as Ethical Orientation
Nature connection is more than a psychological state. It is also a relational and moral orientation, one that invites reflection on interdependence, responsibility, and care (Koger & Winter, 2010). Individuals who experience themselves as embedded in ecological systems may develop a heightened sensitivity to the impacts of environmental degradation, not only on personal wellbeing, but on non-human life and future generations.
This awareness often elicits what might be termed moral emotions: grief, guilt, compassion, or urgency. While uncomfortable, these emotions can serve a functional role, highlighting misalignment between values and systems and prompting reflection on what constitutes a meaningful or ethical life. This is particularly relevant in clinical contexts where clients are seeking not simply symptom relief, but integrity and direction in the face of uncertainty.
Values Clarification and Collective Action
Therapeutic models such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasise the importance of values identification as a means of supporting committed action in the presence of distress (Hayes et al., 2012). Eco-emotions, grief, anxiety, helplessness, can be reframed within this model as indicators of what matters, rather than pathologies to be eliminated.
In this context, nature connection may support not only regulation but values clarification. The experience of feeling connected to place, non-human life, or ecological cycles can evoke a desire to act in alignment with those relationships. This may take the form of community involvement, advocacy, sustainable behaviour change, or creative expression, none of which need be framed as clinical “interventions” but may be essential to restoring a sense of agency and coherence.
Importantly, action here is not about fixing large-scale problems or achieving certainty. Rather, it is about identifying what feels viable, ethical, and sustaining within one's own capacity.
Holding Ambiguity and Limits
A common barrier to eco-engagement is the perceived futility of individual action in the face of global ecological collapse. Many individuals report feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or ambivalent uncertain of how to reconcile their knowledge with their capacity to respond. These responses are not maladaptive; they reflect a realistic assessment of scale, power, and contradiction (Pihkala, 2020).
Clinically, this underscores the need to hold space for ambiguity. The therapeutic task is not to convert uncertainty into false optimism, nor to push for action in a prescriptive way. Rather, it is to support clients in developing a position of psychological flexibility that accommodates distress without paralysis.
Nature connection can support this process not by removing distress, but by providing a context for reflection and reorientation. It may allow individuals to stay connected to their values, acknowledge their limits, and find meaning in small, local, or relational forms of action even when outcomes are uncertain.
Beyond Individualism: A Systemic Lens
Mainstream psychology has historically prioritised the individual as the primary site of analysis and intervention. However, ecological and community-based perspectives challenge this assumption. They suggest that psychological wellbeing is inseparable from collective conditions environmental, cultural, political and that healing must include attention to these wider systems (Watkins & Shulman, 2008).
Incorporating nature connection and eco-emotions into practice invites a more systemic lens. It allows for conversations about power, sustainability, and relational responsibility without leaving the therapeutic frame. This is not about activism per se, but about legitimacy acknowledging that clients’ concerns about ecological injustice, intergenerational ethics, or planetary future are valid and worthy of attention within therapeutic dialogue.
Conclusion
Nature connection is often introduced in mental health contexts as a tool for self-regulation or mood enhancement. But its deeper value may lie in its capacity to reorient individuals toward collective belonging, ecological ethics, and purposeful action. For clinicians, this means expanding the scope of inquiry to include not just how clients feel, but how they locate themselves in relation to the world and how they wish to respond to that position with care, integrity, and agency.
Psychological wellbeing, viewed through this lens, is not only about coping, but about connecting. It is about fostering the conditions under which people can act meaningfully, even in the presence of doubt.
Suggested Clinical Reflection
What might it mean to support a client not only to feel better, but to live in greater alignment with their environmental and ethical values? What tensions or opportunities does that create within your existing framework?
References
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Koger, S. M., & Winter, D. D. (2010). The psychology of environmental problems: Psychology for sustainability (3rd ed.). Psychology Press.
Pihkala, P. (2020). Anxiety and the ecological crisis: An analysis of eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. Sustainability, 12(19), 7836. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197836
Watkins, M., & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward psychologies of liberation. Palgrave Macmillan.