“There’s a wearing down of everyone’s nervous system. It’s a tender time to be alive.” — Emily Swanson, a Woodacre-based eco- and climate psychologist
that. We couldn’t get out of that hypervigilant state because it just kept happening over and over again.” Davenport acknowledges that the new Trump administration, which has flagged terms like “climate crisis,” “climate science,” “mental health” and “traumatic” as “woke” words to limit or avoid in government websites and communications, grant proposals and contracts is concerning. So, climate psychologists are discussing what language they might want to use instead when addressing the public and on their websites. “Even not using ‘climate’ but ‘a changing world,’ things that back up a little bit from the really highly charged language,” she says. Still, she believes one of the best ways to face the inevitable impacts of climate-fueled disasters is to talk about it. “Parents and teachers don’t know how to talk about it, therapists are just learning how to talk about it so that if we bring it out of the shadows and make it OK to …talk about how it’s affecting us, it’s going to free things up to engage a lot more.” g
the Tubbs Fire and instead become a mental health consultant helping train others who work with children to understand the impacts of trauma and to help build resilient communities. People react differently to a natural disaster based on their own histories as well as societal influences. “A climate disaster will happen, and people will be in all sorts of wellness or not. The more that’s already in one’s system, of PTSD, the more susceptible they’re going to be,” Swanson says. “It depends on the person, where they are going into it, what kind of life experiences they’ve had, what kind of community supports they have. This is really impacted by issues of race, of class, of gender” and, for some, fears of being deported if they seek help. “There’s a wearing down of everyone’s nervous system. It’s a tender time to be alive.” The repeated fires in Sonoma County since Tubbs, from 2017’s Nuns and Pocket fires to 2019’s Kincade Fire, and fires in surrounding counties overwhelmed the North Bay with smoke, which, Silverstein says, was a constant reminder of devastation beyond the initial trauma. “You couldn’t move on. Even the people who don’t have PTSD or wouldn’t have had PTSD diagnoses, but we all have these embodied responses,” she says. “Personally, I still get reactive every time the wind blows on a hot day. In those years when it was constant in front of us, our bodies couldn’t start to recover from Coming Soon to NorthBay biz
Please email comments to jwalsh@NorthBaybiz.com
May BEST Of Bonus issue: Best of the North Bay Results of our annual readers’ poll are unveiled—highlighting the North Bay’s crème de la crème in restaurants, wineries, hospitality, style and financial services. June Women Business Leaders The “Mad Men” days are over—and the North Bay is teeming with innovative, spirited, ambitious and forward-thinking women entrepreneurs looking to make a positive difference in the community.
May 2025
NorthBaybiz 37
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online