Circles of Support

 The material below is adapted from pp. 108-115 in Bob Doppelt's Transformational Resilience (Routledge, 2016). I have shortened and clarified several passages to save space, but recommend that educators or facilitators interested in this activity refer to the original source material in Doppelt’s book, which explores how building resilience to climate disruption can increase well-being.

Identify your Circles of Support

"In the midst of trauma and stress, it is our family, friends, neighbors, and other members of our personal social support network who are most likely to provide the practical assistance and emotional sustenance needed to stabilize our nervous system. In addition, our ability to stay psychologically and emotionally calm in the midst of climate-enhanced or other types of adversity is closely connected to our personal strengths, skills, and the resources available to us.

When experiencing adversity it is therefore of great benefit to consciously remember that you have personal strengths, skills, resources, and a social support network that can help you stay grounded, centered, and calm. … These are the key protective factors of resilience. Taking the time to deliberately remember and call on them is sometimes all that is needed to overcome a stressful situation. The process can buffer you from stress and give you the energy required to persevere. Noticing and naming them can boost your spirits and shore up your courage even when things seem hopeless." (Doppelt, 106-7)

Step 1: Identify your personal strengths & skills

Step 2: Identify your internal mental resources

 Step 3: Identify your bonding social support network 

Draw a 3rd circle and in this one note people who are your “True Allies”—the family members, close friends, and others you bond with and can count on to help you through thick or thin. Most of us have a number of friends and acquaintances, but only a limited number of people we truly bond with. Your True Allies are people who will stand by you, provide emotional support, and give you practical advice or help without telling you what to do or trying to control you.

Step 4: Identify your external physical resources

Draw one last circle and within it note the external physical resources at your disposal for dealing with trauma and stress associated with climate disruption, and other types of adversity. These are actual places you can go to and things you can use to create a sense of safety/calm. See Box 5.4 for examples of external physical resources.

Step 5: Observe your strengths, skills, resources, & social support network

Take a few minutes now to look over your Circles of Support. What do you notice? How do you feel in reviewing these resources? Does looking at this sketch help reframe your sense about the future?

Also, are any personal strengths, skills, resources, or members of your social support network missing? If so, add them now.  If there are particular areas that seem deficient: how can you go about cultivating relationships & connections to help you fill in these gaps?

Identify your ecological Circles of Support

Finally, now that you've identified your personal strengths, skills, resources, and support network, it's important to remember what makes it all possible: the Earth’s ecological systems and climate. Draw a final circle around yourself and list all of the ecological systems, structures, organisms and processes you can think of that make life possible for you and the members of your social support network.

Ted listed the sun, which keeps Earth warm enough to support his life, the soil from which he obtains food, the oceans that influence the planet’s temperatures, the rain (linked to our oceans and essential to the soil that provides our food) and plants, animals and other forms of biological diversity that are essential to Earth’s ecological support systems.

"Ted listed only a small number of ecological systems that make his and all other life on Earth possible. He could have also listed all of the Earth’s organisms—from bacteria, worms and insects to mammals and birds—as well as forests, wetlands, water bodies, ice sheets, and much more. The presence and health of all of these systems and organisms is determined by the Earth’s climate system. This complex system involves continual interactions between incoming solar radiation from the sun, some of which is absorbed by the oceans, forests, soils, & human-built structures, and some of which is reflected back out into the atmosphere by those same systems and structures, as well as the planet’s ice sheets and glaciers.

However, since the industrial revolution, the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses has dramatically increased from our use of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels, as well as loss of forests, wetlands, and other ecosystems that sequester carbon. Since 1990 there's been a 34% increase in “radiative forcing,” the warming effect of greenhouse gasses on our climate. Also, our oceans have been accumulating CO2 that would otherwise increase in the atmosphere. This has far-reaching implications: current rates of ocean acidification are occurring at a pace not seen for the last 300 million years.

The point is that by always remembering that your most important circle of support is the Earth’s climate, it is possible to alter the story you and others tell about the attitudes and behaviors required for life as we know it to continue to exist into perpetuity."  (Doppelt, 114-16)