Psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist Orna Guralnik became one of America’s favorite couples therapists through her role on the Showtime docuseries “Couples Therapy.” Guralnik has said in press interviews that she thinks climate change is at the root of many pressing challenges today, from our governments to the “mini political systems” we build in our homes.
Yale Climate Connections sat down with Guralnik to dive deeper into how she sees climate change affecting romantic relationships, families, and communities.
Interview edited and condensed.
Yale Climate Connections: How do you see the climate crisis affecting our relationships with one another?
Orna Guralnik: I happen to think that the climate crisis that we’re all facing is probably the most important factor that is influencing global politics, all the way to couples’ relationships, family planning, and the way people live within themselves. I think it’s definitely the biggest threat and challenge that humanity is facing, and even the biggest climate deniers are, on some level, very aware of the fact that we have caused irreparable damage to the Earth. I see a lot of what’s happening in the world on a large scale and on a more local scale as a response to that crisis and impending doom.
In the modern world, our more global, communal kinship structures are based on nation-states, and those are becoming a challenge, considering that we’re differently affected by climate. We’re differently affected, yet deeply interdependent. Like the fact that areas that generate the most pollution and destruction are the least affected by climate. And in a way, we’re all facing the option of trying to understand each other as mutually dependent and facing the problem together, or circling the wagons around smaller and smaller units and seeing the rest of the world as the enemy.
And then there’s this troubling reality that we’re all faced with, which is that we have caused so much destruction, and the guilt and shame around that, and the sense of foreshortened future. And people differ in how much they can tolerate facing that reality. Individuals, communities, governments deal with that reality differently, mostly by employing very distorted defenses to deny the intensity of what happened and what is coming.
Yale Climate Connections: Do you feel like this is something that, in your work with couples, people are referencing directly, or is it at that subconscious level? Like maybe we’re not even aware of how deeply climate change is affecting our day-to-day relationships.
Guralnik: It’s mostly unconscious. There are two realms in which I find that it is dealt with more directly. One is family planning – young people who are talking about whether to have kids and how many kids. More and more, younger people don’t want to have kids and see that as either ethically irresponsible or just pointless. Like, why bring more kids into a world that is suffering or dying, or we have brought already so much destruction. Why bring more of us into this?
And then, in terms of kinship structures, people ask me a lot about the rise in open relationships, polyamory, and I see it partially as a response to the threat of the climate crisis, and the underlying understanding that it no longer makes sense to barricade around small units. We’re much more interdependent, and really we need to be thinking about communities rather than about smaller units, and less about bowing down to this kind of extreme form of capitalism, and more about sustainability, shared resources, kind of an anti-capitalist idea of the family.
Yale Climate Connections: That resonates, not necessarily in my romantic relationship, but I have a number of friends with kids, and the role of a friend-aunt feels really important because the kids need more adults. They need more support. Parents need more support. We all need more support.
Guralnik: Kids always needed more adults. I mean, family structures have changed, and there’s less extended family, all of that is true, but there’s also the idea that community matters in a different way. It matters in the sense that we depend on each other to try to slow down this catastrophe that is unfolding.
Yale Climate Connections: Do you remember when it was that you first started to really see the effects of the climate crisis spiraling out into our relationships?
Guralnik: Look, I went through my own process of it sinking in. I started hearing about the effects of the climate crisis in the ‘90s. And it seemed to me kind of far-fetched and catastrophic thinking, and like, “What, there are going to be more storms? Come on. What are you talking about?” But you know, gradually, what was going on with the shrinking of biodiversity, and, I mean, there was always talk about pollution, but I think really in the 2000s is when it really started hitting me: “Oh, this is not just some kind of paranoid projection into the future, this is happening.”
At the same time, I started seeing in my practice more of these alternative kinship structures show up. When people try to criticize these types of kinship structures, they often talk about it as if it’s really all about sexuality, that people just want to have sex with more and more people. And I was like, “That is not what’s going on here.” I mean, people were very preoccupied with ways of living and, actually, with sustainability and with capitalism.
COVID was the great clarifier on this, because during COVID, we met the same question: Are we going to deal with this as a world community, or are we going to blame, I don’t know, the Chinese, or the mask-wearers? It just became immediately clear that there are two ways to respond to crises.
Yale Climate Connections: When people come to therapy, whether it’s couples therapy or individual therapy, how might they be aware that climate change may be coming up in the room? Or how might they bring it up themselves?
Guralnik: People are often referring to this kind of free-floating anxiety that is on the rise now, and they just make these vague reference points to it. “Well, you know what’s going on in the world? Dot, dot, dot.” So it would be good for people to repeatedly pause and say, “What do you mean? What are you referring to? There’s a lot of things going on in the world. Let’s get explicit about it. What are you anxious about?” Like, break through the fog of defense, you know? And then, if you ask people, they will pretty quickly talk about not only the political and polarization tensions, but climate. It’s right there. Both the fear of the future and the shame and guilt about all this destruction that we’re engaging with every day.
Yale Climate Connections: How do you think people can be more aware that emotions related to climate change are in their unconscious and may be affecting them? What tips do you have for people to help bring that more to the conscious level?
Guralnik: It’s a complicated question: How do you support people in tolerating more awareness of a reality that is disturbing? I think part of it is just in different ways, hand-holding people while they’re exposing themselves to more information. You know, like Extinction Rebellion [a climate movement focused on using nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to make governments act on climate change] was very good at that. Saying, “This is happening, but we’re going to face it together.” It’s just about really hand-holding, like we’re not alone in this. We’re all in this together, and then, as much as possible, reminding people of the realms in which they are not completely helpless, whether it’s from composting to voting.
Yale Climate Connections: Do you see this as a potential moment to build something better in our relationships and our communities?
Guralnik: I think the emphasis should be on interdependence. Even if we want to believe that we can isolate ourselves and just protect our immediate circle, we are interdependent. And that is a good thing. The more we work together, the more we can mitigate what’s happening, and the better we will feel, by the way. This is not only about the future, it’s also now.
Yale Climate Connections: That reminds me of a Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor article published in the Guardian last spring where they talk about this issue that there are very powerful, very wealthy people who see this vision of the end of the world and are like, “I’m going to build my bunker, or I’m going to build my spaceship, and everybody else is gonna burn.” It comes back to your earlier point that even people who I might consider climate deniers are also, in some way, having an emotional response to this crisis we’re all facing.
Guralnik: They’re deniers, but they’re building their bunkers.
Yale Climate Connections: Right, exactly.
Guralnik: They’re going to Mars, good luck to them.
Yale Climate Connections: Is there anything else that you think people should know?
Guralnik: I just hope people will not let themselves and the people around them off the hook of thinking about it. You probably saw the whole Bill Gates thing [Gates recently published an essay arguing that money is better spent on disease prevention and economic development than climate action], and I’m like, “Why? Nooo.”
Yale Climate Connections: Yeah, yeah, like we’ve talked about through this conversation, it’s all intertwined. You can’t fight malaria and poverty without also fighting climate change. It’s very frustrating.
Guralnik: Very frustrating, and really not the right emphasis for right now. I understand, believe me, I understand, but it really is the key issue behind almost everything, every conflict in the world right now.
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