Why I Am a City-Based Nature-Informed Therapist
Short on time? Read this summary:
Humans evolved in nature; chronic disconnection from nature is a significant factor that fuels psychological distress.
Plenty of science supports that exposure to nature positively impacts physical and mental health, but unfortunately modern humans have a rigid conceptualization of what “counts” as nature, which exacerbates this disconnect. Reframing nature as anywhere where multiple species thrive allows the city-dweller to maintain a connection to the natural world.
Reframing one’s relationship to the natural world into a reciprocal one is the first step to finding connection and belonging to the natural world. This opens a door to nature having many roles in our lives that improve our quality of life. Nature can be a companion, a teacher, a source of awe, and a source of comfort when we feel lonely, lost, uncertain, hopeless, or distressed.
Creatively integrating the natural world into a city-based existence can be a valuable tool for clients to be exposed to in the therapy space and take with them to independently use in their own lives.
When you ask people to describe how they visualize nature, they tend to summon images that are pure and untouched. This causes people to feel farther away from the natural world if realistically they spend much of their time indoors with their minds on the busy intellectual activities of modern life. But if we define nature as simply anywhere where multiple species are present and life is thriving, all of the sudden we are connected with nature when walking down a busy city street where there are a few weeds growing in front of an apartment building. We city-dwellers will make up 68% of the world’s population by 2050, and realistically our lives are spent nearly 90% indoors. That is not a judgment or a criticism - that is what it looks like to have a thriving life in a city.
As a species, humans have spent over 90% of their existence in nature; our physiology is still adapted to it. We are designed to sense and interpret information from the natural world to calibrate our internal sense of safety and identity (Hasbach, 2012; Roszak, 1992). In contrast, we sense the stimuli of modern life (like traffic noises and high rise buildings) but we don’t as readily interpret them in a way that recalibrates us, so the information just stays - leading to feelings of overwhelm and overstimulation. When we have an overabundance of this latter type of stimulation and a lack of natural-world stimulation over a period of years (especially early life), our nervous systems develop in ways that lack integration. This leads to some of our senses being over-sensitive and some being under-sensitive - not just our five primary senses but also the up to 30 senses we evolved with that combine to form our vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses.
Thankfully, more people are turning to therapy at all ages when they sense that something is missing from the quality of their daily life. As therapists, we want to use both our creativity and available science to provide that healing and that better quality of life. We have plenty of science telling us about the physical health and mental health benefits of time in nature, but “time in nature” tends to evoke images of multiple-hour hikes in the forest or watching a sunset on a lakeside dock, so we think about needing doses of nature for the days and weeks when we are not otherwise engaged in intellectual learning and working - vacations and weekends. But this is exactly the “all or nothing” approach that exacerbates our worries and our stress and makes us feel further disconnected from nature. We need to disassemble this schema and cultivate an ever present relationship with nature that can integrate into and coexist with the busy life of the city-dweller.
The first step in rebuilding this relationship is how we define our relationship with nature. As humans have invented more and more ways to survive without direct relationship with the natural world, we are more likely to view elements of the natural world as either a resource available for our use (e.g., water for our plumbing) or as a barrier to our goals (e.g., stormy weather that makes us late to a meeting), or both. This type of disconnected relationship has played a significant role in declining mental health; it is similar to the ways in which a rupture in other formative attachments (e.g., with parents or primary caregivers) can lead to persistent patterns of psychological distress. But when you reframe your relationship with nature as a reciprocal one in which both entities take care of and support one another, a surprising amount of healing can occur. This process is not unlike the healing that can occur between a parent and child once the child becomes an adult and is able to relate to their parent more and hold on less to pain from early childhood. The vast majority of parents do the very best they can with what they know and have, and still a child may go through their growing years with certain needs unmet. That is the reality of being a human child raised by a human parent - it is inevitable. But since modern society has moved away from a communal or village-oriented way of raising children, the hurt a child feels in their relationships within their nuclear family now causes significantly more distress than it may have in the past when children felt that their biological parents were just one of several supportive and caretaking individuals. Reestablishing oneself as a member of the community of the natural world can provide a surprising amount of healing for the modern human who has experienced some distress in their human relationships.
Therapy with a mental health provider is not required for rebuilding one’s relationship with the natural world; all kinds of activities (large and small) can achieve this healing and feel therapeutic. However, for individuals who are already oriented toward or are currently receiving therapy with a mental health provider, this work can be greatly enhanced with a nature-informed approach. There are also many individuals who may be wary of traditional therapy; common reasons include being an individual who processes through nonverbal expression (versus talk therapy) or feeling particularly unsupported in the power dynamic of the traditional therapy setting (in which the client comes to the home-base of the therapist who is framed as the expert). For these individuals, a nature-informed therapist partners with the natural world to offer more experiential learning experiences, do relational work through a client’s evolving relationship with the natural world, and to join with the client in experiencing the unpredictable and sometimes uncomfortable elements of the natural world (Norcross & Lambert, 2011).
Mental health practitioners themselves are vulnerable to the same psychological distresses of everyday life and, like all of human society, are more disconnected from the natural world than their ancestors ever were. Burnout and secondary stress has long been on the rise in the mental health field, which stands to further exacerbate the already crisis-level gap between individuals who need therapeutic support and available clinician time and energy to provide it. Therapists who practice nature-informed therapy are much more protected against these burnout issues, and a virtuous cycle is created whereby a nature-informed therapist has nature always available as a co-therapist, experiences their own mental health benefits from their reciprocal relationship with nature, and that reality shows up tangibly in both the quality of the therapeutic work they provide and their ability to provide it for more hours or to more people than they could before.
In the most basic of ways, as a nature-informed therapist I have started with the space my clients come to, which is designed to reduce mental fatigue, improve concentration, and restore energy (Yang et al., 2023). The colors are the blues, greens, and browns that are most plentiful in nature and that our human eyes have evolved to take in with the least amount of strain and with the highest levels of perception. The materials of multi-tone wood, textured fabric, and wicker help soothe the visual senses in a way that the uniformity of smooth plastic simply does not. The shapes of the furnishings and art work, including drawings and completely artificial plants, are primarily the fractal shapes of nature which has been empirically shown to reduce levels of stress in the moment by up to 60% (Taylor & Spehar, 2016). The windows allow for seeing how the light in the room naturally changes as the sun moves and for glimpses of the neighborhood trees or even the birds who land occasionally on the skylight. This often helps the client generate ideas about how they can bring nature elements into their daily indoor world to extend the effect of how they feel in the office. In a very important way, the client’s experience of stepping into this space from a bustling metropolitan block reinforces how nature can provide soothing and comfort in the span of just a few minutes, which is quite meaningful considering that 120 minutes per week is the amount of nature exposure linked to optimal health and well-being (White et al., 2019).
If and when clients are ready or open to leaving the office for periods of the session, we are then able to bring in the relational work on several levels. One of those levels is the therapeutic relationship itself; when we both put on our winter coats or our sunglasses for a brief walk in the neighborhood, the client feels like they have a partner. The experience of taking the therapy out of the office gives the client more opportunity to connect the elements that have been healing to them in the office with the therapist as being something they can walk through the world with when they go on with their day and week. The client can also see themselves more easily as inherently possessing the characteristics and qualities that will lead to healing and a better quality of life (however much they remain a work in progress), rather than associating these elements with the therapist as an individual or the static space of the office. Another level of the relational work is the opportunity to reconnect with the natural world in small and unassuming ways; this strengthens the client’s sense of reciprocal relationship with the natural world thereby making that supportive relationship easily accessible when needed. When you are able to walk to school or work and observe the trees, birds, grass, and stones as members of a community that you belong to, feelings of loneliness dissipate and fixation on one's own concerns (whether psychological or physical) decreases. Getting out of one’s own head and connecting to something greater than oneself are the primary elements of “awe”, which some refer to as a positive spiritual experience. But even for those who do not connect with the concept of spirituality, experiencing awe enhances mood, increases feelings of connectedness, and opens up our critical thinking abilities (Shiota et al., 2007).
The natural world also provides an entire other language with which to process our internal experiences. Most therapists use metaphor at times to explain abstract ideas or concepts in a way that is easier to comprehend - for clients of all ages (Cade & O’Hanlon, 1993). Elements from the natural world are particularly effective for grappling with concepts such as embracing or at least accepting change or lack of control. The rhythms of time passing, seasons transitioning, weather changing provides daily opportunities to consider these realities and help clients find how they can cope with unpredictability and loss of control.
Clients who are seen virtually can also benefit from nature-informed practice; indeed, I would argue that bringing nature-informed therapy into virtual practice gets at the heart of the “pure nature” schema that needs dismantling. When we bring nature-informed elements into virtual sessions, we model for clients how they can integrate their evolutionary wiring for a home-base in nature and their modern technology-heavy routines; again, without judgment or evaluation. When clients are already sitting at their devices when they learn strategies for partnering with nature to manage feelings of loneliness and stress or to restore attention and energy, they are much more likely to see these practices as feasible and helpful when they are using devices for work, learning, recreation, or connecting. Technology can also be used to increase curiosity about the natural world, especially for youth, and studies have shown that exposure to nature using virtual reality resulted in the same benefits as that same amount of time outdoors (Jo et al., 2019).
I am proud to have been certified by The Center for Nature Informed Therapy, part of a growing effort in mental health described beautifully in this New York Times article. If you are a potential client interested in receiving NIT, or you are a clinician interested in learning about NIT, please reach out!
