We are sharing this chapter of Act, Rest, Reset, Repeat by Katie Hodgetts for members of our Hopeful Book Club.
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Chapter 17
After moving through the eight guideposts, we end up back at Act, for the cycle to continue. Action is powerful and necessary for all the reasons I’ve stated, but action also needs to be considered, self-aware and rooted in a connection to self and others.
For the case of climate change, I often see green groups and community leaders suggesting “the solution to anxiety is action” – for example, if you’re feeling hopeless, join your local group and start acting. As a catchy idiom, it makes sense. It offers what could be perceived as a “quick fix” for anxiety and it serves to involve more people in necessary change. Double win. But in reality – and we might want to whisper this – action doesn’t always ease anxiety from changemaking. In fact, jumping into action can lead to exacerbated ill-health and burnout.
Climate anxiety – or anxiety related to the state of the world – is relational, meaning that it intensifies when we feel people in power aren’t doing anything and recedes when we’re taking action or witnessing the action of others. You might find that anxiety intensifies when you read a damning headline, see government inaction or perceive widespread societal inertia. You may feel it ease when you take action or participate in a march. Therefore, I see interpersonal dimensions such as alienation, isolation and betrayal as the real meat of the anxiety. So, my first important point is that we simultaneously have a crisis of climate and a crisis of connection. Planetary anxiety is uncomfortable, but feeling powerless and holding this giant existential crisis alone is what makes it feel unbearable. Reading statistics on biodiversity loss can be upsetting, but feeling like we are the only one who cares is what can push us to resignation.
Action Alleviates Anxiety
When I was 21, I joined a climate group as a way of lessening my climate anxiety, which presented mostly as anger. In reality, my climate anxiety shot up. The unspoken pressure to know everything about the crisis so I could be a legitimate voice meant that I immersed myself in the science and the statistics. I joined a group of young people doing the same, so we sat in a room where every person knew a different catastrophic fact about planetary degradation. One felt sorrow about the decline of bees, another about the impact of rising sea temperatures on marine life and another that climate change was going to drive up the cost of the pint I was sipping on. Climate anxiety inevitably became contagious, because we were a group of young people who cared deeply about the very intersectional ways in which climate change is the greatest threat of our time. Stoking the fires of urgency left us deprioritizing making real space to talk through all of the sorrow. We’d meet each week to discuss our intended action or campaign, focusing on meeting minutes and agendas to distract from the discomfort. But we all felt exhausted, frustrated and disconnected, and stopping wasn’t an option. I have since heard the stories of hundreds of other young people woven together with the same threads that the urgency is so strong we must prioritize action over rest, joy or healthy boundaries. Our narratives tell of martyrdom and exclusion, and talking about our emotions is self-indulgent, a waste of precious time. Feelings of guilt that we’re “not doing enough” are both personal and impressed upon us.
Eva came to The Resilience Project in 2021 with a similar experience. She’d been taking climate action since she was 19 and simultaneously seeing a variety of therapists about her climate anxiety. She followed the advice to “take action” and joined a direct-action group in London, infamous for large media moments (and tins of soup). She told me about her campaigns team, which was made up entirely of young people aged 18 to 24 and how they often worked 12 hours or more a day, 6 or sometimes 7 days a week:
The enormous pressure that exists in youth climate activist spaces is destroying a generation of strong, dedicated young people. We were spurred on by the narrative that our own lives were insignificant in the context of the climate crisis and the urgency of the situation left no time to rest. People were burning out and leaving the movement in huge numbers, while others were so entrenched in the toxic culture that they isolated themselves from friends and family, dropped out of school and disregarded all their own needs. I experienced high levels of anxiety, paranoia, depression, panic attacks and burnout, while others planned their suicides at work.
I’ve had to change Eva’s name as her association with this group has damaged her career prospects. One of the warmest and kindest souls I’ve worked with, she is having job offers revoked as she’s considered a radical extremist. Three schools rejected her teaching placement as they thought she would indoctrinate the children. Her only charge? Getting arrested age 20 for sitting in a street in protest. It breaks my heart and demonstrates the complexity of the psychological turmoil changemakers are facing.
Eva’s story is one of many where taking action led to burnout because groups fostered a culture of disconnection and urgency. This results in a phenomenon I observe as “boom and bust”, where young people enter movement spaces, inspired to take action, but without adequate tools, knowledge or support for inner and collective resourcing. They might then experience something like burnout and withdraw from the movement entirely. It’s a model that some existing groups rely on entirely, burning through people power to maximize frantic and impassioned external action.
Of course, this is not true for all movement spaces and things have changed for the better in recent years. I have been part of groups that inspired the eight-week model, where we held firm boundaries, celebrated our identities outside of the fight and gave each other permission to express joy. In fact, for my master’s thesis I studied Extinction Rebellion (XR), a group who (beyond their headline-grabbing direct actions) held grief tenders, had wellbeing officers and created utopian scenes in public spaces. I interviewed some members of the climate group to understand their experience. One cited XR as an “antidepressant” and shared that being a part of XR has reaffirmed within her “something I thought I’d lost.” Others reflected on the feeling of love, with one who took part in the London protests powerfully stating that, “From the first moment I stepped onto Parliament Square to the second I left Marble Arch the resounding feeling I felt was love.”
My second important point is therefore that some action can alleviate anxiety, but some can intensify it as it deepens those relational aspects of loneliness, resignation, exhaustion and hopelessness. If action is to be a “remedy” for anxiety, then we must also turn our gaze toward the culture inside the group taking action. Resisting narratives that shrink space for connection, joy and togetherness can be a radical act. If the relative property of climate anxiety means that it intensifies with government inaction, and it takes a back seat when we feel hopeful and supported and a sense of belonging, the question shifts from: “How do we fix climate anxiety?” to: “How do we build spaces to incubate changemaking that by their very nature make us feel hopeful and supported?” Then we get to the juicy stuff.
The intention after the eight- Taking action is week model is to start taking critical and it can action. If we start designing alleviate anxiety the type of action grounded from changemaking. in our internal landscape and supported by strong communities, it will lead to action that is inspired by imagination and togetherness, rather than urgency and disconnection. We can act in a way that transforms ourselves and our communities at the same time. In doing so, we ease the crisis of connection, and the possibilities expand from reducing carbon emissions to building societies of justice and kinship. My third important point is therefore that taking action is critical and – a big “and” – it can alleviate anxiety from changemaking, but only when the hub of that action is built on mutual support.
Action Forged by Disconnection
When I was 23, I joined a local climate group in Bristol to blockade the motorway as you enter the city. The intention was to amplify the message of the climate crisis to the masses of commuters on the busiest road in the city. We sang and jumped and cheered to raise awareness – most of us students or people not wearing shoes – while those who were able to get past us screamed, beeped and cussed. Our response to their disquiet was that there was no inconvenience greater than climate change, positioning us on the side of moral righteousness. We hoped to shake people into an understanding that the crisis is here now and we need to act (and stop driving cars!) now.
The impact was a disaster on three counts. Firstly, targeting commuters created an “us” and “them” divide. It fostered alienation and aggression with no opportunity for meaningful dialogue above the beeps and screams. As an action it felt designed to make us feel better that we were doing something rather than nothing, instead of bringing people with power into the conversation. Strike one. Secondly, the march resulted in a three-hour-long standstill on the motorway, with plumes of car engine emissions floating into the communities and neighbourhoods of the people who live next to the motorway. These were poorer communities, the least responsible for the climate crisis, who would experience increased levels of air pollution in the following weeks. Strike two. On top of that, we pissed off thousands of people. Strike three.
Rather than be swallowed by shame, this action gave me a lot to reflect on. My intention was to raise awareness, but my impact was to negatively impact thousands of people, increase emissions into a poorer neighbourhood and sully the climate movement’s reputation. By sitting on the road, we positioned ourselves as the morally pious and literally forged a block between our group and the general population. I borrow from the decolonial movement that intention and impact are not the same thing. Focus on intention foregrounds the perpetrator, focus on impact foregrounds those impacted. Rather than bringing people into the conversation (intention), the impact of our action broke trust between our group and the people of Bristol. It created net-disconnection.
Without pausing to understand the psychological drivers of our campaigns, we risk taking action that leads with ego and creates suffering to ourselves, the movement and others. While climate action can help alleviate climate anxiety, if it’s disconnected, pressured or urgency-driven without care for relationships and inner resilience, it can just as easily deepen burnout and despair.
Action alleviates anxiety only when the infrastructure around it also addresses the crisis of connection. Two truths exist at the same time. We desperately need everyone to join our movement club, in every corner, every sector and every space in society, and we deserve to take action which feels joyful, empowering, dare I say it – fun. That’s a movement I want to be part of.
“We don’t have time for joy and all this woo-woo drama!” Yes, we do. Internal activation is the critical foundation for sustainable external action.
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”44
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
The truth of this book is that changemaking is both profoundly necessary and profoundly challenging. By stepping into the Arena you are going to get your butt kicked, and moving close to burnout will always be a possibility. If you truly want to create change without burning out, leave your movement, abandon your cause. It’s the easiest way to avoid discomfort, pain and loss.
But you’re stronger than that, more courageous than that. Leaving the fight may bring you temporary relief, but you shut yourself off to the most beautiful parts of changemaking: deep kinship with others, connection to something greater than ourselves and a framework for really understanding who we are and what we stand for. What you spend in time, effort and energy you recoup in swathes. To improve the lives of others is a plight so formidable that it will cloak you in a never-ending armour. You will age knowing that you did something. It mattered. Your life mattered. You can’t buy, steal or borrow the feeling of living in alignment with your principles. The rewards are lasting, intimate and real. So – do the hard things.
How do we really create change without burning out? We make courageous choices. The first is to make an honest enquiry into how you are complicit in your own suffering. The second is to resolve to change. The third is to turn your gaze on systems and structures that perpetuate harm – from historic injustices to toxic workplaces – and make the effort to leave, reform or dismantle them. The fourth is to live in alignment with the learnings you uncover, even when it feels easier to choose comfort and convenience. The fifth is to summon the grace to do it all over again.
In the face of multiple, overlapping crises, it is no longer enough to build campaigns or movements that ignore the emotional, physical and psychological toll on those within them. The staggering rates of burnout illuminate the condition not as a temporary setback but as a warning sign of deeper systemic and psychological misalignments. As the world shifts, changemaking must too. The paradigm shift required bakes inner development into the centre of changemaking, rather than considering it an optional extra. It is one that recognizes self-change, not just self-care, but roots us in a wider collective context. Innertersectional changemaking is a framework that foregrounds inner work as a vehicle to broaden our ambitions for change to intersectionality, systems and justice.
Our new changemaking paradigm is human-centred, not goal-oriented, because human-centred activism is activism in it’s most alive form.
CONCLUSION
Instead of avoiding uncomfortable emotions, it asks us to learn how to create more space to host them. Exhaustion, hopelessness and fatigue are given permission to eat, but not too much and not for too long. The art of hosting requires self-awareness and self-accountability, but also the soft support of others. Tilling our emotional soil creates communities built on mutual aid rather than individual heroism. Born from groups of belonging, connection and support, our activism becomes more spirited, gutsy and inviting. And if we get too close to burnout, our GROWTH Recovery Arc uncovers how we got there and how we’ll get ourselves back to baseline. Just like waves in the ocean, we can offer ourselves the grace to perpetually break and begin again.
I hope I’ve convinced you that changemaking is not only found in metrics and campaign analysis, or even in changes of legislation, but in how we model the values Let your actions and virtues we wish to bring be guided by the forward. Each day presents ecosystem, not by an opportunity to counter the ego-system. The systems we are trying to transform – systems of separation, domination and ego, which all contribute to the crises we see and the wider degradation of the soul. If the latter is robbing us of capable and vitalized agents of change, then walking through the world in a way that contributes to the reclamation of the soul is a strong current of impact, one you might never see and never know. So, forage for joy, show up authentically not performatively, and let your actions be guided by the ecosystem, not by the ego-system. In this framing, changemaking isn’t a project we take on, but a posture we move from. Radical action becomes less about external conquering or performative success and more about internal alignment. But attitude doesn’t equal action, so put this into practice. My hope is that the guideposts laid
ACT, REST, RESET, REPEAT
out become less of a textbook and more of a framework for living – the connective tissue that underpins our lives, a way to start tomorrow with more tools, more tenderness and more truth. The guideposts are non-exhaustive. They may not bring all the answers, but they pose a new set of questions: not “How do I feel less tired?” but “How do I feel more alive? How do I resource myself more completely? What change is available to me now?”
My twenties have been a journey of learnings, impact and multiple burnouts. Though they were painful and consuming, I am so grateful for them, for they gave me the wisdom that you are never broken – and you are never not broken. Burnout illuminated parts of me I didn’t want to know and patterns I didn’t want to acknowledge. Bringing them to the light and truly listening to them, rather than purging them, engendered a journey not of healing, but of making me whole. Appreciating the wholeness of who we are: the good bits, the battle scars, the deeply conditioned parts and the bits we’re always striving to unlearn; the quiet acceptance that we are never not broken. My journey is not over. As I turn 30, my next courageous decision to create change without burning out was made during the writing of this book. After almost six years, and ten years of activism, I have chosen to step back from The Resilience Project as CEO. If change is not a marathon, nor a sprint, but a relay race, then it’s time for me to (temporarily) pass the baton. For my own “what next”, after a long stint of Act, I’ll be beginning my next cycle of Rest, Reset and Repeat to better understand where I can contribute to the movement that is in alignment with who am I now. It’s time to install my software updates, find my aliveness and let the ecosystem guide me. Watch this space.
