Rewilding Our Psyche
Deconstructing harmful behavior patterns that keep us from flourishing
Do you repeat detrimental behavior patterns that interfere with professional success or meaningful relationships with others? Are you afraid to stand up to toxic family members? Are you stuck in a relationship that is going nowhere? Lessons from ecological psychology can help you break free of these and other self-defeating behavior patterns.
What is ecological psychology?
Ecological psychology focuses on our relationship with nature and the planet. Ecological psychologist Lori Pye, President of Viridis Graduate Institute, explains, ‘We live in a reciprocal relationship with the planet—the ecological processes of the planet function ecologically and psychologically.”¹
The tendency to think of ourselves as separate from nature, primarily driven by Western culture and religion, has kept us from recognizing our participation in nature and planetary ecosystems and processes.
However, Pye says, “It is impossible to be disconnected from nature. What we are disconnected from is the understanding that we are a part of nature.”
These processes — energy exchanges, diversity, decay and renewal, change, and relationality — are the building blocks of ecological psychology. These same processes drive our physical and psychological interactions with nature; therefore, we are an ecosystem.
By psychology, I am referring to personal narratives—the stories we internalize that reveal unconscious beliefs about our value and function in the world and drive subsequent behavior. These stories underpin and perpetuate defensive or harmful behavior patterns we express toward each other and the planet.
Our ecosystem suffers when we feel crushed or depleted by soul-destroying or scapegoating narratives that hold us hostage to distorted or false perceptions of reality. Experiencing what nature tells us through what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and sense enlivens our senses and inspires new insights and ideas for navigating and transforming our psychological ecosystem.
Verbalizations such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m a failure” keep us in defeatism. Applying metaphors allows us to translate clouds generalized, overwhelming emotions such as anxiety or anger into elements we can visualize (sunset), hear (trickling of a creek or roar of the ocean), smell (rain falling in a forest), touch (bark on a tree or prickliness of a pinecone), and even taste (the smoke of wildfire).
For example, do we feel raw or jagged? Paralyzed or frozen? Quaking? Shivering? The language of “felt” sensations opens our conscious and unconscious psyche to buried narratives, often rooted in events and trauma we experienced in childhood.
“What we are disconnected from is the understanding that we are a part of nature.”
Using metaphors of the four spheres — atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere (of the earth’s crust)—are effective in revealing the roots of these narratives. For example, we may experience churning in our gut when interacting with certain family members. Imagining this churning as a tornado or hurricane may connect us to childhood experiences buried in our unconscious related to this family member.
Or, if perceived rejections trigger volcanic eruptive behavior, we may want to explore what those eruptions tell us about underlying resolved trauma.
Rewilding
The practice of rewilding—restoring large-scale degraded landscapes or ecosystems by letting nature take the lead—provides myriad metaphors for deconstructing and transforming self-sabotaging narratives and behavior patterns.
Rewilding is prevalent throughout the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Rewilding differs from conserving a specific species or ecosystem in that it involves large-scale, systems-based restoration of ecosystems degraded by exploitive and extractive practices for human gain.
Reseeding trees, restoring healthy soil, re-introducing missing species, and repairing riparian (river bank) landscapes are examples of rewilding projects that absorb and sequester carbon dioxide in natural carbon pools such as trees, soil, peat, and marine reservoirs, mitigating climate change and creating a more resilient ecosystem.
Becoming a rewilding project
As with ecological rewilding, psychological rewilding involves caring for and restoring our human ecosystem by exchanging old destructive, self-sabotaging narratives for new and flourishing ones.
Introducing a missing species, particularly a keystone species, without which the ecosystem would collapse, restores the ecosystem’s natural food chain. For example, the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s after they were eradicated by hunters and farmers in the 1920s created what is known as a trophic cascade,² which restored the balance and natural food chain of the Yellowstone ecosystem.
A similar rewilding success restored a population of 1,000 lynx on the Iberian peninsula after being virtually wiped out by hunters and farmers, a declining rabbit supply, and fragmented habitats.³
Beavers, another keystone species, build dams that convert a dried-up ecosystem into thriving biodiverse wetlands that support insects, birds, amphibians, mammals, and fish—an apt metaphor for consciously and unconsciously transforming decades of emotionally depleting narratives by introducing healthy, diverse narratives to a depleted psychological landscape to create one that is more balanced and resilient.
Rewilding is “a personally transformative process.”
Increasing woodland and peat cover as part of a rewilding project helps stabilize soil, prevent flooding, and help mitigate climate change.⁴ Expanding our role and relationship nature and transforming disruptive narratives of self-defeatism stabilizes our ecopsychological landscape and helps prevent emotional flooding.
These are just a few examples of how applying rewilding metaphors helps us identify destructive energy patterns, increase our ecosystem’s diversity, and replenish psychological soil.
Behavioral ecologist Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts, explains how we can personally rewild with nature. He envisions rewilding our hearts as the “dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our heart and brain, our caring and awareness.”⁵
Bekoff calls for us to “undergo a major personal paradigm shift in how we view and live in the world and behave.”
Like pulling excess CO2 from the atmosphere, we can pull toxic narratives from our psychological atmosphere and transform them into healthy exchanges and nourishing resources.
As we rewild our psyche, we may surprise ourselves by breaking free from churning, self-defeating narratives that keep us stuck in dysfunctional relationships and becoming more resilient to triggers in ways we couldn’t imagine or experience as we rewild our psychological ecosystem.
“It is a personally transformative process,” Bekoff emphasizes.
References
- Pye, Lori L. Forthcoming. Fundamentals of Ecological Psychology. London: Routledge.
- Farquhar, Brodie. 2025. “Wolf reintroduction changes ecosystem in Yellowstone.” Yellowstone National Park Tips. Available at https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/
- Augustin, Johan. 2021. “Conservation actions see Iberian lynx claw back from brink of extinction.” Mongabay. Available at https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/conservation-actions-see-iberian-lynx-claw-back-from-brink-of-extinction
- “Rewilding in Britain.” n.d. Mossy Earth. Available at https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/rewilding-in-britain
- Beckoff, Marc. 2022. “Rewilding 2023 demands expanding our self-centered mindsets.” Psychology Today. Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/22212/rewilding-2023-demands-expanding-our-self-centered-mindsets.
To learn more about ecological psychology, visit viridis.edu. To learn more about rewilding, visit rewildingbritain.org.uk.
