What is Functional Connectivity and why is it important?
The human brain’s relationship with stories is as long as humans’ relationship with fire. Sunlit conversations addressed practicalities or gossip, but fireside tales evoked the imagination, preserved history, settled disputes and established social customs. Stories can be described as narratives about human (or human like) agents, their relationships and their fortunes; they are “created for the purpose of engaging readers”. Le Guin describes stories as carrier bags for memories (1997), and indigenous Australians created multidimensional stories called songlines that encompassed knowledge, history and social mores that have endured for tens of thousands of years.
Narrative comprehension takes place in the Default Mode Network (DMN), an interconnected network of brain regions active when our brain is at rest. DMN is most active during REM sleep, mind wandering and reading. However during this time it also monitors and interprets sensory information from external and internal environments including pain.
Neuroscience has linked the DMN with recollection and prediction, thoughts about others, creativity, imagination and impulse, navigation and spatial cognition, emotional responses, and aesthetic experiences.
But stories are much more than entertaining storage devices. Neuroscience is now finding that reading stories increases functional connectivity (FC) between the DMN, the Salience network (SN) and the Central Executive Network (CEN). FC describes the likelihood that these different regions of the brain will become active at the same time. The DMN is responsible for random, creative, diverse and often disconnected thoughts, as well as interpreting external and internal stimuli; the SN determines which thoughts and stimuli are likely to be relevant and meaningful and therefore productive and useful; while the CEN, maintains working memory, and is responsible for controlling attention, logical judgment, and decision-making.
Not only are high levels of FC is linked to creativity, decision making, divergent thinking, concept development and academic performance and even healthy aging, but increased FC is also linked with higher levels of resilience and wellbeing in young people.
Neuroscience is providing empirical evidence from around the globe linking stories to Functional connectivity. Functional connectivity underpins self-actualisation, wellbeing, healthy aging and social adaptation. Yet many countries are diverting funds from qualified school library staff and story based resources. How can educators let this continue?
Narratives are increasingly being used in neuroscience as naturalistic stimuli for studies employing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) analysis to examine the regions of the brain collectively known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). Using naturalistic stimuli ensures these studies have sound ecological validity, and fMRI analysis provides robust quantitative evidence validating the importance of narratives in healthy socioemotional development – a bond that has previously been largely demonstrated using qualitative studies. Thus results from these studies provide an untapped pool of empirical evidence demonstrating the relationship between narratives and social and emotional development.
When taken together these studies suggest that the role of narratives in this relationship is not incidental; rather that narratives, language, and self- and social-awareness are interdependent and have developed as an evolutionary triptych, central to the evolution of the human DMN and its role in the unique ability of humans to accumulate and share knowledge. Reinterpreting studies of narratives in neuroscience through an educational lens reveals the potential for stories to enhance self-actualisation in children and adolescents, especially in reading programs such as those encompassing Developmental Bibliotherapy. This novel approach provides a framework by which existing fMRI analysis can provide a source of empirical evidence for a broader investigation into the importance of narratives in adolescent wellbeing and education. [GO BACK]
Stories and Personality
Storytellers and their audiences know how stories can influence and change our view of ourselves, others and the world. Stories, or narratives, reveal how interrelated events, unfolding over time affect the fortunes and relationships in the lives of the story’s characters. Narratives often contain moral or didactic messages embellished with richness in meaning and emotional content which encourages engagement and transportation into characters’ minds, and ensures these messages are understood and remembered. Readers are swayed, challenged and persuaded, and engage in simulation, prospection and prediction.
Immersion in a story can induce a flow state, where time can be distorted, and where our brains reject external sensory stimuli in preference to the adventures within our imagination as it engages with the perspectives of other lives and the possibilities of other worlds. For some, this is the purpose of narratives – one enters into the contract of story, not only fully aware that narratives require emotional commitment, but eagerly anticipating the experience.
Transportation into fictional lives and locations can be so complete that readers’ mirror neurons respond as if they were physically experiencing the world of the story. Emotions are experienced vicariously as the story’s protagonists exhibit character attributes of core confidence – such as hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism – and develop a growth mindset where new experiences are reframed as adventures, feedback from trusted allies is acknowledged and accepted, and failure is met with resilience and regarded as learning opportunity.
When Campbell’s hero of the didactic Bildungsroman genre returns home transformed, empowered and enlightened, by association so does the reader. Along the hero’s journey readers vicariously experience reward and pleasure as they proudly, albeit vicariously, enjoy the hero’s successes and learn from the hero’s failures. Stories help to clarify, explain, normalise and validate emotions and experiences in ways that enable the transformative power of catharsis. Stories can also become instruments of comfort; as the story’s audience becomes aligned with the protagonists they feel less isolated and alone; and by enabling them to experience protagonists’ viewpoints, audience members become aware of others’ perspectives and also become more aware of their own.
Fictional narratives can promote creativity and provide intellectual opportunities, stimulating the imagination with problems or mysteries, and augmenting knowledge. Audiences, given insights into protagonists’ motives and intentions, are able to view the same events from multiple perspectives, broadening their own emotional experiences. Escapism, using the “novel as a therapeutic experience”, and vicarious learning opportunities can be significant intellectual responses. Our intellectual flexibility is challenged by narratives which reveal conundrums, surprises and secrets, introduce fallible heroes, present uncomfortable truths or use humour to shock and surprise. Engagement with narratives can inspire, motivate, guide self-reflection, enhance wellbeing and nurture self-actualisation.
During childhood fictional narratives can provide safe play spaces where key life skills can be shaped, tested and refined. These fictional play spaces can help to frame personal narratives, shape personalities, enhance confidence, and help to identify, clarify and define personal identity including values and beliefs. Stories become a pathway for young readers to form personal identities as they begin to identify and name themselves in the context of the world. [GO BACK]
Reading and wellbeing
Although fairy tales, folk tales, myths, anecdotes, novels, chronicles, biographies, legends, falsehoods, descriptions of news items and yarns can all be considered narratives, fiction provides the greatest opportunity for personal transformation and thus the greatest potential to enhance wellbeing. Comprehension and self-reflection is associated with engagement with a narrative’s content. Engagement with a narrative is a personal relationship which occurs regardless of either reading proficiency or literary content of the narrative, and is also associated with reading for pleasure. Engagement with a hero who is validated, enabled, enlightened and returns home triumphant in a future which is always positive has the potential to promote wellbeing by stimulating the reader’s dopaminergic system.
Studies linking narratives with benefits to social and emotional development in the developmental stages of childhood and adolescence are not difficult to find. And yet schools are divesting resources from school libraries, and the numbers of qualified school librarians is dwindling. Prior to 21st century, research documenting the relationship between narratives and wellbeing has been limited to findings derived from studies which rely on qualitative, subjective, anecdotal and intuitive data. However, the relationship between stories and socio-emotional development and wellbeing is a relationship that has also been difficult to prove using scientific methods: each person’s interpretation of a narrative is individual, personal, and unique, influenced by memories, inferences, experiences, and reading styles that are infinitely varied. [GO BACK]
Decoding the Default Mode Network
The Default Mode Network (DMN) is an interconnected group of regions within the human brain. DMN was initially identified in 2001 as the regions of the brain most active when the brain is in a wakeful but resting state. DMN is now recognised as being the brain’s centre for personality, and self-referential mental activity including the processing of emotions and memories. It is active during spontaneous cognition, including mental time travel (MTT) and REM sleep. DMN begins to develop from early infancy and is shaped by both personal and vicarious experiences.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive method used to observe DMN responses to external stimuli. Studies using fMRI analysis are beginning to reveal the significant role of the human DMN as the brain’s primary network for personality, memory, imagination, forethought, intuition, moral judgment, mentalising and all other self-referential thoughts and behaviours. FMRI also reveals how DMN interacts – its functional connectivity (FC) – with other regions in the brain. FC between the DMN and the executive control and salience brain networks suggests that these other networks act to monitor and evaluate the feasibility and reasonableness of ideas, plans and memories during MTT. FMRI studies show that FC between DMN and other regions of the brain is strengthened by reading fiction, and also that increased FC in the brain is associated with increased resilience in the face of setbacks. The dopaminergic system, which registers emotions associated with reward, such as pleasure, also has FC with DMN. Delusion, depression, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, OCD, ASD and ADHD have been associated with changes in DMN and its FC with other regions of the brain, especially the executive control and salience networks.
Speculation of the role of the DMN, especially during MTT and REM, varies from it being a sentinel keeping watch for dangers from the external environment, to a process which maintains the brain in an autopilot role during otherwise boring activities, to the essential feature of the human brain which distinguishes us from other animals. Egocentric sensory information such as pain is also monitored by DMN, even during REM sleep.
DMN is central in the processing of memory, emotion, language, imagination, simulation, planning, prediction, navigation, and thinking from others’ perspectives (known as Theory of Mind (TOM) or mentalising). DMN is also closely associated with vicarious learning, curiosity, intuition, and creative insight – sometimes referred to as the AHA! Moment. Humour and literary elements such as metaphor and simile are also processed in DMN. This close alignment between the complex processes associated with language independent comprehension and the processing responsibilities associated with DMN suggested the use of naturalistic stimuli in empirical studies of social behaviour in humans.
The use of narratives as stimuli for fMRI studies offers a number of advantages: narratives are engaging, and their use does not require training; narratives can be reproduced, selectively edited, and their presentation mode varied; and narratives can be independent of language. Naturalistic stimuli have demonstrated how the human DMN changes, and reconfigures when presented with unfolding, or conflicting story elements and a functional subdivision of the DMN has been identified – named the Chrono architecture – which updates the brain’s spatial and temporal information. Narratives in neuroscience have revealed how the DMN responses differ between character based and action based fiction, and between fiction and non-fiction. The use of narratives as naturalistic stimuli although nascent, is increasingly providing neuroscience with insights into how the human DMN processes real-life sensory experiences. [GO BACK]
An Evolutionary Triptych
It seems that the human DMN may have three interconnected roles: firstly, a concept building role, responsible for recognising, creating, recording, recalling and sharing concepts, and relationships between concepts, that facilitate communication via the development of language; secondly, a storyteller role to facilitate the transmission of information in a format that was easily comprehended and remembered, and which encouraged appropriate responses; and finally, a social awareness role which enabled early humans to consider another’s perspective, and set the foundations for social mores and customs. FMRI studies indicate that the human DMN possibly developed as an evolutionary triptych incorporating the Concept brain, the Story brain, and the Social brain in a mutually enriching and supporting scaffold for ongoing human development. [GO BACK]
The Concept Building Brain
DMN has the ability to build, maintain, augment and reject relationships and concepts giving rise to the notion of DMN as the Concept Building brain, Although independent of language, this ability to generate relationships and recognise patterns is fundamental for the development of language. These roles of DMN, particularly the relationship building role, also provides evidence of the mechanisms involved in learning, association, spontaneous thought, creativity, intuition and MTT. [GO BACK]
The Storytelling Brain
DMN has also been called the Storytelling Brain as fMRI analysis has revealed regions of DMN are activated during the high level processing of narratives; regions involved in memories, emotions, plot formation and scene building, navigation, and prospection have been identified using naturalistic stimuli including narratives. Furthermore, curiosity indicates that in the absence of stories the human DMN will try to find one in an attempt to make meaning. Narratives simulate real world situations by using just the essential elements necessary to efficiently transmit information, assist cognition and convey context; it has been suggested that the transfer of information between humans is the primarily role of stories. [GO BACK]
The Social Brain
DMN is the location of our personality and could be appropriately named the Social Brain. Narrative comprehension engages the neural mechanisms associated with personality, perspective taking and Theory of Mind (TOM), thereby supporting socio-emotional development and self-actualisation. FMRI has revealed how DMN engages memory and prior experiences during narrative comprehension, and how these memories and prior experiences can be projected into the future.
InterSubject Correlation (ISC) – a measure of the extent to which DMN activity patterns revealed by fMRI analysis are found to be similar within a group of participants – provides neurological examples of information being transferred between a storyteller and their audience, and the context of a narrative itself increasing ISC between listeners during the telling and into the future. Studies of ISC in DMN responses to both humour and suspense highlight how memory and culture are linked to emotional responses. ISC can be observed while DMN is stimulated using naturalistic data in written, auditory and audio-visual narratives, as well as music, and aesthetic performances, providing evidence of the variety of activities that produce this unifying response, in ways that are independent of language.
FMRI studies also demonstrate the actions of the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) which is responsible for a phenomenon whereby a set of neurons corresponding to the action of an individual is activated in an observer, unifying the execution of an action by one person with the perception of the action in another. The MNS enables people to experience and learn actions and emotions vicariously, including those associated with social situations. Narratives also promote positivity and vicarious pleasure in the dopaminergic system.
DMN activity was initially thought to be associated purely with task-negative activity since DMN activity is anticorrelated with the task-positive dorsal attention network (DAN). However, using narratives in neuroscience can demonstrate that DMN is functionally connected to regions of the brain necessary for wellbeing such as the executive control and salience networks. [GO BACK]
My contribution to Literature as a lens for climate change (in 5 parts) Young, R. L. (2022). Literature as a lens for climate change : using narratives to prepare the next generation. Lexington Books.
Bandura, Albert. 1978. “Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change.” Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy 1 (4): 139–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/0146-6402(78)90002-4.
Cohen, Stanley. 2015. States of Denial : Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge, Uk: Polity ; Malden, Ma.
Eckersley, Richard. 2008. “‘Nihilism, Fundamentalism, or Activism: Three Responses to Fears of the Apocalypse’ by Eckersley, Richard – the Futurist, Vol. 42, Issue 1, January-February 2008 | Online Research Library: Questia.” The Futurist 42 (1). https://www.richardeckersley.com.au/attachments/Futurist_Apocalypse_2008.pdf.
Gold, Joseph. 2001. Read for Your Life : Literature as a Life Support System. Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry And Whiteside.
Kelly, Claire M, Johanna M Mithen, Julie A Fischer, Betty A Kitchener, Anthony F Jorm, Adrian Lowe, and Chris Scanlan. 2011. “Youth Mental Health First Aid: A Description of the Program and an Initial Evaluation.” International Journal of Mental Health Systems 5 (1): 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1752-4458-5-4.
Konrath, S. H., E. H. O’Brien, and C. Hsing. 2010. “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15 (2): 180–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868310377395.
Kringelbach, Morten L., and Kent C. Berridge. 2009. “Towards a Functional Neuroanatomy of Pleasure and Happiness.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (11): 479–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.08.006.
O’Brien, Karen, Elin Selboe, and Bronwyn M. Hayward. 2018. “Exploring Youth Activism on Climate Change: Dutiful, Disruptive, and Dangerous Dissent.” Ecology and Society 23 (3). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-10287-230342.
Oades, Lindsay G., Aaron Jarden, Hanchao Hou, Corina Ozturk, Paige Williams, Gavin R. Slemp, and Lanxi Huang. 2021. “Wellbeing Literacy: A Capability Model for Wellbeing Science and Practice.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (2): 719. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020719.
Rubin, Rhea J. 1979. “Uses of Bibliotherapy in Response to the 1970s.” Library Trends 28 (2): 239–52. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ212852.
Stajkovic, Alexander D. 2006. “Development of a Core Confidence-Higher Order Construct.” Journal of Applied Psychology 91 (6): 1208–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.6.1208.
Stark, Eloise A., Peter Vuust, and Morten L. Kringelbach. 2018. “Chapter 7 – Music, Dance, and Other Art Forms: New Insights into the Links between Hedonia (Pleasure) and Eudaimonia (Well-Being).” Edited by Julia F. Christensen and Antoni Gomila. ScienceDirect. Elsevier. January 1, 2018. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079612318300190.
Wiessner, Polly W. 2014. “Embers of Society: Firelight Talk among the Ju/’Hoansi Bushmen.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (39): 14027–35. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111.
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower
“Great leaders are Made not Born”
The thousands of books and articles published on the subject of leadership effectively illustrate how difficult it is to define the qualities of a great leader.
The Centre for Creative Leadership identifies the Core Leadership Skills as: Self awareness, Communication, Influence, Learning agility, Integrity, Gratitude, Empathy, Courage, Respect and an Ability to delegate.
Great leaders are also expected to be visionary, humble, virtuous, inspirational, charismatic, intelligent, just, generous and compassionate.
Great leaders must know how to Unite team members to pursue a common goal, and they must know how & when to Praise, Encourage & Admonish.
Great leaders must develop Trusting Relationships by Sharing Responsibility & Sharing Accolades.
Great leaders must know when to take the Role of the Hero and when to take the Role of the Sage. Great leaders must be able to accommodate a variety of Perspectives and balance a range of Outcomes.
Great leaders must be Mentors who recognize and nurture the Potential in individuals, and can Inspire & Motivate individuals to achieve their potential within the goals of the team.
David Foster Wallace says: “A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get up to do better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”
How does fiction help us differentiate Great Leaders from Tyrants and Charlatans?
Reading fiction activates our Default Mode Network– the regions of the brain associated with the personal qualities, memories and dreams that go towards defining our personality. The Default Mode Network is also responsible for building social awareness, and for insight, problem solving and creativity.
Stories nurture Core Confidence– with Hope, Efficacy, Resilience & Optimism – and help us to adopt a Growth Mindset.
Stories Increase Cognitive Flexibility, Intuition, Insight and Spontaneous Thought.
Leadership is a social process.
The list of what makes a good leader could include every positive human quality. But as every leader brings their own leadership style to the role so there are many different styles of leadership.
“A real leader is somebody who … is able to inspire people. Leadership is a mysterious quality … but we always know it when we see it, even as kids.” David Foster Wallace
Indeed, it is often easier to identify poor leadership than to recognise a Great Leader for, as Lao Tzu says, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
But while we may not be able to isolate the Qualities of a Great Leader, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Great Leaders Read Fiction
The Default Mode Network (DMN) is that part of the brain most active during REM sleep, while daydreaming and while reading stories.
The DMN is associated with task-unrelated thinking, sometimes called Spontaneous or Stimulus-Independent thought, and has been described as “The brain running in neutral” activated “precisely when we detach ourselves from what’s going on around us” (Noë, 2017).
“Spontaneous thought allows individuals to construct and simulate alternative scenarios, mentally-organize their plans, and prepare for what may lie ahead … and facilitate the organization and structuring of daily events.” (Andrews-Hanna, 2011 )
The Sentinel
But, while the DMN can be thought of as the parts of the brain that are not engaged with processing sensory information or attending to external stimuli (one reason why the study of DMN is difficult), research also supports a “sentinel hypothesis” in which the DMN concurrently monitors the external environment for upcoming stimuli or other significant, unpredictable events; precisely the situation in which we respond to an unexpected event “without thinking” – far from being in a “world of our own” our DMN has been monitoring our external world and is already engaged sufficiently with our memories to react instantaneously.
Eudaimonia, Wellbeing and Pleasure
The findings that the DMN is activated when we are directing our attention inwards may be the reason that the DMN has been linked with the development of Eudaimonia, described by Aristotle as ‘doing and living well’. Vessel (2019) also linked the DMN to the perception of beauty related to aesthetics, including an inner feeling of pleasure associated with music, artworks, landscapes and architecture, perhaps because these activities are often linked with pleasant memories. It is not surprising then to learn that many of the key regions of the pleasure system are part of the Default Mode Network.
Defining Ourselves
The DMN is in a constant performance/feedback/revision loop as it continually stores, reviews and applies learned information, consolidating our recent experiences, and enabling us to make sense of the chaotic and disconnected events that we encounter daily.
Our DMN is active whenever we are thinking about ourselves or others, when we are remembering the past or using our past experiences to plan for the future, when we are interacting in social contexts and finding our place in the world, and when we are using our self knowledge to make choices, explore our creativity and test our boundaries.
DMN is Responsible for:
All the processes that make us who we are as individuals and as members of the society we inhabit…
FORMING Personal Narratives and Autobiographical Memories –
Understanding and accepting our emotional responses, and assimilating facts and events about ourselves into our understanding and knowledge of our personal traits, and our strengths and weaknesses.
DEVELOPING Theory of Mind –
Understanding diversity in viewpoints and opinions, developing Empathy and Moral Reasoning, learning to interpret Social cues and examine Stereotypes, and then learning to modify our behaviour to suit different social situations
Managing Memories –
Creating memories and then enabling us to recall and apply these memories, access intrinsic understanding, imagine possible futures, comprehend narratives, and respond without thinking in unexpected situations.
APPLYING Insight & Intuition –
Responsible for the Aha moments, lateral thinking, creativity and confidence in problem solving, Spontaneous Thought and automatic responses that protect us in Sentinel mode, and
DEVELOPING a Growth Mindset through Vicarious Learning –
Building efficacy, hope, optimism, emotional resilience and curiosity, interpreting simulations & making predictions, finding pathways, overcoming obstacles, through the actions of others
HELPING to Making Sense of the World –
Assimilating and interpreting narratives, creating order from chaos, identifying patterns and logical thought processes, analysing and synthesising the day’s events.
Stories and the Default Mode Network
When we read, our DMN is helping us imagine journeys with heroes and villians, define our values and our goals, helping us visualize different perspectives and pathways, supporting our capacity to simulate hypothetical scenes, spaces and mental states; we must access our memories in order to understand the story we’re reading and visualise the scenes within the novel. Our DMN is active when we respond to the word ‘Dog’, associating that one word with the memories and emotions linked to a multitude of interactions with dogs, all invoked by the present instance of a dog within the pages of a novel.
It is the correlation between Reading Fiction and the activation of the Default Mode Network, with its positive links to eudaimonic states and wellbeing, aesthetics, social responsibility, and the self awareness that necessitates the welfare of the self in future endeavours, that presents the most compelling case for Developmental Bibliotherapy in schools.
References
Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2011). The Brain’s Default Network and Its Adaptive Role in Internal Mentation. The Neuroscientist, 18(3), 251–270. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858411403316
Stark, E. A., Vuust, P., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2018, January 1). Chapter 7 – Music, dance, and other art forms: New insights into the links between hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (well-being) (J. F. Christensen & A. Gomila (eds.)). ScienceDirect; Elsevier. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079612318300190
Vessel, E. A., Isik, A. I., Belfi, A. M., Stahl, J. L., & Starr, G. G. (2019). The default-mode network represents aesthetic appeal that generalizes across visual domains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(38), 19155–19164. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902650116
Eco-Anxiety and Solastalgia are common responses to the distress caused by the effects of climate change – responses likely to be significantly intensified by the Australian summer of 2020. Young People and First Nations People are most severely affected.
On National TV, a young woman tearfully shares her conviction that motherhood in the near future is unsafe, unethical and a bad choice for the planet, while a young teenage protester asks for a curriculum that includes Climate Science, Media Literacy and Political Engagement.
At a “Schools Strike for Climate” rally a year 10 student talks about her fears for the future, her traumas framed by past experiences, and then, in blending pleas with demands, she calls on those in power to take action on Climate Change, care for the environment, listen to the Science and Tell the Truth.
But young people’s concerns are dismissed and they are told to study hard so they can fix the climate when they graduate. Understandably, they are increasingly becoming either extremely concerned about climate change or in denial.
“What if the problems we are causing in the natural environment are linked to the problems going on inside our heads?” asks Matt Haig (2019).
Eco-anxiety – an Appropriate Response
Eco-anxiety, the chronic fear of environmental doom, is an appropriate and reasonable response to the existential threat of climate change. With symptoms similar to other anxiety disorders, Eco-anxiety differs in that the threat posed by climate change is real so the fear is rational. Some refer to it a Pre-traumatic stress disorder – a fear of the future.
Anxiety is a common emotion, a protective mechanism. But “all anxiety contains a kernel of good news” said Rollo May observing that we would have no anxiety if we could not envision a future; anxiety contains an element of hope. In the face of the existential threat that is climate change, eco-anxiety is an appropriate response.
Understanding the “fight, flight or freeze” responses to anxiety helps to explain the varied and often polarised responses to Climate Change. For many, eco-anxiety is akin to the despair felt by Cassandra, whose gift of prophesy was frustrated by the curse of not being believed; they watch as the science is ignored in favour of populist alternatives that exacerbate the accelerating ecological destruction and make the scientific predictions even more likely. Some consider the subject too distressing or too difficult to understand, or refuse to acknowledge either that climate change exists or that it is anthropogenic. Some are overwhelmed.
However, only the fight response is considered to be the adaptive and healthy response to climate change, or, as the 350.org email informs me “Action is the antidote to despair”.
The Need for Stories
Advances in scientific knowledge have shown little or no correlation with changes in environmental attitudes or behaviour in relation to climate change. Science is bracketed out as complex, experimental and elite; knowledge is not transferring to power in tackling climate change. The lay person can feel shut out and inferior.
Stories can give a boarder audience a better sense of what is happening, framing responses and to making the science real and personal. Stories engage the emotions and reduce stress, opening the pathways to learning. Stories use metaphor and analogy to enable us to see ourselves and others from diverse perspectives, and to help us identify our values and build empathy. Stories can serve a didactic function, educating us through the voices of knowledgeable authors.
And stories have the power to motivate and inspire us by nurturing self-efficacy, optimism and resilience, which generate the hope and creative energy to act.
What is Cli-Fi?
Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction) novels are usually set in the present or the very near future with effects of climate change as a backdrop and a plot in which catastrophic events unfold amidst social and environmental upheaval. Young Adult (YA) Cli-Fi features teenage protagonists with absent or unhelpful adults and settings that are remain on a local level. The authors of YA Cli-Fi present readers with unsettling worlds, explore ways that families and relationships will be affected, the nature of heroes and villains, and how we might co-exist with the environment that we have callously disrupted.
Many Cli-Fi novels present readers with unsettling worlds where interpersonal trust has disappeared, where institutions that have previously been able to help have collapsed, where animals and plants have acquired new, monstrous properties and where even nature and the weather cannot be trusted. In these worlds, where we do not know how to distinguish good and bad, we are challenged to reflect on what is important to us, what our values are, what we need to preserve and what we are prepared to sacrifice.
In a version of Cli-Fi called ‘Solar punk’ writers opt to imagine a better, fairer world through their work. One Solar Punk writer, Sarena Ulibarri, acknowledges that “any near-future science fiction that does not engage with climate change is fantasy”.
In their didactic role, authors of YA Cli-Fi explain scientific terms and concepts, explore individual and government responses and address other unknowns for their readers, providing their readers with knowledge and empowerment and a positive perspective. By harnessing the emotions authors compel readers to recognise and act to foster change. In Cli-Fi we find heroes dealing with the impacts of climate change, adapting to the aftermath of natural disasters, and pressuring governments and corporations to act. We see alternative scenarios developed; what does martial law look like, what would you do to protect your family, or a bottle of water? Various and volatile combinations of fear, anxiety, confusion and anger, exist in Cli-Fi, and always with a message of hope.
Danish Cli-Fi researcher Gregers Andersen says (2020) “Cli-Fi plays a very significant role in helping people manage eco-anxiety. Climate fiction helps us to think about the future, gives us the opportunity to reflect on what it’s like to live in a climate collapsed world and make us realize the importance of changing to a more climate friendly way of life.”
Driven to Act
In the classroom, Cli-Fi has the potential to raise awareness in a non-threatening and non-personal way, motivating debate and inspiring action, and so potentially alleviating anxiety. Cli-Fi adheres to scientific accuracy, introducing concepts and language such as feed-back loops, tipping points, permafrost, gyres and gulf-streams that beget curiosity and discussion, and encourage research and investigation. Educators must ensure that climate change education cultivates hope and one way to do that is by empowering young people to be agents for change.
Cli-Fi can encourage us to focus our energies outwards. As we seek and connect with like-minded people, we feel less isolated, and we recognise our eco-anxiety as justified and valid. Within our new communities we can explore solutions, share problems and ideas, engage our imaginations, and learn ways to adjust to the future that is presenting itself; in the process we become less concerned with our own personal anxieties, begin to see the potential in action as an antidote for our anxiety and the possibilities in harnessing our energies for the greater good.
We find something worth fighting for; we are validated and empowered, unified and supported, and part of a global movement, huge and historical, that has come together to make the world a better place.
Paul Hawken describes this “Blessed Unrest” as “the greatest social movement in history … made up of environmental, social justice, and indigenous organisations, research institutes, community development agencies, village and citizen based organizations, corporations, networks, faith based groups, trusts, and foundations … from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts … a global, classless, diverse and embedded movement spreading worldwide.” (from Eckersley 2007)
Eckersley identified three responses to fear of the apocalypse; Nihilism, Fundamentalism or Activism identifying “Activism: Where Hope Rules”, as the only adaptive response to the threats posed by Climate Change. Hope, formally defined as an awareness of strategies or pathways to achieve goals and the motivation to effectively pursue those pathways, has been identified as a strong predictor of recovery from anxiety disorders.
As sensations of hope inspires climate change action, and in turn, climate action generated by one’s peers can generates hope, people transform their anxiety into action as part of a united social mass of individuals who want to see a brighter future.
Driven to Adapt
But Cli-Fi has another purpose, and that is to show us our possible futures. When we read dystopian and science fiction novels, we explore other worlds with scant regard to how those worlds evolved. Cli-Fi fills in those gaps, forcing us to confront our grief and perhaps motivating us to fight harder to save those things we care about, to drive change, join rebellion and embrace activism. Cli-Fi introduces us to messages of survival; extreme weather, preppers, martial law, medical realities and societal and ecological systems collapse can all be explored in Cli-Fi.
Supportive fiction, by definition, nurtures Hope, Resilience, Self-efficacy and Optimism. But along the way we also explore and experience community, collaboration, empathy, laughter, relationships, values, alternative pathways and perspectives, validation, insight, catharsis, new information, new skills, universality, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, growth, healing, resolution, trust, alternative endings, escape, immersion, and a reframing. Good Cli-Fi can offer all of these.
Cli-Fi can help us adapt to a rapidly changing world by teaching us skills to build emotional resilience. Cli-Fi shows us that life goes on, allows us to live through our fears, disrupts our stuck thoughts and stimulates our imagination. Cli-Fi empowers us through information and understanding, knowledge and diversity and presents us with opportunities to reframe and possibly rewrite our futures. Cli-fi challenges us to accept that climate change is a fundamental part of being alive and allows us space to process the complicated feelings we have surrounding climate change. Writing original Cli-Fi can further help to process climate grief and build emotional resilience.
By inhabiting a warming planet within the pages of a Cli-Fi novel we will be better prepared to confront and respond appropriately to the unsettling and distressing realities of climate change; we will be better able to adjust to the realisation that our environment is changing rapidly and unpredictably; we will be more flexible and adaptable and able to identify the values and relationships most important to us; we will develop the emotional resilience to face the sadness and injustice accompanying climate change with courage and determination; we will identify our personal strengths and unique qualities; and we will learn that adaptation is not just coping, not just resilience, not just transformation but also the capacity to form meaningful connections with others.
Teaching Climate Change Without Creating Despair or Entrenching Denial
Is climate change education appropriate for children? Are we doom mongering? Even though the likelihood is that climate change will reach crisis point in their lifetimes, is this knowledge too great a burden for the young people in our care?
How do we raise a generation to look forward to the future with hope when all around them swirls a message of apparent hopelessness? How do we prepare today’s children for a world defined by trauma without inflicting further trauma ourselves? Where do we draw the line between responsible education and undue alarmism?
“Kids are terrified, anxious and depressed about climate change. Whose fault is that?” asks Jason Plautz (2020)
The link between Climate Change and the mental health of young adults is very real. A 2019 poll of USA teens found that Climate Change made 57% of them afraid and 52% of them angry, while just 29% said they felt optimistic.
The high school student thinks about climate change every day, she reads about how ecosystems are on the brink of collapse and listens in despair as her teachers and parents tell her that it’s up to her generation to fix things. She wonders if she will have children.
The second grader is scared about the planet but says it feels good to be surrounded by some many people (at the School Strike for Climate) who care, since he sometimes feels as if nobody else is worried. His parents are proud that their child is aware, but concerned that he could become overwhelmed by predictions that seem to be growing ever more disturbing.
And a sixth grade teacher wonders if he is violating his mandated responsibility to speak up about signs of abuse and neglect if he does not speak up forcefully about climate change and the institutions that prop up the “fictional story that you can care for kids in our country while neglecting or ignoring the climate”.
Psychiatrist Lise Susteren, expert for the plaintiffs in the Juliana vs United States Youth Climate Lawsuit (2018) is left with a sense of shame after interviewing children about their fears for nature and their worries about their future families.
Young people translate inaction by the older generations as telling them we don’t care about their future. By failing to address Climate Change in a meaningful way we are failing our young people and they know it.
Teachers have a responsibility to inform themselves about climate change so they can help young people work towards solutions and move away from rigid thinking, calm their fears about the future, and give them a sense of hope and optimism. Teachers must be prepared to empower their students by means of age appropriate knowledge, to nurture their sense of agency in their own lives, to help them recognize that the worst of climate change is not a fait accompli, to show them that solutions exist and that some progress can be made, and to encourage them to take action, be that at a personal level or as part of a larger group, as a way to process and alleviate climate change concerns.
Activism is a burden, but they should be encouraged to participate in some type of action, primarily because action is the best antidote for eco-anxiety but also to show them that they have agency in their future, and that their future is still being written.
Teachers, and parents, walk a tightrope between being honest and being comforting, between empowering young people with hope and weighing them down with the responsibility of saving the world.
Parents, also, must prepare their children to be ready to make good choices and be part of the society they will inhabit as adults. As one parent says, “It’s a disservice to our children if we don’t reach them about life’s dangers and how to protect themselves, even as we pray it will never be necessary.”
Activism or Despair?
Young people are both more susceptible to environmental-related trauma and less emotionally equipped to cope with the potential impacts. In the face of a disaster they are more likely to be affected by eroded social networks as communications fail, and more likely to be overwhelmed by grief, frustration, guilt, helplessness and anxiety in the aftermath.
Some young people must be asking “Am I sick or is the world sick?“ They might wonder “Am I the only one paralysed by eco-anxiety?” Some young people may be so overwhelmed that they retreat into avoidance and denial.
Some adults might say that it is the rhetoric surrounding climate change that is creating anxiety in young people. But children and adolescents will register our concerns via overheard conversations, news items, popular films that generate questions among their peers, or by experiencing the effects of wild weather and natural disasters unfolding around them.
They want a curriculum that prepares them for the uncertainties of a warming planet, with reliable information about the facts and the magnitude of the threat of climate change in honest, open and frank discussions with trusted and informed adults, whether in the classroom or around the dinner table, in ways they can understand.
Young people want their emotions and concerns acknowledged; they want to be able to make informed choices, and they want to feel empowered to make their own choices; to access and be able to influence policy makers; and they want to join with peers who think along the same lines.
Young people’s anxiety is fuelled by the inaction of adults even as it drives their activism. Scientist Owen Gaffney says that Eco-anxiety is the right response to the scale of the Climate Change. Yet according to marine biologist Tim Gordon “there’s a huge amount we can still do to protect what’s left and make a meaningful difference.” Young people need to receive this message.
The Role of Cli-Fi
“All great literature is subversive if not downright revolutionary” says John Marsden. “It’s important for novelists to challenge false thinking, to question, to blaze trails.”
All literature influences and models the world for readers, defining, describing and explaining the world, and challenging and shaping our values through the actions and voices of heroes and villians.
Scott Westerfeld argues that his work is not designed to manipulate the political preferences of adolescents, but rather to provide them with a forum to discuss issues and strategies for political activism and social change.
In the novel “I am David” Anne Holm’s protagonist says “Can’t you understand that children have a right to know everything that’s true? If there’s danger you have to recognize it or else you can’t take care of yourself.”
And so, in the style of G. K. Chesterton we might say …
Cli-Fi does not exist to tell children that Climate Change is real. Children already know Climate Change is real. Cli-Fi exists to tell children that Climate Change must be confronted.
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Three important web sites documenting Trigger Warnings to be aware of and support – the titles speak for themselves…
This database began as a Google Docs Spreadsheet in 2017. It is now a “place for readers … with triggers” who want a “safe, enjoyable reading experience”. It is a crowd sourced resource with contributions from readers, authors and publishers. There are a great number of entries organized by title.
Describing itself as a community driven platform providing “Crowdsourced emotional spoilers for movies, tv, books and more” this website is a comprehensive list of Trigger warnings for many different types of media.
There is little to indicate who is behind the list but contributions are welcomed.
Another comprehensive list which can be searched using “Young Adult” as a category. Being a wiki there could be unverified, subjective or incomplete entries but it serves as a great starting point.
Congratulations to those involved in collecting this important information. All welcome contributions so keep these links handy.
Note: Goodreads has useful information as well it’s but not so easily found.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.
Laurie Halse Anderson
Eating disorders and Self Harm
YA Authors take their responsibility very seriously when writing about Eating Disorders and Self Harm. There is an unpredictability that surrounds the triggers for both of these issues and for that reason, the YA fiction on this topic may be a useful way to give parents some understanding, however slight, of their child’s thoughts.
Laurie Halse Anderson, submitted the manuscript of Wintergirls, to experts on the subject of eating disorders before publication. Her challenge was to ensure that Wintergirls told the whole story.
Elena Vanishing: a Memoir by Elena Dunkle describes how difficult it was for the author to accept her problem and ask for help – an echo of her personal battle with an eating disorder.
Girl in pieces by Kathleen Glasgow begins with the protagonist in a treatment facility after a serious episode self-harm. The complex thoughts behind the decisions to self-harm are insights generously shared by the author from her own personal experiences.
These books may act as a conversation starter that creates understanding, and can also provide insights for people caring for young adults experiencing these disorders.
Note: It is important that school librarians are aware of the books dealing with eating disorders and self-harm in their libraries, and aware when students are reading them.
Suicide
No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.
Jay Asher
Jay Asher’s 13 reasons why is not the first YA novel to address suicide, but when it became a televised miniseries it attracted the concerns of parents afraid that talking or reading about suicide may prompt young people to take the same course of action. Evidence says that the opposite is more likely to be the case – a discussion of suicide does not initiate thoughts of suicide if they are not already present, but enabling someone to discuss suicidal thoughts, whether with friends or family, is more likely to prevent them from putting those thoughts into action.
At the core of 13 reasons why is the death by suicide of a teenage girl. The novel addresses teen suicide, mental illness, reputation-worship, gossip and slander, nearsighted impulsivity, sexual abuse, and malignant narcissism. These issues resonated with teens and had a significant impact on those who read the story. The novel neither glamorised nor preached, instead leaving it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Teens commented that this book made them realise how their actions could have unforeseen consequences, how seemingly small things can be compounded to produce a significant but unforeseen effect, and how we never fully realise what is going on behind the scenes for a person who we think we know quite well.
And, because the main character was guilty of inaction, it also contained a plea to those who might otherwise remain bystanders.
Last word …
Early intervention has been shown to minimise the disruption caused by mental health at all ages. YA Fiction enables early intervention by providing language, by reducing stigmas and stereotypes, by both posing and answering questions, and by facilitating conversations.
Students need school librarians and dedicated reading programs to enhance their mental health and wellbeing.
Not only does reading fiction help adolescents navigate personal and emotional development during their teens, but developing a reading habit can help to mitigate the disruptive effects of mental health throughout their entire lives.
What’s special about stories?
Stories show us that it’s okay to fail, that mistakes are opportunities for learning, that courage isn’t an absence of fear, and that not everyone is as they seem.
Stories help us identify and refine our values and ideals, show us what resilience looks like, help us to define our goals and encourage us to explore our emotions.
Stories reflect and validate our lived experiences, help us to accept our past, help us to create order from our chaotic lives, and encourage us to be optimistic about the future.
Stories comfort us, help us connect with others and make us feel less alone.
Stories reframe our problems, help us create distance and see different perspectives, and nurture optimism, hope and self-efficacy.
Stories promote empathy and compassion, remove stigmas and stereotypes, help us to embrace diversity and show us a wider view of normal.
Stories introduce us to ancient wisdom and create intergenerational connections.
Stories help us to understand our world, help us to recognize the importance of our own life story as part of a bigger picture and help us to be more accepting of ourselves.
Stories give us answers to questions we don’t know how to ask.
Stories stimulate our imagination.
Stories give us role models to inspire us to persevere and improve, to empower us to speak out, to join in celebrating the successes of others, and to help us to be grateful and accepting of ourselves.
Stories give us the insight, the language and the confidence to seek help when we need to share our concerns or can’t manage alone.
Stories are not only the easiest way but sometimes the only way to learn about ourselves, and find our place in the society and the world we inhabit, from a safe and secure place.
Who can ensure our students are learning these things if not the teacher librarian?
Why is a Teacher Librarian is the best person to implement Developmental Bibliotherapy?
Teacher Librarians love to talk about books and Teacher Librarians provide guidance, encouragement opportunities for learning without grades.
NOTE: Books do not judge and neither should librarians – remember that in developmental Bibliotherapy activities there are no wrong answers.
Developmental Bibliotherapy occurs when Young People recognize that a change has taken place in their Thoughts, Feelings, Actions or Beliefs.
Implementing
Developmental Bibliotherapy is about asking the right questions to help this
self reflection to take place. It can take as little as fa few minutes as an
informal chat, or it can be developed into a unit of work.
Whether
as an informal chat, recalling an event or quote from a novel, creating a piece
of artwork or writing a book review, Developmental Bibliotherapy is almost
certainly taking place in every library wherever a skillful teacher librarian is
talking to young people about the books they are reading.
Go to the Activities and Printables page for ideas on Implementing Developmental Bibliotherapy or ways you can ensure that your existing programs are creating the conditions for change.
If an activity results in the reader reflecting and articulating a positive change in theirThoughts, Feelings, Actions or Beliefs then Developmental Bibliotherapy has been in action.
Although reading fiction is not a panacea, by showing young people a wider view of normal, by allowing them to explore their emotions and their identity alongside fictional heroes, by removing stigmas and stereotypes and by giving them the language and the confidence to seek answers from trusted adults, Developmental Bibliotherapy programs gives students skills that can promote better mental health outcomes throughout their lives.
Read For Life 