136: BEST OF: Eco-Shame with Rebecca Gray

Struggle Care

KC Davis

Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 750 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You have probably heard me say, “You can’t save the rainforest if you are depressed.” The truth is that eco-shame and eco-perfectionism can get in the way of our taking steps toward better functioning. If you have ever felt guilty for not being “eco-friendly enough,” this episode is for you! Rebecca Gray is an environmental epidemiologist. With her master’s degree in public health, she studies disease, the patterns of disease, and health at population levels within communities and countries. She also studies how factors in the environment impact health by causing and promoting disease. Rebecca works with government agencies like the EPA and CDC to develop water guidelines to keep pollutants out of the water supply. Show Highlights: How Rebecca has experienced forms of eco-shame in her profession How some people push the environmental movement in ways that are able-ist The trap we fall into to “embody the archetype” of the space we occupy How social media plays into the eco-perfectionism pressure we feel Why functionality matters more than the morality of what we do in care tasks, eating, the environment, etc. Rebecca’s view of today’s environmental movement Why we should ask ourselves how an eco-behavior affects our health and well being What really does need to happen to prevent climate change How our capitalistic society colors what we can do to be eco-friendly How differing narratives make us feel pressured to make individual changes and collective changes to “save the world” How to identify what we need to function well, fill in gaps with eco-friendly behaviors, and learn how to conserve our energy How to take a more reasonable–and less stressful–view of sustainability swaps Actions that have the least impact and the most impact on environmentalism Rebecca’s advice about letting ourselves off the hook for the decisions we make Links & Resources: Connect with Rebecca: LinkedIn Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:33.1	Hello, you sentient balls of Stardust. I'm Casey Davis, and this is struggle care, the mental health podcast that does not expect you to save the rainforest when you're depressed.
0:42.3	Today I'm talking to Rebecca Gray, who's an environmental epidemiologist, and we're going to talk about eco-perfectionism and eco-shame.
0:49.6	So if you've ever felt guilty for not being eco-friendly enough, this one is for you.
0:56.1	Hello and thank you for joining me today. One of the things that I've talked about a lot in
1:01.6	my channels and I talk about in my book is my principle, you can't save the rainforest if you're
1:06.2	depressed. And it's basically talking about how eco-shame and eco-perfectionism really can get in the way of us taking steps towards better functioning.
1:16.6	And I wanted to do a couple of episodes on this.
1:19.1	And the guest that I have today is Rebecca Gray.
1:22.0	She's an environmental epidemiologist.
1:24.8	And I'm going to let her introduce herself.
1:26.9	Rebecca, tell us your sort of background and
1:30.4	what you do for a living. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
	...

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