All the Layers of My Environment
They're impacting me - and you - all the time
I moved from Columbus Ohio to Tucson Arizona, almost 26 years ago. It was a somewhat random move, guided more by my intuition than any clear logic. I didn’t have any relatives or friends here, I didn’t have a job, and I couldn’t pinpoint one specific reason for the move. Somewhere deep inside, I just knew I was supposed to move to Tucson. So way back in January of 2000, I loaded up everything I owned in a U-Haul and drove three days across the country, to move into an apartment I had only seen online.
Now, almost three decades later, I can say with certainty that Tucson is an ideal environment for me and my biological trait of high sensitivity. Because of my neurodiversity, my nervous system is more impacted by everything in my environment: lights, sounds, texture and temperature. I feel everything in my physical and emotional environment more intensely than most people.
Which means I struggled with Ohio. Columbus is the 8th cloudiest city in America, and it’s crazy cold, and also super humid. I suffered with terrible seasonal affective disorder every year. My mood would sink with the frigid temperatures and cloudy days, and my body would physically long for sunshine and warmth. Which I found in abundance in Tucson.
I’ve come to appreciate Tucson for many reasons, but the geographic environment is incredibly ideal:
300 days of sunshine every year
Dry, arid, desert climate with mild winters and low humidity
July and August bring dramatically beautiful monsoon rains
4 separate mountain ranges make for gorgeous scenery in every direction
Back in 2005 I went to graduate school in Washington, DC, and the whole time I found myself somewhat disoriented, looking around for the mountains. I’d become accustomed to seeing mountains in the background of all my days and when I found myself next to the ocean, I painfully missed the mountains. Seeing the mountains every day keeps me grounded in a specific place and time.
Every time I come home to Tucson it feels like home, and my body physically relaxes into this environment.
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I’ve been observing how many of us are feeling overwhelmed by the news lately. It seems we’re being over stimulated by our always-on media environment. And as a highly sensitive orchid, I try to be very intentional about how I manage my environment. But I’ve come to realize that our environment isn’t only our zip code geography, there’s so many additional layers to our environment:
Physical environment - the specific space our physical body inhabits at home and at work. This includes the noises, textures, lights, temperature and clutter. I’ve noticed that sounds, temperature and physical clutter can have a huge impact on my mood. I try hard to regulate all the conditions in my physical environment.
Emotional environment - all the relationships and emotional connections we experience with family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and everyone. The degree to which we feel either safety and connection or danger and friction greatly impacts us. Our emotional environment might be less visible than the physical, but it is equally significant. Our relationships create their own mood and environment.
Mental-cognitive environment - what do we read and analyze, and where do we direct our mental attention? Into which topics do we immerse our brains? Our mental environment can be either light or serious, either superficial or deep. There’s so many options all day long about where to direct our brain cells.
Local / national / global environment - the larger community environments in which we live can feel positive and safe or negative and hostile. We can experience these broader environments as either hopeful and empowering or hopeless and disempowered. The national mood and tone is truly an environment in which we exist. I think the many ways in which our national environment has changed in the past year has genuinely impacted many of us.
This is all to say that the whole concept of our environment is complex and nuanced. My daily environment is so much more than just Tucson.
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Whenever I find myself overstimulated I try to spend more time outside in nature. There’s even a term for this: forest bathing, and doctors in Japan and Europe will prescribe time in the forest for their patients. I hope this trend takes off in the US, but I don’t need a prescription to know that being in nature helps my physical and mental health.
I also read a recent study demonstrating that “Looking at Art Reduces Stress.” What’s fascinating about this study is that the researchers measured the physiological markers of the participants, using body sensors, saliva samples, heart activity and skin temperature. They found that enjoying original works of art in a gallery can relieve stress, reduce the risk of heart disease and boost your immune system! The participants who viewed original artwork had their cortisol levels fall by 22% and their cytokines dropped by 1/3. This means that the immune system, endocrine system and autonomic systems were all positively impacted by viewing art. Why don’t we all spend more time in art galleries?
I’ve been thinking about the forest bathing and art gallery research a lot lately. The research validates the high degree to which our environment impacts our physical and mental health, more than we realize.
And it seems, we also have more power to actively and intentionally manage all our environments: physical, mental, and emotional. Where we put our bodies, where we direct our attention, where we consume media content, which relationships we cultivate, all these things matter.
As a neurodiverse orchid with a highly sensitive nervous system, I am exquisitely attuned to everything in all my environments. And it’s up to me to be intentional about where I put my body, where I direct my mind, and how I manage my emotions and my relationships. All these environments can either provide healthy nutrients or junk food, they all have an impact on my health.
When I read the national political news, I tend to feel overwhelmed and powerless, disoriented and discombobulated. But when I go for a walk on the trails near my house, I make eye contact with my neighbors, we engage in pleasant small talk, and I feel connected to this place and these people. I feel rooted.
We all have dozens of choices every day about how we intentionally manage every layer of our environment. We can choose our environments wisely.
I hope today you choose some nature and some art. I hope you take a walk outside and notice the sounds and smells and colors. Every day is a new opportunity to choose your environment, all of them.
Very thoughtful considerations, and beautiful photos! I had a similar experience moving from NYC to Washington, DC -- being instinctively drawn away from the concrete and toward the greenery, in a way that overrode logical thinking.