Resources
WHAT WILL I FIND HERE?
The Hub is our curated library of climate-mental health resources.
Too often, we sit in silence with our difficult eco-emotions, which creates a sense of loneliness and powerlessness. Authentic conversations about how we’re feeling — in a space where those feelings are welcomed — can dramatically change that. Talking with others who give us permission to share openly can be comforting, empowering, and unleash creativity all at the same time.
Climate Awakening
Sometimes you just need to express your climate feelings with other people who get it, and not much more is required. Activist and psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon created Climate Awakening as a series of ongoing sharing and listening sessions that anyone can drop into virtually.
Learn more or join a virtual listening session: climateawakening.org
Climate Cafes
Climate cafes are human-centric, emotions-friendly meetings where people can safely express what they’re sensing about what the climate crisis means—not in some far-out future way, but for their own lives and loved ones. They are a relational and permission-giving space that help people work through their fears and frustrations. Search online for “your city + climate cafe” to find a climate cafe near you, or sign up for an ongoing virtual series run by the Climate Psychology Alliance here.
Conceivable Future
Drawing attention to the pressure that the climate crisis puts on reproductive decisions, and the injustice this causes for people of childbearing age today, Conceivable Future hosts “house parties” where people can express their concerns and desires about how to have kids, or not, in these times. The founders adamantly support personal choice and do not endorse any way as the “right” way to navigate reproductive decisions in the climate crisis, whether that might mean having multiple children, adopting, or refusing to reproduce.
Download the Conceivable Future “House Party How-To” and host your own gathering, or upload a testimonial about how the climate crisis is shaping your intimate decisions.
If you find yourself feeling so depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed by the climate crisis that you’re struggling to stay afloat or stay in the work, it might be a great time to call a climate-aware therapist. In recent years, a conscious group of psychotherapists, social workers, and psychiatrists have come together to help people live more comfortably with their climate-awareness through diverse methods and practices.
These therapists are special in the sense that they will never pathologize one’s eco-distress or dismiss it as catastrophic thinking, whereas other therapists sometimes do (which ends up leaving people feeling misunderstood, alienated, and many times worse). They understand this distress to be a natural and reasonable reaction to what is happening — a sign of one’s connection to and care for the world — at the same time that they provide perspectives, tools, and techniques for coping with it.
Some starting places to find climate-aware mental health professionals:
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Climate Psychology Alliance United Kingdom
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Climate Psychology Alliance North America
Workshops & Online Learning
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“Psychotherapy and a Changing Planet: Climate Psychology” - an online course through JFK University, taught by Leslie Davenport
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Offered through Guardians Worldwide, The Healing is a 6-week course on climate change and planetary health rooted in indigenous wisdom and transitioning beyond colonial health systems.
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The Post Carbon Institute offers an online course, “Think Resilience”
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Carbon Conversations offers a number of downloadable educational resources
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The Pacific Graduate Institute offers a Certificate Program in Ecopsychology
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Climate Psychology Certificate through the California Institute of Integral Studies
Workbooks & Guidebooks on Climate-Mental Health
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All the Feelings Under the Sun by Leslie Davenport is part workbook, part emotional guide
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Emotional Resilience Toolkit for Climate Work from the Climate Therapy Alliance
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Project Inside Out provides interactive tools and resources
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The Australian Psychological Association series of helpful guides to coping with climate change
“Emotional methodologies” help people connect with and process difficult climate feelings, such as anxiety, grief, and dread, in ways that build courage, acceptance, and inner resilience. Unlike much climate-aware therapy, emotional methodologies are practices that are designed to be done in groups, and are not necessarily facilitated by a mental health professional. In each their own way, they move people past denial and emotional paralysis towards deeper understanding of their own felt responses, as well as meaningful external actions they can take.
For more on emotional methodologies, see Jo Hamilton’s 2020 PhD thesis.
Here are a couple of our favourite emotional methodologies:
TWTR is practiced around the world as a way to cultivate inner resilience, healing, and connection in collectively dark times that demand empowered action. It is based in the teachings of Joanna Macy, a renowned activist and author whose life has been dedicated to helping people tap into the interconnectedness of all living things using a mixture of modern systems theory, Indigenous, and Buddhist philosophies.
Find workshops, retreats, and study groups: workthatreconnects.org
A branch of TWTR that is focused on decolonizing the practices of TWTR to better meet the needs of communities of colour.
Read more about The Evolving Edge’s ideas and practices
Good Grief Network
GGN is an innovative peer support network for processing and integrating the uncertainty and grief that the climate and wider eco-crisis can awaken in people. Based on Alcoholics Anonymous, this group format moves participants through a 10-step program in which key topics are processed in a supportive setting, such as: “accept the uncertainty of the predicament,” “practice being with uncertainty,” and “honor my mortality and the mortality of all.”
Learn more or join a GGN 10-step group: www.goodgriefnetwork.org
Somatics
To practice somatics (from the Greek soma for “body”) is to listen to the sensations that come in through the body as a foundational language. It is a way of working with the connection of the mind and body to become aware of deeply rooted conscious and unconscious patterns, survival strategies, and modes of existence that we learn from traumatic situations. By becoming aware of these patterns embedded in our neurobiology, we can uproot and reorganize them towards justice-oriented change and liberation.
Generative Somatics
Generative Somatics, an organization that works in the service of climate and social justice, offers several kinds of trauma-informed somatic programs that engage our emotions, sensations, and physiology for individual, collective, and societal transformation.
Learn more or find programs: generativesomatics.org
Check out Ecopsychopedia
A trusted source for current research and thinking on how psychological factors drive the climate crisis, how the worsening crisis affects us psychologically, and what we can do about it.
Climate-specific mindfulness retreats
Climate and social justice activists are no strangers to feelings of overwhelm, depression, and burnout. While the ills of the world that we work to heal often feel like a relentless uphill battle that we can withstand for a while, eventually that climb becomes too much to bear. Mindfulness and mindful meditation have been proven to be effective ways of finding restoration by grounding oneself in the present moment. They tap into truths about the non-dualistic joy and suffering that are part of existence at all times, in ways that are soulfully nourishing.
Plum Village
Plum Village, a Zen Buddhist retreat center in France that is rooted in the teachings of activist and global spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, sometimes offers online mindfulness retreats for activists and climate activists. Recommended for moments of high emotional drama, despair, burnout, compassion fatigue, and general exhaustion.
Learn more or find an upcoming retreat: plumvillage.org/retreats
Boundless in Motion
The climate crisis disproportionately burdens communities of colour and layers more stress on top of existing oppression. This in turn demands culturally sensitive support. Zen Buddhist priest and senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Dr. Kritee Kanko hosts multi-day ecodharma retreats for people of colour, as well as BIPOC grief circles.
Sign up to Boundless in Motion’s contact form to be alerted of upcoming events: boundlessinmotion.org/contact-us
