The Climate Therapist will see you now
Good professional support for climate distress can be hard to access, and this new column is here to help fix that.
Why an advice column?
When we surveyed our readers last year, a majority told us they’d love to see a climate-aware therapist column be made available. Ta-da! We’re so happy to now be in a position to offer this to you, and hope you see it as your personal resource.
Though we all sometimes feel like unique, individual selves moving through the cosmos, our problems and discontent tend to be shared. Chances are, we might find pieces of our own stories and struggles in the questions that others ask. And it’s no surprise that we need help answering the enormous, mind-boggling existential questions that the climate emergency is collectively surfacing for so many of us.
Our hope is that this new format will help you, dear Dread Head, to move through whatever you’re grappling with via text-based climate-aware therapy by writing in with your questions, so we can all read the responses you receive from our incredible therapists and learn together as a community. Any and all climate/eco emotions, mental health and resilience questions are welcome. Plus, it’s totally anonymous, so permission is fully granted to bring forth whatever difficult, worrisome predicaments and dilemmas you’re rolling around in.
So without further ado, meet our trinity of wisdom, Leslie Davenport, Kyle Hill, and Caroline Hickman.
Leslie Davenport works internationally as a climate psychology educator, consultant, and therapist working at the intersection of climate, education, policy, media, and social justice. She authored five books including Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change, and All the Feelings Under the Sun. She is an advisor to Post Carbon Institute, Climate Mental Health Network, and One Resilient Earth. She is the program and faculty lead for the Climate Psychology Certification at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Kyle Hill, Ph. D., MPH, is Ojibwe, Dakota and Lakota, enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, descendant of Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate (Dakota) and Cheyenne River Sioux (Lakota) tribal Nations.Throughout his education and training experiences, Dr. Hill has developed a multifaceted skill set in decolonizing mental health treatment, trauma-informed practices, health equity and Indigenous frameworks of health and wellness. His research interests focus on climate change adaptation vis-a-vis Indigenous traditional practices and active engagement of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledges.
Caroline Hickman has a background in mental health social work and has been a practicing psychotherapist since 2000 using a depth psychology (Jungian), ecopsychology and analytic relational approach. She is a lecturer at the University of Bath researching children and young people’s emotional responses to climate change globally for 15 years examining eco-anxiety and distress, eco-empathy, trauma, moral injury, and the impact of climate anxiety on relationships. She delivers talks & workshops in climate psychology, emotional resilience, and mental health internationally.
Submit your burning questions around how the climate and earth crisis is affecting your daily life, emotions, wellbeing, relationships, and more. And remember - it’s totally anonymous.
If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏🏼
Making Waves
Our friends at the Climate Mental Health Network have developed a Climate Emotions Wheel to help us identify how we’re feeling in the climate crisis; a free resource that’s being used by therapists, educators, librarians, community activists and more worldwide.
Solastalgia is a youth-led climate arts group that recently released their Volume 2 Zine that features creative arts, poetry and written submissions from 16 youths across Canada on the topic of Eco-engagement and Climate Action. Check it out here.
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‘Till next time!
My heart already feels more hopeful with your most excellent crew here. 🙏🏼
THANK YOU for doing this!