Climate-Aware Therapy

For environmentalists, activists, researchers, policy makers and advocates, educators, concerned parents, medical and mental-health providers, and others confronting climate change in their lives and work.

It is normal (and dare I say healthy!) to feel big feelings about the climate crisis

The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat that humanity has ever known. It is completely normal and reasonable to feel anxious, afraid, in denial, paralyzed, guilty, hopeless, or despairing about it and the future of our planet. These feelings come through us for a good reason! The reason= IT’S A REAL THREAT that is unfolding before us in our lifetimes! The question is, can we use these feelings for our own good, and humanity’s good?

If you are someone who feels the urgency of the climate crisis and the loss of the natural world deeply, and often feels alone in your feelings about it; If you find yourself holding back on talking about it with others for fear of being judged as a downer, dismissed, or confronting others dissociation or denial, I am with you. I am here to support without judgement, and without pathologizing you.

I offer climate-aware therapy for deep-feelers of climate anxiety and grief, and a group for women to move through feelings around the climate crisis with resources, tools, and community support. Both are a haven away from the every-day where you have full permission to feel.

It is more important than ever to move through these feelings so that we can find acceptance of the climate crisis as it is, and renewed hope and energy for engagement and action to address it. 

In climate-aware therapy, I support with:

  • Expressing and honoring your climate-feelings 

  • Tools for emotional self-regulation

  • Practices to help calm climate-anxiety and fear

  • Helping you find a sense of purpose and connect to who you wish to be in the midst of this unfolding crisis

  • Finding replenishing activities for pleasure and enjoyment of life

  • Connecting with the earth and more than human world, and to your interdependence with all of life, through eco-therapy

My story

I was 8 years old when I first learned about climate change from Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. I remember asking my parents and teachers in despair, “How did this happen? Why aren’t you fixing it?!” Their faces were blank. I suddenly knew my purpose. Ever since, I’ve been dedicated to planetary healing. This has taken many shapes over my life. As a high schooler and college student I was a political activist, protesting fossil fuel development and deforestation and demonstrating in support of climate legislation. After college, I spent 6 months walking across America on an eco-activist tour picking up trash. Throughout my twenties and early thirties, I worked in the climate and sustainability space on Capitol Hill, at universities, at local governments, and for grassroots nonprofits - coordinating climate planning and policy, community outreach, clean energy, waste reduction, and ecological restoration projects. My fascination with interpersonal, internal, and group dynamics at the organizations I worked at, coupled with transformation in my personal life, and feeling isolated and burnt-out in my eco-advocacy, guided me to make a change to become a therapist. In addition to working with individuals and couples, I lead a Women’s Climate group and have led ecological grief rituals and “Climate Cafes” for communities online and across California. I am a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.

Resources