As events around the world continue to bring challenges to our inner peace and well-being, we wanted to share some resources for helping to cope with climate anxiety, grief, and despair. We hope they will help you and your community find glimmers of hope and some solid ground to stand on in the midst of uncertainty.
We've built a collection of Eco-anxiety Resources here on the Forum site. It includes books, articles, videos, podcasts, reports, programs, and more. The resources are updated frequently, so be sure to check back and see what new offerings have ben added. If you have additional resources that should be added to this list, contact our webmaster Elizabeth using the Contact Form.
We also want to highlight the new CIIS Climate Psychology Certificate Program. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
From the CIIS site:
CPC provides psychological training and skills for therapists, healers, and allied professionals to competently and innovatively address the growing mental health impacts of the climate emergency. Utilizing an integrative and robust framework that includes multiple behavioral science approaches and philosophies, as well as a view into the broken systemic legacies from which painful eco-emotional conditions arise, climate psychology is adaptable to various therapeutic orientations. The primary focus of CPC is to provide training that can be incorporated into clinical practice for working therapeutically with the lived experiences of eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and many expressions of climate-invoked dread.
The Good Grief Network has a program called “10-Steps to Personal Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate.” Their next circle is directed specifically at parents, but you can also sign up to receive information when new circles are announced. The 10 steps that are the foundation of this program are:
- Accept the Severity of the Predicament
- Be With Uncertainty
- Honor My Mortality & The Mortality of All
- Do Inner Work
- Develop Awareness of Biases & Perception
- Practice Gratitude, Witness Beauty, & Create Connections
- Take Breaks & Rest
- Grieve the Harm I Have Caused
- Show Up
- Reinvest in Meaningful Efforts
There is an online event coming up this Saturday at 12pm EST, hosted by the Garrison Institute. “Processing Climate Grief: A New Possibility for Taking Action” will be a virtual forum for addressing these issues. Garrison Institute Fellow Nico Cary and Angel Acosta, Director of the Garrison Institute Fellows Program, will lead this exploration.
From the event site:
We’ve all seen the documentary that shows us the world is ending. On good days, it seems like there is a growing vocabulary of concern, a global response to meet the unprecedented reality of climate collapse. From the promising glow of new technologies to the resounding wake up call of international youth movements, there are resilient pockets of hope if you look for them. And yet on bad days, even in the wide availability of creative solutions and collective efforts, there is a sharp undercurrent of grief – a foreboding sense of uncertainty and despair … Is it enough? Will we survive this? As opposed to investigating what else there is for us to do about climate collapse or searching for the next frontline of eco-justice, this workshop invites participants to slow down and simply tend to the experience of grief — to listen to it and learn from it. Can we discover grief as an ally? As a wild edge of activism? As a complete answer to the question of “what to do?” Can we relate to grief as a generative territory of imagination? Can we find playfulness in grief? What if grief is a gateway that reveals an entirely different set of questions about climate collapse? Join members of the Garrison Institute Fellowship as we gently begin to explore some of these questions in a practice of deep listening. Weaving mindfulness, creative storytelling, and self-compassion practices along with music and a digital altar, in this 2 hour workshop, we’ll co-create a ritual space dedicated to honoring grief, while lifting up some of the questions that often go unattended in a rush for solutions to climate collapse. In slowing down, we might discover that sites of creative wellness grow in the wilds just beyond our deepest sorrow. Let’s practice together. You can find out more and register here.
Coping with ecoGrief: What It Is, How to Cope
Hannah Malcom, Church of England
ecoAmerica