Climate-Conscious Therapy The climate crisis is having a significant, negative impact on human mental health and emotional wellbeing, and you might be experiencing a range of feelings in relation to it, including, among others, those like numbness, anxiety, grief, fear, disconnection, sadness, or anger. Whatever you're feeling, climate-conscious therapy provides space to talk about it in a way that's nonjudgmental, that doesn't overpathologize, and that helps you get unstuck if you're feeling overwhelmed. I'll help you understand your environmental identity and will provide an empathic, therapeutic space for your eco-distress to be heard and understood, as well as support and guidance to process and manage what can be difficult and powerful emotions. Talking with someone trained in working in this challenging area can also help you feel supported to move forward meaningfully and to take action in the face of this ongoing threat.
As an experienced hiker, a lifelong outdoors person, and award-winning environmental grassroots organizer who's had a deep reverence for nature my whole life, I've personally long felt sustained by nature and drawn to protecting it and our environment. I feel it's essential for me as a clinical psychologist to use my professional experience to intervene in whatever way I can to address the climate crisis, and I consider climate-conscious therapy to be a critical need. I've been fortunate to receive training from expert psychologists in this relatively new and rapidly evolving field, along with being engaged in an ongoing consultation group. I also volunteer several hours a week as the liaison for state and provincial coordinators, and as the state coordinator for Michigan, for the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America. Please see the About Me tab for more details on my environmental and psychological experience. ................................................................... Hiking Therapy and Mental Health Hikes ~for Nature Connection and Specific Concerns~ Starting in spring 2023, I'll be providing several types of therapy in nearby outdoor areas that are peaceful and restorative. Research shows that being in nature has numerous mental health benefits. Yet one of the problems with modern life is the way in which humans often simply use nature for their benefit rather than feeling deeply interconnected with it. As a result, I seek to not perpetuate that approach in outdoor therapy.
Hiking therapy with me allows for otherwise-typical therapy sessions--for any therapy, not just eco-related--for established clients to be held outdoors. My mental health hikes go beyond this and are designed as an ecotherapy intervention to help you not only feel the benefits of being outdoors during therapy but also to help increase your connection to what's called the "more-than-human world." Such connection benefits both humans and the planet.
If you are someone who wants to be close to nature or to get outside more but are worried or unsure about how to do so, or if you have anxiety about nature or a specific fear of certain aspects of nature, I can also design mental health hikes and/or outdoor behavioral therapy for you. I'm Red Cross-certified in First Aid and CPR. I follow Leave No Trace guidelines. Brief client instruction in Leave No Trace is a part of my hiking therapy program.
**No prior experience is needed for hiking, and all levels of physical ability are welcome. No specialized gear is needed or required; hikes are not strenuous and can be done in sneakers if you don't have hiking boots. Flat or slightly hilly hikes can be chosen based on interest. All hikes take place in selected city nature areas and township or county nature preserves or parks. Paved trails are available if needed for accessibility; otherwise, the trails I use for hiking therapy are in the woods and are not paved.** ................................................................... More... Eco/climate workshops and groups, Active Hope workshops, reading groups for clinicians, coaching, and related events are in the works. I also provide educational climate- and eco-psychology presentations.
"It seems to me that the dry earth, the parched, parched soil...needs the water of our tears-- to know that we give a damn, that we're actually here."