Let’s talk about climate change: What psychotherapists think about climate change and its relevance to their work

by Imogen O’Connor

Introduction

This article is based on research I conducted as part of a master’s thesis which explored what psychotherapists in the Irish context think and feel about climate change and how their worldviews, particularly in relation to self and environment, inform their responses to the climate crisis and how relevant they feel it is to their work.

My interest in taking on this research sprang from my experience of a disparity between my private feelings of distress about, and responses to, climate change and the attention I pay to the issue in my client work. Furthermore, in my career spanning over 25 years, only a handful of clients have presented with climate-related issues. A survey by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2021) indicates that a majority of the general public were worried about climate change. I wanted to see if my own experience was shared by my colleagues and if so, how they account for this. I will begin with a brief review of the related literature, followed by an outline of the methodology used, and then an analysis which will weave some statistical data particularly where it points to anomalies, along with qualitative data from the survey and interviews.

Literature review

There is general agreement that the current climate crisis is human induced (Trenberth 2018; Zalasiewicz et al., 2017), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that outcomes are serious, causing widespread and severe damage and displacement to both natural and human systems, some of these irreversible, across a wide range of measures (IPCC, 2023).

Therapists’ experiences and beliefs regarding climate change

To date, the only research directly relating to psychotherapists’ experience of climate change was conducted in the Australian context by Silva (2022), which claims to be the first exploration of the issue. She concluded that both therapists’ and their clients’ experiences were deeply complex and needed to be considered within the socioeconomic and cultural context in which they were situated.

The role of therapy and climate change

The literature documents the extensive negative mental health consequences of climate change (Hayes et al., 2018; Clayton, 2021). Many authors have identified psychotherapy and related disciplines as having a clear role to play regarding clients presenting with climate related issues (Clayton, 2021; Baudon & Jachens, 2021; Jackson, 2020). In addition, it can attend to the range of human adaptations required both now and in the future as a response to climate change (Cornforth, 2008), including helping clients re-establish and strengthen their connection with nature (Baudon & Jachens, 2021) and educating and empowering clients to act (Jackson, 2020). Other writers have pointed to its value in offering skills and support for environmental activist groups, and in raising awareness within and between professions (e.g., Hickman, 2019).

Psychotherapy and the self

The connection between cultural and personal worldviews in relation to how humans locate themselves in the wider environment, and the causes and solutions to climate change has been widely documented by many including Eisenstein (2018), Macy (2007), Matthews (1994), and De Oliveira Andreotti (2021).

Cornforth (2008) suggests that Euro-western psychology may be part of the problem which is central to the causes of the current climate crisis. She argues that its discourses and practices are founded on too limited a view of what it is to be human, reinforcing self as separate from rather than deeply interconnected with the natural world. She alludes to the radical implications of this for therapists and therapy organisations.

Psychotherapy – distress, denial and disavowal

Robertson (2023) describes climate change as: “too large to be adequately comprehended by human beings, [and], in the case of climate change, we are not the subjects observing what is happening externally, [we] are entangled inside the climate and part of the change.” (para 3)

Feltham and Weintrobe (2013) describe the concept of disavowal as a psychological process which facilitates people to continue on as usual by denying the potentially annihilating effects of climate change. This process facilitates a minimalisation of the conflict created by the psychological impasse of living within an economic system founded upon environmentally destructive behaviour coupled with a knowing that radical behavioural change involving substantial sacrifice is required. This creates an internal cognitive dissonance where the depth of distress is minimised so that one’s knowing yet not-knowing exists at the same time within a relatively guilt-free ‘bubble’ (Weintrobe, 2020).

Silva (2022) suggests that therapists likewise may avoid naming or discussing this ‘taboo’ topic. She also alludes to the importance of therapists acquainting themselves with the gravity of the climate crisis as well as exploring their own inner engagement and psychological conflicts pertaining to the issue. In addition, it is possible that therapists’ own emotional relationship with climate change may impact on how they receive clients who wish to discuss these issues in therapy (Seaman, 2016). Finally, it is important to consider that many manifestations of eco-anxiety can be viewed as non-pathological or adaptive (Pihkala, 2020).

Methodology

My choice of methodology for the research was guided by the principle of collaborative co-creation between researcher and participant. I posted a survey in the IAHIP Northwest Regional WhatsApp forum, and in an online members’ bulletin. Participants also included therapists who were not members of IAHIP. It turned out that an informal participant-initiated snowballing had occurred putting the survey out into the wider therapy arena. Already the research project was beginning to be cocreated by the participants.

Four interviewees (Murphy, Farren, Brennan and Regan) were selected from the survey as a cross- section of age, gender, years of accredited practice and the emergent themes identified from the survey. Given the potentially disturbing nature of the subject matter, both survey and interview offered internal reflective pauses and an opportunity to debrief during and after completion of survey and semi-structured questionnaire.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity lies at the core of this study. I considered the implications of my insider position as researcher/colleague and as co-producer and interpreter of knowledge rather than detached observer (Langdridge, 2007, p. 59). I incorporated a spiritual approach to engaging with the research project as a-being-in-its-own-right harbouring its own energies and purposes, which included the wider/wilder environment. I connected with this research-being regularly in my daily meditation in my garden, and many of the inspirations for the survey questions and reflections about the data arose in this liminal nature-connected space.

About the participants

Of the 39 therapists who completed the online survey, 85% identified as female and 15% male, with 80% of the total aged 55 or over and the remainder aged 35-54. Sixty per cent were based in Connaught with the remaining spread throughout Ireland, with one overseas. The participants identified a wide range of theoretical orientations mostly within the humanistic-integrative framework and worked in a variety of settings but predominantly in private practice with adult clients. Fifteen also worked with adolescents and children. Seventeen were supervisors and seven were involved in training. For 87% of the participants, an ecological perspective had not been included in their core training and 71% had not experienced training in the last two years which included this dimension.

Findings and discussion

Knowledge and experience of climate change

Around 62% of participants agreed that they knew a lot about climate change with the remainder being unsure or disagreeing. This contrasts slightly with the EPA study (2021) in which 76% of those surveyed felt they knew at least a modest amount. In this study, all participants indicated their belief that climate change was happening and 87% of these agreed that climate change is predominantly caused by human activity, which is notably higher than the EPA figure of 60%. While 69.2% were worried or very worried about climate change, 30.8% were neutral, not very worried or unsure. In relation to the latter less worried-neutral group, I wondered if this might suggest the presence of some form of disavowal, aided perhaps by the cushioning of environmental privilege from the intense effects of climate derangement experienced by those in the global south (Norgaard, 2012, p. 98).

Worldviews: self-in-the-world

Information from both the survey and interviews indicated that participants who commented agreed that nature is sentient, and over half that the natural environment is sacred and imbued with its own intelligence. There was variation however in how they understood this, some in terms of a kinship with common ancestry, others as an overarching system of intelligence, and/or as an expression of the transpersonal or divine. These variations in beliefs appeared to colour how participants felt about climate change - sometimes providing comfort, sometimes distress - and how they responded to it personally and professionally. For example, Murphy described what Taylor (2010, p.16) terms a Gaian spirituality. This offered a framework to behold and contain the distress and a response of acceptance rather than reactive doing:

In order to answer [the survey question], I had to admit that I was worried - I had to join the collective worry - but what sustains me is my determination to trust…and that when I am connected to the Creative Intelligence/or Great Mystery I can let go of worry and of fear and experience…faith that all is perfect as it is…We are nature and that nature and living naturally is sacred and… that kind of living is what will sustain us …

For Brennan on the other hand, what could be described as a scientifically grounded environmental cosmology - Gaian naturalism in Taylor’s typology (Taylor, 2010, pp. 22-36) informed the focus of their distress, and what they deemed an appropriate response at personal and professional levels.

… I would understand myself to be a very spiritual person…it’s very materially and scientific rooted...my consciousness, my sentience is a part of the universal systems and processes, [with]…a sense of ultimate connection with both the Earth and its biosphere and its beings and creatures and all other people and creatures…There’s a deep sadness because of the loss…

Brennan, one of six participants qualified five years or less, identified the imperative for wider systemic change and viewed the efficacy of individual action as almost “inconsequential”, but essential as a means to empowerment and as a political act fostering hope. In addition, they saw psychotherapy as a vehicle for social change and were comfortable helping clients locate themselves in the wider system when appropriate.

For the majority however, individual action, articulated in the survey as “doing my bit, a small but significant bit”, particularly through restorative acts with nature, rather than engaging in activism, was seen as the most significant personal response for many in terms of the legacy they would like to leave. While activism was valued as a source of hope, this was generally located in the action of others rather than themselves, and particularly in the engagement of young people.

Navigating the complexity of climate change – contradiction and ambiguity

Struggling with the tension arising from conflicts between feelings, beliefs, knowledge and action appeared consistently in terms of three sub-themes: connection/disconnection with nature, awareness, and the activity of talking about the subject of climate change.

Connection/disconnection with nature and the environment

Connection with nature was seen by participants as central to the climate change issue and viewed both as a source of respite and healing but also as a locus of despair, with concern being the most dominant identified feeling. Global destruction of the natural environment, extinctions and the negative effects for future generations (including grandchildren) were significant distressors. Regarding the causes of climate change, survey participants alluded to lack of awareness and disconnect between humans and the natural environment as sources of upset to them.

Contradiction was evident at the interface between the personal and professional: while spending time in nature was extremely important for the majority and fostering a connection with nature was considered by 85% to be a role for psychotherapists, only three participants saw their clients outside, and 58% were undecided, or agreed that they rarely considered the wider ecological setting in their work. There was also a disjuncture between the perceived importance of climate change personally and professionally. Seventy-seven per cent of participants indicated that it was important to them personally, while 89.1% were neutral regarding its priority or did not see it as a priority in their professional work.

Awareness/unawareness

The importance of awareness featured as both a source of distress and hope. Many articulated their distress at the ignorance, disregard and lack of awareness at individual, national and international levels. At the same time, a majority of participants identified expanding awareness, particularly in young people and children as beacons of hope. There appeared to be a relationship between beliefs and knowledge about climate change and emotional dissonance and numbing. There was also variation in how participants dealt with this dissonance. Brennan and Farren, who were both well informed about the extent of climate change, spoke about this overwhelm and how they managed information in order to stay within their window of tolerance. Both became aware in the research process that they were doing this. Brennan described the experience of completing the survey:

...at the end of the survey, …. I was really struck by how much I was managing myself in the doing of it and just being very careful what I absolutely recognise as my own grief about chaotic climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation… I’m very careful about coming into talking about those issues because, yes, I’m very pained by it to the point of being overwhelmed by it in some circumstances. To manage that and manage not shutting down … is one of my oldest coping mechanisms. With that level of grief, I am very bounded about thinking, talking and engaging around those issues.

Farren described, without ever having read about Weintrobe’s (2020) discussion of climate bubbles, how “you know, I’m aware of what’s going on, but then I come back into my own bubble…and I…just stay in that contently or whatever that is”.

For Murphy however, an awareness of the potentially disempowering impact of overwhelm led to a conscious choice not to think too much about climate change: “I prefer not to think about climate change because I might go into the place…of helplessness. And I choose not to feel helpless. I’m interested in being proactive.”

Finally echoing Silva’s study (2022) and other literature which points to the double-bind inherent in living within a capitalist framework that compels the very behaviours that individuals seek to avert (e.g. Eisenstein, 2018, pp. 234-236), Farren, Brennan and Regan all pointed to the conflict arising from what they knew they should be doing and what they actually do. For example, Brennan stated, “the difficulty is that we’re killing most of them [species] by the way we’re living”.

Silva (2022) has referred to the importance of considering the context in which the therapists and clients are situated. It was also a consideration for Regan who located some personal dissonance between knowing and doing within the broader economic system and also Ireland’s colonial past and current farming practices:

…. it’s the industrial world in many ways, land development… You know coming from a farming background there would be a sort of anti-green/green party situation in the country, kind of, coming from being subservient to the British – they can break the rules and get away with it. I can see it as part of myself, kind of.

Talking about it/Not talking about it

Talking about the issue, both at the personal and the professional level, emerged as an overarching theme, interlinking with personal worldviews and awareness of climate change. It manifested similar tendencies towards paradox and ambivalence.

The personal

At the personal level, talking about climate change was part of the problem and the solution. Not doing so fuelled their reticence to engage with climate change while talking allowed engagement, reduced internal psychological disavowal and overwhelm and afforded a sense of relief. Brennan articulated the complexity of the internal struggle:

I[t] reminded me again, Imogen, that although it feels like the hardest thing to do, talking with someone else about this, is okay. Like at the beginning [of the interview], and that trepidation about it…you know, sometimes I can feel [it]coming up in a conversation. I can feel myself going away from it, but if I can manage to stay with it, that witnessing that sharing it’s actually a source of strength and not paralysis. It’s hard to hold onto that in the face of rising trepidation…but I do feel the better for speaking.

The interpersonal

The impact of the tensions in cultural mores leading to socially constructed silences around climate change has been documented by Norgaard (2011). Three of the interview participants referred to the complexities of bringing up climate-related issues with family, friends and wider community, highlighting how it might:

• Upset or overwhelm – “…it is a…potentially disruptive dynamic at the heart of …all interpersonal relationships” (Brennan).
• Offend the farming community.
• Evoke the sense of imposing on others a value-laden opinion both personally and professionally.

Thus, while in this research and in the EPA study (2021) there was general agreement about the scientific ‘facts’ of climate change, it seemed for some participants that when talking about it in informal settings they felt they were indicating a personal value laden ‘belief’ which could offend.

The professional

At the professional level, there was a dissonance between participants’ general agreement that psychotherapy had a role to play in relation to climate change, and their ambivalence regarding how this could arise in practice in a therapy session. For three of the interview participants, the concept of a therapist introducing the issue was not something they had considered doing. Reasons included:

• Not thinking beyond the current presenting trauma.
• Their own lack of readiness: “…for it to be consistently and constantly in the sessions with me, as well because of my own tenderness around it” (Brennan).
• Its dissonance with a client-led, Rogerian theoretical orientation.
• Concerns about ethics.

Regan, who worked with children and adolescents, was the exception, articulating their own nature cosmology as one resting on a personal relationship with the natural world, through gardening as a means of caretaking. This brought a sense of internal ease along with an appreciation of ancestral roots in a rural cultural context. There was a congruence between the personal and professional - bringing up the subject was natural, necessary and flowed into their professional work without ethical concerns, while at the same time, being aware of the potentially traumatising impact of the subject on clients:

I always bring it [climate change] up – the three things: the war in Ukraine, Covid and global warming…To do it in a gentle way…that you don’t land it onto people - you just throw it out into the pond, and it causes gentle ripples.

While existing literature seems to indicate that demand for treatment of eco-anxiety is on the rise (Baudon & Jachens 2021, p. 2), this was not reflected in the experience of the participants, with 64% rarely or never having experienced adult clients presenting with climate related issues. When asked why they thought this was so, Brennan felt that the issue:

….is very much there, but I’d say just below the surface from any of my clients…[and]… it’s not the primary reason why they’d come and so they’re not bringing it in themselves.

Also, Farren suggested: “but they haven’t …. because I haven’t asked.”

Those therapists working with children and young people felt that these age groups were more likely than adults to bring up the subject. Brennan recalled that the five clients who had presented climate related issues were all young. In relation to beliefs about the role of professional associations, a substantial majority in the survey believed that these associations should be operating sustainably, offering CPD on climate anxiety and eco-psychotherapy and ensuring that psychotherapy training courses offer modules on the subject. Over half were unclear as to whether IAHIP and other professional bodies were actually taking appropriate action. This might suggest that professional organisations have not sufficiently raised climate change as an issue for discussion or debate regarding policies and practice.

The research project as forum for talking, reflecting and gaining insight

This research points to the need of therapists to talk about this issue, evidenced by the fact that 22 of the 39 survey participants offered to engage in follow-up interviews. Many expressed gratitude that this project was opening up the conversation to bring awareness to climate change even if it was emotionally challenging. It provoked thought and prompted further discussion - for example, one survey participant commented:

As I started the questionnaire, I noticed I was curious but also a little anxious in my body. Having completed it, I now feel more anxious and have a sense of incompetence and lack of knowledge.

Another participant experienced a personal insight into their disconnect with nature during the interview, recalling a childhood memory of embodied connection with nature which was deeply moving for them. The research also validated decisions to make changes to professional practice, e.g., working more outdoors, and prompted reconsidering practice. Brennan for example, wondered why they had not been asking clients routinely about climate change concerns up until now.

In some ways, it appears that this research was creating data simultaneously while collecting it as participants engaged with research questions that facilitated them to clarify and voice what was perhaps previously unarticulated.

Conclusion

This research involved a collaboration with psychotherapists to explore how their knowledge and beliefs about climate change shaped their emotional and behavioural responses to the climate crisis, and their engagement with the issue in their professional work. The majority of participants felt they had a reasonably good knowledge of climate change and its anthropogenic origins. They articulated worldviews about self and environment that varied regarding spiritual beliefs, but all locating the individual self in the wider environmental context, with an accompanying sense of care and concern for it.

Ambiguity and paradox were intrinsic to the therapists’ engagement with the climate crisis, as they grappled to comprehend and manage the overwhelming complexity of this issue which concerned them. These processes manifested personally, socially and professionally in the three emergent themes identified: connection/disconnection with nature, awareness/unawareness, and talking/not talking about climate change. In particular, there was a disjuncture between the importance of climate change for therapists personally and its relative absence as subject matter in the therapy room with adult clients. Climate change appears to be a taboo subject for discussion across intrapersonal and interpersonal domains, inviting a mutually reinforced silence in the therapeutic setting. This silence was mirrored in psychotherapy organisations and professional training. There is a need for professional bodies to provide clarity, ethical guidance and support in developing a culture of openness and a language to talk about it along with an evaluation of the ethical consequences of viewing the human self as inextricably embedded in environment.

This research offers itself as a living data stream flowing onwards past its completion, hopefully inspiring new research ideas, awareness and innovative responses in those who come in contact with it.

Acknowledgement

I pay tribute to the ecosystem where I live and work, which abundantly sustains me and has contributed to this project. I acknowledge all those who participated in this research, and all beings who are suffering and will suffer as a result of the privilege I enjoy at every level of my lifestyle, which I acknowledge is contributing to this current climate crisis.

Imogen O’Connor originally trained in the Institute of Psychosynthesis, Dublin. Her passion and personhood arise out of her love for and interbeing with her forest garden where she also sees clients. This research forms part of a Masters in Ecology and Spirituality programme (UWTSD). Imogen will be running a series of online climate cafes for counsellors and psychotherapists and can be contacted at imogenoconnor@protonmail.com

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