Eco-Psychotherapy

Staying with the Trouble

We have left action so late there is now no way of avoiding dangerous climate change which does not also require a major transformation in the way in which we live. But surely to say that a cultural transformation is required is to be unrealistic, it is to ask too much of us? The danger is that, overcome by feelings of hopelessness, the self withdraws anxiously into a psychic retreat from where facts are accepted but meanings and implications are denied. But there is another way. In our lifetime positive cultural transformations, for example in relation to sexism and homophobia, have been set in motion. What can we learn from these processes of change which might inform the collective action we now require around climate change?