Addressing Ecological Grief in Counselling
Love Poem for Climate Change
I am so full of words for you
I always have been.
Sometimes
when we were together
and you were asleep
I would whisper
“I love you”
As lightly as pollen
Now
After the moon has fallen
into the ocean
and the bees
have burned onto the sun
I hope sometimes
you still hear me say
“I love you”
In your dreams
Perhaps it is the voice
of a willow
Do you
remember
trees?
Charlie Petch (www.charliecpetch.com/, 2021)
As the global environment shifts and humans (and all planetary species) experience the very real and devastating impacts of climate change, there is an increasing need for mental health professionals to better understand the psychological repercussions that climate-related losses have on the population. Ecopsychiatry, the branch of psychiatry concerned with ecology (Cianconi et al., 2020), is beginning to explore the emotional ramifications of what has been termed ecological or environmental grief (EG) or “the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change” (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018, p. 275).
EG is a unique and complex emotional phenomenon that follows three distinct pathways of loss which include grief associated with physical ecological losses, loss of environmental knowledge and anticipated future losses. These pathways encompass a new “eco-emotional” (Consulo et al., 2020, p.32) terminology that describes various psychoterratic (earth psyche) (Albrecht, 2019) states including solastalgia, pre-traumatic stress disorder, Anthropocene horror and environmental melancholia (Craps, 2020). These terms are but a few which represent new lexicons that describe contemporary environmentally related grief and loss phenomena which must be understood by counsellors if we are to effectively address the experiences they describe.
The loss of landscapes, species and livelihoods has meant the loss of personal and cultural identity, social interactions and meaning making for many people. The tierracide or intentional destruction of the earth (Quarum, 2020) is uniquely horrifying because it is perpetuated through and by many nebulous, interconnecting pathways and entities making it difficult to know who to hold accountable. As we search for culprits and solutions, we and our clients find ourselves powerless to effect change during an all-encompassing crisis that has so many sources.
EG also encompasses ambiguous grief, a psychical or psychological loss that is, “unclear, cannot be fixed, has no closure” (Harris & Winokuer, 2021, p. 135) alongside disenfranchised grief which refers to situations in which, “the loss is not recognized as valid, the griever is not recognized as a valid person to mourn a loss, the grief response of the induvial falls outside of social norms, or in which the loss itself has a social stigma attached to it” (Harris & Winokuer, 2021, p. 60).
Anticipatory grief might be understood through the lens of what Timothy Clark (2020) describes as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder or “PTSD in advance” (p. 62). Here, thoughts of the future become a source of distress resulting in helplessness and anxiety while bearing witness to the environmental collapse of the earth. The term itself suggests that it shares some of the symptoms more commonly associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. These might include experiences of hyperarousal, dissociation, and challenges in physiological and emotional regulation.
Approaches for Healing
The concept of healing grief related to the seemingly unresolvable loss of the earth and all its inhabitants is hard to fathom. According to the latest science, climate change will indeed get worse. There is no single identifiable source to appeal to for change and the loss is both rapid and slow. When considering approaches for healing EG, the importance of first understanding the earth as a “mournable subject” (Craps, 2020, p. 3) is urgent. In addition, as author Lisa Sideris (2020) writes, counsellors can hold space for clients’ “profound grief, and sustained reflection on death and loss, as the starting point for genuine, transformative change and the possibility of hope” (Sideris, 2020, p. 1). Quarum (2020) states that “the acknowledgment of the psychological side of climate change needs to be brought into the discourse in a much more intentional and responsive fashion” (Quaram, 2020, p. 4).
With this integration of new ideas, language, understanding, and culture pertaining to the Anthropocene, I provide individual sessions that allow clients to process their anxiety, guilt and sadness. Sessions also include psychoeducation around grieving and practical ways to address it. To find out more about working with me to address issues related to Ecological Grief, please contact me at nicolem@finebalanceyoga.ca
References
Cianconi, P., Betrò, S., & Janiri, L. (2020). The impact of climate change on mental health: A systematic descriptive review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 74-74. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00074
Clark, T. (2020). Ecological Grief and Anthropocene Horror. American Imago, 77(1), 61-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aim.2020.0003
Comtesse, H. et al. Ecological Grief as a Response to Environmental Change: A Mental Health Risk or Functional Response? (2021). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2), 734. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020734
Craps, S. (2020). Introduction: Ecological Grief. American Imago, 77(1), 1-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aim.2020.0000
Cunsolo, A., & Ellis, N. R. (2018). Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 275-281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0092-2
Cunsolo, A., Borish, D., Harper, S. L., Snook, J., Shiwak, I., Wood, M., & The Herd Caribou Project, Steering Committee. (2020). "You can never replace the caribou": Inuit Experiences of Ecological Grief from Caribou Declines. American Imago, 77(1), 31-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aim.2020.0002
Harris, D.L., & Winokuer, H. R. (2019). Principles and practice of grief counseling (3rd ed.). Springer.
Sedehi, K. T. (2017). Grieving over the Degradation of Nature in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 8(5), 965-968. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0805.18
Sideris, L. H. (2020). Grave reminders: Grief and vulnerability in the anthropocene. Religions, 11(6), 293. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11060293
Quarum, S., (2020). Psychoterratic States: Designing the New Language of Climate Change. [Undergraduate honors thesis]. PDXScholar Digital Archive. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=honorstheses