From The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (Willsher & Freeston, 2024): Climate change distress is a challenge to people seeking help, and to those providing help. Those providing help are working in a new area of clinical practice where little is known, but they may also be experiencing climate change distress. The aim of this article is to highlight the personal and professional implications of the unfolding climate crisis and how we might better understand and support those with understandable, yet intense, emotional reactions to the climate crisis. The article consists of a first-person narrative by Claire Willsher, a CBT psychotherapist with lived experience of climate anxiety, and a commentary on the narrative based on the psychology of climate change literature by Mark Freeston.
My climate journey: One cognitive behavioural psychotherapist's account
From The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (Willsher & Freeston, 2024): Climate change distress is a challenge to people seeking help, and to those providing help. Those providing help are working in a new area of clinical practice where little is known, but they may also be experiencing climate change distress. The aim of this article is to highlight the personal and professional implications of the unfolding climate crisis and how we might better understand and support those with understandable, yet intense, emotional reactions to the climate crisis. The article consists of a first-person narrative by Claire Willsher, a CBT psychotherapist with lived experience of climate anxiety, and a commentary on the narrative based on the psychology of climate change literature by Mark Freeston.

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Hosting and facilitating a Climate café listening circle (CCLC) training
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