Mel Shearsmith

I am a therapeutic practitioner offering an integrative, relational and somatically informed practice grounded in neurodivergent experience, embodied intelligence, ecological consciousness and our profound interdependence with the living world.
My practice offers sanctuary for neurodivergent and sensitive people navigating ecological grief, climate anxiety, overwhelm and the emotional realities of living through the polycrisis.
As an autistic woman, with over 25 years of somatic movement and embodied enquiry, I bring a deep appreciation of the sensory, emotional and intuitive intelligences through which we experience the world. My work explores how these capacities are shaped by cultural expectations, and how we might cultivate greater trust in ourselves without continually adapting to conditions that diminish us.

I understand grief, outrage, despair and overwhelm as meaningful responses to ecological destruction, social injustice and the suffering of the living world to which we remain profoundly connected.

Rather than pathologising these responses, I offer a slower, robustly held sanctuary where these experiences can be felt, expressed, witnessed and tended to without pressure to resolve them. This is not about you becoming better adapted to the world as it is, but about creating conditions in which you can encounter yourself, your grief and the world without being required to abandon your own intelligence.

My practice integrates the Thinking Environment®, somatic enquiry, Polyvagal-informed approaches, depth psychology and communal grief work.

My training includes Grief Ritual Apprenticeship with Francis Weller (Centre for Climate Psychology), Climate Grief Café Facilitation and Through the Door (Climate Psychology Alliance), Climate Coaching (Academy of Executive Coaching), Time to Think® Thinking Environment training and ILM Coaching.

My work is further informed by Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects, ecopsychology, somatic justice and Jungian philosophy.

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