From Climate Anxiety to Climate Resilience: A 12-week program for practitioners to navigate climate conversations with their clients

• Dates: Wednesdays, 7-8pm EDT, September 11-December 4, 2024
• Format: Weekly course material and activities accessible via online learning platform plus weekly live group meeting on zoom (1 hour)
• Cost: normally $1200, pilot discounted rate: $899 (a 25% savings)
• Group size: 6 (min) to 10 (max) participants
• CEUs: Provided by VCPI for Allied Mental Health Professions and Social Work or Psychology if applicable. All participants will receive a Certificate of Completion.

Description:
Are you a coach, educator, health or mental health provider, social worker, healer, or in another helping profession, witnessing painful stress and tension caused by the climate crisis (or “climate anxiety”) in  your office or classroom?

Are you looking for more effective ways to:

• Navigate complex and emotionally charged conversations about climate change that fall beyond your training and scope of expertise.
  
• Move through grief, anger or despair and create climate conversations that are generative - not overly positive, but safe, realistic and empowering.
  
• Maintain your composure when you share the same overwhelming feelings as those you are trying to help.

This 12-week, hands-on intensive course is designed for you.

Join a small group of fellow helping professionals to build your own climate resilience and grow your “ecological emotional intelligence” so that you can facilitate long lasting transformation in those you serve.  

Make a significant impact in the lives of those you serve

As caring professionals, we are not climate scientists, we don’t need to engage in confrontation or political debates, we don’t need to lecture, tell people what to do, give answers or solutions, fix things, and we don’t have to fall into a spiral of despair with our clients, patients or students when the topic of climate change arises, directly or indirectly. We don’t have to feel responsible for driving fast, major change because of the positions we hold either.

The biggest impact we can have is to create safe spaces, one-on-one or in small groups, to be in genuine conversation. We can learn ways to make others feel seen, validated, and empowered—even within the context of climate change or a polycrisis. With patience, curiosity, new habits of relating and strengths-based approaches, we can serve as guides for deeper personal transformations that not only help people shift out of anxiety and build resilience, but in the long term, lead to growing awareness, responsibility, value-driven and sustainable action, and improved health and wellbeing.

Course Content and Format

In this 12-week, hands-on online course, we will explore research-based tools from various disciplines and how they can be adapted to better equip practitioners to handle climate conversations and emotions.

Each week consists of

• A lesson accessible via an online learning platform (Canvas)
• Supporting material from thought leaders in their field
• Simple daily exercises to put the theory into practice right away
• Journaling prompts to integrate the learning
• A weekly one-hour live group discussion via zoom
• Ongoing support from your facilitator
• A community of learners to accompany you on this transformative journey

Estimate time commitment: 2-3 hours per week

You will learn to bring insights and practices from the following disciplines into your work:

1. Positive psychology and the positivity spiral
2. Appreciative Inquiry and the power of language
3. Character strengths and values
4. Authenticity and flow
5. Climate emotions literacy
6. Pain, suffering, and leaning in
7. Self-care and compassion
8. Presence and mindfulness
9. Purpose and meaning
10. Intuition and inner guidance
11. Prototyping and gaming
12. Relationships and community

“To face our current realities, and stay engaged, awake, and capable, we need to do more than scare, inform or push solutions at people. Our work must be more nuanced. It starts with our capacity to show up as fully human. When we start with ourselves—and our own messy and complicated feelings—we can begin conversations that transform.”

—Renee Lertzman, Project Inside Out

In this course, we will…

• Raise awareness about the psychological impact of climate change, such as climate anxiety, eco grief, or solastalgia

• Highlight Positive Psychology, Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Intelligence, and other strengths-based approaches and how they can be applied to environmental mental health

• Engage with theory as well as practice to initiate the mindset shifts and transformation required to move from climate anxiety to climate resilience

• Demonstrate ways to create safe climate conversations that validate, empower and bring hope to your clients and others around you

• Combat isolation and loneliness and bring together various helping professions in a supportive community

• Contribute to the climate movement by spreading scientific knowledge and best practices that foster hope, resilience, and sustainable action

You will leave this course feeling less alone, more hopeful, empowered, and intentional about how you navigate the climate crisis. You will also have more confidence and clarity on how you can facilitate meaningful, long lasting transformation in the people you serve so that they too, can manage their existential stress and regain a sense of optimism and agency.