Climate anxiety is real-and here is a practical, accessible guide to addressing it on personal, relational, and structural levels, from the founder of the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth.
In 2013, Kate Schapira sat in her office at Brown University and read about acidic waters, ecological imbalance, dead zones, and zombie ecosystems. Before then, she’d had the same broad understanding of climate change that most people did at the time, but these articles on the permanent disappearance of coral reefs filled her with such hopelessness and overwhelm that she desperately needed an outlet–someone or some people to talk to, who understood how she was feeling. Soon, she was setting up a Peanuts-style “The Doctor Is In” booth in her hometown of Providence, Rhode Island so that she could talk about climate change with her community. Ten years and over 1200 conversations later, Schapira channels all she’s learned into an accessible, understandable, and aware guide for processing climate anxiety and affecting real change in your life and in your community.
Filled with stories, questions, and exercises, Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth focuses on five action verbs readers can use to build their climate resilience: recognize, release, find, build, and become. All of the stories, questions and practices are included in the book because they helped someone find what they wanted or needed, whether in the moment or for the years to come. Through their use of this book, readers will move through their personal and general climate anxiety, frustration, helplessness and grief, toward a sense of shared purpose and community care. Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth meets readers where they are, with thoughtful and deeply practical strategies to help us meet this growing crisis in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat the realities or scream fragility, but one that offers communal support.
Kate Schapira is a senior lecturer at Brown University where she teaches nonfiction writing, with a focus on narrative, diverse formal strategies, and environmental and ecological storytelling. She’s the author of Time to Be Something Other Than Human and six collections of poetry. She engages with the public about climate change and mental health through the Climate Anxiety Counseling project. Kate lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
