AN INTRODUCTION to ECOTHERAPY: Healing Collective Heartbreak – surviving the grief of climate change, with Halina Pytlasinska, on Saturday July 9th 2022

This workshop will be at Park Place, Wickham. P017 5HA. 10am to 4pm, max of 20 participants. £50 to hacp members, £60 to non members. this will include lunch.  For an application form, please email info@hacp.co.uk.

To pay by bank transfer, HACP sort code 090151 account number 43775502

An introduction to ecotherapy

This experiential workshop, for counsellors and psychotherapists, provides tools and strategies to respond to ecoanxiety. To support clients, we first need to understand our own ecoanxiety. As a group, we will explore our connection with nature and identify our place among the family of all species.

In the morning, we begin by evoking a sense of gratitude towards the natural world. We kindle self-compassion to address our own ecoanxiety. Using creativity, we identify the ways we have been socialised to dominate and control. Together we discuss climate injustice and colonisation and examine how this affects therapeutic practice. The afternoon provides the opportunity to investigate a new Model of Interbeing. Through sharing ideas, we discern practical ways that each of us can bring an ecological perspective into our clinical practice.

Ecological Crisis

Even though all clients may not present with climate concerns, the ecological emergency is affecting all of humanity and underlies individual problems. The 2021 IPCC Report states that it is code red for humanity. The scientific evidence is irrefutable. The BACP YouGov survey in 2020 showed that 55% of the population feel that climate change has impacted their mental health. The Bath University led global survey revealed that 59% of young people were extremely worried about climate change. 58% of people between the ages of 16-25 felt their government was betraying their generation in not doing enough to address environmental disaster.

Definition of ecoanxiety

Ecoanxiety incorporates an array of feelings, including trauma, shame, depression, grief and betrayal. It is not a syndrome, but a healthy response to global crisis that we need to validate as therapists. We cannot address climate change as individuals. This overwhelming issue requires groupwork and collective response. Addressing ecological crisis means appraising our own relationship to the natural world and our bodies. Colonialism lies at the heart of ecological damage, so it is vital to understand our own trauma around racism and other forms of prejudice.

To date, psychotherapeutic models and most trainings do not take account of the broader picture or map and humanities place within the more than human world. But we can use a model that both acknowledges our true nature and incorporates our theories and skills.

As an integrative, humanistic-transpersonal therapist in private practice, I deliver Couples and individual work, clinical supervision, CPD workshops and workplace training. Since qualifying 30 years ago, I have worked for charities, universities and colleges as a counsellor, trainer and lecturer.

Since waking up to the climate and ecological crisis I have a passion to develop an ecotherapeutic vision. I am a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and Extinction Rebellion. For the BACP I am helping to set up an Eco Division for members to explore ways of responding to eco-emergency. Within my own practice I have created a Model of Interbeing.

 Halina.