“We are busting at the seams with grief, but are sentenced to this individual confinement. We can’t do both tasks at once; we can’t provide containment for our grief whilst also allowing our fortifications to crumble. We need each other for that. ”

In the book “Climate, Psychology and Change: Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety”, author, editor, and climate psychologist Steffi Bednarek, together with 30 contributors, explores our ecological predicament and psychology’s role within it.

“Now what can we do about it?” is a common response to ecological collapse, and a question Steffi is regularly asked. Applying a problem-solving mindset, especially to the most complex of problems, keeps us stuck. Locked into familiar patterns of response, the issues perpetuate themselves. Instead, Steffi Bednarek invites us to pause, zoom out, and “gesture towards regenerative ways of relating to the world”.

Sympoiesis worked with Steffi on creating the website that hosts the book. This has now become the home of the Centre for Climate Psychology and Change, a platform that is dedicated to changing embedded habits of thinking and building collective resilience.

In this conversation, we explore Steffi’s transformational journey to compiling this radical anthology, described by Satish Kumar as "a book of wisdom”; a journey that began more than thirty years ago and proved to be a profound reckoning with reality at the “gates of grief”.

Cover of the book "Climate, Psychology, and Change"

“I was no longer trying to fortify myself against this force. Giving up my defenses against feeling the reality of the situation didn’t incapacitate me, it stretched me larger — not despite entering the waters of heartbreak, but because of it. My capacity to hold others grew too.”

Niels: You have been working as a psychologist for more than two decades. Could you share more about your journey to becoming a climate psychology consultant and now as an author and editor of this book and the founder of the Centre for Climate Psychology and Change?

Steffi: I am 54. As a 22-year-old student, I followed the UN Rio conference, was ‘climate aware’, only ate seasonal food, was in a climate working group and generally felt like I was engaged and trying to be conscious about my privilege and impact. In my 30s I worked in Human Rights, worked on national policy for survivors of domestic violence, was a research assistant in a groundbreaking community psychology project, studied psychotherapy, became a trauma therapist, and headed up mental health services. All the while, I exiled the deep-seated pain that was at the heart of these collective injuries to the fabric of life.

It was only when I attended a grief ritual in my 40s that the horror and cruelty of Western culture really sank into my body. In the company of other humans who were open to sitting with grief, I could allow myself to feel the shocking cost of it all. I was surprised at how deeply this horror had embedded itself into my bones. Once I allowed myself to touch the enormity of suffering and devastation that had become an ordinary part of everyday life, the dam finally burst. Words were no longer the language that mattered. My body started to tell its own story, one that was no longer upright, one that brought me to the ground. The only response that made sense was to fall to my knees and weep. No longer composed, but messy, snotty, wailing about the sheer scale of it all. The crumbling of the tight and rigid containment could give way because the holding no longer needed to come from my individual skin boundary. There was a village around me — warm, compassionate others who gently held me in song as I allowed myself to touch the depth of horror of my modern life. My fellow humans did not look away, did not try to cheer me up, but provided containment through their empathic presence so that I could yield to a force that felt commensurate with the magnitude of the reality that we are confronted with. It felt like the most dignified response I can imagine.

This changed everything. I was no longer trying to fortify myself against this force. Giving up my defenses against feeling the reality of the situation didn’t incapacitate me, it stretched me larger — not despite entering the waters of heartbreak, but because of it. My capacity to hold others grew too.

I know that I am not alone in this. We are bursting at the seams with grief, overwhelm, and anxiety, but have no place to express this safely. Western culture sentences us to this solitary confinement of individualized suffering. The rigid defenses against the anxiety, distress, and trauma that lurk beneath the surface infiltrate our decisions — and with that, the defenses become part of the solutions we seek. A bulwark against literal and emotional flooding.

We need to do better than that if we want to avoid moving toward a global mental health crisis, especially at a time when we need to be more mature and grounded than ever.

Tenderness of Touch. Photo by Sympoiesis

But we can’t do both tasks at once; we can’t provide containment for our grief whilst also allowing our defenses to soften. We need to be able to hold each other in this process. And you don’t need to be a therapist to be with someone’s grief and suffering. This is what ordinary human beings have done for millennia.

Everything I have done as a climate psychologist has sprung from this moment when my suffering and the suffering of the world were no longer separate. It allowed me to see with open eyes and to take action, even if the impact is not always clear. What I do is no longer just a job. It has become the only thing that makes sense.

With the Centre for Climate Psychology and Change, I hope to build a platform that helps people to access their wisest and most grounded parts and to nurture the capacity to be more comfortable with discomfort without resorting to reactivity and dissociation. I am excited that Francis Weller, one of my early mentors, will offer a series of talks and workshops on what it means to meet this time with Soul, and offer a grief facilitator training in 2025. These skills are much needed in any walk of life.

“I no longer saw capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, racism, classism, etc. as out there, but started to see how it was enacted in the way I related to myself, others, and the world around me. ”

Niels: You often speak about the familiar and the dying of the familiar. When we think about what is familiar to us, we think of our institutions and economic system, but also about the trees, insects, all the fauna and flora that make our world and give life to our memories and imagination. What does the familiar mean to you? What have you had to let go of in your life that was familiar, and how did you manage that loss?

Steffi: Dealing with loss is an ongoing journey. Once I cultivated the capacity to process the deep grief I held at bay for decades, I stretched into a capacity to see with open eyes and could no longer subscribe to the same worldview. Climate change was no longer an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, but was now in everything — in the buildings, in the banking system, the education system, the way I have been taught to think, the way we educate our children, and in our hopes and dreams. I no longer saw capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, racism, classism, etc. as out there, but started to see how it was enacted in the way I related to myself, others, and the world around me.

But of course, this was also a departure from a sense of safe belonging. My different perspective meant that I became more outspoken, more awkward, and less willing to fit in. Some friends and colleagues had big responses. Friendships fizzled out. I was publicly shamed by colleagues, who were very angry that I questioned some underlying principles of the profession. There was a period of utter disorientation. Of course, there was also support, often in places that I had given little attention to before. Over time, I met so many wonderful and inspirational new people, found support in surprising places, and connected with ‘the small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos’ that Prigorgine talks about. Slowly, a path began to emerge as I walked it — one step at a time. I feel deeply touched by the genuine kindness of many people around me who come from such a diverse background of disciplines. We are all processing the ongoing challenges that don’t stop coming.

“Relating to ourselves as an ecology is a political action. It changes the texture of everything we do. The world we see is no longer fragmented, and neither are we. What flows from us will be in service to something new, something waiting to be brought out of exile.”

Niels: In our Western, WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) world, healing often means returning to society as a productive and well-functioning member. The rising rates of depression and other mental health issues are seen as a departure from the norm and as a problem to be solved. We like to think of it as our unconscious personal and collective resistance to participate in systems that are degenerative and opposite of life-affirming. What are your thoughts on that?

Steffi: “Climate and metacrisis messages are getting through. The problem is that most people are not equipped to deal with the magnitude of uncertainty that this entails. Whilst data around climate is sophisticated and backed up by expertise, the messages about how to cope with the mental health impact of this slow collapse are not. In fact, they are dangerously simplistic.

We often think of good mental health as the ability to function symptom-free within a neoliberal, patriarchal, colonial consumerist society.

The well-meant but the hopelessly inadequate formula is: A positive coping strategy for distress is a fierce attitude of hopeful positive action. But what action.

Positivity is hammered into us. It is the new stick that people beat themselves up with. They come to therapy, coaching, or mentoring feeling like there is something wrong with them for not feeling positive enough. Their system refuses to yield to being squeezed into this monoculture and rebels, but people want to get rid of the symptoms so that they can continue with the life they have worked so hard at creating.

The suffering that this adaptation and attempt at belonging causes is then bombarded with psychological interventions. Rightful rage, anger, grief, and shame are often exiled to the edges to be able to go back into a soporific slumber that hardly notices the atrocious cost of our ways of living and thinking. The parts in us that rebel against this deadening become victims of the well-being and self-help marketing machinery and often only have a few alcohol-fuelled, late-night corners to hide in.

When emotions are gathering at the edges of our consciousness, the energetic force is waiting to burst out. This increases the general volatility for everyone.

We can’t get rid of feelings we don’t like or are not equipped to take care of. Even in the darkness of the deepest exile, they are still part of the whole. If we push them into the unconscious, they have no choice but to force their way back into unconscious, irrational, or reactive decisions or responses.

People then distance themselves from these departures from the rational Self they identify with and find a logical narrative to explain these irrational responses. They may say: “This was not me. I don’t know what got into me!” But the ‘real me’ is not a manicured internal landscape where every undomesticated feeling can be extinguished with psychological weedkiller.

Re-wilding is not just an activity out there. It is an act of soul rebellion. If we relate to ourselves as an ecosystem, everything we do will be different, and this will flow into every decision we make in all aspects of our lives. This is every single person’s leverage point for systems change.

When we relate to ourselves and the world around us as an ecology, we take a radical political action. The world we see is no longer fragmented, and neither are we. What flows from us will be in service to something new, something waiting to be brought out of exile. That’s the support I offer to the individuals that I coach and mentor.

Steffi Bednarek is the editor of the book "Climate, Psychology, and Change". She is also the founder of the Centre for Climate Psychology and Change (CCPC), which offers online training, workshops, and events that challenge embedded habits of thinking and build collective resilience. Steffi also works as an international consultant in climate psychology, living systems theory, and complexity thinking, runs workshops and supports individuals and groups through coaching and mentoring. More info on her website.

Learn more about the book “Climate, Psychology and Change: Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety” and order it directly from the publisher here.

“Gates of Grief” title references Francis Weller’s book “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”. For his upcoming live lecture “ on November 15, sign up by clicking the button below!

Info and Registration

Niels Devisscher is the co-founder of Sympoiesis and regenerative communications designer. Sympoiesis designs experiences and communication for individuals and organizations serious about developing adequate responses to the polycrisis and our predicament.

Reimagining Psychology at the Gates of Grief

Multi Species Worlding

Regenerative Communications