Ecological Grief & Climate Anxiety
Making room for the grief, uncertainty, and complexity of living in the current times.
There is so much happening in our world that can be difficult to hold. Ecological destruction, climate change, the loss of species and habitats, widening inequality, social fragmentation, and the growing sense that the systems we've built are no longer sustainable.
For some, this is experienced as ecological grief or climate anxiety. For others, it comes through collapse awareness, an increasing sensitivity to the interconnected crises of our time, sometimes called the polycrisis or metacrisis, or a deepening sense that something about the way we are living is profoundly out of balance.
These experiences can bring an enormous amount of grief, anger, helplessness, fear, and uncertainty. They can also be incredibly isolating, particularly when so much of everyday life seems to carry on as though nothing is happening.
Where do we bring all of this? And what happens when we give ourselves permission to feel what is here?
Living with these questions myself
My own relationship with the living world has changed profoundly over the past several years. As my sense of belonging and connection with the more-than-human world has deepened, so has my awareness of the suffering taking place within it.
I've found that opening to this connection has meant opening to more grief, sometimes more than I know what to do with.
I also live with burnout, and increasingly understand my own exhaustion in the context of systems organized around endless extraction, productivity, and the assumption of infinite growth on a finite planet.
I know what it's like to recognize the harm within these systems while remaining deeply entangled in them. To depend on ways of living that I simultaneously question. To feel the tension between what I know, what I value, and what is actually possible within the circumstances of my life.
I'm still finding my way through these questions, and I don't believe they have simple answers.
What I've discovered along the way is that allowing myself to experience more grief has also opened me to a deeper experience of joy, tenderness, wonder, and belonging. The grief hasn't disappeared. These experiences exist alongside one another, sometimes with an intensity that is difficult to describe.
A place for the grief to belong
I offer a space where we can slow down and be with the complexity of what you're experiencing, without needing to change, fix, overcome, or make something positive out of it.
Your grief doesn't need to become hope. Your anger doesn't need to become acceptance. And your awareness of what's happening in the world doesn't need to be softened into a comforting spiritual explanation.
I'm particularly mindful of how easily we can turn toward spiritual ideas, positivity, or personal healing as ways of avoiding the pain of what we're encountering. There is room here to question those impulses, gently and without judgment.
There is also room for the moments when you feel numb, disconnected, exhausted, or simply unable to take in any more.
We can hold all of this with curiosity and care, without requiring ourselves to feel everything all at once.
Exploring our place within the living world
My approach is informed by an ecological understanding of life, one that recognizes our interdependence with the countless beings, relationships, and systems that make our existence possible.
As we become more aware of these relationships, we may encounter difficult questions about how we live, what we participate in, what we can influence, and what remains beyond our control.
We might explore these questions together, paying attention to what emerges through your direct experience, your relationship with the living world, and the realities of your everyday life.
There is no pressure to arrive at a particular conclusion or to turn your grief into action. There is no requirement to find hope, discover a greater purpose, or emerge from this experience with a more positive outlook.
And there is no need to rush toward meaning-making or tidy everything into a story that makes sense.
Sometimes we may discover possibilities for living differently. Sometimes we may find ourselves sitting with profound uncertainty. Sometimes being present with what is happening is enough for that moment.
Grief and joy can coexist
One of the things I keep discovering is that a deepening relationship with life can bring us into contact with both its beauty and its suffering.
We can feel immense sorrow for what is being lost while also finding joy in the sound of birds, the movement of water, or the simple experience of being alive.
These experiences don't cancel one another out.
There is room for all of it, including the contradictions, the questions, the complexity, the mystery, and the feelings we may struggle to make sense of.
Two ways to work together
I work primarily in two formats: ongoing weekly sessions and longer individual intensives. Both are designed for work that benefits from spaciousness, continuity, and relationship rather than a quick fix.
Weekly sessions
50 minutes · 1 200 NOK (€110) or 90 minutes · 1 800 NOK (€165)
Weekly sessions create an ongoing rhythm in which we can stay close to what is unfolding in your life over time.
You do not need to arrive each week with a problem to solve or an agenda to complete. Some sessions may feel active and exploratory. Others may be quieter. We can follow what is present and allow the work to develop gradually.
I work primarily on a weekly basis rather than offering occasional one-off sessions. The continuity matters to the kind of relational work I offer.
Counselling intensives
Sometimes you want more room than a 50-minute session can offer.
Individual intensives create a longer block of time to stay with something more deeply without reaching the edge of the hour just as the work begins to open.
They may be particularly supportive around burnout, grief, major transitions, moving through shame or deep shadow work, questions of identity or direction, processing a traumatic experience, or moments when something in your life feels ready for sustained attention.
Depending on the intensive, we may work online, indoors, outdoors, or combine reflective and nature-based practices.
FAQ
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Ecological grief refers to the sorrow we may experience in response to the destruction, degradation, or loss of the living world. This might involve grief for particular places, species, habitats, or the broader changes unfolding across our planet.
It can also be connected to climate anxiety, collapse awareness, the polycrisis or metacrisis, and a growing recognition of how deeply interconnected the challenges of our time really are.
For some people, this grief is very personal and tied to a particular place or relationship. For others, it can feel vast, difficult to name, and almost impossible to know what to do with.
All of these experiences are welcome.
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I'm happy to explore hope if it's meaningful to you, but I won't ask you to find it.
I know how painful it can be when our grief is met with reassurance, positivity, or suggestions for how we might turn it into something useful. Sometimes those responses leave us feeling even more alone.
I offer space for the full complexity of what you're experiencing, including despair, helplessness, anger, love, uncertainty, and moments of joy. None of these feelings need to be changed into something else.
We can allow what is here to be here.
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I spend a great deal of time exploring the interconnected ecological, social, economic, and cultural crises unfolding around us. I've become increasingly aware of the limits of our dominant systems and the immense uncertainty surrounding what comes next.
I don't claim to know exactly how these crises will unfold, and I'm wary of anyone offering certainty about something so complex.
While I wouldn't consider myself an expert on collapse awareness or the metacrisis, I follow and learn from thinkers whose perspectives I find particularly thoughtful and well-informed, including Nate Hagens, Indy Johar, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Vanessa Andreotti, Alnoor Ladha, and many others. I'm always happy to share resources if you're interested.
That said, my work is less about analyzing the details or trying to predict what comes next, and more about making space for what it means to live with this awareness. The grief, fear, uncertainty, contradictions, and questions about how we might live within a world undergoing profound change.
We can explore all of this together, with room for different perspectives, curiosity, and the humility of acknowledging what we simply cannot know.
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This is something I know intimately from my own life. As I've become more aware of my own entanglement in systems that cause harm, I've experienced waves of shame, guilt, and grief that have sometimes felt incapacitating. I'm still finding my way through these contradictions, but over time I've found a little more spaciousness and steadiness in being with them. It's from this ongoing experience that I feel called to accompany others as they navigate their own.
We live within systems that shape almost everything we do, from how we earn money and obtain food to how we travel, communicate, and meet our basic needs. Becoming more aware of the harm within these systems can create painful tensions between our values and the realities of our lives.
We can make room for that discomfort and explore it with curiosity and care. There is no expectation that you somehow separate yourself from the systems you're part of or find a perfectly ethical way to live. We can hold our contradictions honestly, without demanding impossible purity from ourselves or one another.
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No. There is no expectation that your grief needs to become activism, lifestyle changes, personal growth, or any particular outcome.
Sometimes our experiences naturally invite us to reconsider how we live and participate in the world. Sometimes we're exhausted and simply need a place where our sorrow can be witnessed.
I'm interested in making room for both, and for everything in between.
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Absolutely. I live with burnout myself, and I increasingly understand my exhaustion in the context of a world organized around continuous extraction, productivity, and the assumption of infinite growth on a finite planet.
I question the idea that we should always be trying to recover our capacity to function within the very systems that are exhausting us.
We can explore what your burnout might be expressing, how it connects with your relationship to the larger living world, and what it means to care for yourself while remaining aware of the conditions around you.
There is no prescribed path toward recovery, and no expectation that you'll emerge with a better routine, greater resilience, or a more productive version of yourself.
We can begin by being with what's happening.
Weekly sessions or an intensive?
You do not need to know in advance which format is right.
Weekly sessions can offer a steady place to land while you are moving through burnout, with consistent support and enough time for things to shift gradually.
Intensives may feel more supportive when you are deeply depleted, when even getting yourself to another weekly appointment feels like effort, or when you need a longer stretch of time where nothing else is asking anything from you.
Rather than trying to fit everything into an hour, we can slow the pace, take breaks, rest, and give what you are carrying more room. We can talk together during the free introductory consultation about which rhythm feels gentlest and most workable right now.
Begin with a conversation
I offer a free 30-minute introductory consultation so we can meet, talk about what is bringing you in, and get a sense of whether working together feels right.
There is no expectation that you arrive knowing exactly what you need or to decide anything in the moment.
Weekly individual sessions
50 minutes · 1 200 NOK (€110) or 90 minutes · 1 800 NOK (€165)
Individual intensives
Longer formats · online and in Norway