Lessons from 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 that she desperately needed an outlet-someone or someone 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, to talk about climate change with her community. Ten years and over 1,200 conversations later, Schapira channels all she's learned into an accessible, understandable, and aware guide for processing climate anxiety and affecting real change in people's lives and communities. Filled with stories, questions, and exercises, "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth" focuses on five action verbs that readers can use to build their climate resilience: recognize, release, find, build, and become. All the stories, questions, and practices included in this book have 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 practical strategies to help solve this growing crisis in a way that doesn't sugarcoat the realities or scream fragility and instead offers communal support"--

Kate Schapira has been listening to people about climate change for ten years, at the Climate Anxiety Counseling booth and elsewhere.  She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches nonfiction writing at Brown University and is involved with local efforts toward environmental justice, climate justice and peer mental health support. She’s the author of six books of poetry, and her prose has appeared in Catapult, The Rumpus, The Toast, and as a chapbook from Essay Press called Time to Be Something Other Than Human. She never met a tidepool she didn’t like.