Type of Method
Suitable for
• Parent / teacher / child care provider
• One to one, personal
‘Therapy’ is a broad church with many academic and practical variations, and for this reason, any single definition will be inadequate. This is therefore, only a general overview, allowing guides who identify themselves as Therapists, Psychotherapists, or Counsellors to describe their respective practices in greater detail on their personal profiles. They will be able to include their academic background, world-view, practice framework and approach to Climate Psychology and Deep Adaptation.
Standard Therapy
Therapy, also called Psychotherapy or Counselling, is the process of meeting with a therapist who is trained in aspects of psychology in order to resolve problematic behaviours, beliefs, feelings, relationship issues, and/or somatic responses (sensations in the body). There are many schools and variations. Standard Therapy offers individuals psychological insight, in order to become better adjusted in themselves and in the World.
Standard Therapy assumes that ‘The World’ is more or less stable, rational and eternal, and that many forms of anxiety, negative emotions and limiting behaviours are internally generated by events from the past, may be mal-adaptive in the present, and can be managed, healed or overcome.
Deep Adaptation starts with the insight that the World and/or the Biosphere are in collapse. A small but growing number of Therapists are adapting and extending their practice to integrate the insights of collapse awareness and/or Climate Psychology. From this perspective, the World is irrational, and anxiety and existential discomfort may be entirely rational responses to real threats, and not necessarily something to be solved or overcome. This perspective challenges some of the basic assumptions of standard therapeutic practice.
By helping to value, explore and manage grief, anxiety and cognitive dissonance, they may become positive springboards for necessary action and transformation. Climate Psychology seeks to offer depth and psychological insight to the climate change and adaptation movements. This may help to frame, and in some cases overcome, the endemic inertia and resistance to facing and acting upon the acute human and global predicaments.
You can find out much more about these perspectives via The Climate Psychology Alliance website.
If you are a Counsellor or Therapist listed as Deep Adaptation guide and would like to comment or add to this method description please contact methodmanager@daguidance.info
Guides using this Method
Kaif Mahmood
Psychotherapist
I am a psychotherapist working in private practice in New Delhi, India. Over time, in my work, I hav …
Norbert Prinz
Gestalttherapeut (DVG), Supervisor (DVG)
Ich beschäftige mich intensiv mit der Möglichkeit eines sozial-ökologischen Kollaps und den psycholo …
Pascale Aline
Counseling Therapist (registered) and Coach
I help with solastalgia and making sense of the environmental and societal destruction we’re seeing …
Jenny Rose Smith
Deep Listener; Hakomi therapist in training. Trauma sensitive meditation instructor.
As I have become older I have increasingly known that slowing down, simplifying and working more wit …
Nick Laurence
Clinical Psychologist
In my day job, I work in mainstream mental health, primarily working with adults experiencing a rang …
Jarrah Schmah
Psychotherapist
Hello dear hearts, I’m offering online psychotherapy sessions in Somatic Experiencing and just being …
Neela Paulussen
Bodyoriented (psycho)therapist
Facing collapse asks for being firmly routed in connection. I use somatic and awareness work as well …
Eveline Tijs
Coach - Psychotherapist - Facilitator
Hi, my name is Eveline. I am a 36 year old Belgian and moved to Hastings, East Sussex in 2019 to liv …