Climate Grief: How to Process Environmental Loss and Stay Hopeful

As climate change reshapes our landscapes, weather patterns and ecosystems, many of us are grieving what has been lost. Often, these changes are very visible, and we can see a difference with each year that goes by. These feelings of loss and upset are called climate grief, which reflects care, connection and a sense of responsibility towards the natural world. Learning ways to process and manage climate grief can help you stay emotionally grounded while still holding out hope for our planet.

Defining Loss: What is Solastalgia and Ecological Grief?

Climate grief is a term that covers different emotional experiences related to environmental change. Two important concepts are solastalgia and ecological grief. Solastalgia describes the stress that people feel when the environment around them changes, for example, watching coastlines erode or forests disappear. Solastalgia is the pain of losing the feeling of peace in a place that once felt stable.

Ecological grief is mourning the loss of species, ecosystems and future possibilities, even if you have not personally witnessed these changes. It’s possible to grieve places you’ve never visited or species you’ve never seen. These forms of grief are both real and valid and are becoming more common as the world changes due to a warming climate.

The Importance of Acknowledging Your Sadness and Anger

Many people try to push away climate-related sadness or anger, or may avoid the topic as it feels overwhelming. Suppressing these emotions can intensify the stress and anxiety over time – grief needs to be felt, expressed and managed. Allowing yourself time to acknowledge these feelings can be an act of emotional honesty and help to cope in the longer term.

Feelings of anger in particular can often signal violated values, such as the unfairness of climate change impacts, respect for nature, or the outlook for future generations. When this feeling is recognised, it can become a source of clarity and ultimately direct you to manage the feelings in the long term.

Caring deeply about the environment is not a failure; it is a natural response to a changing world, but it is important to learn how to cope with these emotions without allowing them to negatively impact your daily life.

The Coping Triad: Grieving, Action, and Self-Care as a Way Forward

A helpful framework for navigating climate grief is the coping triad: grieving, action and self-care - each aspect of the triad provides ways to help you cope with climate grief. Grieving allows you to honour what has been lost, action provides a sense of purpose – reminding you that your choices and actions still matter – and self-care ensures that you have the emotional and physical resources to sustain both.

These three elements work best as a trio. Action without grief can lead to burnout and stress, whilst grief without action can turn into despair or spiralling thoughts. Examples of actions which you could take are joining community groups, getting involved in local events such as litter picks, and supporting environmental policy change.

Undertaking self-care through things such as rest, healthy boundaries, and time in nature can help to support long-term resilience. The goal of the coping triad is to pave the way forward and learn how to manage climate change in the long term.

Cultivating Radical Hope in Uncertain Times

Having hope where climate change is concerned can sometimes be misunderstood. Holding radical hope doesn’t mean that reality is ignored or assuming that everything will be fine; instead, it involves committing to values such as compassion and justice – even when outcomes are uncertain, as is the case with climate change.

This kind of hope is gained through taking part in climate-positive activities, changing consumption habits, witnessing ecological regeneration projects, reading positive news stories and feeling community solidarity. It’s seeing small positive changes and signs of hope in a changing world.

Radical hope allows you to act with integrity today, regardless of what tomorrow brings, with the main ethos being less about certainty and more about choosing how you act in the face of uncertainty.

Counselling Approaches for Navigating Loss

Counselling can be a positive approach for navigating climate grief; it can help with approaches and coping mechanisms to help manage difficult emotions. The aim of therapy is not to “fix” your grief, but to support you in carrying it with compassion and balance - without letting it get in the way of your daily life too much.

With the right support, climate grief can become a positive pathway to a deeper connection and purpose for the world we live in. At The Grove Counselling & Therapy, we can give you that help. Get in touch with our team here.