Holding the Hope

Global heating, catastrophic climate change and the growing reality of ecosystem damage and accelerated species extinction hang over us all. For the counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, coaches and their supervisors who make up the talking therapy professions, these topics are increasingly coming up in their work. They must deal both with their clients’ and communities’ emotions and responses – their fear, anger, denial, grief, helplessness and hopelessness – and with their own. The chapters in this thought-provoking, honest, moving and sobering book explore the frameworks, theoretical constructs and ways of working they have devised to hold hope and build agency in the face of all this complexity, uncertainty and injustice. Contributors from a range of cultural backgrounds and professional disciplines discuss our inter-relationships with the natural world, indigenous practices and understandings, acknowledging our betrayal of our children and young people, how to go on practising at the edge of despair, staying well in unwell times, ‘rewilding’ hope, deep adaptation coaching and much more.

Author Biography

Linda Aspey is a leadership coach, facilitator, psychotherapeutic counsellor, BACP Fellow, and activist. She works with people and organisations to support them in engaging and acting on climate, environmental and social crises. – Catherine Jackson is Commissioning Editor with PCCS Books. Previously she was editor of the BACP magazine Therapy Today, and before that worked for several magazines and journals in the counselling and mental health field. – Diane Parker is a coach, group facilitator and creative movement therapist with a background in dance and performance. She is also an experienced freelance writer and editor, and she has edited the BACP journal Coaching Today since its launch in January 2012.