Welcome to Kate Schapira’s Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth

Like Lucy did with her Psychiatry Booth in the Peanuts cartoon, this climate activist offers help in public spaces.

A decade ago, therapists sounded the alarm about the looming rise of climate grief and eco-anxiety, but their warnings were largely ignored by mainstream society. That didn’t stop individuals like Kate Schapira, author and climate activist, from helping communities cope with feelings of climate anxiety.

With the climate crisis in full effect, it’s no surprise that all generations, new and old, are suffering from climate anxiety. They are witnessing firsthand the devastation wrought by the climate crisis on their communities. The once-vibrant natural landscapes of their hometowns are withering and decaying before their very eyes.

Take a moment to think back to your favorite place on Earth a decade ago. What did it look like then? What about now? Now fast forward another ten years: What do you imagine, and what do you feel? 

Looking around, you might miss not only what's gone, but what you fear will be gone soon: the beauty, the magic, even the simple ability to sustain life.

In this subject matter expert series video, we interview Kate Schapira, climate activist, mental health advocate, and most recently author of Lessons From the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, to discuss her experience navigating climate anxiety and the importance of community.

For the past decade, Schapira has been engaging with her local community in Providence, R.I., through her climate anxiety counseling booth. The initiative began as a way for Schapira to have conversations about climate anxiety in a non-threatening, casual environment.

Many of her earlier conversations about climate anxiety were dead ends as people felt confused and uncomfortable with the topic. In an attempt to make the conversation about climate anxiety more approachable, she made the counseling booth “look like the booth Lucy has in Peanuts.”

Schapira "literally made it out of garbage, cardboard, and a plywood table she found in the streets" to give it a light-hearted appearance and to help people feel less afraid to discuss their climate grief and anxiety with a stranger.

The counseling booth was a tremendous success! In this unique, low-pressure environment, community members discussed their eco-anxiety and feel less isolated in the process. From these conversations, Schapira learned a great deal about the motivations behind these feelings of climate anxiety and the various behaviors people may exhibit in response.

For instance, Schapira shares that "climate anxiety can prompt people to try really hard to maintain the status quo and lock themselves into that," while for others, "it prompts feelings like depression, despair, or intense guilt and shame, and then it might prompt others to organize and take care of one another," with the latter being her experience. Leading her to support more collective environmental justice efforts in Providence.

With its tremendous success, the climate anxiety counseling booth quickly evolved into her latest book, "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Booth," which has just recently become available for purchase.

For Schapira, writing the book was the natural continuation of the counseling booth to ensure that “these conversations at the counseling booth can help people to find their paths into climate action”. 

Schapira hopes that by engaging with a broader audience, she can better serve the people of Earth, helping them navigate their climate anxiety and providing the tools to activate their community and embrace climate action.

To learn more about climate anxiety and the work Kate Schapira is doing, watch this video.

Green Builder Media is thrilled to announce that Kate Schapira will be our guest speaker for our Next Generation Influencers Group (NGIG) meeting–Climate Anxiety Unmasked–on July 23rd. More details to follow!