If you visit Karen Grant for a counselling session, expect a little sand in your shoes.
The self-described outdoor counsellor meets her clients at the beach.
Ms Grant specialises in climate anxiety and believes taking the conversation outdoors is an immediate reminder of what the effort to tackle climate change is for.
9-5 in the great outdoors
"Welcome to my office!" Ms Grant yells over the crash of waves and wind, before moving toward a beach shelter with bench seats and a cement floor.
It's a typical day for the outdoor counsellor, who meets clients for a walk on the beach or to sit waterside, to discuss issues that are often entangled with environmental concerns.
"Whether it's from natural disasters, the cost of living, just what the future will hold — environmental concerns are always woven into those issues," she says.
Ms Grant's decision to counsel outdoors came after decades of careers that kept her outside.
For almost 20 years, Ms Grant led climbing, kayaking, canyoning and caving trips all over Australia and overseas.
Her specialisation in climate anxiety was inspired by her developing awareness of the issue.
She first learned about climate change in 2001, when she retrained as a cartographer.
"It was called the enhanced greenhouse effect and I got this sense that climate scientists were saying, 'come on, hurry up, we really do need to do something about this'," Ms Grant said.
Emerging areas of concern for eco-anxiety
Ms Grant has identified two big areas of concern while working with clients.
"Originally I thought it would be intergenerational anger — I'm a boomer and my generation seem to be the one that's dropped the ball," Ms Grant says.
"What I see happening in the community is helplessness, people giving up because now things have got so bad, they don't think they can contribute anymore."
The other area of concern for Ms Grant is the mental health of scientists, some of whom she says are suffering greatly.
"Can you imagine being the messenger of such important news and being constantly denigrated, ridiculed, called names, ignored? It's really taking its toll," Ms Grant says.
Climate scientists feeling the impact
As a child, Dr Jessica Melbourne-Thomas learned to dive in kelp forests off the coast of Tasmania, but those forests are now gone because of climate change.
Dr Melbourne-Thomas leads the marine socio-ecological systems team at the CSIRO and climate change adaptation is central to her work.
In her scientific circles, the topic of mental and physical health comes up quite often.
"There are periods where people feel the personal impacts of the work we do more acutely," Dr Melbourne-Thomas explains.
"For me, working on reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is quite compelling and upsetting.
"When you place it in the context of how many reports there's already been and how long people have been working in the space, it can have a big impact."
Supportive group discussions have become commonplace at Dr Melbourne-Thomas's workplace.
Sessions were recently held with counsellors and people who could facilitate conversations about eco-anxiety and how scientists were feeling.
"People who work on climate change are right on the pointy end of thinking about this all the time," Dr Melbourne-Thomas says.
"I think I'm really lucky that I have a beautiful, secluded bush block to escape to with people I love, who understand."
Coping mechanisms for eco-anxiety
Prioritising action over anxiety is one strategy Ms Grant encourages her clients to use when managing eco-anxiety, alongside building knowledge and identifying key concerns.
The outdoor counsellor recommends reading reports and following organisations such as the NASA, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, to be informed on the science.
"The next step is to develop what I call your care concerns," Ms Grant said.
"What are you actually concerned about — and why and how do you care?"
She suggests mapping out why and how you're concerned, then developing a framework for practical action.
"There's a lot of guilt [and] stress associated with recycling, not consuming, driving a car, all these sorts of things," Ms Grant says.
"Nobody can do everything, but if everybody does something, we'll get there."
