What Would the Fox Say: Exploring Climate Distress Through the Lens of Existential, Social Action Eco-Art Therapy

This thesis explores the firsthand experience of climate distress in a 30-year-old woman through a lens of existential social action eco-art therapy, employing hermeneutic phenomenology as its mechanism for data collection and analysis. Informed by Judith Herman’s trauma recovery model (2015), Macy and Johnstone’s (2012) book Active Hope, ecological identity theories (Thomashow, 1996; Carpendale, 2023b), somatic, bottom-up practices, and recent developments in neurobiology and positive psychology, this thesis features a framework that is unique to this study: Four Phases to Support Climate Distress: An Art Therapy Model. Emerging research and taxonomies of climate emotions are also dissertated upon, including Àgoston et al.’s 2020 study related to adaptive coping mechanisms; Albrecht’s (2005) solastalgia (loss of belonging due to ecological damage); and how eco-nostalgia is a formative component of climate distress. Despite our apparent cultural adaptive freeze response to the climate crisis, this thesis encourages us to face our climate fears and work in community with others. Playful engagement that connects us to the freedom of childhood (e.g., exploring the magic and alchemy of blueberry inkmaking), as well as communing with the deep ecological identity of our child-self, are highlighted for continued examination.