Systemic Ecotherapy

Abstract

Through narration of therapy with a client, this essay defines systemic ecotherapy. Systemic ecotherapy is informed by the particular commitments and principles of systemic therapy, formally known as marriage and family therapy. It draws on apprehension of client connections and contexts to help clients cope, adjust, and heal. These connections and contexts center client relationships to and with the more-than-human. By attending to co-existence with earth and other beings, clients can unlearn familial strategies of enmeshment or detachment and foster relationships based in mutuality, acceptance, interdependence, and care. The systemic ecotherapy approach includes social justice in psychotherapeutic content, and does not ignore the realities of anthropogenic destruction. It validates clients' affective responses to this precipitous moment, including weirdness and “wrong” feelings, encouraging disavowed affective strategies. But while systemic ecotherapy grounds itself in reality, it orients toward possibilities—what could and may yet happen, for clients and for earth. Systemic ecotherapy is the therapeutic practice of hope.