Reflections on a Career Shift from Psychologist to Climate Activist

I enjoyed a wonderful career as a clinical psychologist. Education from Yale (BA) and Adelphi (PhD), combined with memberships in APA, MPA, and ABPP (Clinical, 1983) supported my journey. I developed an outpatient PTSD program for the VA and treated combat vets for twenty years. I was a founding partner of a large private practice where my clients were individuals, organizations, and law firms. I trained psychologists throughout my career, twenty years as an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. I wrote and spoke to help individuals manage stress, slow their pace, and create lives fueled by passion.

I’ve always felt very close to nature. Plants, trees, and animals were friends—not objects. My training in mindfulness strengthened these connections. So when I returned home one evening in 2022 to find surveyors staking a coastal salt marsh for development, this became the “happy accident” that culminated in my career shift.

My urgency to protect the ecosystems of the coastal wetlands prompted meetings with local conservation groups, town and state officials, and friends working with Yale’s School of Environment. I read extensively, attended seminars, and established relationships with consultants. Certainly I was aware of climate change, but the more I learned, the more I feared for the future of life on our planet.

A 2022 Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Climate Change expressed concern that very few psychologists were addressing climate change in their work. The report states that “the climate crisis threatens the health and well being of every human on the planet in current and future generations, is exacerbating health and economic injustices, and magnifying social conflicts” (APA, 2022, p.16). The Task Force presented specific action plans, calling for more involvement from psychologists.

Unfortunately, when Lustgarten (2024) reviewed the recent climate research, it indicated that the planet was heating more rapidly than initially predicted. Maps and climate forecasts were again a call to action. (Lustgarten, 2024). Kai Chen, a director at Yale’s Center on Climate Change and Health, added that “extreme weather events are worsening and becoming more frequent due to climate change, and are not merely environmental crises—but are pressing public health emergencies” (Poitras, 2025, p.3)

Luisa Neubauer, a German climate activist, phrased it succinctly in a conversation on September 13, 2024: “You can’t have healthy people on a dying planet!” Change begins with someone who cares—and everyone is someone!

My career shift became official in 2023. It was time to not only be someone who cared, but someone with more time to take action. My clients and colleagues were not surprised. However, for me, the surprise became an awareness that each phase of my training and experience as a psychologist, including the preparation of this piece, helped to prepare me for work as a climate activist!

I formed and educated community groups about climate change. I connected people with conservation groups, and worked to lobby against development that would increase risk to the environment. I kept our groups and town board members aware of relevant research, and learned from them in the process. I established a library in the office of the Conservation Commission, building relationships along the way. In 2024 I began work with a group within the Massachusetts Psychological Association to increase awareness of climate change and prepare responses to potential climate disasters. An ABPP CEU offering by Melissa D. Hiller Lauby on May 29, 2025 added knowledge on this subject. APA Division 34: Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology offered more potential contacts. One challenge is the coordination of advocacy related to conservation and climate change in what is apparently an era of decreased federal support.

At times the work seemed endless, and results were often unpredictable—-not everyone believed in climate change, and others ignored it to profit financially in the present. How to care for myself and groups of activists? I remembered a conversation with my supervisor at the Derner Institute during my PhD program. I was complaining about the difficulty of treating a patient who came late, missed appointments, and was less-than-committed to behavior change. My supervisor smiled, saying that perhaps I should only treat “healthy patients”. (He did offer some other suggestions!) In my own career as a supervisor, I often reminded interns that we therapists should not evaluate our effectiveness based only on treatment outcomes. There are too many variables, and our help is needed in very difficult situations. Unlike Wall Street, quarterly gains and losses are not relevant.

I recalled the words of Vaclav Havel, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out” (Wheatley, 2012, p. 6). Whether therapist or climate activist, focus on the value and meaning of the work itself—not the results. Invest time and effort in what matters most, and pause periodically to maintain this focus.

My training as a therapist reminded me of the importance of “being present” and able to listen. I learn much more from listening than from talking! Seminars with Jim Bugental, considered the father of humanistic psychology, were an important part of my training (Bugental,1965). Listening has been important in creating cohesive activist groups and in lobbying efforts. Learning how others feel is critical in deciding how to form effective relationships—whether in therapy or climate activism. And, as I learned from my work with organizations, people support what they help to create. Effective leadership is knowing and empowering followers: “When people believe they need one another to succeed in reaching an important goal, they become more than the sum of their parts.” (Grant, 2023, p. 241). The volume of our voice increases as we add numbers and encourage participation. We learn from one another, feel support, and become a closer community. Similar results were achieved from leading consultation groups and workshops in our clinical practice. We connect and learn from teaching.

Being a therapist taught me the importance of self-care. Whether working with combat vets, or other patients in the midst of incredible life crises, what I heard in many years of being a therapist required that I absorb difficult content, manage my own emotions, and formulate clinical responses. Consultation, supportive colleagues, and techniques to manage stress all helped me. I emphasized this to interns, and frequently offered seminars in meditation to our practice. Not a surprise that what helped me manage stress was often useful to interns and my patients. References I shared in clinical work now help to support many in our climate groups. (Hanh, 2017; Kabat-Zinn, 1994).

Laurie Santos, a Professor of Psychology at Yale, spoke on September 5, 2024 of the importance of managing burnout in climate activism work: Find self-compassion. If you were your best friend, what would you do for you now?  Performance in anything we do decreases if we ignore our own mental health.

Jamil Zaki (2024) wrote that one of the best ways to bring back purpose is to be there to help others, and that we feel replenished when we give time and effort.  The supervision of therapists helped me become a better therapist. Educating climate activists improves my skills and connects me with positive support. Protecting nature increases the importance of that relationship too. I pause to share time with nature much more frequently. I’ve often said that we help one another—-nature adds to my self-care and I continue to invest energy in trying to care for her.

I remind myself of what I can and cannot control. What happens to me may be beyond my control, but what I do with it remains my choice.  Most situations are trying to teach me something – if I have the patience to pause and learn.  I can only live in the present – there’s no correlation between anxiety about the future and outcome.  How to make today the best day possible?  I try not to let the behavior of others turn me into someone I don’t want to be – I live with me the longest, and best that I care for that relationship!  These thoughts travel with me and assist in self-care, whatever the career or situation.

I care very much about people and nature. More than ever I believe our fate is connected – we will either survive or perish together. “The movement to restore life on Earth is not a repair job. It is transformative, an entirely new experience of self, an awareness that our life is coincident with every being on the planet” (Hawken, 2025, p. 194).

This reflective glimpse of my journey is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the literature on climate change. Instead, consider it an invitation to become more involved. And, it is more than coincidental that I offer it here, to psychologists belonging to ABPP— an organization defined by continued speciality education and motivation for self-improvement.                                                                                        

If we and our patients haven’t yet been affected by the results of global warming, or experienced anxiety about it, unfortunately our time is coming. Treatment plans will need to consider the impact of the environment much like we currently assess family or vocational variables. Most psychologists I’ve known entered the field because they cared about people and wanted to help. Hopefully who we are, combined with our training and experience as psychologists, makes us perfect candidates to participate in efforts to mitigate climate change, respond to climate disasters, and improve life for all inhabitants of the planet. This work may even bring us closer to one another, and to all of the living world around us!

As is likely clear from this article, I am quite willing to share more about our work  in Massachusetts, and participate in any exchange  of ideas  or education related to this subject.