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Caring Without Collapsing: A Selfgentle Approach To Climate Anxiety
With Dr. Femke E. BakkerYou're already paying attention. You're already doing what you can. And still, underneath all of that, there's often this sense that it's not enough. This course is not about worrying less or thinking more positively. It's about learning to stay with yourself in the face of something enormous, so that your care becomes sustainable rather than crushing. Using the Selfgentleness Perspective, developed by Dr. Femke E. Bakker, we move through six lessons that take you from overwhelm to grounded engagement. You'll explore what climate anxiety is actually made of, meet the part of you that tries so hard to fix everything, allow the grief and love underneath it, find your way back to your own steadiness, and discover what it means to contribute from genuine care rather than guilt or pressure. Each lesson includes a short teaching and a guided meditation. You are not responsible for everything. But you are someone who loves the world. This course is about honoring both of those things at once.
For people who care deeply about climate and need to stop losing themselves to it.
About this course
You're already paying attention. You're already doing what you can. And still, underneath all of that, there's often this sense that it's not enough. This course is not about worrying less or thinking more positively. It's about learning to stay with yourself in the face of something enormous, so that your care becomes sustainable rather than crushing. Using the Selfgentleness Perspective, developed by Dr. Femke E. Bakker, we move through six lessons that take you from overwhelm to grounded engagement. You'll explore what climate anxiety is actually made of, meet the part of you that tries so hard to fix everything, allow the grief and love underneath it, find your way back to your own steadiness, and discover what it means to contribute from genuine care rather than guilt or pressure. Each lesson includes a short teaching and a guided meditation. You are not responsible for everything. But you are someone who loves the world. This course is about honoring both of those things at once.
Meet your Teacher
Dr. Femke E. Bakker is a selfgentleness teacher, behavioral scientist, and certified meditation teacher. She is a professor at Leiden University, where her research focuses on leadership, stress, and the role of meditation in crisis decision-making and political processes. She is also a TEDx speaker. Femke is the creator of the Selfgentleness Perspective, an approach that blends behavioral science, meditation, and lived experience to help people develop a more honest and durable relationship with themselves, especially when life is hard. Her interest in climate anxiety is both professional and personal. As a behavioral scientist who studies how people respond under pressure, and as someone who navigates her own relationship with caring deeply about the world while remaining one person within it, she brings both research and lived understanding to this course. This course applies the Selfgentleness Perspective to the specific experience of climate anxiety: the overwhelm, the grief, the pressure to do more, and the challenge of staying grounded and genuinely engaged over the long term.