Extreme Weather and Resilience in Your Therapeutic Practice

by Kristi Harrison, PhD, LMFT

As the Northern Hemisphere moves from Fall to Winter, many of us are preparing for colder weather while also witnessing the unusual weather patterns that are becoming our new, tumultuous normal. While weather has always been a reality in our practice as therapists, the effects of weather are undeniably changing. 

On one hand, telehealth has allowed us to work comfortably indoors, sometimes without braving the weather at all. On the other hand, we have never been more dependent on the power grid and Internet to do our work, and people in all regions are seeing more frequent extreme weather events, sometimes culminating in community crises, damage to infrastructure (water, power, and internet, as well as road access), and community-wide psychological stress. 

In just the last few weeks, extreme weather has been featured prominently in the news, including the devastating effects of Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and new developments in the catastrophic flooding in Texas and the Los Angeles wildfires. We are clearly seeing the human, communal tolls of extreme weather events. Thinking just about my own immediate circle, I have therapist friends directly affected by the 2023 Lahaina fire, the 2024 Hurricane Helene, and the 2025 Los Angeles fires. Such disasters are scary, to say the least, claiming lives and thrusting whole communities into crisis followed by long-term journeys of rebuilding. These community crises can directly affect clients or therapists or both without warning. 

As we learn to expect the unexpected, we have the opportunity to build weather-related resiliency into our therapeutic practice. While the possibility of a weather-related disaster may be daunting, learning and preparing can help us mobilize and respond with greater resiliency in the face of an extreme event. By considering weather-related effects on your practice proactively, rather than in the midst of a crisis, you have the opportunity to learn, prepare, and develop weather-related resiliency incrementally. 

Here are a few ideas to begin this process:

• Draft a weather-related crisis plan for your practice or suggest such planning at the organization where you work. A few questions to consider: 

  • How will you reach clients in the event that Internet-dependent clinical records become inaccessible?

  • How might you handle widespread interruption to infrastructure such as electricity, Internet, or water?

  • What policies or plans might be established with clients ahead of time to reduce the risk of client abandonment in the event of a weather?

  • Ready.gov - This federal government resource addresses disaster preparedness planning tools not only for individuals but also for businesses. It includes tools to support preparedness for different types of extreme events, and includes tools for addressing both the administrative and financial aspects of business disaster preparedness.

• Familiarize yourself with regional disaster response mechanisms (particularly your state emergency management agency) 

  • Engage peer support or consultation spaces to work with others around community crisis preparation

  • Use the directory of state emergency management agencies to locate your state emergency management agency. 

• Familiarize yourself with principles and practices of disaster behavioral health - while individual crisis management is foundational to our competence as clinicians, many therapists may find that developing our community crisis management knowledge and skills

  • The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) resources on Disaster Behavioral Health provides a solid starting point for learning.

• Consider your own personal/family disaster preparedness - this has the dual benefit of protecting yourself and reducing the likelihood that a weather-related crisis might interfere with your ability to continue providing care.   

  • The Ready.gov resource referenced above also includes many planning resources for individual households.

• Reflect on the ethical considerations around temporary therapist impairment due to a weather related event.

  • How might you navigate decisions around continuing to see clients in the midst of a community-wide crisis?

  • What are some of the ways you might adjust your practice in the midst of a weather-related crisis? While it is impossible to anticipate the individual and community needs during a crisis, thinking about this ahead of time can still help you prepare.

  • How would you know that the stress of an extreme event was resulting in impairment that would require temporarily suspending your practice?

• Consider how you can support your clients with their own resiliency building, not only around extreme weather but also around broader issues related to climate change. The connection between extreme weather and climate change is increasingly clear. For many clients, the uptick in extreme weather events may be accompanied by increases in climate-change related distress. And certainly, therapists themselves may also experience climate related distress! 

  • Consider embarking on a longer term process of developing your climate-change clinical competencies. 

  • If you would like to read more on the topic, consider Surviving Climate Anxiety, a new book by psychologist Thomas Doherty. 

Kristi Harrison, PhD, LMFT is the founder of Consilience Coaching and Consulting, a practice dedicated to helping individuals and organizations navigate the mental health and wellbeing implications of climate change, with specific focus on frontline professionals engaged in sustainability, social impact, and health professions.  She is a consultant and trainer with Center for Transformative Healing and will be leading an upcoming training on Dec. 12, 2025: “Climate Distress and Clinical Practice: Strategies For Therapist Self-Care and Supporting Clients”.