Date: Monday, January 26, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm ET
Location: Tate-Turner-Kuralt Auditorium, 1st Floor
Format: Hybrid
- Livestream via Zoom, or
- In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
CE Credit: 2 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $35 (scholarships available)
Description:
In times of political, environmental, and community crisis, many people experience a profound and often unspoken form of grief, marked by heartbreak, helplessness, guilt, and fatigue. This kind of grief is not always tied to a single event, but to the accumulation of losses: to democracy, to safety, to climate stability, to community trust. People may find themselves feeling immobilized by the weight of ongoing injustice, or ashamed for tuning out when staying informed feels overwhelming. Others feel stuck between a desire to take action and the emotional cost of constantly bearing witness. Drawing from dual-process models of grief, this workshop offers participants language, frameworks, and tools to better understand and work with layered nature of losses that arise from collective and sociopolitical grief.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the training participants will be able to:
1. Explain the Dual Process Model (DPM) of coping with bereavement and how it applies to political, environmental, and community-based grief.
2. Differentiate between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping tasks and analyze the benefits of oscillation between them.
3. Apply the DPM framework to real-world scenarios involving ecological or political grief.
4. Develop at least one personalized or professional strategy for engaging with grief while sustaining advocacy and emotional well-being.
Trainer:Peggy P. Whiting, LCMHCS, FT is a professor and program coordinator in the Counselor Education Program at North Carolina Central University, where she has served since 2006. A licensed clinical mental health counselor supervisor, certified K–12 school counselor, and fellow in thanatology, Professor Whiting has over 30 years of experience in counselor education, grief and trauma work, and clinical supervision. She has developed and implemented graduate-level courses in grief, trauma, and crisis counseling that are now integrated into clinical curricula across multiple universities. In addition to her academic work, she maintains a counseling and supervision practice focused on bereavement and trauma, including consultation with hospice and oncology professionals. Her research and teaching interests center on grief, loss, and narrative approaches to clinical intervention. A past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling and recipient of the UNC Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award, she is committed to preparing counselors to support individuals and communities through loss.
References:
- Carlill, A. (2025). “We were paralysed“: Ecological grief, the everyday anthropocene, and climate crisis ordinariness in the high house. English Studies, 106(3), 373-394. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2024.2428932
- Comtesse, H., Ertl, V., Hengst, S. M. C., Rosner, R., & Smid, G. E. (2021). Ecological grief as a response to environmental change: A mental health risk or functional response? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2), 734. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020734
- Chapple, H. S., Bouton, B. L., Chow, A. Y., Gilbert, K. R., Kosminsky, P., Moore, J., & Whiting, P. P. (2016). The body of knowledge in thanatology: An outline. Death Studies, 41, 125–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1231000
- Dennis, M. K., & Stock, P. (2024). “you’re asking me to put into words something that I don’t put into words.”: Climate grief and older adult environmental activists. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 67(3), 281-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2023.2259942
- Eisma, M. C., de Lang, T. A., & Stroebe, M. S. (2022). Restoration-oriented stressors of bereavement. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 35(3), 339-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2021.1957849
- Leitz, L. (2025). The politics of grief and mourning: Calls to action and processing emotions. The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642251334072
- Ojala, M., Cunsolo, A., Ogunbode, C. A., & Middleton, J. (2021). Anxiety, worry, and grief in a time of environmental and climate crisis: A narrative review. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46(1), 35-58. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-022716
- Panu, P. (2025). Ecological Grief and the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement. Religions, 16(4), 411. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040411
- Pihkala, P. (2024). Ecological sorrow: Types of grief and loss in ecological grief. Sustainability, 16(2), 849. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16020849
- Pihkala, P. (2025). Ecological grief and the dual process model of coping with bereavement. Religions (Basel, Switzerland ), 16(4), 411. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040411
- Wheat, L., & Whiting, P. (2018). Sacred privilege: Using narrative reconstruction as a postmodern approach with grieving children and adolescents. In M. Sholl & J. T. Hansen (Eds.), Postmodern perspectives on contemporary counseling issues (pp. 93–120). Oxford University Press.
UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Lecture Series