What is collapse psychology?

Collapse psychology is the study of human behavior and responses to ongoing and sudden collapse, including social, environmental, and systemic breakdown.

Collapse psychology focuses on the impacts of systemic failures and how humans respond to transition and crisis as individuals and groups. It looks at personal and collective collapse on all different levels including the mental, emotional, somatic, spiritual, and communal aspects of accelerated change and ongoing stress. By gaining insight into how humans behave in times of transition, crisis, trauma, and grief we are more likely to respond in a conscious, caring, and just manner to the ongoing and coming collapses. See our areas of interest below, as well as our writing and resources pages for more information on what we’re currently exploring.

Attachment Theory

We’re committed to a culture of trust and belonging. In our capitalist society that depends on hyper-individualism and consumerism, building communal secure attachment is one of the most vital forms of resistance we can engage in. We strive to be consistently accessible, responsive, and emotionally engaged with each other, starting with our core relationships and moving out into the wider-community.

Collapse Awareness

We’re rooted in the reality of current, ongoing, and inevitable collapse of our social, political, environmental, and economic systems. The effects of human induced climate crisis and non-stop global violence have created the real possibility of near-term human extinction, along with the extinction of most of our non-human kin. In order to respond honestly and effectively to the shock and overwhelm of accelerated change and loss, we cultivate the skills of discernment, systems analysis, strategic community building, and somatic-emotional regulation.

Compassion

Compassion is a skill that can be learned. It includes curiosity, care, patience, and imagination. Self-compassion involves responding to difficult thoughts, feelings, and experiences with kindness and sympathy towards ourselves. As we turn this compassion outwards, we learn to care deeply for the suffering of all life on Earth. By increasing our capacity for compassion, we’re able to respond to the predicaments of our times in both a boundried and relational manner.

Creativity

In order to step into a truly different world based in love rather than domination, we must cultivate wild imagination, wonder, and play. We make beauty out of the broken and appreciate what’s awe-inspiring. We use poetry, art, song, ritual, and movement in order to express what our colonized hearts, minds, and words can’t otherwise convey.

Eco-Psychology

We know ourselves, and our species, as part of and depending on the living body of Earth. We’re dedicated to honoring and defending relationships with the natural world and the original stewards of the land we inhabit. Capitalism is at the heart of our disconnection from the wider web of life, and the main cause of planetary collapse; Humanity must quickly shift away from a consumerist mindset towards an ecologically and communally centered consciousness to sustain life in any form.

Grief Counseling

We experience personal and collective grief as the natural consequence of being truly aware and alive during these times--often referred to as the anthropocene era or sixth great extinction. Grief is evidence of love and, as such, we do not aim to fix or resolve grief, rather we fully bear witness to what’s unfolding during loss and transition. By building relationship with our grief, we increase our capacity to build intersectional solidarity and face injustice of all kinds.

Ritual Literacy

In a time void of culture and lacking accessible systems for well-being, we see ritual as vital to communal healing and collective nervous system regulation. The trauma of oppression and shock of collapse, requires awareness of the elements and skills needed to work with deep psychic material, particularly in group settings. We’re dedicated to creating conscious, non-appropriated practices and containers for grief, trauma, gratitude, transition and spell crafting.

Somatics

Trauma, grief, oppression, and domination are stored in and expressed through the body. We trust our bodies, and the collective human-body, to express what’s happening in these times. We strive to regulate our autonomic nervous systems through body-based trauma resolution and communal co-regulation. Authentic movement and group expression help us gain clarity and built intuition towards what’s needed in these times.

Transformative Justice

Understanding systemic oppression and abuse of power is fundamental to collapse-awareness. We’re exploring creative facilitation, mediation, and communal systems of accountability that address racism, oppression, and injustice. By studying community-based efforts of health and healing, rather than punitive forms of state-based control, we’re building social technologies that can aid humanity in navigating collapse relationally and equitably.

Trauma Stewardship

We recognize trauma as most often being a consequence of domination and oppression. We choose to be informed and engaged with all types of trauma including personal, cultural, collective, and ancestral trauma. We’re committed to tending to and responsibly guiding ourselves and other beings who are experiencing the effects of trauma.