#186 | Mainstream Psychology Can Go Fuck Itself: Managing Collapse Awareness w/ Holly Truhlar

Intro: 12:45

In this episode, I speak with lawyer, grief therapist, and community builder Holly Truhlar. We discuss her provocatively titled essay ‘Mainstream Psychology Can Go Fuck Itself,’ which addressed the ways mainstream psychology, as it is currently practiced today, largely lacks the framework, language, and tools required to adequately counsel those that are coming into the growing awareness that the systems we are embedded within are leading to societal collapse, ecological disintegration, and abrupt climate disruption on the global scale.

Mainstream psychology “puts the onus on the individual and takes the focus off of the violent and divisive systems we’re in,” (http://bit.ly/2Uwfyjw) which in turn disempowers the individual from preparing, in any meaningful sense, for what lies ahead as we begin to experience the impacts of a fraying socioeconomic and political system (mired in systemic oppression and corruption), the catastrophic loss of species (described as the Sixth Mass Extinction event), a radically changing climate system (as a result of industrialization), and the likely near-term extinction of the human species as a result of these converging crises. “As with all things capitalist, patriarchal, and committed to the growth of civilization, psychology is used mostly as a tool of the oppressor to keep us divided into individual causes rather than working in solidarity with our class structure.” Holly, in her work, seeks to make use of the tools provided in mainstream psychology, and incorporate Radical Attunement Work (RAW), which cultivates "a deep awareness of people and systems in order to fundamentally shift exploitative ways of being towards reciprocal relationship, collective liberation, and communities of care.” (http://bit.ly/2VoS4tN) As Holly says in her essay “we don’t have time for this shit. We have a small window in which we MAY be able to learn the skills needed to co-regulate with each other and organize for the needed revolution (or end-of-life care for our species).” The stakes really are this high. We discuss this and more in this episode.

Holly Truhlar is a lawyer, grief therapist, and community builder. She’s integrated her doctorate in law with a masters in transpersonal counseling psychology to create a model for personal and collective liberation. This model, called Radical Attunement Work (RAW), moves people and groups from dominating and exploitative ways of being into attuned and transformational relationships. Her work lies at the convergence of ancestral grief, collective trauma, conscious collapse, and social justice. She’s currently practicing and researching social technologies, such as ritual and Deep Democracy work, that foster large-scale trauma resolution and collective nervous system regulation. She's been called to help hold grief in these troubled and transitional times, so she lives with her heart broken open and soul on display. (http://bit.ly/2KcGbpJ)

Episode Notes:

- Read Holly’s essay ‘Mainstream Psychology Can Go Fuck Itself’: http://bit.ly/2Uwfyjw

- Learn more about Holly and her work at: https://www.hollytruhlar.com

- Learn more about the Tending The Threshold conference: https://tendingthethreshold.com

- The song featured in this episode is “Guns Are Drawn” by The Roots from the album The Tipping Point.