Member Columnist — Julie Brams, LMFT

Decolonizing the Mind: Why Psychology Must Become Earth-Centered

Western psychology was built on a silent assumption—that the human mind exists apart from our living Earth. This anthropocentric foundation is rarely named, let alone questioned, but it has shaped our clinical frameworks, treatment goals, and cultural narratives for over a century. It is embedded in the language we use, the pathologies we define, and the very way we conceptualize “mental health.”

After more than three decades in clinical practice, I’ve come to believe this separation is not only incorrect—it is harmful. The belief in human exceptionalism, particularly in the context of mental health, has led us to misdiagnose our suffering, misinterpret our symptoms, and misunderstand our potential for healing.

The Mind is Not Separate from Earth

Human consciousness is not a detached phenomenon. It is embodied and shaped by our ecological context—by seasons, bioregions, ancestral landscapes, microbial relationships, air quality, and biodiversity. Neuroscience, trauma studies, and somatic psychology have all gestured toward this truth in different ways, but the field at large has yet to reckon with the full implications: the mind must be embedded in living systems.

When these systems are damaged or denied, we suffer. But instead of tracing this suffering back to its ecological and cultural roots, we continue to treat the individual only in terms of the human species. A client struggling with meaninglessness, anxiety, or chronic fatigue in a collapsing environment is rarely if ever helped to re-root themselves back into their environment. As clinicians it is imperative that we begin to ask ourselves if their symptoms are the outcome of an insane paradigm.

A Legacy of Disconnection

The anthropocentric bias in psychology is not incidental—it is historical. Modern Western psychology emerged during a period of colonial expansion, industrial growth, and mechanistic thinking. It mirrored the broader cultural narrative that saw land as property, Indigenous knowledge as superstition, and the non-human world as inert.

This worldview was never neutral. It was—and remains—a central feature of colonization. To colonize land, one must first sever relationality. To exploit nature, one must first deny its intelligence. And to sustain that denial, one must build a psychological framework in which separateness is considered normal.

This is where psychology failed us. Rather than questioning the disconnection, it normalized it. Rather than resisting the paradigm of domination and extraction, it adapted to it. In doing so, it became a discipline that colludes with a very damaging core premise.

The Nature Embedded Mind

In my book, The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and Ourselves, I propose a corrective. This is not a new technique or modality. It is a different epistemology—a shift in how we understand the mind itself.

The Nature Embedded Mind is a framework that acknowledges human consciousness as relational, ecological, and reciprocal. It asks us to recognize that our Earth is not simply a backdrop to the psyche but a participant in it. That trauma is not only interpersonal or intrapsychic—it is also ecological. That healing must happen not just within us, but between us and the more-than-human world.

This is a departure from conventional eco-therapy, which is often positioned as a niche or adjunctive practice. What I’m advocating for is more fundamental: a reorientation of psychology toward ecological integrity and decolonized consciousness. A return to the truth that we are part of, not apart from, the living world.

From Pathology to Relationship

The implications of this shift are profound. For example, consider the epidemic of disconnection so many clients experience. Loneliness, despair, and a lack of purpose are often seen as individual challenges. But when viewed through an Earth-centered lens, they may reflect a rupture in relational belonging—not just with people, but with place, species, time, and ancestry.

Similarly, climate distress is now emerging as a legitimate psychological category—but we must be cautious not to treat it as a dysfunction. Often, what we call “climate anxiety” is a deeply appropriate response to the destruction of the biosphere. The real dysfunction may lie in the social systems that overlook this grief, not in the individuals who feel it.

When we understand the mind as Earth-embedded, these so-called symptoms become signals—calls to reconnect, to remember, to re-enter the web of life with reverence and humility.

Decolonizing the Profession

Decolonizing psychology is not a metaphor. It requires that we examine not only what we do, but how we think. It means interrogating the implicit hierarchies in our field—the privileging of Western knowledge systems, the pathologizing of Indigenous worldviews, the silencing of Earth-based spiritualities.

Earth-centered psychology calls us to listen to voices long excluded from clinical legitimacy: land-based traditions, animist ontologies, ancestral wisdoms that understand healing as inherently communal and ecological.

This is not a regression into mysticism or romanticism. It is a reclamation of truths our field has long exiled. We are not objective observers of Nature—we are participants in it. Our job as clinicians is not just to regulate nervous systems or repair attachment styles, but to help restore our clients’ sense of interbeing.

A Call to Practitioners

I believe this shift begins with us—therapists, psychologists, and healers willing to question the paradigms we were trained in. It begins when we are brave enough to ask: What if the field of psychology got the mind wrong?

To be clear, this is not a rejection of science or technique. It is an expansion. A maturation. A remembering.

In this moment of ecological crisis, psychology has an opportunity to evolve. We can continue to treat the mind as a separate entity, or we can recognize it as a thread in a larger tapestry of life. We can continue to adjust people to a dysfunctional world, or we can help them reconnect to a more intelligent one.

Join the Movement

If this perspective resonates with you—if you’ve ever felt that your work as a therapist is missing something essential—I invite you to explore further. Visit www.experienceelemental.com to learn about upcoming book study groups, retreats, and professional conversations designed to support this shift.

We are not broken individuals on a broken planet. We are part of a vast, intelligent, relational system. Healing is not a solo act. It’s a remembering. A return. And we, as therapists, are uniquely positioned to midwife this remembering in others—and in ourselves.

The time has come to re-ground our profession. Let’s begin.

Julie Brams, LMFT is an Earth-centered psychotherapist, certified Forest Therapy guide, meditation practitioner/teacher, and writer in Los Angeles for 30 years. Her psychotherapy practice integrates traditional therapy, ecopsychology practices, meditation, and the latest advances in the field of neuropsychology. For more information visit her website www.juliebrams.com.