What Is Neurodecolonization? Collective Care and Anti-Colonial Therapy
Mental health is often framed as an individual project.
You regulate your nervous system.
You manage your symptoms.
You become more productive, more resilient, more “functional.”
But this framing hides something important.
Many of the patterns we pathologize as anxiety, burnout, dissociation, or emotional dysregulation are not personal failures or biological defects. They are learned responses to systems shaped by colonialism, racial capitalism, patriarchy, and extraction.
This is where the concept of neurodecolonization offers a necessary reframe.
Rather than treating distress as an individual problem to be corrected, neurodecolonization asks how colonial systems shape our nervous systems, our sense of time, our attention, our relationships, and our capacity for rest and connection.
At Phoenix Rising Centers, this question sits at the heart of how we practice therapy.
What Is Neurodecolonization?
Neurodecolonization is a framework articulated by Indigenous scholars and practitioners, most notably Michael Yellow Bird, that explores how colonial violence is not only historical or political, but neurological and embodied.
Colonial systems do not just dispossess land.
They train bodies.
They condition nervous systems toward urgency, hypervigilance, scarcity, and self-surveillance.
They reward speed, productivity, and emotional suppression while punishing rest, grief, interdependence, and difference.
Over time, these conditions become normalized. Survival strategies are mislabeled as personality traits, attachment styles, or diagnoses.
Neurodecolonization challenges this framing by asking different questions.
What happens to a nervous system shaped by displacement, racism, poverty, or cultural erasure?
How does chronic urgency become mistaken for motivation?
How does emotional numbing become framed as resilience?
Who benefits when people are taught to regulate themselves instead of questioning the systems harming them?
This framework does not reject neuroscience. It refuses to isolate the brain from history, land, culture, and power.
Individualized Healing vs Neurodecolonized Care
| Common Mental Health Framing | Neurodecolonization Reframe |
|---|---|
| Distress is an individual problem | Distress is shaped by systems and history |
| Regulation means calming down | Regulation means supported capacity |
| Productivity signals wellness | Safety and connection signal wellness |
| Symptoms are deficits to fix | Symptoms are survival responses |
| Healing is linear and measurable | Healing is relational and contextual |
Why Mindfulness Alone Is Not Enough
Mindfulness is often presented as a universal solution to distress.
“Breathe. Focus. Stay present.”
In many clinical and corporate settings, mindfulness is taught as a way to help individuals regulate themselves within harmful conditions. When stripped of social, historical, and political context, it can quietly shift responsibility away from systems and onto individuals. People are asked to adapt to pressure rather than question why the pressure exists. Calm is rewarded, while anger, grief, and refusal are treated as problems to manage.
This does not mean mindfulness itself is harmful. It means how mindfulness is framed and used matters.
Indigenous approaches to mindfulness and contemplative practice, including those described in neurodecolonization work, are fundamentally different from productivity-oriented models. They are not designed to optimize performance or reduce symptoms in isolation. They are relational practices.
Relational to the body and its signals.
Relational to land and place.
Relational to ancestors, community, and story.
Within neurodecolonization, mindfulness is not a technique for managing stress so life can continue unchanged. It is a practice of noticing how bodies have been trained by colonial conditions and of remembering forms of connection that were disrupted through displacement, assimilation, and control.
In this context, presence is not compliance. Awareness is not neutrality. Mindfulness becomes a way of restoring relationship, dignity, and choice, rather than a tool for tolerating harm.
Mindfulness as Control vs Mindfulness as Relationship
| Mindfulness Without Context | Neurodecolonized Mindfulness |
|---|---|
| Used to tolerate harmful conditions | Used to notice and name harm |
| Focused on individual calm | Focused on relational safety |
| Detached from culture and land | Rooted in history, land, and community |
| Rewards emotional suppression | Honors grief, anger, and rest |
| Measures success by focus | Measures safety by choice and presence |
From Pathology to Context: An Abolitionist Lens
Abolitionist frameworks remind us that systems built on control cannot be reformed into care.
The mental health field has long participated in surveillance, diagnosis, and normalization. Difference has been labeled disorder. Resistance has been framed as defiance. Survival has been medicalized.
An abolitionist approach to therapy does not mean the absence of structure or accountability. It means refusing to locate harm solely inside individuals.
How Distress Is Reframed Through an Abolitionist Lens
| Pathologizing Interpretation | Abolitionist Reframe |
|---|---|
| Burnout is poor self-care | Burnout is a response to extraction |
| Dissociation is dysfunction | Dissociation is protection |
| Anxiety is overreaction | Anxiety reflects real threat |
| Resistance is noncompliance | Resistance is self-preservation |
| Healing means symptom reduction | Healing means restored agency |
Neurodecolonization aligns with abolition by shifting the clinical task from fixing people to restoring dignity, choice, and relational safety.
Collective Care as Nervous System Repair
Colonial systems teach isolation. They frame healing as something you do alone.
Neurodecolonization insists otherwise.
Healing happens in relationship.
In witnessing.
In shared language.
In community rhythm rather than individual speed.
At Phoenix Rising Centers, this shapes how we understand care.
Therapy is not about compliance. It is about consent.
Regulation is not forced calm. It is supported capacity.
Progress is not linear. It is relational and contextual.
Collective care does not mean group therapy for everyone. It means recognizing that nervous systems stabilize when people experience belonging, agency, and cultural safety.
How Neurodecolonization Shapes Our Clinical Practice
Our commitment to anti-colonial and collective care is not theoretical. It shapes how therapy actually unfolds.
What This Looks Like in Practice
| In Conventional Therapy | At Phoenix Rising Centers |
|---|---|
| One-size treatment plans | Collaborative pacing and format |
| Focus on symptom management | Focus on context and meaning |
| Therapist-led interpretation | Shared meaning-making |
| Compliance-focused goals | Consent-centered care |
| Progress measured by output | Progress measured by safety |
We resist one-size-fits-all treatment.
We adapt pacing, communication style, and session structure collaboratively. That may include slower processing, written reflection, movement, silence, or non-verbal expression.
We name systems, not just symptoms.
Distress is contextualized within racism, ableism, transphobia, poverty, family history, and cultural dislocation so clients are not asked to internalize blame.
We honor survival strategies.
Masking, dissociation, people-pleasing, and hyper-independence are approached with respect, not urgency to eliminate them.
We center consent as ongoing.
Every therapeutic choice is collaborative. Consent is not a checkbox. It is a practice.
We value rest and capacity.
Healing is not measured by productivity. It is measured by safety, choice, and connection.
What Neurodecolonization Is Not
Clarity matters, especially when Indigenous frameworks are often diluted or misused.
| Neurodecolonization Is Not | Why That Matters |
|---|---|
| A branding trend | Prevents dilution of Indigenous work |
| A metaphor detached from scholarship | Honors lineage and accountability |
| A quick intervention | Respects depth and complexity |
| A productivity tool | Resists extraction |
| A replacement for sovereignty | Centers Indigenous leadership |
At Phoenix Rising Centers, we approach this work with humility. Indigenous frameworks are not tools to extract. They are teachings that require accountability, relationship, and respect.
Reimagining What Healing Can Be
When we shift from individual pathology to collective context, something opens.
People no longer have to ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
They can ask, “What happened to me, and what kept me alive?”
Neurodecolonization invites us to see healing not as correction, but as remembering. Remembering relationship. Remembering dignity. Remembering that our bodies learned what they needed to survive.
Therapy, then, becomes less about fixing and more about accompaniment.
At Phoenix Rising Centers, this is the work we are committed to doing together.
Author
Ty Donaven (they/them)
Business Development Manager, Karya Studio
Ty Donaven is a strategist, writer, and business development manager at Karya Studio, where they support values-driven organizations in building sustainable, ethical systems for growth. Their work sits at the intersection of narrative strategy, collective care, and anti-extractive practice.
Ty is also a contributing writer for Dear Therapy and Avid Intimacy, where they write about abolitionist approaches to mental health, relational care, trauma, and the ethics of healing work. Their writing is informed by lived experience, long-form research, and close collaboration with clinicians, educators, and community practitioners.
Across their work, Ty is committed to language that does not flatten complexity, individualize systemic harm, or turn care into content. They approach writing as a relational practice grounded in accountability, clarity, and respect for the communities being named.
Editorial Note on Authorship & Care
This article was written by a human, not generated by artificial intelligence.
At Phoenix Rising Centers, we are intentional about how knowledge is created and shared. Writing about trauma, abolition, Indigenous scholarship, and collective care requires context, accountability, and relational responsibility. These are not things we believe can be ethically automated.
AI systems are trained on extractive data practices that often reproduce colonial harm, flatten lived experience, and remove authorship from its sources. For work rooted in anti-colonial and abolitionist values, that matters.
Our writing process centers:
Human authorship and accountability
Respect for Indigenous scholarship and lineage
Careful language that resists oversimplification
Editorial practices that honor consent, context, and meaning
We believe how something is written is inseparable from what it communicates. Care does not begin in the therapy room. It begins in how stories, frameworks, and ideas are handled.
Reference:
Yellow Bird, Michael. (2013). Neurodecolonization: Applying mindfulness research to decolonizing social work. Decolonizing Social Work. 293-310.
