Understanding Attention

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Technological and economic shifts have placed human attention under unprecedented strain in the last 15 years.

Attention activism rests on three pillars: study, organizing, and building sanctuaries to protect attention.

Therapy is itself an attention sanctuary, fostering rich joint attention through shared time and copresence.

Therapists work at the intersection of the art and the science of human attention. This has never been more important because cultural, economic, and technological changes have, in the last 15 years, placed our attention under unprecedented strain.

The good news is that people are banding together in new ways to protect and support human attention through collective action and solidarity. This emerging movement is called “Attention Activism.” Attention activism rests on three pillars: study, the open exploration of what collective attention is and can be (and consciousness-raising of the forces that threaten it); organizing, building coalitions on the common ground of protecting our attention; and sanctuary, the curation and cultivation of spaces where collective attention can be practiced, protected, and nurtured.

Therapists are attention activists. We study our own attention in school and supervision; we advocate and organize for client well-being through our care and attention; and, in the course of our therapeutic engagements, we are stewards of a unique kind of attention sanctuary for our clients. But while therapeutic attention is a powerful form........

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