OUR STORY

The story of Community Counseling begins with a group of community organizers and therapists with deep experience in social movements. Community organizing refers to the craft of bringing people together to create positive change that protects communities and provides for unmet needs, seeking to end oppression and injustice. The civil rights movement, the campaign for women’s suffrage, and the struggle for LGBTQ rights are examples of movements in the United States that used community organizing to create lasting changes in society.

The core group that came together to found Community Counseling was made up of organizers from diverse social movements, including the Occupy movement, the student climate movement, the labor movement, and the U.S. immigrant rights movement. Despite successes in these movements, certain problems kept recurring that undermined our efforts: Why were so many strong leaders burning out and leaving our communities? Why were so many people suffering from emotional and mental health problems and feeling that they did not have adequate support in dealing with them? Why was there so much interpersonal conflict that couldn’t be resolved, leading to fractures and lasting damage in our movements?

Facing these problems, we asked: What would be needed to sustain our communities over the long term?

In search of answers, we began exploring new approaches to fostering personal growth, emotional wellness, and healthy interpersonal relationships. We connected with spiritual traditions that taught contemplative prayer, meditation, and mindfulness practices. Some participated in recovery fellowships such as 12 Step and Reevaluation Counseling. From this exploration, key insights emerged: We needed to bring these powerful new tools and perspectives home, creating new forms of mutual support integrated into our communities and relationships, with common language and shared practices readily accessible to all.