How Therapists Can Help Rebuild Our Attention
Sanctuaries of attention can collaboratively support our attentional health.
Posted May 28, 2026 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
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 of joint attention , it struggles in a landscape ravaged by extractive attention industries—the “ human fracking ” business model of big tech. Therapeutic attention alone may not be sufficient to help ourselves or our clients navigate this new world. More active and collaborative commitments are needed.
The third pillar of attention activism, sanctuary, is central to the overlap between our discipline and the urgent work of rehabilitating attentional health. Attention sanctuary emphasizes both (1) the protection of forms of attention particularly vulnerable to extraction and (2) the cultivation of non-commodifiable forms of attention. The classroom is an attention sanctuary, as are places that have a long legacy of providing space for human attention, like houses of worship, libraries, and museums.
The therapeutic space is, by its very nature, an attention sanctuary. The formalized agreement between client and clinician, who agree to work toward a common goal of wellness by means of shared time and copresence, creates special “sanctuary” conditions, which then permit a rich, productive quality of joint attention to develop.
Collaborative social practices for the creation of attention sanctuaries must become a standard component of attentional health. As a corollary of our training, therapists know how to foster sanctuary. As therapists and attention activists, we are ideally positioned to educate others outside of the therapeutic space on how to set the stage to effectively, collectively confront the unique issues of our time alongside other attention activists. Community guidelines and consensus practices to facilitate authentic gathering —these are increasingly important to psychological well-being in families, friend groups, and civic settings.
Of the many coalitions that have been forming around the issue of attention activism, the nonprofit Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA, with which we are both affiliated) has focused on developing programming around cultivating such forms of non-commodifiable attention, to build coalition across disciplines, and to codify guidelines for building sanctuary. Born out of work by the Friends of Attention (a nonprofit group of artists, activists, and scholars), SoRA aims to develop tailored, scalable, grassroots changes at the local, national, and international levels. While SoRA is a school in the sense that it is an institute that supports education , it is also a school in the sense of being a school of thought: a movement toward human flourishing in a time of great cultural flux.
Professionals in a variety of disciplines (including K-12 education, the arts, academia, and business) are finding their way toward attention activism using the materials SoRA has made publicly available. The field of therapy would be well-served in taking on the mantle of attention activism and adopting this new school of thought, developing theories, practices, and interventions in line with the needs of our cultural moment.
Therapeutic professionals have much to learn from this movement, as well as much to contribute. The successful therapeutic encounter hinges on particular forms of attention, rooted in care and the cultivation of joint, durational experiences of reflection and exchange. The rise of a new, multi-trillion-dollar industry that commodifies human attention presents novel challenges for individual and social well-being and can be understood to threaten key aspects of the attentional capacities on which clinicians and clients must draw in successful therapeutic work. Because of these developments, clinicians and clients alike would do well to engage with the emerging movement to protect human attention from the adverse effects of the “human fracking” business models of big tech and to consider the positive opportunities to cultivate, collaboratively, new kinds of attention sanctuaries.
Liberman, B. (Host). (2026, March 29). Human fracking, AI, and the capture of attention with D. Graham Burnett [Audio podcast episode]. In The Wisdom & Action Podcast . Small Giants Academy. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/human-fracking-ai-and-the-capture…
Burnett, D. G., & Mitchell, E. (2025). Attention sanctuaries: Social practice guidelines and emergent strategies in attention activism. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1546 (1), 5–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15313
Parker, P. (n.d.). Building connections: The gathering toolkit . https://www.priyaparker.com/gathering-toolkit
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D. Graham Burnett, Ph.D., is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science at Princeton University. Eve Mitchell is a psychotherapist and is affiliated with the Strother School of Radical Attention.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.