Jennifer Harvey Sallin is a psychologist specializing in high intelligence, and the founding director of an international community and support organization for gifted adults: www.intergifted.com. In addition to her work in this field, she applies her expertise in the areas of ecological intelligence, climate psychology, leadership and activism, collaborating with and training gifted leaders and activists around the world.
This article invites readers to explore the profound interplay between personal inner work and the collective challenges of our times. Grounded in the paradoxes of life—accepting mortality while choosing to live fully, surrendering control while embracing creative agency—it looks at how these tensions shape our experiences of the world. Reflecting on the metacrisis of climate change, societal polarization, and personal struggles, Jennifer Harvey Sallin weaves insights from meditation, transpersonal awareness, and quantum metaphors to encourage a deeper understanding of how our inner and outer worlds inform each other. This thought-provoking piece challenges us to reflect on our creative role in an interconnected universe while offering inspiration for navigating complexity and crisis with grace and wisdom.
Activism is a psychological process we engage in, one which is like a mirror bringing us back in touch with the essence of ourselves, while simultaneously connecting us with the essence of what life is. There are personal, collective, and transpersonal aspects to activism that don’t allow us to only “fix problems out there”, but rather that offer us healing within as we engage our creative agency in outer changemaking. Each of us is unique as an activist, yet each of us is connected in a Collective Activism, and all facets inform and transform each other. In this article, Jennifer Harvey Sallin explores the psychology of activism and the multiply transformative path of changemaking.
At the core of structural personality disordering is a rigid coping strategy which was very functional for restrictive developmental environments, but which later in life causes all kinds of trouble for the person in contexts which don’t require that rigid form of coping. We all know narcissism from our own healthy narcissistic development as children, but we also know its more toxic forms from cultural/collective narcissism, and from any of the unhealed narcissistic wounds that remain alive in us as individuals, in our own relationship to ourselves and in our relationship to others and the world. Healing narcissistic wounds is available for many of us, and our individual healing contributes to profound systems change, as intergenerational, cultural and collective narcissistic wounds are crying out to be tended to and repaired. This article explores all this and gives resources for further discovery and recovery.
A good life is built upon our relationships – to ourselves, with others, and to the whole of life. In a growth-dependent paradigm (i.e. Capitalism), the need for growth at all expenses puts pressure on us and our relationships, toxifying the psychic, social, environmental and spiritual fabric into which we weave our life experience. In contrast, a degrowth framework allows us to live in an embodied present in which our relationships are based on real living, mutual aid, a sense of place and community care, and joy and collective meaning. This article explores the psychological and physical harms of growthist ideology, and how we can individually and collectively create a better life that meets our true needs for thriving.
Bringing our giftedness to therapy isn’t always easy, both for gifted therapists and gifted clients alike. The shame or fear we feel around our gifted complexity and/or gifted wounds, and the lack of support we’ve had for integrating our giftedness into our lives, show up in ways that dampen our ability to give and receive good gifted-specific therapy. Jennifer Harvey Sallin has written this article to open a collective discussion on the need for us to be able to bring our giftedness into the therapy process, so that our whole gifted self can heal and provide healing to others.
Climate has historically felt like something “out there” for many of us, unrelated to our sense of identity and not included in our personal narrative as anything more than a backdrop for the “real story” of our lives. Now that climate is knocking at each of our life’s doors, refusing to remain in the background, many of us are unsure how to respond. We wonder whether we should integrate climate into our life story and sense of self, and if so, how. This article explores how the four F’s of trauma play into our response to climate’s knock and how parts work can help us move past feeling threatened to feeling resourced and empowered.
The focus on productivity is important for certain tasks at certain times, but it’s only one part of a holistic expression of our potential. If we conflate productivity with potential, we lose out on many rich aspects of our full selves, such as joy, rest, play, unstructured exploration and purposeless creativity. Trauma, culture and internalized ideologies can prime us toward a dysfunctional relationship with productivity, and thus with our understanding of our true potential. Jennifer explores these themes and shares resources for change in this article.
