What is the Metacrisis, Really?

You’ve probably felt it, even if you haven’t named it.

That sense that something’s wrong, not just in one area, but everywhere. Climate breakdown. Economic precarity. Social fragmentation. Cost of living rises. Housing crisis. Artificial intelligence. Political polarisation and unpredictability. Mental health spirals. A rise of grief, anxiety, and disorientation.

This isn’t just a series of isolated problems. It’s a pattern. A convergence. A crisis of crises.

That’s what thinkers, healers, and systems strategists are calling the metacrisis.

But what does that actually mean?

The Crisis Beneath the Crises

The metacrisis isn’t one thing – it’s the interwoven breakdown of many systems at once. It’s ecological, psychological, cultural, economic, and spiritual. It’s the realisation that our dominant ways of living – our stories, structures, and assumptions – are no longer fit for purpose. They don’t seem to make sense.

It’s not just that the climate is changing. It’s that our relationship to nature has been severed.

It’s not just that mental health is declining. It’s that our cultures often deny grief, suppress emotion, and isolate us from meaning. It’s not just that politics are broken. It’s that our shared narratives are fracturing, and trust is eroding.

Our lived stories and our future expectations are unravelling.

Why Naming It Matters

When we name the metacrisis, we stop treating symptoms in isolation. We begin to see the deeper roots, and the possibility of deeper healing. Naming it helps us move from confusion to clarity. From overwhelm to orientation. From despair to direction.

It also helps us recognise that we’re not crazy for feeling what we feel. That our grief, anxiety, and longing are appropriate responses to a world in transition.

The Metacrisis Is Also a Birth

Here’s the paradox: the metacrisis isn’t just an ending. It’s also a beginning.

Every breakdown contains the seeds of breakthrough. Every unravelling makes space for reweaving.

The metacrisis is painful, but it’s also an invitation. To reimagine how we live. To restore relationship to nature. To regenerate culture. To remember what it means to be human.

It’s a rite of passage for our species.

How We Navigate It

We don’t fix the metacrisis with a single solution. We navigate it. Together.

That means cultivating emotional resilience, systems literacy, and regenerative imagination. It means learning to hold complexity without collapsing. To feel deeply without drowning. To act wisely without rushing.

It means asking better questions:

• What stories are we living in and what stories want to be born?

• How do we support youth who feel the weight of the world?

• What does healing look like across generations?

• How do we build communities that can weather the storm and plant new seeds?

These are the kinds of questions The Counterflow Journal will explore.

A Personal Note

I first encountered the term “metacrisis” while listening to a podcast called Breaking Down Collapse, then reading the work of Prof Jem Bendell (both of which I recommend). But I’d felt it long before I had the language.

I felt it in the quiet panic of teenagers I teach who couldn’t imagine a future. In the expressions of adults who didn’t know how to talk about collapse. In my own body, as I wrestled with grief, hope, and the longing to serve something deeper. Naming it gave me a compass. Not a map, but a way to orient, a direction. It helped me consider therapeutic and educational spaces that honour complexity, emotion, and emergence.

Now, I seek to help youth, families, and communities navigate the metacrisis with clarity, courage, and connection. This blog is part of that work.

You’re Not Alone

If you’ve felt overwhelmed, disillusioned, or quietly heartbroken by the state of things, you’re not alone.

If you’ve sensed that the old ways aren’t working, but don’t know what comes next, you’re not alone.

If you’ve longed for a place to explore these questions with depth, warmth, and creativity, you’ve found one.

Welcome to The Counterflow Journal.

We won’t pretend the river isn’t turbulent. But we’ll learn to navigate it with strength, grace, and purpose.