The Research-Based Process That Can Dramatically Reduce Anxiety and Increase Creativity and Connection in 30 Days

Maya Frost helps collapse-aware individuals transform grief, outrage, burnout, and uncertainty into creative adaptation, emotional resilience, and meaningful action through her process called Collapse Companioning™.

People Come To Her Here To:

• process climate anxiety
• recover from burnout
• rediscover creativity
• build emotional resilience
• navigate major life transitions
• reconnect with meaning and community

In 2020, Maya Frost (a mindfulness trainer and certified creative breakthrough coach with an extensive personal history of overcoming grief) began using a 30-day private companioning process to help individuals (mostly women, ages 35-65) who were facing devastating levels of grief and anxiety.  Due to the severity of these cases, Ms. Frost offered support at no charge to those who were referred to her by contacts working in non-profit organizations.

These women were experiencing deep levels of despair that made it difficult to get out of bed or functionally perform the most basic tasks, including taking a shower, getting dressed, or eating a meal. They were at high risk of self-harm or suicide.

Within 30 days, all of her clients were not only capable of daily tasks, but they had transformed their perspective and their habits, creating a project that healed them as they helped others. 

🔶 The Challenge: Our Current Therapy and Coaching Offerings Are Not Designed To Meet The Needs Of Those Experiencing Reality-Based Climate Anxiety, Collapse Grief, or Existential Dread 

Most people are seeing our systems fail and our crises collide.

They are experiencing an unprecedented onslaught of news and updates that constantly trigger a combination of emotions, including grief, anger, fear, guilt, shame, helplessness, and hopelessness. 

Not only are they overwhelmed, but many are turning to traditional models of psychotherapy and coaching to address their rapidly increasing levels of anxiety and despair.

Under these extraordinary circumstances, it is wreckless to expect the traditional schedule of one hour-long session per week to effectively guide distressed individuals in the following areas:

🔸staying steady emotionally despite inadvertent or intentional exposure to negative news 

🔸processing the reality of the ecological, societal, economic, and political shifts with any degree of depth or complexity

🔸creating a practical and meaningful way to live fully daily with this knowledge

🔸taking action to adapt and thrive in ways that require new and relevant skills that are not yet clearly defined or understood

And it's especially misguided when there are tested and proven alternatives that are specific, effective, and work quickly to reduce self-reported levels of grief, anxiety, anger, and hopelessness.  

🔶 Maya Frost's Unique 30-Day Collapse Companioning™ Process For Dramatically Reducing Self-Reported Levels of Grief and Anxiety Related To Climate and Systems Collapse

Since developing her process while serving those who were struggling with grief and anxiety during the pandemic, Ms. Frost has been helping individuals who have been directly impacted by collapse, both personally and professionally.  

Their challenges include systemic failures such as war, school shootings, environmental hazards, political antagonism, and the loss of homes due to increasing storms, floods, and wildfires. 

In addition, she serves clients anticipating changes that require awareness of possible futures and a realignment in purpose and planning.  These major shifts will impact businesses, organizations, and governments, as well as individual choices regarding lifestyle, location, education, and future planning.

Using the same 30-day private companioning process with leaders at all levels, she has been able to help her clients transform their grief and anxiety into curiosity, creative energy, and inspired action that leads to deeper awareness in those they serve and a collective effort to make critical adaptations. 

This process is not coaching.  Despite her own training as a creative breakthrough coach, Ms. Frost's process does not follow traditional coaching protocols. However, creative breakthrough techniques are useful in guiding clients through creative blocks that often accompany grief and anxiety.

It is not mindfulness.  Though Ms. Frost has extensive training and experience in this area (she created a playful mindfulness course in 2003 that helped thousands of people in over 100 countries reduce stress, increase clarity, and enhance creativity), she does not use traditional mindfulness techniques. Instead, she focuses on expanding capacity for curiosity and imagination.

It does not follow the typical once-a-week schedule. Her first clients were facing devastating losses and, in some cases, extended quarantines that prevented them from grieving with others or even saying goodbye to their loved ones before they died. Because of their imposed isolation, these clients required more immediate and frequent support. The once-a-week model would have put them at serious risk of self-harm or suicide.

Her choice to offer daily support was a radical departure from other helping professions and based on research about habits and behavior change. It has led to positive self-reported benefits for her clients.

🔶The Collapse Companioning™ Process Is Grounded In Recent Research On Anxiety, Habits, and Human Behavior Change

Frost 's process, requiring daily action over a period of 30 days, has been proven effective in creating consistency, momentum, and lasting change.

It is influenced by the research of Brown University neuroscientist and psychotherapist Dr. Judson Brewer and others who have shown that generalized anxiety (what many people are experiencing in this time of uncertainty) is actually a habit, not a condition. Like most habits, it can be changed, with anxiety dramatically reduced in 30 days using techniques focused on curiosity and awareness.

It is also inspired by the work of Dr. BJ Fogg, professor of human behavior at Stanford University and the author of Tiny Habits, describing the most effective ways to change our behavior by focusing on small shifts in our habits.

🔶Additional Sources of Inspiration for Maya Frost's Development Of Her 30-Day Collapse Companioning™ Process

In addition to the research that inspired Ms. Frost, her own personal experiences significantly impacted her creation of this process. 

Adopted at birth, her parents then divorced when she was four, and she moved with her mother and her two younger brothers to live with her grandparents in Oregon. Shortly thereafter, her grandfather died suddenly while mowing the lawn, catapulting the already-reeling family into deep grief and a struggle to survive. 

Ms. Frost found comfort in the backyard garden, where she transplanted her first marigold seedlings. As she tended them lovingly, her grandmother explained to her that marigolds were "plants that protect other plants just by being there." 

This idea of protective presence sparked a sense of magical thinking for Ms. Frost that ultimately planted the seed of her work in companioning those who were lost and grieving. She uses the marigold as the symbol for her company and inspiration for others who long to protect what is around them. 

Years later, as she struggled with her grief and survivor guilt after an accident that killed four teens but left her uninjured, she created a simple mindfulness game that soothed and inspired her. Then, in her 40s, as she was processing the deaths of two brothers to suicide and one of AIDS, she turned that game into an online mindfulness course that inspired thousands of subscribers around the world with her playful, eyes-wide-open approach to everyday awareness. 

🔶 Focus on Emotional Steadiness, Clarity About Behaviors, New Habits That Expand Curiosity and Creativity, and Inspired Action That Enhances Healing

Collapse Companioning™ is designed to assist clients as they:

▲develop their ability to assess their emotional state and regulate their nervous system

▲gain clarity about the habits and behaviors that are reinforcing anxiety

▲create new habits and behaviors that expand their capacity for curiosity, awe, gratitude, and deepened relationships

▲metabolize their grief and enhance their healing by helping others

According to Ms. Frost, coming to terms with our crises is both a personal and a relational challenge. It requires us to address our own emotions and habits, and then connect with others in caring and collaborative ways.

Individuals experiencing grief and anxiety related to current realities require a practitioner who offers deep listening, provides prompts and provocations for reflection, and serves as a co-creative partner.

As clients tap into their longing and define for themselves how they will choose to protect the people, places, and possibilities that matter to them, they experience a renewed sense of agency, creative energy, and purpose. This, in turn, leads to inspired action, satisfying engagement, and a deeper appreciation for collaboration and community.

It is this new level of connection that leads to greater resilience through meaningful relationships and mutual aid.

🔶The Results of the 30-Day Collapse Companioning™ Process 

Ms. Frost has found the most effective way to offer private companioning to clients around the world is through continuous daily but asynchronous support via video chats, voice notes, and texts.

The key to the rapid progress of her clients seems to related to both the consistency and the time lapse between Ms. Frost's daily question or prompt and the client's response. Rather than responding in real time, the interim space, even as short as a few minutes, significantly increases the likelihood of deeper insights on a daily basis, leading to a consistent flow of processing, inspiration, and energy that builds momentum naturally.

In addition, these insights compound in ways that deepen the client's understanding of their own thoughts and behaviors (metacognition), resulting in what clients describe as more grounded and confident decision-making and expanded capacity for creativity. 

🔶 Maya Frost's Professional Bio