Transformative Mutual Aid Practices (T-MAPs) is a tool born out of the radical mental health movement—a way to map what matters, survive crisis, and build collective care in a collapsing world.It’s not a clinical intervention. It’s not a self-help gimmick. T-MAPs is a living tool for people who are navigating complex inner worlds and hostile external systems—and want to do so with intention, connection, and courage.
Where T-MAPs Came From
T-MAPs was originally dreamed up in the early years of The Icarus Project (now the Fireweed Collective), a community that challenged the dominant language of mental illness and made space for people to share stories, strategies, and visions of healing outside the medical model. Early versions of the tool were inspired by Wellness Recovery Action Plans (WRAP), and the concept of Psychiatric Advance Directives—but quickly grew into something more relational and imaginative.
Rooted in Systemic Thinking
The current evolution of T-MAPs is deeply informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS) and systemic family therapy traditions. These frameworks offer ways of understanding ourselves not as isolated individuals, but as systems—of parts, of relationships, of histories.
We’re interested in what happens when:
- People speak for their parts instead of from them
- Families explore the dynamics beneath the diagnosis
- Communities trace the webs of connection and rupture that shape mental health
T-MAPs invites people to locate their struggles within both internal and external systems—personal histories, intergenerational trauma, community care, economic violence, spiritual longing. It’s a map that reflects the complexity of real life.
“We are not puzzles to be solved—we are systems to be witnessed, supported, and transformed.”
From Margins to Practice
T-MAPs was never designed inside the system, but over time it has been adopted into places like First Episode Psychosis programs, peer support trainings, and community-based clinical care. Still, its spirit lives in the margins: activist circles, mutual aid projects, underground peer networks. In this political moment—rising authoritarianism, unraveling social safety nets, fractured public discourse—tools like T-MAPs offer more than just crisis plans. They offer pathways for reflection, communication, and relational repair.
Not Just a Tool, But a Practice
T-MAPs can be:
- A personal wellness map for surviving extreme states
- A group process for building trust and accountability
- A framework for exploring how our inner and outer systems relate
- A cultural practice that holds complexity without collapsing into blame or control
It’s not about finding the “right” answer. It’s about naming what’s true, making meaning, and choosing how we want to show up for ourselves and each other.
Who Created This
The two main architects of T-MAPs have been Jacks McNamara and Sascha DuBrul, the founders of The Icarus Project. Jacks and Sascha wanted to create a practical tool that embodied the peer wisdom found in our greater community. We offer it as a labor of love to people who might find it useful. There are so many different people’s voices captured in the questions and the responses.