The Anchored Relational Model is an integrative framework for understanding normal development and the impact of complex trauma across the lifespan. It brings together insights from neurology, development, dignity and competence, resilience, vulnerability, and intersectionality.
Anchored Relational Model Framework
Anchored Relational theory is grounded in feminist and multicultural perspectives and research. Rather than being culturally specific, it offers a framework for understanding how individuals develop through the complex interaction of neurological, developmental, experiential, familial, cultural, and societal influences.
Anchored Relational therapy views trauma across multiple dimensions, including individual, familial, cultural, societal, and historical, within the broader context of long-standing systems of domination and power. Through a feminist and multicultural lens, the model explores how people are shaped by the systems in which they live while also recognizing both risk and resilience factors.
The approach is grounded in the belief that humans are wired for connection, repair, and healing processes that occur most fully within relationships of compassion, care, and community. It also recognizes that core patterns of neurodevelopment and childhood development occur universally across cultures.
The Anchored Relational Model follows a three-phase Therapeutic Arc, informed by and aligned with the Transtheoretical Model of trauma treatment.
Phase 1: Creating Context & Resource Stabilization
Establishing safety, understanding trauma responses, and building foundational internal and external resources.
Phase 2: Developing Networks & Anchored Resourcing
Strengthening relational, neurological, and somatic resources to support regulation and integration.
Phase 3: Future Resilience & Memory Reprocessing
Supporting long-term resilience and, when appropriate, integrating trauma memories through therapeutic processing.
The Arc of Anchored Relational Therapy
Anchored Relational Model Handouts
