Two relationships sit at the heart of all relational healing — the one we have with the people around us, and the one we have with the many voices inside us. Here is how Anastasis holds them together.
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We begin life in relationship, so it makes sense to begin the Dynamics there too. Two of the five — Communion and Committee — are about relationship: one turned outward, towards others and the Source; one turned inward, towards ourselves. I am treating them together because, in truth, they are two sides of a single coin. The way we relate to ourselves is mirrored in the way we relate to others, and vice versa. If I cannot accept my own humanity, then the best I can offer you is pity, or a counterfeit of love that is really possession or compensation.
Communion: interpersonal (and transpersonal) relationship
This Dynamic began life, in my drafts, as Relationship, then became Connection — but neither word was enough. ‘Relationship’ can be healthy or unhealthy; ‘connection’ can describe a merely functional meeting of needs. I wanted a word for the deeper thing that becomes possible when human beings are brave enough to be vulnerable. So I settled on Communion. Broken down from its Latin roots, com means ‘with’ or ‘together’ and unio means ‘one’: to be one together. For me it carries an interdependence, a mutual respect and compassion, an empathy and resonance and grace, that the other words simply miss.
We are relational from the very beginning. We develop in the womb in relationship with our mother, dependent on her wellbeing. We are born into relationship with her, with our family, with the world. And our first relationships set what Bowlby called an internal working model — a template not only for how the world works, but for whether we belong in it, and what we are worth.
Ainsworth’s work on attachment styles is part of every trauma practitioner’s grammar, and I lean on it here: secure attachment, where a child trusts that comfort will come; anxious-avoidant, where a child has learned to expect that needs will not be met and so becomes self-reliant and emotionally detached; anxious-ambivalent, where intermittent care has taught a child to cling. And then the pattern Ainsworth’s team noticed last: disorganised attachment, formed when the caregiver is the very source of fear and confusion, so that the child has no coherent strategy at all. For many of the people we work with, that is the starting point — and it is why trust can feel almost impossible. Erikson placed trust versus mistrust at the very first developmental stage, and when our earliest caregivers were not trustworthy, we are left confused about whom to trust ever after: trusting everyone, or no one, both of which lead us into further harm.
There is a fundamental difference between safety and familiarity. What is familiar can feel ‘safe’ precisely because it is familiar — even when it is the very thing that hurt us.
That last point is one I return to constantly with clients and trainees alike. Because our early relationships imprinted on our nervous systems, we can be drawn to people who repeat them, and repelled by genuine safety because it feels unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. Naming this — gently, without shame — is often the beginning of a different choice.
Communion also includes the transpersonal: our relationship with the Source. Our attachment style colours how we imagine the Divine, and many of us, having been failed by those who were meant to love us, project that failure upward and picture an angry parent to be appeased. I understand that. I also believe there is another possibility — a Source that longs for us to be one with it, in the truest sense of Communion. I never insist on this. I simply hold the door open, and invite you to bring your own beliefs into the room.
Because relationship is where the wound was made, it is also where the healing must happen — and yet it is the very thing we most avoid once we have been hurt. This is why the therapeutic relationship matters so profoundly, and why I value carefully boundaried, well-facilitated groups so highly: they offer a broader mirror, a family of choice, a crucible of reciprocity in which we learn to be real. It is also why we must understand transference and countertransference explicitly, and why we cannot simply tell a client “you can trust me.” Trust is not asserted; it is experienced, through our congruence and our authenticity, over time.
Committee: intrapersonal relationship
Now turn inward. Our inner world is a complex and crowded place. I picture mine as a Committee — a roomful of ‘voices’ or characters, each formed at some point in my life. Some are introjected messages from caregivers about the dos and don’ts, the shoulds and oughts. Some I developed myself, in response to experience. Some are not verbal at all: my body, which Transactional Analysis calls the Somatic Child, is a member of the Committee, as are my emotions and my senses.
Everyone has a Committee; it is simply how the mind organises itself. In a person who did not grow up with trauma, it tends to be a reasonably orderly working group. There may be a cautious voice, an anxious voice, but as long as the mature Adult self holds the Chair — the seat with the casting vote, the one that manages the dynamics in the room — the Committee can take account of all those voices and respond to life with some objectivity.
But when a person has grown up with developmental and relational trauma, the Committee can become a riotous assembly. Some members vie loudly for control. Others hide under the table, terrified of being seen or asked to choose anything. Old, frightened, very young members keep seizing the microphone.
The work is not to silence or banish anyone — it is to help the Adult self take the Chair, and get the best out of everyone in the room.
Let me make this concrete, because it is how I actually live. I have an anxious member partway down the table, with a persistent terrified voice. I have another who remembers all our failures and is quick to say that whatever we attempt will go wrong. Left to those two alone, I freeze and get nothing done. So, sitting between them, I have a fellow I call Malcolm — my safeguarding lead and risk assessor. He answers the doom-laden voices with things like, “I know you’re scared, but I can help,” and “we’re in this together,” and “you don’t have to manage on your own.” He helps the frightened members find their resources, and he consults the Chair, who reframes our failures as learning. I have a creative member with a kind of ADHD energy and no follow-through, who works far better when paired with a planner. I rarely get them all collaborating at once — but I can convene small working groups around a particular task. The team writing this model is in focus today, which is why the housework is not getting done.
As for the Source: I have come to think of the Chair as the chief executive of the company — which is me — and the Creator as the owner of the company. I run the day-to-day operations; the Owner can override me when needed, and I feel that override as a nudge in my spirit when a door closes or I have stepped outside what is best for me.
How do we get to know our Committee? Through the much-neglected art of contemplation — what modern coaching has rebranded as mindfulness. It is simply the practice of listening to ourselves with compassionate objectivity and curiosity. Most of us who have survived trauma are overthinkers, so the moment we try to be still the Committee turns up the volume into quite a cacophony. That is normal. Sometimes I wait for my inner snow-globe to settle; sometimes I am too restless for that, and I walk or dance instead, so that my Somatic Child gets some attention and does not hijack the whole meeting.
Two sides of one coin
Here is why I teach these two Dynamics together. Until we can listen to our own Committee with empathy, we will struggle to listen to another person with real empathy too — we will keep mistaking our projections for their reality. And until we have experienced safe Communion with at least one trustworthy other, many of our Committee members will never dare come out from under the table. The inner work and the relational work feed each other, endlessly. Learning to hold both, in ourselves and then in the room with a client, is one of the central skills we practise on the Level 7 course.
A few questions to sit with
- Who sits on your own Committee? Which member tends to grab the microphone — and who never gets heard?
- What is your own attachment style, and how does it show up in the room with clients?
- Where do you experience Communion — real one-togetherness — in your life right now?
About the course
The Anastasis Model sits at the heart of a Level 7 Diploma in trauma-informed, advanced therapeutic practice — written for accredited counsellors and psychotherapists who want to work more deeply with developmental and relational trauma, and who are moving towards senior accreditation (SCoPEd Column C).
It runs online, with three in-person residentials, over fifteen months: October 2026 to December 2027. The group is deliberately small — capped at twelve — so no one is ever just a face in a crowded screen. The fee is £5,250, with payment plans available.
To enquire, email training@authentictandt.uk or call Annie on 07949 677405. We shape the cohort together through conversation, so do get in touch early.