![A hand reaching towards the light — the landscape of the Anastasis Domains](https://authentictandt.uk/main/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/sunrise_01-scaled.jpg")
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If the Dynamics are the forces that move us, the Domains are the landscape we move across. Here is an overview of the five spheres of overcoming — and how they grow, like the rings of a tree.
Having walked through the five Dynamics — the forces of our healing — we now turn to the five Domains: the terrain itself. I define a domain simply as a distinct sphere of activity or knowledge. The five Domains of Anastasis aspire to map the country we find ourselves journeying through as we overcome developmental and relational trauma.
I find it easiest to describe these as places we journey to and through — though that is a slight simplification, because each one is really a process rather than a fixed point. Each Domain takes us to task; each invites us to get involved. And, just as you can stand with one foot either side of the Greenwich Meridian and be in two time zones at once, it is entirely possible to be in more than one Domain at the same time. I have drawn firm boundaries between them only for the sake of clarity on a two-dimensional page. Lived reality is far more fluid — and multi-dimensional.
The five Domains
The five Domains are Autobiography, Accountability, Amnesty, Archaeology and Alchemy. Each has its own post in this series, so here I will only name their territory. Autobiography is the telling and re-hearing of our story. Accountability is the careful sorting of responsibility — distinguishing healthy guilt from toxic shame, and putting each where it truly belongs. Amnesty is the releasing of ourselves from the bondage of blame, hatred and the longing for payback. Archaeology is regulation, reclamation and discovery — the digging up of buried and disowned parts of ourselves. And Alchemy is the refining of base experience into gold: acceptance, post-traumatic growth, and the becoming of who we were made to be.
We do not pass through the Domains once and tidily. The Labyrinth weaves us in and out of each of them, many times over, on the way to our own centre.
How the landscape grows: the rings of a tree
I find this part of the model both beautiful and hopeful. The Domains are not static. They grow from the inside out, like the rings of a tree.
To begin with, trauma survivors often feel fragmented. They arrive with splintered, chaotic narratives and, frequently, a fragmented sense of self. As they take the first steps of the journey — met by an empathic, steadfast therapist or group offering what Rogers called the necessary and sufficient conditions (congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding) — some of those fragments begin to connect, like pieces of a jigsaw. These form the model’s innermost ring: twenty functions, which establish just enough stability and grounding from which to grow.
As growth continues, it pushes outward, the way a tree pushes out its earlier rings. The next ring shows those twenty functions defragmenting into ten sub-domains — each one a sign of deepening integration and security. As integration matures further, more rings develop. The functions give us discrete, intentional things to work on; the sub-domains lend our narrative a more concrete tone; and finally the Domains themselves become a consolidation of the sub-domains — more singular, more defined, as understanding clarifies. We are, in effect, taking an increasingly objective view of our own past, becoming less buffeted by what has gone before, and beginning to see it as part of a bigger picture.
Consolidation, consolation, and the space for mystery
Beyond the Domains, the model has two further rings. Consolidation is a later-life, reflective process — akin to Erikson’s eighth life stage, where integrity (the fruit of integration, a sense of wholeness) sits in tension with despair (the anxiety of unfinished business, of ageing, of wondering whether our life has meant anything). It is in holding that tension that wisdom is born — a sense of one’s life ‘as it had to be’.
The final ring before the centre is consolation — a word from spiritual discourse, used in the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. It speaks of a peace and wholeness that come from deep connection with the Numinous and an acceptance of all that is; a decrease in the striving that marked our earlier life. And at the very centre of the model is a void — not an emptiness of despair, but an openness left deliberately for the unknown and the as-yet-unimagined. We cannot know what lies ahead, or fathom what may become possible in union with others and with the Source. So we leave a space for the Mystery.
Why the map matters in practice
For practitioners, the Domains offer something invaluable: a sense of where we are, without ever reducing a person to a stage. When a client is desperate simply to be heard, we are likely in Autobiography. When the work turns to whose fault it really was, we have moved into Accountability. When the question becomes whether they can lay down their hatred without betraying their own pain, we are in Amnesty. The map does not tell us what the person should do next; it helps us recognise the terrain they are actually standing in, so we can meet them there rather than somewhere we (or they) wish they were.
Each Domain is a process, not a place
I want to underline something easily lost in a tidy overview: although I speak of ‘going to’ and ‘journeying through’ the Domains, none of them is really a fixed location. Each is an active process. Autobiography is not a room you enter and leave; it is the ongoing work of telling, re-hearing and gradually re-writing your story, and you will return to it many times, each time with a subtly different account. Accountability is not a verdict reached once; it is the slow, repeated sorting of what is genuinely ours from what we have carried for others. The same is true of all five. This is why I resist any reading of the model as a checklist. We do not ‘complete’ a Domain and tick it off. We deepen our relationship with it, returning as more integrated versions of ourselves.
It follows that two practitioners working faithfully with the same model may move through the Domains in quite different orders with different clients — because the person, not the model, sets the pace and the path. One client may spend the better part of a year in Autobiography before they can bear to look at Accountability; another may arrive already articulate about their story and find that the real work, for them, is in Amnesty. The map gives us a shared vocabulary for the terrain; it does not dictate the route. That flexibility is a feature, not a flaw, and learning to follow the client rather than the diagram is part of the art.
We do not travel alone
There is one more thing the overview must say, because it shapes everything else. We are not meant to travel this landscape alone. When we journey somewhere unfamiliar and difficult, a trustworthy companion does more than keep us company — they steady us, mirror us back to ourselves, and share both the trials and the joys. In trauma recovery this is not sentiment but necessity: because the wound was relational, the healing must be relational too. The Domains are walked best in the presence of an empathic, well-boundaried other — a skilled therapist, a spiritual director, a carefully facilitated group, a faithful friend. Much of what we learn to offer, as practitioners, is precisely this quality of steady, attuned companionship across the whole landscape — not rescuing, not rushing, but walking alongside.
It also reframes the despair of repetition. When a client groans, “I feel like I’m taking two steps forward and three steps back — I’m here again,” the map lets us answer honestly and hopefully: yes, this is the same Domain, but you are not at the same point on the path. You have been digging a new part of your Labyrinth, which has enabled you to see what was round the bend. The main task, each time we revisit a Domain, is simply to learn something new from the visit — or to make a different mistake, and so gain a deeper learning. Over the next six posts, we will walk into each Domain in turn, beginning with the map that holds them all.
A few questions to sit with
- Thinking of a current client: which Domain do you sense they are mostly standing in right now?
- How do you tend to respond, inwardly, when therapy seems to loop back on itself?
- What might it mean for your practice to leave a deliberate space for mystery — for what you cannot yet know about a person?
About the course
The Anastasis Model sits at the heart of a Level 7 Diploma in trauma-informed, advanced therapeutic practice — written for 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.