Anchored Relational theory is grounded in feminist and multicultural pedagogies, philosophies, perspectives and research.  It is not, as such, a culturally specific theory or treatment model.  It is a model for understanding who people are and how they get that way from a complex interconnected set of considerations and factors which include neurological, developmental, experiential, familial, cultural, and societal dimensions.  Anchored Relational (formerly AIR Network) therapy is a model of seeing people who have been traumatized across multiple dimensions – individual, family, cultural, societal, historical - in the context of systems of domination that are ascendant in the world and have been for millennia. This is a feminist and multicultural lens on the world explicating how people, all people within their different settings and systems, are impacted by the systems in which we live. The theoretical perspective and the therapy take into account both adverse/risk and protective/resilience factors and assume that we are wired to connect, repair and heal, which happens best and most fully in the context of compassion, care and community.  Those assumptions are based in an understanding of the cross-cultural reality that neurodevelopment and childhood sequences of development happen in the same way across the world.  

The “treatment” as it were, then is to walk with people in understanding themselves and the systems that rob us/them of our humanity. The focus is on seeing whole people - in all of their identities, selves, cultures, values, wants, needs, ideals, and visions - at the centers of their stories and lives apart from the paradigm of dominance and submission, which is the colonizer paradigm, present in every area of life. The colonizer paradigm is one of total dominance and ownership and we will never be free unless we can continue to step outside of that paradigm in both large and minuscule ways. The will and the choice to step outside of that paradigm of dominance and submission into paradigms of integrity and freedom belongs to and is defined by individuals and communities. There are many different models of freedom with specific cultural aspects and different ones will fit for different people, families, communities. 

The Anchored Relational Model is a way to help people, any people who step into the work, to find and define their core from their own cultural, familial, individual values and to step into taking actions from that place.  It is a model that acknowledges the impact of individual, familial, cultural, societal, and historical trauma on the lives of individuals, families, cultures, societies, and history -and what gets recorded as “history”.  These systems of domination, supremacy, oppression, impact every person and all the creatures on the planet. That impact is different both immediately and historically based on how those systems are set up and whom they are designed to most benefit.