Glossary

ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

A behavioural therapy that focuses on accepting difficult thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them, while committing to actions aligned with your values. Used inside the AWOD™ integration scripts as the cognitive reframing layer. Three-step structure: Acknowledge, Choose, Take One Action.

AIM™ — Archetypal Integration Method

Fiona Ellis's complete healing methodology: the umbrella system that holds every tool, process, and framework together. The Archetypal Integration Method™ (AIM) is a proprietary framework developed by Fiona Ellis that bridges archetypal psychology, cultural trauma theory, and Shamanic NLP to address inherited patterns passed through up to seven generations. Details at archetypalintegration.com/method.

AIM™ Coaching Spiral

The seven-movement framework: Diagnose → Vision → Clearing → Integration → Values → Reconnect → Rise. Spiral mechanic: the descent into the wound IS the rise into self. Both directions are true simultaneously. Each pass clears deeper ground.

AIM™ Healing Hierarchy

The treatment triage framework within the Archetypal Integration Method™. Inverts conventional health approaches by addressing: (1) thoughts and beliefs first — archetypal wound recognition; (2) breath and nervous system regulation; (3) water and hydration; (4) nutrition and minerals; (5) physical symptoms last. Based on the NLP Communications Model principle that behaviour is the last output. If internal representation creates the state that drives the behaviour, then symptoms are the last place to intervene — not the first. The exception is the Four-Point Reset, used during acute emotional activation.

Archetype

From the Greek archetypon — original pattern. A universal pattern of human experience that repeats across cultures, generations, and individuals. Carl Jung described archetypes as templates living in the collective unconscious: the Mother, the Hero, the Trickster, the Sage. Joseph Campbell mapped them through mythology. Caroline Myss applied them to personal contracts. In general usage, archetypes are timeless, universal, and neutral. In this work, used more specifically — see Archetypal Wounds.

Archetypal Integration

Fiona Ellis's term for the process of transforming inherited wound patterns from something that controls you unconsciously into something you consciously wield. Not removal — reclamation. The shadow becomes the sovereign. The energy that was distorted by the wound is the same energy that powers your sovereign expression.

Archetypal Wounds

Distinct from general archetypes. An archetypal wound is not a neutral blueprint — it is a specific pattern of inherited damage. A survival strategy encoded into the nervous system by a real historical event and passed down through generations. The wound is the fracture. The archetype is the mask that formed over it. The sixty archetypes in this system are not who you are — they are what you inherited. They are called wounds because wounds can heal. Personality types cannot. Labels are permanent. Wounds are not.

Ancestral Trauma

Trauma that did not originate in your lifetime but was passed to you through your family line — biologically through epigenetics, behaviourally through learned patterns, and energetically through unresolved grief, fear, and survival strategies that never had a chance to complete their cycle. You did not choose it. You may not even know it is there. But your nervous system is running it.

The Archetypal Integration system maps ancestral trauma across 68 specific patterns rooted in three civilisational fractures — giving it a name, a shape, and a pathway out. Read the book →

AWOD™ — Archetypal Wounds Oracle Deck

The 68-card diagnostic and integration system created by Fiona Ellis. Maps three Core Global Wounds, five Family Culture Wounds, and sixty specific archetypal patterns. Each card carries a Shadow Belief, Sovereign Reframe, Wound Origin, Guidance, and four integration practices. Available at archetypalwounds.com.

Big T and little t Trauma

Big T: Single-incident, headline-making significant emotional events — accidents, abuse, sudden loss, violence. little t: Cumulative, subtle, often pre-verbal trauma. The chronic conditions of childhood — conditional love, emotional absence, unspoken rules, inherited anxiety. Often more impactful than Big T because it has no single moment to point to. Both create archetypal patterns.

Can of Worms — Emotional Can of Worms

Fiona Ellis's original model for how emotions are stored in the body — not individually, not neatly, but stacked, layered, compressed, and interconnected. Like worms in a sealed can. Every time you swallow an emotion — bite your tongue, don't say the thing, smile when you want to scream — it goes into the can. It doesn't dissolve. It compresses. And every new experience of that same emotional family gets stacked on top. Anger on anger on anger. Sadness on sadness on sadness. Going back not just years, but generations. The Can of Worms explains why people explode over a toothpaste lid — they didn't get the toothpaste reaction, they got the full weight of the can. Read more →

Civilisation Progression Model

Fiona's named framework mapping humanity's movement from Separated tribes → Connected communities → Interconnected global world → Integrated future. The three Core Global Wounds arrived at the exact moment humanity became interconnected enough for the damage to go global.

Cultivated Adult Self

One of the two parts at the Faultline. The part of the self that has grown, learned, adapted, and built competence. Often runs the external life while the Protector Child Self runs the emotional responses beneath.

DDG — Deletion, Distortion, Generalisation

The three primary filtering mechanisms in the NLP Communications Model (Fred The Head). Your brain takes millions of bits of incoming sensory data and consolidates them into roughly seven manageable chunks. Deletion removes information before you notice it. Distortion changes what the information means. Generalisation applies one experience to everything. These are shaped by seven deeper filters: time-space-matter-energy, memories, language, beliefs, values, decisions, and meta programs. In the Archetypal Integration Method™, an eighth filter — inherited archetypal wounds — sits beneath all seven.

EFT — Emotional Freedom Techniques

Tapping on meridian points while voicing emotional content. Used inside the AWOD™ integration scripts to dissolve shame at the root — not just in the mind but in the nervous system. Science-backed, non-invasive. Each archetype has a customised EFT script.

Eighth Filter

Fiona Ellis's extension of the NLP Communications Model. The standard model maps seven filters that shape how humans process reality. The eighth filter accounts for inherited archetypal wounds — deletion, distortion, and generalisation patterns that were passed down through the biological lineage rather than created by personal experience. Supported by epigenetic research confirming trauma inheritance across at least three generations via the NR3C1 glucocorticoid receptor gene. Original to the Archetypal Integration Method™.

Embodied Parts Integration™ (EPI)

Fiona Ellis's full-body process for integrating split parts of the self. Goes deeper than cognitive reframing. Brings the Cultivated Adult Self and the Protector Child Self into mediated relationship at the Faultline. Available through AIM-trained practitioners.

Epigenetics

The study of how environmental and experiential factors switch genes on and off without changing the DNA sequence. The science that explains how trauma is transmitted biologically — not just behaviourally — across generations.

Further reading: Bruce Lipton — The Biology of Belief

Eye Gazing

A practice designed to increase intimacy and see into the soul of another person. Just as Mirror Work is eye gazing with self, eye gazing with another is mirror work in relationship. The "eyes are the window to the soul" theory is being validated by emerging research into breath and heart coherence between entangled particles.

Family Culture Wounds

Witch Wound, Mother Wound, Father Wound, Sister Wound, Brother Wound. The five patterns that emerge when the three Core Global Wounds are filtered through the intimate dynamics of the families who raised you.

The Faultline

The split that forms in the psyche when wound moments occur faster than the system can process. Creates two parts: the Cultivated Adult Self and the Protector Child Self. The mechanism that explains both human nervous-system collapse and the inherited patterns mapped in this system. Read more about the Faultline →

Feminine Energy

Flow. Intuition. Creativity. Connection. The water that fills the riverbanks and gives them life. Present in every human being regardless of gender or biology. When wounded: suppression, people-pleasing, loss of voice, disconnection from desire.

Feminism & Polarity Collapse Wound

The third Core Global Wound: Women vs Men. The collapse of healthy masculine and feminine polarity when the fight for equality overcorrected. Not a criticism of feminism — a naming of what was lost alongside what was gained.

Four-Point Reset

Fiona Ellis's acute intervention protocol for moments of emotional activation — when the prefrontal cortex goes offline and the primal survival system takes over. Four steps, any order: (1) Water — drink a large glass; the brain is electrical and needs water to conduct signals. (2) Grass Hug — lie flat on the ground; the reptilian brain registers safety when fully horizontal. (3) Move — walk, tap, shake, dance; movement processes adrenaline and cortisol. (4) Get in or under water — shower, ocean, bath; resets the electromagnetic field. The framing is possibility-focused: "You can do the thing — but do these four things first. Then see if you still want to." Original to the Archetypal Integration Method™. Read more →

Fred The Head

The teaching frame for the NLP Communications Model — how external events become your internal experience. We call him Fred The Head. Named by Remi Pearson in NLP training.

Generational Trauma

Trauma transmitted from one generation to the next — through biology (epigenetics), through behaviour (learned patterns), and through culture (the rules nobody wrote down but everyone follows). Often used interchangeably with ancestral trauma, though generational trauma typically refers to transmission across two to three generations while ancestral trauma can span further. Research suggests epigenetic markers may persist for up to seven generations.

Gestalt String-of-Pearls

From Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy theory: inside each Can of Worms, individual life events are strung together like pearls on a string — connected by the same emotional neurology. The first event is the root cause. Every subsequent event of the same emotional type threads onto the same string behind it. The silver lining: when you find and release the root event — the first pearl on the string — the entire string releases with it. You do not need to process every single incident individually. You trace back to the source. And the rest follows, like pulling a thread. This is the foundation of Integrated Timeline Therapy™. The root cause may be from this life, from the womb, from a past life, or from an ancestral line.

Guided Journalling

Writing as sacred technology. The journalling prompts for each archetype are designed to map your lineage, rewrite your narrative, and anchor new beliefs. One of the four integration practices.

Industrial Factory Wound

The second Core Global Wound: Being vs Doing. The inherited belief that you are only worthy if you are productive or useful. Born when humans were redesigned to behave like components in a system.

Inner Child

The younger part of the self that carries unprocessed experiences from childhood. In the Archetypal Integration system, this concept is made structurally precise through the Faultline mechanism — the inner child is named as the Protector Child Self, and the work is not to "heal" it in isolation but to bring it into mediated relationship with the Cultivated Adult Self through Embodied Parts Integration™.

Integration

The process of taking two opposing parts and finding the common ground that allows them to combine into a functional whole. Not choosing one over the other. Not compromise. Not blending until both lose their shape. Integration means each part retains its nature while becoming something greater together than either could be alone.

In this work, integration is the process of transforming an inherited wound pattern from something that controls you unconsciously into something you consciously wield. Not removal — reclamation. The shadow becomes the sovereign. "The trauma was inherited. The integration is chosen."

Integration Practices

The four self-guided tools used throughout this system: EFT Tapping, ACT, Guided Journalling, and Mirror Rituals.

Integrated Timeline Therapy™ (ITT)

Fiona Ellis's adaptation of timeline work for ancestral and inherited trauma. Distinct from Tad James's Time Line Therapy® (two words, registered trademark). Clears inherited and personal emotional pressure at the level where it was originally installed, including pre-verbal and ancestral imprint. Available through AIM-trained practitioners.

Integrated Values Matrix™ (IVM)

Fiona Ellis's five-layer values mapping process: Polarity Essence, Core Focus, Void Values, Sabotage Set, and Activation Set. Reveals the architecture of your life's operating system and where wound-driven values have overridden sovereign ones.

Intimacy — Into Me I See

A connection based on vulnerability — allowing another person to peer past the walls and barriers. Into-me-I-see. True intimacy requires that you have first done the Mirror Work — you cannot let someone see into you if you have not looked first. Eye Gazing is the practice. Intimacy is what it produces.

Masculine Energy

Structure. Direction. Purpose. Containment. The riverbanks that give the water somewhere to flow. Present in every human being regardless of gender or biology. When wounded: rigidity, control, emotional shutdown, hypervigilance.

Matriarchist

Fiona Ellis's claimed positioning — not a feminist, a matriarchist. This is not the inverted-patriarchy version that circulates in popular culture (matriarchal supremacy / man-hating). Fiona's definition: Patriarchy has a single winner, defined by strength. Feminism, in its current dominant form, still carries an energy of us versus them — it connected what patriarchy separated, which was necessary, but it has not yet integrated the polarity it set out to heal. Matriarchist is the next layer. It is all-encompassing. It includes everyone's individual strengths to ensure the entire ecosystem wins. On the Polarity Pendulum, matriarchist IS the integrated Functional Centre — healthy masculine and healthy feminine in functional relationship. In the Civilisation Progression Model: patriarchy operated at the Separated stage, feminism at the Connected stage, matriarchist at the Interconnected and Integrated stages. Each stage is necessary. None is final.

Mind Body Connection

The principle that the body and mind are not separate systems but a single integrated whole. Emotions are stored in the body. Beliefs shape biology. Symptoms carry messages. This is the foundation of every integration practice in this system — we do not treat the mind and body as separate departments because they are not.

Further reading: Annette Noontil — The Body is the Barometer of the Soul · Inna Segal — The Secret Language of Your Body · Louise Hay — You Can Heal Your Life

Mirror Rituals

The practice of facing yourself in a mirror and speaking truth aloud. The oldest oracle — a witness, not a judge. The eyes are windows to the soul — so look into your own. Mirror work is eye gazing with self.

One of the four integration practices. Each archetype has a mirror mantra designed to be repeated until the words stop feeling foreign.

Muscle Memory

The body's ability to encode repeated experiences into automatic physical responses — including emotional and trauma responses. Your body remembers what your mind has forgotten. This is why talk therapy alone often cannot resolve inherited patterns — the pattern lives in the tissue, not just the thought. The body must be included in the integration process.

Further reading: Dr Joe Dispenza — Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

Nervous System Regulation

The process of bringing the autonomic nervous system back into a state where it can respond to present reality rather than replaying inherited or historical threat patterns. Most inherited trauma lives not in the conscious mind but in the nervous system — which is why cognitive understanding alone rarely resolves it. The four integration practices in this system (EFT, ACT, Guided Journalling, Mirror Rituals) are designed to work at the nervous system level, not just the cognitive level.

NLP — Neuro-Linguistic Programming

The study of how language and thought patterns shape behaviour. Originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Fiona's foundational training modality, extended through Shamanic NLP.

Oogenesis

The biological process by which a woman's eggs are formed while she is still a foetus inside her own mother's womb. Means every person physically existed — at a cellular level — inside their grandmother's body. The feminine is literally where you began.

Personality — Personal-Reality

In conventional use, personality describes the characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that make a person who they are — often treated as fixed. In the Archetypal Integration Method™, personality is reframed as personal-reality — the unique version of reality your filters create. Fred The Head teaches that your experience of reality is not reality itself but a filtered, compressed, personalised version of what actually happened — shaped by your memories, beliefs, values, decisions, meta programs, and inherited archetypal wounds. Your personality is the output of those filters, not a fixed identity. Change the filters, change the personal-reality, change the personality. This is why the Archetypal Integration system maps wounds rather than personality types — because wounds can heal. Personality types cannot. Labels are permanent. Filters are not.

Polarity

The natural dynamic between masculine and feminine energy. When healthy: interdependence, complementary strengths, sacred partnership. When collapsed: independence glorified, interdependence shamed, intimacy tangled with fear.

Polarity Pendulum

Maps the swing between masculine and feminine expressions — how wounds push people to extremes rather than allowing integrated flow between both poles.Fiona's adaptation of a base model of Functionality from Remi Pearson.

Protector Child Self

One of the two parts at the Faultline. The younger part of the self that froze at the moment of wounding and has been running survival strategies ever since — strategies that were brilliant then but are outdated now.

RAS — Reticular Activating System

The part of the brain that filters incoming sensory information and decides what reaches conscious awareness. The "red car principle" — once you tell it what matters, it shows you that everywhere.

ResponsAbility

Conventionally, responsibility is framed as an obligation or blame — something you should carry, often loaded with guilt when you can't. In the Archetypal Integration Method™, responsibility is reframed as Response-Ability — your ability to respond. This ability is not fixed. It changes with age, with skill, with circumstances, with healing, and with the resources available to you. A five-year-old does not have the same response-ability as a thirty-year-old. A person in survival mode does not have the same response-ability as a person who is resourced and safe. Through the lens of Fred The Head, your response-ability is determined by your filters — and filters can be updated. As you clear inherited wounds and expand your awareness, your ability to respond expands with it. ResponsAbility is not about blame for the past. It is about capacity in the present.

Shadow

Carl Jung's term for the parts of ourselves that we suppress, deny, or hide in order to be accepted. They do not disappear — they run the show from underneath. In this system, mapped as sixty specific Shadow Beliefs attached to sixty specific archetypes.

Shadow Belief

The unconscious limiting belief each archetypal wound carries. The specific sentence your nervous system has been repeating — often for generations — without you ever consciously choosing it. Example: "If I can't provide, I have no worth" (The Failed Provider).

Shadow Work

The practice of consciously engaging with the parts of yourself you have suppressed, denied, or hidden — the parts Carl Jung called the Shadow. Shadow work is any process that brings these hidden parts into awareness so they can be witnessed, understood, and ultimately integrated rather than continuing to run your life from underneath.

In the Archetypal Integration system, shadow work is structured rather than abstract. Each of the 68 archetypes carries a specific Shadow Belief paired with a specific Sovereign Reframe. The shadow is not defeated — it is reclaimed. The energy that was distorted by the wound is the same energy that powers your sovereign expression.

Pull a card to meet your shadow · Learn about the AIM™ methodology

Shamanic NLP

The practice combining the linguistic and behavioural rigour of NLP with the intuitive, body-centred, spirit-connected depth of shamanic traditions. Learn more about Shamanic NLP →

Source Amnesia

The phenomenon of remembering information but forgetting where it came from. In the context of personal development and healing work, source amnesia occurs when concepts, frameworks, and insights are passed from teacher to student to social media post to AI training data without attribution, until the original source is lost entirely. Accelerated by AI-generated content that assembles fragments of other people's work without accountability. Fiona Ellis identifies source amnesia as a systemic integrity problem and maintains a living Source Reference Register to combat it. Read more →

Sovereign

Self-governing. Having full authority over your own choices, energy, and expression — not because external circumstances permit it, but because you have reclaimed the internal territory that was colonised by inherited patterns, survival strategies, and other people's rules.

In this system, sovereign is the integrated expression of an archetypal wound once it has been healed. Not the opposite of the shadow — the same energy, reclaimed and restored. The fire that burned you becomes the fire that lights the way.

Sovereign Reframe

The integrated belief offered as the replacement for each Shadow Belief. Not positive thinking — a genuine reframe that honours both the wound and the wisdom. Example: "My worth is inherent. Providing is a gift, not a transaction" (The Failed Provider).

Somatic Healing

Healing that works through the body, not just the mind. From the Greek soma — body. The recognition that trauma, emotion, and inherited patterns are stored in the physical body as tension, pain, posture, breath restriction, and automatic responses — and that the body must be included in the healing process for change to hold. Talk therapy engages the cognitive mind. Somatic healing engages the tissue, the nervous system, and the felt experience of being alive.

In the Archetypal Integration system, every integration practice includes a somatic component — EFT tapping works directly on the meridian system, Mirror Rituals engage the visual and vocal body, and Embodied Parts Integration™ is a fully somatic process. The body is not separate from the healing. The body IS the healing.

Further reading: Bessel van der Kolk — The Body Keeps the Score

SphEars of Influence

Fiona's framework for the concentric circles of relational impact in your life — the spheres of the people who impact you from inner intimacy outward to acquaintances.

Spiritual Awakening

The moment — or season — when the inherited patterns, survival strategies, and borrowed beliefs stop working and something deeper demands to be met. Not a destination. Not a single event. A recurring threshold that asks you to let go of who you were taught to be and step into who you actually are.

In the Archetypal Integration framework, spiritual awakening is not the end of the work — it is the beginning of integration. The awakening shows you what has been running beneath the surface. The Spiral is how you do something about it.

Spirituality

The lived experience of connection to something larger than the individual self — whether you call it God, Source, Universe, Energy, or simply the part of existence that cannot be measured but can be felt. Not religion. Not dogma. Not a set of rules someone else wrote. Spirituality is advanced science that hasn't been fully measured yet. The gap between what we know and what we can prove is where spirituality lives — and that gap is closing.

Suppress-or-Explode Cycle

The civilisational pattern of having exactly two settings for emotion: suppress it or explode it. No middle. No release valve. No culturally normalised way of moving emotional energy through the body safely. The toothpaste lid moment — when someone gets the full weight of the Can of Worms dumped on them in a single explosive moment they did nothing to deserve. On the other side, the implosion — people who collapse inward rather than explode outward. Fiona Ellis teaches that the suppress-or-explode cycle is how civilisations regress, while the diffuse-and-direct pathway is how they evolve. Read more →

TCI Deep State Repatterning™

An adaptation of Time Line Therapy®. Used as one of the inputs into Fiona's expanded Integrated Timeline Therapy™.

Three Core Global Wounds

Victorian Era Wound (Spirit vs Body), Industrial Factory Wound (Being vs Doing), Feminism & Polarity Collapse (Women vs Men). The three civilisational fractures that created the soil from which all sixty archetypes and five Family Culture Wounds grow.

Time Line Therapy®

Tad James's original NLP time-based clearing modality (two words, registered trademark). One of Fiona's certified modalities. Distinct from Fiona's adaptation Integrated Timeline Therapy™ (one word).

TNT Model

Fiona's framework mapping three masculine archetypes: Threatening (overcorrected aggression), Non-Threatening (suppressed and shamed — told to "sit still, look pretty"), and Take-Charge (integrated sovereign masculine). The Non-Threatening wound is the lived experience of an entire generation of men.

Victorian Era Wound

The first Core Global Wound: Spirit vs Body. The inherited cultural patterning of repression, purity, and the fear of desire. Born when morality became a survival strategy because churchgoers bathed more often and died less — not from God, from soap.

Wound Origin

The historical and cultural context in which each archetypal pattern was formed. Every archetype traces back to one or more of the three Core Global Wounds and five Family Culture Wounds.