His assessment revealed
The Fixer Mask
Underneath: fear, frustration, and a longing for partnership that his own fixing was blocking. His nervous system had learned that managing everything was the only way to stay safe.
The Inner Compass Assessment
Your nervous system has a plan for every situation.Uncover the survival code and rewire it.
A clinical assessment that uncovers the source of your attachment style and translates it into precision solutions to rewire your relationships.
You’ve done the work.
You’ve read the books.
You understand your patterns.
And yet they’re still running.
Your partner’s tone shifts.
The defensiveness rises before you can catch it.
They go quiet.
Your brain starts scanning for what you did wrong.
You get feedback.
Instead of hearing it, you shut down.
The worst part isn’t the reaction. It’s what comes after. The shame. The overthinking. The voice that says, “I thought I healed this. Why do I keep doing this?”
You’re not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it was trained to do.
Every reaction you can’t explain, every fight that starts before you realize it, every wall that goes up when you want it down. That is not a character flaw. That’s your nervous system running a program it wrote when you were too young to choose.
It runs automatically. It runs fast. And it won’t change just because you understand it.
That’s why the Inner Compass doesn’t ask you to try harder. It shows you the system. Then gives you the tools to change it.
“Anxiously attached” is not a diagnosis. It’s a bumper sticker.
The NARM Relational Soundboard
Every relationship has a soundboard, and most people are unaware of the mix that’s playing and running the dynamics. Once you see it, it can be remixed.
Five channels, one for each core need. A fader at the top is a need that was met. Pull one down far enough and it fires, up through the five MAPSS layers and up through the body beside them.
How to read the board3:06
Pull down the need that went the most unmet
Top 7, fully metBottom 1, unmetRed zone 3.5 and under, fires
The vagus nerve, brainstem to gut. Read down, it maps the moment. It fires body up.
- What your partner sees
The move your partner actually meets.
- Mind
The scan, and what it’s biased to find.
- Attribution
The meaning welded onto the moment.
- Perspective
The part of you that runs the strategy.
- Sentiment
The body’s first move, before a thought.
- Story
The need, and whether it was met.
Pull a fader on the board below, or load a mix. The climb shows here, one layer at a time.
Drag a fader, or use the arrow keys on it.
Primary Drivers
Trust and Attunement
Nothing on this board is low enough to fire. The two lowest faders are still the Primary Drivers, because every board has two.
This board is a demonstration. The Inner Compass builds yours from your own answers, names your two Primary Drivers, and reads the whole climb back to you, layer by layer.
The science behind the assessment
The Inner Compass maps.
Most relationship assessments are flat. They produce a label. Anxious-avoidant. Pursuer-distancer. Type 4. The Inner Compass maps five layers, down through nervous system, narrative, and identity. At the bottom is the original developmental need that fires the whole sequence. The map has a name: MAPSS™.
Each layer is grounded in a separate body of research. The integration is what’s proprietary. The layers are not.
Layer 1
Mind
Where perception begins. The brain and nervous system do not passively register events. They are actively primed to scan for specific patterns. Addicted to certainty. Seeking confirmation of what they already believe. The trigger is as much about what your brain is looking for as what externally occurs.
Karl Friston’s predictive processing model (2010, refined throughout the 2020s) describes the nervous system as a prediction machine, scanning for confirmation of what it already believes about threat and safety. Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 (Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011) is the cognitive economy that makes the scan run in milliseconds. The reaction you experience as instinct is the output of a model that was calibrated before you could name it.
Layer 2
Attribution
The meaning the brain assigns. And the secondary emotion that fires with it.
What couples fight about is rarely what’s actually underneath. Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy (Hold Me Tight, 2008; The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, 2012) demonstrates that the secondary emotion (anger, contempt, defensiveness, withdrawal) is the visible layer of a protective stack with primary attachment emotion underneath. Christensen and Heavey’s demand-withdraw research (1990s onward, with three decades of replication) anchors the interactional pattern this layer produces. The Attribution layer surfaces both the meaning the brain wrote and the reactive emotion that fires with it.
Layer 3
Perspective
Identity organized around protective roles.
Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model (Internal Family Systems Therapy, 1995; IFS Skills Training Manual, 2018) maps the protector, manager, firefighter, and exile structure that activates under perceived threat. Each protector earned its job in development. The fight in the room is not between two people. It is between two protectors meeting each other, both running ancient code. The Perspective layer names the hardened vantage point so it can stop being identity and start being information.
Layer 4
Sentiment
The primary emotion underneath the protector. And the autonomic state holding it.
Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory (The Polyvagal Theory, 2011) maps three nervous system states: ventral vagal (safe and social), sympathetic (mobilized for fight or flight), and dorsal vagal (collapsed, frozen, shut down). The Sentiment layer pairs the primary affect (fear, grief, shame, helplessness) with the autonomic substrate that holds it. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (2014) supplies the longitudinal evidence that this layer runs the show whether the conscious mind acknowledges it or not.
Layer 5
Story
The original developmental conclusion. The thing that wrote everything above it.
Laurence Heller’s NeuroAffective Relational Model (Healing Developmental Trauma, 2012) identifies five core organizing needs that wound early in development: Connection, Attunement, Trust, Autonomy, and Love & Sexuality. Bowlby and Ainsworth’s attachment research (1960s to 70s), extended through Mikulincer and Shaver’s adult attachment work (Attachment in Adulthood, 2007), supplies the relational template the wounding gets organized around. Dan McAdams’ narrative identity research (The Stories We Live By, 1993) names the chapter-writing function the mind runs on top. The Story layer reaches the source code.
The quantitative instruments
- The Couple Satisfaction Index (Funk and Rogge, Journal of Family Psychology, 2007). A 16-item relationship satisfaction measure used in clinical research worldwide. Outperforms older instruments on precision and discrimination at the low and high ends of the satisfaction distribution.
- The Differentiation of Self Inventory-Revised (Skowron and Schmitt, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2003). Measures four subscales of Murray Bowen’s differentiation construct: Emotional Reactivity, I-Position, Emotional Cutoff, and Fusion with Others. Produces the demand-withdraw read.
- A custom-developed NARM survival style measure. Maps to Heller’s five core needs and produces the Love-Sexuality, Trust, Autonomy, Attunement, and Connection scores that anchor the soundboard.
What the assessment produces
A symptom checklist produces a label. The Inner Compass produces a clinical map and a matched intervention path. For each MAPSS layer the report names the body cue, the protective part, the developmental anchor, and a specific re-authoring move. For couples, two maps converge into a single map of the cycle, with mirror-and-mission moves for each partner at each layer.
The output is not a diagnosis. It is a map of the nervous system that built the strategies, the strategies that built the patterns, and the patterns that show up in the relationship.
The work is naming the architecture clearly enough that what was running automatically can become something the person chooses.
Frameworks integratedFriston predictive processing · Kahneman dual-process cognition · Johnson EFT · Christensen demand-withdraw · Schwartz IFS · Porges polyvagal · van der Kolk somatic trauma · Heller NARM · Bowlby-Ainsworth-Mikulincer-Shaver attachment · McAdams narrative identity · Bowen differentiation · Funk-Rogge CSI · Skowron-Schmitt DSI-R
Here’s what this looks like in practice.
One couple came in stuck in the same fight on repeat. He was hyper-independent, managing everything to prevent her anxiety from escalating. She was conflict-avoidant, shutting down the moment his tone shifted.
Her assessment revealed
The Mask of The Silent Wall
Underneath: loneliness and a longing for safety that her silence was preventing. Her system treated withdrawal as the only available protection.
Neither one was the problem. The loop was the problem. And neither could see it until it was mapped.
They used the matched repair phrases, the weekly rituals, and the mask replacement protocols. Within weeks, clients report reduced hypervigilance, increased vulnerability, and fewer shutdown cycles.
And in the most resistant case, where only one partner did the assessment, the person who did the work shifted so visibly that the skeptic eventually opted into the Couples Upgrade on their own.
★★★★★
“Felt like someone finally translated our fights into English. The Inner Compass didn’t just point out problems. It showed me why my nervous system reacts the way it does and what healing would actually look like. Then the Couples Report mapped our loop and gave us clear moves to interrupt it. Real direction, fast.”
★★★★★
“I went in skeptical. I’ve done years of therapy. But seeing my survival driver written out. The exact belief running underneath everything. It stopped me cold. That alone was worth it.”
Inside the reports
See the pattern you’ve never been able to name.
Tap any page to read it.
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You might be thinking…
“I already know my patterns. I don’t need another assessment.”
Knowing you’re anxiously attached doesn’t tell you that your nervous system scans for threat before you’re aware of a thought. It doesn’t show you that your brain treats each unexamined reaction as evidence the old story is correct, reinforcing the wiring every time. You don’t need more information. You need to see your operating system.
“Can’t I just work on this myself?”
You’ve been reading the books and journaling. And you’re still here because the patterns haven’t changed. That’s not a discipline problem. It’s because insight alone doesn’t rewire your nervous system. Your brain runs its survival algorithm before conscious thought arrives. Insight without structured intervention is expensive self-awareness.
“What if my partner won’t do it?”
This works as an individual assessment. You don’t need your partner to participate. In fact, many people take it solo. The shift in their own patterns is visible enough that their partner eventually asks to take it too. Change in one nervous system changes the dynamic for both.
This is for you if
- You’ve done the surface-level work and you know something deeper is driving your patterns.
- You’re tired of managing symptoms without seeing the code underneath.
- You want a structured, private way to understand your wiring and start changing it.
- You’re ready to stop guessing and see the full system on a page.
This isn’t for you if
- You’re looking for another quiz to screenshot and forget about.
- You want reassurance, not clarity.
- You’re not willing to look at what’s actually driving the pattern.
“Psychology is long on problems and short on solutions. My aim is an assessment that reveals the source code of each couple’s patterns and links them to the correct solutions, so they can actually change their life and relationships.”
Christian J. Charette, LMFT
What you’ll receive.
See the pattern you’ve never been able to name. Your full report maps the hidden belief driving your reactions, the protective mask you wear, and the exact loop that plays out every time you get triggered. In plain language.
Get tools that actually work for your brain. Not a generic checklist. Targeted exercises chosen because your assessment shows you need them. Calm your nervous system, break shame spirals, and start responding instead of reacting.
Understand what’s really driving you. Your 5 Truths Profile reveals the deeper forces shaping your relationships. Which one runs your life, and how they push and pull against each other.
Start breaking the loop today. Your Liberation Guide gives you daily practices matched to your specific pattern. Small shifts that prove to your nervous system that a new way of being is safe.
New wiring, on autopilot. 12 personalized affirmations you record in your own voice, plus a playlist built for your brain. Listen while you drive, cook, or walk. Your nervous system takes it in without you having to add another task.
Couples Upgrade Available
Your partner takes their own assessment. Then you both get The Couples Compass Report. Your cycle mapped together, showing why you keep getting stuck in the same fight. Plus exact phrases to repair in the moment and a weekly ritual to rebuild connection.
$79
Immediate access. No sales call. No waiting list.
Your nervous system ran the loop today.It will run it again tomorrow.
See your Inner Compass. See what’s driving you.
Take the Inner Compass · $79Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Building on this, until you radically accept that The Map Is Not the Territory, real intimacy will escape you within and without, and you call that fate too.
Christian J. Charette, LMFT
Couple Forward
The Inner Compass Assessment is educational and informational. It is not psychotherapy, counseling, or medical care, and does not create a therapist-client relationship.
