Welcome to Psychologlyph®
The purpose of this page:
This page is an overview of the Psychologlyph language and project. We are in the early stages of growing a movement; at this stage, we’re testing implementation and reach and building custom programming.
If you're here, that means you've been given the link to learn more and potentially become involved, whether as a potential collaborator, partner, or financial support. Thank you for being here. If you’d like to be involved, or bring classes, speaking events, or trainings to your audience, please reach out. We look forward to hearing from you. |
Below you'll discover,
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Let's begin
What is Psychologlyph®?
pronounced Psy-chol-o-glyph
(Shortened to Psycholly for younger audiences)
Psychologlyph® is a visual language created by Anna Fox Ryan to support Relational, Emotional and Mental Health, (REM Health). A library of linguistic images with their own grammar and syntax, these images and image series map the inner workings of psychology concepts, including emotional and relational dynamics. These visual, measurable, and customizable images help clarify feelings, behaviors, and experiences.
Anna has currently created a library of over 70 painted and over 200 sketched glyphs. Each Psychologlyph is reviewed and tested by mental healthcare professionals to ensure accuracy and clarity. These glyphs illustrate such subjects as:
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These are the tools I've been needing for years! |
Each Psychologlyph is partnered with text and video teachings to help learners in classrooms, therapy offices, or at home integrate the material. These Teaching materials include guided lessons, inquiry, and instructions on how to write/draw the glyphs and customize them to help learners integrate the concepts and express and understand their own experiences while integrating the concepts.
Concepts can be further integrated through the arts and sciences.
Artistic experiments provide a chance to expand upon each concept in practical and metaphorical forms. Artistic practices can include drawing, dialogue and role playing, movement and physical exploration, and emotional expression games.
To integrate scientific perspectives, expert speakers and teachers in fields of nutrition, biology, ecology, permaculture, and physics are just some of the subjects that can be brought in to demonstrate how psychological and behavioral concepts are part of the fractal network that includes all building blocks and forces of life.
"Anna's Psychologlyphs turn mental health concepts into usable tools. I wish I’d encountered this work when I was in graduate school. Anna has made clear to me core concepts that were not clear in text books. I’ve read tons of books throughout my training and career and these cards are synthesizing these concepts in a much more digestible way. This is a very powerful gift Anna is putting out into the world.”
— Lia Moran, M.ED.
Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Administrator for Maternal & Child Health Home Visiting, for State of New Hampshire
Who are Psychologlyphs® for?
Psychologlyphs can benefit everyone. Psychologlyphs can be valuable tools for people across the neurotypical and neurodivergent spectrum: the glyphs transform complex, emotionally-charged relational concepts and experiences into bite-sized, easily digestible embodied awareness, allowing learners to intuitively grasp difficult emotional and psychological concepts. In informal trials, these images have been shown to expedite the psycho-education process while anchoring concepts in the learner’s personal experience for greater efficacy. Psychologlyphs bridge demographic gaps and barriers to support wider connection and collaborative potential: The abstract/non-objective, and simple imagery allows the same visual language to be delivered across identity, demographic, and language barriers. The neutral images provide structure to help facilitators and teachers guide their unique audiences, while also remaining adaptable and customizable to the needs of each unique student audience. This combination of structure with room for emergence has the combined benefit of helping the facilitators and teachers to avoid burnout, while allowing students room for autonomy and self-guided exploration within the constraints of each glyph. |
Psychologlyphs span generations. The visual language employed by the glyphs can be intuitively understood by people of any age.
A real-world example involves a mother who attended one of Anna’s presentations at the UVA children's Hospital. Her five-year-old son had spent his young life in and out of the hospital due to a chronic illness. To cope with the pain of his illness and treatments, he’d started dissociating. Although dissociating can lessen suffering in the moment, repeatedly dissociating can have far-ranging negative effects. Based on what she learned at the presentation, this mother showed her son the Psychologlyph that illustrates dissociation, along with another of Anna’s visual guides for centering in the body, the Centering Homing Beacon. Then they drew their own versions together and discussed what they meant. By using these tools, the child was able to intuitively understand the concept of dissociation and what it felt like, and was then able to practice recognizing when he might be doing it during his treatment and avoid it or return to his body with care and compassion. Psychologlyphs are gender neutral. The blueprint or game-play style of renderings offer a nonverbal interpretation of behavioral patterns, thoughts, and emotions and emphasize the structural logic behind personal and interpersonal patterns. Psychologlyphs also assist in clarifying multifaceted emotion streams and dynamic sequences, assisting those with strong or complex experiences in identifying the workable parts within the greater whole of their experience. This is especially helpful in responding to overwhelm. |
Responses from users & mental health experts:
Due to the clarity and visual strength of these images, this system is compassionate and highly accessible to diverse and marginalized populations, especially with the capacity to reach those who are visual learners and/or neurodiverse.”
— Kara Castle, LCSW, The Women's Initative Charlottesville Va
After twenty-five years as a senior manager with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and for several years more recently as a somatic psychotherapist in private practice, I discovered Anna Fox Ryan and her development of Psychologlyphs. She displays the same kind of gap-bridging entrepreneurship that DARPA has always supported in advanced technologies.
— B. Sosdian, MA, CCEP, Former Senior Manager with DARPA
“Yesterday’s community webinar was incredible. I can already see how useful it will be in different parts of my life. It would be amazing to have a Part 2 of this topic with Anna in the future to dive deeper!”
“It was epic!”
“I learned so much!”
— Attendees from the Dalai Lama Fellowship Program, at the University of Virginia, Contemplative Sciences Center
I attended most of the program presentations for the UVA Children's Hospital Mental Health Awareness Month, and Anna's presentation was the most impactful by far! |
This is very helpful. I am a therapist and I find Anna's work very essential and connecting. |
When are you publishing your book?! |
This is groundbreaking. |
Meet Anna Fox Ryan
Anna combines her BFA training as an illustrator from Savannah College of Art and Design with training in shamanic energy medicine from a two-year certification program with the Four Winds Society and medical anthropologist Alberto Villoldo PhD. To create her unique healing modality, Anna has combined this indigenous energy medicine gifted by the Q'ero shaman of the high Andes in Peru with Jungian Psychology and the ethics of clinical practice.
Anna creates Psychologlyphs from direct observation or embodied experience by observing and feeling the energy of experiences. Her visual art background allows her to translate these experiences into forensic maps of healing, including opportunities to transform patterns and pivot to new outcomes. |
She began creating Psychologlyphs as an adult to grow into a healthy relationship with her own feelings and responses to her family, friendships, and broader world, but quickly recognized that what she was creating was also the learning support and care she would have found invaluable as a young, sensitive child growing up in a neurodivergent household. She continues to map routes from dis-ease to ease in connection for her own understanding, awareness, compassion, safety, and wellbeing, and to support the same in others.
Anna has returned to her hometown of Charlottesville Virginia, where she now lives, works, and learns how to better love and serve her community and land. You can meet Anna's work as a fine artist at AnnaFoxRyan.com
Anna has returned to her hometown of Charlottesville Virginia, where she now lives, works, and learns how to better love and serve her community and land. You can meet Anna's work as a fine artist at AnnaFoxRyan.com
The Team
The following individuals contribute their consulting & contributions on a volunteer basis.
+ An advising board of Psychologists & Clinicians
Join The Waitlist
for Beta Testing
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