Steady ground, and the help to hold it.
Anchor Hold Institute builds tools and publishes original research for people pursuing integrity, accountability, and restoration.
We help people pursuing integrity and restoration find steady ground and hold it, through research, resources, and tools for lasting freedom.
We work on two things, and the second exists to keep the first honest.
Tools you can use daily
We build digital tools for self-reflection and accountability: simple enough to use on a hard day, honest enough to be worth using on a good one. Every design decision is made in favor of the person who almost did not open the app today.
Research anyone can read
We publish original research on integrity, vigilance, and restoration, drawing on behavioral science and the Christian tradition alike. We say plainly what the evidence does and does not yet support, including where it does not yet support us.
Built to answer to the work
Anchor Hold Institute is a nonprofit corporation with its own governance, independent of any business its founder runs. That separation exists so the tools can be shaped by what helps people, and by nothing else.
Our first tool
SPIRAL Check
Behavior tends to spiral: downward toward a low point, or upward toward restoration. A spiral needs a fixed center to turn around. SPIRAL Check is a daily check-in that helps you notice which direction you are moving, measured against your own baseline rather than anyone else’s.
It tracks honest check-ins rather than perfect days, on purpose. A streak you can only keep by lying is worse than no streak at all.
SPIRAL Check supports sexual integrity. It is a tool for self-reflection and accountability, not for treatment or diagnosis.
Visit spiralcheck.org
From the Institute
Vigilance, Virtue, and Restoration
Our current paper proposes the framework behind SPIRAL Check and sets it against the existing literature on relapse prevention, self-monitoring, shame and guilt, and social support. It is a framework proposal, which means it argues for a design and names what still needs testing.
In progress. Sign up below and we will send it when it publishes.
Why “Anchor Hold”
An anchor holds a vessel steady in water that will not hold still. An anchorhold was something else: a small room built into the wall of a medieval church, where a person lived a life of fixed prayer and daily self-examination. It had two windows. One opened onto the sanctuary. One opened onto the street, so that anyone passing could stop and talk.
Withdrawn, but not cut off. That is the posture we are after.
Fund the next paper, and the next tool
Anchor Hold Institute is a Washington nonprofit corporation. Gifts pay for research, development, and the ordinary costs of keeping this work running and reaching the people who need it.
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