Core Relational Question
Can I rely on what I know, what you show me, and what God has revealed?
Relational ROOTS™
Where Are You, Relationally?
Relational ROOTS™ does not begin by asking, “What is wrong with you?” It begins with a different question: Where are you?
This is not a question about physical location. It is an invitation to awareness. Where are you emotionally? Where are you relationally? What is happening beneath your response? What did the experience come to mean to you? What are you reaching for, afraid of losing, or trying to protect?
The Relational ROOTS™ Assessment gives you a structured way to explore these questions within your relationship with yourself, others, or God. It organizes your reported impact across seven ROOTS, helping you recognize what may be carrying weight and where ROOT strain may have been exposed.
Relational ROOTS™ is a response-centered guided self-awareness framework for exploring how relational experiences take on meaning and shape responses across relationships with self, others, and God. It organizes reflection around seven relational ROOTS: Trust, Safety, Security, Connection, Importance, Acceptance, and Protection.
The seven ROOTS are not presented as a hierarchy or list of universal human needs. They are relational areas used to organize and explore what may be carrying weight within an experience.
Relational ROOTS™ is a guided self-awareness framework and is not a diagnosis, clinical evaluation, or replacement for licensed professional care.
The Seven Relational ROOTS
What Carries Weight Beneath Your Response?
Click or tap each ROOT in the interactive graphic below to learn what it represents and the relational question it helps you explore.
What This ROOT Represents
Trust
What can be relied upon within relationship.
How the Assessment Works
Four steps toward greater relational self-awareness.
Your reported experiences become a structured starting point for understanding where you are relationally.
01
Choose Your Focus
Select the relationship you want to explore: your relationship with yourself, others, or God.
02
Report Your Experience
Consider 49 relational experiences and report how deeply each one affects you.
03
Discover Your ROOTS
See your seven reported-impact scores and identify your Primary and Supporting ROOTS.
04
Grow with Intention
Use your Personalized Insight Journey to explore what may be carrying weight and consider a more intentional response.
ASSESSMENT PATHWAYS
Choose Where You Want to Begin.
Select the relationship you want to explore: your relationship with yourself, others, or God. Each assessment examines the same seven ROOTS within a different relational domain.
Available Now
Relationship with Self
Explore how you relate to your own thoughts, emotions, needs, decisions, worth, and responses through the seven Relational ROOTS™.
Start Self Assessment
Available Now
Relationship with Others
Explore how Trust, Safety, Security, Connection, Importance, Acceptance, and Protection may carry weight within your relationships with others.
Start Others Assessment
Available Now
Relationship with God
Explore how you experience and understand Trust, Safety, Security, Connection, Importance, Acceptance, and Protection within your relationship with God.
Start God Assessment
The Foundations of Relational ROOTS
A guided path toward relational self-awareness.
Relational ROOTS™ was created to help people better understand themselves before trying to change their relationships. Rather than assigning labels or personality types, it offers a guided path toward relational self-awareness by helping individuals examine what happened, what the experience came to mean, what may be carrying weight, and what their response may be trying to preserve, regain, or protect.
Why Relational ROOTS?
Relationships are influenced by more than communication alone. Relational self-awareness can help people notice what may be happening beneath a response and consider a more intentional way forward.
Who Is It For?
Relational ROOTS™ is for people who want to understand themselves more clearly within their relationship with Self, Others, or God and grow in how they respond to relational experiences.
What Makes It Different?
Relational ROOTS™ keeps the focus on the response that belongs to you. Rather than diagnosing another person or reducing you to a label, it helps you examine what happened, what it meant to you, what may be carrying weight, and what your response may be protecting.
What You'll Gain
- Greater relational self-awareness
- Language for what may be carrying weight
- Insight into protective responses
- Opportunities for more intentional growth
Research Foundation
Built on Research. Designed for Real Life.
Relational ROOTS™ is an evidence-informed framework developed in conversation with established research in psychology, relational science, family systems, meaning-making, emotion, and related fields. It does not replace or reproduce these perspectives. Relational ROOTS™ offers its own way of defining and organizing relational experiences across Self, Others, and God through a response-centered process.
Evidence-Informed
Informed by established psychological and relational research while remaining clear about where the Relational ROOTS™ framework begins.
Distinct Framework
Relational ROOTS™ is not a renamed version of one existing theory. It defines and organizes seven proposed ROOTS across Self, Others, and God.
Response-Centered
The framework keeps attention on what a person can examine and influence: their experience, meaning, response, and opportunity for intentional growth.
Actively Developing
Relational ROOTS™ is being refined through continued research, professional review, participant understanding, and assessment testing.
Founder & Creator
Javonté Rice
Founder & Creator of Relational ROOTS™
Javonté Rice conceptualized and developed Relational ROOTS™ through study, reflection, faith, and real relational experiences, with a growing focus on understanding what may be happening beneath the responses people bring into relationships.
Drawing from a background in psychology and independent study of relational and behavioral research, he developed Relational ROOTS™ as a structured way to explore seven proposed relational ROOTS (Trust, Safety, Security, Connection, Importance, Acceptance, and Protection), across relationships with Self, Others, and God.
His aim is not to create another label for people. It is to give people a clearer place to begin: locating where they are, understanding what may be carrying weight, and taking greater ownership of the response available to them now.