"If I give in on anything, I betray who I am."
- The experience
- Values that truly matter to you.
- The certainty
- Any nuance feels like defeat, and you become more and more alone.
Open Complexity Model
Cultivating amplexity: from fear to love.
Making human complexity livable.
The Open Complexity Model is a framework for understanding and working with inner and relational conflict. It focuses on the moment an interpretation becomes a certainty and starts deciding for you, and on how to open it without denying what you lived. Grounded in clinical practice and doctoral research on cognitive closure and prejudice.
Validating your experience doesn’t oblige you to confirm the interpretation through which you’re living it.
F.A.R.O. is a rescue tool: four steps to avoid reacting on autopilot when a conversation heats up.
Starting point
Complex times require learning to live in complexity.
When complexity frightens us, the tendency is to close it with certainties. The OCM proposes another way out: cultivating the capacity to inhabit it.
Where it shows up
Inner conflict
Couples
Family
Groups
The same mechanism, in different conflicts.
"If they loved me, they’d notice what I need."
- The experience
- Loneliness, disappointment, needs that go unseen.
- The certainty
- A total conclusion about the other and the relationship, and every argument becomes a trial.
"You can’t talk politics with my father anymore."
- The experience
- Arguments that end badly, again and again.
- The certainty
- "That’s just how he is, nothing can be done." The whole relationship is reduced to one topic.
"If they don’t speak up, they’re on the other side."
- The experience
- You need to feel your people are with you.
- The certainty
- Silence is read as betrayal, and friendship becomes a test.
Which part of what you’re living belongs to the experience, which part to your interpretation, and what possibilities disappear when you treat them as the same thing?
Did you recognize yourself in any of these? Start with F.A.R.O.
Get F.A.R.O. free
The mechanism
What begins as an experience can end up governing your relationships.
Having interpretations is inevitable. The problem begins when one of them stops being a provisional reading and starts functioning as reality itself.
- 01
Experience
Something hurt you, threatened you or outraged you. That was real.
- 02
Interpretation
You build an explanation: what happened, who the other person is, what it means.
- 03
Certainty
The explanation stops being revised. It’s no longer a reading: it’s reality.
- 04
Polarization
The world shrinks to two sides. Nuance looks like betrayal or naïveté.
- 05
Reactivity
You stop responding and start reacting: attacking, defending, withdrawing.
- 06
Loss of connection
People, conversations and options end up on the other side.
The OCM doesn’t replace a negative interpretation with a more positive one. It works on the moment an interpretation closes and starts taking the place of the whole experience.
That’s why "listen more" or "accept the other" usually isn’t enough: they work on behavior, while the closure stays intact.
In the OCM, the search for certainty is understood as a resource of fear: a way of simplifying complexity to make it predictable.
The research base
Closure isn’t a fixed trait. It can be worked on.
In my doctoral research I evaluated an 8-week mindfulness program with 60 participants randomly assigned to a practice group and a control group. At the end, those who took part showed:
a lower need for cognitive closure,
less generalized prejudice, including rejection of people on the left and on the right,
more empathy and openness to experience, and a less threatening view of the world.
The control group showed none of these changes. It’s a small study and it didn’t evaluate the OCM, which came later: what it contributes is evidence that closure can soften with practice. The OCM is built on that foundation.
The pattern of closure
F.E.A.R.: four movements by which what was open closes.
When a situation hurts or threatens, the mind simplifies to protect itself. That defensive simplification has a recognizable shape. Seeing it clearly is the first step to not getting caught in it.
Fuse
Experience fuses with interpretation. What you felt and what you concluded become one thing.
Enclose
The explanation stops being revised. Any new fact confirms what you already knew.
Antagonize
The world splits into two sides and the other becomes an adversary.
Rupture
The connection breaks or cools. People and conversations end up on the other side.
The mirror
ClosesOpens
FuseExperience
EncloseReceive
AntagonizeOrient
RuptureSynchronize
From fear to love: from F.E.A.R. to E.R.O.S.
F.E.A.R. is a conceptual elaboration still in development within the Open Complexity Model.
The method
E.R.O.S.: four movements to open what has closed.
It isn’t a technique for winning arguments or avoiding them. It’s a way to move through conflict without losing yourself in it, and without losing the people who matter.
Experience
Register what is happening — in you, in the other, in the scene — before reducing it to a label.
In conflictNotice the activation before it speaks for you.
Receive
Host the experience without rushing to correct it, explain it or discharge it.
In conflictTolerate not having the last word.
Orient
Distinguish what happened, what you interpreted and what you closed. Widen understanding and recover paths.
In conflictSee more than two options where there were only two sides.
Synchronize
Respond in tune with the other through a possible, situated and responsible action. Without merging: your own.
In conflictSay what you think without closing the door.
Receiving the other’s doubt
When someone who thinks differently starts to doubt, you have two options: open a door for them or say "I told you so." The second feels fair, but it teaches them that doubting is costly. Part of the work is learning to make room for the other’s doubt, because that’s where any reconnection begins.
The method
E.R.O.S. is how what has closed is opened.
The direction
From fear to love.
The horizon
Making human complexity livable.
Moving from fear to love doesn’t mean no longer feeling fear. It means fear stops being the only authority from which you interpret, decide and relate.
Where it leads
Amplexity
Amplexity is the capacity to inhabit complexity without reducing it prematurely or being captured by it, and the way of understanding, relating and acting that expresses that capacity.
- 01
Simplicity
Simplicity gives us certainty.
- 02
Complexity
Complexity gives us depth.
- 03
Amplexity
Amplexity gives us the capacity to hold depth without losing direction.
Complexity is not overcome by reducing it. It is overcome by developing the capacity to embrace it.
Amplexity is a conceptual elaboration still in development within the Open Complexity Model.
It’s not about thinking differently
You can hold what you believe without it becoming a wall.
Your outrage may be legitimate, your wound real and your values firm. The OCM doesn’t dispute the content of what you believe. It works on four distinctions that closure erases.
Lucid distance is not automatic rupture
Sometimes stepping away is the healthy thing. The difference is whether you decide it or the closure does.
A boundary is not demonizing
You can say "this far and no further" without turning the other into an enemy.
Firmness is not closure
You can hold clear positions and still be able to listen.
Understanding is not conceding
Understanding why the other thinks that way doesn’t oblige you to agree.
An important caveat. This isn’t relativism or "everyone is a little bit right". Nor is it an invitation to tolerate mistreatment, violence or contempt. The goal is for your decisions about a relationship — including the decision to take distance — to be yours and lucid.
Start here · Free
F.A.R.O.: for the moment a conversation heats up.
A short tool within the E.R.O.S. method for moments of fear, crisis, uncertainty or emotional activation. It helps you interrupt the automatic reaction and recover your ability to choose — at a family dinner, in an argument with your partner or in front of a message that outrages you.
F
Freeze the automatic reactionPause before acting on the first impulse.
A
Accept what is happeningAcknowledge present reality without adding unnecessary resistance.
R
Recognize your agencyIdentify what lies within your responsibility and your ability to influence.
O
Orient your responseChoose the next action in line with your values, the context and the relationship.
Courses
Coming soon
Coming soon
Coming soon
Coming soon
From the model to practice.
The courses apply the OCM to different kinds of conflict. They all share the same promise: cultivating amplexity, from fear to love.
Core course · Opening first
Tools for personal and interpersonal conflict.
The starting point for every course. You learn to recognize when an interpretation becomes a certainty, to work with E.R.O.S. and to use F.A.R.O. in moments of activation.
By the end you’ll be able to:
- 1Recognize the moment an interpretation becomes a certainty, before it speaks for you.
- 2Hold a difficult conversation — political or personal — without it ending in attack or retreat.
- 3Say what you think firmly without turning the other into an enemy.
- 4Tell a boundary that protects from a rupture that shuts down.
- 5Decide which relationships to repair, how to do it and when distance is the lucid response.
- 6Receive the doubt or change of someone who thinks differently without humiliating them, so the opening has somewhere to stay.
It’s for you if…
You keep quiet about what you think with people you love, to avoid a fight.
A relationship broke or cooled over a difference, and it weighs on you.
You want to keep thinking what you think, but in a different way.
You notice your certainties are isolating you, even though you still believe in them.
It’s not for you if…
You’re looking for techniques to persuade or beat the other.
You expect the course to side with one camp.
You’re going through violence or an acute crisis: there, individual professional care comes first.
Coming soon: courses by area
Inner conflict
When the fight is with yourself: your certainties, your values and what it costs to hold them.
Let me know when it opensCouples conflict
When every argument becomes a test of the relationship.
Let me know when it opensFamily conflict
When a topic, a role or a history decides how you can be together.
Let me know when it opensGroup conflict
Teams, communities and organizations where difference has turned into sides.
Let me know when it opens
Sessions and groups
1:1
Groups
Working with the model in company.
Besides the courses, you can work on your specific situation through the OCM in individual sessions or in a therapeutic group.
Individual sessions
A space to work on what you are living through: what activates you, which closures repeat, and how to inhabit the situation without reducing it or being captured by it.
Therapeutic groups
Small groups that practice the E.R.O.S. method with others. The group is also where it is exercised: listening to other realities without losing your own orientation.
Format, frequency and fees are agreed in a first conversation.
Frequently asked questions
What people usually ask about the model.
What is the Open Complexity Model?
It’s a framework for understanding and working with the moment an interpretation becomes a certainty and starts deciding for us. It emerges from the intersection of clinical practice, research and philosophical work. Its method is E.R.O.S. and its horizon, making human complexity livable.
Where do I start?
With F.A.R.O., which is free and helps in the moments when the automatic reaction takes over. If you want to go deeper, the core course is the starting point for all the others.
Is this about becoming neutral or "lukewarm"?
No. Opening isn’t diluting. You can hold firm positions and, at the same time, keep the ability to listen, distinguish and connect.
Will I be asked to change my mind?
No. The OCM doesn’t assess whether your position is correct. It works on the way an interpretation became a certainty and started deciding for you. Many people end up thinking the same thing, but holding it differently.
What kinds of conflict is it for?
The same mechanism operates in inner, couple, family and group conflicts, and in politics too. That’s why there is a core course and courses that apply it to each area.
What if the problem is the other person, who won’t change?
The other person may not change. The work doesn’t depend on that: it’s about recovering your room to move — what you say, how, what boundaries you set, which relationships you sustain — even if the other side stays the same.
How is this different from cognitive therapy or mindfulness?
Cognitive therapy usually seeks more realistic or adaptive thoughts: swapping one interpretation for a better one. The OCM doesn’t try to replace your interpretation; it works on the moment it closed and could no longer be revised. Mindfulness is part of the method — it lives in Experience and Receive — but the OCM doesn’t stop at regulation: it carries that space into a question about what you interpreted, what you closed and how you want to respond in the concrete relationship.
Does it replace therapy?
No. It’s an educational and practice space. If you’re going through violence, an acute crisis or distress that overwhelms you, the right step is to seek individual professional care.
Invitation
You can start with a question.
Which relationships, conversations or possibilities ended up on the other side?
How could I hold what I believe without it costing me the people I love?
Which of my interpretations became a certainty and stopped being revised?