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Ep.17: When Love Becomes Culture: Translating RLT into Community Peace
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In this powerful episode, host Sarah Melissa Oswald sits down with therapist and peace facilitator Chiddie Anyasodo to explore her remarkable journey from oil and gas engineer to relational healer. Drawing on her background in engineering systems and her training in Relational Life Therapy (RLT), Chiddie has pioneered a groundbreaking approach to conflict resolution, transforming age-old community tensions in Nigeria through the creation of the “Five Masquerades” metaphor.
Chiddie shares how she helped a village locked in a 19-year conflict find common ground, peace, and even laughter by translating complex relational dynamics into cultural stories that resonated deeply with her community. From navigating patriarchal structures to disarming resistance and shame, Chiddie demonstrates how relational skills can heal not just couples, but entire communities.
This conversation is both inspiring and practical, a glimpse into how systemic change begins with relational courage, creativity, and compassion.
Chiddie Anyasodo is a UK based psychotherapist, conflict-resolution specialist, and founder of Chotayah, working at the point where psychoanalytic depth meets community peacebuilding.
She spent her early career in the high-stakes world of oil and gas with Schlumberger and Baker Hughes, leading real-time diagnostics and strategy across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. This experience honed her eye for the hidden relational dynamics that drive systemic failure. Identifying a critical gap in research on African relationship dynamics, she began a Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the University of Exeter. Alongside a thriving private practice, she serves in some of the UK’s most demanding clinical environments: within the NHS as a psychotherapist specialising in personality disorder and complex trauma, and as a therapist for a major UK local authority.
She is the creator of the “Five Masquerades,” a groundbreaking, culturally resonant translation of Relational Life Therapy’s losing strategies that changes behaviour without shame; in 2025 she helped catalyse a breakthrough de-escalation in a decades-long community conflict by pairing parity with accountability under a single, even code. Chiddie is the author of the forthcoming book The Festival of the Five Masquerades, anchors a growing curriculum, and is collaborating with the Relational Life Foundation to shape this work into trainable tools for couples, leaders, and communities worldwide.Show Notes: Scholarship application for RLT
Website: https://chotayah.com/
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