Walking a Mile in My Nervous System
A survivor-focused workbook that explains what trauma really does to the body, identity, and inner voice — and how to begin reclaiming autonomy.
Open Workbook →Survivor-Centered, Advocacy-Driven, Trauma-Science Grounded
Before We Begin, Ask Yourself This:
What happens inside a child’s body at the exact moment trauma hits? Not in adulthood. Not in a therapist’s office. Not in an ACEs score. Right there. In real time.
What does their heart do? Their stomach? Their breath? Their sense of self? What are they possibly thinking about their safety at that moment?
What does a child feel when they are raised inside addiction… when the adults they depend on are high, raging, vacant, or unpredictable… when they begin understanding they're LGBTQ in a home where love has conditions… when religion is used as a collar and leash instead of a foundation… when survival becomes their personality?
Science has tried to answer these questions:
- ACE studies map the long-term damage.
- Neuroscience explains hypervigilance.
- Psychology labels attachment wounds.
- Medical journals chart the toll on immunity, digestion, and brain development.
But none of those graphs capture what is actually happening in the body of a child whose entire central nervous system is being sculpted by fear.
I know what that feels like — because that was my childhood.
I Learned Trauma the Way Most Professionals Don’t: From Inside the Nervous System
I’m Robert. Before I ever began learning, before I earned my master’s in human services… before I studied trauma, attachment, identity formation, and complex PTSD… I was living inside the very conditions people write about; a brutally abusive and psychologically shaming house of traumas.
- Two parents addicted to heroin
- Unpredictable caregiving
- Chronic neglect
- Emotional volatility
- Violence
- LGBTQ identity suppression
- Spiritual manipulation
- Poverty
- Shame-conditioned survival strategies accompanied by consistent abandonment
I wasn’t learning trauma — I was surviving it.
And like every child in homes shaped by addiction, religion-as-control, or identity-based rejection, my nervous system adapted with perfect intelligence:
- hypervigilance
- emotional masking
- people-pleasing
- dissociation
- collapsing to stay safe
- reading danger before anyone else felt it
- learning that silence = safety
- learning that self-erasure = survival
These weren’t symptoms. They were skills — crafted by necessity.
If You Grew Up in Chaos, Addiction, or Conditional Love… Your Body Never Forgot
Maybe you’ve always felt “too sensitive.” Maybe your stomach clenches before you can explain why. Maybe you shut down during conflict. Maybe you over-apologize. Maybe you disappear in relationships. Maybe you don’t trust good things. Maybe you brace for the worst even when nothing is wrong.
You are not broken — you are adapted. Your reactions make perfect sense. Your nervous system did exactly what it had to do. You are the evidence of survival — not failure.
This Project Exists for Survivors Who Were Never Seen
This is a space for:
- Adults who grew up in the opioid epidemic
- Children of addicts who became the emotional adults at age 6
- Those who learned fear before language
- LGBTQ+ people raised in rejecting or religious environments
- Survivors of spiritual abuse and coercive authority
- People whose families still deny their truth — the scapegoats, the quiet ones, the “too dramatic” ones
- Anyone who carries trauma in their nervous system that never had a chance to heal
This isn’t a platform for pity. It’s a platform for power. Advocacy. Reclamation. Truth-telling. Science-based understanding. And survivor-led education that the world desperately needs.
Why I Built This
- Because survivors deserve the truth about their bodies.
- Because shame has stolen enough years.
- Because the opioid crisis created millions of invisible children who are now invisible adults.
- Because religious trauma is still dismissed as “hurt feelings.”
- Because LGBTQ kids are still being emotionally starved in their own homes.
- Because trauma is not a moral failure.
- Because your nervous system was never the enemy.
- Because you deserve language for what you lived through.
- Because someone should have explained all this to you decades ago.
- And because telling my story — truthfully, unapologetically — may help someone else survive their own.
What You’ll Find Here
- A Nervous System Timeline — my story told by developmental stage, paired with trauma science.
- Education for Survivors — clear explanations of hypervigilance, collapse, people-pleasing, and shame conditioning.
- Opioid Childhoods — understanding what your body learned growing up around addiction.
- Religious Trauma + LGBTQ Identity Harm — what it does to attachment, identity, and safety.
- Guides, Writings, and Tools — practical nervous-system literacy you can use immediately.
- Opportunities to Work With Me — a free, no-pressure consult call for people who want to understand their story through a trauma-informed, lived-experience lens.
The Words I Needed Decades Ago
Nothing about your survival responses is shameful. Nothing about your story is “too much.” You are not broken — you were never given safety. Your body kept you alive. Your adaptations were genius, not defects. And you deserve to reclaim the life that fear stole.
Welcome to a place built for survivors — by someone who knows the terrain intimately. This is where your story gets its language.