A Mile in My Nervous System

About Robert

I’m Robert — a trauma-informed professional with a Master of Science in Human Services (Leadership & Organizational Management), a Qualified Professional (Q.P.), and a North Carolina Certified Peer Support Specialist (C.P.S.S.). Before pivoting fully into behavioral health, I worked as a licensed nurse. That clinical foundation gave me a grounded understanding of trauma physiology, crisis stabilization, and the ways chronic stress reshapes the body as much as the mind.

But the truth is this: my deepest training came from lived experience — years of surviving self-defeating and self-sabotaging behaviors, systemic inequalities, and complex developmental trauma. I’ve spent decades unpacking and studying religious and identity-based psychological harm, and the lifelong impact of growing up LGBTQ+ in environments that taught me to question my worth simply for existing.

My work centers people who know these wounds intimately — those who understand the oppressive, looping space trauma can create, whether self-generated through survival patterns or reinforced by manipulative systems:

• LGBTQ+ survivors
• Individuals navigating the aftermath of spiritual abuse or conversion efforts
• Adults unpacking childhood environments that were chaotic, rejecting, or unsafe
• Anyone working to rebuild self-trust after years of being told their reactions were either “too little” or “too much”

When I went back to school in 2016 to pursue a degree in human services, I was at the end of my rope — desperate for meaning and purpose. That period became the start of an intensive, immersive journey into the study of trauma, attachment, nervous-system responses, shame conditioning, survival-based behavioral patterns, and anything connected to Complex PTSD.

I don’t approach trauma as pathology or defect. I see it for what it is: the body’s adaptation to constant fear and impossible conditions.

Trauma survivors aren’t broken. Their nervous system did exactly what it had to do to survive an environment it was never meant to endure.

My role is to help others understand those patterns without shame, reconnect with the parts of themselves that were forced underground, and learn practical ways to regulate, ground, and respond — not from fear, but from agency.

No jargon. No pathologizing. No “just think positive” shortcuts.

Just honest, evidence-informed tools you can use to reclaim your story and build a life that feels like it finally belongs to you — not to the people or systems that once controlled it.

*My use of the acronym LGBTQ is used for the sake of brevity and to reflect language that is relatively familiar to readers and visitors to this page. I recognize, however, that this acronym cannot fully encompass the rich diversity of identities, experiences, and communities whose sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression may differ from society’s expected norms. My intent is to use accessible terminology while honoring and respecting the individuality of all people beyond the limits of this shorthand.