As a child, I grew up in a seemingly “normal” family and was very fortunate in some respects. I had the opportunity to attend good schools, play sports, be surrounded by knowledge and culture, live between the beach and the mountains, eat well, and have friends. But I don’t remember feeling normal. I don’t remember feeling the way I imagined the other children I spent time with outside my home felt.
I was a highly sensitive child. I could feel the leaves, the sea, the earth, the air, and animals, but also people: their emotions, their breathing, their hearts, and their souls. Life behind closed doors was a nightmare. Our home environment was deeply violent—across the broad spectrum of what is now recognized as child abuse. That sustained violence had a direct impact on my sensory processing system, which became dysregulated by the ongoing experience of threat, further intensified by my sensitivity. Despite my many fainting episodes and trips to the emergency room, doctors would only say that my electroencephalograms showed signs of hypersensitivity to even the slightest stimulus. Everything was fine, according to them.
My daily life unfolded between an appearance of normality to the outside world and the day-to-day struggle to survive in that home, with my parents—wounded, emotionally deprived adults who were still children themselves—with no other family, while neighbors and close friends looked the other way. I fell and got back up thousands of times. I went to bed exhausted from crying, tired and hopeless about the life I was living. But beyond that exhaustion, deep inside I knew that everything had a meaning, that life was much more than that pain. I was not a submissive child; I was rather defiant. Today, I believe that helped me, but it also brought me into conflict with a much more loving and peaceful part of myself, a part I had to set aside in order to adapt to my circumstances.
I wondered why people with a good, beautiful essence could behave in such harmful ways. What makes someone choose to keep copying and repeating destructive patterns rooted in deprivation? Or dissociate from their entire experience and focus on material things? Or live in a bubble of appearances and lies that not even their own children will be able to sustain later on?
What makes some people, more than others, somatize these experiences into illness? What makes others carry the emotional deprivation, anger, fear, and pain of their early years—or those of their parents or grandparents—into their work environment, their relationships, or the way they lead a company or a country? And what makes a few, instead, choose to rise and begin unraveling the tangled threads that have been woven within their family and society for years?
I took responsibility for my own story. I have looked within myself in spirals—according to what my body was able to hold at each stage, and what my mind was able to understand and accept. I began by studying metaphysics and later explored different scientific fields, seeking to understand how unresolved childhood trauma can be transformed in the gentlest, most harmonious, and most constructive way possible—those unresolved wounds that lead so many adults to live empty lives, while we continue placing on children the burden of carrying the consequences of so much adult neglect.
I learned that living in victim mode does not help; it harms us, and we end up harming those around us. I learned how our mind can elevate us and, at the same time, destroy us, and that when we allow the heart to lead, the mind expands, feels safe, and can activate other functions that remain silenced without that connection. I came to understand how our sensory perception can be used to control through fear, but also to create harmony and abundance from a place of inner peace and trust.
Part of the success of my journey in overcoming adversity was, from the very beginning of my life, learning to embrace every beautiful moment, even if I could only find it for a few minutes: in nature, in books, in sports, in music, in writing poetry, in daydreaming about something beautiful, and in laughter with friends.
If you are still in the mud, in confusion, fear, or exhaustion, I hope my story inspires you and encourages you to rise. It is worth it—I did it, and so have many others. Today, I live a life that, as a child, I could never have imagined possible. I have found beauty and harmony in transforming life crises into creative evolution.
Professionally, for years I combined leading teams as a specialist in logistics and international transport with workshops, volunteering, and supporting others in their well-being and personal growth in my free time. But life found a way to speak loudly, calling me to live in greater alignment with my story and my purpose, and to devote myself wholeheartedly to deepening both my work with people and my research—with the aim of helping to put an end to child abuse and to the unmet needs of the wounded children who still live within today’s adults.
So I left behind a comfortable stage of my life, with a secure and good income, and committed to building my own business. From there, the Phi Method — The Power to Transform (Yourself) was born, both through the deep individual work of the Transformation Programs and the personalized group experiences of One Shot.
I have become, for other people and organizations, the person who shares the method and provides the kind of support I would have loved to receive, both personally and professionally. And that is also thanks to the great teachers I have had, and continue to have, along the way.
I don’t believe there is a magic formula, but for me, one of the key ingredients is understanding that transformation is not a therapy: it is a process of learning about ourselves and our human potential.
I do what I do because I know—from personal experience, from my work supporting others, and from my professional training—that the legacy that perpetuates violence in parenting and in society as a whole can be transformed by supporting both children and their environment. Because every person who chooses to take responsibility for their own story and its effects does not only change their own life—they contribute to transforming the world into a more humane place.