Context — The Place Where This Story Unfolds
For the last eight years, I’ve lived in a two-apartment family building — my mother upstairs, me downstairs.
I moved here after returning from Singapore after living away for more than 15 years, and I completely rebuilt the apartment myself. It was an old, decaying space, and my mother said that if I restored it, I could make it my home.
Over time, this place became both a refuge and a trap. When family dynamics started collapsing — the silent treatments, the avoidance, the emotional pressure — living here became unbearable.
By late 2024, I had to leave. It wasn’t a move, it was an escape. I left with no savings, no emotional support, and the weight of being cast out of my own home — the one I had rebuilt from the ground up.
Introduction
Each event here is a foundational piece of TEG-Blue, each realization was born from a moment of collapse, clarity, and survival.
TEG-Blue it’s written from direct experience — of pain, loss, and the need to make sense of it all. My intention recording these events is not to expose anyone, but to understand how human disconnection begins — and how, even amid rupture, we can build a language to repair it.
This map is my way of bringing order to what destroyed me, and of leaving record of how, through suffering, a project was born that seeks to help others not have to learn to love from emptiness.
April 2024 — Leaving a Relationship after 6 Years Together
Event:
- I leave a covertly abusive relationship — behind the image of stability, there was manipulation, gaslighting, and financial control.
- My nieces and nephew become my main emotional anchor: I pick them up from school on some weekdays, they come for weekends, we do activities together, and their unconditional love helps me endure the grief and confusion.
- I start researching narcissism and speaking openly about it.
- My close family (brother, sister, mother) reacts defensively — they feel threatened recognizing themselves in some of those patterns.
- By late April, the silent subtle exclusion begins: my siblings bring the children less often, the visits become shorter and shorter.
I leave with nothing: no company (the one I helped built from scratch), no salary, no savings (because he keeps absolutely everything).
Total state of shock.
Emotional impact:
- Sudden grief and loss for the breakup and for the life I’ve left behind.
- Unexpected strength thanks to the children’s love, which makes me feel there’s still a safe place.
- Confusion and pain in seeing my family react with distance instead of support.
Understanding gained:
- First clues about enmeshed family systems — when closeness is used to control, not to support.
- First signs of covert punishment: withdrawing affection or contact as a means of control.
April–May 2024 — Subtle Avoidance and Isolation
Event:
- My mother starts to avoid contact (e.g., going up to her apartment quietly so I don’t hear her, spending weeks without saying hello, cooking only for my brother and his daughter, not for me…).
- Acute financial and emotional crisis — no income, no savings, no benefits, after losing everything due to my ex’s emotional and financial abuse.
- Losing time with the children removes my main emotional anchor.
Emotional impact:
- Feeling invisible in my own home.
- Anxiety and hypervigilance — listening to her movements upstairs, anticipating avoidance.
- Deep sadness at losing my safe emotional space with the kids.
Understanding gained:
- Realizing that emotional neglect can be active (avoiding contact) or passive (withholding support).
- Recognizing that family jealousy can be directed toward healthy relationships between relatives (in this case, with the children).
Summer 2024 — Escape on the Road
Event:
- I travel with my dog Rossell through rural France — camping, nature, and distance as refuge.
- Relief and expansion in nature; reconnection with myself.
- Instead of collapsing, I decide to transform pain into creation: I begin writing my first children’s books about emotions.
- The motivation comes from thinking about my nieces and nephews: if they learn emotional intelligence tools early, they might never have to suffer what I’ve lived through.
- At the end of summer, I stay with friends in southern Germany.
Emotional impact:
- Sense of meaning in turning suffering into something that can help children.
- Quiet pride for daring to create in the middle of chaos.
Understanding gained:
- Distinguishing between spaces of connection (nature, freedom, creativity) and spaces of control (family home, shared social circles with my ex).
- Discovering that I can birth future out of adversity, and that creativity is a form of resistance.
End of Summer 2024 — Returning to the Family Building
Event:
- I return to the apartment in my family’s building for financial reasons.
- My siblings begin to use the children as pressure: they stop bringing them or bring them only for five minutes, without explanation. Covert manipulation continues until December, when they stop coming completely.
- I continue the children’s books about emotions as a way to heal and sustain myself after the abuse from my ex.
- My brother discredits my project and discourages others around me from supporting it.
Emotional impact:
- Feeling trapped again in a toxic dynamic.
- Hopelessness over the silence surrounding my exclusion.
Understanding gained:
- Recognizing triangulation — using children as pawns to punish or control another adult.
- Understanding emotional rupture as a tactic of manipulation.
December 1, 2024 — My Brother’s Birthday Lunch
Event:
- I attend lunch with him, my sister, brother-in-law, mother, and the children.
- They know about my financial situation (in reality, only 80€ in my account).
- I’m expected to pay 50€ for lunch and part of the group gift (I pay without protest).
- During lunch, my brother and sister speak about me quietly and don’t say a single word to me the entire time.
- My mother normalizes it.
Emotional impact:
- Humiliation from financial pressure.
- Erasure within the group — physically present but socially excluded.
- Profound loneliness, even among family.
- First seed of deciding not to spend Christmas with them.
Understanding gained:
- Covert shaming — social exclusion + financial pressure.
- Silence and whispers as tools of isolation.
- My mother’s normalization reinforces the abuse.
December 2024 — Stalking by My Ex-Partner
Event:
- My ex (who has no other ties to the town) appears in the area.
- Several people say they’ve seen him near my home.
- This happens while tension with my family is growing.
Emotional impact:
- Insecurity in my own neighborhood.
- Feeling watched and cornered, with no safe space.
- Hypervigilance and insomnia.
Understanding gained:
- Post-separation abuse also includes physical presence and intimidation.
- External threats (ex) and internal threats (family) overlap and worsen the trauma.
- I’m working publicly on social media with millions of views about narcissistic abuse, which may provoke further reactions from him.
- Stalking is a measurable indicator of physical risk.
TikTok: @emotionalgradient
December 2024 — Message Before Christmas
Event:
- I send a respectful message acknowledging the avoidance and proposing not to spend Christmas together.
- I leave the door open to future conversations but protect myself from their three-against-one confrontations.
Read here:
Message I sent to my family groupEmotional impact:
- Anxiety before sending; relief afterward for setting boundaries, with sadness for having to do it.
Understanding gained:
- Self-protection without aggression — clear limits without escalation.
- Clarity doesn’t guarantee repair in an unsafe system.
December 2024 — “Therapy” as an Intervention
Event:
- My mother (likely pressured by my brother) organizes a supposed “family therapy” session in Barcelona.
- My brother and sister don’t attend; (my father does). The session turns out to be a psychiatric evaluation aimed at me.
- Later I find out they told the psychiatrist that I had problems with my ADHD medication (I take exactly what my psychiatrist prescribed, one of the lowest possible dose: Elvanse 30 mg).
- I realize they prefer to make me look unstable rather than face their behavior.
Emotional impact:
- Shock and betrayal from the trap.
- Deep grief: seeing them distort reality to protect themselves.
Understanding gained:
- Tactic: gaslighting through diagnosis — using mental health to discredit someone.
- Narcissistic family projection — placing the “problem” on the one who breaks the silence.
December 2024 — Before Leaving
I spent Christmas at a friends house, with her family but feeling completely alone.
Those days, I understood that their goal was not reconciliation, but erasure — to make me disappear quietly under the label of “unstable.”
Other Events:
- My brother intensifies his campaign against me and my work at annaparetas.cat, convincing others I should abandon the project and find a “normal job.”
- The message spreads and affects how others perceive my capabilities.
Emotional impact:
- Trapped again in the toxic family dynamic.
- Pain and frustration at seeing my professional identity undermined.
- Loss of trust in relatives repeating his narrative.
- I end up spending Christmas alone.
Understanding gained:
- Economic abuse through sabotage — undermining my work to push me toward low-autonomy jobs.
- Erosion of reputation within the family system.
- It’s not about my real abilities, but about maintaining hierarchy.
Early 2025 — Decision to Leave and Birth of TEG-Blue
Event:
- I create the first Gradient Scale to visually distinguish between real harm and discomfort mistaken for harm.
- This becomes the seed of TEG-Blue.
- I accept that my family will not stop the campaign against me.
- I sell my car to fund my independence.
- I leave for England, the place where I’ll feel safest. My ex, who travels across Europe constantly in a van and continues to stalk me, can’t reach me there.
A true EUREKA moment — realizing I had created something that could help many people facing emotional abuse.
Emotional impact:
- Empowerment in creating something meaningful.
- Loss (leaving family) + hope (a new path).
Understanding gained:
- Discomfort ≠ harm.
- Making these distinctions visible dismantles manipulation — the foundational principle of TEG-Blue.
Leaving My Hometown
Event:
- After months of rising tension, I leave the apartment I had rebuilt years earlier — the one that had once been my safe space.
- Avoidance, silence, and the loss of the children’s presence make it impossible to breathe.
- My family’s narrative — that I am “crazy” or “unstable” — spreads quietly through social circles.
- I have no savings, no emotional ground, and nowhere to go.
- For a time, I am nearly homeless.
- I go to England, seeking distance from my ex’s stalking and my family’s manipulation — a way to survive long enough to keep building what will become TEG-Blue.
Emotional impact:
- A mix of collapse and determination: leaving behind what was unbearable while holding onto the work that gives meaning.
- Grief for everything lost, and a quiet defiance that says, “I’m still here.”
Understanding gained:
- Sometimes leaving is not escape, but the only way to stay alive.
- Even when there is no safety outside, clarity becomes a kind of shelter.
February 1 – September 1, 2025 — Working in England
Event:
- I spend nine full months developing TEG-Blue: a visual and systemic map of emotional logic.
- I build the entire theoretical architecture:
- Develop over 20 emotional tools that translate the theory into practice.
- 11 interconnected frameworks explaining each layer of the emotional ecosystem — from what happens within one person to what happens between people, and how those same patterns scale into culture, systems, and power.
- Integrate and connect over 30 recognized scientific theories and models — from neuroscience, psychology, education, and social systems — showing how TEG-Blue acts as a bridge between disciplines.
- Consolidate international professional support:
- ION Institute of Neurodiversity — provides access to its European network of therapists to carry out the empirical validation study.
- I start designing the initial research infrastructure needed for future scientific validation: data collection methods, comparison frameworks, and open research materials.
- Despite academic and international support, I face difficulty securing stable funding.
- I decide to return temporarily home to reduce expenses and continue working without halting the project.
It translates what usually feels invisible — the movement between emotional safety and survival — into something that can be seen, understood, and taught.
Emotional impact:
- Clarity and direction: feeling that my entire story now has a concrete purpose.
- Extreme resilience: sustaining intense work without stable financial or emotional support.
- Profound sense of mission: understanding that TEG-Blue is not just a project — it’s a tool to change how humanity understands emotion and care.
Understanding gained:
- Creative autonomy is key to protecting the project’s integrity.
- Even without resources, emotional and conceptual coherence can generate real credibility and connections.
- TEG-Blue becomes a living architecture: born from pain, but designed to build repair.
Monday, September 1, 2025 — Return to my hometown
Coming back wasn’t a choice of comfort; it was an act of survival. I returned because I had nowhere else to go.
This small apartment — the one I once rebuilt with my own hands — was the only place available, and the only way I could continue working on TEG-Blue while spending almost nothing.
Living here now is an exercise in endurance: everyone around me avoids me, the children are forbidden to visit, and yet, inside these walls, I continue to build.
Event:
- I return to my hometown after nine months.
- It’s been nine months since I last saw the children — not even in photos.
- I write to my siblings to see each other and talk.
- My brother replies quickly: “Okay, we’ll find a day this week.”
- My sister doesn’t respond for five days: “Okay, we’ll find a moment.”
Emotional impact:
- Initial excitement at my brother’s quick reply.
- Disappointment and discouragement at my sister’s delayed, vague answer.
- Anxiety living in uncertainty after so long in isolation.
- Unequal control dynamic: they decide the time and pace, while I remain waiting.
Understanding gained:
- Quick yet vague responses serve to keep me waiting without commitment.
- The delay in replying is a way to assert distance and power.
- The message offers no concrete step, only prolonged uncertainty.
- The pattern becomes clear: it’s not about finding a real moment to talk, but about keeping me suspended.
Saturday, September 6, 2025 — I Can’t See the Kids Unless I Accept to Speak with Both at Once
Event:
- I write clarifying that I’ll only agree to talk one-on-one, not in a “two-against-one” setup.
- I explain that I want to talk to understand and repair, not to accuse or fuel conflict.
- Both siblings reply with the exact same message: they will only talk if it’s the three of us together.
- When I insist on “one-on-one,” they close the door: “Separately, we don’t see it as necessary.”
Emotional impact:
- Sadness and exhaustion: after nine months without seeing the children, the only reply is a condition.
- Feeling of inferiority: they impose a format that denies me a fair voice.
- Blockage and helplessness: my attempt at honest conversation is rejected.
- Deep grief: realizing that even contact with the children is conditional on accepting an unequal scenario.
Understanding gained:
- The imposed format (all three together) isn’t for dialogue but to control the narrative and terrain.
- It confirms that access to the children is a form of emotional leverage, tied to my submission to their rules.
- Their inflexibility shows that repair isn’t the goal — maintaining power is.
- For the first time, it’s evident that the blockage is intentional and sustained, not circumstantial.
Wednesday, September 10 — Saying Goodbye to my dog Rossell After 16 Years Together
Event:
- I have to say goodbye to my dog Rossell after 16 years of life together.
- My siblings don’t send me a single message during this crucial moment.
Emotional impact:
- Immense grief for the loss of a life companion and emotional anchor.
- Abandonment and betrayal, amplified by family silence in a moment of extreme vulnerability.
- Disorientation: accompanying the death of the one who cared for you while feeling completely alone.
Understanding gained:
- The family prioritizes their image and control over human care and real support in suffering.
- Silence in the face of your grief is a way to avoid responsibility and maintain emotional distance.
- The bond with Rossell reveals what is truly essential to me: care, loyalty, and presence — things my family is not offering.
Friday, September 13 — Ivet’s Birthday I Cannot Attend
Event:
- It’s Ivet’s birthday, and I cannot attend.
Emotional impact:
- Deep sadness for missing an intimate moment with the child I love.
- Guilt and helplessness for not being present on a day that matters.
- Amplified emptiness caused by the ongoing separation (nine months without seeing them).
Understanding gained:
- The ways you’re excluded begin to erase not only the adult relationship, but also the bonds with the children.
- Controlling access to the kids functions as emotional penalty: you’re punished by being deprived of vital moments.
- Not being present highlights the need to protect the relationship with the children from manipulative adult dynamics.
Saturday, September 14 — Family Barbecue I’m Not Invited To
Event:
- My siblings organize a barbecue at my sister’s house; my mother attends. I’m not invited.
Emotional impact:
- Public humiliation: seeing your family make plans without you as if it were normal.
- Social isolation: feeling excluded from a communal act that once felt natural.
- Resurfacing pain of being positioned as “outside” the family core.
Understanding gained:
- Ritual exclusion (parties, gatherings) is an explicit tool of punishment and control.
- My mother’s normalization of my absence validates and perpetuates the exclusion dynamic.
- These actions confirm there’s no current intention to repair; the relationship is being used as leverage to shape my behavior.
Thursday, October 2 — My Mother Only Allows a “Silent Hug” for the Kids
Event:
- My mother goes to my sister’s house, just 10 minutes away from ours.
- I ask her to give the children a hug from me.
- She replies: “Yes, dear, I’ll give them a silent hug from you.”
Emotional impact:
- Shock and pain: realizing I can’t reach the children even through something as simple and loving as a hug spoken out loud.
- Deep destabilization: my nervous system goes into crisis; the words “silent hug” echo inside me as erasure.
- Sense of disappearing: I see that my siblings want me to cease to exist for the children.
Understanding gained:
- Even the most basic gesture of affection is silenced and controlled. My name and my love are not allowed to reach the kids clearly.
- My mother acts not as a bridge, but as a filter of presence, turning my bond into a shadow.
- This “silent hug” is a clear symbol of the family strategy: reducing me to nothing, even in the most innocent gestures.
Tuesday, October 7 — TEG-Blue Research Call and International Response
In just two weeks since publishing the call for the Research & Academic Catalyst role, I’ve received 27 applications from high-level professionals and researchers willing to collaborate voluntarily on the empirical validation of TEG-Blue.
This response — with profiles from psychology, neuroscience, education, design, and social sciences — shows the magnitude and credibility of the project.
With no investment in advertising, qualified people from various countries have chosen to be part of a system that unites scientific research, emotional innovation, and social transformation.
The following summary shows the diversity and depth of the profiles who answered this call.
Thursday, October — The Family Standstill
It’s been two months since I came back here. My brother and sister still refuse to let me see the kids.
They’ve set a condition: that I can only see them if all three of us are present together. I’ve said clearly that I want to meet one by one, so that conversations can be calm and emotionally safe.
This isn’t to exclude anyone — it’s because group settings always turn into tension, blame, and chaos.
I want communication, not confrontation.
Because they won’t allow one-to-one contact, I haven’t seen the kids at all. And since my mother lives upstairs, this also means that the children aren’t allowed to come to her house.
So she’s being punished too — her access to her grandchildren has been cut off, indirectly, because of me.
Now she’s collapsing under the pressure, shifting between silence, anger, and victimhood. She says she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, that she just wants to be alone.
But the truth is, she’s protecting herself from seeing what’s really happening — that the emotional system she built is now turning against itself.
I’ve stayed quiet, working every day, trying to keep my dignity and emotional balance. But it’s clear: they’re all maintaining control through collective rules designed to make me unsafe — and then call that “reasonable.”
All I’m asking for is something simple and healthy: to speak one by one, calmly, with respect and emotional safety.
Reflection
I’m beginning to see these dynamics with more technical clarity, almost like watching an emotional system unfold in real time.
Understanding it through the lens of TEG-Blue helps me stay grounded and reduces the emotional toll this situation has had on me.
It’s still extremlly painful not to see the kids — but I can’t betray what I know is true just to make peace with a lie. If they decide to continue like this, that’s their choice, not my failure.
What I see clearly now is the difference between a boundary and a condition. I’m not punishing anyone — I’ve simply said I need one-to-one conversations to keep things calm and safe. They are the ones enforcing a collective rule and punishing me (and my mother) for not accepting it.
That difference matters — one protects safety, the other enforces control.
Right now, my focus is on TEG-Blue and on building the core team — the heart of people who truly understand this work and want to help bring it forward.
Even in the middle of all this, I feel a quiet excitement — a sense that something solid is forming, that this pain is being turned into structure and meaning.
Reflection - October 29, 20225
Despite having built a colossal body of work — made of light, rigor, and survival — I reach this point completely exhausted.
I have carried TEG-Blue alone while losing, one by one, all the connections that gave my life meaning: the children, my mother, the entire family, and even friends who once supported me. It’s as if my whole world died in silence, even though they are still alive. This emptiness — this silence around me — erodes me from within.
Working becomes harder each day, not for lack of clarity or vocation, but because I’m suffering too much. I’ve spent a year and a half living between trauma and creation, sustaining the project with a broken body and a tired soul.
And yet, something has begun to shift in these last months. I’ve started meeting people who truly see the depth of this work — gifted individuals, researchers, and collaborators like Ryan and his father, who recognize what TEG-Blue is trying to build.
These meetings give me moments of hope, small but real — proof that the project is beginning to attract the kind of minds and hearts it was always meant for.
Still, the toll of it all remains heavy. Survival without resources is a daily battle.
When I speak about needing money, people sometimes hear it as dependence or alimony — but it isn’t that. It’s simply that I cannot keep carrying this alone. I’ve reached the limit of what one person can do without support.
I know what I’ve built is immense, but I also know that no map can fill the void of an imposed absence.
And still, I continue — because I believe that making pain visible is a form of love, and love, even when fragile, can still rebuild a world.
— Anna Paretas