First, I want to thank you. If it weren’t for the research you’ve done, the books you’ve written, and the knowledge you’ve made public, I don’t think I would have survived. When my life broke apart, it was your field that gave me language for what was happening. It was your work that stopped me from ending up in a hospital, or worse.
I also want to acknowledge something openly: I understand why it can feel like an intrusion when someone without academic credentials enters your field. You’ve spent years, even decades, studying and building knowledge. To see someone arrive from outside, bringing something new, might feel like a violation. I don’t take that lightly.
The truth is: I never planned to do this. I didn’t want to. I only began building this because my life left me no other option. At 46, my relationship ended in deep betrayal, my family cut me off completely, I lost my home, my work, and the children I loved as my own. I had nothing left—and my mind could not “go back to normal.”
In that state, I found myself unable to function in ordinary ways. I couldn’t just look for a job, or start again the way others told me to. My brain simply wouldn’t do it. What it did do was search for patterns, relentlessly. I read, mapped, and connected everything I could about emotions, trauma, and survival. That process was not a choice—it was the only thing keeping me sane.
The Emotional Gradient Blueprint is what came out of that year. It is not a rejection of your work—it is born from it. It is not competition—it is survival.
I offer it with gratitude, not with arrogance. And I hope you can see it in that spirit: as the work of someone who was saved by your field, and who now adds back what only lived experience could have revealed.
—Anna Paretas
26th of August 2025