Hi! My name is Teresa. I was born in Salerno, a small but beautiful town in the south of Italy and grew up, like everyone, with many dreams.
My parents separated when I was 6 and I lived all my life with my mother and my younger brother. I missed my father very much, as my relationship with my mother was never easy. We were very different persons and I often felt neglected and misunderstood. Mum was an orphan and she had lived in a catholic boarding school for 11 years, therefore she was strict and didn’t know how to show love and affection. However, my dad didn’t live far from us and we spent a lot of time with him, despite the fact that he wasn’t at home.
Living in the south of Italy at that time was tough. Our small apartment was in a quite rough neighbourhood, a lot of young people were using heroin and I had to always walk carefully and watch out not to step on used syringes. “Mafia clans” still existed back then and some people were hungry and violent and we had to force ourselves to be stronger to be able to survive in that environment.
I was a very shy and sensitive little girl and for some time, while growing up, some of my cousins and school mates would bully me. When I became teenager, I started to understand that if I wanted to be respected I needed to speak up for myself. So I started to change: started to talk in dialect as the “strong”, fight “as the strong” and did everything to become popular as the “strong”.
Mum was working full time and had to drive 200km per day to go and come back from her destination. She used to come back home around 3- 4pm, sometimes even 8pm in the evening, therefore we grew up with nannies. Until one day, I was 12 at that time, my baby sitter slapped me in the face after a fight and then I told my mum I’d rather stay at home alone with my brother. I didn’t have any nanny since and we started to spend a lot of time by ourselves, which meant we had only two options available apart from being at home: the street or the church. I went for the church and it saved me. I would not be the person I am now without the community that surrounded me at St. Margaret’s. That was my second family. I volunteered for 12 years there, I was going there basically every day after lunch, taking part in different activities and coming back home late at night. I did that until I moved to Torino in my twenties for my master degree.
I graduated at the University of Salerno in Western Languages and Tourism as my biggest passion was traveling and communicating with different people. I would have actually liked to study psychology but we didn’t have that faculty at that time and I could not afford to move away from Salerno. Soon after my master degree, I soon realized that work opportunities in Italy were very limited and started to look for jobs abroad. I have lived in different cities and countries like Germany, Portugal, and finally, the UK, where I decided to move permanently.
During all these years I have been involved in different romantic relationships, some of them longer than others, but all with a common pattern: I was always ignoring my needs to please my partners, thinking that by doing that they wouldn’t leave me, which obviously never happened.
It was after splitting up with my partner who I lived with for 3 years that I decided to start therapy.
What came next was a journey of self- healing and discovery. I tried CBT and came across several books and teachings of experts who knew a lot about human behaviour, mainly related to relationships, and how our brain works. What really interested me was the patterns we create in our minds that influence our choices and reality.
I was going through a difficult time so I decided to invest in my own wellbeing to break free from subconscious limiting beliefs and blocks that were preventing me from achieving what I wanted in life. Once I finally felt better, I decided to become a life coach, although a voice inside me was telling me that there was my path since I was a teenager.
I am now on a mission to spread awareness amongst as many people as possible and help them to love and accept themselves unconditionally, so that they can become their best version and live the life of their dreams.