🏠What it means to have grown up in unsafe or high-crime neighborhoods
Growing up in high-crime neighborhoods meant that your childhood streets were a battlefield where violence was the soundtrack and hypervigilance was the price of survival.
You may have learned to read danger signals before you could read books—knowing which blocks to avoid, how to spot trouble brewing, and when to become invisible. Your world operated on a simple but stark equation: be strong or be prey. This binary thinking became your emotional compass, helping you navigate genuine threats by quickly categorizing people as either safe allies or potential dangers. There was no middle ground in a war zone.
You may have developed incredible street smarts and survival instincts that genuinely protected you, but this same radar can now paint every relationship in stark contrasts of power and vulnerability. Even in safer environments, your nervous system might still react to sirens and shouting as if danger is imminent. You've become skilled at spotting predators and reading power dynamics, but you may struggle with the gray areas where most healthy relationships actually exist.