Deborah J Crozier

The Limits of Your Life Are the Limits You Choose” — But It’s Not the Whole Story

I saw a post today that read:

“The limits of your life are the limits you choose.”

At first glance it feels inspiring, almost liberating — as if choice alone shapes destiny.

But it also got me reflecting on something important:

Nothing is relevant until it becomes relevant.

Nothing truly lands until you can apply it to yourself.

Before I say anything more about quotes and self-help books, I want to share something personal.

A friend of mine died in 2023.

We initially met when she approached me for therapy for unresolved trauma.

She was kind, thoughtful, curious, and exhausted — the kind of exhaustion that comes from a lifetime of searching for answers without ever truly finding them.

She told how she had been on every mental health course, workshop, and seminar she could access.

She had tried every kind of medication.

She had read every self-help book ever recommended to her.

She kept trying, kept learning, kept hoping.

The day we met, she had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

Her wish was to finally make sense of her life, and she was determined to understand - and so, for the next twelve months together we stepped into the world of trauma — gently, compassionately, honestly.

And in that final year of her life, she learned more than she had learned in the previous fifty-nine years combined.

She learned the truth about trauma.

Not the surface-level understanding that so many books offer,

but the deep, embodied reality of how trauma shapes the nervous system, the identity, the sense of self, and the capacity to feel alive.

She learned what it meant to finally be seen.

To make sense of her inner world.

To recognise that nothing was “wrong” with her — her body was responding exactly as it had needed to survive.

When she died, she left me her entire library of over 300 self-help books.

And I often reflect on what those books meant to her.

Not because they failed, but because they were written for a mind she didn’t yet have access to — a mind that only emerges when the nervous system feels safe enough to take in new information.

That experience changed how I think about self-help.

It deepened my understanding that we don’t lack information — we lack regulation.

We don’t lack resources — we lack internal safety to apply what we learn.

She taught me that the search for healing often lives in the pages of books, but the actual healing begins inside the body.

The Search for Answers Outside Ourselves

So many people spend a fortune on the latest self-help book or training program.

We read the first chapter.

We complete the first two modules.

Then we buy another one, hoping this will finally be the answer.

Dr Wayne Dyer used to say this is like losing your keys in the house but going outside to look for them.

You’ll never find them — but you keep searching outside anyway, convinced the solution must be “out there.”

And isn’t that how so many of us live?

Especially when we’ve grown up in environments where our internal world wasn’t nurtured, recognised, or supported.

We keep looking for external fixes because internally, we don’t yet know where — or even who — we are.

A Quote That Changed My Trajectory

I remember many years ago sitting in a solicitor’s waiting room.

On the wall was a simple framed quote by Henry Ford:

“If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

I must have read it a dozen times before my appointment.

I’d never heard it before.

And it blew my mind.

Not because it was intellectually profound, but because no such idea had ever entered my world.

I turned the meaning over and over in my mind.

It was a complete contrast to the hopelessness I lived with — a life where nothing felt possible and the evidence of that impossibility showed up everywhere. Just has it had for my friend, Alison.

Suddenly this sentence suggested the opposite.

“If that’s what you think, you’re probably right.”

It confused me a little…

but on some deeper level, it connected.

Something in me recognised that thought alone might not change my life — but it could open a door.

When Dorsal Vagal Shutdown Defines Your Reality

It’s difficult to explain the dorsal vagal space to someone who has never experienced it.

How can you describe a world where everything feels limited?

Hopeless?

Where control is non-existent?

It’s like living in another dimension.

You can see with your physical eyes that joy, love and peace exist.

You can watch other people laughing, connecting, building lives.

But there is no comprehension of it… and absolutely no felt sense of it.

It belongs to them, not you.

It’s for other people in other lives.

When you’re in dorsal, your mind doesn’t say, “I’m limited because of my nervous system.”

It says, “I can’t. I never could. And I probably never will.”

Which is why motivational quotes — even the good ones — often feel like they’re written for someone else.

When Dorsal Vagal Shutdown Becomes Your World

Trying to describe the dorsal space to someone who hasn’t endured it is like trying to explain darkness to someone who has only ever known light - where do you begin?

People often describe nervous system states as emotional “modes,” but this one is far more than that.

Dorsal isn’t just a state — it’s a destination.

A world.

A landscape with its own rules, colours, textures, and gravity.

It is:

• dark
• dirty
• dank
• heavy
• hopeless
• frightening
• lonely
• disconnected
• isolating and distant

It is an internal world that becomes an external world.

Your entire existence — inside and outside — gets filtered through the same lens.

When you are in dorsal, you don’t simply feel limited.

Your environment becomes an expression of your internal collapse.

Your home might become disorganised, untidy, or even squalid.

Not because you don’t care — but because your life force is switched off.

Your space often mirrors your nervous system.

Your world becomes a visual map of your inner disconnection.

But the opposite can also be true — and it’s just as misunderstood.

Not everyone living in dorsal looks like they’re collapsing.

Some people have:

• money
• cars
• luxury
• a beautiful home
• impeccable grooming
• a curated lifestyle
• a polished persona

From the outside, it looks like success.

On the inside, it is chaos.

This is the height of persona — the desperate attempt to construct a perfect external world because the internal world feels unmanageable, unsafe, or in pieces.

For these individuals, the shutdown, numbness, and disconnection doesn’t show up in their environment.

It shows up in:

• their relationships
• their isolation
• their inability to feel joy
• their chronic over-functioning
• their exhaustion
• their sense of emptiness
• their collapse behind closed doors

Both experiences are expressions of the same internal landscape — the world of dorsal.

One is visible.

One is invisible.

Both are equally real.

Why this distinction matters

Professionals who have never lived in that landscape often misinterpret what they see.

If the outer world is chaotic, they judge the “mess.”

If the outer world is polished, they miss the suffering entirely.

But both are coping strategies.

Both are nervous system adaptations.

Both are attempts to survive a world that feels overwhelming or unreachable.

To understand the dorsal space is to see beyond the physical environment — whether that environment looks like collapse or looks like perfection — and into the inner world that shapes it.

It’s not laziness, dysfunction, or self-neglect.

And it’s not shallowness, vanity, or overachievement.

It’s survival.

A survival strategy expressed either through external disorder or external perfection.

And both deserve compassion, not judgment.

When Professionals Judge the Symptoms, Not the Landscape

This is where something vital gets missed — especially by professionals who have never lived in that terrain.

When someone shows up in a dorsal state, their environment often shows it too.

Not because they’re choosing it, but because their survival response has taken over.

Yet too often the external signs — the mess, the disorganisation, the shut-down — become the target of judgment.

Words like:

• “unmotivated”
• “chaotic”
• “neglectful”
• “unfit”
• “dysfunctional”

When your internal world is collapsing and professionals judge the outer expression of that collapse, it feels deeply unjust.

It feels like victim-blaming, because it is.

To understand the dorsal space is to see beyond the physical environment into the inner landscape — the one most people never see.

Dorsal creates a whole world, not just a feeling.

And when professionals misunderstand that, people already buried in collapse become buried further under shame.

Why “Choice” Isn’t the Whole Story

This is why the phrase “the limits of your life are the limits you choose” can feel both true and untrue at the same time.

It’s true in the sense that our beliefs shape our behaviour.

But it’s incomplete — and even unfair — without understanding how trauma alters the nervous system.

Your ability to “choose differently” is shaped by:

• your environment
• your internal state
• your past experiences
• your neuroception
• and your core beliefs formed in survival

Choice cannot override a dysregulated nervous system.

Thought cannot override immobilisation.

A positive affirmation cannot cancel out years of survival-based wiring.

Mindset is not the starting point — it’s the result.

This is why so many people read self-help books and feel nothing changes.

It’s not because they’re lazy or unmotivated.

It’s because they’re trying to use top-down tools to solve bottom-up conditions.

Bottom-Up Before Top-Down

We cannot think ourselves into healing.

We feel our way there.

From the bottom up.

The answers are not in the next book, the next program, or the next external teacher.

They’re inside us.

But they are buried under layers of survival strategies, protective patterns, and nervous system responses that developed for very good reasons.

When the body feels safe,

the mind becomes available.

When the nervous system is regulated,

possibility suddenly appears where hopelessness once lived.

When we are connected internally,

external wisdom finally makes sense.

This is why things only become relevant when we’re ready to receive them.

Not because the ideas weren’t valuable before…

but because we didn’t yet have access to them.

The Real Meaning Behind the Limits We “Choose”

So when I hear the phrase again — “the limits of your life are the limits you choose” — I interpret it through a trauma-informed lens.

Yes, our beliefs shape our direction.

Yes, internal narratives matter.

Yes, mindset plays a role.

But that mindset is shaped by:

• our history
• our nervous system
• our experiences
• and our capacity in the present moment

For someone in a regulated, supported state, choice feels empowering.

For someone in dorsal, it feels impossible — or worse, shaming.

And that distinction matters.

Because healing isn’t about forcing new thoughts.

It’s about creating the physiological conditions where new thoughts become available.

The Keys Were Never Outside

Dr Wayne Dyer’s metaphor stays with me.

We keep looking for our keys outside, even though we lost them inside.

Everything we’re searching for — safety, clarity, confidence, connection — is internal work.

Not the easy kind.

Not the overnight kind.

But the honest, compassionate, body-based kind.

And when the body shifts, the mind shifts.

That’s when the quotes land.

That’s when ideas resonate.

That’s when relevance appears.

That’s when possibility feels real.

Because the truth is this:

The limits of your life are not the limits you choose.

They’re the limits you’ve learned.

And learned limits can be rewired.

Not through self-help alone.

Not through positive thinking alone.

But through nervous system regulation, relational safety, truth, connection, and compassionate self-understanding.

In the end, the limits you “choose” are simply the limits you finally become free enough to see beyond.

And that freedom begins from the inside out

Alison’s Legacy Lives On

Today, in honour of her journey and her generosity, Alison’s reference library is available for our clients, students, and practitioners to borrow from. It stands as a reminder that while the answers ultimately live within us, sometimes a single sentence, a single book, or a single moment of connection can become the light that guides us home. Her library continues to support others on their path, and her legacy lives on in every person who finds comfort, insight, or curiosity within its pages.

by Deborah J Crozier

How Trauma Held in the Body Shapes Our Thoughts, Behaviours, and Vulnerabilities

Trauma isn’t just something that happened to us — it’s something that lives in us.

It lives in our bodies, in the patterns we learned to survive, and in the emotions we pushed down because they were too much to hold at the time.

When old wounds stay unhealed, they don’t disappear.

They simply go underground — shaping our thoughts, behaviours, and relationships in ways we often don’t recognise.

Trauma in the Body → Reactions in the Present

When the body senses something as threatening or unsafe, it doesn’t check whether the danger is happening now or in the past.

It simply reacts.

This is why so many people:

• mask
• fawn (people-please)
• shrink themselves
• try to appear “normal”
• work hard to belong
• pretend they don’t care

Underneath these behaviours are hurts that need attention, not shame.

Emotions are messages. They say:

“Something inside needs care and awareness.”

How Trauma Disconnects Us From Ourselves

Trauma doesn’t just leave memories — it reshapes the way we experience ourselves.

When we grow up or live through situations where our needs were ignored, dismissed, or punished, the body learns:

“My feelings are too much. My needs don’t matter. My truth is unsafe.”

To survive, we disconnect:

• from our bodies
• from our instincts
• from our emotions
• from our boundaries
• from our sense of worth
• from the internal signals that guide us

This disconnection isn’t dysfunction — it’s protection.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Tries to Forget

We can appear calm, capable, and “fine” to others while internally living in constant vigilance.

Survival mode has one priority:

Get through it. Don’t feel it. Stay safe.

Over time, we become strangers to our own inner world.

What Disconnection Looks Like

Instead of understanding our emotions, we override them.

Instead of recognising our needs, we minimise them.

Instead of trusting our instincts, we silence them.

Instead of listening to discomfort, we push through it.

Instead of setting boundaries, we collapse them.

Instead of being who we are, we perform who we think others want us to be.

This is why trauma responses are often invisible on the outside and painfully loud on the inside.

Signals We Stop Hearing

Trauma disconnects us from the signals meant to keep us safe:

• the tightening in the chest when something feels off
• the gut instinct that says “this isn’t right”
• the discomfort when a boundary is crossed
• the exhaustion signalling overwhelm
• the sadness showing where we hurt
• the anxiety showing where we’re afraid

We numb, dismiss, or override these signals.

But numbed signals don’t disappear — they simply guide us from the shadows, shaping our reactions without our awareness.

The Cost of Disconnection

When we are disconnected from ourselves:

• we don’t see our own vulnerabilities
• we miss our own red flags
• we override our needs
• we question our intuition
• we repeat the same painful dynamics
• we read everyone else’s emotions but ignore our own
• we mistake survival patterns for personality
• we become easier to manipulate, pressure, or overwhelm

This is why understanding your own “white flags” is vital — not as blame, but as protection.

The Mirror Effect

When we’re disconnected from our own wounds, we often misjudge others.

We dislike in other people the traits we’d rather not admit in ourselves.

Not because we are judgemental, but because our nervous system tries to protect us from anything that might expose our pain.

The truth is:

There is no one more vulnerable than the person who believes they have no vulnerabilities at all.

The STAND Three-Flag System

In our STAND program, we use three types of signals to help people recognise safety, risk, and vulnerability — both externally and internally.

🟢

Green Flags

Signs that someone is safe, grounded, and trustworthy.

🔴

Red Flags

Behaviours signalling caution — early signs of manipulation, control, or harm.

⚪

White Flags

Your own vulnerabilities — the emotional areas where you are most easily influenced, pressured, or harmed.

White flags are not weaknesses.

They are parts of you asking for compassion, understanding, and protection.

A Real Example: When White Flags Are Exploited

A friend of mine unknowingly entered a relationship with a narcissist.

He cheated, emotionally abused her, and slowly eroded her sense of self.

When she finally left, he said:

“You were easy to target because you were desperate to be loved.”

It sounded cruel, but beneath it was a terrible truth.

She was desperate to be loved.

Not because she was weak, but because years of loneliness and trauma had made her crave connection so deeply that she tolerated the intolerable.

And he saw it — immediately.

Like many narcissists, he mirrored her unmet needs perfectly, pretending to be her ideal partner.

He wasn’t reflecting who he was.

He was reflecting her white flags.

This is how white flags work:

• They show us where we are emotionally exposed.
• They help us understand what makes us vulnerable.
• They help us prevent harm and break patterns.

This is not victim blaming.

This is self-awareness and self-protection.

Reconnection Is Healing

Healing is not about perfection.

It’s about coming home to yourself.

It’s:

• hearing the body’s whispers again
• naming emotions instead of numbing them
• recognising early warning signs
• honouring your needs without apology
• trusting your intuition
• choosing relationships that feel safe

Reconnection brings clarity.

Clarity brings choice.

And choice brings freedom.

And Healing Matters Deeply for Our Children

Our trauma never stays contained.

It spills.

It spills into:

• our tone
• our reactions
• our boundaries
• our regulation
• the way we love
• the way we protect
• the way we parent

Every choice we make with the intention of protecting our children will be shaped by our state —

and if we cannot read our own signals, we often act from fear rather than truth.

Acting From Ego Instead of Presence

Ego in trauma terms is the protective shell we develop to avoid pain.

When we parent from ego, we may:

• react instead of respond
• control instead of connect
• shut down instead of attune
• overprotect because we feel unsafe inside
• underprotect because we minimise danger
• teach children to mask because we mask
• send confusing mixed signals

Not because we’re bad parents —

but because we’re dysregulated parents doing the best we can with what we inherited.

Acting From Unseen Wounds

When we can’t see our own behaviours:

• we misread situations
• we mistrust safe people
• we trust unsafe people
• we project our fears onto our children
• we silence their emotions because ours feel overwhelming
• we repeat intergenerational trauma without meaning to

We imagine we’re protecting them —

but sometimes, we’re repeating what hurt us.

The Moment We Reconnect, Everything Changes

When we learn to read our own body, signals, and white flags:

• we pause instead of explode
• we listen instead of defend
• we attune instead of dismiss
• we protect without controlling
• we model safety instead of survival
• we raise children who know themselves because we’ve learned to know ourselves

Cycle-breaking begins with awareness, not perfection.

And it begins in the body —

the place where trauma was stored,

where it still speaks,

and where healing finally becomes possible.

How This Links Directly to STAND: Parents as Protectors

Everything in this post is not just personal reflection — it is the foundation of prevention.

In STAND: Parents as Protectors, we teach that self-awareness is the first layer of safeguarding.

You cannot protect a child from dangers you cannot recognise in yourself.

You cannot spot manipulation in others if you are still vulnerable to it internally.

You cannot teach boundaries effectively until you feel worthy of them yourself.

This is why understanding your own white flags is so important.

Groomers and manipulative individuals look for:

• loneliness
• emotional hunger
• fawning
• low self-worth
• collapsed boundaries
• desperation to be loved
• fear of rejection
• unhealed wounds

These are not flaws — they are unseen vulnerabilities created by trauma.

When parents don’t recognise these vulnerabilities in themselves, they may unintentionally:

• trust unsafe people
• distrust safe people
• minimise danger
• send confusing signals to their child
• normalise unhealthy behaviour
• override their child’s instincts
• stay silent when something feels wrong
• ignore their own intuition
• repeat relationship patterns that leave the whole family exposed

Not because they mean to — but because trauma kept the signals hidden.

When we help parents reconnect with themselves, everything becomes safer:

✔ They see danger earlier

✔ They become harder to manipulate

✔ They make choices from clarity, not fear

✔ They create stronger boundaries

✔ They model emotional safety

✔ They raise children who trust their instincts

✔ They break generational cycles

✔ They reduce the likelihood of grooming or coercive control

Parents who understand their own white flags become the safest people in a child’s world.

This is the heart of STAND.

This is early intervention.

This is prevention.

And it is why the work of healing ourselves is not only personal —

it is protective.

by Deborah J Crozier

Intergenerational Trauma Isn’t About Blame — It’s About Nervous Systems Doing Their Best

Why children self-soothe, why parents struggle, and how the 7Rs Pathways offer the route to repair

We often talk about cycles in families as though they are rooted in deliberate choices or moral failings.

But most intergenerational trauma has nothing to do with intentional harm.

What truly passes from one generation to the next is:

A dysregulated nervous system that has never known safety.

This is not a story of fault — it’s a story of biology.

When Parents Grow Up Without Safety, They Cannot Model It

Consider a parent raised within a setting shaped by:

• high-control religious beliefs
• large families with very little emotional attention
• poverty or chronic stress
• obedience prioritised over connection
• emotional suppression
• overwhelmed caregivers doing their best with limited capacity

In environments like these, emotional literacy isn’t taught — it’s replaced with silence, survival, or self-sufficiency.

Children raised this way grow into adults who:

• love their children deeply
• want to provide stability
• try their absolute best

…but who never learned:

• emotional regulation
• co-regulation
• secure attachment
• healthy identity formation
• self-worth
• internal safety
• boundaries rooted in connection rather than control

Not because they didn’t want these things — but because nobody showed them how.

This is intergenerational trauma:

not intentional harm, but unresolved stress passed forward through nervous systems, behaviours, and unmet needs.

When Dysregulated Parents Raise Children

A parent who has never experienced emotional safety cannot simply download those skills into adulthood.

Even in loving homes, children may experience:

• emotional unpredictability
• tension in the air
• inconsistent responses
• overwhelm
• chronic stress or pressure

Children sense this instantly.

Their nervous systems respond to the emotional climate, not the spoken intentions.

This is why children in these households often rely on primitive self-regulation behaviours, such as:

• rocking
• head-banging against the sofa
• thumb sucking
• pacing
• humming
• hair twirling
• genital self-touch (non-sexual; purely physiological regulation)

These behaviours are signs of effort, not “misbehaviour.”

They are not dirty, shameful, or sexualised.

They are a child’s way of saying:

“I’m overwhelmed. I’m trying to regulate myself because my environment is too much.”

Different behaviours, same message:

their nervous systems are working very hard.

Not All Intergenerational Trauma Looks Like Trauma

When we talk about intergenerational trauma, many people think only of the obvious forms:

• abuse
• neglect
• violence
• addiction
• chaos

And yes — those absolutely create dysregulated nervous systems that can pass through generations.

But that’s not the whole story.

Some of the deepest, quietest forms of intergenerational dysregulation come from things society doesn’t label as trauma, such as:

• lack of emotional literacy
• lack of understanding about feelings and needs
• lack of nurture because parents were overwhelmed
• lack of co-regulation because no one knew how
• lack of access to knowledge about the nervous system
• strict rules that suppress feelings rather than guide them
• cultural or religious norms that prioritise obedience over connection
• poverty that leaves no energy for emotional presence
• parents doing everything “right” yet never having been taught the basics of attunement

These “lacks” don’t look like trauma from the outside.

But inside the nervous system, they leave just as deep an imprint.

A child who grows up without:

• emotional language
• being soothed when distressed
• being seen or understood
• having space for their feelings
• permission to be imperfect
• caregivers who could regulate themselves

…will adapt in ways that look like “coping” on the surface

but become dysregulation patterns in adulthood.

And when that adult becomes a parent, the cycle continues —

not through intentional harm, but through absence of the knowledge, skills, and safety they themselves never received.

This is intergenerational trauma, too:

the trauma of what was missing, not just what was present.

Intergenerational Trauma Isn’t About Blame — It’s About Capacity

Families do not repeat patterns because they do not care.

They repeat them because:

• their nervous systems were shaped by stress
• they were never shown how to regulate
• emotional suppression was a survival tool
• they lack internal safety
• identity and belonging were not nurtured
• generational beliefs discouraged emotional expression

The cycle isn’t continued by intention.

It’s continued by absence of the tools needed to do differently.

And this is where the 7Rs Pathways become transformational.

The 7Rs Pathways: A Compassionate Framework for Intergenerational Repair

Your 7Rs Pathways contain two essential layers:

the seven outcomes we aim for, and the seven trauma-informed steps that take a person there.

Together, they form a structured, compassionate route from survival to safety, from disconnection to belonging.

The 7Rs: The Seven Outcomes of a Regulated Life

These are the capacities trauma blocks — and that healing restores:

1. Regulation
2. Reflection
3. Responsibility
4. Repair
5. Resilience
6. Relationships
7. Reconnection

These are what every human being needs in order to thrive.

The 7 Pathway Actions: The Steps That Make Healing Possible

These seven “Re-” steps guide individuals from dysregulation to internal stability:

1. Recognise
2. Reconnect
3. Regulate
4. Reframe
5. Reimagine
6. Rebuild
7. Rise

These are the journeys we help people walk.

The Integrated Pathway: How the Steps Lead to the Outcomes

Here is how your model flows — a complete trauma-informed roadmap:

1. Recognise → Regulation

Recognising patterns, triggers, and nervous system states is the first step toward regulation.

2. Reconnect → Reflection

Reconnecting with self, truth, body, and story allows for healthy reflection and meaning-making.

3. Regulate → Responsibility

Once regulated, individuals gain the capacity to take responsibility — not blame — for actions, boundaries, and healing.

4. Reframe → Repair

Reframing old narratives supports repairing relationships with self, children, partners, and community.

5. Reimagine → Resilience

Reimagining new possibilities strengthens resilience and widens the window of tolerance.

6. Rebuild → Relationships

Rebuilding with new skills creates safer, healthier, more attuned relationships.

7. Rise → Reconnection

Rising into purpose, identity, and belonging completes the cycle: reconnection with self, family, community, and future generations.

This is intergenerational repair in real time.

Why the 7Rs Pathways Matter

For many adults, this is the first time they have ever:

• had their childhood explained in nervous system terms
• understood why their parents struggled
• recognised that their own stress responses were inherited, not chosen
• been offered a practical route to healing
• been given permission to stop blaming themselves

The 7Rs Pathways don’t shame or judge.

They teach what was never taught.

They bring nervous systems out of survival and into connection.

Families don’t just “change behaviour” through the 7Rs —

they change the internal wiring that shapes every relationship.

They create the safety they never had.

They offer their children the co-regulation they missed.

They become the generational turning point.

Healing Doesn’t Erase the Past — But It Transforms the Future

Intergenerational trauma is not a story of failure.

It is a story of survival.

But survival isn’t the end of the story.

With awareness, safety, attunement, and pathways like the 7Rs, families can:

• understand their patterns
• regulate their nervous systems
• rebuild relationships
• repair what was broken
• rise into identity, belonging, and purpose

The cycle doesn’t break through judgement.

It breaks through understanding.

And understanding is where the

7Rs Pathways to Purpose and Belonging begin.

© 2025 Deborah J. Crozier — 7Rs Pathways™

by Deborah J Crozier

The Journey Before The Journey

If you’d asked me where A Positive Start began when I first started this work, I would’ve confidently said:

“It began because of the domestic violence.”

At the time, that felt true.

It felt obvious.

The dramatic moment. The crisis. The breaking point.

The event that almost ended my life.

But what I discovered as the journey unfolded — as I tracked my recovery with genuine curiosity, compassion, and a willingness to see beyond the obvious — was that the real beginning wasn’t the trauma I believed had “created” the problem.

That moment was only a symptom.

An eruption at the end of a long, invisible fault line.

The real story had begun decades earlier, buried in belief systems I didn’t know I held, shaped by nervous system responses I didn’t yet understand, and woven through patterns I thought were “just who I was.”

What I thought was the beginning was actually the middle.

And that realisation changed everything — including the birth of A Positive Start CIC.

Learning to Track the Journey Instead of the Events

When I first began to look back, I did what many trauma survivors do:

I focused on the “big” events.

The obvious pain.

The memories we circle around because they feel like the milestones that broke us.

But recovery has a way of peeling back layers we didn’t expect.

I began to notice themes.

Patterns.

Internal reactions that didn’t match my external reality.

Moments when I “collapsed” inside while appearing fully functional on the outside.

For the first time, I started to track my nervous system, not just my emotions or thoughts.

And what I uncovered was something I had lived with for so long that I didn’t even know it had a name.

Dorsal vagal collapse.

A dark, heavy, numb place.

Not dramatic.

Not chaotic.

Just a quiet, hollow emptiness.

A sense of peering into the abyss from the inside.

And here’s the truth I wrestled with:

I had lived in that state for most of my life without realising it.

I didn’t know what ventral vagal safety truly felt like.

I had moments of peace — but they were fleeting, usually happening when I was engrossed in an activity that pulled me above water just long enough to breathe before I sank back down again.

Ventral was not a home.

It was a holiday I didn’t know how to book twice.

From dorsal, ventral didn’t just feel far away — it felt unimaginable.

Something I watched other people experience like an observer through glass.

Something I deeply wanted but couldn’t comprehend for myself.

And that sentence — “I can’t imagine that for me” — became the turning point.

Because it wasn’t just me.

Recognising the Same Patterns in Others

When I worked with people the DWP labelled “the farthest from the labour market,” I recognised the same gaze I carried for so many years:

that sense of ventral being “for other people.”

They weren’t failing.

They weren’t unwilling.

They weren’t stuck because they lacked ambition.

What they lacked was a self-belief system that recognised possibility.

Their nervous systems had been shaped by experiences long before adulthood — experiences that conditioned them to expect shame, failure, disappointment, and rejection.

And here’s the thing trauma teaches you:

If you believe something deeply enough, the nervous system will make it feel like truth.

Even if it isn’t.

This is why you can desperately want a better life — but your actions still pull you back into familiar patterns.

Not because you’re broken.

Not because you’re incapable.

But because your mind is trying to protect you by keeping you in what feels predictable.

I saw myself in them.

They saw themselves in me.

And that’s when I realised:

The journey didn’t start at the trauma.

It started with the beliefs we learned about ourselves long before the trauma ever happened.

Belief Systems Are Formed Before We Have Words

For most of us, our story doesn’t start with the first major trauma.

It starts with the first moment our nervous system learned that the world wasn’t safe.

My earliest memory of trauma is from around two and a half years old.

I accidentally overdosed — helping myself to what I believed were sweeties, not knowing the danger.

My stomach was pumped.

I lived, physically.

But something else shifted that day.

I share this not for drama, but for clarity:

this is where neuroception began for me —my body’s subconscious scanning for danger, long before logic or reasoning had developed.

What stayed with me wasn’t the medical event.

It was the energy in the room.

The panic.

The anger.

The fear disguised as blame.

The sudden shift from innocence to “you could die,”

“you are silly,”

“you are stupid,”

“you can’t be trusted.”

Children don’t hear words — they absorb meaning.

And the meaning I absorbed was this:

I am the problem.

I cause distress.

I disappoint people.

My parents weren’t cruel. They were terrified.
They were ‘authoritarian’ - from the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ era, and dysregulated by their own experiences. I was their first born, I didn’t come with instructions - and they were terrified.

But their dysregulation became the foundation of my self-belief.

And once that foundation is laid, life builds upon it — until it becomes a house you don’t realise you’re living in.

The body keeps the score long before the mind keeps the memories.

As I continued tracing the threads further back, I began to realise that my body had been trying to warn me for years — long before I understood the language it was speaking.

At age nine, I had a tumour removed from my appendix.

At the time, this was treated purely as a medical event, but when I look back now through a trauma-informed lens, I can see it as another sign of a nervous system living in constant survival mode. My body had been running on adrenaline for so long that it was no longer functioning from a place of safety; it was reacting, protecting, bracing — even at an age when I should have been carefree.

Through my teens and into adulthood, the physical symptoms increased.

I experienced vasovagal syncope, fainting episodes that struck suddenly as though my vagus nerve simply overloaded and shut down. At the time, no one connected it to stress or dysregulation. But now I understand exactly what was happening:

My vagus nerve was signalling overwhelm.

My body was saying, “This is too much.”

Alongside this came migraines, IBS, digestive issues, and a deep sense that my body was fighting quiet battles I couldn’t interpret. These weren’t random medical problems — they were somatic messages, the body expressing what my conscious mind had never been allowed to feel or articulate.

And now, after the work I’ve done to reconnect and regulate, something remarkable has happened:

Those symptoms are gone.

No fainting.

No IBS.

No migraines.

Not because life suddenly became easy, but because I finally learned to listen to my body with understanding instead of fear. Once I found language for my experiences — dorsal collapse, hypervigilance, nervous system overload — the physical expressions of that stress no longer needed to shout for my attention.

My body had been keeping the story long before I did.

I just didn’t yet know how to read it.

As these symptoms appeared throughout my childhood and teenage years — the fainting, migraines, IBS, shutdowns, and overwhelm — they were real. They felt real. Anxiety and panic live in both the mind and the body, and when you don’t understand why they’re happening, you reach for the only support available:

You go to the system designed to help you.

But here is where so many of us become lost.

We seek professional advice, hoping for clarity or connection, but instead we are often given labels, diagnoses, and medication without anyone asking the most important question:

“What happened underneath this?”

No one explained the nervous system.

No one recognised trauma.

No one connected fainting episodes, stress physiology, or chronic shutdown with emotional overwhelm.

No one explored belief systems or developmental neuroception.

So the journey ends there — not because we heal, but because the system stops looking.

We become suspended in our own suffering, frozen in place, medicated rather than understood. And when your underlying belief is already “I am the problem,” it is painfully easy to accept the labels placed upon you.

And then the next chapter unfolds almost predictably:

You become too unwell to work.

You go on sickness benefits or unemployment.

You struggle with daily functioning.

You collapse further because the system does not soothe — it often shames.

Society reflects the same beliefs we already carry:

“Scrounger.”

“Lazy.”

“A drain.”

These words echo the beliefs that took root in childhood — the ones already living inside the body.

And dorsal collapse becomes the trapdoor.

It pulls you deeper:

into hopelessness,

into guilt,

into shutdown,

into the place where you feel you don’t belong anywhere — not in work, not in community, not even in your own skin.

The very systems meant to support us often reinforce the deepest shame we already hold.

Not because people are unworthy of support —

but because their suffering is misunderstood at the level of the nervous system, not the behaviour.

And without that understanding, people aren’t supported back into life —

they’re pushed further out of it.

Survival Mode Becomes a Personality When It Lasts Too Long

From an early age, my nervous system was shaped around:

• hypervigilance
• shame
• internal collapse
• overthinking
• self-blame
• low self-worth
• fawning
• acceptance of less

Not because I chose it — but because my survival system chose it for me.

By the time domestic violence entered my life, it didn’t create my lack of self-worth.

It reinforced what I already believed about myself.

That’s the painful truth many survivors eventually realise:

the trauma didn’t invent the beliefs — it confirmed them.

Even when we say we want better, we often behave in ways that contradict that desire — not out of weakness or lack of willpower, but because incongruence is a nervous system response, not a moral failing.

You cannot build a life that contradicts what your nervous system believes about your worth.

And this is why understanding the patterns matters.

Because once you see the patterns, you can finally change them.

And once you change them, the life you build begins to change too.

The Turning Point: Tracking My Own Recovery

The real breakthrough wasn’t an event — it was a shift in how I saw myself.

I stopped asking:

“Why did that happen?”

and began asking:

“What was I believing about myself at the time it happened?”

This single shift changed everything.

Because when you start tracking your internal state rather than the external events, you begin to see how your life has been shaped not by what happened to you, but by what you believed those events meant.

I realised I had spent decades:

• abandoning myself
• normalising collapse
• confusing familiarity with comfort
• confusing chaos with normality
• confusing survival with living

And once I understood that, the journey toward ventral — toward safety, connection, groundedness — finally became possible.

How This Led to the Birth of A Positive Start CIC

A Positive Start CIC wasn’t created at the moment of crisis.

It was created as I slowly pieced together my recovery and understood the real roots of trauma:

the beliefs beneath the surface,

the nervous system states that shape identity,

and the quiet patterns that dictate the lives of people labelled as “hard to reach.”

APS didn’t begin because of domestic violence.

It began because I finally understood the trajectory from:

• early childhood dysregulation
• to survival mode
• to low self-worth
• to unhealthy relationships
• to collapse
• to hopelessness
• to the feeling of being “too far gone”

And I knew — not intellectually, but viscerally —that others were living the exact same journey.

As I healed, I didn’t just want to help people “cope.”I wanted to help them understand.

Because healing doesn’t begin with motivation. It begins with meaning.

And people cannot change their lives until they understand the story beneath the story.

That became the heartbeat of APS.

Not surface change.

Not behaviour management.

Not “fixing people.”

But helping people reconnect with the part of themselves that trauma disconnected them from.

Connection.

Safety.

Regulation.

Awareness.

Understanding.

Self-compassion.

Belief.

Ventral.

This is at the heart of our collaborations — working with people who understand the importance of emotional literacy and emotional safety.

The Deeper Message: We Have to Go Back to Go Forward

People often misunderstand this.

Going back is not about reliving trauma.

It’s not about revisiting painful memories to punish ourselves with them.

It’s about understanding

how the journey unfolded

and why the nervous system shaped itself the way it did.

When you understand where your beliefs came from, you’re no longer controlled by them.

When you understand why you disconnect, you can learn to reconnect.

When you understand why safety feels dangerous, you can slowly rewire what “safe” means.

When you understand why you collapse, you can begin to rise.

Healing isn’t about changing your past.

It’s about changing the meaning your nervous system attached to it.

Because anything is only ever true because you believe it.

And what you believe about yourself is the foundation of everything you build.

Why This Matters for Community Mental Health

The people I support today aren’t broken, resistant, or “hard to reach.”

They’re carrying belief systems shaped in childhood, reinforced by trauma, and never challenged with compassion.

Many of them have lived their whole lives in dorsal collapse.

Many don’t recognise ventral as an option.

Many don’t believe hope is for them.

But I am living proof that:

• survival mode is not a personality
• collapse is not a destiny
• belief systems can be rewritten
• nervous systems can be retrained
• safety can be learned
• connection can be restored
• a life worth living can be rebuilt

This is the heart of A Positive Start CIC.

Not perfection.

Not quick fixes.

But a journey from dark to light — one belief at a time.

The Journey Continues

If I could go back and speak to the version of me who thought domestic violence was the beginning of the story, I would tell her:

“You began your healing long before you realised you needed it.

And the part of you that survived the earliest trauma is the same part that will lead you home.”

A Positive Start CIC was not born from pain.

It was born from understanding.

From tracking.

From curiosity.

From learning to see myself clearly for the first time.

And from the realisation that community mental health must honour the whole journey — not just the parts people can see.

The journey didn’t begin at crisis.

It began with belief.

And belief — rewired through compassion, connection, and safety — is where every new journey begins.

by Deborah J Crozier