You are not Broken
You make sense, more than you realize.
Not every newsletter will be this long, but if someone had shared with me earlier what’s in this one, it would’ve saved me a decade of pain, time, money, and energy. The insights here are truly life-changing, enjoy.
My Business and Income Were Built on Trauma
For over a decade, I kept hustling and pushing when it came to money and work. I was in deep survival mode.
All of this began after living with my stepfather for about 15 years. He was very abusive and alcoholic. I was deeply suicidal because the pain felt unbearable. I was young, drowning in darkness, I was managing the pain in all the wrong ways, just trying to hold it all together.
I spent ages 4 to 10 in a boarding school in one of the smallest villages in Lebanon. My dad wasn’t in the picture, and my mom couldn’t care for me and my three siblings. It left a deep wound. All I did was cry, longing to be with my mother.
I felt like I needed to escape this miserable life, so I started working and saving and did whatever I could to get out of that life.
I was a mess, but because I needed to survive, I managed to keep my grades up. Later I earned a scholarship to one of the best universities in the Emirates, and graduated at the top of my class as a petroleum engineer. The truth is, I forced myself to do engineering just for the money, thinking it would make me feel safe. And in the process, I sacrificed my mental & physical health.
Then I worked as a day trader in Canada, buying and selling stocks within seconds, while trying not to lose all my money in the process. I was functioning, but barely.
I made more money than I ever thought possible, I was surrounded by millionaires, living a life of luxury, and travelling. But deep down, I was miserable, I was living in survival mode—numbing myself with alcohol, smoking, in & out of toxic abusive relationships, dealing with anxiety, panic attacks & depression.
My default state was anxiety and inner struggle. Everything I did felt like I was dragging my nervous system through fire, convinced that if I just made enough money, I’d finally be safe.
Spoiler: I didn’t.
Back then, I didn’t understand how deeply in survival I actually was and I did not know anything about the nervous system. On my journey, I became deeply immersed in self-development and spirituality, doing everything I could to feel better.
After my husband and I moved to Portugal I stopped working completely, I was totally burnt out. Later, when I tried to start a new business I kept feeling so much resistance. Every time I sat down to build or create, I froze. Even the smallest tasks like laundry, groceries, opening emails felt overwhelming.
What made it even more confusing was that, on the outside, my life looked beautiful. I was living in the most magical place I’ve ever seen — a subtropical island called Madeira. I had ocean views from my balcony, where I watched the sunrise every morning.
I had amazing friends, a supportive community, and spent my days hiking to waterfalls and dancing at festivals. I was deeply grateful, my life was even better than any vision board I ever created… and yet, I still felt stuck.
I turned to mindset tools and spiritual practices to try to fix it. I even bought a course from a well-known spiritual teacher on building a business from the heart — but nothing worked. If anything, it made things worse because I was putting in the effort but going nowhere.
I knew something was going on, but I didn’t know what. It turns out, your nervous system can feel safe and regulated in one area of life, like relationships, and still be in a survival responses when it comes to business or finances.
My nervous system saw work as a perceived threat based on its stored experiences, so it often put me in a freeze or shutdown state to protect me from that danger.
When the nervous system senses threat or overwhelm, it can shift into a freeze or shutdown state to protect the body. This can make you feel physically stuck or unable to move forward, even if mentally you want to. It’s the body’s way of conserving energy and keeping you safe when it doesn’t see another option.
It felt like two opposing forces inside me: my mind saying 'go' while my body said 'no'. This internal tug-of-war is a clear example of stuckness caused by nervous system dysregulation. And stuckness is a common sign of unresolved trauma.
I was stuck for what felt like an eternity trying to make an income and start a business that I began panicking, thinking something was really wrong with me.
No matter how hard I tried, nothing worked. I kept spiraling with worry, anxiety, and stress. I felt lost—without purpose or ambition—and found myself just hoping for a miracle.
One day, I saw an ad for a spiritual event and something inside me said, “go.” I had a strong intuition that something important was waiting for me there. I sat beside a woman, and I asked her what she did for work, and she told me she helps people work with their nervous system and integrate their traumas.
Something lit up in me. I knew I had trauma, but aside from talk therapy and being prescribed antidepressants, I had never received support that truly helped me feel seen or understood. What she shared was just the beginning of a thread I would follow and unravel over the years.
Nervous System and Parts Work Completely Transformed My Life
In the beginning of my journey, I bought a self-guided nervous system tune-up program that gave me something I’d never had before: a clear understanding of how my body works.
Simply understanding how my body worked brought me huge relief. The program offered audio tracks to help regulate survival responses, and I began to shift out of survival states—especially when I used the orienting audio consistently.
My ability to get things done improved drastically, I was no longer stuck. This was extremely impressive because I spent long years immersed in self-development, trying meditation, inner child work, self-help books, CBT, talk therapy, and other methods that barely made a difference in my life when I needed to make changes—so this felt truly remarkable.
This sparked a fire in me, and felt like a true calling to become a nervous system coach myself. I became obsessed with all things nervous system—reading, studying, and learning as much as I could—but something still felt incomplete, that program alone wasn’t enough. I was still struggling with many patterns I couldn’t change on my own!
How Connection Supports Your Nervous System’s Natural ability to Heal
Co-regulation happens when two people connect in a way that helps calm and balance each other’s nervous systems. It shows up through attuned, supportive moments—like soothing words, a gentle tone, or just a caring presence—that make you feel safe.
Attunement is the process of deeply tuning in and responding to someone’s emotional and physical signals—like their feelings, needs, and body cues in a sensitive and understanding way.
Most people aren’t naturally attuned to others through a trauma-informed lens, and they don’t understand how trauma changes the way we give and receive safety signals. Without that awareness, attunement can miss important cues, unintentionally trigger stress, and even re-traumatize others.
Trauma isn’t just about the event itself—it happens when an experience overwhelms our nervous system before it has a chance to process and respond. We’ve all been affected by trauma in some way.
What many don’t realize is that unresolved trauma gets stored in the body’s tissues until the unfinished experience is fully integrated. When trauma remains unintegrated, your nervous system stays on alert, keeping your body stuck in a protective mode. This can cause ongoing stress, tension, and emotional struggles because your system hasn’t had the chance to fully settle and recover.
Science shows that trauma can affect up to three generations through epigenetic changes. This means that the stress and experiences of your grandparents and parents can influence how your genes work, affecting your own responses to stress and health. It’s like a biological memory passed down that shapes how you handle challenges—even if you didn’t directly experience the original trauma. (I know this feels heavy, so take a deep breath. The good news is we can change this.)
Becoming trauma-informed helped me deeply understand myself and it explained so much about my internal struggles. I truly believe everyone can benefit from becoming trauma-informed.
A skilled, trauma-informed nervous system coach creates a space where natural healing can happen, helping you feel safe, seen, heard, and understood. Their own calm nervous system is the most powerful tool they offer you.
Mirror neurons play a role by allowing your nervous system to ‘mirror’ or tune into the coach’s regulated state, supporting your own regulation. This is especially helpful if your body doesn’t yet know what real safety feels like.
Restoring your nervous system’s health without co-regulation is possible but usually much harder and slower. Co-regulation helps your nervous system feel safe enough to relax and let go of stored survival stress—making regulation faster, easier and more effective. Without it, your body can stay stuck in a protective state.
Feeling safe is the foundation for real change. When your nervous system senses safety, it opens the door to lasting transformation. Your body holds deep wisdom and knows how to regulate itself—you just need the right support and awareness to let that happen.
Once you understand your nervous system and can regulate it on your own, you often don’t need a coach anymore. The coach’s role is to guide you toward that awareness and provide support until you can manage your nervous system independently.
The powerful transformations I experienced
After I discovered the importance of co-regulation, especially with someone who truly attunes to you. I joined a long live cohort where I co-regulated alongside two amazing embodied mentors and a supportive group of women, all within a safe, caring community.
This cohort helped me restore my nervous system and prepared me to become a trauma-informed nervous system coach.
Learning to attune to others and work with the nervous system felt like discovering a whole new way to understand and connect—beyond words. It was subtle, complex, and deeply powerful.
Neuroscience shows that our nervous system influences how we see and react to the world.
It affects our thoughts, feelings, actions, and behavior, shaping the way we experience life.
It’s the foundation of how we experience reality.
In this cohort, I also learned about Parts Work, a powerful approach that works best alongside nervous system regulation. About six weeks in, my body began releasing decades of stored survival stress on its own. I felt internal chills and vibrations moving through me—like huge exhales as my body finally started letting go.
I also began releasing old survival patterns that no longer served me, and powerful shifts took place across all areas of my life. Life felt easier and more manageable. My nervous system grew more resilient to stress, when things didn’t go my way, I no longer spiraled. My ability to handle life improved significantly.
I stopped people-pleasing, self-sabotaging, and procrastinating. I finally felt free to do what I wanted, when I wanted. Instead of sitting on the sidelines feeling stuck while others moved forward, I began experiencing my true potential. I even started attracting incredible things and opportunities into my life!
So much changed that it’s hard to name it all, but my energy soared, and I managed a busy schedule without burning out. I also launched my coaching business and stayed consistent with it. It truly felt like a new reality.
For the first time, I felt in harmony with my body instead of fighting against it. My discipline was no longer fueled by stress and fear—it was fueled by joy.
What is ‘Parts Work’?
Parts Work, also known as Internal Family Systems (IFS), was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz and helps you understand and heal the different parts within you. Parts Work has been absolutely life-changing for me. It’s a way of understanding yourself as a system of inner parts—each with its own voice, emotion, and intention.
When you go through intense experiences (especially in childhood), your nervous system reacts to protect you, and over time, these survival responses shape into ‘parts’—like the Perfectionist, the Avoider, or the People-Pleaser.
These are protector parts—deeply embedded survival strategies designed to keep you safe. Each part carries a role that helped you survive, belong, or stay safe.
For example:
If you didn’t feel safe expressing anger as a child, a People-Pleasing Part might form to avoid conflict—often tied to a nervous system stuck in ‘fawn,’ always trying to keep peace.
If your needs were dismissed, a Hyper-Independent Part may have stepped in to avoid vulnerability, connected to a nervous system stuck in ‘freeze,’ shutting down to protect itself.
If love felt conditional, a Perfectionist Part might have taken over to earn worth, driven by a nervous system stuck in ‘fight’—constantly on edge to avoid mistakes and rejection, holding tension to feel safe.
By listening to these parts with compassion and helping them feel safe enough to soften, you create more internal harmony. They no longer have to protect you in ways that hold you back, and your nervous system begins to feel safer, too.
How Unmet Childhood Needs Shape these Protective Parts
When we go through intense experiences or get wounded, especially as children, parts of us can emotionally ‘freeze’ in that moment. These younger parts of us carry the pain, fear, or shame from that time and stay stuck at the age or stage when the original wound happened.
The nervous system's main job is to keep us alive and safe. When it perceives threat—real or imagined—it reacts through survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These responses can ‘link up with’ the younger wounded parts that carry emotional pain, fear, or vulnerability, reinforcing protective patterns. Over time, these linked responses shape into protector parts that maintain protective patterns.
These protector parts often form in childhood when core needs like safety, love, or acceptance weren’t consistently met. They develop protective strategies to protect us from pain, rejection, or failure. They do this to keep us safe by blocking or managing that pain so we don’t have to feel it again.
They might push away emotions, avoid certain situations, or create distractions. Even when the original danger is gone, those old stories keep running, causing nervous system dysregulation.
When the pain feels overwhelming, protector parts step in to bury it. They suppress the emotions carried by younger parts, trying to keep us safe. But suppressing wounds doesn’t heal them—they remain stored in the body and resurface when we’re triggered, often showing up as overwhelm, anxiety, or shutdown.
So when we work with these younger parts, we’re not just doing emotional work—we're helping the nervous system feel safer so it no longer needs to stay in protection mode.
Nervous system dysregulation often occurs when these protector parts stay stuck in protective roles, running the same loops even when you're no longer in danger. Working with these parts helps you move past outdated survival patterns and build healthier habits that truly support you now.
How Unmet Childhood Needs and Protector Parts Shape Your Adult Behavior
When love or validation felt conditional growing up, achievement becomes a way to feel enough. You chase success, status, or perfection—not out of desire, but out of fear. Fear of being unworthy, unlovable, or unsafe if you slow down.
Many people unknowingly try to meet those unmet childhood needs through business or relationships—pushing themselves to work nonstop to prove their worth, or staying in unhealthy relationships hoping for the love they never received as children.
Unmet childhood needs lie at the heart of emotional wounds that quietly shape how you feel and act today. To protect you from that pain, parts of you step in—these protector parts work hard to manage the hurt, often by shutting down or avoiding difficult feelings. Together, these unmet needs and protective responses influence the patterns you carry into adulthood.
If those needs stay unmet, they keep running the show—driving your behavior, disconnecting you from your authentic self, and keeping you stuck in survival mode. That cycle continues until you meet the younger parts carrying those needs with compassion and attuned connection, creating new internal safety.
These needs are often accessed and tended to by attuning to the felt sense—the subtle bodily sensations and emotions—that arise from your younger parts, who are like your inner children. When you meet their needs through this felt sense by offering the care, safety, or love they’ve always needed but never received, those parts begin to feel acknowledged and supported. As they do, the protectors that have long worked to keep you safe can start to soften, no longer needing to stay on high alert, and gradually take on new, more supportive roles within your system.
The whole purpose of parts work is to help you reconnect with your Authentic Self. And the path there is by meeting the unmet needs, this is where true change and real freedom begin.
As your Authentic Self takes the lead, your desires, dreams, and choices start to feel more aligned and possible, because they’re coming from your truth, not your survival patterns. It unlocks your capacity to move through life, work, and relationships with more confidence, ease, and self-trust.
Looking back, I didn’t choose petroleum engineering out of passion—it was fear driving me. My “achiever part,” a protective part, believed that doing something tough meant earning more money, and that money meant safety. That same part later pushed me into day trading, thinking it would keep me safe. Instead, it took a toll on my mental health, dragging me into a daily spiral.
I invite you to pay attention to how people—and yourself—often say, “Part of me wants this, but another part is scared.” That’s your protective parts in conflict, each trying to keep you safe in their own way.
To put it simply:
The younger part often holds pain or unmet needs, while the protector’s role is to keep you safe from feeling that pain again. We need to integrate these parts back into our whole authentic Self. Integration means helping the protector relax its defenses because the younger part is now seen and cared for safely. When both parts feel acknowledged and connected, they stop working against each other and become part of your authentic, balanced self.
I am sharing this story to tell you one important truth:
You’re not broken.
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do:
Protect you.
I’m passionate about this work because I’ve lived the pain of feeling trapped in my own mind, overwhelmed by chaos I couldn’t control. But I’ve also seen how powerful it is to reclaim safety, rewrite those survival patterns, and step into true freedom.
Now, I guide my clients to rewire their nervous systems and shift protective patterns by helping their bodies feel safe enough to respond in new ways. We work somatically, blending parts work with nervous system regulation for lasting change.
Did you know that 80% of nervous system communication flows from the body to the brain, not the other way around? That’s why this work is body-centered and experiential.
The nervous system does not understand verbal language, real change happens when you show it through the felt sense—meaning the physical, lived experience in the body. The nervous system needs to feel safety and connection to truly respond.
I hope this gives you a deeper understanding of how we function as humans.
My Approach
I’m a Certified Nervous System Coach, trained in nervous system regulation and parts work. My approach is trauma-informed and blends insights from polyvagal theory, applied neurology, interpersonal neurobiology, complexity theory, and somatic practices—all aimed at creating lasting, embodied change.
My coaching approach comes from mentors who’ve spent years supporting executives, founders, and Fortune 500 leaders and it’s proven to bring real, lasting change.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
—Joudy
Disclaimer: I support your body’s natural ability to heal and guide you in regulating your nervous system to create conditions that support natural healing. This is not medical advice, therapy, or a substitute for professional mental health care. If you’re facing significant trauma or health challenges, please consult a qualified trauma-trained professional experienced in nervous system work. I do not provide direct trauma treatment. I guide you in working with the protective patterns your nervous system developed over time, using nervous system regulation and parts work to help you move out of survival mode and into a more grounded, connected way of living.
This made my day and all the effort worth it!😁 I really hope people understand my message as much as you did and feel hopeful, your comment touched my heart ❤️ thank you so much for reading and for following😊
wow, such a tough and beautiful journey you've been through. For you to persevere through all those challenges and yet still finding yourself where you are now is quite inspiring!