Psychology LOVES trauma work. Because most—well, the vast majority—of us have been traumatized in one way or another. Often by our parents, but really, it doesn’t matter who. For traditional therapy, trauma work is a goldmine. Almost everyone can become a client. But here’s one thing: traditional therapy isn’t talking about…
Trauma isn’t the real problem. The beliefs it creates in the name of survival are.
Traditional therapy calls them “stories” or a “limiting beliefs” and mostly disregard them as just cognitive constructs, something that we can simply rewrite with certain precision… But that’s not exactly true.
Let’s go back for a moment. Trauma is usually defined as an emotional response to a distressing event. Something happens that overwhelms your system—your mind, your body, your ability to cope. That disruption isn’t just emotional; it affects how you think, how your body stores memories.
Most trauma therapies today focus on the memory of the event, or the feelings tied to it. They work to release emotional charge, regulate the nervous system, or even rewire how the brain responds to pain. EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, IFS—these are all valuable tools. But even the best of them often miss the root issue:
Hands down, the least effective approach of all is trying to simply mentally overwrite those stories with a new narrative. If those stories came from the survival protocol itself, you’ll be rewriting them for the rest of your life—and still feel stuck. Because those survival patterns aren’t designed to help you thrive. They’re designed to keep you very, very safe. Too safe to live a life you actually love. Safe enough to never risk pain.
But we need pain. Pain is inevitable if we’re going to grow. Muscles don’t get stronger without first breaking down. Nothing meaningful is learned without uncomfortable repetition. Relationships will hurt sometimes—but the good ones mostly bring joy. Pain isn’t drama. It’s not a flaw. Painful, risky, even dangerous experiences are what give life fire, intensity, and fullness.
Trauma triggers the Survival mechanism—an ancient system hardwired into our biology—that’s only function is to keep us away from being hurt to ensure our survival. In other words: our survival protocol keeps us surviving. But not truly alive.
The survival-driven beliefs
When something painful or threatening happens, your system doesn’t just store the emotional impact. It creates an entire survival protocol—a program designed to protect you from that kind of pain ever again. That program includes feelings, body memories, emotional reactivity…
But at the core of it? Beliefs.
These aren’t just thoughts. They’re rules your nervous system wrote under pressure. They become your quiet law. Sometimes—if you are self aware enough—you recognize them for what they are, but sometimes they run in stealth mode ruling our life without us even knowing.
These beliefs are not conscious. They’re protective. And they’re powerful. They’re not formed out of logic—they’re formed out of strong emotional reaction to a traumatizing event. The event itself may not even be dramatic enough to be considered traumatic. But it will launch the Survival protocol—if only it decides that this event is big enough to threaten our survival.
And that’s the part most trauma work skips over. We try to rewrite the story. See it as some ridiculous thought that came out from a seemingly irrelevant event. And that’s true, sometimes these beliefs come out as unexpected conclusions, but that’s where the beauty and power of our Survival Protocol comes to play.
Here is the thing. Our Survival Protocol is not just a collection of stories our mind creates to keep us protected. It’s a massive, incredibly powerful built-in system meant to make sure we survive—not just as individuals, but as a species. It’s way beyond us. It’s built into our DNA, developed through millennia of survival instincts passed down through generations.
And for it to be that effective, it has to be extremely powerful. And smart. It holds memories of threats on a cellular level and has evolved over millions of years to generate shields for human existence instantly—and in incredibly intelligent ways. It doesn’t just give us orders in the form of “don’t touch a hot skillet” or “stick a fork into an electrical socket” like parents do. We all know that when we told not to do something—what do we want to do? exactly the opposite… No. It creates narrative so sneakily powerful, that it makes sure we don’t even come close to anything that potentially can cause us harm.
What characterizes them – generalization, globalization, their grandiose nature—”All of them are…”, “I will always”, “I will never”, “I am too much…”, “I am not enough…”
Beliefs like:
- “All men are liars.”
- “Women only want me for my money.”
- “I can’t do it.”
- “I’m not persuasive enough as a leader.”
- “I’ll never be successful.”
- “I’ll never lose the weight.”
- “I will always be alone.”
It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Imagine your parents teaching you not to smoke by telling you: “You will never be able to inhale properly” Not immediately elegant analogy, but darn close to what the Survival Protocol does to us. Sneaky bastard.
So, we determined that limiting beliefs are the stories that our Survival Protocol keeps us away from harm. So once we know this, can we use our awareness and willpower to dig them out for good?
Not so fast!
The major issue with limiting beliefs that come as a result of intense trauma is their connection to traumatic experience through emotional response. The protective story—what we later identify as a limiting belief—is created instantaneously as a part of the Survival Response to the trauma. And gets merged with the emotion on the physical (or somatic) level, or simply, stored in our bodies.
And here’s the amazing truth about limiting beliefs. We are accustomed to think that they are of cognitive nature, or thoughts. But they’re not just thoughts. They’re something deeper—a mix of emotion and cognition stored in the body. What I call: Emognitive™.
Limiting beliefs are Emognitive records, written into our bodies so we remember, so we keep them, and so we pass it to future generations. So we stay protected… And the funny sad thing about it that the Survival Protocol doesn’t care if they are also keeping us from going for what we want, allowing success, money, and love into our lives. There is no such thing for our Survival Protocol as “too protected.”
So for the Survival protocol limiting beliefs are not limiting at all. They are absolute necessity, the wall, the castle with the dragon that will keep enemies away. We call those beliefs limiting because they keep us stuck in lousy jobs, dysfunctional relationships, or completely alone, because there is one thing that’s scarier of them all – terra incognita. Or the unknown!
Yet we try. We journal, meditate, we do therapy, personal development courses, taro readings, and ayahuasca, only to get back to the same wall we keep bumping into. And the worst part of this journey is that after rounds and rounds and rounds of endless attempts to rewrite limiting beliefs using words alone we fail over and over again, a new belief arises that is the most damaging—the belief that we are broken beyond repair.”
Is there hope?
Absolutely! We failed to fix our limiting beliefs because we tried to use the power of our mind to address complex programming of almost prehistoric magnificence. These beliefs weren’t created to make you suffer. They were built to keep you alive. Not just as an individual, but as part of a species wired for survival. These limiting beliefs are of the same nature as adrenaline rush when we need to run from a tiger in a Jungle. Your nervous system doesn’t just respond to threats for your sake—it’s carrying generations of inherited wisdom about what not to do to stay safe, avoid rejection, escape harm, and preserve belonging.
That’s the brilliance—and the trap. But there is a way out!
You CAN reprogram your Survival protocol, at least the parts of it that no longer serve you as a free individual that wants to build their life the way that will make them the happiest, not just the safest.
I developed the Emognitive Method to deal with stubborn unwanted beliefs. This Method was built for this exact reason. It doesn’t just work with the body, or the mind, or the emotion. It addresses the entire survival imprint—the emotional, cognitive, and somatic elements working together to protect you.
Here is the Emognitive framework:
- Clearly identify what limiting belief keeps you stuck
- Where is it stored in your body and which emotions is it riding off
- Have a replacement rule ready to fill the empty spot in the Survival Protocol when you clear out the belief that doesn’t serve you
- And do the replacement.
There are a few more layers involved. It sounds simple, but this work is not always straightforward.
It’s not just about healing the past—It’s about re-coding the system that defines how you respond to life.
Nobody told you this, but
You can take control over your Survival Protocol. You have got the power. You just didn’t know it. Now you do.
So, what do you choose?
