You’re Not Broken — You’re Living From a Belief Formed in Survival

By Elizabeth Meigs | Certified Trauma-Informed Practitioner | Transformational Coach | Founder of Elizabeth Inspires | Creator of the Miracle Power Activation System™

Understanding How Trauma Shapes What You Believe

Many behaviors that frustrate you today did not begin as flaws. They began as protection.

After trauma, abandonment, chronic stress, or repeated rejection, something shifts beneath the surface. The event ends. But the belief remains.

You may not remember consciously deciding it. But your nervous system did.

Beliefs like:

“I’m a mistake.”
“I must have done something wrong to deserve this.”
“I am a failure.”
“Everything would be easier if I wasn’t here.”

Beliefs like these don’t form because someone is weak. They form because pain searches for meaning. And when pain cannot find safety, it often finds self-blame.

This isn’t brokenness. It’s adaptation.

How Belief Forms in the Aftermath of Trauma

After my traumatic brain injury, I wasn’t just healing physically. I was navigating rejection, judgment, hurtful words, chronic stress, and performance pressure. Moments that may have seemed small to others landed heavily.

When people said things that cut, when I felt misunderstood, when I felt judged instead of supported — my brain tried to answer the question:

Why is this happening?

And the conclusion slowly formed:

There must be something wrong with me.

That belief didn’t show up loudly at first. It showed up quietly — in anxiety, in depression, in trying harder, in questioning my worth, in spirals that felt impossible to escape.

Over time, belief became the lens through which I saw everything.

This is where Perspective becomes critical — what I later came to teach as the first step in the Pathway to PEACE Method™.

Belief is interpretation.

The event may be real. But the meaning we assign to it determines identity.

When Self-Protection Turns Inward

The nervous system does not separate emotional pain from physical threat. If rejection once felt life-threatening, your system remembers.

It decides:

“If I was better, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“If I don’t stand out, I won’t be attacked.”
“If I don’t expect love, I won’t be disappointed.”

That is survival logic. And survival logic is powerful.

But what protects in one season can imprison in the next.

There comes a moment — sometimes quietly, sometimes through exhaustion — where something inside you begins to question the narrative.

This is the first step in the Roadmap to Resilience™: Rise.

Not rising by forcing change.
Not rising by pretending you’re stronger than you feel.

Rising is a choice. A conscious decision to pause and notice:

“I am not my belief. I learned this.”

Rising is the moment you separate who you are from what you adapted to survive.

It does not require confidence. It requires awareness at first, then practice.

It is the first reclaiming of authority — not over what happened, but over what it now means.

The Breakdown That Became a Turning Point

There came a point when I could no longer think my way out of the spiral.

I broke down. Not with polished prayer — with desperation.

Crying out to God, overwhelmed and exhausted. And what met me was not punishment.

It was comfort.
Love.
Peace.
Everything I needed in that moment — and it was more powerful than anything in this world.

For the first time since the accident, I felt safe. Not because the pain disappeared, but because I knew someone understood it fully.

I knew Jesus Christ knew what I was carrying — and loved me in it.

And in that safety, something shifted.

I no longer believed I was abandoned in my suffering. I began believing there was purpose in it.

Not a one-time revelation. But a consistent reminder.

Every spiral. Daily. Weekly. Monthly.

“I have a plan for you.
You can’t stop.
You have to keep going.”

That promise became the beginning of new belief. And in that belief, I finally found rest. If you are reading this today it is no different for you. The same promise for me is for you too.

Regulation Before Rewriting

Healing did not happen overnight.

I still spiraled. I still shut down, lashed out in anger, questioned myself.

But each night, no matter what had happened during the day, I turned to Him.

Sometimes in tears.
Sometimes exhausted.
Sometimes ashamed of how I had reacted.

But always thanking Him first.

Thanking Him for my life.
For my blessings.
For the promise He kept reminding me of.

That gratitude wasn’t performance. It was stabilization.

This is Appreciation and Stabilize.

Before belief can be rewritten, the nervous system must feel safe.

Over time, that nightly surrender began happening during the day. I learned to rest in His promise, to regulate in His presence, to believe that I was safe even when I didn’t feel strong.

That is how belief slowly shifts — through repetition, through safety, through connection.

Why Letting Go Felt Unsafe

Releasing the old belief wasn’t simple. It felt exposed.

If I wasn’t the mistake…
If I wasn’t the failure…

Then who was I?

Old beliefs feel protective — even when they hurt.

Letting go of an old belief can feel unsafe. Even painful beliefs once served a purpose. They shielded you when you didn’t know how else to survive.

So releasing them can make you feel exposed — like standing without the protection you once relied on.

That’s why healing cannot be rushed.

The nervous system needs safety before it can lower the walls it once built to survive.

We don’t shame the way you learned to survive.

There was a time when I criticized myself for spiraling — for shutting down, for reacting, for not being stronger.

Others don’t criticize themselves. They simply identify with the pattern.

But the patterns you developed were responses — not identity.

Healing begins with understanding — understanding why the belief formed, understanding what it was trying to protect, understanding that you did the best you could with what you knew at the time.

We gently replace it with something stronger and more stable.

And safety is where God begins His rebuilding.

The New Belief

Over time, through surrender, repetition, and safety, new truth anchored itself.

“I am chosen.”
“My voice matters.”

Not because circumstances proved it first. But because truth was consistent when my emotions were not.

Belief changed. And behavior began to soften naturally.

Not forced.
Not performed.
Just aligned.

That is Elevation.
That is Reconnect.
That is Shine.

If You See Yourself Here

If you recognize yourself in survival beliefs, nothing about you is defective. You adapted. But you are allowed to adapt again.

Healing does not begin with fixing behavior. It begins with asking:

What did I start believing about myself — and is it actually true?

God does not expose belief to shame you. He reveals it to free you.

You are not a mistake.
You are not a failure.
You are not a punishment.

You are chosen.

And your voice matters.

If something in you recognizes these beliefs, you don’t have to untangle them alone.

Belief does not shift in one breakthrough moment. It shifts through repetition — through daily reminders of who you actually are apart from the wound, apart from the survival pattern.

That’s why I created my free daily affirmation text subscription where I send simple daily affirmation texts focused on identity and restoration.

Not hype.
Not pressure.
Just steady truth to help retrain the narrative running beneath your life.

If you need that kind of reinforcement right now, you can join here:
https://elizabethinspires.com/subscribe-to-daily-affirmations/

Small reminders.
Consistent truth.
A voice that helps you remember you are chosen — and your voice matters.

That’s where new belief begins.