**The Innate Entitlement Framework™:

A Developmental Understanding of Boundaries From Womb to Adulthood**

By Janaína Mahé, Psychotherapist & Counsellor, Hypnotherapist Trainee (2012–2025)

Abstract

This article introduces the Innate Entitlement Framework™, a developmental and relational model emerging from thirteen years of clinical practice in psychotherapy. The framework proposes that human beings begin life in a state of profound biological and psychological boundlessness—first in the womb, then in early infancy—and that this early entitlement to having our needs met forms the foundation of how we relate to ourselves and others throughout life.

When boundaries are not adequately mapped for us by caregivers, we enter adulthood without an internalised template for self-respect, relational safety, emotional containment, or healthy autonomy. This absence becomes a root source of psychological suffering, relationship difficulties, and chronic patterns of burnout and self-neglect.

The Innate Entitlement Framework™ offers a compassionate lens for understanding why boundary work is central to therapeutic change and why so many adults struggle to feel worthy, safe, or whole in themselves.

 

Introduction

In more than a decade of clinical practice, I have witnessed a common thread running through nearly every form of human suffering: a lack of healthy boundaries.

Relationship conflict, people-pleasing, overgiving, burnout, anxiety, resentment, emotional disconnection, low self-worth—though these issues present differently, they often arise from the same developmental absence: the failure to internalise boundaries early in life.

Through my work with clients since 2012, I began to notice that many adults were not struggling because they were “broken.” They were struggling because they had never learned how to be separate, sovereign, or internally boundaried human beings.

This observation led me to trace the origins of boundaries back further than childhood.

It led me to the beginning of life—into the womb.

 

Theoretical Foundations

1. Prenatal Boundlessness: The First Experience of Being Human

Before birth, we exist within another human being.

There is no separation, no autonomy, no boundary.

Our earliest experience is one of total entanglement—biologically, physiologically, emotionally, hormonally, and energetically. We receive care automatically through the mother’s body and the umbilical cord. We do not ask. We do not negotiate. We simply receive.

This is the first layer of what I call innate entitlement—not entitlement as selfishness, but entitlement as the natural state of an organism whose survival depends entirely on another.

We begin life boundless.

2. Infant Entitlement: The Expectation of Care

When we enter the world, this entitlement continues.

Infants cry and expect their needs to be met—not because they are demanding, but because crying is their only communication system.

Infants borrow the caregiver’s nervous system. Safety, regulation, self-esteem, and emotional organisation are all external. If the caregiver is attuned and consistent, the child internalises the message:

• “My needs matter.”
• “I am safe.”
• “I can be separate without losing connection.”

If not, the child internalises:

• “My needs are too much.”
• “Connection requires self-abandonment.”
• “Other people decide if I matter.”
• “I must merge to survive.”

3. Boundary Mapping: How We Learn to Be Human

Children are not born with boundaries.

Boundaries must be taught, modelled, and mirrored.

Parents provide the early map:

• This is your feeling.
• This is mine.
• This is your body.
• This is my body.
• You are allowed to say no.
• You are allowed needs.
• You are separate—and loved.

When this mapping is inconsistent or absent, children do not learn emotional differentiation, assertiveness, relational safety, or autonomy. Instead, they adapt through:

• fawning
• people-pleasing
• emotional suppression
• avoidance
• hyper-independence
• enmeshment

These adaptations become adult suffering.

 

The Innate Entitlement Framework™ Model

Phase 1: Womb Boundlessness

• No boundaries
• Total dependence
• Entanglement with caregiver physiology
• Automatic entitlement to care
• Cellular and autonomic co-regulation
• Zero separation

Phase 2: External Boundaries (Infancy to Childhood)

• Caregiver holds boundaries
• Healthy entitlement continues
• Learning through co-regulation
• Boundary mapping through modelling

When boundary mapping is inconsistent, children adapt through:

fawning, people-pleasing, emotional suppression, avoidance, hyper-independence, and enmeshment.

Phase 3: Internal Boundaries (Adulthood)

Ideally, the child becomes a boundaried adult who can:

• self-regulate
• honour their needs
• assert limits
• differentiate self from other
• hold relational space

But many adults enter Phase 3 without adequate Phase 2 experiences.

The result is burnout, resentment, emotional exhaustion, insecure attachment, and chronic relational pain.

Therapy becomes a process of boundary re-mapping.

 

THE INNATE ENTITLEMENT

FRAMEWORK™

Boundlessness → Mapping → Boundaries

PHASE 1

WOMB BOUNDLESSNESS

• No separation between self and caregiver
• Total dependence
• Umbilical entanglement (food, emotion, hormones)
• Automatic regulation (heartbeat, stress)

 

PHASE 2

INFANCY & CHILDHOOD

EXTERNAL BOUNDARY MAPPING

• Cry → Expect response (healthy entitlement)
• Co-regulation teaches safety
• Mapping: ‘me’ vs. ‘not me’;
  avoidance vs. hyper-identification
• Inconsistent mapping → boundary wounds (hyper-independence)

 

PHASE 3

INTERNAL BOUNDARIES

CORE PRINCIPLE

We begin life boundless, Boundaries must be taught, mapped, and internalised., When this mapping is missing, adulthood becomes a search for the boundaries we never had.

⭐

Origins of the Framework: A Personal Reflection

Although this framework was shaped through thirteen years of clinical practice, its deeper roots lie in my own lived experience of boundary absence.

I grew up in a family where emotional roles were blurred, responsibilities were inverted, and individuality was limited. When my youngest brother was born, I was eleven. My mother became unwell with post-natal depression, and almost overnight, I became his primary caregiver. Everyone called my name when he cried. In practice, he became “mine,” though I was still a child myself.

My mother was nurturing when we were small, but as we reached adolescence and independence threatened her sense of purpose, she struggled to let us grow. My father, meanwhile, did not allow me to work until I was twenty-one. Autonomy was not something I learned; it was something withheld.

I shared a double bed with my baby brother at fifteen. I became the emotional stabiliser for a volatile father. I became the one who held everyone together. My identity formed around regulating others—not knowing myself.

By my early twenties, I realised:

I had never lived a life that belonged to me.

This realisation propelled me to leave Brazil at nearly twenty-four. I left not for adventure, but to reclaim myself—to discover who I was beyond obligation, beyond emotional responsibility, beyond blurred roles.

Arriving in London confronted me with a new truth: without boundaries, I could not survive. I had to cultivate presence, self-trust, and internal regulation—skills I had never been taught.

This personal journey illuminated what I later witnessed repeatedly in clinical practice:

boundary wounds are developmental wounds.

When a child remains boundless for too long—emotionally, relationally, or structurally—they enter adulthood without the internal architecture needed for healthy autonomy.

My life revealed the essence of the Innate Entitlement Framework™, and my clinical work gave it shape. Together, they form a model that speaks to the deep human need for separateness, safety, and selfhood.

 

Conclusion

The Innate Entitlement Framework™ offers a developmentally grounded way to understand why boundaries are difficult for so many adults. We begin life boundless. We rely on caregivers to teach us separation, autonomy, and emotional clarity. When that mapping is absent or inconsistent, the adult struggles not because they are weak, but because they were never shown how to exist as a separate self.

My clinical work and personal journey both affirm this truth:

healthy boundaries are not rules—they are expressions of self-worth.

Therapy becomes the place where individuals learn, often for the first time, to honour their needs, to assert their limits, and to exist as whole, sovereign human beings.

 

If this framework resonates with you…

Many people who struggle with burnout, resentment, people-pleasing, or emotional exhaustion are not “too sensitive” or “too giving”—they were simply never taught how to have boundaries.

If you see yourself in this article and would like support in reclaiming your autonomy, building emotional clarity, or learning to live as a separate, sovereign self, you are welcome to connect with me for therapy or hypnotherapy.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Your healing begins with presence—and with boundaries.

 

© 2025 Janaína Mahé

The Innate Entitlement Framework™ is an original theoretical model developed by Janaína Mahé.

This framework, its name, and all associated concepts are the intellectual property of the author.

All rights reserved.