Before exploring the developmental theory itself, it helps to understand the experiential foundations that shaped it.
The spiral you see above reflects the recurring emotional, relational, and existential patterns that emerged across years of lived experience and clinical observation — the patterns that ultimately crystallised into the Innate Entitlement Framework™.
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Why This Diagram Has No Stages
Unlike the Developmental Arc of the Innate Entitlement Framework™, the Lived Experience Arc is not linear.
It does not unfold in steps, phases, or predictable psychological markers.
It reflects the truth of human experience:
We grow in spirals, not straight lines.
We loop through loss, adaptation, resilience, Boundaries, suffering, reconnection, and restoration — in movements that repeat, soften, deepen, and reorganise across seasons of life.
The spiral form honours this reality.
It mirrors how people change: circling back, moving forward, collapsing and rising again, coming home to themselves with greater Presence each time.
This diagram represents themes, not stages — the inner architecture of how human beings reorganise themselves through adversity, resilience, and eventual reconnection to their original receiving template.
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Innate Entitlement Framework™
Remembering the Right to Exist, Be Met, and Take Up Space
A Personal Reflection
For a long time, I believed that something was wrong with me.
I felt deeply.
I noticed everything.
I carried responsibility early.
I cared intensely about others — often more than I cared for myself.
Somewhere along the way, I learned to minimise my needs, question my right to take up space, and feel guilty for wanting more: more rest, more truth, more life.
Like many people, I adapted:
• to family dynamics
• to emotional availability
• to expectations instead of inner truth
Outwardly, I functioned well.
Inwardly, there was a quiet sense of dislocation — as if I lived slightly outside myself, earning my place rather than inhabiting it.
What I did not have then was the awareness that my life belonged to me.
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The Inner Boundary That Survived Everything
Although my upbringing erased many relational boundaries, something essential in me remained intact — something existential and unshakeable.
From a young age, I knew:
“What is happening here is not my fault.
These people — my parents — are responsible for their behaviour.
I have just arrived on Earth.
How could this possibly be about me?”
This was not defiance.
This was clarity.
It was the early expression of my internal boundary template — the core differentiation that prevented me from merging with dysfunction or internalising blame.
Because of this:
• I did not collapse
• I did not lose my sense of self
• I did not internalise shame
• I did not become defined by the emotional climate at home
But I did carry social shame — the kind that comes from living with domestic violence, secrecy, and fear of judgment.
This was not an internalised shame (“I am bad”).
It was relational, social, contextual (“This situation is shameful to talk about”).
My self-worth was never the issue.
Outside the home, I thrived:
• I excelled academically
• I had many friends
• I was vivacious, joyful, socially attuned
• I lived freely, as if the dysfunction at home did not define me
This intact internal boundary became even clearer in adulthood — especially in the moment I realised in my marriage that I could not function harmoniously in the same way I functioned with chaos.
It showed me that my relational challenges were adaptations, not evidence against my essence.
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A Childhood Already in Relationship With Life
Even as a child, I lived from an instinctive orientation toward life:
• toward truth
• toward clarity
• toward possibility
• toward my own internal reference point
I never collapsed into the emotional climate of the home because I was never referencing the home.
I was referencing life.
This is the early expression of what the framework now names:
Conscious Boundlessness — the capacity to remain internally anchored and connected to life even amidst instability.
This inner compass is exactly what carried me into adulthood.
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Moving to the UK Alone: Proof of an Intact Inner Boundary
At 23, alone, without speaking English, without a plan, and without familiar references, I left Brazil and moved to London.
I didn’t collapse into fear.
I didn’t let the unknown define me.
I didn’t need rescue, approval, or certainty.
I had:
• Presence
• Instinct
• Internal boundaries
• Self-trust
• Life-force
• A deep relational dialogue with life
People often ask, “How could you leave everything?”
But the real question for me was:
“How could I stay?”
I realised I was not living a life that belonged to me.
I was living a life shaped by expectations, emotional dynamics, and responsibilities that were never mine.
I left Brazil because I wanted to inhabit myself.
To reclaim my own life.
To take up space without apology.
To finally live from the inside rather than from adaptation.
And most importantly:
**I went to London to meet life where it was —
like Mohammed going to the mountain.**
Life was calling me forward, and I followed.
Not out of rebellion.
Not out of impulsivity.
Not out of escape.
But out of something much deeper:
a knowing that if life was not coming toward me where I was, I would go to where life was moving.
This is what it means to be in relationship with life —
to meet it, respond to it, and participate in it.
The move was not a break.
It was a continuation.
The next expression of the internal boundary I had carried since childhood — the part of me that always knew:
“This life is mine to live, and I am meant to live it.”
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Presence Was Survival — And Revelation
London did not create my Presence.
It revealed it.
Alone in a foreign country, I had no choice but to live moment by moment — listening inwardly before acting outward, meeting each situation without collapsing, staying open without abandoning myself.
This way of being wasn’t learned.
It was remembered.
I began to experience life as relational:
• a meeting
• a responding
• a listening
• a participating
Not something happening to me.
Not something I had to manage or control.
Life became something I was in dialogue with.
This dialogue was embodied:
• meeting moments without collapse
• staying open without dissolving
• letting life move toward me without self-abandonment
• responding from clarity rather than fear
And from this dialogue, a stance emerged — one that later became the philosophical heart of Conscious Boundlessness:
I am here, and life is here with me.
I move, and life meets me.
I listen, and life responds.
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Interconnectedness With Others: Presence as Contagion
As my relationship with life deepened, something equally profound revealed itself — something described across polyvagal theory, interpersonal neurobiology, affective neuroscience, and systemic therapy:
Human beings regulate one another.
Our nervous systems are interconnected.
Presence is biologically contagious.
But here is the essential paradox:
**Interconnectedness becomes healthy only when it is held within Boundaries.
Boundlessness becomes safe only when the field is boundaried.**
We are born naturally boundless — open, receptive, connected.
But without boundaries, that boundlessness becomes collapse, fusion, overwhelm, and emotional absorption.
What the science actually shows is this:
A boundaried system can co-regulate.
A boundaryless system collapses into dysregulation.
This is why my presence affected others —
not because I was boundaryless,
but because I was self-boundaried enough to stay regulated, coherent, and clear.
And from that boundaried coherence, something natural happened:
**I could only offer others what I was offering myself.
And others could only offer me what was alive within them.**
In human relationships:
what is available in one nervous system becomes available in the other —
and what is unavailable remains unavailable to both.
This reciprocity is mutual, but it is not symmetrical.
A regulated and restored presence can engage in this exchange without collapsing, because:
• Boundaries stabilise the field
• Coherence travels across systems
• Openness remains protected by differentiation
Neuroscience confirms that co-regulation requires two things:
1. Openness — our natural boundlessness
2. Containment — a stable boundary that prevents fusion
When these two conditions are met, what flows between two people is not overwhelm, but coherence.
From here, the principles of the science match my lived experience:
• Polyvagal Theory (Porges): regulated systems invite regulation
• Interpersonal Neurobiology (Siegel): one coherent brain creates coherence in another
• Affective Neuroscience (Schore): attuned presence reorganises emotional states
• Systemic Therapy: one change shifts the whole system
• Social Baseline Theory (Coan): the brain uses fewer resources in the presence of a grounded other
In everyday life, this looked like:
• When I grounded myself, others grounded.
• When I treated myself with compassion, others felt safe to treat themselves with compassion.
• When I respected my boundaries, others found theirs.
• When I regulated myself, others regulated simply by being near me.
• When I related from presence, others found presence within themselves.
Presence affects presence.
Regulation affects regulation.
Compassion evokes compassion.
Coherence reorganises the relational field.
This is circular causality —
our way of being shapes the system around us,
and the system shapes us in return.
This is why I became a therapist.
Helping others wasn’t a strategy.
It was the natural continuation of how I was already living:
offering others the regulation, compassion, boundaries, Boundlessness, and coherence that I had cultivated within myself —
the state the nervous system recognises as safety, connection, and truth.
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Boundlessness Begins in the Womb
Before birth, there is no psychological separation between baby and mother.
There is no “me” and “you”.
Only Original Boundlessness — physiological, relational, and total.
The womb is the first boundary — and the first receiving environment.
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Prenatal Receiving: The First Adaptation of the Human Organism
The fetus does not simply exist inside the mother.
It is received on every biological, physiological, biochemical, and experiential level.
For nine months, the fetus:
• is carried
• is held
• is nourished
• is regulated
• is protected
• is kept alive through another
This leads to the core biological truth:
The fetus adapts to receiving.
Receiving is its first environment.
Receiving is its first relationship.
Receiving is its first survival mechanism.
The fetal organism develops around:
• the expectation of regulation
• the expectation of nourishment
• the expectation of protection
• the expectation of being held
• the expectation of relational continuity
It learns:
“I am meant to be received.”
This is the original imprint of Existential Entitlement —
not psychological, but biological.
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The Science of Receiving — Energy, Healing, and Surrender
Modern science now confirms what ancient traditions intuited:
Receiving is not passive. It is a biological state of openness, safety, and relational trust.
In prenatal development, this is mediated by:
• oxytocin-driven parasympathetic dominance
• maternal-fetal biochemical signalling
• neuroception of safety (Porges)
• allostatic support through the mother’s nervous system
• cellular energy exchange through the placenta
• bioelectrical communication that coordinates fetal growth
This is the deepest form of “receiving energy” —
not mystical, but physiological.
The fetus receives:
• glucose, oxygen, nutrients
• hormonal cues
• emotional states
• biorhythms
• regulatory signals
• molecular “instructions”
• energetic safety through relational attunement signals
Developmental neurobiology shows that:
**Cells grow in response to receiving.
Cells repair in response to receiving.
Systems regulate in response to receiving.**
This is the biological foundation of what we later experience as:
• surrender
• healing
• restoration
• letting go
• being held
• internal safety
• openness without collapse
In adulthood, these states correlate with:
• increased vagal tone
• reduced cortisol
• oxytocin release
• parasympathetic restoration
• immune repair
• emotional integration
• deep relational trust
Receiving is therefore not metaphorical.
It is:
• energetic
• relational
• biological
• neurological
• developmental
• embodied
This is why surrender heals.
This is why being held restores.
This is why co-regulation transforms us.
This is why safety reorganises the nervous system.
Because the organism remembers:
“I am meant to be received.”
And healing is — at its core — the body returning to this prenatal truth.
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How Boundaries Are Meant to Form
After birth, boundaries grow through repeated experiences of being met:
• held
• soothed
• fed
• responded to
Each appropriate response teaches:
“There is me, and there is the world.
And the world responds to me.”
Boundaries are grown — not taught.
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The Three Layers of Entitlement
1. Existential Entitlement — the right to exist
2. Relational Entitlement — the right to be met
3. Egoic Entitlement — a survival adaptation when the first two are disrupted
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When Boundlessness Is Not Safely Held
A child may grow up:
• overly responsible
• unsure of their needs
• afraid of taking up space
• unclear about where they end and others begin
This is not pathology.
It is intelligent adaptation.
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Boundaries Emerge From Entitlement — Not Technique
When existential and relational entitlement are intact:
• saying no feels clean
• saying yes feels true
• guilt dissolves
• Boundaries arise naturally
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Presence: Where Entitlement Lives
Entitlement lives in the present moment, in the body.
Through Presence we learn to:
• feel our limits
• sense what is right
• self-regulate naturally
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Entitlement Is Not a Trait — It Is a Condition of Worth
Entitlement is shaped by early relational experience.
When supported, we feel grounded.
When disrupted, we adapt.
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Coming Home to Yourself
Healing entitlement is the restoration of:
• the right to exist
• the right to be met
• the right to take up space
You stop trying to deserve your place in the world.
You simply occupy it.
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Scientific References
Polyvagal Theory:
• Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation.
Interpersonal Neurobiology:
• Siegel, D. (2012). The Developing Mind.
Affective Neuroscience:
• Schore, A. (1994–2019). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self; Right Brain Therapy.
Social Baseline Theory:
• Coan, J., & Sbarra, D. (2015). Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort.
Attachment & Relational Neuroscience:
• Schore, A. (2003). Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self.
• Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant.
Systemic Therapy & Circular Causality:
• Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
• Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy.
Developmental Psychology:
• Winnicott, D. (1960). The Theory of the Parent–Infant Relationship.
Copyright & IP Notice
© 2025 Janaína Mahé
The Innate Entitlement Framework™, Mindful Attribute Boundaries™ (MAB™),
Nervous System Achievement™, and the Entitlement Triad™ are original theoretical concepts and intellectual property of the author.
All rights reserved.