What's your 'trauma tripwire'? The story that's your biggest source of founder fuel, may actually contain your deepest trigger
A very real human tale of how my own story of overcoming adversity later stopped me in my tracks – at the very moment I launched my business.
(Trigger warning: content covers some traumatic life events - readers are urged to use their discretion)
The TLDR:
An unplanned day off
led to a podcast binge of a business legend's origin story
that connected the dots back to my own story and how it nearly wrecked my business launch
that I share with you here so you can see how your own 'trauma tripwire' might impact what you're scaling on your own founder journey.
Sound good? I invite you to kick back and read on…
Sometimes an impromptu day off is needed, and you never know where it may lead
Thursday morning. Slivers of July summer sunshine streaming through the gaps in the blinds. I had awoken to early morning birdsong, and a familiar feeling of tiredness that I immediately knew was not going to pass after a strong hit of freshly brewed coffee. Not this time. This was bone-deep. I took my dog, Bella, out to the garden hoping the fresh morning air would bring me to. It didn’t. I went back to bed.
Two years of building a business has brought a whole new level of weariness that for me is still hard to describe; matched only by the whole new level of capability (and humility) that it also brings. I’m grateful for all of it, even on the days when the nostalgic pull of the simpler ‘old life’ challenges that gratitude. Over that same period of time, I’ve gradually learned to better recognise what my mind and body need. I’m glad that I have the flexibility in my week to take the time I need, when I need it. Eventually, I surfaced at 10am from my long second slumber, feeling much more alive but aware that I really just needed to take the whole day off. Of course, when I say ‘day off’ any founder reading this knows you’re never fully ‘off’ – are you?
Your story reveals more than you think
True to form, that afternoon I found myself watching interviews that popped up on my feed featuring Alex Hormozi – who is right now probably the most-recognised figure for relentless working when it comes to building a business. I watched his recent Diary of a CEO episode, and a conversation he’d had with Tony Robbins. Alex is a fascinating person to me. He’s such an accomplished businessman and I’ve taken snippets of insight from him for my own business-building efforts (although that’s absolutely a work-in-progress). Yet, from a coaching perspective, there’s so much I can see that’s potentially holding him back (I say that because I only know of him what he openly shares). Whilst he and I are worlds apart on the business front, there's a shared human experience - very much a leveller - that we all have in common. It’s one of the reasons why my coaching approach is not conventional. I'll give you an insight as to why this is important.
This is the single most important factor in our early coaching work together, because where you’re going matters less than what brought you here.
When I work with a coaching client, the first thing I ask them to do is write a life synopsis. Not a list of goals, a vision for the future or their 5-year plan, like many other coaches would start with. Instead, we begin with my client's own life story, in their words, over a page or two (or more if desired). This is the single most important factor in our early coaching work together, because where you’re going matters less than what brought you here. The path you're pursuing may actually be built on a pretence you haven't yet noticed. So, your life synopsis is a crucial starting point. And the format and process matter just as much.
Firstly, questionnaires are just dull to complete, and also hugely restrictive. For me, questions should deepen, rather than direct. Writing your life story allows you to capture the moments that mattered to you; the events - big or small - that helped shape you as a person. I've received them presented as bullet point lists, full-blown stories, and thematic sections; I've yet to receive a mind-map or picture flip book, but I'm absolutely here for that too.
Secondly, people rarely ever sit down and actually write out their whole life story – from birth up until today; the good, the bad and the ugly. I never did. I cannot tell you how many clients sit in that first session with me, when we have our synopsis chat, and tell me that it’s not something they’ve ever done before and how enlightening the experience was. [If you haven't done this before, I highly recommend it. Dust off your journal and start from Day Dot, the day you were born. It'll be the most powerful entry you ever write.]
Thirdly, not only does the life synopsis prime my client for their Breakthrough Session, but for me as a coach it also gives me vital clues as to why a founder may feel stuck or trapped in their business (and usually life too).
Podcasts and interviews give me a similar insight to the life synopsis (albeit limited by what’s revealed in a public setting, compared with a confidential client session). Listening to Alex Hormozi, and watching the little tells that speak more clearly than any clever soundbite ever could, gave me the threads that I would pull on if he were my client sitting in my coaching room. Here’s a man with a phenomenal work ethic, battle-hardened business genius, a Guinness world record-holder for his book launch of $100m Money Models, and humble enough to know there’s always room for more learning, more growth. Yet, he hasn’t broken through the $1bn business mark despite the hardcore hustle, and has publicly declared “f*ck happiness” – that’s where my coaching interest is piqued.
That’s not to take away from the incredible success he and his business partner and wife, Leila, have achieved; nor the moments of happiness they have no doubt shared. In fairness, he stated that he would have stopped at a certain level, but has kept going because Leila wanted to keep going. That said, a combined three hours of interview content showed me that Alex himself will remain his biggest business constraint while his unconsciously-directed need for his father’s approval (and the fear of failure that would prove his father right) continues to block his access to untapped aspects of his true capability. And happiness.
…clients often begin to see more clearly what they actually want in life and business separately from what they thought they wanted.
It’s feasible that the Hormozis will break through the $1bn threshold – but at what cost? If I was his coach, the blocks from early life experiences would be the first thing in that first session that we’d gently shift out of the way – neutralising the triggers and limiting beliefs laid down that once brought benefit, but are now working against him. When we do this in a session, my clients often begin to see quickly and more clearly what they actually want in life and business separately from what they thought they wanted. Or if they still want the same things, the motivation moves from extrinsic to intrinsic. While pivots do occur, quite often the process just removes the blinkers that prevent you from seeing and seizing opportunities that would actually move the needle.
Alex is aware of the story that is running in the background. He hasn’t been able, so far, to shift it because that story is now his identity. This identity has been propped up by his unconscious decisions, actions and behaviours that are driven to sustaining that self-concept. And all of this is further reinforced by the results and astonishing success he has attained. Thus the cycle continues. The Tony Robbins interview I watched saw that identity actually play out in real time too; it's not just a hypothesis. This is true for all of us by the way - identities are a psychologically stabilising factor for us humans, even if they're actually causing us problems in their present form. That's why we find it hard to let go. Change and transition phases are where good coaching really comes into its own, to guide and bolster you through the identity shifts that occur, especially when you're in the grip of the 'push-me-pull-me' effect. When you no longer resonate with the identity you have outgrown, but the new one hasn't quite settled in yet.
Alex has built a successful business empire because of his story: he went out on his own and had to make it work, no matter how many challenges and failures he came up against. The story has been his founder’s fuel. This happens a lot - most of us have a story where we overcame something really difficult and used it as our fuel to keep going through tough times. But it only takes us so far in life before it can end up becoming the very thing that starts to trip us up. That can show up in a multitude of ways: maybe you burn out, maybe the business hits a plateau or you fall out of love with it, maybe one over-reactive decision sinks the ship, or maybe your personal life falls apart because your business became your obsession. Whatever it may be, the story or the identity you rely on will trip you up...eventually.
Hopefully before things unravel or cause any lasting damage, this realisation gives you enough of a nudge that you recognise something needs to change. And that you take the right action for you – whether through coaching, mentoring, or even therapy. Now, conventional methods tend to focus on tackling or trying to override the identity issue on a cognitive plane. But it just doesn’t work at that level. Tony Robbins spent an hour in that interview (highly edited of course) trying to convince Alex out of his current belief system, and Alex was clearly not connecting with it, as much as he probably wanted to. We’ve got to work at the neuro-biological level first. That’s what makes a difference, both quickly and effectively. I know because it played out - to a T - in my own life as well.
My own story is no different: the fuel that powers you can burn you just as quick
But what happened next not only upended my life, it challenged my idea of what being a coach was really about.
After my coach training in 2024 with Paseda360®, I finally launched my coaching practice that I had initially begun to set up in late 2019/early 2020 (it ended up being shelved because of the pandemic). I finally felt ready: I’d had the right training for my coaching style, did the business accelerators in preparation, mapped out the growth plans, and handed in my resignation. 2024 was a tough year, and I’d worked hard to get to that point, including reconfiguring my own identity that was rooted in a long-established policing career. It had already taken a lot to get there, so leaving it behind wasn't a straightforward process. But what happened next not only upended my life, it challenged my idea of what being a coach was really about.
August 2024 was a wild ride. In the July I had just finished my coach training, recovered from three weeks of being ill with covid, and celebrated with my best friend over a Champagne afternoon tea at Claridge's in London (a 40th birthday gift I'd been saving). Thankfully I regained my sense of taste and smell by then! I floated into August not knowing what was about to unfold: in the first week I had an 'internal temporary promotion', the week after I handed in my resignation because I couldn't bring myself to do the job anymore, the week after that ended a relationship, and the final week of the month officially launched my business. None of this was actually as rash or impulsive as it may sound. Just actions I was finally ready to take, long after decisions had already been made deep down. But, boy did it feel like a lot, one after the other. Just because you choose to go on the rollercoaster, doesn't mean it lessens the out-of-control feeling of being on the rollercoaster.
Mid-September rolled around quickly. I'd been handing over work and wrapping up my goodbyes in my job. Then the rug-pulling happened. The day before I left my safe, secure, well-salaried, comfy corporate job, I received an email. My landlord was selling up. Six months notice (plus two months notice of the eviction notice). Generous perhaps, but not when you've just kissed goodbye to a regular income and haven't even signed your first client. No more payslips. No business accounts. No chance of securing another tenancy. Plus a dog and the contents of a three-bedroom house in tow. Bad enough, eh? Chuck a brain landmine in there and watch the fireworks!
When I say 'landmine', what I'm referring to is a trigger that is logged in the landscape of the brain when a trauma is encoded in the amygdala (the threat detection centre of the brain). We all have these and you'll know when one detonates. If you've ever had an intense visceral and seemingly irrational response to a person, place, thing or situation that throws you into a flight/flight/freeze/defensive-rage reaction, then there's a landmine hiding and you just found it. It's a very clever, evolutionary mechanism designed to take note of what might kill or harm you, then make sure you either stay away from similar situations in future or get you out of an environment double-quick if you get into trouble. This neuroscience is what I had just been training in; what I had literally just been licensed in working with with my own coaching clients. I'd already experienced the power of the technique I use as a Havening Coach®. Yet here I was, out of the blue, struck by an almighty landmine of my own. That wasn't part of the business plan.
So how did that landmine get there? And what was the story around it? Settle in for this one - it's not pretty.
When I turned 18, I was made homeless. I did eventually get a roof over my head, 'emergency housing' they called it. While it was better than sleeping on the streets, it was a rough area - some genuinely good neighbours but plenty of paramilitaries around (as was the case in a lot of communities in Northern Ireland back then). Soon after I moved in, I was made redundant from the job I had (let go on the day with a few quid because the business was struggling). I had been trying to get pieces of furniture as I had nothing but a borrowed airbed to sleep on. I bought a pint of milk everyday from the local shop and filled the sink with cold water as I didn't have a refrigerator. Most days I lived on toast and packet noodles. What little money I had I spent on cigarettes - because numbing out with something was all I had, and self-care goes out the window when your already low sense of self-worth has completely tanked.
I had 50p in my purse and 14p in my bank account - the electricity meter had run out a week or so before.
Some pretty awful things happened too, including my flat getting broken into and ransacked one evening, and escaping an attempted rape on another. I eventually landed in hospital for a week with pleurisy and pneumonia - oxygen sats of 73%, weighing about 7 stone, and not knowing how I was going to get back on my feet, but savouring hot cooked food and the kindness of nurses easing the pain in my ribcage. It was the first time I felt safe enough to fall into a deep sleep. At that point in time I had 50p in my purse and 14p in my bank account - the electricity meter had run out a week or so before. The depth of shame was matched only by a fierce determination to build a better life than the existence I had at that moment. All of it compounded by earlier childhood trauma that I've since spent a number of years working through. But our survival instincts as humans are powerful, and so the comeback story began.
When I got home from hospital and recovered, I sat down with the phone book, which was as thick as a doorstep back then. I didn't have a car and the public transport was a nightmare as I lived on the edge of town in a semi-rural community. I hand-wrote an individual covering letter to every company I could feasibly work for. I spent most of my dole money on stamps and stationery (I had found out how to sign on benefits at that stage). Pure determination got me through that time - and the wrist cramp - and I eventually landed an admin job. It paid £7000 per year and while there was a bit of rocky relationship with the owner, it got me started, out of the flat everyday and off benefits. More than anything, it restored my faith in myself and a bit of pride that I was somewhat self-sufficient again. Life was looking up, finally.
After that I moved into agency contract work - more money, full-time but less working hours than the job I started with, and much better working conditions. I went on to college as a mature student and got my diploma that enabled me to go to university. At 24, I moved to England and started university and a whole new life and policing career; I had a fantastic relationship with my partner and eventually we got a place of our own. I was so happy and very proud of what I'd overcome, with the support of some wonderful people along the way. Maybe too proud, looking back.
Life took me in a different direction at 37: a fresh start in South Wales after our relationship breakdown, a move closer to my best friend, and a new job with a different police force that offered a better route of career progression. Granted, I've skirted over that second new start, I know - maybe a tale for another post. But my point being that two new beginnings under my belt in the space of two decades is a pretty strong track record for resilience. That whole life of overcoming adversity became tightly wrapped up in my identity. I had no reason to think I couldn't crack a fresh start for a third time, launching my long-awaited business.
But my own personal unconscious modus operandi is to shut down - that MO is how I learned to stay safe in my early life. And that is not helpful when you've just launched a business
Those stories had been my fuel - proof of what I was made of, and what I could handle. What I didn't realise was that original 'landmine' from 18 years old was activated the moment my brain had assessed a threat that was inescapable by its own criteria. It had sent that little chemical package of sensory information on a high frequency brain wave over to my amygdala to check if we'd been in this situation before. When that was confirmed, my autonomic nervous system did its job. Full scale activation. But my own personal unconscious modus operandi is to shut down - that MO is how I learned to stay safe in my early life. And that is not helpful when you've just launched a business - one that's now your only source of income. That eviction notice in September 2024 completely paralysed me, and it stopped my brand new business in its tracks. This is why I highlighted at the beginning of this field note that in my coaching with clients, we start at the neuro-biological level not the cognitive. Read on and find out how I became my very own case study in how effective this coaching technique actually is.
Around the same time that all this was happening, I had become good friends with Helena - an already-established coach who I had gone through the Paseda360® training with. We decided to help each other and get practicing our new Havening Coaching techniques while we were building up our businesses. I'm not sure I would be where I am if Helena hadn't coached me back then. It was a complex trigger that I had because it wasn't just about the original event of being made homeless, it was also entangled with how my life unravelled after that - redundancy, burglary, running out of money, ending up ill in hospital. All of that stuff stemmed from an abandonment wound and unprocessed trauma prior to that too. A brand new coach, with a brand new business, and here I was sitting in someone else's coaching seat unable to move from the paralysis caused by my own brain short-circuiting. Not the fresh start I had imagined. But most definitely the making of me as coach.
The full circle moment: how I became my own walking case study
It's often said that the true test of transformation is in changed behaviour. I agree. And there's a layer underneath this that's deserves attention. Changed behaviour begins with changed reactions. Or more to the point, lack of reactions: when what you think, decide, say or do comes from a place of response instead. Those two outcomes emerge from two very different nervous system states. It's one thing to observe this in a coaching client; it's something else entirely to experience it yourself.
I got to a month before the eviction date when I finally found somewhere to live. It was a temporary solution and supposed to tied me over until I could find something more suitable for me and the dog longer-term. It got me started and it I was grateful for the breathing space while I was trying to get my business off the ground. I thought 6-12 months, brilliant. What I failed to register was the minimum 3-month term on the contract before I signed it, such was my panic-filled rush to sort something out while carrying the weight of everything else in my life. Four months in...another eviction notice. A change of plans. Never have so many expletives filled my mind whilst plastering on a smile and offering nod of understanding.
It's only right to add here that all of this was just how life was serving up - people have their lives, their plans and priorities. For me, it just wasn't the first time I'd found myself having to adjust my whole life because a decision made by someone else. A hard lesson I'm determined not to repeat. We live and learn.
What was the most astonishing thing about this second situation though was the distinct lack of 'landmine'. The first event was characterised by the sensation of my stomach dropping when I received the email from the landlord, and every single time I thought about my situation (which was all day everyday). That visceral feeling was key, so I knew the original trauma had been dealt with because I didn't get that sensation during the second eviction. Two eviction notices within a year. But this time: no panic, no shut down, no paralysis. All because we located and neutralised that original landmine on the landscape of my brain (a process that takes about 15 minutes to do).
A massive headache? Absolutely. The last thing I wanted was to move house twice within six months, be out the cost of removals and have the physical, emotional and mental upheaval. But for the first time I had clear thinking and full control of my faculties. All sorts of shit is going to come at you in life and in business - it sometimes feels like a perpetual onslaught of peaks and troughs, highs and lows. The big difference is in being able to tackle those head-on, from a grounded place, and feel like you're responding rather than reacting. Meaning you're more likely to make clear decisions in line with what's right for you.
What the second eviction also gave me was the new perspective on the story itself - now that I could actually see it. I had no idea it had been running in the background, framing how I saw the world, and myself in relation to it. Had I not experienced the trigger, then the transformation, I wouldn't have known that both the landmine and the story existed. It gave me a chance to disarm it completely, with a huge thanks to Helena's amazing coaching. Identities can take a bit longer to unravel and set right again. Building from the ground up as your authentic self takes just as much effort and dedication as building your business. Of course, both are absolutely worth it. The whole experience has made me a far better coach. Having the benefit of going through something and coming out the other side of it is about as relatable as it gets - I'm my own walking case study in how powerful and effective these techniques are.
So take note of where your own 'trauma tripwires' may be. What are the stories you dine out on time and time again? What identity might you be building your life and business around that won't withstand a good old rug-pulling? What needs to change to allow you to be who you actually are, not who the world told you you needed to be just to get by or feel accepted (or survive for that matter)?
I may not have a business empire like Alex Hormozi (yet?) but I can stand beside him with the human stuff. Life is a leveller at times - it pays to be kind to ourselves, and each other.
Stay human,
Suzi x
[If you've been affected by anything covered in this field note, please do reach out to me.]
Email me on: transform@cazimicoaching.co.uk
Come say hello on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suzi-graham
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