Ep. 203 – Understanding and Healing Your Traumas with Gabby Bernstein

Your trusted source for nutrition, wellness, and mindset for thriving health.

I have the honor of connecting with Gabby Bernstein today! Gabby is a spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, and catalyst for profound inner change. She recently launched her latest book, the New York Times bestseller, Happy Days. 

Gabby has been transforming lives- including her own for more than sixteen years. She is a number 1 New York Times best-selling author. She has written nine books, including The Universe Has Your Back, Super Attractor, and her latest, Happy Days. In her weekly podcast, Dear Gabby, she offers real-time coaching, straight talk, and conversations about personal growth and spirituality with unique and inspiring guests.

In this episode, Gabby and I dive into undoing the patterns that made us feel unworthy of love. We discuss the impact that big and little T traumas have on the brain, how our coping mechanisms could reflect the traumas we experienced, and the value of supporting the autonomic nervous system- specifically the sympathetic overdrive, which is a chronic state of hyper-arousal. We also discuss the effects of shame and how it clouds our perspective on the experiences we have had, and talk about using compassion as the antidote.  

I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with Gabby Bernstein! Stay tuned for more!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Noticing the patterns that keep us stuck in our lives is the first step to undoing those patterns.
  • Why is it easier for people to stay stuck in their patterns than change them?
  • How shame keeps us locked into painful patterns in our lives.
  • Gabby talks about trauma and explains why everyone in the world today is traumatized.
  • Using compassion as the antidote to shame.
  • Creating a boundary of distance can help us view people through the lens of compassion rather than the lens of shame or blame.
  • Addiction is an extreme way of managing impermissible trauma.
  • How can those who grew up in traumatic circumstances change the course of their children? 
  • The most important thing we can do for our children is to create a secure environment in which they can grow up.
  • The book, Happy Days, is about re-parenting yourself so that you can heal the traumas of your past and undo the generational cycles.
  • Gabby discusses tools and proactive practices for addressing trauma or uncomfortable feelings you may be experiencing from your past.

About Gabby Bernstein

For over sixteen years, Gabby Bernstein has been transforming lives—including her own. The #1 New York Times best-selling author has penned nine books, including The Universe Has Your Back, Super Attractor, and her latest, Happy Days. In her weekly podcast, Dear Gabby, she offers real-time coaching, straight talk, and conversations about personal growth and spirituality with unique and inspiring guests. What started as hosting intimate conversations with twenty people in her New York City apartment, Gabby has grown into speaking to tens of thousands in sold-out venues throughout the world.

Connect with Gabby

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow

“Compassion is the antidote to shame.”

– Gabby Bernstein

Transcript

Cynthia: Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.

 

Today, I had the distinct honor of connecting with Gabby Bernstein, who is a spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, and a catalyst for profound interchange. She has a new book, Happy Days, which I have had the joy of reading twice. We had an opportunity during our conversation to talk about undoing patterns that have left us feeling unworthy of love, the impact of Traumas and traumas on the brain, how our coping mechanisms are likely a reflection of the traumas we’ve experienced, the value of supporting the autonomic nervous system, and specifically, the sympathetic overdrive, which is a chronic state of hyperarousal, and the impact of shame and how it clouds our perspectives on our own experiences, and how compassion is an antidote to this. I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I had recording it with Gabby. 

 

Again, I want to be super mindful of your time, but Gabby, I have to tell you, I have all of your books and I feel this book in particular, Happy Days kind of came into my life at absolutely the right time. I think a really great starting off point would be talking about undoing patterns in our lives that keep us stuck, because this is something that comes up with me, with my work with patients and clients, and I see it in my own family members, and I’m certainly not immune to this myself, but it’s something I’m actively working on. What are these things kind of show up for people in your experience or even in your own life?

 

Gabby: We all have patterns that we get stuck in and those are typically patterns of protecting ourselves. Patterns of helping us avoid impermissible feelings, and fearful experiences, or things that we just don’t want to face. When we start to notice those patterns and notice what we feel in those moments, and then, become conscious and aware of the ways that we avoid those feelings, that’s a practice of starting to see how we could potentially look into the underbelly of the pattern. It’s notice. Notice what the pattern is, notice what it feels like, notice what you know about it, and then know. What do you know about it? Is this an old pattern, is it something that’s been with me for a long time, does it reflect a childhood experience, is it even just something like is it masculine, is it a feminine pattern, what is this? Then, what does it need, what does this pattern need? 

 

If you’re speaking to the pattern of addiction, or if you’re speaking to the pattern of fear, or you can call it the pattern or the coping mechanism, whatever it is, and usually when you ask it what it needs, it says, “I need to be hugged, I need to relax, I need to feel safe, I need to be seen.” It really begins just by becoming curious about the patterns and that’s a really massive first step to undoing them.

 

Cynthia: I think it’s interesting, because as I was reading your book, I’m reflecting on my own coping mechanisms and patterns. One that really evolved for me growing up in a tumultuous situation with my parents being divorced, and alcoholism, and a lot of different things that I grew up in was this praiseworthy behavior that you talk about and perfectionism. I was pattern with as a child was, if I was perfect, if I got good grades, if I had the right friends, if I went to the right college, if I got the right job, then, it deflected attention on the uncomfortable feelings of the traumas that I grew up with. I know you talk about big T’s and little t’s. Even as a clinician, I was conditioned to believe that traumas have to be huge and yet, what I love about your book is that, you give us permission to understand that it could be the kid in second grade that made fun of something that you have thought about and perseverated over your entire life or something that seemed fairly benign at the time that comes up for you. I feel through the therapy that I’ve done throughout my lifetime and Reiki work, energy work. The things that have started to come up at this stage of life for me is really forcing me to reflect on the perfectionism that I’ve tried to pretend I don’t have. 

 

But how that has gotten in the way of connecting with my loved ones including my relationship with my husband, because I feel this sense of everything has to be perfect and how incredibly freeing it is when we allow ourselves the opportunity to acknowledge it and then, to really lean into those feelings. So, it’s really brought up some incredible discussions. For me, it’s created additional boundaries with some individuals in my life, so that I can be in my uncomfortable feelings, and move forward, and process them. I think for a lot of people, it’s much easier. And obviously, I’m making a broad overgeneralization. It’s much easier for many people to stay in those maladaptive patterns than it is to actually do the work. Because you and I both know the work is, it can be arduous, it can be hard, it’s not meant to be easy.

 

Gabby: I think it is sometimes a lot easier for people to stay stuck in the patterns. Easier in that it’s temporarily numbing something that is so impermissible, but harder in that you never actually get to experience what freedom is. The reason that we work so hard to stay committed to these managerial roles of controlling and protecting our lives or really protecting us from the fears of the past is because of the shame that lives beneath them. You brought up feeling like you have to be a perfectionist, because a part of you feels that if you’re not being perfect, this is for all of us, this isn’t me terrorizing you. But for all of us, we have the core wound of feeling unlovable and inadequate. We build up all these different ways of making sure that we are lovable, that we are adequate, that we are saved, that we are secure, that we are in control, so that we never have to face the shame of knowing that maybe we weren’t loved the way we were supposed to be, or that we may not had the structure in our life, or the security, or safety that we deserved. 

 

One of the other things you mentioned was divorce. I think that this is such an important thing to acknowledge, because so many of us, “Oh, my parents just got divorced. And this was me. I lived in such a dissociated state for so many years, because my parents’ divorce was amazing. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, because they were friends.” That’s fine. Yes, it was better for my parents to get divorced for them, probably for us as well. But there was no acknowledgement of the trauma of what that looks like. Being in a broken home and the feeling that a child takes on particularly in my case, I was nine and my brother was younger. He was seven or something like that. My parents literally, I write about this in the book, they literally expected me to inform my brother with them that they were getting a divorce. What message does that send to a child? You are responsible. You have to take care of us. In many ways, taking on the feeling of, it’s my fault. I have to prove to everybody how great I am. 

 

There’re just so many layers to it all. But I think that the thing that’s so profound is that, you also said that in your clinical training, you were only taught to focus on the Traumas, which is so fucking mind blowing to me. Forgive my language, but I mean, “What?” Every human is traumatized. No one is alive right now without living through trauma. We all live through COVID. But before that, we were all traumatized and we have to normalize that word, because it’s not something to shun or shame. I keep saying that if I had written Happy Days, which is the habit, is the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace. If I had written that book five years ago, I would have half the readers I have right now. Because there was so much stigma around trauma. Whereas now that we’ve lived through COVID, and we’re living through witnessing war, and the trauma of the world, we can all not necessarily just identify with the trauma that we’re experiencing in real time, but also, we’ve had this great sense of feeling unsafe in the world. A lot of our coping mechanisms were no longer working and with that we’ve had to then face into the actual historical traumas that have caused us so much suffering throughout our lives. Because when things start to feel unsafe, old wounds get activated. So, you had two choices. You could just go deep into them and come out the other side or you could numb out more.

 

Cynthia: Certainly, a lot of the stories that I’ve been listening to with women over the past two years, a lot of it is talked about the way that people dealt with being isolated socially, maybe children not able to attend school, maybe not even being able to do their work or having to work from home amongst having little people at home or even big people. I have teenagers. The way that we dealt with those feelings, those uncomfortable feelings, because there was uncertainty, there was fear that was going on within the media. It got to the point even as a clinician, where I just stopped watching the news, because it was so mentally disruptive to my wellbeing. And then, on top of that, I’m trying to be strong for my teenage boys and trying to reassure them that yes, at some point, this will go back to some degree of normalcy, we won’t have to have groceries delivered, just the absurdity, especially, of the first four to six months. I think on a lot of levels, when we’re talking about the traumas and revealing to ourselves things that have not been dealt with.

 

Certainly, for myself, three years ago, and listeners know this and I probably don’t talk a lot about it publicly. But when I was hospitalized for 13 days and I almost died, it brought up a lot of stuff, a lot. I was actually surprised. I’ve always prided myself on being strong, and resilient, and I can push through things. What I started to realize was that, I’m as human as anyone else and I was every emotion you can imagine. Fear, shame, like here I am, I’m super healthy, how could I get this sick, fear of the unknown like what’s going to happen next. When I had to go back and have to have a surgery six weeks later, I got completely triggered when they decided to do the surgery in the main operating room as opposed to the outpatient center and my husband was watching me just unravel. I don’t even know how to be supportive, because I’ve never seen you like this. I said, I think it’s indicative of the fact that there were things coming up for me that I had buried and suppressed. Working with a really good therapist, and doing a lot of talk therapy, and using a lot of Reiki and energy work for me has been profoundly healing. 

 

But I think for each one of us, we have our own ways of addressing and coping with things that make us feel really uncomfortable. As you’ve already alluded to, sometimes, that’s addiction. But addiction can take so many different forms. I think about the fact that the only thing I had control over was every day, I would walk with my poor dogs. Probably, walked four or five miles a day. But I would walk outside. That was the one thing I could do to get out of the house, and move my body, and think. I think each one of us over the last two years, it’s shown us, maybe it’s shined a light on areas that we need to work on. I love that you brought up shame in particular, because even again as a clinician, I feel this shows up in different ways and I love that you touched on the sympathetic nervous system and how this fight or flight mechanism can be reactivated when we’re trying to suppress all these emotions. 

 

I think from my perspective, one thing that was really important about the connection between shame and compassion is the understanding that compassion is the antidote to shame and that really sat with me like I remember reading– I read your book twice. But the second time I read it, I felt almost I had a weight lifted off my chest that that somehow it was this beautiful message that I needed to hear right at that point. Like you said, books come to you when you need them. Let’s talk a little bit about the antidote to shame. Because I think for a lot of us, it could be shame over something silly not passing judgment, just saying it could be little things. It doesn’t have to be something extraordinary and huge. You kicked your dog, which is terrible, but it could be something really, really big. So, let’s talk about how compassion can help us move forward from that sensation and that feeling of shame.

 

Gabby: We all have shame and we’re all running from it in different ways. And that shame is so impermissible. It’s the most impermissible feeling and emotion. It’s often so impermissible that we actually dissociate from it. In my case, I didn’t even identify as having shame until I was well into my work as a spiritual teacher and written half a dozen or more books and was already in my trauma recovery until I was saving up to accept, “Oh, my God, this is filled with shame.” That’s what I’m running from. Compassion is the antidote to shame. When we begin to extend compassion and that soothing energy of compassion, soothing secure energy of compassion to the child parts of us that have so much shame, those child parts of ourselves can relax and feel safer in our system. Because what those parts of ourselves that carry that shame need most is to be seen and to be seen with compassion. If we can see ourselves through the lens of compassion and we can see our own shame through the lens of compassion, then, what do we have to be afraid of? 

 

Cynthia: It’s interesting. Even for me, I use this with myself, but also thought of a family member, who has been an alcoholic their entire life and it’s been obviously really tragic to watch that unfold. This individual is now in their late 70s and it forced my heart to look very differently at this individual really understanding their alcoholism was just a symptom of traumas that they had grown up with, and they had never dealt with, and this is their way. Someone that’s close to 80 years old, there wasn’t this growing awareness when they were growing up. It allowed me to feel a profound sense of compassion for their journey and their experiences, and I actually reached out to this individual, and just let them know, I was thinking of them. We haven’t spoken in a while. And obviously it’s a big issue of contention within my family that this individual and I haven’t spoken very frequently, but it allowed me to honor them for who they are and just in my mind’s eye to allow them the space and the respect that they’re not going to be able to do the work that your book embraces, but they have done the work for themselves as much as they are capable of and to just honor their individuality and be compassionate about their journey.

 

Gabby: Well, I appreciate that you mentioned creating that boundary of distance, because when we have that boundary of distance, it’s actually a gift that we give the person, because then, we can see them through the lens of compassion rather than through the lens of shame and blame. Sometimes, the most loving thing to do is set the boundary and say, “It’s not really safe for me to be in your life, but I do love you, and I forgive you, and I respect you, and I appreciate your great opportunities for growth in my life.” [laughs] When we really have to look at addicts from that lens, I’ve been in recovery for 16 years and so. My hope is that, people see my addict parts is through that lens of compassion. Because all addicts in some way have experienced some kind of trauma, typically Trauma. The addiction to whatever it might be, the extreme addiction is just extreme way of managing the impermissible trauma. We all have different ways of running from the traumas of our history, but the bigger the T, the Trauma, the more extreme the protection mechanism. In this case of addiction, typically because of a Trauma. I have a lot of compassion and love in my heart for addicts. For those who do not have the privilege of getting sober, and finding a program, and getting support, it’s really shitty life to live to be in that constant hamster wheel of running, running, running, running, running from the traumas of your past.

 

Cynthia: I just reflect on how different my life would have been if I didn’t develop healthy coping mechanisms to deal with what I grew up in. Because I wouldn’t obviously be where I am and wouldn’t have a healthy relationship with my husband and with my boys. In many ways, I love and honor that when you talk about your relationship with your son, it reminds me how I’ve always said to my husband that I did not and would not recreate what I grew up in and how every day, every single day, I’m not exaggerating. Every day, it’s a conscious effort to interact with my children differently than I grew up with to make sure that even though, it’s embedded in my DNA, that multi-generational trauma that for me, it’s so important that my boys start their lives. Obviously, again, they’re teenagers, they’ll be leaving the house, which is hard to believe in a couple years to go off to college. But for me, it’s so, so important that I am fine tuning as I go along every day. 

 

As they get older, it gets more complicated being a parent. At least, in my estimations, it seems to be far more complicated the older they get, because now they’re physically bigger than me and they are humored and laugh at some of the things I say. But I remind them all the time, the cycle is broken. What I grew up with is not being recreated. I’m very honest like as they get older, I share things that are appropriate to share with them that I grew up with. I obviously don’t share everything. But for anyone who’s listening and maybe grew up in traumatic circumstances to know that we can change the course for our children that we have a blank slate with our children to actually change the dynamic in which we grew up in.

 

Gabby: Yeah, I actually experienced that this morning. When I was growing up, I have very visceral memories of wanting my pigtails to be perfectly straight and I would scream, “The bumps, the bumps, the bumps.” And in retrospect, I can see was just a form of trying to be in control. It was just feeling so out of control in my life, because of the neglect and the trauma I’d experienced as a child that I just needed to be in control. But my parents even to this day have referenced that in jest like, “Oh, you were so this and that with the bumps and the bumps.” My parent part is like, “No way am I going to do that to my kid.” My kid who’s three never wants to change out of the same outfit and he wants to wear this Basquiat shirt that says Thor and his soccer pants. They look like soccer pants.

 

Cynthia: [laughs] 

 

Gabby: And he won’t change out of it. We’ve gotten to the point, where he’ll let us now wash it, so that he can put it back on, but he won’t change. Today I said, “It’s time to change, we’re going to put on a new hockey outfit instead of the soccer outfit.” He just lost it, lost it, lost it. Instead of saying, we have to do this and pulling the clothes off of him, I held him in my arms and I said, because I know, he’s just wants to hold on to some sense of control. I said, “How do you feel? Why is it that you feel you want to have these clothes? What is it?” He just went on and I let him just talk and talk and talk, “Because you’ll take them in there. They’ll get wasted, and then, they’ll get ruined, and they’re going to [unintelligible [00:20:33]” and he was just telling his whole story of what he’s afraid of. I just looked at him and I said, “Beautiful, so, let’s just make an agreement that we’ll wash them later when you have your nap and then, we’ll put them back on.” 

 

This isn’t going to harm my child to wear the same outfit every day and he’s three years old, and his teacher understands, and I can keep it clean. But more importantly, I cared about, I was like, “You need your–” In my head, I’m thinking about my own self. It’s like, “You need to have perfect pigtails. I can make that happen for you.” It’s not that we want to just fix everything for our children, because that’s a different issue. But when it comes to recognizing and acknowledging that their tantrums are not just about the bumps in their hair and not just about the shirt and the soccer outfit, they’re about needing to feel in control. If that’s the one area, where he can help himself feel in control, then, I can help him feel that sensation, and also respect and honor any feelings that he’s having about not being in control.

 

Cynthia: I love that story. I have one boy, who’s now 14, who was exactly that way at that stage. I love that you are allowing him to feel everything he’s feeling and you’re finding an acceptable way, i.e., washing the clothes for him to manifest. I think my youngest, we actually had to buy a double set. I think it were these Adidas trackpants and– [crosstalk] 

 

Gabby: That’s exactly the problem I’m having with the Adidas trackpants and the multiple pairs exactly. What is it with those trackpants?

 

Cynthia: I think they like them, because [crosstalk] my youngest is a little more sensory sensitive. For him, he didn’t like anything rough and those track pants are so soft. They used to talk about, they would just rub their fingers on their track pants. But I definitely remember the superhero stage with the trackpants that was consummate embedded in my mind. I love that you are honoring who he is. It’s interesting to me, even with teenagers, my youngest, who definitely views the world differently than his older brother who’s very focused, rigid in terms of whatever he does in school. He does exactly what they tell him to do. Very smart. And then, my youngest is an outside the box thinker. My husband and I have to parent him completely differently. One of the peculiarities that came up during the past two years is that, he started taking, which is normal for a teenager, some teenagers don’t shower and others shower a lot. Anytime he left the house, he would come home and have this whole ritual of he had to shower, need to change his clothes. My husband out of concern was like, “Is this obsessive compulsive?” I said, “No, I think he has such little control over what’s happening in his world right now that the only way he can control it is to do this ritual.”

 

We just let him do. I don’t even complain about the extra laundry. I’m like, “This is just part of how he is able to control an otherwise uncontrollable situation.” And he’s actually coming to me recently. Now that we’re in a different part of the country, where it was a little less strict than where we lived before and he was saying just how happy he was, how less constrained he felt. For him, he really felt he could embrace exactly who he is. 

 

Gabby: Yeah.

 

Cynthia: This is why I tell people all the time, like, you could have five kids, 10 kids, two kids, three kids, one kid, every kid has to be parented differently. 

 

Gabby: Yes. 

 

Cynthia: I know for myself when I was growing up, my parents were– had to be and it was also in the 70s and 80s, and things were probably a little different than they are now. But parenting back then was pretty strict. It was like, “This is the way things are. I’m a dictator. This is not a democracy,” which is something I listened– [crosstalk] 

 

Gabby: Oh, I was familiar with that. Yes.

 

Cynthia: [laughs] It reminds– [crosstalk]  

 

Gabby: It’s hard when there’re grandparents, and they think, “Oh, you’re not saying no to him.” I’m like, “I’m saying no all the time. You don’t notice because I’m not yelling.”

 

Cynthia: Yeah, well, I grew up with parents that yelled and I married someone who liked me. We are introverts. Our house is pretty quiet, even though we have boys and two dogs. I know for us that quiets my autonomic nervous system and it’s really important, like, I need to feel safe, and yelling and arguing like constant arguing and drama just really drains me. It’s interesting that when my mother comes to visit, who’s a wonderful human being, she’ll say things like, “You do too much for them.” I was like, “Mom,-

 

Gabby: Oh, yeah. 

 

Cynthia: -I only have so many years of my boys. If doing their laundry is not a big deal to me. I think that’s okay. They know how to do laundry. But doing laundry is not a big deal.” But she’ll say, “Oh, you’re doing too much.” I said, “Well, I think I can speak from experience that there’s a fine line between doing too much and not doing enough. I feel we’re meeting their needs where they need to be met right now and when they leave the house, they’ll be fairly independent adults.” But it’s interesting how parents can or family members can view the lens of your parenting through their own experiences and I always–.

 

Gabby: That’s right. Of course, they do. That’s all they know. It’s beautiful, too though, because the most important thing we do is create a secure environment for our children, internally and externally. So, it’s not about the laundry. It’s about how safe they feel with that attachment to you.

 

Cynthia: Absolutely. It’s interesting how and I say this with love and reverence. When my kids were younger and they were only two years apart, people say, “Oh, it’s going to go by so fast.” The truth and the reality is, now that they are taller, bigger, they’re two years and four years away from going off to college, it just makes me feel very grateful that the patterns that I learned as a child for the large part have not been part of their experiences growing up and so–

 

Gabby: That’s a testament to your personal growth work. It’s interesting, because I wrote this book, Happy Days and I think, first re-parenting yourself, it’s literally undoing the traumas of your past, so you can be free in the present. But then, the benefit of that, which is very much what you’re reflecting right here right now is that, when we do that work on ourselves, we end the cycle. We end that cycle of neglect, or the cycle of abuse, or the cycle of addiction, or the cycle of just dictator-parent attitude. When you can look back and say, “Wow, I haven’t put those patterns in my kid,” it’s because you’ve healed them in yourself. I think that’s one of the benefits of the book is, you just have the beautiful experience of freedom in your own internal system. You learned how to care for all your inner children with so much respect and then, as a result, it gets so magnified in the care of your child or your children, your real children, your outside children. [laughs] 

 

Cynthia: Yeah, no, and thank you for acknowledging that. Now, I know that you share some very personal stories, even the story of your postpartum experience with depression and very transparently, and I was just so profoundly moved by that whole experience for you. For individuals that are listening, that are going through tough times, that are dealing with traumas or transient mental health issues, you do go into quite a bit of things that you can do proactively beyond just talk therapy. I would love for you to spend our last moments together touching on some of those, because some of these were new modalities that I had heard of, but I love that you give a very broad stroke for how we can address these kinds of things that come up for us that it’s not just psychotherapy, or talk therapy, or medication that there are many, many things that we can look at as tools to help with strategizing and addressing the uncomfortable feelings we’re experiencing.

 

Gabby: Yeah. This book is really my journey of recovering from trauma. And then, in my journey, as I always do, I share how I did it, so that the reader knows there’s a plan. Their path may not be exactly like mine, but they have a path now I hand them the way out and so they can use it however they feel they need it. In my journey, I’ve had the privilege of being able to experience the most transformational therapeutic and spiritual practices that are designed to heal trauma, some of which are EMDR eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. In the book, I share actually how you can practice EMDR in your own world with binaural music. What it does is it stimulates both sides of the brain with bilateral brain stimulation from a buzzer in either hand or a buzz in either ear, or even through tonal music. When you process energetic disturbance or experience from the past that needs to move through you from that place with the binaural music or whatever it might be, the bilateral stimulation, it actually helps your brain reprocess the experience. So, I go into depth with that.

 

I talk about somatic experiencing, which is a body-based trauma therapy. The intention is to help you become present, because when you have traumas, Peter Levine, the founder of SE says, “The trauma is the inability to be present.” When we start to bring it back to the body and move the trauma out of the body, it actually can not only regulate the nervous system, but also can reorganize the patterns in the brain. That is a fascinating practice. I introduced what I am now trained in which is internal family systems and it is a therapy model that’s designed to help you learn how to lead yourself, reparent yourself why establishing a connection to the undamaged resource part of who you are, which in IFS, we call Self. This in particular is the most empowering practice I’ve ever known, because it allows me to take care of every part of who I am. I go into depth in it in the book, and introduce it gently, and it’s extraordinary that practice. And then, of course, there’s countless body-based practices that I share, and meditations, and spiritual prayers, because all of that goes hand in hand with this other work.

 

Cynthia: I think it’s so beautiful that everything is put together in a book. The book itself is not so lengthy that it detracts from the message. I feel it’s really nice, and concise, and succinct. What are you up to next? Are you probably not wanting to work on another book right now? But do you have any other thing that’s upcoming for you, any focus, are you doing a lot of traveling, are you doing any events in 2022?

 

Gabby: I have been traveling every week. I am going to Vegas tomorrow. I am continuing to share the messages from this book and give this book the respect and the platform that it deserves, because this is my most important book yet. So many of my readers have shared that on Amazon reviews and wherever else saying, “I didn’t think she could beat– universe has your back or whatever,” which I can take a lot of pride in them loving these other books. But there’s a depth in this book that I think is so resonant and you’ve read it twice. What a beautiful gift that is to an author to hear that. I just have this sense of urgency and knowing that this is no accident that God gave me the experiences in my life, so that I could come out the other sides that I could write this book and deliver it at a time when the world has never been in more crisis than before and to show up. So, my way of showing up right now is to spread this message and visualize this book in the hands of anyone who feels that they need support.

 

Cynthia: Well, I’m so very grateful for all the work that you’ve done. I have most if not all of your books and one came to me in exactly the right time. Please let listeners know how to connect with you outside of the podcast, how to grab a copy of Happy Days or any of your other books.

 

Gabby: I have a podcast as well called Dear Gabby, where I workshop people and talk about all kinds of things. That’s a beautiful place to find me. You can also find out more about the book, deargabby.com/happydays. I’m very active on social media @gabbybernstein. So, I’m out there.

 

Cynthia: Wow. Wonderful. I’m so glad that we were able to connect today and good luck on your trip. 

 

Gabby: Thank you, thank you. It’s so nice to be with you. Thank you so much. 

 

Cynthia: If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review, subscribe and tell a friend.