Happy Days with Gabby Bernstein & How We Can Heal

"We are all traumatized in some way," Happy Days author Gabby Bernstein. Welcome to the How We Can Heal podcast. Host, Lisa Danylchuk and Gabby discuss her healing recipes in the new book, Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace. Everything in the book is like a recipe for Gabby. And just like any recipe, you can either follow it or tweak it here and there in any way. In this episode, Gabby explains how she channels meditation with journaling plus bilateral music, the experience of losing a child and allowing dissociation to take over, and the primary goal she aims to achieve in the book Happy Days.

Outline of the episode

• [01:58] Overcoming addiction and picking up new ones
• [03:53] This is what I've been running from…
• [08:47] What are protector parts?
• [11:31] Gabby's recipes for healing
• [15:05] Rage on the Page
• [21:01] We still use so many deficit languages around mental health
• [23:44] The goal of the book is to normalize trauma
• [28:23] Gabby Bernstein – the book is decades of practice
• [32:02] How Gabby's meditation changed throughout her healing
• [45:22] Are we attracting our circumstances?

Resources:

Website: https://gabbybernstein.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabbybernstein/

Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace, Book by Gabby Bernstein: https://gabbybernstein.com/happy-days-book/tein.com/happy-days-book/

Check out Gabby's podcast, Dear Gabby:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-gabby/id1561694805

Website: https://howwecanheal.com/

Full transcript: 

We’re all traumatized in some way and it’s ya know the word “trauma” even like I’m doing all these like broadcast national television shows that will remain nameless but talking to the producers their like, “okay, we can say trauma but let’s just talk about like ya know when the boss yells at you at work” ya know it’s like there’s so much fear around going into the deeper parts there’s just so much shame around it.

Hello and welcome to the How We Can Heal podcast. My name is Lisa Danylchuk and I created this podcast to share deep conversations that encourage us to move through life's toughest circumstances. Let's get talking about How We Can Heal.

Today I'd like to welcome Gabby Bernstein on the show. She's a number-one New York Times best-selling author and has written nine books including her most recent which we'll talk about today, Happy Days. 

Gabby was featured on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday and co-hosted the Guinness World Records largest guided meditation with Deepak Chopra. She appears regularly as an expert on Today and Good Morning America among other places like the How We Can Heal podcast. She connects with her community through her books, her Miracle Membership, and her podcast Dear Gabby. To learn more about gabby visit gabbybernstein.com.  

I fell in love with Gabby's work when we met in San Francisco years ago and I asked her for advice on how to get started writing my first book. She encouraged me to write a clear outline. I took her advice and it served me well. I'm so excited to share more wisdom with you here so let's go ahead and get started. 

Gabby! We did it. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on the show. 

Listen, thank you. I am so grateful to you beautiful souls who are here to support me in fulfilling my mission of sharing this message in this book out into the world and thank you. 

Yeah and I'm gonna thank you right back again for writing this book there are so many important things happening here on so many levels and I think it's such a huge opportunity for healing. I'm assuming for you, but also for anyone who reads it.

There are a lot of things I want to get into about what I appreciated about the book and I'm super curious about your journey writing it and sharing it so um let's dive in. But, yay. I love it so much. I just loved reading it. So for folks who haven't read it yet, this book you share about your personal experience with childhood trauma but you share it in a way that's really educational. It's really supportive, so I'm just wondering, you know as you went through this journey of recovering a memory of abuse early in your life, what surprised you about that? You had already been a spiritual teacher for decades at this point and and all of a sudden you know I'm imagining it would kind of rock your world. What was that like?

It rocked my world, but it was also a great relief because my career began really when I got sober at 25. And I got clean and sober off of cocaine and alcohol, particularly cocaine, and I got very spiritual and really started teaching methods and it was such a beautiful change in my life and a commitment that I made to myself into the world, but all the while I started picking up other addictions like workaholism and codependency and controlling and and I was living in a lot of anxiety that I didn't even realize because I was constantly meditating to feel better or just just really became a spirit junkie. Yeah.

That helped me very much as a form of protecting me from feeling deeper feelings but by the time I was 36 I couldn't go on anymore with all that stress and that hypervigilance and I didn't. I would always ask myself, “Why am I a cocaine addict, why was I a cocaine addict? Why am I a workaholic? Why? Why? Why?” Yeah.

Having at that stage in my life authored half a dozen books or more, been on Oprah, had done beautiful work in the world that I was really proud of, felt really connected and committed to that work. I was still really suffering internally and that suffering just kind of got worse and worse.

And then when I was 36 in 2016, I had a dream and in the dream, I remembered being sexually abused as a child. Wow. And that was a way that that memory was re-surfaced for me and that was terrifying. It rocked me as you said it shook me deeply, but it also gave me great relief in knowing why. Mhm, it makes sense and it fits. This is what I've been running from.

You know and I have to say, I've heard different iterations of this type of experience where people are like, “Why am I, why am I behaving in this way? Why, why do I have this relationship with alcohol or with substances or with other things in life? What's driving it?” And it's so interesting because you don't know until you know right? Mhm. Like you're wondering and I love what you say in your book, “Becoming brave enough to wonder and sit with why. Why is this? Why am I behaving this way? What's happening?” But there's something under the surface and really what explains that is dissociation, which is something I think even in the world of mental health and trauma-informed care people are just really trying to get a grasp of and it's a difficult thing to understand I think you understand it best if you've been through it right? Oh, that's how that works. So, I so appreciate in this book that you speak from that place and can educate people from that place, but I’m curious how did you learn about dissociation? How did you put that together? What was happening?

Well, you know God, God is good and… She’s great. Yeah, for my memory I had dinner with a very close girlfriend who told me the same story that I hadn't experienced yet. I was like holy shit that's crazy. You know? And I couldn't you know, I couldn't even believe that that could happen like. How could you just remember a memory? You know? Yeah. And that was really beautiful because it was really God setting me up to one, kind of knowing that this could happen and not being totally totally unaware of what this could be and two to know who to call. Haha ah, but the beautiful thing about dissociation is that when we are in such extreme terror the brain has the ability to just shut it out. Hmh. Yeah.

The sad truth about dissociation is that while you may not remember in your conscious awareness, your unconscious awareness, your body, your nervous system remembers it every fucking day. Every day. And you know my therapist said to me once, “Your trauma shows up in the way you brush your teeth.” Wow. I love that.

And the thing that I want to acknowledge is that I didn't know the “why”, but and because I didn't know that was another layer of this. Yeah. But, I think every single human has had trauma. Absolutely. Big “T” or small “t”, we've just lived through two years of a worldwide pandemic that's a global trauma. And many of our unresolved ignored push-down shunned traumas from our childhood, big or small “t” trauma.  Small “t” trauma could be bullied being bullied or being told you're stupid. Big “T” traumas being sexually abused or living through a catastrophic event or having an alcoholic parent. And when we have these unresolved wounds from our past, which we all have no matter how good your childhood was. We have them even into adulthood, but when we have these unresolved truncated energy and emotion that's stuck in our nervous system and then we experience a global pandemic and things start to feel out of control and unsafe, the coping mechanisms that we've used throughout our life become extreme. Very extreme. Because we got to work a lot harder to push down those feelings.

Oh, we can't be distracted and if we're if our go-to is the hyperarousal and we're used to just running around to not feel and brushing our teeth really fast or not at all and moving through life and not breathing or thinking. Well, all of a sudden you got to stay in your house and you don't have anywhere to go so are you going to work all day on the computer? Or, how are you going to manage?

Exactly, yeah or you know or if you the way you numb out is. I once worked with a woman, who is her way of running and protecting so I practice IFS therapy. I do. I practiced it. Not as a therapist but I'm trained in it and I practice it every day when I work with people on my podcast and in this book. And internal family systems therapy has this premise that we are. We have these exiled child parts that I mentioned that get locked up under lock and key and they're never spoken of and then we build up these protection mechanisms otherwise known in IFS as protector parts. Yeah, those protector parts are dissociation addiction control running and hypervigilance.

uh we use these repetitive often known as negative patterns but really their protector parts to silence that suffering and that fear from that child part and so when we were, you know, told to stay home. I was saying that I once worked with this woman who was one of her protectors. It was to just lie on the couch all day and you don't have to get up to go to work anymore.  

And you don't have to show up in the office as a protector can get really extreme. 

Right and that's the hypo right that's the hypo aroused state of just being not feeling heavy feeling frozen unable to function or connect, checked out.  And I think it's important to note that like being hyper-aroused or hypo around being anxious or depressed like we use those words a lot in mental health and in the general public I hear that as like you have a nervous system congratulations it's on high or it's on low.  it's on hot or it's on cold.  and if we can understand how that connects to our experiences of trauma well then we can start to heal. 

And you did you know I really appreciate about ifs that it brings in this perspective of parts can hold things right?  because that can be you know in really extreme cases of abuse like ritual abuse and things like that commercial sexual abuse it can become dissociative identity right? 

where there are different parts of self different names you know switching that occurs and so i really appreciate that IFS and in your book you talk about a lot of different modalities that help you get that aspect of “hey there was there was a piece that was just not missing but over there” until i became brave enough to wonder what is why am i behaving this way and what's in there 

yeah what are some of the other tools I know you mentioned tapping and IFS and what do you feel like was your recipe for healing in terms of your therapeutic modalities? 

It's such a nice way to put it uh this book definitely is my recipe and like any recipe you can follow it or you can test drive your own way you know it's not that you have to follow the exact methods, not like baking I don't like, I could never write a baking recipe. 

I’m the same way. A little bit of that looks kind of creative. Yeah, so this is my journey and through my journey, I teach the reader how they can apply these principles in real-time and also where to go to find more. 

 yeah 

so my journey really started with 12-step recovery and deep deep spiritual practice.  I've come to understand that for a while I think that my spiritual practice was even another form of protection.  It was another protector. 

 It was as Dick Schwartz who um who generously wrote the forward for this book and is a great friend of mine new friend but good friend and I love him before his ability to channel internal family systems into this world.  He says and he's really really really got a very big antenna up for spiritual bypassing. 

Good 

Through conversations with Dick, I've been able to really see that that protector is spiritual bypassing particularly with specific types of yoga where you can kind of like get higher than the pain. 

Yeah 

Well that's a lot better than alcoholism sure it's still a way it's still a form of running yeah and managing because protectors are often also called managers so managing managing those feelings of anxiety or impermissible rage or shame guilt. 

and so for a while I used that spiritual practice but the thing I want to do really have to be very gentle about how I speak about my spiritual practice because it saved me. 

Yeah. 

And I can look back and say yeah there were times where it might have been extreme because that's all I had to get above the pain, but it was life-saving. And it also is my spiritual practice that is the thread but within the entire journey that I’ve been on right because I also believe that we have spirit guides and I believe that the energy of the universe is the same as self energy. As Dick would say in IFS and so self energy is that part of ourselves that is creative and courageous and calm and compassionate. And I would always have known that part from a spiritual perspective as a higher self or an inner guidance system. 

And, so college went to college just call upon it and the goal of a lot of these practices that i have found were really about settling and calming those protector mechanisms so that you could get closer to that presence of self within you and really connecting to self to relax those protections to perplex the protectors um the other methods that I get into in the book are EMDR - which is eye movement to sensitization and reprocessing which is a profound practice that stimulates both sides of the brain through buzzers or into different ears. 

And again a spiritual therapeutic practice in my opinion. 

Yes. 

And it opens up the brain's window of tolerance to reprocess these old disturbances and it's so gentle and it's so safe particularly if you do it with a therapist you really trust and there's ways to there's ways i introduce it for the reader in real time as well because there's a practice that i put in a book called rage on the page. 

Yeah,  I like that one um its origins are with the John Sarno work the really under the premise that our physical conditions are often psychosomatic.

Better out than in. 

Exactly exactly and so what I did there was I took this practice that my friend Nicole Sacks adapted from Sarno and she called the journal: speak where you journal for 20 minutes and then you meditate for 20 minutes and in the journaling you just get it all out. 

You just just put it on the page i took it a little further and I added in the EMDR music so I merged the EMDR part with this practice and so I put in bilateral music so the music would stimulate either side of my brain with like a little tone in the right and the tone on the left and back and forth and while I use that I would journal journal journal journal journal and get all my rage on the page followed by deep meditation with the music which would then reprocess those disturbing feelings. 

And even far back memories or present moment experiences that were reflective of those historical stories and that worked really well for me the thing I do say in the book though is if rage on the page is too overwhelming for your system. 

Yes, just do anxiety on the page or just you know anything on the page you don't have many people don't can't touch into their rage quite yet an important piece there is you had support you had experience and I'm assuming you know you did resourcing as part of your EMDR and I think there are times where people go oh EMDR is great.  Just like any tool and then I'm gonna go do it with the most painful memory ever. 

Something I really appreciate about your book is you're like don't don't push yourself too hard just go a little bit, take it bit by bit and I think that's some wisdom you know you learn as a trauma therapist. One way or another right someone tells you or you figure it out that oh we really need to bite off and chew little bits and paste this and I really appreciated that you emphasize that in the book I’m curious so you have been processing this massive, you know, recovered memory and all the implications of that which I think are like so much more than you could even really communicate in a book. 

I mean the reality of that day-to-day is just massive uh so i want to honor that and then in the midst of of all of this uh last time I met you you were pregnant and Owen you know I just want to like say his name and you know as as someone who's also experienced loss and grief. 

And knowing that so many people out there are experiencing loss in grief right now with love, how is it different for you the grief verses like that I'm processing this, this memory and this awful thing that happened because I think we call them both trauma.  We can say traumatic grief but like I think there's a big difference –  I'm just curious how that's been for you? 

Yeah, when you do the work and you come out the other side and you reprocess historical trauma you experience neuroplasticity your brain changes your nervous system changes your neural pathways reorganize.

No, I guess you'd say it and you and you become truly new. you carry in all the good qualities and all the great parts but the parts are the protectors are settled and your extreme behaviors and reactions to things are no longer extreme. 

So three months ago, I was five and a half months pregnant and last time I saw you I was with that child and it took me a year to do IVF to get to this perfect embryo and I had one.  We just kept saying all you need is one, all you need is one, and sadly the baby was he was still alive, but he wasn't getting what he needed from me and so I had to, I had to let him go and what I realized really quickly in that process in I'm still living it now in the grief process is how resilient I am now and how aware I am of my parts. 

You know, I noticed in the early days my friends would be like you know what, why are you so why are you feeling so good, like you know a few days, in or a few days after the surgery they'd be like are you sure you're really feeling everything.  

And I’m like no I'm not my dissociate my dissociation part is is right here front first responder and she's doing a fabulous job yup and she's gonna be here until later tonight when I lose my mind in my bed and then she'll show back up again in 30 minutes and then she'll be back tomorrow so I can you know be there for my three-year-old and most importantly be there for myself because if I had just like sat in that and let that all flood in it would have been too overwhelming to my systems. So that's when those protector parts when they're not extreme have extraordinarily valuable roles and so I let the dissociative part just show up when she needed to and I let the grief come in when she needed to and I let the the you know the part of me that wanted to control my body a little bit come in when she needed to you know get into shape and get my body back because it is a little bit of a nightmare when you are five and a half months pregnant and you've gained all this weight and you're in a pregnant body and your milk comes in. 

That's the problem that was heartbreaking. Oh yeah and I produce a lot of milk.  And that's a gift. And I thought for a minute. I was like should I just pump this so I can give it to my son?  Um, i might have, I might have wanted to I should have probably, but um yeah so I think that we have these moments in life where we can experience something traumatic and if we've done a lot of work on ourselves we can go through it and be able to look at our situation and say wow yep this is what I've been training for,  you know and say thank you protector parts thank you, managers, you're helping me get through this. 

I mean it just it stands out to me how functional all of this is and we still use so much deficit language around mental health I mean even when we say mental health we think about problems but health is right and this isn't dysfunction this isn't a problem this isn't an I mean you could go through and say oh let's diagnose and categorize but that's just based on the way the DSM is created. 

And the way we've come to understand these things. But what stands out to me so much in your book and the way you're describing this is like this is functional, this is helping us survive and maintain and build relationships and be some level of okay.

But what it means to have happy days is to have more of a level of okay more of a settling in your body more of a knowing of yourself right like this is who I am 

This is what I do I'm doing it today, it's okay, it's alright passion towards it and that's what that's why I think internal family systems just blows my mind and has changed my life because my relationship to self,  that curious compassionate courageous part can look at the dissociation in that moment and say oh okay there you are and I have so much compassion for you because this is the best that you can do right now. 

And thank you and let me know what you need and okay you need to do that right now and we'll let that and we'll be we'll check on you you need to be checked out and literally, the way I was communicating to myself, I was noticing that part and saying thank you. 

Okay, this is what you're showing up right now, but you don't have to be extreme like, you don't have to run with my whole system and never let me back right,  instead you can do your thing right now. 

and then, let me know when you need a break and yeah right yeah it's it's just really it's just such a gentle experience to be able to relate to yourself with compassion and courage and just a sense of connection it's just it's just it's game-changing and understanding, right I mean so much. 

I feel like when people just learn about, oh this is how trauma works, this is what happens, it's actually pretty normal. They go, oh okay so this is what's happening and then you don't have to resist it or manage that. 

You just that's actually one of the big goals of the book is like yes normalizing the trauma right? 

We've all got trauma we're all traumatized in some way and it's you know the word trauma even like I'm doing all these like broadcast national television shows that will remain aimless but talking to the producers they're like okay we can say trauma but let's just talk about like you know when the boss yells at you at work you know it's like no it's there's so much fear around going into the deeper parts because there's so much shame around it. 

And this book is just designed to really give the reader the full-bodied permission to acknowledge and honor and respect their history. And their and they're and the moments when they split off from their love connection their self-connection and it's interesting in if’s it's like you know these fragmented parts I always believed that we had, you know from a spiritual perspective that with all these ego-based belief systems that we built up about ourselves and when we noticed them and became compassionate towards them. 

We could offer them up to our higher power for healing and I just the same as ifs you know and I'm grateful that I can be a spiritual voice box for Dick Schwartz because you know you know this in the clinical space it's it's there's a lot of like boundaries in language and expectations and thank god I'm not a therapist because yeah I mean maybe one day I will be, but um that I'm that I’m that. 

I'm not a therapist and I don't have credentials like that right now because it allows me to just be so fluid with my interpretation of all these incredible practices and every therapeutic practice I put in this book is a spiritual practice somatic experiencing EMDR, IFS, EFT and in my case it's emotional freedom technique the tapping technique and it's just it's all their spirit and all of that absolutely.

You spoke earlier to spiritual bypass right and I think it’s a big part of the yoga community. 

I've seen that happen a lot in the yoga community I've also seen people speak to it a little bit more sometimes in uh spiritual speak we say like raise your vibration right this is low vibe this is high vibe.  And I see people struggle sometimes with the material that comes up around trauma, the emotional material it's you know, especially the heavy nervous system states and the sadness and the anger and those things and I that's why I love the rage on the page.

Right, it's like honor it get it out better out than input it on the page not on a person it like directs it in this healthy way, but I wonder from your perspective being so steeped in all these spiritual traditions and kind of sharing your own process along the way: how do you reconcile that of you know raising your vibration and honoring these things that we might some people might call that like oh I don't want to be in a low vibe state, I won't be angry and won't be sad. 

Yeah, that's actually one of the big responses I got from people about rage on the page.  I put it in like a meditation challenge that I did and I got a lot of people saying like I don't want to do this you know and I was like okay well first of all this isn't the right practice for this challenge. 

You know but um and I really do want to acknowledge that rage is a very impermissible feeling that we, many people, are not ready to face unless it's you know lots of work to get there. So I actually really highlight that in the book but I think that the idea of going into the places that scare you – isn't something that you would do all at once. 

You would titrate slowly in and outright so you have like even just from a spiritual perspective like you might do that yoga class and then you're in Shavasana and you have that moment of like full-blown catharsis and you feel it all the way through and then you get off your mat and you get back to life right so it's like you no human should be blown out with all of that emotion at one time because frankly what happens is we go into into full-blown dissociation and identity disorder and we you know I think you know that's just an extreme form of who we are in general that's what Dick would say. 

It's like all these different protectors are different personalities really but it gets so extreme if it was all hitting at once and so I really want the reader here to pace themselves and give themself the I say over and over that go get a therapist or here's resources for a therapist or I say if this practice doesn't seem safe for you right now do not do it, yes the next chapter go back to chapter five and do the breathwork like don't and this is also 42 years it took me to write this book and joking around, but it's you know it's really those are decades of of of practice and so it's my journey and someone's going to read it. 

You know what really feels resonant for me right now is the body work I’m going to go look into somatic experiencing or I love the idea of that you know the practices that she shares in the book because those are safe for me to do right now so I think it's really important to just make sure that the whoever you are wherever you are on your journey you're not just diving headfirst into it because that'll be too much and what i appreciate about what you're saying is that it's these harder feelings are important they're important to pace through there's in my mind and i think you're saying this too there's not a judgment on them as being you know one vibration or another they're just emotions based on experiences that are moving through and if we can contain that perspective and bite off a piece and chew it and do a little bit at a time then we don't have to be governed by it right like you said earlier you don't get sort of hijacked and have this life of you know something someone might call feeling toxic or feeling a certain way all the time you can actually see the connect with the the self that's beyond that or different from that and and use that as more of a more of a manager right you can connect with that deeper self and that's why we go to therapy you know it's like you go to that therapy session once a week you open up you crack open you do some processing and whatever form of therapy you do and then you have another week to to really process to let your body catch up you can often be tired after the session just like fully let it integrate and then you go into the next session and it's a process of growth and and i think that you know we a lot of the folks are like i don't want to feel those feelings they may have the spiritual beliefs like oh i have to only feel good to manifest and yes i believe that the secret to manifesting is feeling good but not faking feeling good yes yes that's it right there doing the work that it takes to get back to a safety within your system so that you so appreciate you clarifying that i think that's a really important take-home point for people it's about doing the work to connect with that and feel good not faking it not denying it in the intro of this book i'm like this may not seem like the eight spiritual books that came before it but it's my most spiritual book of all and it's the spiritual foundation that got me to where I am but also if you want to manifest you know practice freaking happy days you know like and then go do super attractor like that would be the order because we need to really really go underneath and rejigger some stuff under the hood definitely in order to let the car drive you know so that's and have support right so you're talking about your spiritual practice being all of these healing tools right but i'm curious how your more specific spiritual practice your meditation practice for example how did that change throughout this process like you recover memories at 36 it's been a chunk of years since then what if you noticed shift for you in your meditation practice or in some of your other spiritual practices prior to remembering I was really really into Kundalini Yoga and it really served me greatly at that time it was a way of getting above the the feelings and the disturbances and in many ways it was moving the the stagnant energy out of my body and it was allowing me to feel great spiritual connection because in those moments when you release so much in that moment you can really listen to spirit. 

And I really believe I'll go and I'll go down saying that I believe that that technology worked for me and has worked for many people, but I will not get behind where it came from from the leader that brought it here. 

I just can't because that that is that that that guru is not a not a good dude and um that's the truth and it was a truth I was unaware of and it's with heartbreaking for me yeah that's why I wrote a book called “You Are The Guru” do not make anyone your guru. 

Yes and it's happened in other lineages too you know I think a lot of people in the yoga world are struggling with letting go of that it was the second time that it happened to me with a different path that followed. 

And so it just you know the the the spirit but that spiritual practice of Kundalini yoga really brought me for many years above it and that was what I needed at the time because that's all I could do at the time and then when I got to the place of remembering I started doing more Somatic kind of meditation practices like EFT meditation tapping meditations and then I went into the most recently in 2020, I started doing the Rage On The Page that I write about and that became my meditate my primary meditation because it's the way that I’m able to give voice to the impermissible and then reprocess it through the meditation, but the one meditation practice it's been by my side for debt for almost two decades that has been extraordinary for me. 

And I just did it before when I called you and said “hey I need an extra 20 minutes in my day” we have to go a little shorter because I was burning out this is my fifth interview today and I have another one after you. 

A tremendous privilege so freaking grateful for you guys, but I had to say I can't do a full hour, I got it for because I needed that 20-minute meditation and I'm going to need it again, 

You know? So that meditation I’m referencing is Transcendental Meditation, that for me has been just the throat a through-line so there may be many other meditation practices that have woven in and out, but that one is the one that I stick to and I'm studying with.  There’s no way yeah, so it's evolved over time in the way that you understand that the teachers have evolved and I’m sorry because you've been hurt by the teachers. 

And I know so many people who also have and that's a lot of people are doing that you know trying to figure out what to keep and what to let go in these lineages and there's something really valuable there.  And so I appreciate you bringing that forward and acknowledging the harm at the same time and letting that peace yeah I’ll always be very grateful for the technology, and the practice yeah yeah so I know we've got to wrap up soon. 

Um just a couple more questions you know one thing that's come up I’ve seen with a lot of survivors of early childhood trauma in the spiritual community is this lesson you may have heard of like you can only attract something uh if you're the same vibration as it you know. 

If someone's three and they're physically or sexually abused and then they, you know, turn 30 and decide to start doing some work and then they hear that message, I've heard a lot of people struggle with that, especially when you you know are looking at a really innocent young child who just was born into a maybe toxic situation or unhealthy relationships. 

Do you have any thoughts about that on a spiritual level of like people who are really trying to understand why did this happen to me in a spiritual perspective, is that something, yeah I think there are two questions in that so one is why did this happen to me and the other question is am I  like like am I stuck attracting what I what I've experienced and so the attracting question is yes we attract our likeness but if you're working on yourself and you are opening up your awareness of those energetic disturbances you are absolutely adjusting your attract your point of attraction because you're going to be aware, okay my anxious attachment style is attracting and avoid an attachment style now or you know you're going to see it in real-time and so really don't let that we don't let yourself be like oh i'm going to just keep attracting the same [ __ ]

I always say if you don't show up for what's up it'll keep showing up so yeah you're gonna you know I live for many many years attracting the same kind of people but as I got healthier and healthier the people in my life were healthier. 

Yeah

And my expectations of the people in my life became more boundaries and you know clearly and so don't worry about that you know if you're doing the work that's all that matters if you're willing to go to the places that scare you and do the work to come out the other side. 

Then you're going to already begin to shift your point of attraction I appreciate that because there's no shame or blame it it's not like you made it happen or it's your fault it's just hey that's what happened there are all kinds of things happening in the world that we showed up to what happened this is how you've been reacting to it. 

 Let's work on those let's work on settling the reactivity and then take it further and settle the child that needed to be settled then Yeah exactly her back to safety and that but in the process and the journey along the way there are so many growth moments that how could you not be vibrating differently every single time you have a growth moment you know people would say like how do I live a miraculous life? 

 Well just add up the miracles, yeah each miracle moment adds up and adds up and adds up and then you're free you become really truly free, it doesn't mean you don't still have to do and more miracles to perform, but you become more and more free. 

And what I've seen is as you heal that trauma you see the miracles that were already there, that maybe the trauma and the memory of it was so big you weren't aware, right? 

So I've seen a lot of people go oh now I know I can actually appreciate there was someone there to help me or there was something I forgot about because the pain was so strong. 

What made you aware you were ready to write this book? 

Yeah uh, I  always say write my books for myself first. 

So I knew I was ready to write this book when I became safe enough in my nervous system and when I felt that I had done that I’d gone to the depths when I had retrieved the inner child. That doesn't mean that I don't have more to do.  I go to therapy every single week yep and sometimes more than once a week. I practice what I preach every single day and even in my continuing education.  It's practicing it for myself first and so I really knew in the beginning of you know I had to really know I was ready to write the book to sell it right so I sold maybe. 

Maybe after I might have sold it right after the pandemic hit you know just around that yeah i sold it in like march or april of 2020 and then i started writing it yeah so i knew then that my system was safe enough that this shame that i was that there wasn't shame driving it and that there was a story of freedom to share yeah absolutely yeah my last question is you know there's so many people suffering in the world and is there i wanted to ask if there's a mantra or a prayer or something you'd suggest and i just feel like like get the book like it's all in here my prayer my prayer truly is that i'm going to say this prayer really really uh just putting it out there so much energy so much conviction that my prayer is that to all the souls who are ready to begin the process of gently and safely touching into and healing the wounds from their past i pray for you to find this book

yeah yeah that's beautiful and thank you for writing it Gabby and for sharing your journey with us so eloquently.  And I know day to day week to week therapy session to therapy session.  It's messy right and it's such a gift to be able to have a through-line somewhere.  

You can go and say okay well what do I try now and what do i try now and where do I go next because we all know now that healing isn't linear, but still what do I do where I go,  what's next and how do I get some support on the way through this. 

So, I just really appreciate that you've been very honest and vulnerable and shared this with so many people.  Uh and I know it'll touch a million people's hearts and souls and they'll share it with their friends and it'll really ignite a conversation around trauma and dissociation which I’m super excited about,  because I’ve heard so many people talk about trauma and they don't get that part. 

Yeah so I just see this really shifting how we see ourselves and how we see the impacts of trauma and normalizing it and just supporting a lot of people so thank you so much thank you so very much.  It's really fun to talk to you in particular because you're so so close to this and familiar with it all thanks so much for listening to my hope is that you walk away from these episodes feeling supported and like you have a place to come to find the hope and inspiration you need to take your next small step forward. 

DISCLAIMER:  I do want to make sure it's clear that this podcast isn't offering any prescriptions it's not advice or any kind of diagnosis your decisions are in your hands and we encourage you to consult with any relevant healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing for more information and resources please visit my website how we can heal.com there you'll find tons of helpful resources in the full transcript of each show you can also click the podcast menu to submit requests for upcoming topics and guests. 

CREDITS: Before we wrap, I want to send thanks to our guests today, to Christine O'Donnell and Celine Baumgartner of Bright Sighted Podcasting, and to everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly.  Alex, thanks for taking the dogs out while I record. 

DEDICATION: I'd also like to give a shout-out to my brother Matt.  He passed away in 2002 he wrote this music and recorded it and it makes my heart so happy to share it with you now.