Speaker 1: Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Welcome my lovely friends to this very special
Speaker 1: episode of Holy Human. My guest today is a prolific
Speaker 1: and best selling author, Gabby Bernstein is also a motivational speaker,
Speaker 1: podcast host, and a self described spirit junkie, and she's
Speaker 1: driven by the mission to help you become the happiest
Speaker 1: dang person that you know. How you might ask, Well,
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to find out together on today's
Speaker 1: Holy Human. Yeah, oh, Gabby, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on Holy Human. I am I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: have you. I'm excited to be here. I think you're awesome.
Speaker 1: It's not good to be with you. Thank you. I've
Speaker 1: read many of your books, and I one of the
Speaker 1: things I gather and I relate to so much. I
Speaker 1: feel like you've lived like multiple lifetimes in your forty
Speaker 1: three years, and I feel that way. I definitely feel
Speaker 1: that way. Almost I'll be forty in August, and it's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted from the forty years that I've lived. Well,
Speaker 1: you've been going, you've been going strong yourself, You've got
Speaker 1: you know, you've lived a lot of life. A lot
Speaker 1: of life. Yeah, but it gets so good. It gets
Speaker 1: so good when you live your life young and then
Speaker 1: you can get to your middle age. I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm saying I'm middle aged, just too weird. But when
Speaker 1: you can get here and and be and reap the
Speaker 1: benefits of the hard work, yeah, very true. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like something changed for you at forty? I love
Speaker 1: asking women thus because I I hear, I hear that
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, forty, It wasn't really necessarily about forty.
Speaker 1: It was about I happened to be I turned forty.
Speaker 1: When did I turned forty? Was? I think I turned
Speaker 1: forty in twenty nineteen and just before and then uh in,
Speaker 1: I uh really just kind of got my ship together
Speaker 1: in the most major way. And I think it was,
Speaker 1: of course a culmination of sixteen years of deep personal
Speaker 1: growth and a lifetime of spiritual practice and just really
Speaker 1: committing to my well being. But just like everybody else,
Speaker 1: twenty was the opportunity to wake up or shut down.
Speaker 1: So I just was like, let's go bigger, and I
Speaker 1: created I established like extraordinary boundaries with people. I just
Speaker 1: went even deeper in my recovery from trauma. Just all
Speaker 1: the life and I'm so happy that I can have
Speaker 1: come out the other side. So yes, it was in
Speaker 1: my forty year that I began a real big transition
Speaker 1: that's interesting for me. I know, thirty was such a
Speaker 1: big transitional moment for me. I went into to UM
Speaker 1: to rehab basically like right after I call it rehab,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it for anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: I checked myself into rehabilitation center like the day after
Speaker 1: my thirtieth birthday. And I remember that moment and that
Speaker 1: that life shift, and now forty for me, it's like
Speaker 1: you're like you're saying, reaping the benefits of the last
Speaker 1: decade of the work that I have done, and knowing
Speaker 1: that there's many deeper levels that life is calling me
Speaker 1: to go to you at this moment. And you know,
Speaker 1: spirituality has been such a huge piece for me, and
Speaker 1: I think over that last decade, my own spiritual practice
Speaker 1: has grown deeper and it's something that I definitely lean on.
Speaker 1: I still resonate with you calling yourself a spirit junkie,
Speaker 1: because I think I think I would call myself one
Speaker 1: and the same. I was just wondering, what, why does
Speaker 1: that title resonate so deeply with you. Yeah, Well, I've
Speaker 1: been on a spiritual quest I think since I came
Speaker 1: here into into the human form. But I was also
Speaker 1: born into a very spiritual family, uh, particularly my mother.
Speaker 1: My mom. My mom was always a spirit junkie. She
Speaker 1: really is a spirit junkie. She's she brought us to Ashrams.
Speaker 1: We were named by the gurus. I was taught to
Speaker 1: meditate when I was in high school, and that foundation
Speaker 1: was always really present for me, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: like some people when their moms would be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, she got her first like tennis brace. Little
Speaker 1: for my mom was like she got her first tarot deck.
Speaker 1: Like that was where I was growing up. But it
Speaker 1: was it was a great thing to have that seed planted.
Speaker 1: And I've been a seeker my whole life, and early
Speaker 1: I got I got sober. I began my recovery journey
Speaker 1: at twenty five, and for me, it was first started
Speaker 1: with with sobriety, and uh, I had I had really
Speaker 1: I've been looking for that spiritual connection in all the
Speaker 1: wrong places and ultimately became a cocaine addict and a
Speaker 1: drug you know, an alcoholic, and at twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: just hit a massive bottom, first bottom big bottom and
Speaker 1: and got sober, and and anyone that's that gets sober
Speaker 1: through treatment or through or through twelve step recovery will
Speaker 1: really begin to open up to their own deep in
Speaker 1: their spiritual connection in whatever form that comes. Typically that's
Speaker 1: often what happens for us. And so I um, I
Speaker 1: had the privilege of just really cracking myself open to
Speaker 1: the spiritual possibilities for my own personal transformation, for a
Speaker 1: connection to a inner wisdom beyond beyond me, to a
Speaker 1: connection to around beyond my physical site that I believed
Speaker 1: and continued to believe devote devotionally that that is a
Speaker 1: presence that is by my side and within me and
Speaker 1: around me at all times. And so that started to
Speaker 1: happen really fast for me in my early recovery. And
Speaker 1: that's when I started giving talks, and that's when I
Speaker 1: started writing books. And my second book, I was trying
Speaker 1: to find a title for it, and I was at
Speaker 1: the time, I was early in my career, doing some
Speaker 1: group coaching workshop and there was this eighteen year old
Speaker 1: girl and at the time, I must have been like
Speaker 1: twenty eight or something, and there was this eighteen year
Speaker 1: old girl in the group, and she was telling us
Speaker 1: to search. Like last week when I left group, I
Speaker 1: was just so high and I felt so good, and
Speaker 1: I was looking at the stars and everything was taking
Speaker 1: I was taking everything in and I just out of
Speaker 1: my mouth I said, yours just a spirit Junkie. And
Speaker 1: everybody in the room was like, that's your new title.
Speaker 1: You know, it was just boom, that's my book title.
Speaker 1: That's going to be. That's how we all self identified
Speaker 1: in that room, And to this day here you and
Speaker 1: I are self identifying as spirit junkies. And to me,
Speaker 1: what it really means is someone who's who's seeking and
Speaker 1: who is is open and willing to receive guidance beyond
Speaker 1: their physical site and their physical awareness. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: a great way to live. Yeah, it is a great
Speaker 1: way to live. And I grew up with religion being
Speaker 1: such a huge part of my childhood and spirituality. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think I lived in spirituality like as children.
Speaker 1: I think we are we are so connected to spirit,
Speaker 1: and then everything kind of gets placed upon us and
Speaker 1: everybody else's points of view and opinions, and then we
Speaker 1: somehow lose track of our site of that you know,
Speaker 1: that deepest place in us. And I think I know
Speaker 1: on my own journey these last ten years have been
Speaker 1: finding a reconnecting with that most innocent piece of myself.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think religion. Religion kind of cut
Speaker 1: that off for me for a while too when I
Speaker 1: was younger, because I felt like it was, I don't
Speaker 1: know what, it just didn't fit and it felt like
Speaker 1: that was the only path, religion was the only path
Speaker 1: to God, to spirituality. And so was religion a big
Speaker 1: part of your childhood or was it was spirituality and
Speaker 1: your own kind of journey to to that inner part
Speaker 1: of yourself. Was that more cultivated in your childhood? Yeah,
Speaker 1: religion definitely was present. But before I jump into that,
Speaker 1: because there's so much I want to say about that,
Speaker 1: I also want to acknowledge something you said, which is
Speaker 1: that as children, we are all so psychically connected, we're
Speaker 1: so spiritual, were so inspired, and then the experiences throughout
Speaker 1: our childhood begin to unfortunately, you know, life, and particularly
Speaker 1: for those of us who may not have had secure
Speaker 1: attachment at home and you know, taught resilience and felt
Speaker 1: safe in our home and our or in our system,
Speaker 1: we we we cut off from It's in of course,
Speaker 1: and miracles, it's they say, it's the descent from magnitude
Speaker 1: into littleness or the moment that we forgot to laugh
Speaker 1: and yeah, big ones, Yeah, it's so sad. It's so sad.
Speaker 1: And I believe that those of us who find our
Speaker 1: way back to a spiritual longing, like you, like myself,
Speaker 1: anyone listening, we begin the journey of undoing the fear
Speaker 1: based belief systems that we picked up and remembering and
Speaker 1: you just said, reclaiming that innocence and remembering the love
Speaker 1: within us, remembering the greatness within ourselves and within the
Speaker 1: presence of that spiritual connection. So we do in many
Speaker 1: ways cut off from It's like in my new book
Speaker 1: Happy Days, I have this whole passage about how we
Speaker 1: we we we It's as if our soul departs and
Speaker 1: we have this these moments of whether they be trauma
Speaker 1: or small T trauma, big T trauma, whatever it is
Speaker 1: that happens in our childhood, we cut off from that
Speaker 1: presence of spirit and we build up a wall against it.
Speaker 1: And so this is, you know, being on a spiritual
Speaker 1: path is about on learning that fear and remembering love.
Speaker 1: And uh so, I just wanted to just really drive
Speaker 1: home what a profound mentioned that is of where we
Speaker 1: are when we're children, and then what we have to
Speaker 1: almost we almost have to we have to reparent ourselves
Speaker 1: to come back to that spiritual practice. Absolutely, but as
Speaker 1: it relates to the religion, I mean I can speak
Speaker 1: briefly about that. So, um, my family wasn't quite religious,
Speaker 1: but I was brought up in a Jewish home and
Speaker 1: was very very into And I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is for you you started your career at a young age,
Speaker 1: but you know, for me, I think I did do
Speaker 1: in that real I sing it because I was the
Speaker 1: president of this regional Jewish youth group and I was
Speaker 1: like leading these I was leading these like spiritual weekends
Speaker 1: in these temples throughout Westchester County, and I was like fourteen,
Speaker 1: like hosting these spiritual retreats, and and fast forward, you know,
Speaker 1: ten years later, that was what I was doing for
Speaker 1: my career. So I think that you know, we have
Speaker 1: we can't underestimate the things we do by choice, and um,
Speaker 1: but that But but for me, religion has a soft,
Speaker 1: gentle place in my heart because it was the first
Speaker 1: introduction to spirituality beyond my mother was in a Sleepway
Speaker 1: camp that was Jewish and in these retreats and just
Speaker 1: opening up my awareness to what that meant. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that you started that at fourteen. That's so cool.
Speaker 1: That's like me walking on stage. That's exactly in your
Speaker 1: new book you And I think a lot of your
Speaker 1: work in general talks about, you know, the concept of
Speaker 1: goal of happiness, and I was just wondering for you,
Speaker 1: how do you define that word, because I think it
Speaker 1: can mean so many different things to different people. Happiness
Speaker 1: for me is waking up without anxiety. It's please, can
Speaker 1: I have a day of that? That would be great?
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's um, it's it's being present. When I
Speaker 1: when I wrote Happy Days, I started to dive into
Speaker 1: my own trauma recovery. And that's what I share about
Speaker 1: in this book and the and I did a lot
Speaker 1: of semantic experiencing work, which is the work of Peter Levine,
Speaker 1: and it's a body based therapy, mind body therapy really,
Speaker 1: and Peter says that trauma is the inability to be
Speaker 1: present mhm. And so for me, presence is the opposite
Speaker 1: of being in a traumatic state, and presence is his happiness.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people throw around the word presence
Speaker 1: in the spiritual community, but I want to really, you know,
Speaker 1: give it its voice. So presence is that felt sense,
Speaker 1: as they say in the sc language, the felt sense
Speaker 1: of of looking into my son's eyes and just feeling
Speaker 1: my whole heart explode with joy, or holding my kitten
Speaker 1: and just like feeling her energy just going into me.
Speaker 1: And presence is meeting you right here right now and
Speaker 1: not thinking about having to jump off the call and
Speaker 1: get my dinner, you know, just being with you and
Speaker 1: being in the dance of of of dialogue right And
Speaker 1: so that's happiness to me. That that's that that presence
Speaker 1: is something that I longed for my whole life and
Speaker 1: finally hates here and it's so red that's amazing. I
Speaker 1: I find myself going in and out of presence often,
Speaker 1: and I know you talk about this a lot with
Speaker 1: the trauma and the body, and like right now, I
Speaker 1: can feel myself like my body has a lot have
Speaker 1: a lot of body anxiety a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Although I'm very present and here, it's like and I
Speaker 1: find myself throughout the day kind of going in and
Speaker 1: out of of presence and what I'm able to receive.
Speaker 1: I think receiving is such a huge piece of my
Speaker 1: own journey and learning to receive, like you're saying, being
Speaker 1: with your son and like actually looking in his eyes
Speaker 1: and being able to to take him in. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when we've lived in trauma alright, still have that
Speaker 1: trauma experience going through the body, it's almost like it
Speaker 1: puts up a block to being able to receive the
Speaker 1: fullness of what is in front of us. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: And you know, I think what you're saying also something
Speaker 1: to be really compassionate towards yourself, because tight trading in
Speaker 1: and out of that presence is actually a really sure
Speaker 1: sign of your recovery because you can touch into it
Speaker 1: and then the protector part of you, the anxiety is
Speaker 1: like too much better to go out and then and
Speaker 1: then it can go back in and it can come back.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you can even touch into it
Speaker 1: briefly is miraculous, right. It's it's it's a slow recovery.
Speaker 1: And that's why I like the word recovery, because it's
Speaker 1: you're recovering your peace, and when it's blown out because
Speaker 1: of trauma, it's like you've got a lot of broken pieces.
Speaker 1: You've got to kind of pull back together, and so
Speaker 1: it's slow, and it's gentle, and it's a compassionate process,
Speaker 1: and it's a careful process, and it's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing we want to rip off the band aid
Speaker 1: too quickly. But we are going to step away quickly
Speaker 1: for a quick break. But we'll be right back with more.
Speaker 1: Gabby Bernstein, welcome back, my loves. Gabby and I were
Speaker 1: talking about the sometimes tricky and tender process of healing trauma.
Speaker 1: And I'm trained in something called internal family Systems therapy.
Speaker 1: I've done their level one training and I write about
Speaker 1: it in Happy Days and in i f S. We
Speaker 1: have all these different it's considered that we have different
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves, and we all have protector parts. And
Speaker 1: then we have exiled children's. The exiled children are the
Speaker 1: traumatized little girls in us. You know, the traumatized children
Speaker 1: in us that that are terrified to come forth. They
Speaker 1: have shame, they carry fear, they're just they're locked up.
Speaker 1: And the way we lock them up is by building
Speaker 1: up these protection mechanisms and protector parts. And anxiety is
Speaker 1: a protector part. And so we have to thank the
Speaker 1: anxiety right now for its service in keeping keeping that
Speaker 1: little girl you know, not from blowing up and exploding
Speaker 1: it all at once. Right, So it's like it's been
Speaker 1: doing its job and slowly but surely through this journey
Speaker 1: of that past decade of recovery, it this this anxiety
Speaker 1: part has been becoming less and less extreme. M And
Speaker 1: it's not that we want to shun these parts of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Like the anxiety part isn't a bad part of you,
Speaker 1: it's not a bad part of me. It's it's actually
Speaker 1: in many ways, like I can even look back at
Speaker 1: the cocaine addict part and say thank you, you kept
Speaker 1: me safe. And that was all I could do at
Speaker 1: the time was do drugs. You know, that was what
Speaker 1: I could do then, Right. And so to look and
Speaker 1: be very fond and compassionate towards these protection mechanisms, these
Speaker 1: protector parts, is is very very important because it's not
Speaker 1: about shunning those parts of ourselves. It's about helping them
Speaker 1: become less extreme. And the way we do that is
Speaker 1: through is through connecting to what in I f S
Speaker 1: we call Self and for you you might call that
Speaker 1: your spiritual presence or higher self. For God and Self
Speaker 1: is compassionate, courageous, calm, curious, right, it's creative. And so
Speaker 1: you know, for yourself, and I can speak for this too.
Speaker 1: When when you're when you're when you're creating music, you're
Speaker 1: you're in self. Right when you're doing this podcast, you're
Speaker 1: in self, You're when you're And so when we start
Speaker 1: to assume those qualities curiosity, courage, creativity, connectedness, that's when
Speaker 1: we start to soften the protectors. And yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot in one, you know, little Riff, but no, it
Speaker 1: is beautiful. It's very complex, and you're right about that.
Speaker 1: Like I can sit here and know that there are
Speaker 1: there's so many parts of me that are here, like
Speaker 1: they're you know, there's the little girl who's terrified of
Speaker 1: like getting it wrong, and then there's the protector part
Speaker 1: of me, which is the anxiety of like you know,
Speaker 1: trying to like you know, trying to protect that little
Speaker 1: girl make sure she does everything right. And then there's
Speaker 1: you know, there is self that's here. And I love
Speaker 1: that you I love that you call itself in this
Speaker 1: book because it doesn't seem so far outside of us anymore,
Speaker 1: Like it becomes a piece of who we are because
Speaker 1: I know that you know, we talk a lot about
Speaker 1: the higher we call it higher self. But I almost
Speaker 1: feel like that's even too far out. It's like self
Speaker 1: becomes it becomes a piece of you. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when we think about God and spirituality, sometimes
Speaker 1: it feels so far outside of us. And I love
Speaker 1: that self piece. I mean, I know you just talked
Speaker 1: about some of the qualities of self. What's your favorite
Speaker 1: way to get in touch with that piece of you? Oh?
Speaker 1: What a beautiful question. Thank you. Um Well, I believe
Speaker 1: compassion for me is the portal to self because one
Speaker 1: of the ways that I have been able to calm
Speaker 1: and soothe my protector parts, you know, the controller or
Speaker 1: the every one called knives out, like when she feels judged,
Speaker 1: she's like fuck you you know so um or you
Speaker 1: know my former anxiety and you know just you know,
Speaker 1: different all these different parts. Do you have a name
Speaker 1: for your anxiety part? Sorry didn't, um Well, I would
Speaker 1: reference that part as the Tasmanian devil because the visual
Speaker 1: I had, The visual I had was literally just like
Speaker 1: this like spinning demon, you know, just like this devil
Speaker 1: going like like in circles like a tornado. And so
Speaker 1: having those visuals really are helpful because it's about befriending
Speaker 1: and getting to know these parts of ourselves. And then
Speaker 1: when we notice the part, we noticed the part, and
Speaker 1: we just notice what's up in our body when the
Speaker 1: part is there, and we can ask ourselves some questions
Speaker 1: about it. What do I know about this part? You know,
Speaker 1: how old is it? Does it have a gender? Does
Speaker 1: it have something it wants me to know? Right? And
Speaker 1: then we can ask the parts, what do you need?
Speaker 1: What do you need right now? And I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's truly profound to have that kind of dialogue.
Speaker 1: And then when I asked the part what it needs,
Speaker 1: it usually says something like I need a hug, or
Speaker 1: I need to breathe, or I need to create a
Speaker 1: boundary right now. And that's when compassion can swoop right
Speaker 1: in and say, you're doing a good job, You're doing
Speaker 1: the best you can. I'm here to help. Let's do
Speaker 1: some let's do some breath, Let's set that boundary, let's
Speaker 1: step back. And God, when you that when you start
Speaker 1: to let that voice of compassion or curiosity or courage,
Speaker 1: when that voice starts to when that presence of self
Speaker 1: starts to lead your internal family system, like all the
Speaker 1: parts of you or your little family. Then you become
Speaker 1: what Dick Shorts called self lead and living in that
Speaker 1: self led ways, living and living living in communication with
Speaker 1: God and living living led by inspiration and intuition and
Speaker 1: and love. I mean, self becomes the greatest parents. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right, that you just nailed it. So self becomes
Speaker 1: the internal parent and so all the things that we
Speaker 1: did not get from our parents. And in fact, there's
Speaker 1: a whole chapter and Happy Days called reparenting yourself. And
Speaker 1: I lean on a lot of these self meditations and
Speaker 1: connecting to self. And the beauty is the more direct
Speaker 1: access that we get to that self energy, the more
Speaker 1: the internal parent can lead m hm. And what that
Speaker 1: does is it takes the pressure off the employees, It
Speaker 1: takes the pressure off the husband, and takes the pressure
Speaker 1: off the parents who just couldn't do it. You know,
Speaker 1: it takes and it allows you to feel fully resourced
Speaker 1: and resilient. Yeah, I know totally. I know one of
Speaker 1: the you just said takes the pressure off the husband
Speaker 1: and the employees. And I know one of the biggest
Speaker 1: shifts for me because I did depend on at a
Speaker 1: certain point my husband and you know, the people around
Speaker 1: me too, to fill me up, and it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my relationships really started changing when it started to come
Speaker 1: from the inside. Now, don't get me wrong. If I
Speaker 1: need to lean on people, that's absolutely something that I
Speaker 1: do and ask for, but I also know that I'm
Speaker 1: I can be there for myself. And there was a
Speaker 1: point in my life where I'm like I had there
Speaker 1: was no access to me being able to self source
Speaker 1: and that was a huge shift in my relationships. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the codependent part kept you safe for as long
Speaker 1: as that part did, and that was what that part needed.
Speaker 1: And I I you know, I also want to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that that even when we start to resource and care
Speaker 1: for ourselves, that does not take away the importance of
Speaker 1: the bond to others. You know. I started to study
Speaker 1: attachment science and I write about it in the book
Speaker 1: as well. And the more we establish healthy bonds to partners, lovers, parents, children,
Speaker 1: really not our children to us particularly right those those
Speaker 1: healthy bonds are, particularly in romantic relationships, extraordinary because when
Speaker 1: you have that secure attachment to a partner, it actually
Speaker 1: gives you the freedom to be more creative. It gives
Speaker 1: you the freedom to be taking bigger, more risks and
Speaker 1: be more courageous in life. So attachment is actually our
Speaker 1: biological necessity and it's not something to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got it all into control. I'm going
Speaker 1: to take care of myself, you know. But of course
Speaker 1: like attachment and the anxious attachment, you know that co
Speaker 1: independent behaviors takes us to another extreme. So the goal
Speaker 1: is the more we become secure in our own system,
Speaker 1: the more secure our relationships become. Yeah. Absolutely, I want
Speaker 1: to touch upon attachment style way because you you do
Speaker 1: key into that in this book, and it's such an
Speaker 1: important part of of your healing. Why is that such
Speaker 1: an important thing to know when it comes to our
Speaker 1: own healing? So it's extremely valuable to understand your attachment style.
Speaker 1: Our attachment styles are imprinted when we're young based on
Speaker 1: our relationship to our parents. Uh. In the book, I
Speaker 1: reference for different types of attachment styles, but we can
Speaker 1: typically what you hear people talk about is the relationship
Speaker 1: attachment styles, and there's three of them, and typically as
Speaker 1: it relates to romantic relationships, but this goes for pretty
Speaker 1: much all relationships. There's secure, there's anxious, and then there's avoidant.
Speaker 1: And those people who have a secure attachment grew up
Speaker 1: in likely in a household where they could rely on
Speaker 1: their parents. Their parents were steady, They created, they saw,
Speaker 1: they were seen, they were soothed. They were not just
Speaker 1: feeling safe literally, but safe emotionally, and they knew there
Speaker 1: was somewhere to go. Whereas an anxiously attached person and
Speaker 1: a formerly anxiously attached person, uh, grew up in a
Speaker 1: home where there was you know, you weren't sure what
Speaker 1: you were going to get each day with that parent.
Speaker 1: There was an inconsistency, not a lot of reliability. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of feelings of you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta fawn and cling to get that that connection. Um.
Speaker 1: Whereas an avoidant attachment, you know, there was just a
Speaker 1: neglect and uh, the belief was instilled that if I
Speaker 1: don't do it, nobody else will. And I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of both. I was going to say, can
Speaker 1: you have a mix of hell you too? I had both.
Speaker 1: I had both, and that's you know, ultimately an insecure
Speaker 1: attachment style. And um, the more awareness that we have
Speaker 1: about our own attachment styles, the more we can understand
Speaker 1: why we are so you know, wacky in relationships at
Speaker 1: times or why we get so triggered in certain situations,
Speaker 1: and then we can also understand why we attract certain
Speaker 1: types of people, and then understanding our partners attachment styles
Speaker 1: or our coworkers attachment styles really helps because you can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know that person is is you know, super activated
Speaker 1: right now. They're not crazy, They're just in a flood
Speaker 1: of emotion because they are you know, their anxious attachment
Speaker 1: style has been activated. And you know I made this quiz.
Speaker 1: I us to actually launched this quiz on what's your
Speaker 1: attachment style? I just took it this morning. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what are you what? I am an anxious attachment? I
Speaker 1: feel like i'm I'm I'm leaning more on secure, but
Speaker 1: still very anxious. If that's gonna say, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: because you've done so much work by my guess is
Speaker 1: that historically you've been anxious, but there's secure that's so
Speaker 1: present now. So it's almost hard to answer the questions
Speaker 1: because you're probably like answering them like based on how
Speaker 1: you thought you were, you know, and that's how I
Speaker 1: did it too. I was like, if I if I
Speaker 1: answered this about you know, who I was for most
Speaker 1: of my life, it's very anxious. But if I started
Speaker 1: to answer it like how I feel today in this moment,
Speaker 1: it's secure. So I think that's we're probably very much
Speaker 1: in the same boat there. Yeah, for sure. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you touch upon in your book is
Speaker 1: chronic shame, which I think is so it's so present
Speaker 1: for so many of us. I'm you know, I've always said,
Speaker 1: like the core wound for everyone I feel like is
Speaker 1: I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy of whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: What constitutes chronic shame for you? And then what ways
Speaker 1: cannot show up in the body? How do we know
Speaker 1: we're in chronic shame? Yeah, chronic shame is shame without repair.
Speaker 1: So when we're children and we don't have that secure
Speaker 1: attachment to a parent, we don't have the resources to
Speaker 1: repair the moments of shame that we all are going
Speaker 1: to experience, Right, we're all going to have. But the
Speaker 1: more resilient we are, the more secure attachment we have
Speaker 1: with their parents, the more resilient we are, so we
Speaker 1: can have a shame shameful experience. But we know I
Speaker 1: am lovable and I am adequate because that has been
Speaker 1: what I've experienced in my My most important attachment bond
Speaker 1: to my parents or my caregiver. And so I'm confident
Speaker 1: that my son Oliver, who has a very secure attachment
Speaker 1: with three different figures, me, my husband, and his nanny
Speaker 1: who you know, who are all extremely valuable people in
Speaker 1: his life, will likely have a pretty good sense of
Speaker 1: resilience in those moments of shame because he's been brought
Speaker 1: up with a secure attachment style God willing knocking on
Speaker 1: all the wood in my office. But but but for
Speaker 1: those of us who didn't have that growing up, we
Speaker 1: never were given the ability or the the safety in
Speaker 1: our nervous system to be resilient to rebound in the
Speaker 1: in those experiences of shame. And so when shame is
Speaker 1: not resourced in the moment or as a child, because
Speaker 1: there isn't that presence of security, what it becomes is
Speaker 1: a exiled part of us that we just keep running
Speaker 1: from for decades. And so we run from it with addiction,
Speaker 1: We run from it with anxiety, We run from it
Speaker 1: with workaholism, we run from it with relationships, We run
Speaker 1: from it with all the forms of of of protection
Speaker 1: mechanisms we build up. And it's extreme, and shame is
Speaker 1: the most impermissible feeling and what is underneath the shame,
Speaker 1: the belief that we are unlovable and inadequate. It My therapist,
Speaker 1: you know, helped me understand this early on, and I
Speaker 1: was like, holy shit, you know, and we actually up
Speaker 1: a lot of associated beliefs about ourselves, you know, I live.
Speaker 1: I was like, I am extremely adequate, I'm extremely lovable,
Speaker 1: and I built up a world that was proving that
Speaker 1: to me, but I didn't feel it on the inside. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: I relate to that so much. I feel like I
Speaker 1: had this really inflated, you know, I am bigger than
Speaker 1: everyone and everything belief As I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's also such a part like you have to have
Speaker 1: this kind of ego piece of you that can go
Speaker 1: out and do and be bigger than life, and then
Speaker 1: you know, when my whole world can coint of crashing
Speaker 1: down around me. In my late twenties, it was almost
Speaker 1: like the pendulum swung to the other side of like
Speaker 1: I'm horrible, I'm a bad person, I'm you know, unlovable
Speaker 1: and obviously I feel like that belief had been deeply
Speaker 1: buried underneath that inflated piece of me, and it was
Speaker 1: like when the pendulum swung. I started to get all
Speaker 1: of these like I had fears around things, even performance
Speaker 1: where I didn't have them before. And it's been a
Speaker 1: really tender road back to finding the balance of the
Speaker 1: two UM. And I'm still on that road because I
Speaker 1: feel like it's you know, to bring to bring that
Speaker 1: authenticity and the the humaneness to what I do that
Speaker 1: can sometimes demand those larger than life pieces of me. UM.
Speaker 1: It feels, Yeah, it feels tender and scary sometimes, and
Speaker 1: it's it is amazing how I've noticed that that that massive, inflated,
Speaker 1: you know, part of me that used to exist. Um,
Speaker 1: was there one for protection of these that feeling of
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But also what a good job that part did, What
Speaker 1: great service and you know, extraordinary art that part brought
Speaker 1: into the world. So, as Dick Schwartz says, there's no
Speaker 1: bad parts, they just become extreme. And so you said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to get these parts into balance. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the way is about helping them become
Speaker 1: less extreme, right, so you can actually have that ego part,
Speaker 1: let's not even call it an ego that like, you know,
Speaker 1: forward facing, profound whatever you want to call it, right,
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't and and and it can be
Speaker 1: that big, and it can be that bright, and it
Speaker 1: can be that exposed in in a non extreme way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's been my journey. And that's been Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been. No, it's knowing knowing your bigness and your greatness,
Speaker 1: but also alongside of that in lies your your deepest humanity.
Speaker 1: And there's such a it's such a profound place to
Speaker 1: come from. I'm gonna I'm gonna cry talking about it
Speaker 1: because it's like, Wow, I think the gift once we
Speaker 1: once we are able to bring that piece of ourselves
Speaker 1: into those we are all of those pieces. Really, it's
Speaker 1: once you're able to bring all of those pieces of
Speaker 1: yourself into the world, like that gift that you're able
Speaker 1: to not only give yourself, but the people in which
Speaker 1: you are singing to, speaking to, sharing life with becomes
Speaker 1: that gift is so deep and it's so profound, and
Speaker 1: it's a feeler right now. It's um, it's very moving,
Speaker 1: very very moving. It's very moving. What you're referring to
Speaker 1: is self. It's showing up. You're just right there with self,
Speaker 1: and and it's just bringing self to all the other
Speaker 1: parts so that the parts can do their jobs, but
Speaker 1: not in an extreme way. And so you know, my
Speaker 1: controller part is really valuable. You know, she wrote nine
Speaker 1: books in eleven years, and she you know, she Lea.
Speaker 1: It's a team of twenty five people, and you know
Speaker 1: she's she's really good. But when she's not an asshole, right,
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's just just helping them be
Speaker 1: just just really taking on their role in a way
Speaker 1: that's that's not so extreme. Yeah, when it comes to
Speaker 1: to the body, when I related so deeply to your
Speaker 1: chronic t MJ and your your stomach issues, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think this was that was a I know
Speaker 1: it was a manifestation of trauma, but do you I mean,
Speaker 1: was there a specific way that shame showed up in
Speaker 1: your body for you? Was there? Or is it just
Speaker 1: like trauma in general? Yeah, So shame is the root cause.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is the protector. Anxiety creates the gastro the jaw,
Speaker 1: the migraines, the insomnia, the you know. So it's it's
Speaker 1: almost like these layers are built up and so the
Speaker 1: body is just really just consistently responding with anxiety as
Speaker 1: a way of protecting from feeling into the impermissible shame.
Speaker 1: So when we start to recognize that there's that psychosomatic effect,
Speaker 1: and again there's a whole chapter on this one too.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much packed into happy days, but
Speaker 1: the the when we start to understand that psychosomatic experience
Speaker 1: that we're having, we can then begin to address. Yes
Speaker 1: of always addressing the physical. We never want to ignore
Speaker 1: a body, right, so I had to, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: medication at times for my stomach or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: but to simultaneously, most importantly address the root cause of
Speaker 1: the condition, which is the impermissible feelings that we just
Speaker 1: work so hard to run from. And I think actually
Speaker 1: that's what this book is most about, is really giving
Speaker 1: people the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and
Speaker 1: inner peace, which is the subtitle. But that guided path
Speaker 1: is the gentle, slow, peaceful, guided path of slowly noticing
Speaker 1: and touching into and and accepting and acknowledging and healing
Speaker 1: and soothing and repairing those gentle parts of ourselves that
Speaker 1: need so much love. And we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break here, but we'll be right back, I promise.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, friends, Gabby and I are navigating the guided
Speaker 1: path from trauma. Yeah, I know you keep saying the
Speaker 1: gentle path that. It's so funny because sometimes I just
Speaker 1: want to rip the band aid off. It's like, can
Speaker 1: we just get can we get to the other side?
Speaker 1: And I heard so many of us have I'm sure
Speaker 1: listening that I've done years and years of work. It
Speaker 1: can be exhausting and it can feel like you want
Speaker 1: to rush. But then I've been doing detox on my body,
Speaker 1: and I remember when I first started, like five months ago,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm gonna just jump in and
Speaker 1: take all the things. And I took two much of
Speaker 1: this dropper that pulls out heavy metals, and I felt
Speaker 1: awful for twenty four hours, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I learned my lesson. And I think that's true in
Speaker 1: dealing with trauma. Um. Sometimes we have to learn our
Speaker 1: lesson and actually pull the band aid off, and then
Speaker 1: we're like, Okay, I'm going to take this a lot slower.
Speaker 1: And it is a process. It is definitely a process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to be careful not to rip off the
Speaker 1: band aige too fast because that can just really shock
Speaker 1: our system. Yeah, and so yeah, it's slow. Something you
Speaker 1: mentioned too that I don't. I think it is not
Speaker 1: spoken about enough. And the process of healing is grief.
Speaker 1: And I know for me, I've definitely noticed my shame.
Speaker 1: I know I've gotten to that point where I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I know, I know that paced place of me really well.
Speaker 1: And now I'm I'm on a new level of understanding
Speaker 1: grief for myself because and it grief has no time line,
Speaker 1: like it shows up whenever. I mean, right before we
Speaker 1: jumped on here, I was crying because I was just
Speaker 1: there was a moment of of grief for me. And
Speaker 1: there's no there's no necessarily there's no you know, reason
Speaker 1: why that it's happening. It just comes. And that's been
Speaker 1: a new journey for me on my healing, is to
Speaker 1: allow for grief to show up whenever it needs to
Speaker 1: show up. And I just wondered if you could talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about grief and why that is such
Speaker 1: a huge part of this process of healing. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: some reason, I'm drawing to try to find this passage
Speaker 1: in the book where I write about grief at the
Speaker 1: end of the book. Let me see if I can
Speaker 1: while I talk, I'm gonna see if I can find
Speaker 1: something here. Um, But when we experience grief, it's actually
Speaker 1: a really beautiful sign that recovery is close touching into grief.
Speaker 1: Here we go lean, Okay, here, let's see what I
Speaker 1: wrote I don't remember. Let's see, um, when we experienced
Speaker 1: a trauma, big tea or small tea. It says, if
Speaker 1: a part of our soul departs, there's a splitting off
Speaker 1: from a sense of safety into exiled parts filled with
Speaker 1: terror and fear. We become fragmented, frozen, and lost in
Speaker 1: the subconscious without a clear path. I always felt this split.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't name it. It was far too scary
Speaker 1: to face the fact that an innocent part of myself
Speaker 1: had been so burdened. When I was twenty seven, I
Speaker 1: did his sole retrieval energy session with a shamanic healer.
Speaker 1: The session was designed to connect me to the child
Speaker 1: parts of myself that had been cut off. I remember
Speaker 1: the shaman saying that there is a little girl around
Speaker 1: the age of five or six, and she has lost
Speaker 1: in a forest. The shaman explained that she saw this
Speaker 1: child filled with fear and terror. At the time, I
Speaker 1: had no recollection of what had happened in my past
Speaker 1: but I felt the truth of her word deep within
Speaker 1: my body. I knew a part of me had been lost,
Speaker 1: but I was so far from accepting that truth, let
Speaker 1: alone grieving it. Grief is a deep emotion that we
Speaker 1: often don't feel safe enough to face. It lives beneath
Speaker 1: the shield of rage and in the shadow of heartbreak.
Speaker 1: It feels too painful to contemplate the grief of our
Speaker 1: past wounds. And I'll read one more paragraph. We often
Speaker 1: consider grief and an appropriate emotion only when we've experienced
Speaker 1: a socially acceptable loss, such as the death of a
Speaker 1: loved one or a divorce, or too ashamed or too
Speaker 1: unaware to give voice to the hidden grief that lingers
Speaker 1: in the shadows of our traumatic wounds. What we're afraid
Speaker 1: to accept is that our separation from safety, from peace,
Speaker 1: or from freedom was a loss in itself. It's a
Speaker 1: loss of innocence, the loss of a secure attachment, a
Speaker 1: peaceful childhood, a sense of inner safety. Those losses are
Speaker 1: hard to accept and hard to grieve. M And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's so interesting because grief, what I what I'm
Speaker 1: saying here is the grief of the loss of our
Speaker 1: innocence and so well and to to the point of
Speaker 1: what I was saying, also, is it's acceptable to be
Speaker 1: grieving loss of a loved one or loss of a child,
Speaker 1: or a loss of whatever, job or anything. But what
Speaker 1: we never really live give ourselves the permission or even
Speaker 1: we we we often are far too afraid to touch
Speaker 1: into the truth that we have this innocence that we
Speaker 1: have to grieve, the loss of innocence that we have
Speaker 1: to grieve. Yeah, I think we always equate grief with
Speaker 1: a specific event, like you're saying the death or divorcer,
Speaker 1: and it's we don't realize the ripple effects of so
Speaker 1: many things. I mean, I know people, you know this
Speaker 1: last couple of years have lost so much and we
Speaker 1: think grief has to be some big but there's so
Speaker 1: many greeks, like little grievance and griefs that we go through. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like on a daily basis, like I feel
Speaker 1: like I wake up I think my heart is just
Speaker 1: that big and open, but I feel like I wake
Speaker 1: up to grief every day, like there's something it's just
Speaker 1: a piece of it's a piece of life that we
Speaker 1: don't we don't want to face, but it's there and
Speaker 1: it can also break you open to something so sweet,
Speaker 1: like there's love. To me, grief kind of lives right
Speaker 1: alongside of that beautiful, expansive space of love. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I really want to emphasize my therapist help me understand
Speaker 1: that being able to touch into grief is a sign
Speaker 1: that you've done a tremendous amount of work on yourself,
Speaker 1: because you the decade that you've spent that I've you know,
Speaker 1: the decades I've spent working on myself have helped us
Speaker 1: get to the place where we can have you awareness
Speaker 1: that there's even something to grieve, and it's that you
Speaker 1: know that loss of innocence, but grief also shows up
Speaker 1: for just like you said, we all had a lot
Speaker 1: of loss, and I'm still grieving something very big that
Speaker 1: happened to me in November. So I spent doing IVF
Speaker 1: treatment to try to conceive a second child, and I
Speaker 1: became pregnant after nine rounds of treatment, and I got
Speaker 1: a healthy embryo tested him. I was pregnant for five
Speaker 1: and a half months, and then in in November, I
Speaker 1: was told that the baby wasn't growing and he wasn't
Speaker 1: getting what he needed, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: things wrong, and there was no wasn't like I had
Speaker 1: a choice, which I'm grateful for, and so I had
Speaker 1: to let that child go. And just this past week,
Speaker 1: I have decided that I am not going to try
Speaker 1: to have another child in any in any form. And
Speaker 1: while that feels good to be definitive and to have
Speaker 1: that clarity and to you know, have even attempted one
Speaker 1: more try. And there was a plan I had that
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, if God wants me to do this,
Speaker 1: you know, one more round of IVF and surrogate and
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and if it wasn't gonna work, it
Speaker 1: was over and it's over. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: realized that while I'm really thriving and going through the
Speaker 1: grief with grace, to your point, it's going to come
Speaker 1: in and it's going to step out and it's gonna
Speaker 1: you know, just like, um, my girlfriend came over. She
Speaker 1: has a son that's two years younger than mine, and
Speaker 1: I gave her the you know, I gave her the
Speaker 1: old stroller, and I gave her the you know, the toys,
Speaker 1: and I gave her some clothes. And that was like
Speaker 1: a moment of grief because I'm like, oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: holding onto this anymore. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's lost dreams, there's past versions of ourselves.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's even the versions that we didn't
Speaker 1: or weren't our best versions. I would say there's there's
Speaker 1: something about those two to grieve because I mean even
Speaker 1: with the growth that when we grow, there's and when
Speaker 1: you when you know more and you you experience more,
Speaker 1: and you you grow within yourself, there's even the protector parts,
Speaker 1: like the there's always something there to to grieve. I feel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's been I think one of my biggest, my
Speaker 1: biggest pieces is like, Okay, I've had to grieve all
Speaker 1: of these different past versions of myself incruditly, including that
Speaker 1: loss of innocence for sure. Yeah. Yeah, grieving the past
Speaker 1: versions of ourselves. That's a big one, totally. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: want to touch back on spirituality form like how how
Speaker 1: has your spiritual journey changed? I mean, I'm sure going
Speaker 1: through going through what you did with UM with IVF
Speaker 1: and like I feel like, I'm sure every experience like
Speaker 1: that changes us and maybe maybe deep and sometimes maybe
Speaker 1: it repels people away from their spiritual journey. I know
Speaker 1: for me, like sometimes I just don't. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: too much for me to sit in it because of
Speaker 1: of an experience that I've had that I've had that
Speaker 1: I will now have to face. So how is something
Speaker 1: like that, how does that change your own or does
Speaker 1: it deepen your spirituality? Or how has that shifted for you? Well?
Speaker 1: I think that it depends. It's there's different seasons. And
Speaker 1: for me when I my spiritual practice was my savior
Speaker 1: for so many years, and then at thirty six, I
Speaker 1: actually remembered remembered to dissociated trauma, which is what I
Speaker 1: read about in the book, which is this this this
Speaker 1: memory of of one my soul departed truly, and it
Speaker 1: was the memory of being sexually abused as a child.
Speaker 1: And in the early days of the early days, like
Speaker 1: the first two years of that memory coming to fruition,
Speaker 1: I was really disconnected spiritually, like I felt out of
Speaker 1: my buddie. I was. It was really hard to sit
Speaker 1: and meditate, It was really hard to hear that connection.
Speaker 1: And then in writing my book The Universe Has Your Back,
Speaker 1: I almost like restored the connectionally. That book healed me
Speaker 1: on such a deep, soulful level, and I wrote it
Speaker 1: around that time of remembering the trauma, and so for me,
Speaker 1: the writing was a big portal back to spirit and
Speaker 1: just super super aligning me because when you right for yourself,
Speaker 1: first do you remind yourself of what you know to
Speaker 1: be true? And then of course that's going to have
Speaker 1: an impact on others. Uh, And then you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote a bunch of other books after that and continue
Speaker 1: to remind myself and remind myself, and so now here
Speaker 1: today that spiritual connection is extraordinary and it's so present.
Speaker 1: And when I had the loss of my son Owen,
Speaker 1: I was able to witness, you know, once I got
Speaker 1: passed that, I had to do a d n E
Speaker 1: and one I got past the surgery and sort of
Speaker 1: into the recovery. The second week, I was like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, this is what you've been training for, you know,
Speaker 1: this is what you've been counseling women on for decades,
Speaker 1: and here you are really living it. And my faith
Speaker 1: just held me like a pillow. It was like I
Speaker 1: fell into this pillow of faith and it was so
Speaker 1: loud and so strong, and I could feel the presence
Speaker 1: of that baby, and I felt that there was another
Speaker 1: presence coming. And now I'm you know, clear that that
Speaker 1: presence may not become it. It's just sort of letting
Speaker 1: it be guiding in and out of of of that sensation.
Speaker 1: And so the faith is a muscle, and the more
Speaker 1: we exercise it, the more it will be there for us.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's so interesting. Your book came to me,
Speaker 1: of course the perfect time, because repressed memory is is
Speaker 1: something that's been something that's been coming up for me
Speaker 1: a lot lately, and I don't I don't actually went
Speaker 1: when I started to have these memories come through. I
Speaker 1: don't remember clearly, which I know you've discussed too. UM.
Speaker 1: Actually started googling it because I'm like, Okay, is this
Speaker 1: a real thing? Am I making this up? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I I didn't know where to turn. And this was
Speaker 1: like maybe a couple of months ago, and then your
Speaker 1: book came out, and I'm like, oh, there's someone who's
Speaker 1: discussing this UM for the first I mean, I really,
Speaker 1: like I said, I hadn't heard much about it. So
Speaker 1: I felt like for me, it was the first time
Speaker 1: someone was really speaking on repressed memories and how they
Speaker 1: can live in the body and how we might not
Speaker 1: even when we start to reclaim those memories. UM, how
Speaker 1: they might not fully come, you know, and how that was.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really a defense mechanism. It's a genius
Speaker 1: that our mind and our body can do this. But
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say thank you, because yeah, you're
Speaker 1: really first person who I've heard talk about that, so thinks, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just wanna you know, I wanna hold you,
Speaker 1: and how scary it is, and I want to really
Speaker 1: just extend tremendous amount of compassion to you and love
Speaker 1: to you because it's when you have a when you
Speaker 1: have a dissociated memory, that's exactly right. It's very beneficial
Speaker 1: for the period of time because it's not going to
Speaker 1: blow out your whole system and send you to a
Speaker 1: psych word, you know. But eventually we kind of get
Speaker 1: our way to the psych word and whatever form that comes,
Speaker 1: because it's too much to bear in our body and
Speaker 1: in our in our life. Because it well, it may
Speaker 1: be tucked away and locked up, that memory, it still
Speaker 1: shows up in every single reaction we have and every
Speaker 1: single emotional reaction, every single nervous system response, and so
Speaker 1: that becomes very very hard to live with. And then
Speaker 1: facing into the truth of those memories is is a
Speaker 1: whole other level of of trauma as well. And so
Speaker 1: it sounds like you might be in the middle of
Speaker 1: kind of accepting and embracing and and and it's um,
Speaker 1: it's scary, and I just want to acknowledge that it's very,
Speaker 1: very scary, and you know, I think that. And the
Speaker 1: good news is is that you don't have to recover
Speaker 1: all the memories, right, and you don't have to see
Speaker 1: it all and you don't have to you know, you
Speaker 1: can heal the emotional disturbance through the practices I teach
Speaker 1: and I share about in Happy Days and E M
Speaker 1: d R Somatic Experiencing I F S. These are all
Speaker 1: beautiful practices that really work on a very subconscious, spiritual level.
Speaker 1: And so I want to assure you that you don't
Speaker 1: have to remember everything. Yeah, yeah, And that's I think
Speaker 1: that's anybody out there who's listening, I think you know
Speaker 1: that may have a feeling that something has happened to them,
Speaker 1: or they they know that the trauma is there, but
Speaker 1: I haven't. They don't have a full full memory of it.
Speaker 1: I I want I just want hope they hear, because
Speaker 1: this is something I feel like I needed to hear,
Speaker 1: is that you're not making it up and you're not crazy,
Speaker 1: and it's it's possible to expre experienced trauma every day
Speaker 1: that you don't have that full full awareness of yeah,
Speaker 1: and when and and so they're very very important conversation.
Speaker 1: So glad that we're going here, So we will be
Speaker 1: reliving it every day until we process it, because what
Speaker 1: it is is it's a moment in time where we
Speaker 1: went into the such an extreme state of arousal because
Speaker 1: of this fear based experience that happened. Then we froze
Speaker 1: and dissociated and checked out from it. But the the
Speaker 1: nervous system response is on a neural loop, right, So
Speaker 1: it's just it's like anything that triggers the feelings of
Speaker 1: being unsafe or out of control, we'll just boom, there
Speaker 1: it is again. There it's again. So we're reliving that
Speaker 1: trauma daily. But that's something so historical. So it's like
Speaker 1: we may not be in that threat in this moment.
Speaker 1: We're just you know, the Internet just went out, right,
Speaker 1: but that feels like such a threat that we go
Speaker 1: into this extreme place of hyper arousal. And so and
Speaker 1: then that constant state of hyper arousal puts us into
Speaker 1: that paris sympathy, that sympathetic nervous system which just rocks
Speaker 1: our body. Rocks are energy levels, rocks our relationships. And
Speaker 1: so the thing that's really important now is to just
Speaker 1: very slowly. And that's why I think body based work
Speaker 1: is so valuable when it comes to trauma recovery, because
Speaker 1: too slowly. And I'm gonna give you a few things
Speaker 1: that i want you to use right now in this
Speaker 1: period of your life. The whole hearth holds, so like
Speaker 1: the gin to, it's too holds. So putting one of
Speaker 1: your hands on your heart, in the other hand on
Speaker 1: your belly and just grounding with breath with a hold,
Speaker 1: and you could do the same with the heart with
Speaker 1: your with your hand on your head, on your forehead,
Speaker 1: and your hand on your belly, and meditate in this position,
Speaker 1: you know, and whenever you notice yourself triggered and activated,
Speaker 1: come back to this hold and breathe in that diaphragmatic
Speaker 1: breath in that place. And then another great one is
Speaker 1: just tapping on what's known as the gamut point is
Speaker 1: the point it is e f T. It's emotional freedom technique,
Speaker 1: and it's the point between your ring finger and your
Speaker 1: pinky finger, and you would tap on that point and
Speaker 1: you could just say to yourself, I am safe, I
Speaker 1: am safe, and then breathe and just say I am safe,
Speaker 1: I am safe. And when I was in that that
Speaker 1: period that you're referring to, just sort of covering and
Speaker 1: being almost like you're catapulted back into it, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: This was the safe here for me. I would just
Speaker 1: be in the car tapping way, you know, and it
Speaker 1: really really help me to just just tight tra in
Speaker 1: and out of that safety. Yeah. Well that's great too,
Speaker 1: because you can do it. You can do it in
Speaker 1: public anywhere, and the hold you can do anywhere, and
Speaker 1: breath you have with you all the time, and and
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's I think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: also you know, and it's it's it's heartwarming to know
Speaker 1: you don't have to recover the full memory. You just
Speaker 1: have to fully process, right the energetic disturbance and on
Speaker 1: that incredibly powerful note, we are going to pause for
Speaker 1: a breath, but we'll be right back with more. Gabby Bernstein,
Speaker 1: Welcome back, my friends. Gabby and I were just talking
Speaker 1: about processing repressed memories and trauma. Yeah, I know, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest pieces for me recently, like I went
Speaker 1: into full freeze this morning and I had no idea why.
Speaker 1: All my body was me is like, I just want
Speaker 1: to be in a fetal position. So I literally I said,
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's for thirty seconds, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give that piece of me what it needs them
Speaker 1: and I go lay in a fetal position and it
Speaker 1: was I was able to move through it. But it's
Speaker 1: you know, one of the biggest pieces for me that
Speaker 1: I've learned is not going into story around things and
Speaker 1: not having to, like, you know, it's so easy for
Speaker 1: us to get in our head and so easy for
Speaker 1: us to create stories, you know, around these emotions. And
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that I've learned is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there goes my story again. But what does my body need?
Speaker 1: And how can I give it to it without having
Speaker 1: to tell a story about it. It's just this is
Speaker 1: what's here and this is what's needed. And it can
Speaker 1: be just that simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it can just
Speaker 1: be noticing what's up and asking what it needs. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I feel like though, when we ask what it needs,
Speaker 1: if that's not a question that we've asked ourselves a lot,
Speaker 1: sometimes we'll be we'll be fumbling in the dark for
Speaker 1: that need. It's like, well, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: have an answer for that. Yeah, well that's why I like, um,
Speaker 1: those three questions of what do I notice about how
Speaker 1: I'm feeling right now? And this is something I used
Speaker 1: very proactively all throughout my day. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: The other day. I was I was right before Russia
Speaker 1: invaded in the Ukraine, and just like the whole world
Speaker 1: is just in complete chaos and terror. I was coming
Speaker 1: off of extreme output. I just launched my books. I
Speaker 1: was putting coming off of extreme output. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I was parenting and you know, living life, and and
Speaker 1: so I'm driving in the car with my kid, my
Speaker 1: kids in the backseat, and he's like screaming like Bruno Bruno,
Speaker 1: you know, and to listen to Encanto and I'm like
Speaker 1: freaking out and I'm just and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I noticed this sort of familiar feeling that I hadn't
Speaker 1: had in a long time. And I was like, uh, Initially,
Speaker 1: like okay, push it away and just keep driving, and
Speaker 1: you know, put the music louder and pushed it down.
Speaker 1: And then and then I was like, this is just
Speaker 1: getting worse. And so then I did the practice in
Speaker 1: the car while driving with the Bruno song, and I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I notice right now? I noticed that there's anxiety.
Speaker 1: I noticed that there's that part that's up and it's
Speaker 1: really tense in my chest and it's really clenching my jaw.
Speaker 1: And it's that old anxiety of feeling out of control.
Speaker 1: It's it's historical anxiety, it's recent anxiety. What else do
Speaker 1: I know about it? I know, so I notice where
Speaker 1: it is in my body, notice what it feels like.
Speaker 1: What do I know about it? It's it's young, right,
Speaker 1: It's a girl. She's she's really scared right now. And
Speaker 1: then very quickly I said what do you need? And
Speaker 1: she said, I need box breath, you know, so breathing
Speaker 1: for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
Speaker 1: And I just did it while I was driving my
Speaker 1: kid and had a miraculous shift in that moment. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to go from the extreme anxiety to the
Speaker 1: box breadth, right, but if you start to just befriend it,
Speaker 1: like I notice that that it's there, and I notice
Speaker 1: what's up inside my system, and then I what do
Speaker 1: I know about you? You know what, what do you want?
Speaker 1: You know, what do you want me to know about you?
Speaker 1: And then what do you need? And so it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's a practice. And to your point right away,
Speaker 1: you're gonna say, I don't know what that part is.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell she's talking about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been doing i FS for decades, so I have
Speaker 1: it in me. But it's it's a practice. So really
Speaker 1: just touching into what that part of your needs in
Speaker 1: that moment. Yeah, And I think one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've learned too is like this
Speaker 1: is where story sometimes comes in and plays and creativity
Speaker 1: plays a huge part. It's like, Okay, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: let my creativity tell me what this is right now.
Speaker 1: Like if I don't know what it needs, like let's
Speaker 1: make let's let's create something, and Lyndon, let's trust that
Speaker 1: that is the thing. That's where then it's like then
Speaker 1: self comes in and it's like okay, and that's where
Speaker 1: faith and their spiritual comes in. It's like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: trust that what just showed up was exactly what needed.
Speaker 1: What I could just create it is what I need.
Speaker 1: That's why creativity is one of the qualities itself. And
Speaker 1: so and when you think about it, like creativity and
Speaker 1: anxiety can't coexist. Oh, I'm like, can they? When you're
Speaker 1: in a creative flow state, right, anxiety can dissipate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely can. But I do feel like for me,
Speaker 1: at least they they can live alongside each other. But
Speaker 1: the driving yes, yeah, yeah, but it's but it's you know,
Speaker 1: really surrendering to the creative process. It puts you into
Speaker 1: that flow state where that anxiety is not that's the forefront. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, for sure. I love this conversation. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for Oh my god, really, I really want
Speaker 1: to hug you and I want to hang out with you,
Speaker 1: and I love it. I just think that this is
Speaker 1: the I mean, I only like big talk. This is
Speaker 1: the only kind of conversation I want to agree. One
Speaker 1: of the great privileges of this time that we're in
Speaker 1: is that we get to connect with really soulful people
Speaker 1: in this way. And you are my people to be
Speaker 1: friends with you. Thank you. Do you live Do you
Speaker 1: live in on the East Coast? Right? Yeah? Okay? Where
Speaker 1: are you? I'm in l A. Yeah? Okay, cool. Actually
Speaker 1: I have one more question for you. OK, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I always ask my guests because of course there's the
Speaker 1: music piece involved. I am. I always ask my guests,
Speaker 1: what are your holy five songs? These could be, this
Speaker 1: could be from yesterday, these could be from your life,
Speaker 1: like what has inspired you? And you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like music is the sound obviously the soundtrack to our lives.
Speaker 1: What's it's what weaves everything together? So what are your five?
Speaker 1: There's a few. Um So Luca the Susanne Vega song
Speaker 1: my name is Luca. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if Yeah, my name is Luca. I live on like
Speaker 1: that before, I live upstairs from you in retrot. It
Speaker 1: was such a big song for me as a kid,
Speaker 1: and I never knew why I loved it. I live
Speaker 1: on the second floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think you've seen me before. You hear something late
Speaker 1: and n and you have teenagers like the Emo teenagers. Right,
Speaker 1: He's about a kid. I believe it's about a kid
Speaker 1: that was being abused upstairs. And you know, I never
Speaker 1: really dove into the lyrics. Yeah, yeah, big one for me. Um.
Speaker 1: I love I love folk music, so I love Edie
Speaker 1: Broquell's song Circle me. I'm a body of circle and
Speaker 1: we notice you don't camerad and I love um Superstition
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder than your Back. It's such a hat song,
Speaker 1: really good, happy song, so good. Um, I I love
Speaker 1: I love Seagar Ross. I can't think of any of
Speaker 1: the names of their songs, but oh yes, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: the ones that sing without words basically, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's like Norwegian. I mean, it's like another language.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly. Um, totally not giving any credit
Speaker 1: to what this music is, but it um, it's music
Speaker 1: that I meditated, meditated to for you know, when I
Speaker 1: was really deepening my meditation practice, and so just you know,
Speaker 1: when you meditate to music, it's just like the tones
Speaker 1: can just like suck you right in really quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: A girlfriend of mine is called Jai jug Diche and
Speaker 1: she has extraordinary Cundalini music and so she has a
Speaker 1: cover of Hallelujah that I birthed to and so that
Speaker 1: for me is really extraordinary. Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. Um.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you know, I sing for everyone else,
Speaker 1: but it's rare that I've but I but I've started
Speaker 1: to use my voice for my own healing and um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that comes up for me is,
Speaker 1: and it's been really it's very fearful for me for
Speaker 1: me to share, is that I like to sing without words.
Speaker 1: And so when you just mentioned I can't think of
Speaker 1: how you pronounced there. There you go, see grass Um.
Speaker 1: Someone turned me onto them not long ago, and it
Speaker 1: was the first time I had had seen anyone do
Speaker 1: what I feel like I do in my privacy of
Speaker 1: just like making sound and creating song but without words,
Speaker 1: because sometimes I feel like sometimes I feel like words
Speaker 1: can't express the fullness of like what I want to sound.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, so interesting that you just brought that up,
Speaker 1: because I just discovered them the other day. I love that.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're supposed to do something with that.
Speaker 1: I will I do too. I feel like I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to do something with it too. I'm just I think
Speaker 1: I'm just starting to be able to even yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: and first being able to heal with that, and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to heal you, and then I'm just first
Speaker 1: being able to talk about it like this is it's
Speaker 1: like such a private piece of me that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't And it also feels like something I haven't
Speaker 1: shared with the world yet and don't need to at
Speaker 1: the moment. But what I like so much about what
Speaker 1: you're saying is this concept like our presence is our power, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't rely on our words words. You know,
Speaker 1: words are words are very impactful and they have a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and their symbols, but words without the
Speaker 1: presence of that energy kind of worthless. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: like you're getting to almost like the true soul of
Speaker 1: that energy in in your art. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank you so much. And that,
Speaker 1: my friends, ends this really intense and I hope enlightening
Speaker 1: episode of Holy Human. I want to thank Gabby Bernstein
Speaker 1: for waiting and such deep waters with me, and I
Speaker 1: would love to hear your thought. It's about our discussions,
Speaker 1: so please share them with me in the comments wherever
Speaker 1: you're listening. I truly love hearing from you well. And
Speaker 1: on our next Holy Human, we're going to dive into
Speaker 1: some topics that are dear to my heart and I
Speaker 1: know many of yours too, which is cultivating a functional, fulfilling,
Speaker 1: blended family while navigating the complications of step parenting. I'll
Speaker 1: be joined by step mom Guru Jamie Scrimm Drawer for
Speaker 1: some seriously honest and open conversation. But until then, please
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves and one another, and I love you.
Speaker 1: Holy Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with LeAnn Rhymes
Speaker 1: on the I Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get the podcast that matter most to you.