Speaker 1: What we're running from, first and foremost is we're running
Speaker 1: from trauma. Even the subtle moments in time someone tells
Speaker 1: you you're stupid, or you were in the best of
Speaker 1: environments growing up but you were fat shamed by a friend.
Speaker 1: Those tiny moments that are seemingly insignificant dictate the rest
Speaker 1: of our lives. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose,
Speaker 1: the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to
Speaker 1: each and every single one of you who come back
Speaker 1: every week to listen, learn, and grow. And I am
Speaker 1: so excited to be talking to you today. I can't
Speaker 1: believe it. My new book Eight Rules of Love is
Speaker 1: out and I cannot wait to share it with you.
Speaker 1: I am so so excited for you to read this book,
Speaker 1: for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook.
Speaker 1: If you haven't got it already, make sure you go
Speaker 1: to eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to
Speaker 1: anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love.
Speaker 1: So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up,
Speaker 1: or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to invite you to come and see
Speaker 1: me for my global tour. Love Rules go to Jay
Speaker 1: shelleytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences,
Speaker 1: and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now,
Speaker 1: today we have on a guest who has already been
Speaker 1: on before, and we don't do that very often, but
Speaker 1: I have to do it for this special guest, a
Speaker 1: dear friend, an incredible author, number one New York Times bestseller,
Speaker 1: multiple international best selling books, the one and only Gabby Bernstein. Gabby,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming back to on Purpose.
Speaker 1: We've loved each other from the moment we first met,
Speaker 1: and that was six years ago now, I believe it
Speaker 1: or not. And we've talked about this multiple times about
Speaker 1: how we just instantly connected and we found a way
Speaker 1: to stay connected, with me moving from New York to
Speaker 1: LA through to not being able to see each other.
Speaker 1: We just said I hadn't seen you for three years.
Speaker 1: But you wrote this incredible book called Happy Days, The
Speaker 1: Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Piece,
Speaker 1: And I want everyone who's listening right now to go
Speaker 1: and order your copy because you're going to love this
Speaker 1: conversation and you're going to want the book even more,
Speaker 1: so go and grab your copy right now. But Gabby
Speaker 1: you wrote this book at a tough time, you know,
Speaker 1: at a really tough time in the world, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of take a step back because when
Speaker 1: we're doing this work that we do, and you've served
Speaker 1: millions of people for years now that you've been doing
Speaker 1: this like this has really been a labor of love
Speaker 1: for you. You've brought joy to so many people over
Speaker 1: over a decade. And my question is what is happiness? Like,
Speaker 1: let's really talk about what is happiness? Because we keep
Speaker 1: chasing these words. People are chasing mindfulness or happiness or
Speaker 1: joy or success. But it's like, when you've bought about
Speaker 1: happiness from all your learnings, all your wisdom, all of
Speaker 1: your journey, what is happiness? My answer today is quite
Speaker 1: different than it would have been six years ago when
Speaker 1: we first did our first interview. The differences is a
Speaker 1: greater understanding of what happiness is not. I had to
Speaker 1: really go to that place to come through and be
Speaker 1: on the other side of what it truly is, and
Speaker 1: I began to really deepen my awareness and understanding of
Speaker 1: what takes us out of that presence of joy and
Speaker 1: as Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, he says,
Speaker 1: that trauma is the inability to be present, and trauma
Speaker 1: is often the root cause of most of our unhappiness,
Speaker 1: whether it's big T trauma or small T trauma big
Speaker 1: tea like living through a catastrophic event or having kind
Speaker 1: of violence in the household, or small T trauma being
Speaker 1: told you're not good enough for being bullied. But we
Speaker 1: all have it in some way, and when we have it,
Speaker 1: it's not resolved. We build up all of these defense
Speaker 1: mechanisms against it, and that creates the inability to be
Speaker 1: present and to really experience life with all of its
Speaker 1: moment to moment richness and right here, right now, looking
Speaker 1: at you and really taking you in and really just
Speaker 1: feeling into the thrill of what it's like to be
Speaker 1: back in the same room with a very dear friend
Speaker 1: and somebody I love. And even when I came in
Speaker 1: and I hugged you, you know, six years ago, I
Speaker 1: would have been like hey, Jay, and like very like
Speaker 1: not in my body and not in the present moment
Speaker 1: with you, because I was still stuck in that truncated trauma.
Speaker 1: And so coming through the other side of that, what
Speaker 1: happiness means to me now is the ability to be
Speaker 1: fully present and I'm not using that language as like
Speaker 1: some woo woo, but to be fully present in the
Speaker 1: moment with whatever is going on right here now, and
Speaker 1: that is how I'm living today, and it's epic. It's wonderful,
Speaker 1: like the fact that I could be in the uber
Speaker 1: on my way here, having a really awesome conversation with
Speaker 1: the woman driving me and getting to know a new person,
Speaker 1: and then walking in a room and just being able
Speaker 1: to hug my friend and feel that. That was a
Speaker 1: really long answer, but it's important to really recognize that
Speaker 1: I did not know what true happiness was until nine
Speaker 1: books later, you know, sixteen years as a spiritual teacher,
Speaker 1: and I knew what it was for myself along the way.
Speaker 1: But now I really feel like I've gotten to a
Speaker 1: place where it truly has transcended sort of these obvious descriptions.
Speaker 1: I really like that definition, and I really liked that
Speaker 1: approach because I think that presence is so overtalked about
Speaker 1: but undervalued and underapplied. We hear about it lot, as
Speaker 1: you said, but we don't really know how to live
Speaker 1: it because presence to us often actually means judgment, or
Speaker 1: presence means I'm present right now, but now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: critique that or I'm going to see that. Tell us
Speaker 1: how you think about presence differently, because often people say, well,
Speaker 1: when I'm present, I just spot everything that's going wrong
Speaker 1: right now, or when I'm present, I just start highlighting
Speaker 1: things that I don't like or do like for that matter.
Speaker 1: So how do you see presence as being beyond judgment
Speaker 1: and criticism and observation. That's an interesting outlook on it.
Speaker 1: So the concept of be present, it's just thrown around,
Speaker 1: and it's this concept of just sort of you know,
Speaker 1: when you meditate and you quiet your mind, your yeah, yeah, yeah, fine.
Speaker 1: But really, what I believe is when you go on
Speaker 1: the journey of undoing the storylines of your past and
Speaker 1: to at such a point and level that they no
Speaker 1: longer have a hold on your nervous system, and you
Speaker 1: begin to reorganize your reactivity and your relationship to yourself
Speaker 1: and how you respond to the world, then you start
Speaker 1: to establish what is known in sc somatic experiencing as
Speaker 1: a felt sense. It's a felt sense of and what
Speaker 1: that means is I can stand outside my house in
Speaker 1: the country right now and this season change and smell spring.
Speaker 1: I can look in my son's eyes and feel the
Speaker 1: most insane rush of oxytocin moved through my heart when
Speaker 1: he just looks me in the eye. And that's actually
Speaker 1: not the human experience. Typically. Typically we are moving so fast,
Speaker 1: so dissociated from, so checked out from we are, we
Speaker 1: have disembodied. We're walking around like, you know, without our
Speaker 1: heads on. And I could only say this because I've
Speaker 1: lived like that for many, many years and had to
Speaker 1: work really hard with my meditation and with my spiritual
Speaker 1: bactors to keep coming back to groundedness. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of that, yo, yo, of like I'm out,
Speaker 1: I'm in, I'm out, I'm in. But what if you
Speaker 1: could live life just fully in the presence of where
Speaker 1: you are in every given moment and truly taking it
Speaker 1: all in. And that was always sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: that would be So you know, that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about in my spiritual books. But
Speaker 1: I know that now, and I know that you, as
Speaker 1: my friend who's known me for six years, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can feel that in being with me in this
Speaker 1: room right now versus six years ago. And so I've
Speaker 1: and I've had that experience even through writing this book,
Speaker 1: my ninth book. That presence came through the is infused
Speaker 1: in every imprint, and so I didn't think this was
Speaker 1: where we were going. But it's actually it truly is
Speaker 1: what happiness is to me. It's it's being in the
Speaker 1: experience of things and actually being able to experience life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love what you said to me. It really felt
Speaker 1: that example of you looking into your son's eyes when
Speaker 1: you said that, I think what I love about that
Speaker 1: experience is that it's so immersive. And then you said
Speaker 1: to take it all in, And I feel like that's
Speaker 1: really what presence is, is the ability to take it
Speaker 1: all in through all your senses, right that we don't
Speaker 1: even use. I often when I'm teaching meditation and we're
Speaker 1: activating people's senses, we start recognizing how we over rely
Speaker 1: on our eyes. The only sense we actually observed through
Speaker 1: is our eyes and maybe then our ears, but our nose.
Speaker 1: Our sense of touch is fairly unconscious, right, We're not
Speaker 1: always aware of temperatures, textures, sense and things like that,
Speaker 1: which I find is we're not taking it all in.
Speaker 1: One of the things you just reminded me of is
Speaker 1: I read a study recently that was talking about the
Speaker 1: awe effect, and it was saying that we're happier and
Speaker 1: we have more pro social behavior when we experience awe.
Speaker 1: That's right. And when you spoke about your son's eyes,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the idea of or. So always
Speaker 1: generally nature, beautiful landscapes, views, but someone's eyes could be or.
Speaker 1: And it was saying that the reason why we love
Speaker 1: or is because we simultaneously feel tiny but a part
Speaker 1: of something bigger, beautiful, So you feel a sense of
Speaker 1: insignificance but connectedness at the same time. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what presence is to me. I love that. And
Speaker 1: I think that someone listening right now might be like,
Speaker 1: what are they talking about? How could I you know?
Speaker 1: Because the truth is I probably I get that, I
Speaker 1: understand that. You know, what does that even mean to
Speaker 1: be present? What does it even mean to be in
Speaker 1: our Because we live in such a protector mode, we
Speaker 1: have this huge build up, almost like a wall built
Speaker 1: up against the presence of that energy, of that are
Speaker 1: And from a spiritual perspective, it's almost like we have
Speaker 1: to dismantle of these bricks on this wall to just
Speaker 1: reconnect to and return to that presence within ourselves. And truly,
Speaker 1: even in the midst of this experience of not being
Speaker 1: connected to that awe and that presence for many, many years,
Speaker 1: I was still able to touch into it. It was
Speaker 1: I was on a path and a journey towards it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that actually really benefited my readers,
Speaker 1: and it benefited the journey that I was on because
Speaker 1: that's where many people were with me. And so this
Speaker 1: stage of my life, forty two years young and with
Speaker 1: much sixteen years of being in this field, I have
Speaker 1: this experience right now of having kind of up leveled
Speaker 1: my well being. And that's actually what my hope is
Speaker 1: for my reader right now. If you open this book
Speaker 1: right or if you are even listening to us right now,
Speaker 1: have this conversation, you've unconsciously or consciously raised your head
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, I'm ready to up level. And the
Speaker 1: gift of having this globalis that we've all just lived through.
Speaker 1: Is it so so many of us just started to
Speaker 1: crack open to the reality that we couldn't just pretend anymore.
Speaker 1: And this is the journey of kind of unearthing why
Speaker 1: we have been running and how we've been running and
Speaker 1: how to stop. Yeah, what are some of the ways
Speaker 1: you think we're not even away. You have a chapter
Speaker 1: in the book called you Know, like Why We run Away,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what are some of those hidden ways
Speaker 1: of running away that you think stay with us? Because
Speaker 1: I almost feel like there's the obvious ways we know
Speaker 1: we run away, then there's the middle, like in between
Speaker 1: hidden ones where we kind of convince ourselves that we're
Speaker 1: not running away, and then finally we raised our hands
Speaker 1: as you said, and say I'm ready to level up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are some of those hidden, confusing places where we're
Speaker 1: running away or excuses that happen that block us. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come out straight with it. Jay, What we're
Speaker 1: running from, first and foremost is we're running from trauma period,
Speaker 1: end of story. And that word has such a loaded
Speaker 1: stigma around it, and I'm just wanting to bust through
Speaker 1: that now because we are all traumatized. You can't be
Speaker 1: alive in this world right now, at this time, or
Speaker 1: even decades ago without experiencing trauma in some form. And
Speaker 1: like I said, some of us may have been brought
Speaker 1: up with totally secure attachment, so much resilience, so much
Speaker 1: grace in our life, and we've experienced trauma, but maybe
Speaker 1: you're able to move through it with more ease because
Speaker 1: you had that safe, secure experience. But it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's you're unscathed. It doesn't mean that you have missed,
Speaker 1: you know, the life's lessons. Because even the subtle moments
Speaker 1: in time someone tells you you're stupid you're six years old, right,
Speaker 1: or you were in the best of environments growing up
Speaker 1: but you were fat shamed by a friend. Those tiny
Speaker 1: moments that are seemingly insignificant dictate the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're running from. The bigger T
Speaker 1: the trauma, as you mentioned, you know, well, actually we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten there yet, but I reveal a really big
Speaker 1: T trauma that I had remembered in when I was
Speaker 1: thirty six years old. The bigger the teeth, the trauma,
Speaker 1: child abuse or living with an alcoholic parent, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. But regardless of how big or small the
Speaker 1: tea is, there is something that needs to be undone
Speaker 1: because ultimately that's what we're running from. And how are
Speaker 1: we running. We're running with drugs, we're running with alcohol,
Speaker 1: we're running with food, we're running with judgment, we're running
Speaker 1: with work, we're running with rage, we're running with control,
Speaker 1: and these all the list that I just identified or
Speaker 1: protector parts of us. So let me just simplify it
Speaker 1: even more. I am now trained in internal family systems therapy,
Speaker 1: and the simplification of this is that we have these
Speaker 1: moments in time where we disembody, we've been experienced some
Speaker 1: kind of trauma, We check out, and then we say, oh,
Speaker 1: I never want to feel that shame. I never want
Speaker 1: to feel that terror again. We just lock it up
Speaker 1: and those are called exiled parts of us, they're often
Speaker 1: young parts, and then we build up all these ways
Speaker 1: of protecting ourselves. And that's the control, that's the drugs,
Speaker 1: that's the addiction, that's the workaholism, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: to protect ourselves from ever experiencing that pain again. We
Speaker 1: all have exiles and we all have protectors, and this
Speaker 1: journey that we need to go on is to really
Speaker 1: relax those protector parts so that they can remember that
Speaker 1: there is a source of love and an internal parent
Speaker 1: within us that can take care of us. It's incredible,
Speaker 1: isn't it that. Well you're saying, are these protector parts
Speaker 1: are actually causing us more pain? Yeah? So we think
Speaker 1: we're protecting ourselves by running away. So we have this
Speaker 1: protector part, but that protection is not protection. It's actually
Speaker 1: deepening the wound. That's correct. But it looks and fields
Speaker 1: and sounds like protection. I mean, so we can do
Speaker 1: a lot of people lately who are saying to me, Jay,
Speaker 1: I am too sensitive and empathetic towards this world, and
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I belong here. Yeah, right, Like
Speaker 1: there's this feeling of like I just want a world
Speaker 1: full of love and kindness, and I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I belong here. Yeah, it can feel scary to look
Speaker 1: at the trauma, right, It's scary, like there's a big
Speaker 1: fear around, whether it's a small tea trauma or a
Speaker 1: big tea trauma. As you said, it can be really tough.
Speaker 1: And you said after doing so much of this work
Speaker 1: thirty six six years ago, was when you were able
Speaker 1: to look at it. What do you think blocked you
Speaker 1: up until that point from looking at it even though
Speaker 1: you were doing so much work, Or how did your
Speaker 1: work that you were doing actually open that up as well? Both? Yeah, well, dissociation.
Speaker 1: So similar to what your friends are saying, it's like
Speaker 1: it's too scary to live in this world, and so
Speaker 1: you know what, often one of the great protector parts
Speaker 1: is to dissociate, to check out, to even meditate above right,
Speaker 1: to just try to in some way numb that out.
Speaker 1: And for me, I at thirty six, in a dream,
Speaker 1: remembered sexual abuse from my childhood, and I had such
Speaker 1: a huge aha moment when that dream surfaced, because this
Speaker 1: is why I was a cocaine addict, this is why
Speaker 1: I was an alcoholic, this is why I was a workaholic,
Speaker 1: this is why I was controlling the shit out of
Speaker 1: everything in my life. So there was relief in knowing, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what I've been running from, and it was
Speaker 1: so extreme in my case that my brain literally just
Speaker 1: you know, it's a beautiful brain response to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so overwhelming to the system that it's going
Speaker 1: to be totally checked out and dissociated from. But even
Speaker 1: if you dissociate from a memory, it still shows up
Speaker 1: in your body. It still shows up in your gas
Speaker 1: strown testinal issues, It shows up in your sleep, it
Speaker 1: shows up in your relationships, it shows up in your addiction.
Speaker 1: It shows up everywhere. Because you may not have the
Speaker 1: actual claiming of the memory, but the memory is still
Speaker 1: in your nervous system. I remembered at thirty six because
Speaker 1: by that stage I'd already written about I'd been eleven
Speaker 1: years sober, I'd probably written in books. You know, I'd
Speaker 1: been really on this very big quest to my own
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening, and all the work that I had done,
Speaker 1: everything i'd written about got me to the place where
Speaker 1: I was safe enough to remember, you know, everything's in
Speaker 1: the perfect order. There's no accident. I'd done a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of spiritual work, a tremendous amount of therapeutic work.
Speaker 1: I got to a place in my life. Also, this
Speaker 1: is important to recognize where there was a lot of
Speaker 1: new things happening around me. So control was one of
Speaker 1: the ways that I kept that exiled story at Bay.
Speaker 1: But a lot of things in my life at that
Speaker 1: time were falling out of control. So I was My
Speaker 1: husband was leaving his job at JP Morgan to come
Speaker 1: run our business. We were talking about family planning. We
Speaker 1: had just gotten married. So these big life moments are
Speaker 1: often when people do remember traumas, or if it's a
Speaker 1: trauma that you're aware of, it can really get activated
Speaker 1: and come to the surface. So just something for the
Speaker 1: listener to consider and it was so horrific, can so
Speaker 1: scary to remember that. But the journey that I've underwent
Speaker 1: since that time is what allows me to put my
Speaker 1: face on this book cover and have it say the
Speaker 1: Guided Path from Trauma to profound freedom and inner peace
Speaker 1: and mean every freaking word of that, and to be
Speaker 1: able to stand behind that with full integrity, authenticity and power,
Speaker 1: to be able to say you know what to all
Speaker 1: these people are so traumatized, everyone so traumatized, and I
Speaker 1: can say, go do this, And it's a gift to
Speaker 1: be able to live to tell. Yeah. Absolutely, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate what you said about being safe enough. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think that when you start this work, it's not
Speaker 1: that all of it happens at the same level, and
Speaker 1: it's not that the work looks the same every year.
Speaker 1: And so when you start doing personal growth, self development,
Speaker 1: spiritual work, whatever it may be, it's going to look
Speaker 1: different every single year. New things are going to be
Speaker 1: unlocked and opened and unearthed. And so I think people
Speaker 1: can feel comfortable that if they're on the journey, there
Speaker 1: will be a point at which it's safe enough, in
Speaker 1: your words, to feel that you can be revealed to that,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to say something here because I love
Speaker 1: this dedication. And when you said that about getting married
Speaker 1: and trauma, you actually dedicate this book to your husband.
Speaker 1: For my husband, Zach, thank you for loving all of
Speaker 1: my parts and helping me feel safer than I ever
Speaker 1: thought possible, which I thought was beautiful. Yeah, you're reading
Speaker 1: that is like really emotional for me because you know
Speaker 1: it was a trauma for him to be married to me.
Speaker 1: And you know, Jay, I opened this book by saying
Speaker 1: that my publishers came to me and I sent them
Speaker 1: the manuscript. And these are publishers I worked with for
Speaker 1: so many years and I'd written books and they would
Speaker 1: just accept the manuscript. The universe has your back ready,
Speaker 1: ready to print, you know, super attractor, ready to print.
Speaker 1: And I send them this manuscript and they write back
Speaker 1: like we need to talk, and they get on the
Speaker 1: phone with them and they're like, we're really nervous for you, Gabby,
Speaker 1: because you're revealing so much and it's one negative story
Speaker 1: after the next, and we don't think that you're showing
Speaker 1: your true strength. And my response was my ability to
Speaker 1: be this vulnerable is my true strength. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just them. It was Zach Like, when my husband read
Speaker 1: this book, he edits my books before they go to
Speaker 1: the publisher. I have an editor, then it goes to Zach,
Speaker 1: and then it goes to the publisher. And when he
Speaker 1: read this, it was really triggering for him, super activating,
Speaker 1: and there was moments when he would say to me,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know this was going on. And it's
Speaker 1: so emotional for me because when you're living in that
Speaker 1: kind of recovery, in that crisis, there's so much shame
Speaker 1: wrapped up in it, and especially when you're the self
Speaker 1: help book author, you know that the shame is so
Speaker 1: extreme that you feel so alone in the journey. And
Speaker 1: I just have such a deep gratitude for my husband
Speaker 1: for holding me in that. I have gratitude for the
Speaker 1: whole team of therapists that helped me in that, but
Speaker 1: but particularly for my spiritual connection, because without that I
Speaker 1: would have been really alone. Yeah, And so that's really
Speaker 1: what I want this book to do for people, is
Speaker 1: to help them know they're not alone in this journey,
Speaker 1: and that we all have a lot that we can
Speaker 1: look at and gently and slowly and safely begin to
Speaker 1: peel back the layers or take the bricks off the wall.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, but just just hearing you read that
Speaker 1: acknowledgement out loud and that that that dedication out loud
Speaker 1: is just it just says a lot about what it
Speaker 1: means to hold another person in their trauma. The reason
Speaker 1: why it touched me is because again, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners, a lot of comments that I see,
Speaker 1: a lot of story tags that I see, and people
Speaker 1: that I speak to my personal life. Trauma can break partnerships, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, massively. Oh yeah, and we see either people
Speaker 1: struggling in shared trauma, struggling with the individual trauma being
Speaker 1: passed over to each other, wounds being shared. Explain to
Speaker 1: us how someone can hold space for someone during their
Speaker 1: trauma journey and work and as they're on this path.
Speaker 1: And actually, more importantly, because you do tell us the
Speaker 1: guided path from trauma to profound freedom, how do you
Speaker 1: help someone help you? Yeah? I'm really interested in that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because I find that so often we expect someone
Speaker 1: else to help us, But how do you help your
Speaker 1: partner help you rather than expecting them to be a therapist,
Speaker 1: which is really unrealistic, totally unrealistic. Well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of answers to that question. So the best way you
Speaker 1: can help them help you is to just tell the
Speaker 1: truth to the best of your ability, so even if
Speaker 1: it's the trauma that you're facing. Actually, on my podcast,
Speaker 1: I Workshop People and I dear gavied someone yesterday and
Speaker 1: she was talking about how this book is bringing up
Speaker 1: a lot for her and she's starting to face into
Speaker 1: it and her part just doesn't understand. And I said
Speaker 1: to her, listen, yeah, And I said, listen, you may
Speaker 1: not feel safe enough yet to let him in on
Speaker 1: your full journey or even what you're facing into, but
Speaker 1: it would be extremely valuable for you to go to
Speaker 1: him and say, Hey, a lot of stuff is coming
Speaker 1: up for me right now. It's old stuff from my childhood,
Speaker 1: and it's really scary for me. And I'm reading this
Speaker 1: book and I want to assure you I'm doing this
Speaker 1: really beautiful work on this and I'm committed to maybe
Speaker 1: seeking out therapy and going deeper, and my intention is
Speaker 1: to really create a safe environment for myself and for
Speaker 1: a relationship. But that's the truth of where I'm at
Speaker 1: right now, and that may be the only truth that
Speaker 1: you can tell, because it's just too much shame wrapped
Speaker 1: up and telling exactly what's up. That comment, that truth,
Speaker 1: that extension of vulnerability, even in that slight way, is
Speaker 1: extremely soothing to the other partner, because if you just
Speaker 1: leave them completely in the dark and they don't understand
Speaker 1: why you are so reactive, they don't understand why you
Speaker 1: might pick up the drink. They can't understand why, and
Speaker 1: so giving them a little look behind the why is
Speaker 1: a very valuable thing. Another thing I recommended to her
Speaker 1: was to have him read the book because any you know,
Speaker 1: when you've got unresolved trauma, big TI or small T,
Speaker 1: the patterns are just textbook Jay, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: if you were to look at all of my symptoms,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, check check check check check check check.
Speaker 1: I now, having done my research and having studied this
Speaker 1: and having lived it, I can spot it in humans everywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm like, big T trauma, SMALLT trauma, big T, big
Speaker 1: big thing. You know, I can see it. Like I
Speaker 1: kept asking Zach at times to read this one book
Speaker 1: that was about women who had lived through childhood abuse,
Speaker 1: and it was a little bit too much for him.
Speaker 1: But handing him a book like this, or handing a
Speaker 1: partner a book like Happy Days, allows the partner to
Speaker 1: be like, oh wow, this whole story sounds just like
Speaker 1: my partner, or oh yeah, my partner does that too,
Speaker 1: and it gives you an insight of like one the
Speaker 1: opportunity for the traumatized person to say, look, I'm not alone,
Speaker 1: and then for the partner to recognize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a real thing. I think those are great answers. I
Speaker 1: love both of those. I would highly recommend everyone who's
Speaker 1: listening and watching, if you're reading Happy Days right now,
Speaker 1: make sure you share even paragraphs of it. You may
Speaker 1: take a picture and send it to your partner or
Speaker 1: to a friend. And of course, if you're not reading it,
Speaker 1: make sure you grab a copy of the book as
Speaker 1: you're listening right now, because I do believe that what
Speaker 1: Gabby's saying is so deeply true that if we have
Speaker 1: not healed our traumas, we're going to carry them with
Speaker 1: us into every workplace, relationship scenario. And it just gets
Speaker 1: harder because that trauma gets tied up in more people's trauma,
Speaker 1: and then you can't even tell the difference between yours,
Speaker 1: someone else's, and collective. And so I feel like the
Speaker 1: earlier we can do this work, the healthier it can
Speaker 1: be for us. And I love what you just said
Speaker 1: about the idea of informing someone, hey, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm going through. This is why this week I might
Speaker 1: be really irritable and why I'm really struggling this week,
Speaker 1: I'm going to need your support. And I think I
Speaker 1: do this with rather often, even about small things where
Speaker 1: I'm like, of course, really big thing on Thursday, I'm
Speaker 1: really nervous about it. Like just know that this week
Speaker 1: every gap I get, I'm going to be super silent
Speaker 1: because I'm going to be preparing my energy for this thing.
Speaker 1: That's a small thing of just something coming up instantly.
Speaker 1: But what about when you're doing something internal? So I
Speaker 1: love those and I would encourage people to even if
Speaker 1: someone can't read a book, that you send them screenshots
Speaker 1: and pictures and it's going to get them moving. And
Speaker 1: this book does a great job at breaking those areas down.
Speaker 1: I like that idea too, of being like, hey, read
Speaker 1: this page, or listen to this one section of the
Speaker 1: audiobook because or just listen to the conversation between Gabby
Speaker 1: and Jay, because what it does is it just gives
Speaker 1: a little insight, and then that also helps you as
Speaker 1: the reader as the as the person on the journey
Speaker 1: to take away the shame. There's a chapter in the
Speaker 1: book actually that's called Speaking the Unspeakable, and it's all
Speaker 1: about shame. And you know, here I was, Jay, I
Speaker 1: was thirty six. I was just facing into this. I'm
Speaker 1: at a retreat, leading the freaking retreat with two other women,
Speaker 1: and it's a retreat on you know, women facing their
Speaker 1: trauma and transcending their past. And I'm about six months
Speaker 1: into my own recovery. So I had no business teaching
Speaker 1: at that time. But I didn't realize that that's actually,
Speaker 1: you know, part of some of the vulnerable things I
Speaker 1: shared in this book that my publishers were like, do
Speaker 1: you really want to say that? Yes, I have to
Speaker 1: say at all. So here I was, and I'm teaching
Speaker 1: that I'm leading this retreat, and so in the other
Speaker 1: teachers session, I'm sitting in the room doing the workshop
Speaker 1: with them, and the workshops all about shame. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: I like, you know, all partner up with somebody, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like called space for them, right, And here
Speaker 1: I am in this dialogue about shame. And I realized,
Speaker 1: at thirty six years old, seven self help books, eleven
Speaker 1: years of sobriety, you know, deck, you know, over a
Speaker 1: decade of work on stage speaking about spirituality. And I
Speaker 1: sit there and I'm like, oh my god, shame. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize I had it. Wow, it's so buried. It's
Speaker 1: the most impermissible emotion that it's it is the exiled part.
Speaker 1: It was so so unsafe. I mean, I was like,
Speaker 1: of course I'm lovable, of course I'm adequate. I don't
Speaker 1: have shame, you know, we all do. But it was
Speaker 1: so buried, so deep that facing into that, you know,
Speaker 1: is a very gentle process, and so one of so
Speaker 1: another intention here in this conversation, in this just speaking
Speaker 1: of trauma, just giving voice to trauma, is to just
Speaker 1: end the stigma and shift the shame, because that shame
Speaker 1: is why we don't open up to our partners. That
Speaker 1: shame is why we don't even open a book like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's and that's actually what I was going to
Speaker 1: say that I think one of the biggest things I
Speaker 1: hear is, oh, no, I have no true Like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't have any shame Like no, no, No,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, and I've I've even led people I've
Speaker 1: worked with through inner child meditations and you know work,
Speaker 1: and they don't allow themselves to go there. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things I also find is
Speaker 1: people don't want to go there because they're scared they'll
Speaker 1: get stuck there. Totally, totally right. And so tell us
Speaker 1: a bit about that path of opening up something but
Speaker 1: not getting stuck there. What is the difference between someone
Speaker 1: who opens up a book like this. Obviously you've given
Speaker 1: the whole path and it's in here, but I mean,
Speaker 1: like that difference between someone who opens up a part
Speaker 1: of themselves then just feels like their whole life is collapsing,
Speaker 1: versus someone who opens it, has the courage to look
Speaker 1: at it, but then is able to pass through. What
Speaker 1: have you noticed of the difference you have to titrate
Speaker 1: in and out. It's not you cannot when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with big wounds, big tier SMALLTI. I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: going back to that because some people listen, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing's ever happened to me. And if I
Speaker 1: were sitting with you right now, I can find thirty
Speaker 1: things that are that you're running from, you know, or
Speaker 1: one major thing you're running from so wherever you are
Speaker 1: on the spectrum, the first thing to really identify is
Speaker 1: that you can't just rip the band aid off right away,
Speaker 1: and you have to go slow. And there are plenty
Speaker 1: of people that I have right now that in my world,
Speaker 1: girlfriend and dressed recovering from postpartum depression. I'm like, do
Speaker 1: not read the book right now, you know, put it
Speaker 1: on the shelf and wait. If someone's opening the book
Speaker 1: and its super activating to them, the answer could be,
Speaker 1: you know, go back into your therapy and then use
Speaker 1: the book when you feel safer. Don't put yourself in
Speaker 1: a position where you're going to blow out your system
Speaker 1: with too much digging too fast. Now, with that said,
Speaker 1: inside this book, I hold you by the hand and
Speaker 1: I walk you so slowly through these steps over and
Speaker 1: over again. I say, if this is too much for you,
Speaker 1: please skip ahead, read the next chapter. Go back to
Speaker 1: chapter three, the body based work. There's a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on how to settle your nervous system through body base practices,
Speaker 1: and that in itself can just be so soothing to
Speaker 1: someone as they start to open up to the possibility
Speaker 1: that there's something that they need to face and so
Speaker 1: through breathwork, through physical somatic work, through body talk, and
Speaker 1: just even getting in touch with what's going on in
Speaker 1: your body. There's so much relief, and so it's just
Speaker 1: a very slow process. I don't think people can just
Speaker 1: rip the band aid off at once. It's it's not possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people think they have to or they think that
Speaker 1: that's the only way. And I was actually gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that. I love this section on hiding behind the Body,
Speaker 1: and there's a beautiful quote here that you have that
Speaker 1: says I came to accept that I didn't have a
Speaker 1: gut problem, I still had a subconscious emotional problem. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this whole chapter for everyone who's reading along or
Speaker 1: or is going to get the book is quote a
Speaker 1: hiding behind the body. And that to me was huge
Speaker 1: because I think today we're all trying to be healthier,
Speaker 1: hopefully everyone who's listening to this podcast at least I know,
Speaker 1: is people are changing their diet, they're changing their sleep routine,
Speaker 1: they're changing the vitamins they take and the supplements they take.
Speaker 1: But then they're still wondering why things aren't getting worked out.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people who are listening
Speaker 1: can relate to that, and then you start to recognize
Speaker 1: that the body is just a window into what's actually
Speaker 1: sitting behind there. What have you found because you've been
Speaker 1: researching this, studying this, you give a guided path. What
Speaker 1: were other useful resources? Yeah, on that journey that you
Speaker 1: kind of recommend to people in the book to say, hey,
Speaker 1: check this person out, or think about this idea or
Speaker 1: area of your work. In that chapter, I really referenced
Speaker 1: the work of doctor John Sarno, who wrote Healing Back Pain.
Speaker 1: He wrote The Mind Body Prescription, and all of his
Speaker 1: work was really based on the premise that our physical
Speaker 1: conditions are psychosomatic. And by no means in book, in
Speaker 1: my work, or in his work, was there any reference
Speaker 1: of don't get that medication or don't go on that
Speaker 1: therapeutic path physically, whatever it might be, but to really
Speaker 1: look closely at what are the belief systems and the
Speaker 1: impermissible feelings that are not being met behind the physical sensations.
Speaker 1: So for me, in the book, I reference how I
Speaker 1: had decades of gastro intestinal issues, and what I recognized
Speaker 1: through my healing journey is that I didn't have gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal issues. I had unresolved trauma, I had impermissible rage,
Speaker 1: I'd impermissible terror, I'd impermissible shame. And as I began
Speaker 1: to become safer in my nervous system, safer in my mind, safer,
Speaker 1: you know, reprocessing memories, I have zero gastro intestinal issues.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to change, you know, I did for decades,
Speaker 1: you know, Cebo diets and this thing, and I had,
Speaker 1: you know, this supplement and all of that is necessary
Speaker 1: when you're having acute problems. You need medication, you need vitamins,
Speaker 1: you need diets to just get back to baseline and
Speaker 1: for sure, but all of it goes away so many
Speaker 1: of our So people are like, well, how do I
Speaker 1: know if I have trauma? And I'm like, well, do
Speaker 1: you have a sleep disorder? Do you have gastro issues?
Speaker 1: Do you have TMJ? Do you have so go to
Speaker 1: the body first. Do you have acne? You know? And
Speaker 1: then it goes even deeper. Do you have panic attacks?
Speaker 1: Do you have depression? Do you But the bottom line
Speaker 1: is is that our body is a first responder, and
Speaker 1: our body is such a beautiful way to reveal to
Speaker 1: us what is what is needing to be healed? And
Speaker 1: in fact, we talked about protector parts. The physical body
Speaker 1: actually is a form of protection. Right, So we send
Speaker 1: from the Sarno perspective, we have a nervous system response.
Speaker 1: Because our traumas are triggered, our body gets tense. We
Speaker 1: go into that fight flight response. So that tension shows
Speaker 1: up in the stomach, that tension shows up in the migraine.
Speaker 1: That tension starts to you know, block oxygen from flowing
Speaker 1: to these areas. From a gas strown testinal perspective, it
Speaker 1: stops the GI track from actually you know, moving moving
Speaker 1: our bowel movement. And then what happens. Bacteria builds up
Speaker 1: and then you actually do have a real diagnosis of
Speaker 1: CBO or IBS or whatever. Well, if you actually relax
Speaker 1: your nervous system, your whole system can start to move.
Speaker 1: You can have that perfect digestion begin to set up
Speaker 1: because you're relaxed, and in that relaxed state, your body
Speaker 1: can heal. And so we have to really look at
Speaker 1: the psychosomatic effect of our physical the physical conditions from
Speaker 1: a psychosomatic perspective, that already relaxes my nervous system, going
Speaker 1: like oh wow, like that's where it is like because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people right now are just
Speaker 1: we're tinkering with so many parts of our life, and
Speaker 1: then we're wondering, why do I still not feel doing
Speaker 1: oh yeah, right, like I'm doing everything right. And I've
Speaker 1: I've been in that position myself where I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: doing everything right, why am I still not feeling good?
Speaker 1: And sometimes it is biological if you're psychologically done some
Speaker 1: of the work, and then it's the other way around
Speaker 1: as well. What were you surprised by when you started
Speaker 1: doing this work. What was one of the big surprises
Speaker 1: that came along as you started to do the work
Speaker 1: on yourself that you actually thought, Wow, I didn't expect this,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't think this was going to happen. Well,
Speaker 1: I was surprised by the shame. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I have shame that right? That was so strange, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm like this spiritual teacher. I didn't even recognize my shame.
Speaker 1: I was a shameful I mean, the shame when you
Speaker 1: experience sexual abuse in any form, whether you're particularly as
Speaker 1: a child. This shame is it's my fault. The shame
Speaker 1: is I'm wrong, And you know, underneath all of this
Speaker 1: is the belief that we're inadequate and unlovable. My therapist
Speaker 1: taught me that and I remember her saying that, and
Speaker 1: at the time, I'm like, I'm very adequate and lovable,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell are you talking about? You know,
Speaker 1: decade later, Wow, that is absolutely a core belief that
Speaker 1: I carried for so long. And another big thing I
Speaker 1: realized was how my spiritual practice actually really saved me
Speaker 1: and was the through line of all of the guidance
Speaker 1: of the work that I was led to. And I
Speaker 1: in the book reference very spiritual therapeutic practices for trauma.
Speaker 1: So I reference EMDR, which is I movement to sensitization
Speaker 1: and reprocessing. It's bilateral brain stimulation that allows you to
Speaker 1: reprocess memories. I reference se Somatic Experiencing, which is a
Speaker 1: body based trauma therapy IFS, which I went as far
Speaker 1: as to get trained in. And IFS is all about
Speaker 1: the caring for your inner child parts. And these specific
Speaker 1: therapies are all very spiritual in the clinical space. They
Speaker 1: may not be referenced in that way, but I can
Speaker 1: say that right and I can be the spiritual voice
Speaker 1: for them. And I believe it's spirit that my spirit
Speaker 1: guides that my connection to God very very very clearly
Speaker 1: laid out this path for me and not just for
Speaker 1: me to live it, but also for me to share it.
Speaker 1: And then I would say one of the biggest surprises though,
Speaker 1: was when I would meet these different therapeutic practices. Each
Speaker 1: time I was blown away, I was like, Oh my God,
Speaker 1: what you know? I was carrying that Oh my god,
Speaker 1: next level that is so present in my body, Oh
Speaker 1: my God, you know, and just witnessing and witnessing. And
Speaker 1: I think that the big one of the biggest surprises also, Jay,
Speaker 1: is that when you live with trauma, you think that's
Speaker 1: who you are. You just think I am a workaholic,
Speaker 1: I am a control freak, and you don't know that
Speaker 1: there's a way out. And I am so proud. The
Speaker 1: greatest gift I'll give this world is my bravery to
Speaker 1: go to the places that scared me and come out
Speaker 1: the other side so that I can live to tell
Speaker 1: that this works, that you can survive trauma and that
Speaker 1: you can thrive. I feel it the confidence in this space,
Speaker 1: and I also just appreciate how you were able to
Speaker 1: push back your control parameters and protectors, because, like you said,
Speaker 1: you've been doing this work for a long time. You've
Speaker 1: been teaching this work, you're helping people, you're changing people's lives,
Speaker 1: and then going, well, actually there's another layer. What layer
Speaker 1: of love was work in the trauma? Like when you said,
Speaker 1: we have that deep held belief if I'm unlovable and
Speaker 1: I'm inadequate, inadequate, how do you fall in love with
Speaker 1: yourself again when you realize that's at the root of it,
Speaker 1: because really you're not trying to fall in love with
Speaker 1: yourself before. You're trying to protect and fix. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, now you sing at this stage, yeah,
Speaker 1: you return to yeah, exactly. Well, I'm going to answer
Speaker 1: that from an IFS perspective. When I when I use
Speaker 1: the acronym IFS, it's internal family systems therapy, and it's
Speaker 1: not actually about your family, your outside family, about your
Speaker 1: inner family. So you've got your exiled parts of you,
Speaker 1: and you've got your protector parts of you, and then
Speaker 1: we all have self, your language. You might call it
Speaker 1: higher self or God or the universe. And I did
Speaker 1: that as well for many years inner guidance and self
Speaker 1: is self with a capital S. And what self is
Speaker 1: the internal parent, it's the undamaged, resourced part of who
Speaker 1: we are. It's the man that I'm sitting with here
Speaker 1: right now. You show up to your podcast in self,
Speaker 1: and that's actually why it's so resonant with people because
Speaker 1: they feel that there's no ego attached to it. There's
Speaker 1: no You're not showing up with like a presence of
Speaker 1: neediness or anything. You're showing up. This is me, this
Speaker 1: is what I'm here to do. I'm on my mission.
Speaker 1: But when your wife triggers you, your protector parts might
Speaker 1: show up and you might start to get into an
Speaker 1: extreme pattern. And that's for all of us. So we
Speaker 1: all have access to this undamaged resource part of who
Speaker 1: we are self qualities or courage, compassion, calmness, creativity, curiosity, connectedness,
Speaker 1: And when we are in that presence of self, like
Speaker 1: you and I are here right now, anything's possible. I
Speaker 1: could say to you right now, something really difficult for
Speaker 1: you to hear, but you would hear it with love
Speaker 1: because I'm grounded in that self energy. And so the
Speaker 1: main way to fall back in love with yourself is
Speaker 1: to let self become the leader of your inner system.
Speaker 1: So it's not like we want to control or push
Speaker 1: down or manage these protector parts of ourselves. There's no
Speaker 1: bad parts. We just want to help them be less
Speaker 1: extreme and how we want to let them know that
Speaker 1: there's an internal parent. Let me give you a really
Speaker 1: clear example. Okay, so I let's say something triggered me
Speaker 1: last week. I was like in a conversation with some
Speaker 1: friends and I was like, oh my god, they don't
Speaker 1: like me, like an old exiled part was there. And
Speaker 1: when the exiled part comes up, you don't want to
Speaker 1: feel it, right, So then one of my protectors tries
Speaker 1: to numb it out. And the protector is the judger
Speaker 1: in that case, like, well they're wrong, right, And I
Speaker 1: go into like all the reasons they're wrong because I
Speaker 1: don't want to feel that shame. And then I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: oh my god, no I'm wrong because you know, so
Speaker 1: we attack others, we attack ourselves, and so those are
Speaker 1: protector parts and the judge somebody has to be wrong, right.
Speaker 1: So the judger was there to protect me from feeling
Speaker 1: that impermissible feeling. And then because I have this great
Speaker 1: through line to self, I was able to notice, Okay,
Speaker 1: I notice there's a protector up. Okay, notice where do
Speaker 1: I feel that in my body. Notice is it? Does
Speaker 1: it have a color? Does it have a shape? Is
Speaker 1: there is there something that it wants to say to me?
Speaker 1: What do I know about it? Okay, I know it's young.
Speaker 1: I know it's a young girl who you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like she is understood in high school right And
Speaker 1: I know that she's just wanting to blame others because
Speaker 1: because she's so scared, and what does she need right now?
Speaker 1: She needs a hug, she needs to breathe, and I
Speaker 1: can let her actually speak to me and I can
Speaker 1: listen to that part, and then I can give her
Speaker 1: what she needs. And so it's literally a practice of
Speaker 1: becoming your own internal parent, creating the secure attachment that
Speaker 1: we did not get from our parents ourselves. And there's
Speaker 1: no greater form of self love than letting self with
Speaker 1: a capitalis lead your entire system. And you have to
Speaker 1: see the thing here at Jay's. I didn't shame that part.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like, oh that judger is there, or that
Speaker 1: young child parts showing up like you're a loser. I
Speaker 1: actually really got curious about it. I was compassionate toward it.
Speaker 1: I brought a calm energy to it. And so the
Speaker 1: goal here really is to begin to soften and relax
Speaker 1: the protectors because frankly, Jay, you know the protectors are
Speaker 1: not bad, right, Like the controller wrote nine books in
Speaker 1: eleven years. You know she did a job, so, but
Speaker 1: we just want her to be less extreme, yes, and
Speaker 1: so she can keep producing and keep creating, but not
Speaker 1: in that extreme way. It's a lot of density. In
Speaker 1: chapter seven of the book, I go deep into ifs,
Speaker 1: but I want to just reiterate for the listener, notice
Speaker 1: no need. Note in the moment when you can, if
Speaker 1: you have enough awareness to notice that you're triggered, notice
Speaker 1: it in your body. Does it feel like is their color?
Speaker 1: Is there a shape? What do you know about it?
Speaker 1: And then what does it need? And give yourself a
Speaker 1: moment to try that out. Even though there's so much
Speaker 1: depth to it, I felt that was very clear because
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're ultimately avoiding, is accepting that
Speaker 1: we have an inner child need. That's right, right, It's like,
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what we're running away from is that we
Speaker 1: do have a gap internally and it isn't going to
Speaker 1: be solved through something in the external world. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be solved through someone saying something to us
Speaker 1: in a nice way, or someone changing right, well, right,
Speaker 1: like it's yeah, like my husband changing his tone is
Speaker 1: never going to heal my wounds. Right, It may make
Speaker 1: a create a world where I'm less activated less frequently,
Speaker 1: but like someone else's behavior cannot change your reactivity, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the other person shouldn't show up as well.
Speaker 1: But like you have to be your internal parent, your
Speaker 1: partner can't be your parent. Frankly, in any ways, your
Speaker 1: parent can't parent you back to that you know you,
Speaker 1: especially if a you know, forty two years old or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, as a little child, the expectation is
Speaker 1: you'll have that, but most don't. That's so powerful because
Speaker 1: I think most of us what we're yearning for is
Speaker 1: to live in a less deactivated state. So ideally what
Speaker 1: we want is if everyone was just nicer and kinder,
Speaker 1: then things would just feel better, right, But the reality
Speaker 1: is that not everyone's just going to be nicer and kinder.
Speaker 1: And if we can be in the environment, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's a great environment to grow in. But what you
Speaker 1: just said was so brilliant. You were like, you know,
Speaker 1: if my husband changing his tone is not going to
Speaker 1: solve the wound. And I think that that's why the
Speaker 1: path that you just laid out is fantastic, because we're
Speaker 1: constantly checking in with everyone else's needs. We're trying to
Speaker 1: be pleasing to other people's needs. I don't know the
Speaker 1: last time most people if we're honest with ourselves, and
Speaker 1: I want everyone who's listening to truly be honest with yourself.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you checked in with yourself?
Speaker 1: And not just yourself? You're in a child self, the
Speaker 1: youngest self is Gabby was saying and said, what do
Speaker 1: you need? I just I mean even me, I'm listening,
Speaker 1: I'm going remember the last time I did that for myself.
Speaker 1: And the distinction here too is that you're asking the
Speaker 1: protector part what it is because the exiled parts are
Speaker 1: really locked up Jay, like they're locked in a basement,
Speaker 1: and to start to touch into the exiles, I would
Speaker 1: recommend doing that with IFS therapy. Like with an IFS therapist,
Speaker 1: you can learn more about it. I do an interview
Speaker 1: with Dick Schwartz on my podcast, and then obviously in
Speaker 1: this chapter there's a whole dialogue about IFS and we
Speaker 1: can get some resources links as well. In the show notes,
Speaker 1: but more importantly that you would go through that deeper
Speaker 1: exiled child part journey with a trained therapist, particularly in
Speaker 1: this system, but that you right now, right here can
Speaker 1: start to just be a parent to those protector parts.
Speaker 1: And that's the first step, because the protectors are really
Speaker 1: the ones that you can see the child activated, but
Speaker 1: the protector switched right in. The protectors like oh I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lock that door, like there's a little activation, No
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm gonna put that fire out by picking
Speaker 1: up a drink. I'm going to put that fire out
Speaker 1: by raging, you know. And so you want to work
Speaker 1: with the alcoholic, you want to work with the rager.
Speaker 1: And then where you softened your relationship to those protector parts,
Speaker 1: the closer you can get to the exile, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the protectors are their first responders, like, no way, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get behind that door, and so you
Speaker 1: have to start to soften those relationships. That's good. That's
Speaker 1: a good distinction for me because I was Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think my space was still with the exiled pot. As
Speaker 1: you said, for a lot of people, those maybe too
Speaker 1: locked up. Yeah, and for some it's less. So you know,
Speaker 1: for some for some people that have done a lot
Speaker 1: of personal growth work. Like if you and I were
Speaker 1: to do a session in IFS right now, we could
Speaker 1: get to your child parts and you'd be very safe there.
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of work, You've got you're safe
Speaker 1: in your system. We could go to an exile, but
Speaker 1: I would never like the average person that hasn't done
Speaker 1: a lot of personal growth work. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: safe to go. Yeah. Yeah, that's without the therapy. Yeah yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And that's a great distinction to make again that we
Speaker 1: don't want people going off and trying to do something
Speaker 1: that isn't going to serve them. Yeah. You talk a
Speaker 1: lot about you know in the book that I think
Speaker 1: one of the last chapters or the last chapters love
Speaker 1: every part. And I think just as we believe we're
Speaker 1: unlovable and inadequate, we somehow believe that that's not possible.
Speaker 1: Right somewhere inside of us, there's a belief that it's
Speaker 1: actually not possible to be happy or to love ourselves
Speaker 1: like it just exists there somewhere. Do we develop a
Speaker 1: belief that it exists before we find it, or do
Speaker 1: we start looking for it and find it along the way.
Speaker 1: I was looking for it and found it along the way.
Speaker 1: And I remember being in the early stages of remembering
Speaker 1: the trauma and waking up super depressed, waking up so down,
Speaker 1: so scared, not totally disembodied for months. When you actually
Speaker 1: remember see to trauma, you kind of go back into it.
Speaker 1: So you're living in terror, like everything is just danger.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, there's no way out, but
Speaker 1: I was so committed. And so I think the most
Speaker 1: important message is it's not about getting out overnight. In AA,
Speaker 1: when you get sober, they say I wish you a
Speaker 1: slow recovery, because that means that you're doing the work
Speaker 1: that he means that you're going under the surface and
Speaker 1: peeling back the layers. And so the same goes add
Speaker 1: addiction really is a root cause is trauma period, So
Speaker 1: it's really going back low, slowly into the trauma. And
Speaker 1: so I would say that to the person that's recognizing trauma,
Speaker 1: is I wish you a slow recovery, meaning that every
Speaker 1: small layer that you peel back is a miracle. And
Speaker 1: the more you add up those miracle moments, the closer
Speaker 1: you get to living a miraculous life. So you can
Speaker 1: celebrate your successes along the way. So for today, maybe
Speaker 1: you pick up Happy Days and you just read the
Speaker 1: first chapter. That's a success story. Maybe you just listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast episode again, that's another layer. Maybe you
Speaker 1: practice one of the breath practices in the book. That's
Speaker 1: another layer. And it's it's a very very gentle process,
Speaker 1: and you have to be fully celebrating every step of
Speaker 1: the journey. Am I done, Jay, I'm not done. I
Speaker 1: still go to therapy every Wednesday. I still have sometimes
Speaker 1: two additional sessions a month. I still am deep in EMDR.
Speaker 1: I'm still doing my own ifs on myself. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be going forever just shining the crystal. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 1: but there is really freedom on the other side. There
Speaker 1: really is. Well that's that presence again, right in being
Speaker 1: present in the process, as you just said. But I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so hard right now is that because
Speaker 1: of the way the world's going, everything's become more instant,
Speaker 1: more fast, fast recovery, quick fix. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: always been the way, but it's become more and more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more. And then when you're
Speaker 1: being asked to do slow recovery and the real work,
Speaker 1: which is what we know genuinely has the reward during
Speaker 1: and at the end of the journey. I find that
Speaker 1: that collision is so hard for people because they wake
Speaker 1: up with resistance again. So it's like, just when you
Speaker 1: had that moment when you felt you had a breakthrough,
Speaker 1: you wake up the next morning and the resistance is
Speaker 1: fully back. Yeah. That's actually why I think it's valuable
Speaker 1: to build up your toolbox of self regulating techniques, and
Speaker 1: they're in here. And the reason that's valuable is that
Speaker 1: you can still feel relief along the way. You can
Speaker 1: still have fun along the way. Yeah, it's not postponing
Speaker 1: the journey yet. You've known me for six years. Six
Speaker 1: years ago, I was like totally in a very different
Speaker 1: nervous system than I am now. But I still had fun,
Speaker 1: you know, I still could be with you and just
Speaker 1: have a great time. And it was a different kind
Speaker 1: of fun, and it was a different kind of experience
Speaker 1: because I wasn't in the presence that I'm in now.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you can't live your life and
Speaker 1: have joy along the way these especially if you're on
Speaker 1: the journey. That's why it's called a spiritual path or
Speaker 1: a spiritual journey. If you're on the path and the journey,
Speaker 1: every step of it's an up leveling and so and
Speaker 1: especially if you have this arsenal of these self regulating tools. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can be going through some big stuff, I can
Speaker 1: be slowly getting sober, I can be slowly recovering from trauma.
Speaker 1: It can be slowly going through therapy. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, have these amazing meditations, have these amazing breath
Speaker 1: practices that soothe me, have these great breakthroughs in my
Speaker 1: therapy or in my relationship, and just celebrate those miracles
Speaker 1: along the way. Tell me how you think about trauma
Speaker 1: differently as being a mom. Oh dude, if you've got
Speaker 1: unhealed trauma and you are about to become a parent, particularly,
Speaker 1: I would say for both parents, but particularly a mother
Speaker 1: that's going to carry a baby and deliver a baby
Speaker 1: in the first early days, be the food for the
Speaker 1: baby and the whole thing. You want to do this work,
Speaker 1: because if you don't know, what will have You know,
Speaker 1: even if you do or you don't, doesn't matter, it'll
Speaker 1: all come flooding in. In my case, not only did
Speaker 1: them flooded, but I also was hit with really terrible
Speaker 1: postpartum depression, suicidal postpartum depression. I write about it in
Speaker 1: the book because it actually often if you have unresolved
Speaker 1: trauma can be very activating. Even with the biochemical condition
Speaker 1: to postpartum, it just can take it to the next level.
Speaker 1: So for me, my having my son was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest trauma responses I've experienced in my life was postpartum.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful blessing because when you make the commitment
Speaker 1: to have a child, you are having to ask yourself
Speaker 1: two questions, am I going to do this the way
Speaker 1: it was done for me? Or am I going to
Speaker 1: show up big time? And how do you show up?
Speaker 1: You show up for yourself, because the more you reparent yourself,
Speaker 1: the clearer the path to parenting your child. There's a
Speaker 1: chapter in this book called Reparenting Yourself. It's all here,
Speaker 1: it's just it's almost a joke, and it's a chapter
Speaker 1: called reparenting Yourself where in early twenty twenty, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, running my business like everyone's in this storm.
Speaker 1: My kid's home. He's two years old, he's not napping
Speaker 1: twice a day, and me and Zac are the only
Speaker 1: ones with him at that time. Because everybody's home. And
Speaker 1: I went diving deep into the parenting books, particularly Dan
Speaker 1: Siegel's work, and he has a lot of methods and
Speaker 1: one of them I loved the four US is seen, Soothed, Safe, Secure,
Speaker 1: And I started applying this with my kid, and I
Speaker 1: was making sure I was really seeing him and soothing him,
Speaker 1: not just physically, but like really energetically and creating a
Speaker 1: safe environment, not just that he won't fall over on
Speaker 1: the you know, but a safe energetically and that creates
Speaker 1: a secure attachment bond. Now I was looking at this
Speaker 1: experience with Oliver, and I was like, no one ever
Speaker 1: did this for me, you know. I was like, why
Speaker 1: can't I do this for myself? And so I wrote
Speaker 1: a whole chapter I I did it for myself, and
Speaker 1: I wrote about it. And so the best parenting advice
Speaker 1: I have is to do the work on yourself. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a parenting book as much as it is
Speaker 1: because it's reparenting yourself to be a better parent. Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And with that, I mean it's again the shame again, right,
Speaker 1: like from the mothers that I know well who are
Speaker 1: open and honest with me. If you go through that
Speaker 1: post giving birth it's like there's shame and guilt in
Speaker 1: that because yeah, because it impacts. So it's again another
Speaker 1: opportunity to choose shame and guilt. And then you don't
Speaker 1: tell anyone because as a mum mum, guilt is even
Speaker 1: harder to share. What did you do in that period?
Speaker 1: I mean obviously doing all of this work, but what
Speaker 1: did you specifically do to move through that? So here
Speaker 1: I was now at that stage, had published maybe a
Speaker 1: seven or eight eight books something like this, And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of showing the world of where I
Speaker 1: was a self help book author, very entrenched in the
Speaker 1: wellness space, brought up homeopathic, really believing in natural medication medicine,
Speaker 1: never had fulfilled the prescription at a pharmacy, and in
Speaker 1: many ways probably was a part of the stigma around
Speaker 1: mental health because I would be in my audiences and
Speaker 1: people would say to me, like, I'm depressed, and I
Speaker 1: tried this meditation. I didn't realize if you're having a
Speaker 1: biochemical condition, it doesn't work if you're having a biochemical condition.
Speaker 1: And so I was having a biochemical condition but not
Speaker 1: fully giving it voice. And I got to the point
Speaker 1: where I was having insomnia. I had insomnia for four months,
Speaker 1: and when you don't sleep, you get extraordinarily depressed, and
Speaker 1: for me it became suicidal. I opened the chapter talking
Speaker 1: about how I'm driving to Mother's day brunch and in
Speaker 1: the backseat with my son and under my breath they say,
Speaker 1: I want to kill myself. And so that's where I
Speaker 1: was at, and I did not get help for four months,
Speaker 1: maybe longer. I was undiagnosed because of the stigma and
Speaker 1: the shame of what mental illness is. And you know,
Speaker 1: we have to really begin to look at the shame
Speaker 1: and the stigma around it. And so for me in
Speaker 1: my experience here, I was in this wellness world, and
Speaker 1: you know, finding that ashwaganda wasn't going to be the answer,
Speaker 1: and melatonin wasn't going to be the answer. Alfhionine for
Speaker 1: my stomach wasn't going to be the answer. And even
Speaker 1: in the therapy, the therapeutic tools were no longer working,
Speaker 1: the meditation was no longer working, and finally I hit
Speaker 1: a massive bottom. Just four months of not sleeping, I
Speaker 1: actually missed a talk live talk. It was the first
Speaker 1: time in over a decade that I didn't show up
Speaker 1: because I hadn't slept the night before. And then I
Speaker 1: finally reached out to a friend who was a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: and I said I need help, and he put me
Speaker 1: in touch with a postpartum psychiatrist. I saw her the
Speaker 1: next day. She diagnosed me within ten minutes. She said,
Speaker 1: you have postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety. You have to get medicated.
Speaker 1: And she saw all that resistance in me, and she
Speaker 1: looked at me and these were the words that helped me.
Speaker 1: She said, this medication will give you a safer baseline
Speaker 1: so that you can do the deeper trauma work. And
Speaker 1: those words just punctured me. I just heard everything she
Speaker 1: said and I said, okay, all right, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And I took that prescription and I went down to
Speaker 1: the pharmacy and I stood in the pharmacy with my husband.
Speaker 1: I was like, what do I do. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to do. I've never even felled the prescriptions
Speaker 1: like you hand it to the pharmacist. And I held
Speaker 1: that medication in my hand and the placebo effect is
Speaker 1: set right in, and I was like, there is a
Speaker 1: way out of this. And I was having a biochemical condition.
Speaker 1: You can't mess with that. You cannot meditate your way
Speaker 1: out of that. And so here I am now you
Speaker 1: know a voice for really ending the stigma around mental illness.
Speaker 1: If you have a proper diagnosis from a psychiatric from
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist, and you have that psychiatric support, there is
Speaker 1: no shame in following the medicated path. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: we live in a culture when medication is overly prescribed
Speaker 1: and unnecessarily prescribed, and there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: you have to know and educate yourself on when you
Speaker 1: get on psychiatric medication. But when you need it, you
Speaker 1: need it to survive, and it is and it is
Speaker 1: exactly what she said that medication created a safer baseline
Speaker 1: in my system so I could unearth the deepest, deepest
Speaker 1: wounds and come out the other side. Gave thank you
Speaker 1: so much for shedding your soul in this book in
Speaker 1: this episode. And what I love about this book is
Speaker 1: that it has your story and your journey. It has
Speaker 1: really practical tips and steps for people to actually follow,
Speaker 1: and it has these real methodologies and approaches to guide
Speaker 1: them as well. And I think it's masterful in the
Speaker 1: way it's kind of like the tapestry of all of
Speaker 1: that together. And I think what underpins it is just
Speaker 1: your ability to go all the way and beast of
Speaker 1: vulnerable as you have been today in today's episode, but
Speaker 1: it also in the book. And so if anyone who's listening,
Speaker 1: if you know for a long time you've been shying away,
Speaker 1: you've been protecting yourself, you've been putting it off, postponing it,
Speaker 1: you know it's there. Maybe physical response is really triggering
Speaker 1: right now, maybe something that someone says is pushing you
Speaker 1: over the edge. Then please go and grab a copy
Speaker 1: of Happy Days Today. The link is in the comment
Speaker 1: section and everywhere else, and make sure you follow Gabby.
Speaker 1: A podcast is called Deer Gabby. Go and listen and
Speaker 1: subscribe to the podcast. You can also follow Gabby on
Speaker 1: social media across all platforms. Gabby Bernstein. Make sure you
Speaker 1: go and do that. Gabby, I want to thank you
Speaker 1: from the bottom of my heart for taking other time
Speaker 1: to do this, because I think You've made me ask
Speaker 1: so many questions that I'm going to go back to
Speaker 1: after this episode. I'm like, what do I need to
Speaker 1: take a deeper look at? What have I really not
Speaker 1: work through or what am I avoiding or ignoring or
Speaker 1: putting off? And I'm just grateful for that. I'm really
Speaker 1: grateful that you've given me the space to do that,
Speaker 1: given us all the path to do that through this book.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your presence and for seeing me even
Speaker 1: when I couldn't see myself. And it's such a privilege
Speaker 1: to be your friend. Thank you, Thank you, Gabby. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Everyone who's been listening and watching, make
Speaker 1: sure you tag me and Gabby on your post so
Speaker 1: that we know what resonated with you, what connected with you.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out that a lot of
Speaker 1: my guests have said this to me recently. It makes
Speaker 1: me very happy. Our unpurposed community is amazing, and I've
Speaker 1: been getting messages and speaking to a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends who've been on the show saying that they just
Speaker 1: felt the love, like the flood of love from our community.
Speaker 1: So please show that a Gabby as well. Thank you
Speaker 1: for doing that for all the other guests before. I
Speaker 1: wanted you to know that I've been hearing about you
Speaker 1: personally from so many people and let's start living some
Speaker 1: happy days. So take care everyone. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening.