Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Gabby Bernstein on Finding Profound Freedom and Inner Peace EP 442

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ - Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! Picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024.In this episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles interviews Gabby Bernstein, the number one New York Times bestselling author, about her latest book, "Happy Days." They delve into Gabby's transformative approach to releasing past traumas and unlearning fears to guide listeners toward enduring peace and joy. The conversation covers pivotal mindset shifts, the importance of vocalizing the unspeakable, and confronting fears to achieve unprecedented freedom and self-acceptance.Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/gabby-bernstein-finding-freedom-and-inner-peace/In this episode, you will learn:The importance of being willing to see and heal past traumas.The power of choice in shaping our reality and influencing our path.The impact of trauma on our present and future experiences.Modalities such as Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT), Somatic Experiencing, and Reparenting for healing and self-discovery.The concept of self as an internal parent guiding us towards healing and transformation.All things Gabby Bernstein: https://gabbybernstein.com/SponsorsBrought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place.Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://trynom.com/passionstruck.Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self.This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com.--► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to:https://passionstruck.com/deals/Catch More of Passion StruckWatch my interview with Jen Gottlieb On How To Create Your Own Success By Being SeenCan’t miss my episode with Dr. Scott Lyons On How You Break Free From Drama AddictionListen to my interview with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor On Loving And Leaving AlcoholCheck my interview with Dr. Elisa Hallerman On How You Reconnect With Your SoulLike this show? Please leave us a review here-- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally!How to Connect with JohnConnect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles.Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMilesSubscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclipsWant to uncover your profound sense of Mattering? I provide my master class with five simple steps to achieving it.Want to hear my best interviews? Check out my starter packs on intentional behavior change, women at the top of their game, longevity and well-being, and overcoming adversity.Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/

Coming up next on Passion Struck. We cannot heal what we're not willing to see. Having the bravery and the courage to become conscious and aware of the physical experiences, the thoughts, the energy, the sensations that are keeping us out of alignment with true nature, which is joy. Having the courage to be the witness of those experiences that are blocking us is the first step to healing because you cannot heal what you're not willing to see. So having the bravery to begin to look at your life

and maybe even simply say, is this it? There has to be a better way. That willingness opens the door for more recovery to be revealed. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, Jon R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people

and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors,

CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 442 of passion struck. Consistently ranked as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better, be better and to make a meaningful impact in the world.

If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episodes Starter Packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash Starter Packs to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? Dive into our engaging passion struck quiz crafted to reflect the core principles shared in my latest book. This quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on the passion

struck continuum. Just head over to passionstruck.com to embark on this insightful journey. It's just 20 questions and will take roughly 10 minutes of your time. Don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your passion struck journey. Take the quiz today. In case you missed my interviews from last week, they included three great ones,

including Dr. Stephanie Estima, the renowned expert in metabolism and neurology. Dr. Stephanie, known for her groundbreaking work in optimizing human potential, shares her insights on how to harness the power of your body's biology to achieve peak health and performance. I also interviewed Harvard Business School professor

and behavior scientist, Michael Norton. We discussed his new book, The Ritual Effect, where we explore the essence of rituals, their importance in our daily lives, and how they differ from mere habits and traditions. Lastly, I speak with my friend, Captain John Doolittle, a former Navy SEAL. As he shares insights from his illustrious career and philanthropic endeavors, discover how John's experiences have fueled his commitment to the Navy SEAL Foundation and his impressive feats like swimming the English

Channel. You'll gain unique perspectives on resilience and leadership as we delve into his pioneering work with Kat Tzu, also exploring the cutting edge world of blood flow restriction training. And if you liked any of those episodes or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening

the Passionstruck community, where we can help more people to create an intentional life. And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today on Passionstruck, we are thrilled to welcome Gabby Bernstein, the number one New York Times bestselling author whose latest masterpiece, Happy Days, offers a profound journey towards healing and self-discovery. In our episode, we delve into Gabby's transformative approach to releasing the traumas of the past and unlearning the fears that confine us, guiding listeners towards a state of enduring peace and joy. Happy Days isn't just a book, it's a movement towards freedom, encapsulating Gabby's most

potent teachings on overcoming mental health patterns that contribute to our collective unhappiness. We'll explore nine untapped techniques that Gabby introduces for achieving genuine happiness, from the revolutionary practice of reparenting to bodywork methods designed to release trauma's lingering energy. Our conversation also covers pivotal mindset shifts that can transform personal growth. We'll discuss the importance of vocalizing the unspeakable and confronting the fears that haunt us, leading to unprecedented freedom and self-acceptance. Join us as Gabby shares her journey of vulnerability and truth, providing listeners with the tools

to dismantle the belief systems that have kept them constrained. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and extremely honored to have Gabby Bernstein on Passion Struck. Welcome, Gabby. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy we were able to make this happen. Thank you for having me with you in your studio, my studio, virtual studios here. Well, I'm going to start us off with a background question so the audience could get to know a little bit about you if they're not familiar. So each morning I commit to a routine that grounds me. I do a mindful

walk with my dog, some form of exercise. I then like to spend about a half an hour diving into whatever book I'm reading and then I journal to set my intentions for the day. It's a practice that really centers me and sets a positive tone for whatever lies ahead. Gabby, I was hoping you could share more about your morning routine and how do you start your day to align with your inner peace and to channel positive energy into your day? Well, I think a morning routine is probably the best thing we can do to set ourselves up to win for what's to come. And so in my morning routine these days is a little different than it might have been

five years ago before I had a child. But as a mother of a five-year-old, I'm often now gently woken up, not so gently at times, by the voice of my son screaming in the background, hey, mommy. And he will often be that moment of presence for me. And so where I might have otherwise had some more time for reflection in the morning or for some meditation, I don't always have that unless I get up earlier. And so I do try to be in the present moment with him. And I do try to see that my life circumstances are always a spiritual assignment, that the

world is our classroom and people are our assignments and we can always be getting to work when it comes to development. So my son allows me to focus on my presence. And so I'll spend the next hour or so really being very fully present with him, which means no phones, it means being with what his needs are, but at the same time also creating boundaries, right? These are all spiritual practices. So saying, Mommy needs to get dressed right now, and really holding a boundary. No, we don't have cookies in the morning for breakfast. So these are all spiritual practices.

While they may seem like mundane moments throughout the day, they're actually developmental tools that we can really focus on in the moment and see our everyday moment-to-moment life as an opportunity to shine the crystal that we are and really reclaim the presence that we want to have in our life and the connection that we want to have in our life and the clarity that we want and the boundaries. My main time for meditation is usually midday. So around 12 o'clock, I'll sit and I'll do a 20-minute 30 minute meditation. And that's just when my soul is calling for it. And so it's just been where I've ended up after all these years. That's where I land my meditation practice. Yeah, it's actually a good time to do it because it's a reset. I sometimes do that I find it easier for me to do it on walks or when I'm in nature than when I'm stationary. So that's how I typically go about it or yoga, some type of flow activity.

Yep. Or after a flow activity is a great time to meditate too. Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely true. Well last year I had a mutual friend of ours on the podcast, Rebecca Rosen, And I have to tell you, I, for most of my life was not someone who believed in mediums or spirituality. But about a decade ago, I was at this Halloween party where they had a palm reader and I decided to do it.

I'd never done it before. And it turned out to be one of the most profound experiences of my life. She started to look at my palms and then all of a sudden her whole demeanor changed. And she said, she's not happy with you. She is absolutely beside herself in the journey that you've taken and that you have not pursued being your authentic self. And I won't share more than that, but we get into these things and she starts sharing with me very specifics about my life that only one or two people in the whole planet knew.

And then she revealed to me, cause I asked her, where are you getting this from? And she said, well, Amy is telling me. And I said, who is Amy? And she goes, your fiancee, who died 20 years earlier from cancer. And it was an incredibly moving and eye opening moment for me. And it really was telling me that I was supposed to be on the path that I'm doing now. But the story reminded me of a story you had with connecting with Lily that you talked about, Rebecca, and how she validated her presence during a similar

impactful moment. And I was hoping you might be able to share this connection with Lily and how it's influenced your own journey. Yeah, I also just want to acknowledge how beautiful it is that Amy is now your guide and that she would come to you in ways that would hit you over the head and say, I am here, don't forget it. And that's how guides work. They want to make their presence known, particularly when we're ready to receive it. And of course, we can block it. We have free will. We can shut it down.

We can say, I don't want to hear about that. But ultimately, the guides that are here to support us and lead us and guide us, whether they were once in the human form or not, is a presence that is available to us at all times and always opening our hearts to know more and to be supported and to feel led. For me, about two decades ago, probably about 15 years ago, I started channeling this presence and I knew it was feminine and I could see her in my mind's eye, not physically,

but I could see like when you're reading a book and you start to visualize the person that you're reading about or the character that you're reading about. And I saw this character, this presence, as a beautiful blonde young woman. Maybe she was in her late 20s, mid 20s, very ethereal, very angelic. She was in a white dress with long blonde hair, and she was just like this pure innocence, quite beautiful. And her presence

would come to me when I was, at the time, particularly working with my husband to try to help him with his back pain or his anxiety. And I would just channel her. And I thought for a while, I was like, maybe this is Zach's guide, my husband. I was like, maybe she's coming through me to speak to Zach. Later, I've come to realize that she's actually my guide. And Rebecca Rose, and who you mentioned,

was really put the nail in the coffin for me. She was like, sat down with me around the time that I started really channeling Lilly and really hearing her. And Rebecca gave me a reading and she said during the reading, who is Lilly? And I just said, thank you. Thank you for reiterating that this is indeed a presence

in my life that I named her, I heard her tell me her name. So having Rebecca affirm that was also a guidance from Lily. Lily was saying, let me go to Rebecca to tell Gabby that this is indeed who it is, that she'll trust me, and she can rely on me. And for many years, I thought maybe I would have a daughter I was going to name her Lily. And then I just ended up naming my cat Lily because I didn't have a daughter, had a boy.. I do have a cat called Lily. Well, had we not named our daughter Olivia, we were going to name her Lily Rose. So, well, look at that.

Well, for someone who's listening here today, who might not be into spirituality or understanding what a spirit guide is, how would someone know if they're hearing their spirit guide and not their own thoughts? Well, often when you're listening to a spirit guide or you might call it the universal energy or God or Buddha nature or your inner guidance system, whatever you might call it, any form of spiritual guidance, it will often feel like a sense of inner knowing. It will come through really naturally. There won't be any agenda or fear. It's very, very calm and creative and compassionate.

Your breath will slow down and you'll feel at times even physically tingly or you'll notice sensations can feel often like when you have a very big inspired idea and you just have to sit down and write it. So trusting that it's a very natural presence that can also maybe at times feel strange because you haven't noticed it and typically we block it. So when you feel those sparks of intuition or moments of synchronicity, but guides will also speak through people.

So you might be reading a book and hear the connection that exactly what you needed to hear or you're hanging out with a friend and they'll say something to you and you're like, whoa, that's exactly what I needed right now. That is a guide, a spirit guide speaking through that person, that human. And so guides use doctors, people, even this podcast right now might be delivering a message for someone.

So if they're tuned in and they're listening and we're talking about spirit guides, then they might just be thinking right now, wow, I got to get in there and learn more and that is, wow, I've been thinking about this, why is this now showing up in my life? That's the guidance, that's the one thing leads to the next leads to the next. There's synchronicity typically involved. It's speedy and it's very intuitive in nature. You feel like an inner knowing, a sensation inside. Whereas the voice of our ego or our fear or our control or our logic is usually sometimes feels controlled, feels like we're trying to force it, feels like we're trying to make something happen, feels

like there's an agenda or an outcome that's desired. Whereas when we're listening to guidance, the outcome is just lifted. We're not trying so hard. We're just present. That's interesting because way back, maybe 2008, 2009, I started hearing this inner voice that I hadn't heard before. And it was telling me I needed to pursue this journey of going out and helping what it described as the lonely, the beaten, the battered, the broken, the bored of the world. And I'll tell you, when you start hearing that voice and you're on this completely different path,

you have no idea initially what to do with it or where it's coming from. But it was a comforting feeling that you're talking about when I started to hear this. And as I started to ignore it more and more, the voice became louder both in verbal ways and in physical ways around me. Do you find that's common?

Yeah, I believe that some of us might be called in this lifetime to show up in a specific way or be a conduit for a certain message. I think that we all have the ability to channel spirit, but for some folks, it's a calling. Some people might be calling to play the piano or calling to do philanthropic work. For some of us, it's spiritual activism. And that call will be so loud that when it comes through, it's undeniable.

And then it's really our part and our job to say yes and be open and willing to receive that direction and to stay open to it. And spirit will come to us in all kinds of forms. Sometimes it will be audible. Sometimes it will be an inner knowing. Sometimes it will be physical. For me, I know I'm channeling the moment

that my left hand goes numb. So the moment that my left hand goes numb. So I can, my left hand goes numb, that's my sign. So often if you're a medium, you have a little tune in. So sometimes for me, some people could see sparks of light, my left arm goes numb. And not numb to the point where I can't move it, but it just, it starts, I feel energy coming through and it just settles into my lap and it's receptive and I'm just grounded in that presence. And immediately I know the spirit is here, I'm tuned in. I also have strong inner boundaries where I'll say things like, I'm only welcoming

spirit of the highest truth and compassion. That's unknown in my spiritual realm. It's like I'm not having a party where I'm just inviting everybody that's around me to the party that is me, I'm only inviting the highest and best, the guides of the highest truth and compassion. Commonly, I will channel guides that are in the service of helping people elevate their highest purpose. My guides are actually with us right now because my hand is now numb, as I mentioned. I can start talking a little bit faster so you can see there's just this rapid pace with which I might talk. Words just come to me naturally. I'm not really

thinking I'm just allowing. And so in that communication and that allowing, messages beyond me may come through. Now, I do know that I am in collaboration with this guidance. So it's not just, oh, I'm taken over and the guides are doing all the work. No, Gabby's here. Gabby's present. Gabby's doing great work. Gabby's got great intuition. And it's like a collaborative teaching. So if I were co-teaching a class with you, it's just like co-teaching a class with my guides is how it's come through. Well, I went into this background, Gabby, because you start off your book,

which I have to tell you, I pre-ordered way over a year ago and read it within three days after I got it. I love your books. And I thought this was one of the best ones you've ever written. So I can't wait for your upcoming book. But as I was thinking about how to introduce this, your first chapter, you start by discussing why we need to be willing to become free.

And oftentimes on this podcast, I talk about the power of choices that we have in our life and how it's our choices that end up influencing whether end up in a valley of despair, as I call it, or into tsunami of greatness. And you write about the fact that you were given two choices. You could stay on your current path, struggling with addiction, or you could choose to get clean and make a major impact on the world. Can you take us back to that time and what was going on in your life? Yeah, I'd start the book right at this pinnacle turning point in my life, where I was 25 years old and I was on the precipice of getting sober, although I didn't know it at the time. And I was struggling with cocaine addiction and love addiction,

alcoholism and food disorder, eating disorders. And I was running from my reality, running from dissociated trauma that I didn't even know was there. I was running from experiences that were plaguing me inside that I wasn't conscious of on the outside. And the choice to make the decision

to get clean and sober was something that was very loud in my experience. And at the time, I recall this moment of listening to this psychic reading that my mother had received. And the reading was in an audio player. And I listened to actually this was actually a reading I had received. And the psychic says two different things. She says, you can stay

on this current path and struggle, really struggle, or you can get clean and make a major impact on the world. And I repeated it and repeated it and kept listening to it. And finally, I knew that I had two choices. And it's nice to point that out because we do have free will in this lifetime. While our soul might be destined to make a choice and to go in one direction, as I believe my soul was, doesn't mean that I didn't have free will. It doesn't mean I had to choose this path. It meant that I had the choice. And thankfully, by the grace of God, I made the choice. I made the choice to get clean and sober. I made the choice to be in the pursuit of serenity and happiness and healing and recovery.

And then in my experience of recovery, I've been able to really support people in their journey as well. That is my mission. That is my purpose. That is my life's choice. And in that moment in time that you're referencing, that choice was very present for me. And I could have gone totally different direction, and thankfully I didn't. I think millions of people would agree with you at this point.

Yeah. One thing I like to talk about is the power of micro-choices. It's a concept that I first learned about in behavior economics. And it's this realization that in every interaction we have every moment, it all involves a choice that shapes our path. And I feel right now that so many people claim to be living on autopilot. I think it's worse than that.

I think so many people today are living what I describe as a pinball life where they act like the pinball in the game completely unintentionally, not using their consciousness to inform the choices that they're making. And so they get so distracted by what's around them, whether it's digital addiction or life's distractions in general, that they make no choice at all and choose to just be shaped. If someone's feeling this, what would be your guidance to them on how do they break free from that cycle? I'd remind them of their choice. I'd remind them that in any given moment, you can choose a different direction because I think that so often people feel so stuck in despair that they forget that they have choice. But the beauty is that even the choice to listen to this conversation, however many minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes in, that is a choice.

The person who's listening right now who maybe feels like they're stuck in despair and can't get out of the situation or the circumstances that they're currently in actually has already made a choice. You're listening. You're opening your mind. You're ashen struck saying, yeah, I would like to know more. That exercising of that choice is a first step in creating change. So I like to bring it back to basics for folks.

Coming out of these moments of despair or moments of feeling stuck or feeling addicted or feeling blocked really aren't about radical transformation and changing everything overnight. It's about the subtle shifts inward and the daily devotional commitment to change. So listening to this podcast today is that micro-choice that you referenced. It is a commitment to change. It's a commitment to turn inward. When we make those micro-choices, we can let them add up. And as they add up, they become the easier choice,

the more reactive choice rather than the reactive choice being to stay stuck, the easier reaction and response is to say, let me go listen to that podcast, let me look at that app that helps me, let me pick that book up again, let me go to my therapy session. And it's just exercising that choice one day at a time. And as we start to do that more and more,

it develops and becomes easier to make those choices. So right here, right now, whoever's listening, you've already made that choice one day at a time and as we start to do that more and more it develops and becomes easier to make those choices. So right here right now whoever's listening you've already made that choice. Yeah and I know a lot of people say we don't really have the power of choice and I like to dispel it because I've talked to three of the leading scientists in the world about this. Ethan Cross, who studies psychology and the power of our inner voice at the university of Michigan, Angela Duckworth and her deep exploration of self control and her work that she does at Wharton. And then not sure if you've heard of self-determination theory by Edward

Deese and Richard Ryan, but this is mind blowing stuff. They are the most cited researchers alive today. And they found that self determination theory revolves around three things. Autonomy, which refers to the feeling that one has a choice and is willing to endorse one's behavior competence, which means you have the ability to create mastery in your life. And third relatedness, which refers to the need to feel connected and have a sense of belongingness, which Bob Waldinger has been talking all about in his stuff.

So I, like you, have firmly come 100% to the realization that we have the power to shape our reality and that we can change and that it doesn't matter where you've come from. It matters where you want to go and bridging that gap between who you actually are today and becoming the future or ideal self that you want to be. And I opened it up like that because I think that there's a pervasive sense today that many individuals are living in a state of what Henry David Thoreau called quiet desperation, and they're grappling with things like a lack of intimacy,

authenticity in their life, a feeling of disconnection with the world of not mattering. And I wanted to ask you, because I think you touch on all of this in the book, what are some of the underlying factors that you think are contributing to this widespread experience of so many? I think that widespread pervasive experience of loneliness and despair and feeling disconnected isn't new. I think it's just gotten worse with the speed of which we have information,

the social environments that we have now online. The technological ways that we disconnect has only perpetuated our additional forms of running, running from what's happening on the inside. So maybe 20 years ago, we were still running. We would still have these traumatic events from our childhood that we didn't want to feel, and we'd build up a lot of protection mechanisms against it. The only difference was we had a lot more access to physical connection. We were more likely to maybe walk into a 12-step group,

or maybe we were more likely to go into our therapist's office and see somebody face-to-face, or speak to a friend at a coffee shop. And now we're faced with the same issues that we might have had 20 years, me, Gabby, 20 years ago, might have had the same issues as somebody right now. But those issues now, we don't have as much access to that personalized connection, to that human touch, to that human energetic experience and exchange.

While we might have more resources and access to more resources and therapy online and all of this is excellent and it is what we have to accept and embrace, the human connection has been completely diminished. So that would probably be the biggest difference from how we would address these kinds of experiences maybe 20 years ago as we do today. But the benefit and the beauty is that the conversation around trauma and the conversation around personal development is in the zeitgeist. It is super present.

We are having these conversations left and right. They're happening in celebrity conversations and podcasts. They're happening in the news. They're happening all over the place. You know, it's just on The Today Show yesterday talking about anxiety. We have a voice for these kinds of conversations in a much more public way and it's much more mainstream and accepted. So while we've lost the physical and human connection, we've gained this acceptance

and awareness of our mental health and the priority for really taking mental health into our own needs. But the root cause has always been the same. The root cause of disconnection, the root cause of mental illness, the root cause of... Mental illness, when I say mental illness, I mean anything that's not biochemical because there is, of course, that experience. But the root cause of addiction, all of it is coming from unresolved trauma from our past, period.

And that's what this entire book, Happy Days, is about, is the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace. And so we don't work on the traumatic events and we heal the parts of us that have been so inflicted by these traumas. We will stay in a hamster wheel, doing everything we can to protect ourselves

from those feelings that are so impermissible. But when we start to befriend the younger parts of us that have been through so much, and we start to reparent ourselves through practices that I share in happy days or through therapy or however you find it, that's when we can really heal. And that's the beauty of this conversation being so present in the forefront and in the zeitgeist now because we have more access and more accessibility. And so while we may not have that personal connection,

we have resources. So that's good. Yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up because in the book, the way you put it is that the shadows from our past replay in our present and project onto our future until we find a path to healing. And I certainly found this in my life.

I had significant trauma earlier in my life. And I guess I grew up in an age and especially being in the military where we were taught to suppress all of that. And the more I suppressed it, the darker things became for me. And sometimes I think we cloud this vision of who we could become because we suppress ourselves to a point of believing that we can't do it. So one of the things you touch upon in the book is giving yourself permission to believe in a new vision to becoming your ideal self, even if you can't see how to get there.

If someone is facing that situation, what do you recommend as some of the first steps that they can take? Well, not to sound like I'm plugging the book, but I am because it works. So I think when you believe in your books, you should plug them. So I would say pick up a book like Happy Days.

I wrote Happy Days because it's the book I wanted when I remembered my trauma. I had dissociated from trauma and I had remembered the experience from my childhood when I was 36 years old, the memory came to me in a dream. While somebody might actually remember all the things that happened to them as children, you're still trying to run for them and avoid them

and push them down. And we need guidance, we need understanding, we need connection. That's what Happy Days is. It is guidance. It's understanding. It's connection. And it's a page by page reminder that you're not alone in your suffering. When you recount the stories of another human who is in the compassionate service of you, and they openly and wholeheartedly are sharing their truth vulnerably, that in itself is healing.

So pick up that book. Go grab that book. Listen to it. Read it, whatever it takes, because it is a guided path. Whether it's my book or any other book on trauma, whatever that feels right to you, what you resonate with, it's a step forward. Because when I was going through my trauma recovery, it was the books that actually healed me first.

I really remember wishing at the time, I wish there was somebody that wasn't a therapist telling me the story. I wanted somebody who was actually an authority figure that I could really believe in because they'd lived it, but most believe in because they'd lived it But most importantly because they'd survived it and so that was my mission and writing happy days Well, thank you for sharing that and if people aren't familiar with your story at 35 You were extremely successful at that point if I have my, you had published five books and Oprah

names you as a new thought leader for the next generation. So on the surface, it appears that everything is going phenomenal in your life. And I can relate to this because at about the same age, I was the youngest vice president at Lowe's. I thought my life was going great. But similar to you, as this was transpiring, while success was manifesting in my outer world and yours as well, I think both our inner worlds were falling apart. And what was the toll that this took on you?

Well, I was living with unconscious PTSD. So I didn't even know I had PTSD and I'm living with it. It manifested in extreme gastrointestinal issues. It manifested in sleep disorder. It manifested in rage issues, in workaholism, in extreme patterns of just melting down. Young activation, like constantly feeling like at any moment I could just flip out,

and a lot of sickness inside and out. And so like you said, while I was doing a lot of good in the world, had written five or six books at this point, had been featured on Oprah, I was just struggling so deeply on the inside, falling apart. And I remember thinking things like, I'm cracking open, I'm cracking open, I'm cracking open, like just literally being like, I'm breaking down.

And eventually I did, and I had a piercing through of a dream that reminded me and portrayed to me the trauma that I experienced as a child. And it was a trauma that was sexual in nature that I was completely unaware of, mentally. Physically, somatically, unconsciously, I was running from something. I just didn't know what it was. And when I had that dream, it all came into form.

When I woke up from that dream in the morning, I just was like, no way, I'm not going to touch that. I never want to think about it. It was too real. And days later, I accepted it as truth in my therapy. I had a similar experience that ultimately led me to do prolonged exposure therapy. And while it's extremely painful to go through it,

the other side of it is so liberating. It really is. Yeah. So one of the things you talk about in the book is that you have to identify the triggers like you just mentioned to understand why you feel like you must hide, run, or fight. How do you go about, if you're someone who might be listening to this, identifying those triggers? Because to me, it really involves being vulnerable in the first place and doing the introspection to allow yourself to be open to even acknowledging that they're there.

We cannot heal what we're not willing to see. Having the bravery and the courage to become conscious and aware of the physical experiences, the thoughts, the energy, the sensations that are keeping us out of alignment with our true nature, which is joy. Having the courage to be the witness of those experiences that are blocking us is the first step to healing, because you cannot heal what you're not willing to see.

So having the bravery to begin to look at your life and maybe even simply say, is this it? There has to be a better way. That willingness opens the door for more recovery to be revealed. So the answer is you don't force it, you just want it. When I got sober and I said I can't go on like this, I need a miracle, that was a prayer. That was an unconscious prayer. I don't want to do this anymore. And so if we're listening to this still 35, 40 minutes into the conversation, you are willing. You're just, whether you realize it or not, there's a part of you that says,

it's got to be better than this. Well I want to talk about a couple of the modalities that you mention in the book. One of them is in chapter six where you go into don't call me crazy and it involves something that has been one of the most watched and listened to episodes I've done which is on tapping. Can you explain your experience with emotional freedom therapy and how that has impacted you and why someone should consider this? Yeah, I've been tapping for 18 years and it was the first modality I turned to

when I recognized the trauma. And I actually reached out to a friend who was a tapping coach who specialized in women who had had sexual trauma. So I jumped right in with her. And what happens when you tap is you tap on different energy meridians. So you either have buzzers in either hand or buzzing in either ear.

And you hear that bilateral, actually now I'm talking about EMDR, so let's back that up. Tapping is similar to EMDR, but tapping is when we're tapping in different energy meridians, whether it's on your hand or on your eyebrow, your side of your eye, under your eye, different meridians that stimulate a message to the brain that it's safe to relax. And so what happens is when we have this kind of tapping on these different meridians, opening up your brain's capacity to process, while simultaneously talking about the disturbance, the energetic disturbance,

you are sending a message to the amygdala that it's safe to relax and that processing is possible. So while talking about the most pressing issue, whatever it might be, and simultaneously tapping on these different energy meridians, it's like therapy mixed with acupuncture to relieve you of the stronghold of the protection mechanisms that might block you from processing this pain in the first place. The same goes for EMDR, which I began to talk about originally. EMDR similarly stimulates the bilateral brain stimulation.

So this is another tool I talk about in the book where you have a buzzer in one hand and a buzzer in the other hand or a buzz in either ear, and you're listening to that buzz back and forth stimulating the brain left, opening up the brain's capacity to reprocess unresolved disturbances. So, Cybill, just like tapping, you're talking about the emotional disturbance. Maybe you're visualizing yourself going back into it with a therapist.

All the while, you have this bilateral brain stimulation and it's giving your brain the capacity to process more. The way I might look at it actually is it's actually a way of laying down the protectors, as we might call it in internal family systems therapy, which is what my next book is about. And so IFS is written about in this book as well,

in Happy Days, where we have these protection mechanisms that hold us back from processing these disturbances. Because these protection mechanisms like control or addiction or raging or whatever it is that we do to protect ourselves from the fears and the impermissible experiences of those emotional disturbances, those protectors are in the way of reprocessing.

So what I like to, and I think I might just be coming to this conclusion right here for the first time on this episode, which is that Happing So what I like to... And I think I might just be coming to this conclusion right here for the first time on this episode, which is that HAPing and EMDR, while they are stimulating the brain to process more effectively, they're also calming methods, right? So these are calming tools. And in that presence of calm, your protection mechanisms can relax. And in that relaxed state, your self-energy, your confidence, your courage, your

creativity, compassion, more of that energy can come through. So tapping and EFT are not only serving your brain and serving your nervous system, but also helping these protection mechanisms subside and relax so that more can be processed. It's all happening together at the same time. I've done EMDR myself, and I've just experimented with tapping, but it is a modality that I need to explore in much more depth because it seems to really free up, especially trauma or anxiety or other things that you might be feeling.

I'll give you my app. I have a Gabby coaching app, which people can all try for free. If they wanna try tapping, there's tapping on anxiety, tapping on fear, all of it's inside the app. You go to deargabby.com slash app, and you can try it out for free. I'll give you access to it.

Okay, great. I'll make sure that's in the show notes. In chapter eight, you write about freeing what was once frozen. And another one of my favorite episodes that I did last year was with Elise Ellermann. You talk in the book about doing somatic experiences. Oh, Elise Hallerman, yeah.

Oh, Hallerman, yes. And I was wondering if you could talk about these experiences and how they've helped you and how they can help someone else. Yeah, Elisa was a really great friend of mine, particularly at the time that I was struggling with the memory. In fact, the dream that I had where I remembered that trauma, I had that in Elisa's house. I was sleep sleeping in her home that night where I had that dream. And that's no accident because she was a really important character

in my journey of character friend in the story and the journey of my recovery. And her experience, very in-depth experience with somatic experiencing therapy, really supported me. Because what happens when Peter Levine, the founder of SE, says that when you're traumatized, it is the inability to be present. Trauma is the inability to be present. And so it was really clear to me when I remembered the trauma that, oh, wow, Gabby, all of this stuff that you've been doing, Tyron, all the ways that you've been controlling and pushing

and working and even using drugs and alcohol when I was younger were all ways of avoiding being present with the feeling that I was not safe enough to feel. But those truncated experiences of trauma when you have not processed them still remain in your body. Your body knows. Your gut knows. Your physicals.

Your energy knows. your jaw knows, your leg tension knows. All of these, the anxiety that's present is a reflection of knowing that there's something happening inside that is not resolved. And so from an SE perspective, you go to the body first. You don't get into the head. You get into the somatic experience. And through focusing your attention on the body and giving breath to the body, giving compassion to the body, connection to the body. The body can be the leader,

and the body can reveal what and where in the body that trauma needs to be processed and moved through, moved through all the way to the end. Because what happens when you live with unresolved, unhealed trauma is that you're walking around all the time with the truncated experience of that fight-flight response not being moved through all the way to the end. So you've gone into that response of fight-flight or freeze but

you haven't moved it through. It gets stuck. And so in that stuckness, you might have panic attacks. In that stuckness, you might be frozen, like almost disembodied from the neck down, which is how I lived for so many years, not in my body. Now, I mean, like I can feel my body, I can move my body, I can use my body. For many years, it was just neck down, completely frozen. And it will also affect you. And like almost for me, I would describe it like it felt like a live wire of energy just constantly moving through me like anxiety.

So when you start to direct your attention towards the somatic experience and use that kind of healing, that SE work, you can really start to experience healing without having to remember things, without having to talk about things, but just to let the body heal you. In Happy Days, I share a lot of somatic experiencing practices that you can actually do on your own for creating a sense of safety inside. And they're also inside the Gabby coaching

app. All of it's right there. Okay. And then one last concept that I wanted to explore and you've touched on it earlier is in your last chapter, which is on reparenting oneself. And I really enjoyed this one because I feel like it's so true that in our life that there are times where we have to relearn and parent ourselves again. Can you explain this concept for the listeners so they get what you're talking about here? Yeah, it's so much of what I'm writing what I've written about in my 10th book Self-Help which is coming out. It's that when we go on the journey of reading a book like Happy Days or doing any kind of trauma recovery, we're getting supported by others, we're getting supported by tools. But the greatest connection that is established is the connection to our resourced self. And that self with a capital

S, as they say in internal internal family systems therapy is the presence within you that is calm and courageous and compassionate, connected, creative, confident, these C qualities, as Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS, describes them. And self really is like the internal parent. It's the parent we never had. It's the sense of safety that we never had. It's the trust and the knowing that we never really believed in. Because if you've been traumatized and no one was there to help you in the moment in

that inciting incident or after, you got stuck there. And not only did you get stuck there, but you got stuck with the belief that nobody is safe and that nobody can help me. And when you go on this journey of unlearning those memories and reprocessing those experiences and somatically healing, you are not only becoming free inside, but you're also reminded and reconnected with the everresent energy of self with a capital S, the internal parent inside of you that is always available to you, that is always present. It's never left us. Self is the ever-present energy of love within us and around us.

We just disconnected from it. We stopped believing in it. And so on this journey of recovery, we reconnect to self and self is like an internal parent that guides us back whenever we need it and it's always present for us. And that's why the book is called Self Help, the next one. Well, Gabby, the last question I wanted to ask

is what message of hope can you offer to those who are about to embark on their own journey of happy days, especially to those who might feel overwhelmed by the prospect of transforming their pain into strength? What they said in my early days of 12-step recovery is if you want what they have, do what they do. So people might be listening to you regularly on this show or watching me or listening to this and saying, wow, they both seem really happy and recovered and confident.

So if you want what we have, do what we do. That would be the answer. Use the people in your life, the authors, the leaders that you believe in as a power of example, that this work works if you work it. I sound like a 12-step slogan now, but it's true. And really trust that when you see that light in someone else, it's a reflection of the

light that is within you and that it's your journey of undoing that will remind you of that light. So I promise miracles. If you show up for happy days, I promise you miracles. I promise you miracles and relief, great relief. So Gabby, last question would be, where's the best place for someone to find you if they want to learn more? I think right now the absolute best place would be to go to deargabby.com and try a free trial of the Gabby app. Do seven days free inside the Gabby app.

Try some of the somatic practices. Try some of the tapping, meditations. It's all in there. And so if you're someone's, I really want more than just a book, or I want to go deeper, go to deargabby.com slash app and try it for free. Well, Gabby, it was such an honor to have you on this show. Thank you so much. And I hope we get to do your next book as well. I would love to do that. Definitely. You are some of my favorite types of interviews because this is the stuff you go deep

and you went right to the point, and I'm so grateful for that because we need it. You just go right to it. Well, thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. What an incredible honor that was to interview Gabby Bernstein on Passion Struck. And I wanted to thank Gabby, Jessica Reta, and Hay House for the privilege of having

her appear on today's show. Links to all things Gabby will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links to purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please go subscribe and join over 250,000 other subscribers on the channels. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com

deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'm at John R. Miles on all the social platforms where I post daily. And you can also sign up for our newsletter at passionstruck.com and join over 30,000 other subscribers. If you wanna know how I book amazing guests like Gabby Bernstein, it's because of my network. Go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast interview

that I did with Bill Weir, CNN's chief climate correspondent. And in this interview, we do a deep dive about his brand new book, which is all about tackling climate change, which he does through robust storytelling and letters to his son. An episode you don't want to miss. I'm just inspired by people who are making up these entire new industries

that don't even have standard measurement yet on how we quantify carbon drawdown. But they're the first responders, I think, to this problem. And I hear it all the time now. I just had a call with a CEO up in Canada who has this roundtable of people in packaging, and in plastics, and in these systems-based big corporations who've made their fortune and have plenty for their kids to spend in their retirement, but they know their grandkids can't spend that on a dead planet and they want their legacy to be regenerative.

And so I do think that there's a lot of pent up energy around these ideas. And these days, a lot of people are just looking for ways to turn that anxiety into action. Remember that we rise by lifting others. So share this show with those that you love and care about. and if you found today's episode with Gabby Bernstein inspiring and you know someone who could use her message of hope and resilience then definitely share this episode. In the meantime do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time

go out there and become passion struck. passion strung.