Saturn Returns with Caggie - 5.7 Pathway to Serenity with Gabby Bernstein

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Gabby Bernstein, one of the leading figures in the spirituality space and a New York Times bestselling author, joins Caggie to discuss her latest book Happy Days. In this episode, Gabby distinguishes between trauma with a big T and a small t - and how it can manifest in the body, She also talks about the psychotherapy practice called Internal Family Systems which is what she is trained in, and how this process allows us to reclaim the exiled parts of ourselves. This episode covers some heavy topics like trauma and child abuse so please take care if theses subjects might be triggering to you.  --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. When we have trauma that's unearthing or we're in the midst of a crisis, we can still have a lot of light. We can still have a lot of incredible strength. We can still have a lot of inspiration move through us. Today, I'm joined by the one and only Gabby Bernstein. Gabby is New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and motivational speaker. She is one of the leading figures in the spirituality space and has inspired hundreds of thousands of people with her work, including

myself. I remember when I heard her on Oprah's Super Soul Sundays and was so inspired by her talk. I would say that a lot of the work that I do today, she has really inspired it. In this episode, we discuss her latest book, Happy Days, and we explore some very complex themes. There is a mention of child abuse in this conversation. It's not detailed or graphic, but please do take care if you find this subject triggering. We cover some pretty meaty topics in this episode. We discuss Gabby's approach to psychotherapy, internal family systems, which is what Gabby practices. It's an approach to psychotherapy which identifies the multiple

sub-personalities within each person. I found it really interesting using this sort of terminology to both understand myself and psychology. We have our wounded parts known as exiles which are controlled and protected by other parts known as protectors. So you could say shame is an exile and its protector might be manifest in something like alcoholism or overeating. might be manifest in something like alcoholism or overeating. I hope that makes sense, but she's going to explain it a lot better. And IFS focuses on healing the wounded exile parts of ourselves to restore mental health balance and harmony. I find Gabby's honesty and vulnerability so inspiring because she has this strength about her but also this presence and I felt very affected by this episode and I'm sure that you will too. Also how she identifies the difference between

trauma with a big T and a little t because I think especially as she acknowledges being British we like to put a lot of stuff under the carpet and just sort of think oh well it's not that big a deal you know nothing that bad happened to me But a lot of stuff that we don't address lives within the body. And so in this episode, we discuss how to heal from that and how it can manifest if we don't. Before we get into any of this though, let's hear from our astrological guide, Nora. In Sanskrit, the name for Saturn is Shani. Shani is short for Shanisharya, and Shanisharya means the one who moves slowly. This in itself informs a whole lot about Saturn and how it functions throughout our lives. Saturn is reality, boundaries, restrictions and confinements that we might experience from the moment we're born.

And then, as we mature and grow older, we collectively go through various Saturnian times. Moments where we come face to face with reality and the ugly truth that it contains, as well as all the lessons that it brings, whether we want it or not. The first time happens at the age of seven, the second time at the age of 14, the third time at the age of 21, and then the fourth time at the age of 28 to 29 years old, which is also called our Saturn return. The sum of all of our experiences and how we've co-opted reality so far. It brings into question our coping mechanisms and how we've quoted reality so far. It brings into question our coping mechanisms and how healthy and in service of our path they truly have been.

It's brutal, confrontational, but as always, if we're open to it, absolutely liberating. Then, according to Vedic astrological traditions, at the age of 36, we are released of all of the protection from reality Saturn might have offered. There's no more shielding. It's just us. Us and our experiences come to the surface, our karma becomes obvious, and we start to shift towards our dharma, our higher purpose, which in astrology relates to Jupiter. So this means that our inner Saturn matures and therefore we mature and again

this happens whether we want it or not. So we're confronted with choices, habits, dependencies and sometimes even traumas that have shaped our lives until this pivotal moment. And at first sight it might not seem so but this is truly when the magic happens, because energetically we're given free reign. It's a crucial turning point for many, a moment of truth, a moment of total agency and rediscovery of self. It's not necessarily as confronting as Saturn return, but very often it can feel that way. Especially if we've let our inner demons take control of our lives the goddess Kali represents darkness the mother the universal womb and the

part of the divine that preceded creation she is the yin to the yang she empowers us and encourages us to personify our demons and then triggers life events that helps us conquer them. She's the wild feminine aspect of ourselves that may scare many, but in truth is the most merciful facet of the inner feminine. She forces us to face the truth, triggers us to recognize our inner obstacles and how exactly they've manifested in outer obstacles. Therefore, she helps us align our inner nature with our outer nature. And it's due to this that she's often associated with Saturn, because she's slow to show herself, but once she does, there's no going back. And as scary as it might seem at first, it is the falling, the surrendering to ourselves, the act of faith towards ourselves that truly helps us rise back out of the ashes and eventually transform into a more pure version of who we are, of who we could be.

And that's Saturn. That's Kali. That's the Divine Feminine. Gabby, welcome to the Saturn Returns podcast. So happy to be with you. It's nice to be here. Thank you. I am so excited to speak to you. I feel like you've been such an important spiritual teacher of mine. So it's a real honor to get to have this conversation with you. It's an honor to have a conversation with somebody who has been in any way touched by the work that I do. So thank you. Thank you. So for the audience that doesn't know, how did you get into this space?

My personal journey of spiritual growth and personal development is how I got into this space. I was brought up very spiritual and I was brought up with visiting ashrams and taught to meditate at a very young age. And when I was in college, I started to turn my back on that. And I ultimately in my early 20s became very addicted to drugs and alcohol and really addicted to the ego perceptions of myself and hit a big bottom. And in that bottom, I had the privilege of getting clean and sober at 25. And in my sobriety, I really returned to the spiritual faith that I had and started to develop my own spiritual faith and my own curriculum for how to connect to that spiritual connection of your own understanding. And very quickly started getting on stages and writing books. And it just

became the work that I do. Here we are now, 16 years later, I've written nine books and have been on this beautiful journey of teaching. But what I've mostly been on is a beautiful journey of my own personal growth and transformation. That's beautiful. And I think, you know, it's quite a common experience that people have a sort of spiritual awakening in tandem with their rock bottom, but it sounds like through the foundations of your upbringing and being brought up in that kind of space and environment that you already kind of had your spiritual path a little bit? Would it be fair to say that you kind of went slightly off track in your twenties or early twenties? Well, I guess it would be fair to say that my mother introduced me to spirituality so that when I was ready to connect to a spiritual connection of my own and when I was hitting

bottom, I knew what was possible. So, I mean, addiction is a big part of what you speak about in your books. And I think it's something, it's something I've been thinking about recently because it seems as a society, we kind of put addiction and people that are addicts in this kind of box, but you speak about it in a way that obviously you experience it through drugs and alcohol that I'd love to talk to you about, but also how there are the socially accepted, if not encouraged kind of addictions that we go through and that way that we numb out or sort of disassociate. Would you be able to kind of expand on that a little bit? Yeah. So we all have these different forms of protection that we build up against the childhood experiences from our past, feelings of being inadequate or unlovable or experiences of neglect or experiences of just even being told we're stupid. Any moment in time where we felt shame or we felt terror

splits us off from that love within us. And we build up a lot of forms of protection to protect us ultimately from feeling those impermissible feelings of shame and guilt. And those protectors can come in the form of addiction. Drug addicts are a form of protection. Alcoholism is a form of protection. Workaholism is a form of protection. Controlling, overeating, not eating, all these different things that we do to numb our pain are known in my lexicon as protectors. And I'm a student of internal family systems therapy, which this is the language I'm using. And in my new book, Happy Days, The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace,

I go head first into why we get so triggered, how we run from those triggers and the ways that we build up these protection mechanisms and then how we can begin to settle those protectors and start to come back to a place of safety. This book, Happy Days, I mean, it really, it really affected me. And I think it's, it's an interesting one for me, because not that you shy away from things in the past, but it really goes there. And I think trauma is such a subject that's not spoken about enough.

It's definitely associated with quite extreme forms of trauma. And I don't think that we acknowledge as individuals, what kind of traumatic experiences we might have had and that live in the body. And you kind of talk us through and give a pathway of firstly your own experience, which if you're happy to share, I'd love you to explore a little bit. And also how we can navigate that and the tools and the know-how for kind of processing that trauma. Totally. Well, one thing that you said that's really important is that we look at trauma often as something very shameful, something that is sort of unspeakable, and we don't take time to identify the small t traumas. So trauma with a small T looks like being bullied as a kid or going through a parent's having a divorce that was traumatizing or being parentified by your parent can be very

traumatizing. And that could be considered not a big deal or whatever, something you overlook, but it's trauma. And we've all lived through trauma. We've all lived through 2020, 2021, now into 2022, we've lived through trauma. So we have these defense mechanisms we build up against it. And that's what we have to address in order to come back to a place of serenity within our system, within our internal system. And so for me, I put down the alcohol and the drugs and I very quickly picked up workaholism and love addiction and all these other addictions. And I kept wondering, why am I running? What am I running from? What is this? Why do I keep falling into these patterns and behaviors? And very quickly, I started to get sicker and sicker

as a result of being so stuck in these addictive patterns. But all the while, I was having great spiritual awakening and I was writing spiritual books. I'd probably written six or seven books by this point. I'd been interviewed on Oprah. I'd had major life experiences, but I was still really crumbling on the inside. And when I was 36 years old, I had a dream. And the dream was a memory of being sexually abused as a child. When I woke up from that dream, I was like, holy shit, that's the most real thing I've ever experienced. And a few days later, it came up in my therapy and the memory fully came to me of the fact that this did indeed happen. but it gave me a lot of relief in knowing why I was a cocaine addict, why I was a drug addict. So the ways we act out or the bad patterns that we create in our life, the destructive patterns, all have a root cause, have an unresolved disturbance that we're running from. And so my hope for this book is to help people honor and respect the parts of themselves that need care and healing. Not everybody's story will be as extreme as mine, but we all have it. And then this is my journey of undoing those fearful past experiences to be where I am right now in the present moment.

yeah well thank you for sharing that what was interesting when I was reading your book is how the idea of the outer worlds and the inner worlds and on one hand your career was at an all-time high you're doing all these books you're doing this speaking and you have such a natural ability on stage just to hold space for people and to inspire so many. And yet you were going through this internal struggle. Why do you think it was 36 or around that time that that suddenly became unearthed? Well, I asked my therapist that and she said, because I was, oh, my cat is now scratching me. My kitten is with us. She's in my shirt and she's making noise. And I want you to calm down if you're going to stay. Oh, hold on a second this is what always what happens she comes in calm and then she flips out okay so I asked my therapist this and she said you can cut this part sorry don't worry we love it

I asked my therapist why and she said because you're safe enough now you're safe enough to remember all the work that you've done spiritually and in therapy has brought you to a place of safety where you're safe enough to remember. And you're right. I'd done a lot of beautiful work in that time. And I think it's an important point to make. And this little girl is going to have to go. You're going to have to go. Sorry. Hold on a second. It's an important point to make, which is that when we have trauma that's unearthing or we're in the midst of a crisis, we can still have a lot of light. We can still have a lot of incredible strength. We can still have a lot of inspiration move through us. Some of the greatest artists have suffered the most, right? So Rumi says, the wound is the place where the

light enters you. So when we recognize our wounds as a catalyst for inspiration, sometimes we can see that it's not all just about the suffering. And I'm proud of how I showed up even in the midst of being in crisis. You speak about this feeling of lacking in safety or this kind of underlying thing that was perhaps present and manifesting in these various ways. And I think that that's something that a lot of people will resonate with to different degrees. And also to kind of go into, into you know that you managed to hold space for yourself in that moment in time which I think is such a beautiful thing and the work that you've done allowed you to but I'd love to explore a little bit about what we've gone through collectively as a trauma yeah when the world suddenly stopped I think a lot of people's

trauma has come to the surface and they have no tools or know-how to process it. Whereas I feel like, you know, what you just spoke about, it came to you in a dream. You had the tools and ability to process it. And I have no doubt that it must have been incredibly painful. But in a way, I think the last couple of years has forced people. Have triggered. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really beautiful acknowledgement that we all have these big T or little t traumas

and often they can be activated when we're safe enough to recognize them or when we feel unsafe. And so in this instance, people, I think in this feeling of not being safe, feeling of being out of control, it activated a lot of people's unresolved wounds. And a lot of people went back to the kitchen, started binging, and a lot of people went back to the booze and they went back to the sex or the porn, or they woke up and got into therapy, started working on themselves and cracking open more. And it's funny, I always say that I write my books for myself and I write them when I'm ready to write them. But I also do believe that God has a hand in all of it. And I believe that this book

in particular, and my own recovery in particular, happened in the right time in the world to show up now as a book that people are ready for, that they'll resonate with and that they need. And I think if this book had come out maybe five years ago, people would have been like, I don't have trauma. I don't need that. But we all do. And I think people are recognizing that and accepting that now more than ever. Did you struggle with sort of reconciling your own trauma? Yeah. I mean, I was dissociated from it for 36 years or for 30 years around. And then remembering it completely was really tough because you don't want to admit that to yourself. There's so much

shame in it. And so the shame will be another emotion that we try to numb out and anesthetize. And so it took a long, look, it's been a very nice, steady recovery that I've been going through, but it was not easy. It was not easy. But that's why I also wanted this book to come out because I wanted to make it easier for people. I wanted to help people recognize they're not alone. I wanted to say, here's what I did. Here's your jumpstart. Here's your jumpstart. And here are all the practices that saved my life. And if you're finding a connection to them, use them. Yeah. Because you have an amazing ability to be very vulnerable, but it's a very strong kind of vulnerability. And when you're on stage and when you're speaking, I think that's what resonates and connects with people so much.

You mention in the book about a struggle with being vulnerable one-on-one or in relationship. Would you be able to talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I've always found it really easy to be completely open and vulnerable and almost spiritually naked on the stage in front of strangers. But then I found that I always would struggle with vulnerability in intimate relationships. And what that revealed to me was that there was this clear desire for connection. And why it was so much easier for me to be in that vulnerable place on stage was because I was totally in control. I was the conductor of the energy. I could walk off the stage. That was big for me to realize.

And I'm proud to say that one of the beautiful benefits and results of doing all the work that I've done and that I share about in the book is that that vulnerability and intimate relationships is now available to me. And that deepening of that kind of heart-centered, co-regulated connection is available to me now. Thank God. Because to kind of go back to the stuff you're speaking about before and when your career was taking off and you were almost addicted to busyness and work, in a sense, that is a way of controlling things, you know, and I think control is another socially acceptable or encouraged thing that we do. but actually the underlying thing is a lot of fear. Yeah. If you see anyone who's like a real control freak or really workaholic, just pushing,

pushing, pushing, burnout, burnout, burnout, that's a sure sign that there's something they're running from. But it's so socially acceptable and often in our culture, your culture, my culture, praised, praised. Oh, look how hard you work. Look how much you get done. Look how successful you are when inside you're dying. And did you feel that way? Oh yeah. Yeah. And that manifested in the body? My body was falling apart. I had extreme gastrointestinal issues. I had chronic anxiety. And that's why I built up such a strong spiritual condition because when I was meditating, I could feel relief, but it would be then back to the anxiety. And so it wasn't sustainable until I really got to the root cause of why and started to heal the parts of myself that were so

broken and to really help those parts of me to feel safe again. And now in the presence of that safety, I can work really hard. You're my fifth interview already today and it's only 12 p.m. And I hope you don't notice I'm so exhausted, but I can do all this work and then, you know, just take it slow with you and just enjoy your energy and enjoy your pace and not push myself and just, you know, and, and, and feel settled in your gentleness, you know, and that's something that I couldn't do before. I would have been, you know, pushing, pushing, pushing, then getting sick or burning out or extreme things. So I can do a lot now, but still pace myself. Does that come down to self-trust or trusting in another person as well? Well, what you're saying is, I'll unpack what you're

saying from the training that I have now. I'm trained in internal family systems therapy. And in IFS, the word self with a capital S is the undamaged, resourced love within us. It's the courageous part of us, the compassionate, calm, loving, caring, curious part of us. In IFS, all these different parts like the workaholic or the part that's like victim or the part that's overeating, those are known as protectors. And those protectors are protecting against those child parts. They're called exiles. And so the protector parts build up all this chaos in our life. closer and closer to the connection to that self-energy and a trust of self,

then the protectors can calm down and we can go deeper into what the core wounds may be and we can do some beautiful work with them. But the first step is to really connect to that self-energy, love, courage, compassion, curiosity, and bring that. So imagine you were, you know, a workaholic and you're just in the extreme behavior in the moment and you just took a moment to just put your hand on your heart and just tune in and say, oh, I'm so compassionate towards you. I love you so much

and thank you for working so hard to try to keep me safe. Maybe we could do something else instead. It is establishing trust with self. I just described it in my lexicon, but it's establishing a sense of safety within. And do we reclaim those exiled parts of ourselves? Yeah. So in my book and in my work, I don't touch exiles because I believe that that needs to be done with the support of a therapist. It can be often very re-traumatizing or triggering. And while I am level one trained in IFS and I do feel confident working with exiles, if you and I were in private, I wouldn't do that in a public setting or in a book. And I don't think it's my mission. My

mission is to help people connect to self-energy because once someone allows those protection mechanisms to calm down and settle, that's when they become safe enough to do the deeper work. That's when they can go and get a therapist and look at those exiled parts. And the answer is yes. In IFS, the goal is to relax the protectors, get them out of their extreme roles

so that then you have direct access from self to the exiled child parts and to then retrieve those parts and bring them back to safety. Wow. Well, to kind of touch on the mind-body, because that's a lot of what we're talking about when we get in a state of dysregulation and we can't actually, let's say something's triggered us in a scenario something that compared to the response we're having physically is quite minor but our body goes into this kind of fight or flight stage and it then becomes so unmeasured almost for the situation yeah because I think that that's something that's rarely, I mean, you speak about it a lot in the book, but I think it's rarely actually explored in terms of like,

what's actually going on there and how we can learn to regulate our own emotions, our own systems, because it's not, it's a balancing act between holding space for each other, especially in the context of relationships, but also not being responsible for each other's work. Yeah. So there's a whole chapter in the book about the body and how your body really takes the brunt of a lot of the unresolved trauma. Because I write about the work of Dr. John Sarno, who famously wrote the book Healing Back Pain and the Mind-Body Prescription. And the premise is that when we have physical symptoms like gastrointestinal issues or insomnia or back pain, neck pain, TMJ, those symptoms are often psychosomatic, meaning that there's a root cause emotional disturbance that is so impermissible that we build up all this stress and forms of protection

to fight against it. And that ultimately creates dysbiosis in our gut. It creates inflammation in our body. It creates a chronic stress response. As you mentioned, we go into fight, flight, freeze, or faint. And our body is very affected by the chronic state of stress that we enter into when we're not facing the unresolved wounds. So recognizing that the body takes such a hit is a first step to recognize, oh, wow, there could be something more beneath why I have all this back pain. And then getting a little bit deeper and closer into connection to the why. Why is my body now a form of protection against something impermissible? And in that chapter, I give a really great method that I write about called Rage on the Page.

It's adapted from a Sarno method. So my friend, Nicole Sachs, teaches the Dr. Sarno work, and she suggested for my TMJ that I write journal for 20 minutes and then meditate for 20 minutes. And I took that up a notch and I added bilateral music, which is EMDR music, bilateral brain stimulation. So there's a tone in the right ear and the left ear and then the right ear and the left ear. And the music, what it does is it opens up your brain's window of tolerance to reprocess unresolved energetic disturbances. So while you're writing, and I call it rage on the page. So while you're listening to the music, you get everything out onto the page for 20 minutes, and then you lie back and rest with the music for another 20 minutes and let the reprocessing enter in.

And that process is a profound way of beginning to address those psychosomatic conditions that we have. EMDR is something that's coming up a lot for me at the moment in just conversations that I'm having. Is that kind of your take on using the best aspects of EMDR in a practice that you do as well? Or is that actually traditionally how it's done? EMDR is a practice that I really highly recommend that one do in therapy, particularly if they have complex trauma. But you could do EMDR for just like a phobia or minor disturbance or for your back pain. So EMDR, what happens, it's called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And so what happens is you have a buzzer in either hand or you have a buzzer in either ear and you have this bilateral brain stimulation where your eyes are going back and forth.

And you have that stimulation while you're talking about the root cause issue or just the momentary-ish, what's going on right now and today and how you're frustrated or overwhelmed or triggered. And so while you're talking about this experience and reflecting on it internally and you have the brain stimulation, you're opening up your brain's capacity

to start to settle your system and reprocess the memories and the experiences and the feelings in your body. And then it goes as far as the reprocessing part where you can almost retell the story with the music. And that's almost like manifesting because you're settling your system into a new belief system. And what I did in a book was introduce EMDR through this rage on the page practice and allow the reader to safely go there in their own home with this kind of music and I give references to the music in the book and where to get it and I'm also really cautious in this book with my readers I'm also really conscious of their journey and their path. And so with something like Rage on the Page, I'm like, yo, if this is too much for

you right now, and you think this is, many people have never touched into rage before. Especially as women, I think. Totally. And so I would just say, don't go there or just do anxiety on the page or whatever you're up for in that moment. Don't push rage out if it's if it's not available to you right now it's not accessible yeah because i think a lot of traditional forms of therapy which i'm a big advocate for but when we're working when we're almost working against our subconscious in those settings and by that i mean if there's trauma that's living in the body that doesn't want to be addressed because that is our coping mechanism.

We can spend 10 years in therapy and actually never even touch the surface. Whereas some of these practices that you speak about in the book, it really addresses and bypasses the ego and the mind and just goes right to the root. Is that right? I really appreciate that you said that. Yeah. So I think that there's nothing wrong with talk therapy, but it definitely takes longer. And I believe that practices like somatic experiencing, which is a body-based therapy, which I write about in the book, or EMDR or EFT, these practices have the power to help you reprocess big emotional disturbances from your history. big emotional disturbances from your history. And if they're, the more complex the trauma is, the more EMDR you'll need, but you get to a safer baseline faster. And in that safety, in that level of energetic safety, you can do really deep work without having to remember every detail or even talk about the details. By talking about your back pain, you're addressing the trauma. Because in the sort of way of processing

this kind of thing and i'm i'm a big believer in sometimes we just need to express whatever's going on emotionally it doesn't need to be identified or explained or even make any kind of sense so i think that that's one way to because some of this stuff is so old as well and for people that are going through you know i've got family members at the moment that are going through stuff that's from 20 years ago but it's suddenly because of the pandemic and because of that space is coming to light and if you're used to being in quite a sort of linear way of thinking it can feel very at odds with people because they're like, I don't know how to process this. Or if you have this condition called being British.

Yeah, that too. Yeah, you guys are kind of like years ahead of us. We're willing to go there. You know, therapy is very cool in my country. So, yeah, I think that what's beautiful, one of the, one of the gifts of the pandemic is that we have been cracked open. We've hit our knees, many, many of us. And there's this beautiful Amma quote, the hugging Saint Amma said, when an eggshell is cracked from the outside, it's broken. When it's cracked from the inside, it's reborn. So my prayer for people right now that feel that they're cracking into something or cracking into accepting something they've been avoiding, that as scary as that may feel and as feels like you're dismantling all of the things that kept you safe, but that's a good thing because it's really taken a toll on your happiness and

your serenity and your wellbeing to stay in that fight flight mode and to keep protecting yourself in all the ways that you do. And so I really, really, really want to emphasize the power of showing up for that awakening, that cracking open. And also, I think it's an important thing to acknowledge the grief that that comes with. And let's say it's someone that's been living with being driven by these thoughts or feelings on a subconscious level. And then it's suddenly coming to the surface, the grief of letting go of the fact that that has conducted a large portion of your life. Yes. When we let go of those protection mechanisms or we ask them to settle, there's a lot of grief because we've relied on

them for so long. And I'd like for the listener to consider that those protection mechanisms are different parts of ourselves, that we're not one person. We have all these different people in our system. And when we start to say, hey, workaholic, you can relax, or alcoholic, you can relax, I've seen many, many people mourn the loss of their relationship to alcohol, not because of how much fun it was,

but because it was so reliable, you know, for just numbing out, right? And when there's an even deeper grief underneath, because we start to go deeper and closer to those child parts that were so wounded, we start to clear space for them and start to hear from them. There's extreme grief there because there's grief around the loss, the loss of innocence and the loss of stability or joy or however you know, however it may have affected you in your own life. Maybe there was loss of healthy relationships because you were so wounded from your attachment

to your parents. And so there's all these different feelings of grief that live underneath it. And I believe that grief is kind of the final frontier when you do this work. It starts to show up as you get closer and closer to the real reasons why. So there's lots of layers, but I take you through all of it. Actually, grief is where we end this book. Yeah, no, I know. That's why I brought it up. And I want to kind of take it back for a second because we spoke about shame. And shame is something that has only sort of become very apparent to me recently and something that's peppered its way through my twenties. And would you be able to talk about, because you speak about shame and its connection to trauma and how actually unresolved shame can create trauma in the body. Yeah. So there's a whole chapter on shame and shame is a emotion that's

so impermissible and it's so exiled that we may not even identify it. You know, I'd been a spiritual teacher in the personal growth space for 37 years. I never even knew I had shame. I could never give voice to shame until I was teaching a class and with another teacher and she took over for a little while and then did this shame exercise. And I was like, oh my God, Gabby, holy crap, this was there all the time. And the shame is what we run from. The shame of being inadequate, unlovable, not good enough. And a lot of the things that happen to us as children, we believe are our fault. And so there's shame in that. And touching into shame is a delicate process. So the first step is to really just notice it and just honor it. And for many people,

they may not even be able to identify it for not even for a second, like me, you know, no, I don't have any shame, but that's, that's, that's a process. And, and I, I very gently guide the reader through that in the book because it's extreme if we go too fast. And you speak about in the book about speaking our truth or bringing things to the table. And I thought that really resonated with me because I think if we have experiences that might be shameful and then that creates a sort of neural pathway, And let's say that then that manifests in the body and to kind of go back to psychosomatics when we're having a physical experience that's been brought on by an emotion, but we're not quite aware of that

connection. I think actually, it's such a powerful thing to be able to bring shame into the light. And to have someone hold space for that whether that's in the form of a friend a therapist or whoever it may be and actually the vulnerability that that comes with because when we put things in a box of shame they just become so scary to open up and in our minds get so big and so monstrous that we think that is the reason we're unlovable and I believe that we actually all have those things and feelings about ourselves and then we hide them away and then they can manifest in the body and in all sorts of ways but when we can give a different experience and bring that to the table we then can create a new neural pathway and another stronger

emotion that we can then separate from that original trauma. And a new behavioral pattern and belief system. And that starts to settle in. And as those new beliefs and behaviors settle in, we become new. We really do. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. You can change your brain and you can change your experiences in life by reprocessing the experiences from your past. And people are ready for this now more than ever. I really believe that. And I'm so excited. I mean, I'm even noticing with the psychosomatic, my jaw tension has been really tight lately. And why? Because I'm about to release my most vulnerable book. And I touch into that and I notice it in my body first. And then I ask the jaw tension, is there anything else

that I want to know about you? Is there anything else I can ask you? And I can extend a lot of compassion to the jaw, you know, and I can go there because it's showing up as a first responder to mask the shame and the fear. When you went through this experience and kind of it came to light about your abuse when you were younger, you speak in the book about how you spoke to a therapist and they said, or no, it wasn't a therapist. Was it a mentor or someone that said, don't go out and speak about this yet?

That was my speaking coach. She was like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't speak about this until you're ready. And that's why this memory came in 2016, but the book's coming out in 2022 because I'm ready now. Because I think that's an important thing This memory came in 2016, but the book's coming out in 2022 because I'm ready now. Because I think that's an important thing to acknowledge in terms of people processing this kind of stuff is where to put it and where is it safe? Right, right. Well, one thing I hope that happens with Happy Days is that it helps people feel less ashamed of their history and their experiences and not

alone in it. But you also don't want to blast it out too fast and too publicly because that can be very re-traumatizing. So be very careful with and conscious of the relationships and people in your life that you choose to connect to about this. I, throughout the book, I'm just constantly saying, here's a resource for how to get a therapist. Here's a resource for how to get a therapist, because I think that that's the safest place to bring it. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you've always felt this sense of responsibility with your audience and your community, and that really comes through in the book. How do you kind of manage that? through in the book. How do you kind of manage that? Well, I don't feel responsible for the reader. I feel responsible for sharing the truth, being in full integrity with what I teach,

walking my talk, and making sure that I am keeping them safe along the way. That's my responsibility. And when I say keeping them safe, keeping them safe within the work that I am keeping them safe along the way. That's my responsibility. And when I say keeping them safe, keeping them safe within the work that I recommend. My cat's talking to us. And keeping them safe looks like me saying all throughout the book, this is where you can get a resource for a therapist. This is where you can get a resource for this. Or saying, don't read this chapter if it's going to be too activating for you or come

back to this in a year. And that's my way of keeping them safe. But I'm not responsible for the reader. The reader is responsible for themselves. And, but it is a responsibility to put this kind of work out into the world, because if you don't do it with integrity, and if you don't do it from a place that's steady and, and, and safe and grounded and not triggered, then, then if you don't do that, then you're going to just reactivate people left and right. And so I care so deeply about my reader. I care so, so, so much about the suffering that's happening in the world. I care so much about

each individual human, no matter how horrific they are, no matter how horrific they are, I know that they're wounded. And I just have compassion. I just have an endless stream of compassion for humans. Do you have that same compassion for yourself? Fuck yeah. I love every part of myself. I am so there for every part of myself. I am so compassionate towards myself. And I'm so proud of myself. I think I'm fucking amazing. Every part of me is amazing. I've done such a beautiful job of getting myself to safety and connecting to that compassion. And I'm just so deeply proud of every part of me that can show up today and share this book in a safe way. And in terms of it being one of your most vulnerable pieces of work, how does that,

how does that feel for you at the moment with releasing it? And also how has this journey impacted your ability to be vulnerable in the one-on-ones or the more intimate relationships? Well, I guess it's sort of affecting me now in my dreams and in my jaw, because while I feel really, really safe in my body and really confident in my ability to safely express these truths through this book right now, there's always still a little bit more to work on, right? So for me right now, there's this jaw tension that's holding on like, this is a lot, Gabby. You're coming out with a lot of big statements. You've

plastered your face on the cover. So I'm using my tools. I'm touching into that feeling of TMJ. I'm touching into what it has to reveal. I'm asking that protection mechanism to let me know what it needs. I'm extending compassion and curiosity and courage and calmness to that part of me. Saying thank you for revealing that there's some underlying stuff that maybe I need to hear. Well, it's a constant process, isn't it? Yeah. And you speak a lot in it about, is it the internal family? What is it? IFS, internal family systems. Yeah. How did you get into that work?

It's funny. I've been in therapy with the same therapist for a decade and she practiced what's called parts work, IFS work. And she'd always be like, there's these protectors and let the protectors step aside. And I'd be like, who the fuck is stepping aside? Like, I don't understand what you're talking about. Until I started, just because I'm always studying and learning, being led to some of the work of Dick Schwartz, who is the founder of IFS, has led to Dick's work through a video and then a book. And right away, when I watched the video, I was like, oh my God, this is what I've been doing in my therapy. Like this guy's talking about something that I've been doing for a decade. I didn't even know what it was. And so I became a massive student of his work. And the more I knew about it, the better it worked for me in my own therapy. And then I befriended

Dick and then shortly after got into the level one training and now have my CE credits in IFS. And while I'm not a therapist, I can practice IFS in my work in the way I do it. I'm not a therapist yet. I might be one day. And yeah, it's just been such a profound part of my journey. I'm so grateful to have it. I'd love to know, actually, what is the kind of, if you know at the moment, what is the next thing for you? The next thing for me is right in front of me. It is to celebrate

the transformation that this book will have on the individual and the world. I love that. Thank you. I'm just trying to think if there's anything else I want to ask, but I feel like we kind of covered it all. You're very calm. Your energy is very relaxing. Oh. It didn't help that I started off a little tired, but it was nice because I just needed that like sense of soothing and you're very relaxed. Thank you. Oh, are you feeling okay? Cause I know you've got. I'm feeling good. I think I just, I think I have to eat, you know, I think I just need to go. I haven't really been eating a lot in the daytime because I'm so back to back. And so I'm just like, I have now a little mini break and I'll go eat. Okay. That sounds good.

Yeah. It's so nice to be with you. It's so nice to be with you. Thank you so, so much. It's honestly a complete honor to get to have this conversation with you. And I think our audience is going to love it and learn so much from it. Thank you. And you're so cool.

Hopefully I'll meet you in the UK one day. Absolutely. Are you going to come over? Maybe this summer. For the book? you in the UK one day. Absolutely. Are you going to come over? Maybe this summer. For the book? Yeah. My COO lives in England and I have a lot of really good business partners in England. So I really think I'll be there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me know if I can help you in any way. You're doing beautiful work.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. You're very young. How old are you very much I appreciate that you're very young how old are you I'm 32 yeah baby I'm a decade older than you I'm 42 two generations you've had quite an amazing decade I mean well you're very mature for 32 you look so young but I wasn't sure because you're so mature. It's beautiful. Yeah. Well, I've gone through my own sobriety journey as well. So that's definitely. Beautiful. Congratulations. Yeah. That helps you grow up. Yeah. Definitely. Well, let's try to see each other in the UK and stay connected. And thank you for your beautiful presence today oh thank you for yours thank you so much Gabby I hope you enjoyed this episode of Saturn Returns I absolutely loved talking with Gabby like

I said at the beginning it was a real honor for me to get to have this conversation with her and it was a kind of pinch me moment because you know we get so caught up in what's going on day to day and where we're going what we need to achieve that having a conversation with someone that has been an idol of mine for such a long time was was incredible and I loved everything she had to say you know she speaks so much wisdom she speaks so honestly and vulnerably but also has this real strength about her, which I find very unique. Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. This episode was produced by Laura Gallop and the exec producer was Kate Taylor.

Thank you so much for listening and remember, you are not alone. Goodbye. Thank you.