Gabby Bernstein

LeAnn connects with self-proclaimed ‘spirit junkie’ and bestselling author Gabby Bernstein for a deep dive into the ever morphing meaning of happiness in today’s treacherous world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Heart Radio. Welcome my lovely friends to this very special
episode of Holy Human. My guest today is a prolific

(00:21):
and best selling author, Gabby Bernstein is also a motivational speaker,
podcast host, and a self described spirit junkie, and she's
driven by the mission to help you become the happiest
dang person that you know. How you might ask, Well,
that's what we're going to find out together on today's

(00:41):
Holy Human. Yeah, oh, Gabby, thank you so much for

(01:10):
coming on Holy Human. I am I'm so excited to
have you. I'm excited to be here. I think you're awesome.
It's not good to be with you. Thank you. I've
read many of your books, and I one of the
things I gather and I relate to so much. I
feel like you've lived like multiple lifetimes in your forty
three years, and I feel that way. I definitely feel

(01:31):
that way. Almost I'll be forty in August, and it's like, Wow,
I'm exhausted from the forty years that I've lived. Well,
you've been going, you've been going strong yourself, You've got
you know, you've lived a lot of life. A lot
of life. Yeah, but it gets so good. It gets
so good when you live your life young and then

(01:53):
you can get to your middle age. I can't believe
I'm saying I'm middle aged, just too weird. But when
you can get here and and be and reap the
benefits of the hard work, yeah, very true. Do you
feel like something changed for you at forty? I love
asking women thus because I I hear, I hear that
it does. Yeah, forty, It wasn't really necessarily about forty.

(02:18):
It was about I happened to be I turned forty.
When did I turned forty? Was? I think I turned
forty in twenty nineteen and just before and then uh in,
I uh really just kind of got my ship together

(02:40):
in the most major way. And I think it was,
of course a culmination of sixteen years of deep personal
growth and a lifetime of spiritual practice and just really
committing to my well being. But just like everybody else,
twenty was the opportunity to wake up or shut down.
So I just was like, let's go bigger, and I

(03:02):
created I established like extraordinary boundaries with people. I just
went even deeper in my recovery from trauma. Just all
the life and I'm so happy that I can have
come out the other side. So yes, it was in
my forty year that I began a real big transition

(03:25):
that's interesting for me. I know, thirty was such a
big transitional moment for me. I went into to UM
to rehab basically like right after I call it rehab,
whatever you want to call it for anxiety and depression.
I checked myself into rehabilitation center like the day after
my thirtieth birthday. And I remember that moment and that

(03:47):
that life shift, and now forty for me, it's like
you're like you're saying, reaping the benefits of the last
decade of the work that I have done, and knowing
that there's many deeper levels that life is calling me
to go to you at this moment. And you know,
spirituality has been such a huge piece for me, and
I think over that last decade, my own spiritual practice

(04:10):
has grown deeper and it's something that I definitely lean on.
I still resonate with you calling yourself a spirit junkie,
because I think I think I would call myself one
and the same. I was just wondering, what, why does
that title resonate so deeply with you. Yeah, Well, I've
been on a spiritual quest I think since I came

(04:31):
here into into the human form. But I was also
born into a very spiritual family, uh, particularly my mother.
My mom. My mom was always a spirit junkie. She
really is a spirit junkie. She's she brought us to Ashrams.
We were named by the gurus. I was taught to
meditate when I was in high school, and that foundation

(04:52):
was always really present for me, you know, you know,
like some people when their moms would be like, oh
my god, she got her first like tennis brace. Little
for my mom was like she got her first tarot deck.
Like that was where I was growing up. But it
was it was a great thing to have that seed planted.
And I've been a seeker my whole life, and early

(05:12):
I got I got sober. I began my recovery journey
at twenty five, and for me, it was first started
with with sobriety, and uh, I had I had really
I've been looking for that spiritual connection in all the
wrong places and ultimately became a cocaine addict and a
drug you know, an alcoholic, and at twenty five years old,
just hit a massive bottom, first bottom big bottom and

(05:33):
and got sober, and and anyone that's that gets sober
through treatment or through or through twelve step recovery will
really begin to open up to their own deep in
their spiritual connection in whatever form that comes. Typically that's
often what happens for us. And so I um, I
had the privilege of just really cracking myself open to

(05:57):
the spiritual possibilities for my own personal transformation, for a
connection to a inner wisdom beyond beyond me, to a
connection to around beyond my physical site that I believed
and continued to believe devote devotionally that that is a
presence that is by my side and within me and

(06:18):
around me at all times. And so that started to
happen really fast for me in my early recovery. And
that's when I started giving talks, and that's when I
started writing books. And my second book, I was trying
to find a title for it, and I was at
the time, I was early in my career, doing some
group coaching workshop and there was this eighteen year old

(06:39):
girl and at the time, I must have been like
twenty eight or something, and there was this eighteen year
old girl in the group, and she was telling us
to search. Like last week when I left group, I
was just so high and I felt so good, and
I was looking at the stars and everything was taking
I was taking everything in and I just out of
my mouth I said, yours just a spirit Junkie. And

(07:00):
everybody in the room was like, that's your new title.
You know, it was just boom, that's my book title.
That's going to be. That's how we all self identified
in that room, And to this day here you and
I are self identifying as spirit junkies. And to me,
what it really means is someone who's who's seeking and
who is is open and willing to receive guidance beyond

(07:21):
their physical site and their physical awareness. And uh, it's
a great way to live. Yeah, it is a great
way to live. And I grew up with religion being
such a huge part of my childhood and spirituality. I
don't know, I think I lived in spirituality like as children.
I think we are we are so connected to spirit,

(07:42):
and then everything kind of gets placed upon us and
everybody else's points of view and opinions, and then we
somehow lose track of our site of that you know,
that deepest place in us. And I think I know
on my own journey these last ten years have been

(08:03):
finding a reconnecting with that most innocent piece of myself.
And you know, I think religion. Religion kind of cut
that off for me for a while too when I
was younger, because I felt like it was, I don't
know what, it just didn't fit and it felt like

(08:23):
that was the only path, religion was the only path
to God, to spirituality. And so was religion a big
part of your childhood or was it was spirituality and
your own kind of journey to to that inner part
of yourself. Was that more cultivated in your childhood? Yeah,
religion definitely was present. But before I jump into that,

(08:46):
because there's so much I want to say about that,
I also want to acknowledge something you said, which is
that as children, we are all so psychically connected, we're
so spiritual, were so inspired, and then the experiences throughout
our childhood begin to unfortunately, you know, life, and particularly
for those of us who may not have had secure

(09:06):
attachment at home and you know, taught resilience and felt
safe in our home and our or in our system,
we we we cut off from It's in of course,
and miracles, it's they say, it's the descent from magnitude
into littleness or the moment that we forgot to laugh
and yeah, big ones, Yeah, it's so sad. It's so sad.

(09:29):
And I believe that those of us who find our
way back to a spiritual longing, like you, like myself,
anyone listening, we begin the journey of undoing the fear
based belief systems that we picked up and remembering and
you just said, reclaiming that innocence and remembering the love
within us, remembering the greatness within ourselves and within the

(09:53):
presence of that spiritual connection. So we do in many
ways cut off from It's like in my new book
Happy Days, I have this whole passage about how we
we we we It's as if our soul departs and
we have this these moments of whether they be trauma
or small T trauma, big T trauma, whatever it is
that happens in our childhood, we cut off from that

(10:16):
presence of spirit and we build up a wall against it.
And so this is, you know, being on a spiritual
path is about on learning that fear and remembering love.
And uh so, I just wanted to just really drive
home what a profound mentioned that is of where we
are when we're children, and then what we have to
almost we almost have to we have to reparent ourselves

(10:39):
to come back to that spiritual practice. Absolutely, but as
it relates to the religion, I mean I can speak
briefly about that. So, um, my family wasn't quite religious,
but I was brought up in a Jewish home and
was very very into And I don't know if this
is for you you started your career at a young age,
but you know, for me, I think I did do

(10:59):
in that real I sing it because I was the
president of this regional Jewish youth group and I was
like leading these I was leading these like spiritual weekends
in these temples throughout Westchester County, and I was like fourteen,
like hosting these spiritual retreats, and and fast forward, you know,

(11:19):
ten years later, that was what I was doing for
my career. So I think that you know, we have
we can't underestimate the things we do by choice, and um,
but that But but for me, religion has a soft,
gentle place in my heart because it was the first
introduction to spirituality beyond my mother was in a Sleepway

(11:39):
camp that was Jewish and in these retreats and just
opening up my awareness to what that meant. I love that.
I love that you started that at fourteen. That's so cool.
That's like me walking on stage. That's exactly in your
new book you And I think a lot of your
work in general talks about, you know, the concept of
goal of happiness, and I was just wondering for you,

(12:03):
how do you define that word, because I think it
can mean so many different things to different people. Happiness
for me is waking up without anxiety. It's please, can
I have a day of that? That would be great?
It's uh, it's um, it's it's being present. When I

(12:26):
when I wrote Happy Days, I started to dive into
my own trauma recovery. And that's what I share about
in this book and the and I did a lot
of semantic experiencing work, which is the work of Peter Levine,
and it's a body based therapy, mind body therapy really,
and Peter says that trauma is the inability to be

(12:47):
present mhm. And so for me, presence is the opposite
of being in a traumatic state, and presence is his happiness.
And a lot of people throw around the word presence
in the spiritual community, but I want to really, you know,
give it its voice. So presence is that felt sense,

(13:08):
as they say in the sc language, the felt sense
of of looking into my son's eyes and just feeling
my whole heart explode with joy, or holding my kitten
and just like feeling her energy just going into me.
And presence is meeting you right here right now and

(13:29):
not thinking about having to jump off the call and
get my dinner, you know, just being with you and
being in the dance of of of dialogue right And
so that's happiness to me. That that's that that presence
is something that I longed for my whole life and
finally hates here and it's so red that's amazing. I
I find myself going in and out of presence often,

(13:52):
and I know you talk about this a lot with
the trauma and the body, and like right now, I
can feel myself like my body has a lot have
a lot of body anxiety a lot of the time.
Although I'm very present and here, it's like and I
find myself throughout the day kind of going in and
out of of presence and what I'm able to receive.

(14:14):
I think receiving is such a huge piece of my
own journey and learning to receive, like you're saying, being
with your son and like actually looking in his eyes
and being able to to take him in. I think
sometimes when we've lived in trauma alright, still have that
trauma experience going through the body, it's almost like it

(14:34):
puts up a block to being able to receive the
fullness of what is in front of us. Yeah, definitely,
And you know, I think what you're saying also something
to be really compassionate towards yourself, because tight trading in
and out of that presence is actually a really sure
sign of your recovery because you can touch into it

(14:55):
and then the protector part of you, the anxiety is
like too much better to go out and then and
then it can go back in and it can come back.
But the fact that you can even touch into it
briefly is miraculous, right. It's it's it's a slow recovery.
And that's why I like the word recovery, because it's

(15:16):
you're recovering your peace, and when it's blown out because
of trauma, it's like you've got a lot of broken pieces.
You've got to kind of pull back together, and so
it's slow, and it's gentle, and it's a compassionate process,
and it's a careful process, and it's not the kind

(15:39):
of thing we want to rip off the band aid
too quickly. But we are going to step away quickly
for a quick break. But we'll be right back with more.
Gabby Bernstein, welcome back, my loves. Gabby and I were

(15:59):
talking about the sometimes tricky and tender process of healing trauma.
And I'm trained in something called internal family Systems therapy.
I've done their level one training and I write about
it in Happy Days and in i f S. We
have all these different it's considered that we have different
parts of ourselves, and we all have protector parts. And

(16:21):
then we have exiled children's. The exiled children are the
traumatized little girls in us. You know, the traumatized children
in us that that are terrified to come forth. They
have shame, they carry fear, they're just they're locked up.
And the way we lock them up is by building
up these protection mechanisms and protector parts. And anxiety is
a protector part. And so we have to thank the

(16:43):
anxiety right now for its service in keeping keeping that
little girl you know, not from blowing up and exploding
it all at once. Right, So it's like it's been
doing its job and slowly but surely through this journey
of that past decade of recovery, it this this anxiety
part has been becoming less and less extreme. M And

(17:05):
it's not that we want to shun these parts of ourselves.
Like the anxiety part isn't a bad part of you,
it's not a bad part of me. It's it's actually
in many ways, like I can even look back at
the cocaine addict part and say thank you, you kept
me safe. And that was all I could do at
the time was do drugs. You know, that was what
I could do then, Right. And so to look and

(17:25):
be very fond and compassionate towards these protection mechanisms, these
protector parts, is is very very important because it's not
about shunning those parts of ourselves. It's about helping them
become less extreme. And the way we do that is
through is through connecting to what in I f S

(17:45):
we call Self and for you you might call that
your spiritual presence or higher self. For God and Self
is compassionate, courageous, calm, curious, right, it's creative. And so
you know, for yourself, and I can speak for this too.
When when you're when you're when you're creating music, you're

(18:08):
you're in self. Right when you're doing this podcast, you're
in self, You're when you're And so when we start
to assume those qualities curiosity, courage, creativity, connectedness, that's when
we start to soften the protectors. And yeah, there's a
lot in one, you know, little Riff, but no, it

(18:30):
is beautiful. It's very complex, and you're right about that.
Like I can sit here and know that there are
there's so many parts of me that are here, like
they're you know, there's the little girl who's terrified of
like getting it wrong, and then there's the protector part
of me, which is the anxiety of like you know,
trying to like you know, trying to protect that little
girl make sure she does everything right. And then there's

(18:53):
you know, there is self that's here. And I love
that you I love that you call itself in this
book because it doesn't seem so far outside of us anymore,
Like it becomes a piece of who we are because
I know that you know, we talk a lot about
the higher we call it higher self. But I almost
feel like that's even too far out. It's like self

(19:15):
becomes it becomes a piece of you. And I think,
you know, when we think about God and spirituality, sometimes
it feels so far outside of us. And I love
that self piece. I mean, I know you just talked
about some of the qualities of self. What's your favorite
way to get in touch with that piece of you? Oh?

(19:37):
What a beautiful question. Thank you. Um Well, I believe
compassion for me is the portal to self because one
of the ways that I have been able to calm
and soothe my protector parts, you know, the controller or
the every one called knives out, like when she feels judged,

(19:57):
she's like fuck you you know so um or you
know my former anxiety and you know just you know,
different all these different parts. Do you have a name
for your anxiety part? Sorry didn't, um Well, I would
reference that part as the Tasmanian devil because the visual
I had, The visual I had was literally just like
this like spinning demon, you know, just like this devil

(20:19):
going like like in circles like a tornado. And so
having those visuals really are helpful because it's about befriending
and getting to know these parts of ourselves. And then
when we notice the part, we noticed the part, and
we just notice what's up in our body when the
part is there, and we can ask ourselves some questions
about it. What do I know about this part? You know,
how old is it? Does it have a gender? Does

(20:41):
it have something it wants me to know? Right? And
then we can ask the parts, what do you need?
What do you need right now? And I mean it's
it's it's truly profound to have that kind of dialogue.
And then when I asked the part what it needs,
it usually says something like I need a hug, or
I need to breathe, or I need to create a

(21:02):
boundary right now. And that's when compassion can swoop right
in and say, you're doing a good job, You're doing
the best you can. I'm here to help. Let's do
some let's do some breath, Let's set that boundary, let's
step back. And God, when you that when you start

(21:25):
to let that voice of compassion or curiosity or courage,
when that voice starts to when that presence of self
starts to lead your internal family system, like all the
parts of you or your little family. Then you become
what Dick Shorts called self lead and living in that
self led ways, living and living living in communication with

(21:47):
God and living living led by inspiration and intuition and
and love. I mean, self becomes the greatest parents. That's
exactly right, that you just nailed it. So self becomes
the internal parent and so all the things that we
did not get from our parents. And in fact, there's
a whole chapter and Happy Days called reparenting yourself. And

(22:10):
I lean on a lot of these self meditations and
connecting to self. And the beauty is the more direct
access that we get to that self energy, the more
the internal parent can lead m hm. And what that
does is it takes the pressure off the employees, It
takes the pressure off the husband, and takes the pressure

(22:31):
off the parents who just couldn't do it. You know,
it takes and it allows you to feel fully resourced
and resilient. Yeah, I know totally. I know one of
the you just said takes the pressure off the husband
and the employees. And I know one of the biggest
shifts for me because I did depend on at a
certain point my husband and you know, the people around

(22:52):
me too, to fill me up, and it was like, oh,
my relationships really started changing when it started to come
from the inside. Now, don't get me wrong. If I
need to lean on people, that's absolutely something that I
do and ask for, but I also know that I'm
I can be there for myself. And there was a

(23:13):
point in my life where I'm like I had there
was no access to me being able to self source
and that was a huge shift in my relationships. Absolutely, Yeah,
And the codependent part kept you safe for as long
as that part did, and that was what that part needed.
And I I you know, I also want to acknowledge

(23:34):
that that even when we start to resource and care
for ourselves, that does not take away the importance of
the bond to others. You know. I started to study
attachment science and I write about it in the book
as well. And the more we establish healthy bonds to partners, lovers, parents, children,

(23:57):
really not our children to us particularly right those those
healthy bonds are, particularly in romantic relationships, extraordinary because when
you have that secure attachment to a partner, it actually
gives you the freedom to be more creative. It gives
you the freedom to be taking bigger, more risks and

(24:18):
be more courageous in life. So attachment is actually our
biological necessity and it's not something to be like, oh,
you know, I've got it all into control. I'm going
to take care of myself, you know. But of course
like attachment and the anxious attachment, you know that co
independent behaviors takes us to another extreme. So the goal
is the more we become secure in our own system,

(24:40):
the more secure our relationships become. Yeah. Absolutely, I want
to touch upon attachment style way because you you do
key into that in this book, and it's such an
important part of of your healing. Why is that such
an important thing to know when it comes to our
own healing? So it's extremely valuable to understand your attachment style.

(25:02):
Our attachment styles are imprinted when we're young based on
our relationship to our parents. Uh. In the book, I
reference for different types of attachment styles, but we can
typically what you hear people talk about is the relationship
attachment styles, and there's three of them, and typically as
it relates to romantic relationships, but this goes for pretty
much all relationships. There's secure, there's anxious, and then there's avoidant.

(25:26):
And those people who have a secure attachment grew up
in likely in a household where they could rely on
their parents. Their parents were steady, They created, they saw,
they were seen, they were soothed. They were not just
feeling safe literally, but safe emotionally, and they knew there
was somewhere to go. Whereas an anxiously attached person and

(25:46):
a formerly anxiously attached person, uh, grew up in a
home where there was you know, you weren't sure what
you were going to get each day with that parent.
There was an inconsistency, not a lot of reliability. Um,
you know, a lot of feelings of you know, I
gotta I gotta fawn and cling to get that that connection. Um.

(26:07):
Whereas an avoidant attachment, you know, there was just a
neglect and uh, the belief was instilled that if I
don't do it, nobody else will. And I had a
little bit of both. I was going to say, can
you have a mix of hell you too? I had both.
I had both, and that's you know, ultimately an insecure
attachment style. And um, the more awareness that we have
about our own attachment styles, the more we can understand

(26:28):
why we are so you know, wacky in relationships at
times or why we get so triggered in certain situations,
and then we can also understand why we attract certain
types of people, and then understanding our partners attachment styles
or our coworkers attachment styles really helps because you can say, Okay,
you know that person is is you know, super activated

(26:49):
right now. They're not crazy, They're just in a flood
of emotion because they are you know, their anxious attachment
style has been activated. And you know I made this quiz.
I us to actually launched this quiz on what's your
attachment style? I just took it this morning. Okay, so
what are you what? I am an anxious attachment? I
feel like i'm I'm I'm leaning more on secure, but

(27:12):
still very anxious. If that's gonna say, I was gonna say,
because you've done so much work by my guess is
that historically you've been anxious, but there's secure that's so
present now. So it's almost hard to answer the questions
because you're probably like answering them like based on how
you thought you were, you know, and that's how I
did it too. I was like, if I if I
answered this about you know, who I was for most

(27:33):
of my life, it's very anxious. But if I started
to answer it like how I feel today in this moment,
it's secure. So I think that's we're probably very much
in the same boat there. Yeah, for sure. One of
the things that you touch upon in your book is
chronic shame, which I think is so it's so present
for so many of us. I'm you know, I've always said,

(27:54):
like the core wound for everyone I feel like is
I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy of whatever it may be.
What constitutes chronic shame for you? And then what ways
cannot show up in the body? How do we know
we're in chronic shame? Yeah, chronic shame is shame without repair.

(28:15):
So when we're children and we don't have that secure
attachment to a parent, we don't have the resources to
repair the moments of shame that we all are going
to experience, Right, we're all going to have. But the
more resilient we are, the more secure attachment we have
with their parents, the more resilient we are, so we

(28:35):
can have a shame shameful experience. But we know I
am lovable and I am adequate because that has been
what I've experienced in my My most important attachment bond
to my parents or my caregiver. And so I'm confident
that my son Oliver, who has a very secure attachment
with three different figures, me, my husband, and his nanny
who you know, who are all extremely valuable people in

(28:57):
his life, will likely have a pretty good sense of
resilience in those moments of shame because he's been brought
up with a secure attachment style God willing knocking on
all the wood in my office. But but but for
those of us who didn't have that growing up, we
never were given the ability or the the safety in
our nervous system to be resilient to rebound in the

(29:21):
in those experiences of shame. And so when shame is
not resourced in the moment or as a child, because
there isn't that presence of security, what it becomes is
a exiled part of us that we just keep running
from for decades. And so we run from it with addiction,
We run from it with anxiety, We run from it
with workaholism, we run from it with relationships, We run

(29:44):
from it with all the forms of of of protection
mechanisms we build up. And it's extreme, and shame is
the most impermissible feeling and what is underneath the shame,
the belief that we are unlovable and inadequate. It My therapist,
you know, helped me understand this early on, and I
was like, holy shit, you know, and we actually up

(30:07):
a lot of associated beliefs about ourselves, you know, I live.
I was like, I am extremely adequate, I'm extremely lovable,
and I built up a world that was proving that
to me, but I didn't feel it on the inside. Wow, yeah,
I relate to that so much. I feel like I
had this really inflated, you know, I am bigger than
everyone and everything belief As I mean, I feel like

(30:29):
it's also such a part like you have to have
this kind of ego piece of you that can go
out and do and be bigger than life, and then
you know, when my whole world can coint of crashing
down around me. In my late twenties, it was almost
like the pendulum swung to the other side of like
I'm horrible, I'm a bad person, I'm you know, unlovable

(30:52):
and obviously I feel like that belief had been deeply
buried underneath that inflated piece of me, and it was
like when the pendulum swung. I started to get all
of these like I had fears around things, even performance
where I didn't have them before. And it's been a
really tender road back to finding the balance of the

(31:15):
two UM. And I'm still on that road because I
feel like it's you know, to bring to bring that
authenticity and the the humaneness to what I do that
can sometimes demand those larger than life pieces of me. UM.
It feels, Yeah, it feels tender and scary sometimes, and

(31:38):
it's it is amazing how I've noticed that that that massive, inflated,
you know, part of me that used to exist. Um,
was there one for protection of these that feeling of
I'm not I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough. Yeah,
But also what a good job that part did, What

(32:00):
great service and you know, extraordinary art that part brought
into the world. So, as Dick Schwartz says, there's no
bad parts, they just become extreme. And so you said, oh,
you know, I'd like to get these parts into balance. Well,
I think that the way is about helping them become
less extreme, right, so you can actually have that ego part,

(32:23):
let's not even call it an ego that like, you know,
forward facing, profound whatever you want to call it, right,
but it just doesn't and and and it can be
that big, and it can be that bright, and it
can be that exposed in in a non extreme way. Yeah,
And I think that's been my journey. And that's been Yeah,
it's been. No, it's knowing knowing your bigness and your greatness,

(32:47):
but also alongside of that in lies your your deepest humanity.
And there's such a it's such a profound place to
come from. I'm gonna I'm gonna cry talking about it
because it's like, Wow, I think the gift once we
once we are able to bring that piece of ourselves

(33:08):
into those we are all of those pieces. Really, it's
once you're able to bring all of those pieces of
yourself into the world, like that gift that you're able
to not only give yourself, but the people in which
you are singing to, speaking to, sharing life with becomes
that gift is so deep and it's so profound, and
it's a feeler right now. It's um, it's very moving,

(33:32):
very very moving. It's very moving. What you're referring to
is self. It's showing up. You're just right there with self,
and and it's just bringing self to all the other
parts so that the parts can do their jobs, but
not in an extreme way. And so you know, my

(33:52):
controller part is really valuable. You know, she wrote nine
books in eleven years, and she you know, she Lea.
It's a team of twenty five people, and you know
she's she's really good. But when she's not an asshole, right,
So it's you know, it's just just helping them be
just just really taking on their role in a way

(34:12):
that's that's not so extreme. Yeah, when it comes to
to the body, when I related so deeply to your
chronic t MJ and your your stomach issues, I mean,
do you think this was that was a I know
it was a manifestation of trauma, but do you I mean,
was there a specific way that shame showed up in
your body for you? Was there? Or is it just

(34:34):
like trauma in general? Yeah, So shame is the root cause.
Anxiety is the protector. Anxiety creates the gastro the jaw,
the migraines, the insomnia, the you know. So it's it's
almost like these layers are built up and so the
body is just really just consistently responding with anxiety as

(34:59):
a way of protecting from feeling into the impermissible shame.
So when we start to recognize that there's that psychosomatic effect,
and again there's a whole chapter on this one too.
I mean, there's so much packed into happy days, but
the the when we start to understand that psychosomatic experience
that we're having, we can then begin to address. Yes

(35:24):
of always addressing the physical. We never want to ignore
a body, right, so I had to, of course, you know,
medication at times for my stomach or whatever it might be,
but to simultaneously, most importantly address the root cause of
the condition, which is the impermissible feelings that we just
work so hard to run from. And I think actually
that's what this book is most about, is really giving

(35:46):
people the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and
inner peace, which is the subtitle. But that guided path
is the gentle, slow, peaceful, guided path of slowly noticing
and touching into and and accepting and acknowledging and healing
and soothing and repairing those gentle parts of ourselves that

(36:11):
need so much love. And we need to take a
quick break here, but we'll be right back, I promise.
Welcome back, friends, Gabby and I are navigating the guided
path from trauma. Yeah, I know you keep saying the

(36:34):
gentle path that. It's so funny because sometimes I just
want to rip the band aid off. It's like, can
we just get can we get to the other side?
And I heard so many of us have I'm sure
listening that I've done years and years of work. It
can be exhausting and it can feel like you want
to rush. But then I've been doing detox on my body,
and I remember when I first started, like five months ago,

(36:56):
I was like, oh, I'm gonna just jump in and
take all the things. And I took two much of
this dropper that pulls out heavy metals, and I felt
awful for twenty four hours, and I was like, oh,
I learned my lesson. And I think that's true in
dealing with trauma. Um. Sometimes we have to learn our
lesson and actually pull the band aid off, and then

(37:18):
we're like, Okay, I'm going to take this a lot slower.
And it is a process. It is definitely a process. Yeah,
we want to be careful not to rip off the
band aige too fast because that can just really shock
our system. Yeah, and so yeah, it's slow. Something you
mentioned too that I don't. I think it is not
spoken about enough. And the process of healing is grief.

(37:41):
And I know for me, I've definitely noticed my shame.
I know I've gotten to that point where I'm like, okay,
I know, I know that paced place of me really well.
And now I'm I'm on a new level of understanding
grief for myself because and it grief has no time line,
like it shows up whenever. I mean, right before we

(38:03):
jumped on here, I was crying because I was just
there was a moment of of grief for me. And
there's no there's no necessarily there's no you know, reason
why that it's happening. It just comes. And that's been
a new journey for me on my healing, is to
allow for grief to show up whenever it needs to

(38:27):
show up. And I just wondered if you could talk
a little bit about grief and why that is such
a huge part of this process of healing. Yeah, for
some reason, I'm drawing to try to find this passage
in the book where I write about grief at the
end of the book. Let me see if I can
while I talk, I'm gonna see if I can find
something here. Um, But when we experience grief, it's actually

(38:52):
a really beautiful sign that recovery is close touching into grief.
Here we go lean, Okay, here, let's see what I
wrote I don't remember. Let's see, um, when we experienced
a trauma, big tea or small tea. It says, if
a part of our soul departs, there's a splitting off

(39:12):
from a sense of safety into exiled parts filled with
terror and fear. We become fragmented, frozen, and lost in
the subconscious without a clear path. I always felt this split.
I just couldn't name it. It was far too scary
to face the fact that an innocent part of myself
had been so burdened. When I was twenty seven, I

(39:34):
did his sole retrieval energy session with a shamanic healer.
The session was designed to connect me to the child
parts of myself that had been cut off. I remember
the shaman saying that there is a little girl around
the age of five or six, and she has lost
in a forest. The shaman explained that she saw this
child filled with fear and terror. At the time, I

(39:55):
had no recollection of what had happened in my past
but I felt the truth of her word deep within
my body. I knew a part of me had been lost,
but I was so far from accepting that truth, let
alone grieving it. Grief is a deep emotion that we
often don't feel safe enough to face. It lives beneath
the shield of rage and in the shadow of heartbreak.

(40:18):
It feels too painful to contemplate the grief of our
past wounds. And I'll read one more paragraph. We often
consider grief and an appropriate emotion only when we've experienced
a socially acceptable loss, such as the death of a
loved one or a divorce, or too ashamed or too
unaware to give voice to the hidden grief that lingers

(40:39):
in the shadows of our traumatic wounds. What we're afraid
to accept is that our separation from safety, from peace,
or from freedom was a loss in itself. It's a
loss of innocence, the loss of a secure attachment, a
peaceful childhood, a sense of inner safety. Those losses are

(40:59):
hard to accept and hard to grieve. M And it's
it's it's so interesting because grief, what I what I'm
saying here is the grief of the loss of our
innocence and so well and to to the point of

(41:20):
what I was saying, also, is it's acceptable to be
grieving loss of a loved one or loss of a child,
or a loss of whatever, job or anything. But what
we never really live give ourselves the permission or even
we we we often are far too afraid to touch
into the truth that we have this innocence that we
have to grieve, the loss of innocence that we have

(41:42):
to grieve. Yeah, I think we always equate grief with
a specific event, like you're saying the death or divorcer,
and it's we don't realize the ripple effects of so
many things. I mean, I know people, you know this
last couple of years have lost so much and we
think grief has to be some big but there's so
many greeks, like little grievance and griefs that we go through. Um,

(42:06):
I feel like on a daily basis, like I feel
like I wake up I think my heart is just
that big and open, but I feel like I wake
up to grief every day, like there's something it's just
a piece of it's a piece of life that we
don't we don't want to face, but it's there and

(42:26):
it can also break you open to something so sweet,
like there's love. To me, grief kind of lives right
alongside of that beautiful, expansive space of love. Yeah, And
I really want to emphasize my therapist help me understand
that being able to touch into grief is a sign
that you've done a tremendous amount of work on yourself,

(42:48):
because you the decade that you've spent that I've you know,
the decades I've spent working on myself have helped us
get to the place where we can have you awareness
that there's even something to grieve, and it's that you
know that loss of innocence, but grief also shows up
for just like you said, we all had a lot

(43:11):
of loss, and I'm still grieving something very big that
happened to me in November. So I spent doing IVF
treatment to try to conceive a second child, and I
became pregnant after nine rounds of treatment, and I got
a healthy embryo tested him. I was pregnant for five
and a half months, and then in in November, I

(43:34):
was told that the baby wasn't growing and he wasn't
getting what he needed, and there was a lot of
things wrong, and there was no wasn't like I had
a choice, which I'm grateful for, and so I had
to let that child go. And just this past week,
I have decided that I am not going to try
to have another child in any in any form. And

(43:58):
while that feels good to be definitive and to have
that clarity and to you know, have even attempted one
more try. And there was a plan I had that
was like, Okay, if God wants me to do this,
you know, one more round of IVF and surrogate and
the whole thing, and if it wasn't gonna work, it
was over and it's over. And so for me, I
realized that while I'm really thriving and going through the

(44:21):
grief with grace, to your point, it's going to come
in and it's going to step out and it's gonna
you know, just like, um, my girlfriend came over. She
has a son that's two years younger than mine, and
I gave her the you know, I gave her the
old stroller, and I gave her the you know, the toys,
and I gave her some clothes. And that was like
a moment of grief because I'm like, oh, I'm not
holding onto this anymore. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

(44:45):
I feel like there's lost dreams, there's past versions of ourselves.
I feel like there's even the versions that we didn't
or weren't our best versions. I would say there's there's
something about those two to grieve because I mean even
with the growth that when we grow, there's and when

(45:06):
you when you know more and you you experience more,
and you you grow within yourself, there's even the protector parts,
like the there's always something there to to grieve. I feel, Yeah,
and that's been I think one of my biggest, my
biggest pieces is like, Okay, I've had to grieve all

(45:27):
of these different past versions of myself incruditly, including that
loss of innocence for sure. Yeah. Yeah, grieving the past
versions of ourselves. That's a big one, totally. Yeah. I
want to touch back on spirituality form like how how
has your spiritual journey changed? I mean, I'm sure going

(45:48):
through going through what you did with UM with IVF
and like I feel like, I'm sure every experience like
that changes us and maybe maybe deep and sometimes maybe
it repels people away from their spiritual journey. I know
for me, like sometimes I just don't. It's it's almost
too much for me to sit in it because of

(46:11):
of an experience that I've had that I've had that
I will now have to face. So how is something
like that, how does that change your own or does
it deepen your spirituality? Or how has that shifted for you? Well?
I think that it depends. It's there's different seasons. And
for me when I my spiritual practice was my savior
for so many years, and then at thirty six, I

(46:35):
actually remembered remembered to dissociated trauma, which is what I
read about in the book, which is this this this
memory of of one my soul departed truly, and it
was the memory of being sexually abused as a child.
And in the early days of the early days, like
the first two years of that memory coming to fruition,

(46:55):
I was really disconnected spiritually, like I felt out of
my buddie. I was. It was really hard to sit
and meditate, It was really hard to hear that connection.
And then in writing my book The Universe Has Your Back,
I almost like restored the connectionally. That book healed me
on such a deep, soulful level, and I wrote it

(47:17):
around that time of remembering the trauma, and so for me,
the writing was a big portal back to spirit and
just super super aligning me because when you right for yourself,
first do you remind yourself of what you know to
be true? And then of course that's going to have
an impact on others. Uh, And then you know, I
wrote a bunch of other books after that and continue

(47:40):
to remind myself and remind myself, and so now here
today that spiritual connection is extraordinary and it's so present.
And when I had the loss of my son Owen,
I was able to witness, you know, once I got
passed that, I had to do a d n E
and one I got past the surgery and sort of

(48:01):
into the recovery. The second week, I was like, holy
sh it, this is what you've been training for, you know,
this is what you've been counseling women on for decades,
and here you are really living it. And my faith
just held me like a pillow. It was like I
fell into this pillow of faith and it was so

(48:22):
loud and so strong, and I could feel the presence
of that baby, and I felt that there was another
presence coming. And now I'm you know, clear that that
presence may not become it. It's just sort of letting
it be guiding in and out of of of that sensation.
And so the faith is a muscle, and the more

(48:43):
we exercise it, the more it will be there for us.
I love that. It's so interesting. Your book came to me,
of course the perfect time, because repressed memory is is
something that's been something that's been coming up for me
a lot lately, and I don't I don't actually went
when I started to have these memories come through. I

(49:06):
don't remember clearly, which I know you've discussed too. UM.
Actually started googling it because I'm like, Okay, is this
a real thing? Am I making this up? Like you know,
I I didn't know where to turn. And this was
like maybe a couple of months ago, and then your
book came out, and I'm like, oh, there's someone who's

(49:26):
discussing this UM for the first I mean, I really,
like I said, I hadn't heard much about it. So
I felt like for me, it was the first time
someone was really speaking on repressed memories and how they
can live in the body and how we might not
even when we start to reclaim those memories. UM, how
they might not fully come, you know, and how that was.

(49:50):
You know, it's really a defense mechanism. It's a genius
that our mind and our body can do this. But
I just wanted to say thank you, because yeah, you're
really first person who I've heard talk about that, so thinks, yeah,
And I just wanna you know, I wanna hold you,
and how scary it is, and I want to really

(50:13):
just extend tremendous amount of compassion to you and love
to you because it's when you have a when you
have a dissociated memory, that's exactly right. It's very beneficial
for the period of time because it's not going to
blow out your whole system and send you to a
psych word, you know. But eventually we kind of get

(50:34):
our way to the psych word and whatever form that comes,
because it's too much to bear in our body and
in our in our life. Because it well, it may
be tucked away and locked up, that memory, it still
shows up in every single reaction we have and every
single emotional reaction, every single nervous system response, and so
that becomes very very hard to live with. And then

(50:57):
facing into the truth of those memories is is a
whole other level of of trauma as well. And so
it sounds like you might be in the middle of
kind of accepting and embracing and and and it's um,
it's scary, and I just want to acknowledge that it's very,

(51:18):
very scary, and you know, I think that. And the
good news is is that you don't have to recover
all the memories, right, and you don't have to see
it all and you don't have to you know, you
can heal the emotional disturbance through the practices I teach
and I share about in Happy Days and E M
d R Somatic Experiencing I F S. These are all

(51:41):
beautiful practices that really work on a very subconscious, spiritual level.
And so I want to assure you that you don't
have to remember everything. Yeah, yeah, And that's I think
that's anybody out there who's listening, I think you know
that may have a feeling that something has happened to them,
or they they know that the trauma is there, but

(52:03):
I haven't. They don't have a full full memory of it.
I I want I just want hope they hear, because
this is something I feel like I needed to hear,
is that you're not making it up and you're not crazy,
and it's it's possible to expre experienced trauma every day
that you don't have that full full awareness of yeah,

(52:29):
and when and and so they're very very important conversation.
So glad that we're going here, So we will be
reliving it every day until we process it, because what
it is is it's a moment in time where we
went into the such an extreme state of arousal because
of this fear based experience that happened. Then we froze

(52:51):
and dissociated and checked out from it. But the the
nervous system response is on a neural loop, right, So
it's just it's like anything that triggers the feelings of
being unsafe or out of control, we'll just boom, there
it is again. There it's again. So we're reliving that
trauma daily. But that's something so historical. So it's like

(53:13):
we may not be in that threat in this moment.
We're just you know, the Internet just went out, right,
but that feels like such a threat that we go
into this extreme place of hyper arousal. And so and
then that constant state of hyper arousal puts us into
that paris sympathy, that sympathetic nervous system which just rocks
our body. Rocks are energy levels, rocks our relationships. And

(53:35):
so the thing that's really important now is to just
very slowly. And that's why I think body based work
is so valuable when it comes to trauma recovery, because
too slowly. And I'm gonna give you a few things
that i want you to use right now in this
period of your life. The whole hearth holds, so like
the gin to, it's too holds. So putting one of

(53:55):
your hands on your heart, in the other hand on
your belly and just grounding with breath with a hold,
and you could do the same with the heart with
your with your hand on your head, on your forehead,
and your hand on your belly, and meditate in this position,
you know, and whenever you notice yourself triggered and activated,
come back to this hold and breathe in that diaphragmatic

(54:20):
breath in that place. And then another great one is
just tapping on what's known as the gamut point is
the point it is e f T. It's emotional freedom technique,
and it's the point between your ring finger and your
pinky finger, and you would tap on that point and
you could just say to yourself, I am safe, I
am safe, and then breathe and just say I am safe,

(54:44):
I am safe. And when I was in that that
period that you're referring to, just sort of covering and
being almost like you're catapulted back into it, it's terrifying.
This was the safe here for me. I would just
be in the car tapping way, you know, and it
really really help me to just just tight tra in
and out of that safety. Yeah. Well that's great too,

(55:05):
because you can do it. You can do it in
public anywhere, and the hold you can do anywhere, and
breath you have with you all the time, and and
you know, I think it's I think it's it's it's
also you know, and it's it's it's heartwarming to know
you don't have to recover the full memory. You just
have to fully process, right the energetic disturbance and on

(55:27):
that incredibly powerful note, we are going to pause for
a breath, but we'll be right back with more. Gabby Bernstein,
Welcome back, my friends. Gabby and I were just talking
about processing repressed memories and trauma. Yeah, I know, one

(55:52):
of the biggest pieces for me recently, like I went
into full freeze this morning and I had no idea why.
All my body was me is like, I just want
to be in a fetal position. So I literally I said,
you know, even if it's for thirty seconds, I'm going
to give that piece of me what it needs them
and I go lay in a fetal position and it
was I was able to move through it. But it's

(56:14):
you know, one of the biggest pieces for me that
I've learned is not going into story around things and
not having to, like, you know, it's so easy for
us to get in our head and so easy for
us to create stories, you know, around these emotions. And
one of the biggest things that I've learned is like, Okay,

(56:34):
there goes my story again. But what does my body need?
And how can I give it to it without having
to tell a story about it. It's just this is
what's here and this is what's needed. And it can
be just that simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it can just
be noticing what's up and asking what it needs. Sometimes

(56:57):
I feel like though, when we ask what it needs,
if that's not a question that we've asked ourselves a lot,
sometimes we'll be we'll be fumbling in the dark for
that need. It's like, well, I don't know, I don't
have an answer for that. Yeah, well that's why I like, um,
those three questions of what do I notice about how

(57:17):
I'm feeling right now? And this is something I used
very proactively all throughout my day. I'll give you an example.
The other day. I was I was right before Russia
invaded in the Ukraine, and just like the whole world
is just in complete chaos and terror. I was coming
off of extreme output. I just launched my books. I
was putting coming off of extreme output. Um. And then

(57:40):
I was parenting and you know, living life, and and
so I'm driving in the car with my kid, my
kids in the backseat, and he's like screaming like Bruno Bruno,
you know, and to listen to Encanto and I'm like
freaking out and I'm just and all of a sudden,
I noticed this sort of familiar feeling that I hadn't
had in a long time. And I was like, uh, Initially,

(58:01):
like okay, push it away and just keep driving, and
you know, put the music louder and pushed it down.
And then and then I was like, this is just
getting worse. And so then I did the practice in
the car while driving with the Bruno song, and I said, Okay,
what do I notice right now? I noticed that there's anxiety.
I noticed that there's that part that's up and it's
really tense in my chest and it's really clenching my jaw.

(58:23):
And it's that old anxiety of feeling out of control.
It's it's historical anxiety, it's recent anxiety. What else do
I know about it? I know, so I notice where
it is in my body, notice what it feels like.
What do I know about it? It's it's young, right,
It's a girl. She's she's really scared right now. And
then very quickly I said what do you need? And

(58:45):
she said, I need box breath, you know, so breathing
for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
And I just did it while I was driving my
kid and had a miraculous shift in that moment. And
it's hard to go from the extreme anxiety to the
box breadth, right, but if you start to just befriend it,

(59:06):
like I notice that that it's there, and I notice
what's up inside my system, and then I what do
I know about you? You know what, what do you want?
You know, what do you want me to know about you?
And then what do you need? And so it's it's
just it's a practice. And to your point right away,
you're gonna say, I don't know what that part is.
I don't know what the hell she's talking about. I mean,
I've been doing i FS for decades, so I have

(59:27):
it in me. But it's it's a practice. So really
just touching into what that part of your needs in
that moment. Yeah, And I think one of the one
of the things that I've learned too is like this
is where story sometimes comes in and plays and creativity
plays a huge part. It's like, Okay, I'm just gonna
let my creativity tell me what this is right now.
Like if I don't know what it needs, like let's

(59:49):
make let's let's create something, and Lyndon, let's trust that
that is the thing. That's where then it's like then
self comes in and it's like okay, and that's where
faith and their spiritual comes in. It's like I'm gonna
trust that what just showed up was exactly what needed.
What I could just create it is what I need.
That's why creativity is one of the qualities itself. And

(01:00:12):
so and when you think about it, like creativity and
anxiety can't coexist. Oh, I'm like, can they? When you're
in a creative flow state, right, anxiety can dissipate. Yeah,
it definitely can. But I do feel like for me,

(01:00:32):
at least they they can live alongside each other. But
the driving yes, yeah, yeah, but it's but it's you know,
really surrendering to the creative process. It puts you into
that flow state where that anxiety is not that's the forefront. Yeah,

(01:00:55):
for sure, for sure. I love this conversation. Thank you
so much for Oh my god, really, I really want
to hug you and I want to hang out with you,
and I love it. I just think that this is
the I mean, I only like big talk. This is
the only kind of conversation I want to agree. One
of the great privileges of this time that we're in

(01:01:16):
is that we get to connect with really soulful people
in this way. And you are my people to be
friends with you. Thank you. Do you live Do you
live in on the East Coast? Right? Yeah? Okay? Where
are you? I'm in l A. Yeah? Okay, cool. Actually
I have one more question for you. OK, yeah, no,
I always ask my guests because of course there's the

(01:01:37):
music piece involved. I am. I always ask my guests,
what are your holy five songs? These could be, this
could be from yesterday, these could be from your life,
like what has inspired you? And you know, I feel
like music is the sound obviously the soundtrack to our lives.
What's it's what weaves everything together? So what are your five?

(01:01:57):
There's a few. Um So Luca the Susanne Vega song
my name is Luca. I don't know, I don't know
if Yeah, my name is Luca. I live on like
that before, I live upstairs from you in retrot. It
was such a big song for me as a kid,
and I never knew why I loved it. I live

(01:02:20):
on the second floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes,
I think you've seen me before. You hear something late
and n and you have teenagers like the Emo teenagers. Right,
He's about a kid. I believe it's about a kid
that was being abused upstairs. And you know, I never

(01:02:46):
really dove into the lyrics. Yeah, yeah, big one for me. Um.
I love I love folk music, so I love Edie
Broquell's song Circle me. I'm a body of circle and
we notice you don't camerad and I love um Superstition

(01:03:15):
Stevie Wonder than your Back. It's such a hat song,
really good, happy song, so good. Um, I I love

(01:03:37):
I love Seagar Ross. I can't think of any of
the names of their songs, but oh yes, yeah, they're
the ones that sing without words basically, that's right. Yeah,

(01:04:03):
well it's like Norwegian. I mean, it's like another language.
I don't know exactly. Um, totally not giving any credit
to what this music is, but it um, it's music
that I meditated, meditated to for you know, when I
was really deepening my meditation practice, and so just you know,
when you meditate to music, it's just like the tones
can just like suck you right in really quickly. Um.

(01:04:24):
A girlfriend of mine is called Jai jug Diche and
she has extraordinary Cundalini music and so she has a
cover of Hallelujah that I birthed to and so that
for me is really extraordinary. Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. Um.

(01:04:52):
It's interesting because you know, I sing for everyone else,
but it's rare that I've but I but I've started
to use my voice for my own healing and um.
One of the things that comes up for me is,
and it's been really it's very fearful for me for
me to share, is that I like to sing without words.

(01:05:14):
And so when you just mentioned I can't think of
how you pronounced there. There you go, see grass Um.
Someone turned me onto them not long ago, and it
was the first time I had had seen anyone do
what I feel like I do in my privacy of
just like making sound and creating song but without words,
because sometimes I feel like sometimes I feel like words

(01:05:36):
can't express the fullness of like what I want to sound.
And so, yeah, so interesting that you just brought that up,
because I just discovered them the other day. I love that.
I feel like you're supposed to do something with that.
I will I do too. I feel like I'm supposed
to do something with it too. I'm just I think
I'm just starting to be able to even yeah exactly,

(01:05:58):
and first being able to heal with that, and then
I'm going to heal you, and then I'm just first
being able to talk about it like this is it's
like such a private piece of me that I'm like, oh,
I haven't And it also feels like something I haven't
shared with the world yet and don't need to at
the moment. But what I like so much about what
you're saying is this concept like our presence is our power, right,

(01:06:19):
you know, we can't rely on our words words. You know,
words are words are very impactful and they have a
lot of energy and their symbols, but words without the
presence of that energy kind of worthless. Right. So it's
like you're getting to almost like the true soul of
that energy in in your art. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

(01:06:44):
Thank you, thank you, Thank you so much. And that,
my friends, ends this really intense and I hope enlightening
episode of Holy Human. I want to thank Gabby Bernstein
for waiting and such deep waters with me, and I
would love to hear your thought. It's about our discussions,
so please share them with me in the comments wherever
you're listening. I truly love hearing from you well. And

(01:07:09):
on our next Holy Human, we're going to dive into
some topics that are dear to my heart and I
know many of yours too, which is cultivating a functional, fulfilling,
blended family while navigating the complications of step parenting. I'll
be joined by step mom Guru Jamie Scrimm Drawer for
some seriously honest and open conversation. But until then, please

(01:07:31):
take care of yourselves and one another, and I love you.
Holy Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of
I Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with LeAnn Rhymes
on the I Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
get the podcast that matter most to you.