Have you recently uncovered a deep-seated trauma from your childhood? Have you recently gone through a traumatic experience? Or maybe — like our guest today — both ring true for you.
Today’s guest has spent the better part of her adult life working through these challenges and writing books to help others. Her new book is titled, Happy Days: The Guided Path From Trauma to Profound Freedom And Inner Peace, and I’m excited to have her back on the show for her sixth appearance.
Gabby Bernstein is a dear friend, an international speaker, podcast host, and, of course, New York Times bestselling author. I’ve always left our conversations feeling inspired, motivated, and with more tools and resources to improve my life. So, make sure you check out those other episodes.
This episode’s conversation is a difficult one. Before you continue, we’d like to give you a heads up with a trigger warning: Gabby and I open up and are pretty vulnerable about the different heavy experiences we’ve both had to heal and face in our lives. We don’t just look at something that could have hurt you in the past; our aim is to give you tools on how to identify them, be aware of them, and then break through them as you begin to process and integrate the healing journey.
In this episode, we discuss the difference between big and little traumas, a framework to begin healing trauma in your own life, how to handle your response to being triggered in life, how to know if your coping mechanisms are truly helping or hurting you, and so much more.
I hope this helps you reflect, and I hope it gives you some tools and inspiration to process whatever you might be going through, whether it’s from your past or present. Let’s get started!
Who Is Gabby Bernstein?
Gabby or Gabrielle Bernstein is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of eight books. She has been featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a next-generation thought leader, and the Oprah Winfrey Network chose her to be a part of “Super Soul 100,” a group of 100 trailblazers who are aligned on a mission to bring a higher level of consciousness to the world.
She has also been featured on the Forbes “List of 20 Best Branded Women,” besides being named as one of Mashable’s “11 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts for Inspiration” and is one of YouTube’s 16 “YouTube Next Video Bloggers.” Gabby has even hosted the Guinness World Records’ largest guided meditation with Deepak Chopra.
In her weekly podcast, Dear Gabby, where she offers real-time coaching, straight talk, and BIG LOVE to her listeners. Her latest book, Happy Days: The Guided Path From Trauma to Profound Freedom And Inner Peace, shows that no matter what you’ve been through in life, you can have a future filled with freedom, inner peace, and happy days.
Gabby has appeared on The School of Greatness five times prior, on Episode 1,103, she shared how to manifest your dreams. In Episode 865, we spoke about healing trauma and spiritual freedom. In Episode 618, Gabby dove into faith over fear. In Episode 581, we had a fascinating chat about doing a judgment detox, and all the way back to our first conversation on Episode 391, she shared how to turn fear into faith.
What Is Trauma?
As an athlete, when you hurt yourself, you can’t keep playing until you heal whatever’s wrong, like a broken bone. It’s a bit harder in our emotional life. When we go through a breakup, we might not heal completely and just keep moving.
Gabby splits things into “Big T Traumas,” things like sexual abuse as a child, experiencing violence, living through a catastrophic event, or growing up in an alcoholic home, and then “Small T traumas” — things like being bullied, a teacher telling you you’re stupid, or even surviving COVID.
“Inside [traumatic] childhood developmental experiences is the shame, impermissible rage, feelings of inadequacy, and feelings of being unlovable. We build up different protection mechanisms around us to avoid facing those wounds. Protections could be an achievement, [which] looks good on the outside, [and] workaholism can be praised at times, [but] it can look like alcoholism [or] drug addiction, and we just create all these forms of protection around ourselves to never have to go there. What’s happened recently in COVID is when we’ve been struck with feelings of not being safe, feelings of being out of control, a lot of our typical coping mechanisms won’t work anymore.” – Gabby Bernstein
Typical coping mechanisms range from overeating to overworking, not working, numbing out, or even vegging out the sofa.
“I refer to coping mechanisms as protector parts. I am now trained in Internal Family Systems therapy. In IFS, we talk about ‘protectors,’ and what they protect us from. Those exiled child parts — those impermissible parts that we don’t want to ever go into. Sometimes we don’t even know that they’re a problem. … A workaholic may not yet know that’s a problem for them.” – Gabby Bernstein
Gabby suggests that even spiritual practices can become protectors. Going to every meditation class and doing kundalini yoga is far better than drinking, but it’s another form of protecting yourself from what’s deeper. It’s important to recognize whether we’re doing something to escape facing deeper issues or as part of our healing.
Let’s take an in-depth look at what the healing journey entails.
