Self-Sabotage, Nervous System Hacks & The Real Work of Growth | Rachel Gibler DSH #1204

I feel like I've gotten to the core and the root of what actually heals and not just get the things you want on your vision board and manifest your dream life.

It's like, okay, well, you're going to do that.

And if you get what you want, you're not going to be able to feel it.

And then you're going to be burnt out.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do vision boards every year.

They're fun, but it shouldn't be the main focus.

Right, exactly.

Or future scripting or doing the things that so many people teach from the top down, which is, you know, change your mindset, change your life.

Right.

Not realizing that the state of our body and the state of our nervous system is the thing that's actually driving us and driving our patterns and driving anything that's self-sabotaging and until we get that on board we're not going to be able to feel the thing that we created or we're going to continue to self-sabotage ourselves out of it right

all right guys got rachel here today it's spiritual podcast what a name thanks for coming on yeah thank you so much for having me what's been new with you this year Oh my gosh, so much.

I feel like

I have been on such a deep healing journey over the past two years.

It has completely changed my life and my business and my work.

And I know we'll go into it.

But yeah, I've,

yeah, I feel like I have been reborn.

I'm just getting out of my Saturn return.

So if any of your listeners know about that, that is when your life blows up.

So I've been on quite the journey over the last two years.

How to heal some of that childhood trauma.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, I didn't even know I had any.

And then I started healing it.

I was like, damn, I had a lot.

Yeah, and it keeps going.

There are layers of the onion.

And I've been doing this work for seven years and just realized that it continues to peel back the layers.

What was the first healing thing you tried out?

I've done so many different things and modalities.

But I mean, I guess to kind of tell you, just to understand kind of where I started, I guess I can start with my story a little so your listeners kind of get to know me a bit.

And I grew up as someone who was not into this work at all.

I don't know about you if you were.

I was skeptical.

Okay, I was a huge skeptic.

I thought a lot of this was bullshit, to be honest.

Growing up, and I would have considered myself atheist, and I wasn't spiritual.

I didn't have any belief outside of myself or anything.

And when I was 16 years old, my dad was killed in a freak accident, and it completely started my journey.

And

it started with an eight-year downward spiral until my early 20s.

And I was deep in partying and,

you know, going out and drinking.

tumultuous relationships.

And yet I had this like nagging internal feeling that everything I'd been through, like, this can't be all for nothing, you know?

Yeah, there has to be something else out there.

And when I was 23, I had a spiritual awakening after I was in a freak accident.

You had a near-death experience?

Well, it wasn't a near-death experience.

I just shattered my leg.

But it basically started where I was 23 years old.

I was working a corporate job that I hated in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, you know, just going out, blacking out on the weekends.

I just had no direction in my life at all.

And one day I was crying out.

It was like lunchtime.

And I just thought, oh my gosh, I just want time to stop so I can think for a second.

And as I know now, your wish is my command with the universe.

And two weeks later, I shattered my leg and had to take three months' medical leave.

So it stopped.

And I got a chance to think.

And

yeah, I was really gifted with that time of healing.

And a few weeks into my journey after my surgery, I was laying in my bed, a cast from my hip to my ankle.

And I just had this knowing, like, if I use this time wisely, everything I've been through won't be all for nothing.

And I started by Googling how to be happy.

Like I had no idea.

I've done that before.

Yeah, right.

Like, and I love telling that part of the story because anybody that's listening to this, it's like, it doesn't matter where you are on your journey.

Now, someone could look at you right and be like, oh, you've made it so far.

Look at me with my podcast or the things that I've done.

And there's like this gap, right?

And so people that are at their rock bottom moment, like I started by googling how to be happy.

I had never heard of self-development or mindset work or certainly not somatic work, nervous system work, which is what I am into and teach now.

But yeah, I started where my feet were and I started by googling that.

And I slowly got into what I call kind of the masculine side of self-development, which is like goal setting and waking up at 5 a.m.

and crushing it and hustling.

And it got me pretty far.

I went back and I quit my job.

I eventually started a podcast.

I got really into spirituality and manifestation and was doing all the things they tell you to do in this work, which is

journal and future script your life and decide what you want and connect to why you want it.

And it got me pretty far.

I found a lot of success with the podcast and with my coaching business.

And I woke up a few years ago and realized I am burnt out, I'm exhausted, and I have all the stuff I wanted on my vision board, and it didn't make me feel any better.

And that was the turning point of these last couple of years,

which is, yeah, getting into nervous system and somatic work and inner child healing and healing from the inside out.

Yeah, I have a very similar journey.

Yeah, I worked so hard, you know, 80 hours a week.

Yeah.

And that got me far.

But like you said, burnout, you can't avoid that.

Yeah.

You're working so hard waking up at five and sacrificing physical health to get success financially.

Yeah.

And it all comes from a dysregulated nervous system state if it's coming from a place of not enoughness.

And I

dove really deep into this over the last few years.

I spent three months in complete isolation doing this work.

Yeah, a year and a half ago.

So we can dive into that too.

But I tend to be extreme.

So I don't know about you, but that's extreme.

Yeah.

I went deep into

my own healing journey and just worked with a somatic therapist and myself.

Wow.

And

really, it changed everything for me.

The level of groundedness, the level of connection that I have with myself, because when we're dysregulated, we're completely disconnected from our intuition.

And so now

I feel like I've gotten to the core and the root of what actually heals and not just get the things you want on your vision board and manifest your dream life.

It's like, okay, well, you're going to do that.

And if you get what you want, you're not going to be able to feel it.

And then you're going to be burnt out.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do vision boards every year.

They're fun, but it shouldn't be the main focus.

Right, exactly.

Or future scripting or doing the things that so many people teach from the top down, which is, you know, change your mindset, change your life.

Right.

Not realizing that the state of our body and the state of our nervous system is the thing that's actually driving us and driving our patterns and driving anything that's self-sabotaging.

And until we get that on board, we're not going to be able to feel the thing that we created or we're going to continue to self-sabotage ourselves out of it.

Right.

Self-sabotage.

Man, I do that still to this day.

Yeah.

What are some of the things, if you don't mind me asking?

The biggest one for me that I can recall is friendships.

So whenever someone got too close to me, I would push them away.

And I was like, why am I doing this?

They could be my best friend and then I would just push them away.

Yeah, the fear of the intimacy.

Yeah, it must have been intimacy or something.

I don't know.

But that to me was the biggest one.

So what's been your work?

Like, have you started to work through it?

Now it's just basically opening up.

I would hold emotions back and not speak them.

Because my attachment style was avoidant from my childhood trauma.

When my parents would yell at me, I would just go to my room, shut down.

So I've been working on that.

Yeah.

Well, and to your point,

our attachment styles and our trauma, the way that we handle things, they're really smart protection mechanisms that we have, right?

There's like nothing to shame ourselves about or to blame ourselves for.

It's just an awareness that we get to have.

And then we get to start to regulate our nervous system and choose something different, which I've got a whole process around that.

Breathwork has helped me with that.

Breathwork's huge.

Yeah, Wim Hoff.

Yep.

I've literally done breath tests where I'll measure my nervous system and it'd be so bad.

And then I'll do breath work immediately better.

So you could change the stuff pretty quick.

You can.

Right.

And that's what I teach is breath, movement, and sound, which is the primordial language.

And that's how we actually get connected into

the feeling state in our body because we're living.

So many people are walking around living dissociated and living in their mind and living in story, right?

And not realizing that there's an internal state that's dysregulation that's running the show that happened when you were a child, right?

So it's like when you were a kid and your parents were yelling at you or something, you probably got really tight, dysregulated.

It sounds like you went into flight, right?

That dysregulated state fight or flight.

And then when that gets coded in the body and when we don't process that emotion, we don't allow ourselves to feel it, then we can't heal it and

actually be connected with the truth of who we are.

And then that ends up running our life when we're an adult.

Absolutely.

It was affecting my business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause every time there was an argument, I would shut down and then it would affect the revenue, affect the whole business.

So you can't just avoid it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to tackle it head on.

So it sounds like somatic work really gets down to the root cause.

Yeah.

That was the thing that I found was the missing link for me is I had done so much mindset work and maybe anybody that's listening to this too, right?

Like I had done mindset work and setting goals and trying to crush it.

And I realized I was doing that and overriding my feeling body.

And then when I reached quote-unquote success, the bar was always moving.

Right?

It was like I was never actually good enough.

It was, I would get the thing that I thought I wanted, and then it wasn't good enough, and I needed to move to the next thing.

And the next thing I was constantly chasing a place that I could never even actually get to.

Until I started to learn, oh, this is coming from a dysregulated state.

And the belief and the part of me that thinks I'm not enough, which is an unhealed inner child wound.

Then I started to to heal it through somatics which is simply learning how to feel right learning how to be in the body and learning how to feel and process emotions as the child and a lot of that i did in isolation wow i definitely have that one too feeling not enough i think a lot of entrepreneurs have that one yeah i think a lot of people have that one i think that's a we come here a lot of us

the way that we get coded as a child is the message is often i'm not enough i'm not lovable i'm not capable it's all rooted in i'm not enough right and until we learn how to feel from that child, the impermissible feelings that we didn't actually get to feel, then

we just think it's our personality.

We think it's who we are.

When in reality, it's an adaptation to keep us safe.

I agree.

Yeah.

For me, I think it was not enough affection and attention as a kid.

My parents were pretty hands off.

So I just felt like I constantly had to prove myself, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I so get it.

I, for me, I was coded with

you need to be better, like you need to be better than everyone.

Really a hyper masculine approach to like, as a kid, I needed to get straight A's and do all the things that were, you know,

proved that I was enough through my achievements.

Right.

And as I've done this work, I've really had to learn to let go that, like,

the reason I'm loved isn't because of my achievements, because of who I am.

Right.

You know?

And I think that it's a journey that we all get to take.

Yeah, because a lot of people tie their identity to their achievements.

Yeah.

Right.

That's like an easy way of thinking, but that's not the case.

Yeah.

And it's also a hyper-masculine view.

So I've gotten really deep into feminine work.

And I know you have so many different kinds of people on the, on the show,

but for me,

the feminine is love, and we all have masculine and feminine within us, right?

But the feminine is loved for who we be, like who we are.

It's just simply our essence and our being.

And I started to realize, like, oh, if I can just embody my, the truth of who I am, like, if I can just be kind and loving, that's like, who am I being?

And that's actually what's magnetic.

It's not the achievements and the things that I can check off of a list that make people love me.

Right.

Right.

Or that, that give me confidence.

Yeah.

Do you think more men should embrace feminine energy?

I think it's about a balance.

And I, I think actually.

I think what's act what's happened a lot in our industry is that there's so much talk about polarity.

I don't know how much, how deep you are in.

I've seen that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I'm really deep into the polarity work and polarity space, but I think that oftentimes we overcorrect and swing the pendulum in the opposite direction, which is men need to be hyper masculine and women need to be hyper feminine.

And I think what it actually is, is we need to come into inner union within ourselves, which is masculine and feminine, and a balance of the healthy versions of that and recognize where we're out of balance.

I was really in my unhealthy masculine for many, many years, which is push, control, force, achieve, but coming from a place of not enough

and my unhealthy feminine too which was then i would doubt myself and then i would question and then i would judge and i would criticize myself right um and

when we're actually in our healthy masculine and feminine we are direct we have structure that's the healthy masculine for everyone or men or women right

direct structure um

yeah discipline and then the feminine is creative and loving.

And it's the difference of discipline versus devotion.

And learning how to balance those two things have completely changed my life.

I bet.

Yeah.

And it's the same for men as well.

Yeah.

I've gone through phases where I've been too feminine, I think.

Did I grew up in a single mother household?

So that's probably my childhood.

And then too masculine as well.

Yeah.

So I'm very aware now that I kind of need both.

And my fiancé definitely helps me with that too.

I love that.

Yeah.

When you're in the right relationship, you can heal so much of this.

Like a relationship I'm in now, it's so helpful to

because it's a mirror, right?

Like relationships are a mirror.

And so I went through very tumultuous relationships in my early 20s.

And when we're in a tumultuous relationship, we're just constantly in pattern, right?

Because the person is.

continuously dysregulating our nervous system.

And it's, we attract people that it reminded us of our childhood so that we can heal it.

And when we don't realize that, we keep going in pattern of, you know, attracting the same kinds of people.

So people, you know, listening to this or even myself early on in my journey was like why do i keep attracting the same kinds of relationships it's because i was in an unconscious unhealed pattern right when i started to learn how to feel and process my emotions i attracted someone completely different and now you know i think the right relationships aren't ones that maybe relate to this they're not ones that um have no issue but they're ones that are a mirror and bring out the unhealed parts of you but can hold you and grow with you i agree yeah that's great advice though for people trying to date right now work on yourself first right oh completely yeah and learn how to regulate in times of stress because when we are when we let our different self-sabotaging patterns right we have we have different parts of ourselves that come to the surface to try to um self-sabotage avoidant being the perfect one right when somebody gets too close i run away that's a protective mechanism so instead of running away it's like can i breathe into this discomfort and allow myself to feel this discomfort in my body and respond differently can i you know increase the time of my reaction from reacting to responding right and that'll make all the difference yeah and as you start to choose something different your relationships start to change

talk to me about the soft girl era what's that about okay

um

yeah i it kind of goes with what we've been talking about which is

i

i'm just gonna talk in general about our culture right now.

And I think I could get some hate for this, but we'll, we'll

see what happens.

I think in the feminist movement and in this era of

we've gotten programmed of women like reclaiming their power, which is beautiful.

I am all for women getting to work, women getting to provide for themselves, women getting to have a voice and a seat at the table.

I am such a stand for that.

And what I I mentioned earlier on the podcast is like we often over-correct and swing the pendulum in the opposite direction, which I think we've done as a culture as well.

And it has completely flipped the polarity between masculine and feminine.

And if we're talking masculine as men and feminine as women, right?

So it ends up, and I'll speak from personal experience, being a woman who was so striving to achieve and,

yeah, like

achieve and prove myself and force and hustle, like the boss babe era.

Perfect example of this idea that, like, I don't need a man.

I can, I can provide for myself and I can be a boss babe and I can make all this money and do all these things.

And then I looked at my relationships.

I realized I'm competing with my relationships.

I'm fully in my masculine.

And

I think people get really triggered by that.

But when you really look at, well, how are your relationships?

Are you feeling really satisfied?

Are you feeling,

yeah,

or are you competing?

Are you butting heads with

in your relationships?

And so I started to do this feminine work and realizing I think so many women go down that path and overcorrect and then end up feeling burnt out, exhausted, resentful, resentful in their relationships, resentful with what they've created.

And that was certainly my case.

And

so I kind of started talking about, I'm entering my soft girl era, which is just like a fun way of saying I'm learning to let go of control.

I'm learning how to surrender.

I'm learning how to

let men lead, which that will probably

anger a lot of people.

It will.

Yeah, it will.

But what I mean by that is

it doesn't mean being submissive and doesn't mean giving away my power.

When I'm in my softness and when I'm in,

this sounds really cheesy, but embodiment of the queen, right?

Like people, when we think of archetypes, people talk about like, I want to manifest my king, right?

You hear that, or

I want to manifest my queen.

Well, what does that actually mean?

When we look at archetypes, like the queen,

she doesn't force, she doesn't hustle, she doesn't have to prove herself, she doesn't have to overexplain herself, she doesn't have to people please.

She receives from the world

and

she allows men to provide for her, which, and men being in their masculine, are naturally providers and protectors when we are in our natural state, right?

A king is direct.

A king pursues.

A king builds his kingdom.

And

a queen sits on her throne.

So when you think of the energetics of that, I think when we're actually in our divine masculine and divine feminine, we have have those counterparts.

Like we're unstoppable.

Yeah.

And so

an avenue to that is, can I learn how to feel?

Can I learn how to hold myself in my emotions?

Can I learn how to be soft?

And soft doesn't mean weak.

I feel the most powerful when I'm in my softness.

It's yes, I could do all of this myself, but I don't have to and I don't want to.

Yeah.

And that's the the seed of my greatest power.

That is interesting.

But you see these studies of how top woman CEOs struggle to date, and you start wondering why.

And I actually don't think it has anything to do with

the

level of success.

It doesn't mean women can't be successful.

I'm certainly not saying that in any way.

I'm just like waiting for the comments to be like, what the hell?

It's not that.

But it's when you're operating from a

being in a hyper-masculine state,

it competes with the natural masculine, right?

Rather than can you lead from softness?

Can you lead from an integrated place that's not force, control, prove, hustle?

Can you allow yourself to be in your receptive magnetic energy?

That doesn't mean don't be super successful,

right?

But it's the energy and the place that it's coming from, and that's the difference.

100%.

Yeah.

Feminist movement was wild.

Red pill is crazy too, though.

So I think they're both dangerous.

No, like you said, you need both, but the right balance.

Yeah, anything in extreme.

And when we look at it, it's

it's always looking at the energetic that it's born from.

Because the energetic that something's born from is what carries carries throughout it, right?

So it red pill, or I don't know too much about it, but I know generally.

Or feminist movement, it's yes, it was there to empower women, yet, and at the same time, is it coming from a place of like being combative or like being angry or what and and i think it's really um

it we have to move through those emotions but then we get to like come back to an equilibrium and say actually is this me in my power or what energy is this coming from is it coming from like a f you kind of energy Or is it coming from collaborative and from a healed place?

And I think both of those movements aren't coming from a fully healed place.

I think it was the trajectory that we had to go through to actually get to a more balanced place.

Yeah, because you got both perspectives now and now you can decide.

Well, and I think we're on the journey.

I think that actually as a culture, we're in an evolutionary

place and we're still evolving when it comes to how do we actually

masculine and feminine, how do we work collaborative, collaboratively and together and end the battle of the sexes, which is, I think, what kind of happened with the feminist movement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Do you believe emotions can get stuck in the body?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I lived most of my life.

But emotions stuck in the body.

Yeah.

I mean, speaking to what you shared with inner child healing, right?

And you're, when you were a kid.

And when we're kids, right, we don't have the ability to process our emotions.

And so something happens, your parents yell at you, a kid at the playground makes fun of you, you know,

something where you get dysregulated and you go into shame or that I am not enough wound.

Well, as a child, we don't have the ability to process and not take everything personally.

And so that dysregulation gets stuck in the body.

And then we create an adaptive part, a protective part.

A lot of the work that I do is rooted in internal family systems.

I don't know if you've heard about IFS, but it's IFS.

No.

It's amazing.

And it's basically,

well, I'll go off on a little tangent here for a second.

Internal family systems is essentially this modality that says that we all have many parts of ourselves.

So we're all multiple personalities.

And essentially these parts are adaptive parts of ourselves that protect us.

So you might have

a part that is a perfectionist.

You might have a part that's a procrastinator.

You might have a part that's the inner critic or the bully, right?

You might have a part that collapses.

And different parts can come out depending on what's happening.

Right.

So maybe in work you turn into i'm not saying you anybody right i'll speak for myself um in work like i've turned into a perfectionist right but in relationships i used to go into collapse and every single part of us have it has a different um programmed nervous system state and it is meant to

um

protect us and what's protecting us from are these exiled parts that we didn't feel as a child.

So it's a wounded inner child that it's protecting us from.

So the part that feels, I am wrong, I am shameful, I am bad, I am not enough.

So that inner child part that your protective parts are protecting, right?

Is the part that got stuck at that age.

So say, you know, your parents sailed at you when you were four years old and you got dysregulated.

That emotion gets stuck in the body because you don't ever process it.

And then you

have this story now that like, I am bad or I'm wrong.

Right.

I don't know if you've, you came up with the story that, like, if you've identified what that story is for you, but maybe there was something there.

Well, then we go throughout our life.

It's so there's a protective part that comes online that's like, I don't ever want to feel that again.

I don't ever want to feel bad, wrong, broken.

So therefore, I'm going to become a perfectionist.

I'm going to be, you know, there's different, different parts of ourselves collude with each other, right?

So you're bully and you're perfectionist and

procrastinated.

They all, they all kind of have an alliance with each other often.

And

then you go throughout your life or the avoidant part, right?

Okay, I'm going to avoid that.

I don't want to feel that.

So I'm not going to let anybody close to me.

So that's a part that manages.

And until we go back and feel from the place of the four-year-old.

through breath, through getting connected into our feelings, right?

Rather than being in the story and in the head, which I think is what mindset work does is like, identify your limiting beliefs.

It's like, well, yeah, but that's not going to allow you to feel it in the body.

So through the primordial language of breath, movement, and sound, that can look like crying, that can look like shaking, that can look like screaming, getting connected in with that part and allow it to feel

from that age.

Then it allows it to process through the body.

So that's the kind of work that I do at like my retreats.

And that's the work that I did in isolation myself with a somatic therapist.

And it's profound

because emotions actually,

I don't know if you've ever heard this, I think it's fascinating.

Emotions only last for 90 seconds.

Anything beyond 90 seconds, you're in your mind, you're in a story.

Interesting.

So

what that tells me is like when we have an adaptation, it's like we just haven't felt it, haven't felt the thing that is the shamed part or the wronged part.

And so when we create spaciousness and actually go in and allow ourselves to feel, people get so scared.

If I open this can of worms, like, right, if I go there, I'm going to be feeling it forever.

It's like, no, actually the depression you feel, the anxiety you feel, the,

yeah, the, the part of you that needs to control, right?

All of those, you're feeling those now because you haven't gone back and felt the younger version of you and processed it.

And once you do, it actually dissipates.

It's really wild.

It doesn't last forever.

It lasts for a few minutes.

And when you allow it to actually move through your body body and you open to it, people get so scared of it.

And I'm like, no, what's on the other side is so much liberation.

And then there's space to actually meet your, what they call in IFS, your big S self, which is, you can call it your soul, your higher self, your intuition.

It's just the part of you that's the truth, which is love.

And then the more and more you fill yourself with that,

the more and more you're actually connected in with.

the truth of who you really are.

Tom, I feel amazing.

This sounds incredible.

It is amazing.

Yeah.

Because people get so used to living like with all this trauma and baggage that they don't even know it's there.

Right.

Yeah.

People have no idea.

And then wake up one day and go, why didn't I follow my dreams?

Why am I so burnt out and exhausted?

Why am I in a relationship that's so challenging?

Like all of these different pieces.

Like I woke up and said, why am I, like, what am I doing?

And why am I here?

And yes, I changed my life at the age of 23, but then I had four or five years of doing the manifestation work and the mindset work and all of this.

And it wasn't until this work

that I realized this was the missing link to everything.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I'm still on the journey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I realized about self-development.

It never ends.

It doesn't.

It doesn't end.

Although I will say,

I do think there is a there to get to.

And what I mean by that is

with what I just described.

When you first are doing this work and especially somatic work,

it feels like there's a lot there to process, right?

Like you even said, like, oh my gosh, I did so much work and I didn't even realize how much was underneath the surface.

Like same.

There was so much there.

And

as I started to really dive into this,

every time that I would process or release and do my inner child healing, right?

Like feel the thing that I hadn't felt.

There was always spaciousness on the other side of that, right?

There's a liberation.

There was a freedom.

And I would meet like the truth of myself, right?

We can't even be connected into our intuition if we've got all of this stuff in the static in the way, right?

Which is like

all of the self-sabotaging patterns.

It's people are like, well, I don't know.

You know, is my intuition telling you this or this?

It's like, well, you were so disconnected from it because there's so much in the way of you actually feeling it.

That's so true because my intuition used to be so bad.

Right.

And as I've done this work, isn't it crazy?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't even connect the dots there, but now that you said it, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's wild.

So yeah, doing this nervous system work and be becoming more regulated and learning how to feel and all of that, your intuition will open up because you start to connect with your soul or your big S self more and more and more.

And the more you do it, so imagine,

say that the wound is this big.

I'm just using this for a visual, right?

And the more you feel it, that wound, the layer of the onion that you're peeling back is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

Well, that space has to be filled with something and it's filled with

the big S self or the part of you, the maturation of you, the adult you.

And that's what reparenting is.

So the more adult you that you have available, the more you plug into

that part of you, your soul, your truth.

The inner child, it's a relationship.

You start to heal that inner child and the inner child starts to trust you more and more and says, oh, okay, it actually is safe to show up.

It actually is safe for me to be seen.

And so, yes, we'll always have an ego.

And yes, we will always be human.

And yes, things will always be coming up.

But I do actually think that the more we do this work, the more we'll be able to move through it.

You've probably seen this with your own work that you've done.

Like you're more connected to your intuition now than you were before.

It's insane.

It's night and day.

Yeah.

Like I used to meet people and not sense anything, but now I can meet someone within two minutes.

I know their intentions.

Yeah.

Right.

It's that good now.

That's amazing.

And what did you do to develop that?

A A lot of self-work, some psychedelics,

having conversations, finally opening up because I felt like I just bottled in so much over the years, finally letting loose.

Podcasting is like a form of therapy, as you know.

Totally.

So, yeah, just a bunch of different stuff.

I did Reiki healing, did psychic work, past life work.

Okay.

Yeah, it all helped, I think.

Well, what was the thing that helped you the most?

Curious?

Ooh.

Probably the, honestly, the past life psychic work, even though that's kind of woo-woo for some people.

That really helped me.

I'm so into it.

Yeah, I'm into it.

like i know like people don't have proof of it yeah like because you can't prove it it exists or whatever but for me it helped a lot yeah well i also think the more we go on this journey the more we can believe in the unseen

i don't know if you relate to that i can yeah because i was super skeptical like we said growing up and um now i'm like totally down to learn about stuff same well because you have more and more experiences and you get more

um

what's the word i'm looking for like exposed to different things and different concepts and then you try them on I mean I every single thing in my journey and that's why people listening to this like I that's why I love saying I was an atheist like I was not somebody that blindly accepted this stuff at all I was I had the attitude of prove it right you know prove it and then I like asking from of for signs from the universe or I've started with little things like that and then started to realize there was all of these coincidences that were happening

and they were small little things but really they would just blow my mind, right?

I would ask for something and then it would happen.

And then I thought, okay, there is something to us creating our reality.

There is something here.

And yeah, I think the more that you go on this path, the more I've just realized, you know what?

The more I know, the more I know I know nothing.

And I'm just here to

return back to being a loving presence and to share my voice and to hopefully, you know, share what I learn and allow that to grow and change and evolve.

And it helps people.

I've also had a few ego deaths, which really helped.

Yeah, to be honest, those will fuck you up.

Yeah, those will mess me up.

I had a spiritual one, and then I had an actual one where I lost like all my money and stuff.

So, oh my gosh, yeah.

Oh, I'm so curious.

Yeah, well, the spiritual one, I was just on mushrooms in Amsterdam, so that was a great reset.

Yeah, and um, came out of that just ready to fire off on life.

But then the money one that messed me up, yeah, that all because once you get a taste of like money, success, fame, and then you lose it all suddenly, oh, yeah, yeah, that will humble you.

That'll be that's a that's a big portal for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thankfully, I got out of that one.

That was, that was probably a few months of that one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Has that happened to you?

Not the money piece specifically, but I've had some few major ego deaths and massive awakenings.

And

mainly the one before I entered isolation.

Like I hit a point where I realized that

You know, Sean, I was like, when I got into this work, I think I was looking so much for something to heal me.

And I was looking for it outside of myself.

Right.

So I was constantly searching.

So I've done all the different modalities you can think of.

I've done psychedelics.

I've done ketamine therapy.

I've done EMDR therapy.

I've done breath work and meditation and somato.

Like, I mean,

all of the different avenues that you could go down, I was constantly searching for an answer.

And I would constantly let me take another course.

Let me go to another event.

But I was outsourcing my own power of healing to something outside of me.

And something that I learned about this industry, which I don't speak on too much, but

I feel like you are similar to me.

Like you're doing this for like a reason greater than yourself.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, I feel like I can't not do this work.

I have no choice.

Like, I have to share it.

And I think I naively believed that a lot of people in the spiritual industry, I thought, I thought everybody felt that way.

Like we're all doing this for a good reason.

And what led to my like deep spiritual death was realizing that

there's a difference.

There's two different paths that we can take, I think, as

individuals.

You had Aaron Abke on.

I don't know if he, so I'm friends with Aaron back in Austin.

He came on my show as well.

He's amazing.

And we talked about this on my episode with him.

And he talks about your soul can choose two different paths, service to self or service to other.

And what essentially that is is service to fear and service to love.

Wow.

And I saw that contrast deeply putting

giving my power away to

people I thought would heal me

and realizing that actually I'm my own healer.

and having to go through such a deep, deep

breakdown of everything that I knew and everything I thought this industry was and everything I thought the spiritual work was, all of that stuff.

I almost like had to go through almost rejecting it for a moment and going into full isolation.

And that was probably my biggest, dang, my biggest breakdown.

Yeah, there are some bad actors in every industry.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

Whenever there's money involved, there's going to be naturally some people that are selfish, right?

Well, and you know what I've thought about too, and the conclusion that I had is,

you know when we think of the laws of the universe and there's the law of polarity right and um as above so below like the law of correspondence of these different laws that govern us

and by law

there has to always be the equal and the opposite so where there is the most light will also have the most darkness

wow That's deep.

Right?

So, so this is light work, right?

It's like spreading work of like coming back on to into your own power and healing yourself and you being your own healer and you doing your work and then spreading that out in the world.

And it's like so important.

I like want to cry every time I talk about it.

And that's always going to hold the equal of the opposite.

So the darkness is also going to be here.

Like we could be in grayscale, you know, we could not not be doing work.

And then it's all kind of like.

Okay, right.

That's a selfish route, though, right?

Well, I mean, I think grayscale is when we're not developing in either direction right at all right and what I'll say even too is you talk about bad apples right when we actually get to the core of it like we as humans label things as good and bad but this is something I talked about with Aaron as well is that

in reality

everything is serving the light Because anything that we consider to be darkness is actually creating contrast for people who are embodying the light to go there farther.

Wow.

So everything is actually serving the light.

Dang.

That's a crazy way to think about it, but I could see it.

I could see that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's no good and bad.

I've heard that too.

Yeah.

I'm leaning towards believing in that these days.

Yeah.

Well, and

on a 3D perspective, right?

But I know people will, when I say this kind of stuff on my show, people will say, well,

you know, but like, what about all of the war?

Like, what about the things that are so awful here or the trauma that people go through?

And I'm not negating that.

This is not about like spiritually bypassing anything, right?

When, because we're not feeling it.

We're not feeling our anger.

We're not feeling our, right?

We have to feel those things on a human to 3D level.

But when we can actually get in connected with the truth of our soul, which I believe is love, then

We have to realize that everything from a spiritual perspective is actually serving the light.

Perfect example, because I know people will think this is like, I was in a very abusive relationship a decade ago before I got into this work.

And I'm very open about it on my, on my channel.

People will say like, oh, I didn't bring that on myself.

Or, oh, like, that's really awful or that's really bad.

And from a 3D human perspective, no, I don't ever, like, I don't blame my younger self for getting into that.

I would never look at somebody that is in a tumultuous relationship and say, you attracted that, you manifested that to yourself, right?

Like, that's not healing.

That's not healing, right?

Somebody has to get out of that kind of scenario before they start to do their healing work.

Right.

But as we start to do our own healing work and we look at everything as a mirror for ourselves and everything that we are attracting is actually

showing us where there are wounds and where there are cracks in our foundation.

And that's where we can let in the light and it's actually serving the light.

That relationship served me because we wouldn't be sitting here today if that hadn't happened.

Right.

Yeah, when you zoom out, you could see her, right?

But in the moment, it's obviously a hard spot.

Yeah.

Well, in the moment, feel it.

You know, in the moment, have your emotion, have your human experience.

And for that example, or anybody that's in a relationship like that, in the moment,

your only job in that moment is to create safety for yourself.

Right.

Because we can't be doing all the spiritual work if we don't have physical safety.

And then if our nervous system isn't safe, right?

So there's, there's levels and layers to this.

And so, you know, the level at which you speak and the layer at which you speak, depending on where someone is in their journey in the moment, matters.

Yeah.

Right.

You can't look at somebody that's in a

challenging circumstance in the moment and be like, you manifested that.

And also, we can look from a spiritual perspective when we're outside of that.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that.

So I know you got a retreat coming up.

What's kind of your goal when you host these retreats?

So they're women only retreats.

Women only.

Women only.

Yeah.

Including the guys.

I know, I know.

we do to create safety for the women and I work primarily with women men go through my online programs

um in in my course only editions but um

I have a I have a course actually that explains this entire process it's like a six-part process of kind of what I was talking about today with the inner child stuff but we do this on a very condensed scale in retreats in person and I don't know if you have you gone to retreats yourself no I want to go to Matteus to Stefano

next one but I really want to go to some retreats yeah they are amazing when When I say, like, you talk about collapsing timelines,

it is crazy what you can do in four or five days.

And that's why I'm so passionate about this in-person work, because when

I've gone to retreats myself, like as an attendee, a student, they have been profound.

It has been the entire reason why I have the life I have today, because when you take yourself out of your environment and you're in a safe container that allows you to

go really deep within yourself and you're held in a really safe way.

It's just phenomenal the things that can happen.

But yeah, the retreat is all rooted in feminine embodiment work, somatic work.

We do a lot of deep ceremonies, not plant medicine, it's all sober.

Okay.

Sober retreat.

The one in May is in Costa Rica.

Beautiful.

And yeah, and just the power of getting to be witnessed with other people who speak the same language as you.

You know, a lot of people, I mean, you and I are in this industry, right?

So pretty much everyone I'm around is doing this work or in some way, but it wasn't that way when I was at the beginning of my journey.

And it certainly wasn't that way before I started to podcast.

And, you know, I was the only one doing this work.

And so I find that for a lot of people and for the women that come to my retreats is they are looking for people that speak the same language as them.

They're looking for people that can.

hold their big visions and their dreams.

And they don't have people around them that are like that.

And so,

yeah, we create just a really safe, beautiful environment for these women to go really deep within themselves and to witness each other.

And at every retreat I've ever done, all the women are just their lifelong friends and they take trips with each other.

And, you know, they now have this sisterhood that they get to lean on when they go back home.

And

yeah, it's profound.

It's beautiful.

It's my favorite thing that I do.

That's so cool.

I might call my fiancé about it.

Oh, yeah, please.

Connect us.

What are the most common issues you're seeing with these women that are coming to something like this?

Oh, my gosh.

Well, talk about the protective parts that keep us, you know, from

our truest potential, keep us from our,

like, like who we can be and our most creative expression.

And so many of these women often come to my retreats and they're saying, like, I feel stuck.

I feel stagnant.

I know I'm meant for more.

I want to start my own podcast.

Or, you know, they say they have a dream.

and they're living so outside of what is truly designed for them because they've got so many fears of

I'm not enough or people are going to judge me or,

you know, I'm stuck in, some of them are stuck in relationships that are feeling stagnant for them.

Or they're stuck in their masculine and they've been trying to crush corporate, right?

And they're burnt out and they're exhausted.

And yeah, they just realize, a lot of times realize at the retreat, like, whoa, I've had so much armor protecting me from my greatness and from who I can actually be.

And so we

take a lot of that armor off and have them feel

really like the expanded version.

It's called the expanded women retreat.

And it's about like, can you expand your capacity for more?

Can you expand your capacity to feel?

And my

goal with the retreat or my desire with the retreat is to create such a safe container for these women that they can actually feel that like expanded, lit up, free, alive, liberated version of themselves in that moment.

Because once you have that felt feeling, that becomes now a code, right?

Of like, you've now

yes, the ceiling becomes the new floor.

Yeah.

So yeah, creating an environment where women can do that because that was created for me.

I love that.

You mentioned fears earlier.

It's hard to grow when you have fear, right?

Yeah.

So I've, I've been aware of that and I conquered two of mine now.

What were the two?

First one was heights.

Okay.

So I cliff jumped in Jamaica.

Good for you.

I'm not going to look down.

I'm getting over this right now.

Sean, I'm not there yet.

Are you still at your heights?

I don't love heights.

Yeah.

If you cliff jump, it'll go away.

Seriously?

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't fear heights anymore.

Okay, I love that.

The fears that I have almost, like, I used to have the fear of being seen and the fear, all of now with the podcast, it's like right, I had that one too.

Yeah.

Fear of being judged.

And then you have to just go into the fire.

Yeah, go straight into it.

Go straight into it.

And as soon as I started the pod, it went away.

Like, I realized no one really cares.

No one gets it.

Yeah.

I thought people would judge me and stuff.

Same.

People did judge me.

Oh, actually.

Oh, yeah.

I was so scared.

And I hear this from people that like reach out and say that they want to start their own show and stuff.

I was so scared that people from high school that followed me in college that followed me, like, you know,

who I didn't even talk to anymore.

It's like so funny, the people that we care about

in our head, right?

And a lot of them judged me.

Yeah, I actually did get some judgment of people like telling telling me it was stupid.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And telling me

just making nasty comments.

And I had to be so rooted in my own yes and my belief to do it.

And like, it sucked and it hurt.

But what I'll say is it cleared the way.

Like, I don't have those people in my life anymore.

And it probably fueled you too.

Yeah.

And,

you know, I

would say it fueled me a bit, but that also came from an odd enoughness and a place to prove now that I can see.

But

look who I get to sit across the table with and have really cool conversations.

And had I let that stop me, I wouldn't have the life I have now.

Right.

You know?

And so now I have so much proof that it really doesn't matter.

And now no one would, you know, exactly.

That is in my circle.

Obviously, it's different than comments on the internet.

But yeah, in my circle, nobody would ever say that because I don't tolerate that anymore because I have such high boundaries.

It's like not even in my.

awareness.

Yeah, I don't give a time.

And most hate is projection.

So

it doesn't even concern me because they're not hating on you.

Right.

They hate themselves, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So exactly.

But yeah, flying was another one.

I used to have to take CBD and like hold a banana for some reason.

I don't know what the banana bait was.

Hold on.

That's funny.

Yeah, I had to buy a banana in the airport every time and like keep it nearby.

But now I could fly and I'm good.

Wait, I love that.

I'm still stuck on the banana.

That's awesome.

I think bananas must have been some childhood thing.

I used to eat a lot.

It made me safe.

It was a comfort.

Yeah, I don't know exactly why I did that.

But yeah, I've been trying to conquer them because it's hard to grow.

Because without flying, I mean, I wouldn't have been able to film certain episodes.

Right.

Do you fly to go interview people?

Yeah, once a month.

Okay, that's great.

So like I'll go to like Austin, film like a few episodes and come home.

Let me know when you're in Austin.

Austin's got a great.

Yeah.

Well, I film in person there.

We only film in person.

Oh, same.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Only in person.

But Austin's like the podcast capital right now.

Yeah.

There's a lot of big shows out there.

Well, Rachel, it's been awesome.

Where can people find you, your show, and everything?

Yeah, you can find me.

It's fucking spiritual on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, all the things.

And then at Rachel Gibbler, which I'm sure you'll put in the show notes on all platforms.

I mainly hang out on Instagram.

And yeah, if you love the show, please send me a message.

I love to hear from people.

And yeah, definitely tune into It's Fucking Spiritual too.

I love it.

Check her out, guys.

See you next time.