The Secret to Healing Trauma and Manifesting Faster (4 Easy Steps) | Gabby Bernstein | EP 106

We all have a divine connection to a higher power.

Our beliefs and our patterns and our behaviors have blocked us from that.

The God within us is always there.

We just forgot.

Presence is being in spirit.

Trauma is the inability to be present.

When we're in trauma, we are completely blocking that spiritual faith and that connection.

And as these parts of us start to feel these molecules of safety, that energy starts to emerge really naturally.

And we start to feel more and more connected to that self.

What about for manifestation?

What do you feel like is the number one block that holds people back?

Manifesting is just being in self.

So we're always manifesting whatever we believe and the energy that we put out is reflected back to us in different ways.

People think of to do this manifesting practice.

No, just do the self-help work.

When you heal, you become free inside and you have great faith and you trust that there's a plan better than yours.

When you embrace that higher power of your own understanding and you start to develop access, your life becomes much easier because the greatest work of your life will be to listen to your inner wisdom.

Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast.

Today, we're exploring what it means to trust the universe, how to connect with your true self, navigate setbacks with grace, and reframe life's hardest seasons into powerful turning points.

We're going to go beyond surface-level manifestation to uncover deeper patterns that block you and give you tools to heal them so that you become magnetic to your deepest desires.

Joining us is Gabby Bernstein, New York Times best-selling author and transformational teacher who blends spiritual insight with practical tools that have helped millions manifest more alignment and purpose in their lives.

And I hope that this episode supports you.

I know that trust is a big part of your work, but I know it's a big topic for people in general.

What do you think people get wrong when they're trying to trust the universe?

Well, you know, it's interesting.

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who is a doctor and has been on spiritual path, and he's sort of had all these spiritual friends and all this conversation around him for decades.

And he said, but I really don't know what it means to actually trust a higher power.

And I said, it's not that you don't know, because we all know, we all have that in us.

We all have a divine connection to a higher power of our own, of our own understanding, of a truth that is within us.

But ultimately, we are blocking it.

Our beliefs and our patterns and our behaviors have blocked us from that higher power.

So it's trusting isn't so much about doing something to gain trust.

It's about unlearning the fear-based belief belief systems that have blocked that trust.

Are there some common themes around the beliefs that block that trust?

Absolutely.

I mean, they're all fear-driven belief systems.

So beliefs like I'm inadequate, I'm separate, beliefs of separation, attack, judgment, beliefs of inadequacy, beliefs of fears of the world, any kind of fears that have been instilled in us throughout our lives have been moments of separation from that love and from that faith.

And we've just continued throughout our lives, just continuously built up these walls against that presence of faith inside of us.

And so I believe establishing a faith in the universe really is, like I said, an undoing.

It's not a getting, it's a releasing and it's a returning to that.

Faith is actually really natural.

And when we don't have that faith, it's a sign that we've been misguided.

Yeah.

I think sometimes people think that they're trusting the universe, but then they're trying to control and manage it.

That's exactly right.

They're like, no, I'm trusting.

That's most people.

Yeah.

And so for those people, how do they authentically move from into a deeper sense of faith while not bypassing?

Because there's the questioning of the beliefs, but there's also the somatic, the whole body that's feeling stressed.

Is there any kind of wisdom or teachings that would support them in starting to naturally let go of the blocks that inhibit their trust?

We all know and long for the same thing, whether we can put it into words or not, but we long for that state of inner peace and joy.

And that inner peace and joy is a divine connection to the universe.

That is our spiritual faith.

When we live in that faith, that's when we can live in a

in a lack of resistance in a place of allowing and trusting and so ultimately when we are walking through life and we have all these different blocks around us the dismantling of those blocks becomes something that we have to create as a pattern as a behavioral choice how do people move into more faith without bypassing what they're authentic

bypassing is really important because they the bypassing actually is another form of protection

So, spiritual bypass of I'm doing all the things, I'm saying all the affirmations, I'm repeating the prayers, I'm doing my meditation practice, I'm on my yoga mat.

All of that's excellent.

Obviously, a much better habit than being on your scrolling on your phone.

But it is in many ways, it can be a spiritual bypass.

It can be an overdoing.

Anything we're doing over

to not have to feel the deeper wounded parts of ourselves or to actually face into those parts of ourselves or acknowledge and be in relationship with those parts of ourselves.

That actually is a doing over rather than an allowing to be.

And so I would say the bypass part is a really important word.

Yeah, I think the worst advice we can give to people is let go because they're scared and holding.

And then now we have a concept that I should be different, which makes us further trapped.

And so rather than giving another concept that I should be different, really bringing safety to the part of us that's scared, the letting go naturally happens.

And I'm curious in your own life if there's been a time where it was hard for you to trust, but you really did surrender into a deeper faith and how that unfolded for you.

I think I've been on a daily surrender for 46 years.

And I believe, as a result of marrying therapeutic processes with my spiritual faith, I think the spiritual faith without that deeper trauma recovery work was a bit of a bypass.

And also, it wasn't just a bypass, it wasn't a bad thing.

It was a protector.

My spiritual practice for many years was protecting me from dissociated trauma.

It was protecting me from extreme terror that was dwelling inside of me.

It was protecting me from addiction.

It was protecting me from feelings of

truly being traumatized.

And I actually didn't remember my dissociated trauma until I was 36 years old.

So about 10 years ago.

And it wasn't until the remembering that the real safety started to establish inside.

And so as long as we're living in that place of hypervigilance and that place of feeling unsafe inside, we will cling to our spiritual practice and a faith of some kind.

And it's not a bad thing.

In fact, it can be a bridge.

In fact, it's a step along the way.

It's an excellent thing.

It's definitely a better, right-minded choice.

But I think my hope would be that that spiritual awakening and that spiritual faith would allow someone to listen to their inner wisdom, which would ultimately guide them to the human angels in the therapeutic realm, or whether it be a self-help book or any type of deeper work to actually get into relationship with those parts of themselves that really need the healing and the unburdening so that they can genuinely feel safe inside and ultimately really know what it means to be connected to spirit.

Yeah.

And I can hear the compassion and the perspective that you're holding.

Huge.

And I think that's an important piece to highlight because if we're judging any of our protection or our patterns, we're going to be further trapped in it.

And what I'm hearing you say is like, yes, this is an upgrade, but it's also integrated when it's not just mindset work or affirmations.

It's really going deeper into allowing the different energies that we've avoided, breathing into it somatically so it integrates into our nervous system, thanking the parts of us that were doing the best they knew how based on our upbringing, and then going a little bit deeper to integrate so that it's not just known, but it's really lived.

That's exactly right.

And my spiritual journey has also been a therapeutic journey.

And if it was

one without the other, I would not be where I am today.

And I also think that the spirit, that the therapeutic processes that I've been guided to to have been very spiritual.

Yeah.

Right.

So somatic experiencing and IFS and EMDR, these are, in my opinion, very spiritual practices.

And I also believe that they were, they were channeled material.

They were given to these amazing teachers and healers to bring to the world.

And so when we, and I think really any healing art, any, any form of healing, we always are allowing that energy to come through to deliver that message.

So however it comes for us, we're going to find that intertwined relationship between the spiritual healing and the therapeutic healing.

In my own personal experience, it was when I started to really begin to be in the presence and the witnessing of those protection mechanisms and the greater awareness and understanding of the wounded parts and to get into relationship with these aspects of myself that a genuine settling began to occur and a neuro plasticity that I wouldn't have otherwise had if I hadn't undergone so much of that deep healing.

And that on the other side of that is this extraordinary new relationship to spirit that I didn't have before.

So, you know, as we know, I think it was, as Peter Levine says, that trauma is the inability to be present.

So what is presence?

Presence is being in spirit.

So when we're in trauma, we are completely blocking that spiritual faith and that spiritual connection.

And of course we are because we're in this constant state of hypervigilance and protection.

Yeah, there's so much that you're sharing that I'm loving.

And spiritual spiritual psychology is a big part of my world and history.

And where we're coming from when doing the work is really important so that it's, because you could be meditating and even healing as a way to bypass or as a way to avoid.

And I think a lot of people get into spirituality originally to opt out of their human experience.

And then we get a bit more mature and we realize it's about fully opting and bringing love to this spiritual connection, the truth of our being into our full human dynamic and spectrum.

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I know parts work is a big part of your new book and some of the work that you really love.

Can you talk to us?

I think my audience knows a bit about internal family systems, parts work, but for people that don't know, how do you talk about protection parts?

How would you explain that?

So then we're on the same page.

So I'm trained in internal family systems therapy.

I'm not a therapist, but I was very, very blessed to be in that teacher training and in that facilitator training.

I was probably one of the last people that's not a licensed therapist to be trained.

So I feel so blessed that that was the experience I've been able to have.

And I've also been using IFS in my own, with my own therapist for almost a decade now.

And that internal family systems therapy is really exactly what it sounds like.

The internal family.

There's an inner system inside of lots of little parts of us, young children inside, that are protection mechanisms.

They're protectors, is what we would say in IFS.

As you speak about here, as children, we all have experiences of trauma, big T or small T.

Maybe we've had extreme moments like myself with big abuse and trauma.

And in other cases, maybe you were bullied on the playground and you had a teacher that told you were stupid.

And in those moments, as children, as you speak about, we don't have the emotional resilience or capacity to process those big experiences.

And so what do we do?

We lock them up.

We exile them.

And we say, I'm never going to touch that again.

I never, even as a baby, we can begin to do this process of saying, of not saying or consciously doing anything, but doing whatever it takes to numb that pain, whatever it takes to shut the door on that experience and that suffering.

And so what happens is very young, we begin to protect ourselves.

We start building up.

protection mechanisms for give myself as an example.

I lived with a lot of chaos around me and felt very out of control.

So I built a protector really young that was the controller.

And I would do whatever it took to be in control.

Or if somebody felt like they were not seen as a child, maybe they'd go on to be a perfectionism and overachiever, trying to be seen to protect against the feeling of not being lovable or adequate.

So we're going to work our asses off all day, every day to protect against the feelings of being unlovable, inadequate, not good enough, the terror in many cases, the terror of the traumas.

So we can ask ourselves these parts of ourselves that are known as protectors are still with us today, very active in our lives.

Control, addiction,

any of the feelings, beliefs, or behaviors that may feel extreme, the parts of yourself that you often judge the most, the parts of yourself that you might feel the most ashamed of, are known as these protectors.

And sometimes protectors could be parts that are often very well-liked by the rest of the world, right?

So, a workaholic, you could be praised, but meanwhile, that workaholism is actually completely blowing your nervous system and just putting you into burnout.

So these patterns and behaviors, if you ask yourself, how long has that part of me been around?

Everyone is going to say, as long as I can remember,

since I was a kid,

since this one experience in time.

So we can date these parts of ourselves back so far.

And so we have to recognize that we've been living in these false pretenses.

And in spiritual lexicon, it would be the ego,

the absence of love and the choice of fear.

And we're living in this way where we're constantly focused and

not even focused necessarily, just living from trigger to protector, trigger to protector all day long.

And in that state of protection, we are separate from God.

We are not in alignment with also what is known as self.

Self with a capital S and IFS is equivalent to the God energy, to the universal energy, to spirit energy.

And self is the ever-present energy of compassion and connection and curiosity, clarity,

commitment, that these C qualities, courage, confidence, and it's there.

Just like we would always say that the God within us is always there.

We just forgot.

Yeah.

This doesn't come and go.

Our awareness of it comes and goes.

It's not that it's never gone.

It never leaves.

That's right.

Our access to it

gets further and further away.

from these protector parts, from the stories that would block us from the awareness of it.

It's like the sun and then the clouds.

It's like so we have all these clouds built up around this presence of this energy that's in us.

And that's the spirit energy, the God energy, the universal energy.

And we build up these blocks.

But as we start to get into relationship with these parts and meet them with compassion and connection and clarity and courage, We start to let them know that there's actually a sense of safety inside.

And as these parts of us start to feel these molecules of safety, they start to feel self.

And that energy of self starts to emerge really naturally.

And we start to feel more and more connected to that self.

And we start to want more of that self.

And it becomes more natural for us and it starts to expand.

And as we start to create more and more self in our system, then these young parts of ourselves feel less extreme because it's this young family of parts that realize, oh, I have an internal leader now.

I have an inner parent and inner healer that can help me self-help, which is why I called the book self-help.

Beautiful.

And I think that ties back to spirituality and psychology.

Totally.

Because if we are judging the ego, that's just the ego, further trapped by it.

And there's innocence, like you're speaking of, that compassionate perspective.

But if we replace one pattern with another, it's essentially just working ego on ego versus essence embracing ego.

Self, like we're saying in parts work, really welcoming the disenfranchised parts of ourselves because that's the healing agent.

That's what actually transforms it.

And so I love that this is the element and the foundation, because otherwise it's just the ego replacing one pattern after another.

And it's a never-ending, you know, I think one of the challenges with psychology is that we're always healing the past.

And some of the challenges with...

coaching is that we're always going towards the future.

Yes.

Well said.

So the foundation is really presence, self-energy, truth of our being.

And as we come from that place, it changes the whole game.

It's exactly right.

I think that was beautifully said.

I think that what I love most about IFS is that you don't actually have to go to that.

inciting incident.

You don't have to go to the past and dig it all up.

It happens sometimes naturally that through the process, you're going to revisit these experiences and you're going to help these parts of yourself realize that self is there and that you're safe now and reset the system.

But you don't have to.

You could work in this moment.

And in my book, Self-Help, I'm not in any way, shape, or form touching the exiles.

I want people to do that in their therapy.

Talk to us about what exiles are.

Exiles are the traumatized little children that we've been shutting down.

Those moments of trauma and terror that we experience, the feelings of being inadequate, those young parts that we've built the protectors up against.

So the protectors are those are managing.

There's two types of protectors.

They're managing the feelings of those exiles and they're also firefighters, which is like the addicts.

So when their trigger is really big and we can't handle it anymore, we will go right to the firefighter and put out the flames.

I cannot bear the flames of that suffering.

I've got to put out those flames.

So that is the pattern that we've been living in.

The exiles are really gentle and fragile.

The protectors are a little bit more easy to access because they're not the terror.

They're masking the terror.

The terror, we want to make sure that we have a supportive therapist that's going to be in treatment treatment with us guiding us through that journey.

And when we, on our day-to-day self-help practice, democratizing IFS through this work, I've created this four-step check-in

with Vick's Blessing to help people get into relationship with the protectors so that they can actually soften inside and then probably get to the place where they may say, I'm ready for that therapy to go a little bit deeper with the exile.

Or maybe there's another journey to get to that Zile and to help it.

But to most importantly, create that sense of self inside and accumulate more and more self.

Yeah.

I love that you are, it's, you're trauma informed.

And so you're really making sure that people are getting the right help when there is big T trauma coming up.

Coming up.

Yeah.

I'm going to do it myself.

Yeah.

It's really, I just want to plug that and highlight that because I don't think that there's a lot of people out there talking about trauma and it's dangerous.

Look, I think even big T, small T trauma, whatever you, you call it, people also may have very false views of their trauma, right?

They're like, oh, it's not that big.

But then they're like, but my parent, you know, my dad was an alcoholic and my mom left and I was an addict.

And, you know, it's like, whoa, like people have these dissociated views of their own experience.

So I deeply believe in the therapeutic relationship.

And I think that if it weren't for the therapists that have been my Sherpas along the way, I would not be sitting with you right now in so much freedom.

It is a facilitated journey.

And there's so much about that because the therapist is, in many cases, the self-energy when you don't have access to it.

So

I highly recommend if you can get an IFS therapist, that that would be the dream scenario.

In the case of many people, they may never be able to get access to a therapist.

So, here's a really incredible tool based on a trauma-based therapeutic practice that has a tremendous amount of data on it.

Yeah.

And a self-help practice that's that's bringing it to you.

Yeah.

And people, there's, you want to date.

So, even with a therapist, you want to date because IFS is great.

I love it for emotional mastery work.

Some of my work aligns with it more from Le Gestalt psychotherapy framework.

But then somatic work is really fantastic and helpful.

So and mindset work is really helpful.

So it's like finding also what your system feels safe with.

Yeah.

Because somebody's system may say, well, IFS will be like, that's too, I can't even think about those parts.

It's also parts of the journey.

I wrote a book called Happy Days, which is my the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace.

It's my trauma recovery story.

And it's me telling the story of the journey I underwent when I remembered the trauma to, well, really dating back to addiction, you know, getting sober 20 years ago.

And what that, that was the first phase was the addiction recovery.

And then it was moving into the EMDR.

And then it was remembering the trauma and then getting into the somatic experience because I couldn't go right into the parts because the body was so frozen.

And so you have to just, just...

just taper this.

You know, you can't.

You want an integrative model.

You don't want to just work the mind or the body or the emotions.

You want something that's more integrative.

That's where the spiritual part comes in.

Because if you access the spirit, then you can, or even if you're just asking for spiritual guidance, you're opening this invisible door to open up for you to say, okay, this would be the next right action.

This is the therapist that's going to enter into your life.

This is the book that's going to fall off the shelf.

Literally, how my entire journey was led

was through this just opening my heart to let spirit show me where to go.

Beautiful.

I want to come back to this self-check-in.

Yeah.

This four steps.

Talk to us.

Walk us through the four steps and an example so that we can ground it.

Great.

Okay.

So the four-step check-in process is an IFS informed self-help practice that is a practice of getting into relationship with the protectors, the day-to-day protectors.

Typically, the managers is what I want people to work with.

And those are the parts of you that are somewhat extreme, activated throughout the day.

The parts of you that might say, you know, when my boss challenges me, I want to rage.

Or when my husband says this thing, I shut down.

Or the parts that are wanting to run to the refrigerator and eat when you get stressed out.

And those are the day-to-day managers that are running the show, the parts of yourself you probably judge the most.

and we're not going to remember we're not going to the traumatized little children we're going to these aspects and beliefs that are kind of hanging around all day and what you do is you you check in instead of check out so throughout the day we're always checking out we get triggered and we go to protectors to check out so this this this thing will happen and you'll have this big blow up and then you'll say i don't know what came over me well you became blended with a protector and you literally became this ask this other part it's like an identical personality exactly i mean even in some cases when the parts get so blended you can your physicality can change my hands can go like into fists or i can you know curse or just you become a different energy and so this is about knowing first teasing out what are some of my protectors and some people may be very clear about at least one or two right so oh i have a part of me that gets super anxious or super people pleasing or super shut down or i get really uh controlling or uh workaholic and we start to recognize some of these aspects Once you have access to a little knowledge about one or two of these protectors, you can choose one that you would check in with.

And so instead of checking out, you would the first step, check inside.

So you'd focus your attention inward.

And that's the first simple step, just noticing inside.

The second step is curiosity.

And so you'd start asking some questions inside where you would say, okay, well, where do I feel this in my body?

And what do I know about this part of myself?

What stories or thoughts or beliefs are attached to it?

And you start just teasing it out a bit and getting a little bit more information.

And then the third step is to compassionately connect to the part.

Once you have a little access and a little connection, you would compassionately connect and you'd ask that part of yourself, what do you need?

And the part will oftentimes say, you know, I need to dance or I need to play or I need to feel like a child.

I need to be a kid.

Because what do they want?

They want to be in their childlike form.

And the fourth step is to check for the C qualities itself.

So you'd check in and you'd see, do I feel a little bit more calm?

Do I feel connected?

Do I have more clarity?

Do I feel like I'm a little bit more curious about this part of me?

Do I have courage to know more?

And asking those questions and recognizing that there is a small shift inside, even the tiny molecule of self coming through.

Even if you say to yourself, I feel a little curious about this or I'm a little bit more calm.

That's self.

And it's not about this full connection of self in the moment.

It's although that is very possible, it happens often, which is these spontaneous energies of self come through, but it's the little molecules of self.

And so if you practice those four steps once a day for a minute or two, ideally often, you're going to begin to start to create more and more molecules of self.

And then you start to trust in self.

And then self can be the inner leader.

Beautiful.

That's what self-trust is.

Yeah, full circle.

There's a lot of things that you shared in that that I want to highlight that are helpful for people.

So one is that it's a part of you, it's not the whole of you.

So that you're not identified with it because it's a lot easier to shift with it when you're not identified, right?

The ego

there for once.

Yeah.

That even in itself is so healing for someone.

Yeah.

When I wrote this book,

that year that I wrote it, I was working as a fellow at a recovery center.

And so every month I would show up and I would teach for a brand new group of at least 100 addicts that were showing up fresh into recovery, day, two days, three days, maybe five days back.

And they're really in their parts.

And I would ask the group, I'd say to everybody, hey, how many of you have experienced trauma?

Every hand goes up.

And wouldn't it make sense to you that you would do whatever it took to not have to feel that trauma?

Again, every hand would go up.

And then I'd say, well, wouldn't it make sense that you would go to any length, even to the lengths of destruction with addiction, to not have to feel that suffering.

And if that's the case, can we see that addiction as a protection mechanism?

And not every hand would go up, but there'd be a lot of tears in the room.

And some people very resistant to that, right?

Because they've built up so much judgment against their trauma, their addiction, but which further perpetuates the addiction.

Correct.

But that whole guidance for anyone listening is, okay, look at the patterns and the behaviors that you've been so extreme in.

And I want you to ask yourself, well, okay, I had these experiences as a child that were rough or tough, but big T or small T.

Wouldn't it make sense that I would do whatever it took to protect myself?

And the second that you can even slightly witness these protection mechanisms or these patterns and behaviors that you like, that you dislike so much and see them through that lens of, oh, actually, this is protecting me.

Yeah.

That

is the biggest shift, even in itself.

I agree.

It's huge.

Yeah.

That's not me.

I'm not bad.

I'm just in a extreme role.

Yeah.

And I'm just trying to protect myself.

And so that.

It's a young child that was forced into an extreme role.

And we didn't know any better.

This is not taught in school systems.

This has not been the examples of our parents.

It wasn't there.

It's starting to emerge more.

And I think we're reparenting ourselves and then bringing it into school systems.

But seeing it as freeing to know that that's not who I am and you connect back with self.

And then what I'm also hearing, and this is a big part of the work that I do as well, which is like thanking the part of you for trying to protect you the best way it knew how.

So it's like that perfectionism isn't bad.

It's not who I am.

But that was the way that I learned to get my needs met, to feel safe in the world.

So then changing your relationship with a block changes the block.

Exactly.

And then what I loved what you shared is like coming back to the slivers of self so that when you start just to focus on that, that will expand in your experience and kind of the sun will illuminate more because that is the healing agent that it was only looking for that presence the entire time.

That's right.

And we didn't feel safe enough to feel that, or it wasn't modeled.

And as you feel that more integrated within yourself, or with a therapist, like you were saying, co-regulating until that it's more emerged in your own nervous system, then you become that healing agent for yourself, the self-help.

Self is the inner healer.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't actually even do the healing, we just create the environment for healing to happen.

Yes, that's exactly right.

When self is present, healing happens naturally.

That's right.

That's right.

So, examples: the the more self I have access to, the more I can redirect in the moment, the more I can forgive myself in the moment, the more I can choose again in the moment, the more access I have to

speak for the part rather than as the part, as they would say in IFS.

So typically when we don't have this kind of dialogue with ourselves, we're speaking as a lot of different parts.

We could be on the phone with our boss and speaking as a people pleaser.

And then five minutes later, we're on the phone with our husband and speaking with rage.

And as these aspects, so the energies are what we're putting out, as self begins to expand inside of us, we can then witness, ah, there's a protector there with so much open heart and compassion and love.

I recently, last week, had a big burst on blowout at my husband.

He was,

I did something parenting-wise that he didn't agree with.

And the way he was talking to me about it made me feel shame.

When I feel shame, my knives out protector comes out, she's terrifying.

And I call her knives out because literally the like with like sharp knives ready to murder.

And she came out and she comes out rageful on him.

And she's cursing, and she's saying, you know, go act yourself.

And, you know, all these horrible things to him.

And

outraged and screaming and completely out of her body.

And hours later, you know, he's hungover from this thing.

And he's like, what the hell was that?

You know, and I said, listen, I want to first take ownership and apologize for the hurt and whatever I said and all of that.

And I also want to speak for my part.

This isn't an excuse.

It's a taking care of this part of myself.

That part of me was activated by feelings of shame.

And she was going to do whatever it took to not have to feel that shame.

And I just want to let you know that a part of me took over and I'm going to speak for it.

I'm going to take ownership of it.

I'm going to take care of my side of the street, but also take care of her.

Beautiful.

And I think that's the key in relationships is to have self-awareness.

What is my core wound?

What are the protection parts that are trying to avoid feeling that?

And then you can hold or your partner can hold with more compassion if you do knives out, like attack them in that moment.

They can understand, oh, this isn't really even about me.

This is about the trauma that I had from my childhood.

That's right.

Yeah.

And then when we have that, we have more compassion for ourselves, but then it's way more graceful and the repair is a lot easier in relationship.

And the more awareness you have of your own parts, the easier it is for you to be the compassionate witness of the parts in others.

So, in the case of my marriage, my marriage is an all-time great place.

I was at a dinner the other night, and someone they were asking, what is everybody most excited about?

People were like, This part of my career, and this, and I was like, My most excited about my marriage.

This is, I've been with this man for 20 years, or a little less, right?

So, 18, 19, 17 years.

And

I am

feeling a new level of love and gratitude and appreciation that I've never even thought possible as a result of this work.

And as a reflection of the work you've done.

And him.

Yeah.

And, but I'm just really me.

Yeah.

That's right.

Some people are like, I need my partner to do.

We don't.

I didn't.

Yeah.

And it's nice to have it when two people are, but we don't need it.

But in his own way, he showed up, right?

Here's the thing: people always like, oh, my heart, my partner has to be on long for the ride.

Listen, if you do the work and you start to access and acquire more self, self begets self.

So your self-energy will actually start to permeate the home and your child will co-regulate with that and your husband will co-regulate, your partner will co-regulate with that.

But the thing that may happen is that they may not.

And if they don't rise with your rise and they don't elevate to that energy, then that's a sign that this is no longer a match.

But you can't wait for somebody else to meet you to get to great.

That's right.

You meet you.

You smile in the mirror and life mirrors that right back.

Yeah.

This quote from Ken Ken Wilbert keeps coming to me, growing up and waking up.

And I think you and I are both, we're about both, yes, and, because you can be fully realized to the truth of your being and have a really dysfunctional life.

And you can be very free psychologically, but still living in

jail, so to speak, and identified as your separate self.

And so I think this is an important aspect that we both hold around yes and.

For somebody that's feeling impatient with their journey, feeling like, why is this taking so long?

Who do you think they need to hear?

The miracle can happen right now.

It's not,

you know, I think people are like, I need to get there.

The there is here.

Yeah.

Just in this moment, you can have a experience of a molecule of self that creates a proof, spiritual proof.

Okay.

That's there.

I have a little access to that.

I had a little relief there.

When we start to have those moments of proof along the way, not only are those moments, those miraculous moments of that shift inside of us, these energy, these energetic shifts, but they're also imprinted shifts.

They're a sense inside.

They're a message, a memo to these protectors.

Hey, there's safety inside.

So you have to just witness that this is an adding up of the miracles.

How do you live a miraculous life?

You add up the miracles.

That's beautiful.

As people are starting to wake up to this self being the most important aspect in any of the healing or manifesting, we'll talk about that in a moment, but self being the most important foundation for all of it.

I think part of this work and the most important thing, yes, I think at the beginning of this

personal development, we were all very excited about mindset work.

First it was like, go, action, you know, Tony Robbins, great, some of the masculine.

And then it was about mindset work, the power of questioning your thinking or subconscious limitations.

Now it's a bit more somatic work, you know, or parts work, emotional mastery.

All of it has a place like we were talking about.

But one of the most important and powerful things in my life has been to feel the thing I've been avoiding.

Because as you start to feel safe with self and you open to the sensation of whatever it is you've been avoiding, unworthiness, people pleasing, whatever's underneath the protection parts, as you open to that, then there's no reason for the protection to still be there because you've integrated and opened to it.

Yeah.

And so I think that all of it has a place, but we want to have something that's more well-rounded and really listening to what we need at different parts of our journey.

But ultimately, I think some of the deepest work is feeling the feeling that we've been avoiding.

And as we do that, other patterns fall away.

Yeah.

And I think that the feeling that we've been avoiding can at times be that exile.

There's many feelings we've been avoiding, but the exiled parts.

So

how do we allow ourselves to safely feel into those feelings?

Well, you have to allow the protection mechanisms to settle down enough and to create an environment where those protection mechanisms feel and trust that there's enough safety inside and that there's enough of an inner leader inside, that trust in self is available for that younger part to that even more burdened part to feel safe enough to show its light and to be felt.

Yeah.

And it's similar, what happens inside also happens in relationship because we may test our partner, can you hold?

Same with these parts, that parts and patterns within us, parts and people defend to the degree they don't feel accepted.

And so they may even test it a little bit so that they can surrender and feel that trust.

Even though, you know, having been a therapist, if somebody would come into my office and want to hide, I might give them a blanket and really let them hide.

And when that part felt supported, we're not trying to get rid of it.

We're here to love it.

It's like from ego, it's like, how do I get rid of this?

From essence, how do I love this?

That's right.

And as we embrace it, it naturally lets go when it feels safe on its own.

And so when you have a block for whoever's listening, it's like people pleasing, perfectionism, self-doubt, rather than identifying with it.

It's like, what does it, you're saying, four steps.

What does it need?

How can you offer that?

And bringing that self is the safety.

Yeah.

And the four steps, again, are just the first is to just be the non-judgmental witness.

Just turn your attention inward and witness that it's there.

Oh, that's a part.

There's a part inside.

Yeah.

And send your energy and attention towards it.

And then become curious about it.

So where is it in my body?

What do I know?

What does it want me to know?

Just asking questions.

You could do this through journaling.

You could do this in your your internally.

Then the third step, compassion.

What do you need?

And the fourth step is to check and see for the shift inside and notice the molecules of cells.

And then an hour later, you're going to get triggered again.

And you just do the four steps one more time.

And then three hours later, something else is going to happen and you're going to do the four steps again.

And then it becomes second nature, like any kind of process.

It starts to become this habitual way of learning to relate to ourselves and to get into relationship with these parts rather than keeping in this consistent path of checking out, checking out, checking out.

Yeah, it does get easy over time.

And those dams of repressed emotions we haven't felt settle and they get lighter so that we're not just

somebody says something and we're like unconsciously a puppet reacting to the same thing.

We can cut those strings and live more freely, more consciously.

That's right.

For somebody that's like really struggling right now, they're like, why is this happening to me?

What do you think they need to reframe to start shifting out of that?

I think, well, first, to recognize that no one's alone in their suffering.

That's why I love actually

people being in community around

therapeutic process or around

so much of my career has been creating community.

I'm a motivational speaker, so creating community, spiritual communities, and people hearing each other's stories.

Because I think that in the shared experience of witnessing others and their suffering, it just allows you to feel so much of a relief knowing that it's not just you.

I think that that's a big part.

I think that if they're watching this or listening to this and they had that feeling of the why me or how is this happening to me?

Well, you're 90% of the way there.

You've said, you've opened the door and said, I want to feel better.

You would not be watching this or listening to this right now if you did not want to feel better.

They wouldn't be following you.

It wouldn't even be in their realm.

Yeah, they wouldn't have gotten this far into a podcast.

They would definitely not go this far into a podcast, but they wouldn't even have pressed play.

Right.

That's a a beautiful reframe.

Yeah.

That there's a part of you that's wanting to grow.

And so you're already on your way.

Already on your way.

What about for manifestation?

Because I know this is a big topic that people are excited about, but what do you feel like is the number one block that holds people back from stepping into what they want?

Manifesting is just being in self.

So we're always manifesting.

We're manifesting.

whatever we believe and we manifest what we put out.

And the energy that we put out is a reflection back to us in so many different ways.

So it's people think I have to do this manifesting practice.

It's like, no, just do the self-help work.

That's right.

Just heal.

When you heal, you become free inside.

And in that freedom, you have great faith and you trust that there's a plan better than yours.

And you can hold a desire and you can send it out to the universe.

And you can say, it's this or something better.

You can be in so much freedom with it.

And you can allow it to just unfold naturally.

And if it does take a detour, you trust that detour is moving you in the right direction.

And you just live in this really beautiful way.

And so everyone's like, I got to go do this thing.

It's like, no, just go heal.

Yeah.

I think sometimes the manifestation can be an avoidance.

It's a protection.

Healing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a bypass.

Yeah.

When I started doing this work, I did a master's in spiritual psychology and I was really starting to manifest for the first time in my life.

And it really, I had such a crippling feeling of not good enough.

And the manifesting helped me dream bigger than my self,

my identity thought was possible, which helped me feel more self-energy because of the possibility.

Yeah.

But I had to do all the inner work to meet my unworthiness, my inadequacy along the way.

It definitely doesn't have, it's not like it's front and center stage looking at life through the lens of my personality even anymore.

And so there's a divine design within desire even as we step forward towards what it is we want, the things that have held us back come up so that they can be healed and we more embody self more naturally.

I mean, we do anyway.

We're just not always awake to it.

And listen, I think that there's, I meet people where they are.

So this conversation, I can say very frankly, do the healing work.

And that's when you're beginning to naturally attract what you, more of what you want.

But there's power in affirmation.

There's power in

spiritual practice.

There's so much power in even not doing the deep underbelly work because what are you doing?

You're changing your point of attraction.

You're changing your frequency with these new energies.

And so even though there's maybe a huge underbelly of healing that has to occur, that earlier shift of affirming something new or dreaming bigger, it's putting you into a new vibrational energy.

And so, it does open you up to more hope and possibility.

And it does open your

awareness,

your sorting in the world to something more high vibration than something that you might otherwise be

naturally leading into because you weren't redirecting your thoughts in those ways.

And so, there's great power in the sort of surface-level

manifestation or surface level adjustments or coaching or kind of just the future forward or visioning or all of that.

There's so much power.

And I teach it all the time because sometimes that's just the only place you can meet somebody for the first time.

It's like a gateway drug.

It really is.

Yeah.

And all of my books, particularly even my most popular books, like The Universe Has Your Back or Super Attract or These Manifesting Books, I mean, once you crack those books open, you got to get to work, right?

There's deep mental reconditioning that has to happen in those books.

But I always say to people, read self-help first.

and then everything else will make more sense.

That's right.

Yeah, it's like as you mature in your spiritual path, you realize self, you are everything, you are everything.

Yes.

You're everything you desire.

And so it's just about awakening to that.

And there are gifts in the manifestation journey along the way so that you can uncover, wow, there's something bigger than my small, limited sense of self.

And then we do the work along the way.

And you've been doing the work for a while.

From your lived experience, what would you say has been the most powerful spiritual practice or the most important one that you would recommend for people?

The most important spiritual practice is to be in a daily dialogue with spirit.

So I have

always been very, the veil was lifted at a very young age, so I can hear and feel and I am a medium, as we all are in our own ways.

And for me, that is a relationship.

My spirit guides, the energy of the universe, my angels, my ancestors,

their relationships.

And if just like now, you and I are friends, if I don't call you for a year, we could pick up in a year and we'll be good again, we'll be fine.

But if I call you regularly and start texting, you maybe go for a walk with you in Spain, we'll become good friends.

And that relationship requires communication.

Every day I wake up and I say thank you to my guides and I welcome them into my process, into my life.

Remembering I'm not alone on this journey that I have chosen.

There's a beautiful quote from A Course in Miracles.

If you knew who walked beside you on this path that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.

And so when you really

embrace that higher power of your own understanding, it doesn't have to be what I'm talking about.

It can be whatever that means to you.

And you start to develop access and you ask and you ask and you witness that guidance delivered back to you, your life becomes much easier easier and much more joyful.

And you can notice when you're overthinking.

But I love hearing how it plays up real time for you and just coming back.

Yeah.

I think intentions also are really powerful and just continuing to set that intention, but then we're focusing on what we want.

But that is also like a relationship with your guides or however you call spirit, unless you...

awakened more deeply to being spirit.

But that relationship, I think the intention of calling ourselves back into a deeper truth is really beautiful.

I think my mind will sometimes go to, oh, I want to work on that.

And what I'm hearing is like, there's just an intention to come back to, I don't even have to do it.

It's just attunement back.

Yeah, I think that there,

we were talking a lot about the work, but also there's value in doing nothing

and listening.

Yes.

Because the greatest work of your life will be to listen to your inner wisdom.

Yeah.

But the work is there to release the blocks of that inner wisdom.

That's right.

But don't forget the wisdom.

Yeah.

Exactly to return to the wisdom.

It's interesting.

I think my, in the Enneagram, I'm a three, I'm an achiever.

So I can have more doing.

And for me, the most profound spiritual practice has been meditation.

I've probably done 20 silent retreats in my life.

I'll do one next weekend.

But I think that helps balance the personality of

going

and drop into a deeper stillness within myself.

And so as I'm talking to you, I'm realizing that we'll all have different things things that resonate with us at different times of our life, but there may be one that we keep coming back to that really is this deep anchor.

And when you're talking about listening and coming back and developing a relationship with your guides, I think journaling and journaling has been really powerful lately for me just to hear that wisdom and not to get distracted by other things to be doing, but just to come back as a practice.

A really great journaling practice, there's a chapter in Self-Help called Let It Out.

And it's a practice of doing the four-step check-in at at the top of the page and then letting your pen flow.

Because once you clear the space, so you're like, you tease out the parts that are in the way right now, and you just choose to check in, and you become curious, ask some curiosity questions, and then you ask what do you need, and then you feel a little bit better.

Then you start opening up to just the free writing and allowing spirit to write through you.

You've done the work of just clearing the

even playing field and then letting that energy move through naturally, which is just extraordinary.

And I, uh, I, I, I would highly recommend that to somebody who may feel a little stuck in this kind of, how do I do that work?

Well, just journal it.

Yeah.

And I think that keeps the aperture open a bit.

And that you're saying that relationship that you're developing more of.

I'm curious if there's a story in your own life of a miracle that unfolded for you from doing the work that really will give people inspiration to rise above a circumstance and be like, because sometimes it can get crunchy doing the work and if they're not connected to self.

So, yeah, if there's a story of a miracle or a manifestation or something that just was really powerful to share with you.

I mean, just last weekend, I was sitting, my son's six and a half now, and we belong to this really sweet lake club in the countryside.

And it's kind of like this like 1950s idyllic lake club.

And it feels like there's a clay tennis courts, and like the messier your dirty t-shirt is, like, the cooler you are, you know?

And all the kids just of all ages all play together.

It's really unbelievable.

And it's, it's the one area of my life where I really feel like I have this, this, this very godlike community

where it's what humans are supposed to do, right?

We don't have a lot of that in our lives these days, right?

So it's just people will be grilling and someone will be like grabbing a hot dog off their grill.

And, you know, it's just, that's how it goes.

It's just beautiful.

And

we were there and I just had a tennis lesson.

And now I was like sitting on the dock and I'm my kid's at the age where he can swim really well and there's lifeguards and he's running around with the kids.

And so I'm just like, I'm not thinking about it.

Like, he's just doing his thing.

I'm just literally like, you do you, bro.

And he's out doing his thing.

My husband's off for a drive.

I'm sitting on this deck with like my iced coffee and my big bottle of water and my red bathing suit.

And I've got my book in my hand, and my phone is off.

And I'm just looking at this gorgeous lake, and the temperature is perfect.

And I have this rush of just spirit move through me.

And I just feel this incredible love energy, just almost like falling in love, like that kind of energy and i'm just lit up and in this energy and i'm sitting here and i'm like this is the miracle this is the moment this is god

that

was

was very very very experienced very beautiful experience for me yeah that moves me like is that this right now is the miracle this moment yeah in the mundane in all of it yeah and i think sometimes we can lose sight of that and i think having even even manifestation i've noticed can can help me feel grateful for the things I have because I realize the things that I was wanting are are here.

Yeah.

And so it's like, oh, wow.

And that energy of heart energy of gratitude of just like, this is it.

Yeah.

And more deeply dropping into a dimension of our being of just like noticing that and keeping that aperture open to be grateful for it.

It more comes in.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

Is there any kind of words of wisdom or piece of advice that you want to leave people with?

I know that you have had such a rich journey and have gone so far in your, you know, 46 years, you said, of doing really just living an intentionally spiritual life and using all of it for your growth and healing.

What do you want people to know?

I think I just want people to be really gentle with themselves and to

if you're if you're listening to, I mean, if you're here right now, you're on the journey, you're on the path, you're open, your heart is open, you're ready to receive new guidance and information.

So just let each day allow you to unfold to what the next right action is and just take it one step at a time.

Yeah.

Compassion is productive.

That's such a fierce inner critic.

And like just being compassionate even with the critic shifted that.

And now the commentary is a lot softer.

And so those

they can rewire very easily.

You're in the bright side of the three.

I'm an eight and a seven.

Okay.

I think I'm sort of a quintessential eight.

Maybe not in this moment, but yeah.

And for those that don't know, we have an Enneagram podcast, but the eight is the challenger, and the seven is the enthusiast.

Yes, I go achiever, helper.

I like to achieve things and help other people.

Yeah,

even when I was a therapist, it was very action-oriented.

I'm like, healing is a change of behavior.

Yeah.

And so, helping people, yes, do the inner work, but how does it show up in your life in a very spiritual but practical way?

I know my audience is going to want to stay connected.

Talk to us about what you're up to, how they stay connected.

Well, one big thing I'm doing that I think is really beautiful is I have an app called the Gabby Coaching app, and I just created my AI clone.

And as scary as that might seem to people, it's actually really beautiful because it's been trained with 20 years of content, 11 books, hundreds of hours of live talks and podcasts.

And it's really good.

It's using my work to give people guidance and to be in relationship with others in a way that I'm using technology.

So this app has hundreds of meditations and workshops and trust the universe challenge and manifesting challenges and all these fun elements of creating spiritual practice.

And now it has this front and center.

The next month, it's going to have the Gabby AI in there.

And I feel really,

I'm conflicted about AI in general, but I'm going to lean into it to use it to its highest and best for

the greater good.

And so I'm excited about that.

So if people can try that out, deargabby.com/slash app is probably the place to go there.

And I'm also just excited to be sharing more wisdom on my YouTube channel.

So I've just been doing a lot more of the kind of 10 minute, let me just give you some guidance to just like you have done here, just making things more accessible for people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like a tuning fork, like co-regulation to come back to self-inspiration.

Yeah.

Well, we'll put all of that in the show notes below.

It's such a gift to buy.

You're very, very cool.

I'm very excited to be friends.

Same.

Yeah.

I'm so glad that you are here and this is a new chapter for us.

And hopefully we get to walk the Camino.

We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see it.

Whatever my spirit guides tell me to do.

Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself.

It truly does make a difference.

And if you're finding value in this podcast, a cost-free way to support us is by following us.

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Leave a review on Apple or Spotify, submit a screenshot of that, and upload it to alistenabriga.com forward slash podcast.

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I have so much more magic I want to share with you, and I cannot wait to do that soon.

But for now, I just want to say thank you so much for being an example of what it's like to live with an open heart and mind in the world.