Know Thyself
E126 - Gabby Bernstein: Rewire Limiting Beliefs, Heal Your Wounded Parts & Find Inner Freedom
Tue, 10 Dec 2024
Gabby Bernstein explores the profound self help practices from IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy) aimed at helping to release limiting beliefs and unlock inner freedom. She explains the inner parts of ourself that hold us back, influencing our thoughts and behaviors, often originating from an early age. And how by acknowledging and understanding these inner aspects, we can address internal conflicts, heal trauma, and transform limiting beliefs. Gabby shares who we are at our core: the "Self" that is inherently compassionate and capable of healing. She gives a 4 step check in process to use in moments when you're triggered, that will help you start to heal you relationship to these parts. She also opens up about her personal experience with this work and how it helped her to create the life of her dreams (from the inside out). BonCharge Red light therapy: Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ 0:00 Intro 1:46 The Beliefs that Limit You (And How to Unlearn Them) 3:42 IFS: A Therapy System for Becoming Whole 11:05 Who We Really Are, At Our Core 16:49 Protector Parts & Where They Come From 23:24 Correlation of Addiction & Childhood Trauma 27:57 The 4 Step Check In Process (Do This When You're Triggered) 35:51 Staying Curious in Self Inquiry 38:04 Ad: BonCharge Save on Redlight Therapy 39:15 Exiled Parts & The Hidden Traumas we Carry 41:18 How Unconscious ‘Parts’ May Serve Us 50:00 Awareness Changes Everything: The Process of Becoming Whole 55:03 The Part of Herself She’s Trying to Heal 1:01:06 Don’t Spiritually Bypass Yourself 1:03:48 Facing Postpartum Depression & Menopause 1:10:17 Developing Clarity Through Mindfulness Practices 1:12:47 Conclusion ___________ Renowned spiritual teacher and #1 New York Times bestselling author Gabby Bernstein has been hailed as a “next-generation thought leader," by Oprah Winfrey. Bernstein is the author of nine bestselling books including The Universe Has Your Back, Super Attractor, and her latest New York Times bestseller, Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace. Her empowering perspective and compassionate insights inspired The New York Times to call her, “a role model for a new generation of spiritual seekers.” Bernstein is the creator and host of the podcast Dear Gabby, where she connects with her community and offers insightful, real-time coaching, straight talk, and BIG LOVE. Through her presentations and generous Q&A sessions, Bernstein makes a major impact on individuals and organizations alike, and she has been sought-after by groups such as Google, the AOL Build Series, TED Talks, Oprah’s SuperSoul Sessions, and many more. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabbybernstein/ Website: www.gabbybernstein.com Preorder New Book, "Self Help": https://a.co/d/aA3avAs ___________ Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
The journey of healing is a journey of undoing the false pretenses that we've placed upon ourselves and returning to who we really are. All of us, no matter how great our upbringing might have been, we all experienced some form of trauma.
Chapter 2: How can we unlearn limiting beliefs?
Those moments can be so extreme for us as young children that we don't actually have the inner capacity to process those deep experiences of shame or inadequacy or even terror. And so as little, little people, we start building protectors. And those protectors could be people-pleasing or trying to be seen.
And so through the practice of IFS, we dismantle, calm, and settle the protectors so that self can emerge. You're recognizing that it's not who you are, it's just a part of who you are. And now here's a four-step practice to do it. The beauty is that now you have a tool that whenever you think you're going to check out, you can check in.
Chapter 3: What is Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy?
And every time you check in, you expand your connection to self. And the more you trust in self, the more empowered you feel because you're not trying so hard to stay alive. You actually know there's safety inside and self can help.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast. Our guest today is a multiple times over New York Times bestselling author. She explores many themes around psychological healing and spiritual awakening. And I just love her raw honesty and personality as it comes through and sharing her insights along her own personal path. Gabby Bernstein, thanks for being here.
It's so good to be here. I think I have died and gone to podcast heaven with my rose tea. If anyone could just like catapult themselves into this room, it's fun.
Yeah, come join us. Grab a cup of tea. We're going to talk healing and all the things.
Best tea I've ever had in my life. Thank you.
Well, where I want to start today is hearing your thoughts on something that I've been contemplating and thinking about for a while, which is we have subconscious resistance in us to receiving and allowing life to give us love, abundance, well-being, because we have somatic familiarity with scarcity and fear and not enoughness.
And so in life, our mind might say we want things like a relationship, a career, a person, you know, to come into it. But our body feels we deserve something else and so what has been your journey exploring that dynamic
I have been on a particularly about 19 year journey now of unlearning the fear-based beliefs that create the somatic experience of that kind of suffering. And then of course, through unlearning the belief systems, healing the somatic experience and coming through the other side to know what mental freedom feels like. And of course, then physical freedom as well, because
once I have become settled now in my own inner system, my nervous system has settled and my body has settled and my digestion has settled and my physical ailments have settled. And so I'm living the goal of where I've been trying to get to.
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Chapter 4: How do protector parts influence our behavior?
Yeah. Yeah. Often we think there's a there there. I think A lot of people can relate to if we want to cultivate true well-being and manifest a life by design, we need to look inwards and see what are those psychological subconscious programs that need addressing and need loving.
A big theme of today's conversation is going to be your exploration through IFS, internal family systems, and parts works. Because again, we might say we want these things, and then there are these parts of us that are holding us back into a familiar past. And so what is IFS and parts work for people that don't know?
IFS is internal family systems therapy. It has nothing to do with your outside family. It has to do with an inner family of parts of who you are. IFS was invented by my very dear friend and mentor and brother, truly like a brother, is Dr. Richard Schwartz. He invented this therapy sort of by accident, truly. He was a family therapist. And so systems, family systems was his model.
And in working with women who were, he had a period of time where he was working with women who were struggling with eating disorders and binging. And they would speak in session about these parts of themselves that would take over. That part of me takes over when I want to binge or a part of me takes over when I want to self-harm. A part of me takes over when I am self-loathing.
And then at times they might talk a little bit about this other part of themselves that feels really compassionate towards these behaviors or part of themselves that at times could feel calmer or feel more connected. And he'd ask them, well, what's that part of you? And they would say, that's myself. That's just self.
And what Dick realized was that the same way there's patterns and dynamics and triggers and family relationships, the same was happening to all these parts inside these patients. Recognizing that we are not one mono human.
We are having an experience of many different parts of ourselves inside, often protection mechanisms and a lot of extreme patterns and behaviors that have been there for most of our life. You often check in with these parts of yourself and say, how long have you been around? That's like forever, you know?
And if you've ever said to yourself, you know, a part of me gets really triggered when my girlfriend does this, or a part of me gets really triggered when I don't have that job opportunity or whatever it might be. We are actually speaking for almost like a subpersonality, right? And so to keep this very simple, because that's my gift.
And in this new book that we're going to talk about today, I'm taking IFS and with the blessing of Dick Schwartz, making it self-help. But to give you the full picture of IFS, the goal is to recognize and honor these protection mechanisms, which in IFS are called protector parts, and to recognize who those protectors are protecting.
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Chapter 5: What is the 4 Step Check-In Process?
But those moments can be so extreme for us as young children that we don't actually have the inner capacity or the brain capacity to process those deep experiences of shame or inadequacy or fear or even terror.
And so as a result of not having an adult figure to help us process it, and definitely as a child not being able to process it, we unconsciously say, our brain says, never want to feel that again. I'm going to shut that down completely. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect against that feeling. And so as little, little people, we start building protectors.
And those protectors could be people pleasing, or it could be trying to be seen as a little kid, constantly asking for attention and wanting to be seen. And now they're like 50 years old and they're like checking their likes all day, thirsty for likes, right? It carries on for decades and decades. And so these protection mechanisms become the extreme patterns that we often shame most in ourselves.
And so with IFS, we can start to bring self, which is that part that these women would speak about. They would say, oh, well, sometimes I feel calm and sometimes I feel compassionate. That's just myself. That essence, that Buddha nature, the God within us, the love within us, the compassionate connection, it's like an inner parent, is always inside of us.
And self just has been blocked by these protectors. And so through the practice of IFS, we dismantle and calm and settle the protectors so that self can emerge. And in my book, what I'm doing is making this therapy self-help. It is not an IFS book, it's a self-help book, but now you understand why it's called self-help, right? Because when self emerges, self can help these younger parts.
And I did that through a four-step process, which we can work on today.
I'm really looking forward to diving into that check-in process and the protector parts. But first, you brought up a couple of things that are really important, I think, to set the stage for where I would like to dance with you in this conversation, because this being the Know Thyself podcast, there are many different perceptions one can have on who we are and what is self, right?
You could have the lowercase S self, which you might categorize as different personality substructures and subparts that we can work with that are important for characterological growth and like human developmental journey. You could say a capital S self is more of that nature that is, which you mentioned in your book, Self-Help, those eight Cs, which we can unpack.
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Chapter 6: How to stay curious in self-inquiry?
Yeah.
really are a deeper pointing to a space that we can hold within us because we realize that we're not actually our personality. We're not actually our identifications with our mind, with our body, with our career and all these things. And so we start to dive into deeper aspects of who we are.
And I am personally really interested at holding both because life is very paradoxical and we do have a personality that holds us back and creates suffering. And we're also, we have access to a reality that is also beyond it. And so to just kind of explore these a little bit further, one could say the conventional psychological work of your personality is important in healing that trauma.
And then also waking up to who you are beyond it was kind of like absolute reality. So I feel like we have relative reality, we have that conventional reality, and then we have like the absolute reality that we can tap into through meditation and mindfulness practices.
So I guess I would like to just hear your perspective because self-acceptance, which a lot of the IFS work is surrounded around accepting these parts, welcoming them to the dinner table.
There's no bad parts, yes.
self-acceptance from the kind of absolute view is a project of the divided self right and it's in a way it's kind of like a dog chasing its own tail meaning the only way to maintain the drama is to pretend that the self to be accepted is somehow different from the self that is accepting and so it's it's important to hold that perspective that we are not that and yet
by giving space and allowing these different parts of us to exist and to and to be with them it does create more of a sense of freedom and our relative human relational experience so totally just kind of said a lot there but i do want to get your perspective as we kind of hold both so before we dive deeper into the protector parts and all these things What is your experience of capital S self?
Like our true self, what are the eight Cs? So we can have that as a reference point of like home that we're walking back to.
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Chapter 7: What are the eight Cs of self?
I would have gotten into connection, but it might have taken me a little bit longer. And maybe you would leave with a different experience of me and maybe the greatest virtues of you might not even have been able to develop because we are always vibrating at each other's access to self. And when you're around people, then they're in that energy of self. You feel calmer. You feel more creative.
You feel more confident. It just has a ripple effect. It's beautiful.
Yeah, it's like... I think we can even look externally in the world and see a lot of tragedy that's happening. And like, how can we play our part in bringing healing to the world? And a lot of the, I think, old paradigm of thinking of things is like removing darkness in the world. And instead of, you know, trying to take darkness out of a room, simply turning your own light on.
Yes, my friend.
And so, yeah, we're lights that are turning on and we really illuminate the path for others in so many ways. And like you mentioned, it's a journey to get there, you know, from the head to the heart. And there are all these parts within us that keep us kind of stuck in old personalities where we had a thwarted childhood developmental experience that stays with us. And
So I know it's been a journey getting to this place. Yeah, big time. And I want to unpack, as this can be really supportive, the process that we're going to go into, the context that we're going to give for healing and revealing your true self is really so important. So what are protector parts? Let's start there so we can understand that.
Yeah, well, I can continue to just sort of use my journey as an example, also to let your viewers who may not be familiar with me know that just sitting here in this self-energy now did require a commitment, a commitment to my inside. And really from the early days of becoming a spiritual teacher when I was 25 years old, I... began this journey.
I actually really think I became a spiritual teacher when I was 14 because I was running the Jewish youth groups in my region. I was like a spiritual Sherpa at the temples. 400 kids would come and have sleepovers. I was leading it. I think I even knew then this is my dharma. I really turned my back on my spiritual faith from a childhood experience. My mom brought me up visiting ashrams.
She taught me to meditate as a child. I had a lot of spiritual imprints. But by the time I was in my early 20s, I picked up a lot of protectors. And I had probably had them all throughout high school and throughout my life. And they were really protectors like love addiction. I felt like if I'm not in a relationship, I might die.
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Chapter 8: How can we embrace our wounded parts?
Well, then choose to check in with it. Yeah. Choose to check in. Step one.
Number two, get curious about it rather than fighting it. Step three, ask what it's trying to do for you.
Yeah, so compassionately connect and say, what do you need? What do you need?
listen to what it needs. Ask it for what it needs. Yeah. Bring compassion to it from yourself.
Yeah. And what I want to point out is that the four steps, and this is why this isn't IFS, this is IFS-informed self-help, to be really clear. IFS would be a similar inquiry inside, but it's guided by a therapist and it's teasing out. It's a much more in-depth process and it's a many differences. What I'm using here are self-like qualities to apply towards your inner condition.
And so you lean on these self-like qualities, which is the choice to check in, and the curiosity to inquire about who this part is, and the compassionate connection of asking, what do you need? And then the checking for the C qualities. So it's
Leaning on these qualities of self to guide you through this four-step process allows that energy of calmness and connection and curiosity to emerge naturally.
Curiosity, compassion, calmness, clarity, creativity, connection, courage, confidence. Eight Cs. So you got that right.
If you got all eight, then you're right.
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