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The day I recorded this episode I almost lost my mind! 

I got to the studio and, for whatever reason, everything was a total shitshow. 

I got super flooded—and I really hate feeling out of control. 

Thankfully, I had enough awareness to pause, check in and use my tools to get back to center.  

in those moments of pause, we have this opportunity to pivot—and that’s when miracles happen

We all face moments that trigger anxiety or just throw us off-kilter. This episode will show you how to witness your anxiety and come back to center. 

Click here to learn my methods now.

One of the most powerful ways to overcome anxiety is by being the nonjudgmental witness to your inner world. When you’re aware of your thoughts and feelings, you can start to identify the triggers that cause your anxiety and learn to respond to them in a healthier way.

Step into the power of being the witness to the activated state.

gabby

I’ve made a commitment to notice when I’m out of alignment and adjust, and today on Dear Gabby I’m giving you real-time examples of how you can do the same.

pause and pivot when you’re triggered

We all have different triggers.

Maybe your kid threw a tantrum this morning.
Maybe somebody doesn’t show up for you the way you expected.
Maybe something in your life just isn’t working out right now.

I’m going to teach you how to get back into a centered state when you get activated or just plain pissed off.

For me on the set, I needed to get back into my body and back into my breath, which helped me feel more gratitude for all these beautiful people who help me connect with you. I was able to get back into a centered state so that I could be fully present for you.

In any moment, we have that opportunity to pivot. We have that opportunity to get centered and release. 

And it can happen that fast. Some of it is just about taking a beat, taking a breath, taking a moment and stepping away. 

how to deal with emotional triggers

Be present with what you’re feeling. Give voice to it and witness what’s happening. In that moment of respect for that part of us, we can take a breath. We can let the pause point us in a new direction.

You can practice these steps for returning to a centered state:

  1. Check in with your body. What are you feeling? What thoughts are coming up? By directing your attention to what you’re feeling in the moment, you create an opportunity to notice what’s happening on the inside.
  2. If there’s a physical sensation that comes up for you, place your hand on that part of you and breathe into it.
  3. If it’s a thought you notice, witness the thought and forgive yourself for having the thought. Being a witness of the activated state gives you the power to start settling your system in the moment.
  4. Practice recognizing when you’re out of center and follow the steps above to pause … and return to a centered state.

I’ve really made it a commitment to notice when I’m out and come back in, and today on Dear Gabby I’m giving you real-time examples of how you can do the same.

in this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How to realign your energy when you’re feeling triggered or angry
  • How to clear chaos and invite moments of clarity and connection instead
  • Ways to forgive yourself on difficult days and reset your feelings at any time 
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disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #136 May 08, 2023 manifesting 47 min

how to overcome anger, fear & anxiety

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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein, and if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.

Welcome back, my friends. Welcome back to Dear Gabby. I am excited about today's episode. It's an interesting development. I sat down to take some questions on a different topic, but there were some serious tech issues happening in the studio. Literally nothing was working. I was makeup ready, hair ready, mentally ready, and sat down and nothing else was ready.

And I'm a, uh, I have a part of me that's that's really, uh, likes to be in control and likes when things just work out smoothly. I'm very efficient. I wanna move things along and I also need to be in my creative flow with everything working around me so that I can actually be an untethered force and let it all out.

So this day that we recorded the shit the fan, and as I continued trying to create in this environment, I could feel myself getting more and more anxious, more and more tense, more and more rageful. And I knew I had to get myself back into alignment to bring my highest and best to the recording session.

So I did a little bit of a turnaround. I literally just whipped it up and turned it around, and I was like, Gabby, get back into your center. Pause, pivot. Come back to really showing up for the moment and giving yourself some time to listen. Take it in and give yourself a breath. In that reset—one minute reset—I was able to completely redirect where we went with this episode and completely get back on track energetically.

So I decided to make the entire episode about that quick reset for releasing our fear and releasing our anxiety so that we can get back into that centered state quickly. So I let the chaotic moment be an opportunity for learning, for sharing, and for reminding myself of the tools that I know to be so true within myself and that have helped me year over year over year.

So my friends, enjoy this episode. If you're feeling a lot of anxiety or if you're feeling overwhelmed with fear-based thoughts, this quick reset is gonna change you.

It's gonna support you. It's gonna serve you. Listen now, share it with your friends. Thank me later. Enjoy this show.

Let's talk about how to regroup when you get triggered and pissed off. Does that sound good? I feel like that's a good episode. Right, Josh? Let's start there. How to regroup when something has triggered you and you feel a little bit pissed off.

Joey, no offense, nobody in the room, offense. We started the show today.

I'm using you this experience as an opportunity to just teach how you can reset in the moment because we walked in, we're changing up things on the back end. We wanna sit down, we wanna get started. And there's this part of me that loves to just be super efficient and just have everything work out and everything be on time.

And when things get off kilter, I get flooded. And you know how that goes. And I think that happens for all of us in our own unique ways. So maybe you wake up in the morning and your kid isn't cooperating and they're throwing a tantrum before school and you just spill your coffee on yourself and you flip out.

Or you have those moments in your day where everything starts to go awry or somebody's not showing up for you the way you expect it, or things just don't work out—very common moments in our life. How are we gonna show up for them? So here I am, there's this chaos in the beginning, 15 minutes. I turn every real-time experience into an example so that I can teach from it.

And I was about to start doing a talk on addiction, which we'll get to in another episode, but, I felt in that moment, no, that's not true for me. So I just needed to get back into my body and back into my breath, which I'm starting to feel more and more every second here and back into gratitude for all these beautiful people who are helping me do this great work right here.

And helping myself in this moment to just get back into a centered state so that I can actually be with you fully present. And if we override that step of getting back into connection with ourself, if we override that, if I had just been like, okay, moving on, going into addiction, I knew right here, right now that that was going to take me out. That I wasn't gonna be able to bring my highest and best to the table.

And so, in any moment we have the opportunity to pivot. We have the opportunity to get centered. We have the opportunity to release, and it can be this quick. It can happen this fast. And some of it is just about taking a beat, taking a breath, taking a moment, stepping away, and in those moments of pause, we have this opportunity to pivot and the miracle happens in the pause.

If you can step away from an argument and just give yourself pause, everything can change. If you can take a breath on a Zoom meeting and mute yourself, breathing in and letting it go for a moment, honoring and respecting all of the feelings that are up for you. There can be a pivot. The work is really about getting back to ourself, getting back into center, and particularly getting back into a more calm, less activated nervous system.

Now you might be thinking, okay, Gabby, that sounds nice, and you write the books on this and you do the Dear Gabby, and you do this all the time. So it's probably easy for you. Yes, it is easier for me because I've really made it a commitment to notice when I'm out and come back in, notice when I'm out and come back in.

But today on the show, I wanna give real-time examples to you of how you can do this, how you can have a moment of just coming back to center. And I'm gonna give examples. I'm gonna give practices. I'm gonna give tools for how to get back into your center, how to get back into your highest self in the moments when you get taken out.

Does that sound good to you all? Josh, do I have your buy-in? Everything is a learning moment. Everything is an opportunity for grace. So this is it. We are here right now. Our guests have been in the background witnessing and experiencing the technical discomfort that we had, and here we are. Let's talk about how we come back fast.

And I often say this in my lectures and my talks. I don't actually care how perfect a spiritual student you are or how great you are at personal growth and what it is that you show up with all the time. What I care about is how fast you can come back. What's your comeback rate? So let's talk about it today.

I'm gonna give you some powerful tools for coming back to center quickly. Cause we don't have time to get lost in the drama for days and weeks and months. We have to get to it, get grounded, and that can redirect everything our entire day, our whole experience, just like it has for me right now. So here we go.

GABBY: Okay. Bring them in.

JACKIE: Hello, and it's Jackie.

GABBY: Jackie, how you doing?

JACKIE: Good, how are you?

GABBY: I'm okay. So Jackie, talk to me, girlfriend. What's going on?

JACKIE: Hello. Hello. My gosh, I can't believe this is happening. I would just love some advice on just anxiety in general. My husband travels for work a lot and just the fear, and it's not that we've had infidelity or trust issues.

Just every time he leaves outta town, I get. Like such severe anxiety. It's like I can't sleep, the feelings of something happening to him or him being with people. It's almost like a control thing. I don't know what it is, but it actually causes so much stress for me, for him too, but for me, and it's just something I wanna overcome.

I don't know if it's from a trigger from childhood. I don't know where it's coming from. I’m gonna get teary just thinking about it, cuz I don't know where it stems from. And I just would love some tools to just not have this every time he leaves. I wanna be able to enjoy my time. I should be able to be like, yay, my husband.

I have friends when their husbands are gone, they're like, “Oh my gosh. We love it. We get time to ourselves at home to ourselves.” And I just drive myself and him completely crazy.

GABBY: Okay, beautiful. So Jackie, my love, let's start with the truth, which is that there is a younger part of you that's very activated when he leaves and Dear Gabby, is an opportunity to soothe your system, to help you relax your nervous system. To help you get a little bit more center and to give you advice on how to really support yourself in those moments.

But I am going to recommend that there is deeper therapeutic work that you take from here to really open up your heart and your mind to who is inside of you that really needs that deeper dive and that greater support. In addition, maybe even just picking up my book, Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace would be a deeper dive.

For today though, let's get you some support right now. So for today, you came here, you're saying you have anxiety. You're saying that you get anxious when your husband leaves. You have thoughts of infidelity, you're afraid, and I think that you're not alone in a lot of that fear, particularly for those of us who may have had adverse situations in our childhood, or a parent wasn't stable or we didn't have a strong attachment bond.

And so, to hold you in that, I wanna just be here with you right now and I want you to know I see you and I understand you very much. I personally get it. And you are very brave to speak up, but I wanna give you something that can support you in the interim as you do make the commitment to go do deeper work.

Before he is setting off to go on a work trip or anything for that matter, I think it'd be really valuable to just speak truth, to just come to him and say, Hey, you know that I get really worked up about this. I'm committed to working on it. I'm gonna go do X, Y, Z, whatever it is, therapy, read Happy Days—whatever your plan is. But I just wanna give voice to this right now cuz it's scary for me.

And I know it may not be real to you, but it feels real to me and I just wanna give it voice so that I can just clear some space here. That's a beautiful first step because sometimes when we just speak truth to what we're feeling, we give it exactly what it needs in that moment, which is just airing out, letting it go. Being present with it, not judging it or attacking it or pushing it down, but just giving it voice.

If that feels like too much, if it's too scary to be in that truth with him. And to give it some voice. Give it some voice for yourself.

So there's a really beautiful cognitive behavioral therapy technique for catastrophizing, and it's really simple.

It's just really going through the issue that you can come up with and for you, the issues of catastrophizing or something's gonna happen to him, or he's gonna cheat on me—all these sort of catastrophizing ideas. And so, in the moment, you could say to yourself, what's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario and what's the most likely case scenario?

And in those moments, really what you're doing is you're giving yourself the opportunity to not push down or shun or disrespect the catastrophe, the thought, you're just giving it some voice. Then you're giving the voice to the best case, and then you're giving yourself an opportunity to really think your way back into what's the most likely scenario.

He's gonna go out and he's gonna come back, and we're gonna be together and we're gonna be safe, and I am safe. And in that process of really talking to yourself, You begin to care for that trigger, you begin to care for the catastrophizing. And it's just a tool for you to start to get into this practice of developing a new way of thinking, a new way of perceiving things.

And I know that there's a lot of the methods that are gonna come through today's episode that I want you to use all of them, because these are all methods for how we can center ourselves in moments of stress and anxiety and fear and being taken out. And so, we're gonna do our best. We're gonna ground ourselves in these moments.

But for today, these are specific to you. If you can give voice to the feeling, you can give voice to the experience, to yourself or to him, even just in a journal. And then really, if you're caught in the catastrophizing, ask yourself those three questions. What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario, and what's the most likely scenario here?

What's the most likely scenario here? How does that feel, Jackie?

JACKIE: Thank you for your advice. I'm getting completely teary-eyed. I think it does. It just stems from not having anybody stable in my life growing up, an alcoholic family, and been on my own since I was 16. And just not having that stability. So I think it’s—whenever he leaves, I just think something bad is going to happen. So, I appreciate your advice so much, Gabby.

GABBY: And I just wanna say to you, of course you'd be afraid when he leaves. Of course you would feel triggered. Of course, these feelings would come up for you. How could they not? You've lived for so long with this unresolved trauma from your childhood that absolutely deserves your attention, deserves as much therapeutic support as you can have.

We're gonna send you a copy of Happy Days so you can open your heart to the next steps on this recovery journey. But I really want you to get in the practice of just being like, yeah, this is the s**t that comes up for me. Take away the power of it and just be with it. This is what comes up for me because I've got some big stuff from my past that needs lots of love and care.

I'm gonna just be in more acceptance of what is. Yeah, of course this comes up for me. And in that place of acceptance of, yeah, this is the way that I have protected myself from the impermissible feelings of disappointment and sadness and disconnect and fear and terror, frankly. This is what I've been doing to protect myself and this is the best I could do.

My God, Jackie, God bless you. Just take that in and feel me and hear me. I have so much respect for the part of you that gets so scared and gets so activated. My hope is that just giving it a little bit of airtime just to start to open up more to you and give you a little bit of insight is extremely valuable.

And so yes, I gave you some quick tools, but the deeper work is so necessary and it's so available to you. We're gonna send you Happy Days. There's some amazing therapy options out there. I really recommend that the deeper work be available to you. You could find your way to an Al-Anon meeting if you were a child of an alcoholic or a loved one of an alcoholic.

An Al-Anon is 12 step meeting for you. There's so many ways to start to get the support that you need. But for today, I just really want you to feel my voice and my energy telling you that this is all natural. It's a perfectly natural response to a very traumatic experience. And I absolutely respect you and honor you for the ways that you've been trying to protect yourself.

Bless you, Jackie.

[AD BREAK]

This show is sponsored by Better Help. Every day, I am so mindful of taking care of myself to make sure that I'm feeling my best, to make sure that I am moving in some way every day, eating healthfully, just really taking care of myself and one of the number one things that I do for self-care is my therapy.

I've been working with the same therapist for probably almost 12 years, and our relationship is one of the most meaningful relationships in my life. She's someone I trust deeply. All of the tough stuff that's come through in my personal experiences have been greatly, greatly, greatly supported by this relationship with my therapist.

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[END AD BREAK]

GABBY: All right, who's next? Dianna, how are you, my love?

DIANNA: I'm really well. How are you, Gabby?

GABBY: I'm good, baby. I'm happy to be with you.

DIANNA: Yeah, happy to be with you too. My question is about anxiety, and one of the things that I noticed about myself is I have a tendency to be a bit of a fixer. I just wanna fix their problem.

And then I was sitting there thinking about it, and I was like, oh, I'm a fixer with everybody, but I don't know what to do if I'm not a fixer. So then I get worried about being a fixer. My anxiety goes to, I should just shut up and say nothing, and then… So that's where I go.

GABBY: Honey, I am your girl because I have a complete resonance with what you're talking about. I am a total fixer. And it is something that I've been in detox from recently, particularly. So I've noticed myself in many instances being in this place of trying to give unsolicited advice, trying to fix everybody else around me. And something radical happened when I was having a conversation with my husband and he was having some issue, and I was just immediately going in trying to fix it, which is what I'm sure you resonate with very deeply.

And I could see his resistance and I could see his anger and his resentment and sort of stuff coming up. And he looked at me and he goes, sometimes I just want support, not help. And that came through for me so beautifully. It's like, oh, okay, there's a part of me that wants to fix because of my own story, and we could but a whole episode on that one day and please come back for it.

But really what is of the highest service in that moment is to witness my need to fix or my desire to fix. Be present with it and just ask the person whatever it is that's coming up, whether it's an individual that I've just met, or if it's my friend talking about her sleep issues with her child or my husband coming to me, is to actually shift this by saying, “Do you want my support, or would you like my help?”

And truthfully, they can answer. Give them the choice. You can even give more voice to it. I have a part of me that really wants to come in and fix everything, and I just wanna acknowledge that. My guess is that you probably just want me to give you some support. How could I support you? By having that moment of pause and that curiosity question of would you like support or help?

You're actually putting a new pattern in the place of that knee jerk reaction of needing to fix. Now, my love, there's deeper work always on this show. We're here just scratching the surface. We're getting a quick fix right now for really giving ourselves that shift and that respect of others, but also respect of ourselves by just pausing and being present with that feeling and that need.

And then just asking, would you like support? Or would you like help? Or even asking yourself, can I just be in the presence of support right now? They don't really seem to want help. That subtle shift will help you with that perpetual unconscious pattern. I'm just gonna speak for myself. When I go into fixer mode, I'm done. I'm hungover. I'm like, oh God, Gabby, you did it again.

My sister-in-law called me the other day for parenting advice. She's about to have a baby. It might as well have been like, I was yelling at her on the phone, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And I got off the phone. I was like, oh my God, I'm the biggest asshole.

And so, we wanna be able to have that moment of pause and even the inquiry, right? Would you like my support or would you like my help? And that, I think in itself is the subtle shift that you need if you'd like my support today. At least in this dynamic, you came here for help. Love it. How does that resonate with you?

How does that sit with you as a first step solution to a deeper, a deeper journey of looking inward? How does that feel for you?

DIANNA: Totally, totally. And the one thing that I find, the problem that I have with it is that it's almost, well, it is, it's unconscious. I find myself with verbal diarrhea when I can sit down and I can go, yeah, be real thoughtful about it.

And like in the group when we're typing back in the Miracle Group, I can go, you know, okay, yeah, I can un-type it and start with another answer, because I realize that one's not really the way that it should come across or anything like that. But when I'm standing in front of someone, I just want this situation to get resolved and it's like a—

GABBY: It's an addictive behavior. It is an addictive behavior. Absolutely.

DIANNA: Yeah. That was a real surprise to me because, I mean, there's lots of addiction in my family and I'm like, I don't have addiction. Everyone else has a problem with alcohol and drugs. Clearly I have an addiction. I just didn't know what it was.

GABBY: Yeah. Fixing is an addictive pattern.

The perpetual need to fix others is 100% an addictive pattern, and so let's, for the sake of this first step, just create some pause and so even if the pause occurs halfway through the verbal diarrhea, right? So you could be like, yeah, in it just advising, fixing, and then you could pause in that moment cuz you notice it.

DIANNA: Right.

GABBY: And you just give yourself a moment of breath and you say, wait, I'm gonna pull back. I know I have this tendency to fix a lot. I actually would really love to offer you the opportunity for me to suggest, would you like my support or would you like my help? And I wanna tell you, I did this the other day.

I was walking with my girlfriend, the one that really does not like to take my parenting advice because it's too aggressive and she's completely in the right for not wanting it. And also she just doesn't want it. That's a dynamic that we have. And so, she's talking to me about how her kid's not sleeping.

He's getting up in the middle of the night, and I just said, yeah, I get that. And I really honor you and respect that I've been there and I get it. And then I just said, you know, anytime that you feel like you might want some support from me, just let me know. I don't wanna give you any advice right now, but if you ever need any advice, let me know.

And even that's a little bit fixer-ish. But it was a step, right? It was a step in offering her the choice.

DIANNA: Totally. Totally.

GABBY: And so for you, my love, just be the witness of it. And it might be three days later, like right now, I actually do wanna text my sister-in-law and say, sorry I was so aggressive with my advice.

I am always here to just listen to you. Okay?

DIANNA: Yeah. I know. Thank you.

GABBY: You're so welcome. Bigger stuff to explore. Bigger stuff for you to explore here and that's okay.

DIANNA: And do you have an idea of how I would go about doing that?

GABBY: Yeah. You said you have addiction in your family. I would recommend checking out an Al-Anon meeting because Al-Anon is for children or loved ones, or family members of alcoholics and addicts.

And often one of the strong behaviors of a member of that community is that codependent need to fix everybody and save everybody and jump in and have advice and all that, right? So this is another form of addiction and there is a beautiful, free resource that can support you. I'm not promoting it.

I'm just suggesting it. And another thing you could check out is go to the IFS-institute.org and see if there's an internal family systems therapist that's near you. It's about working with your inner family, not your outside family, but all those inner parts of you, particularly this fixer part. And IFS would be a really great therapeutic support system for you to go deeper in the exploration of what that part needs.

Often the things that bring us the most anxiety or put us into extreme behaviors and patterns is these young children inside of us that are really activated, and so we're gonna do something, whatever it is, to protect ourselves or protect the child parts from feeling those big feelings.

DIANNA: A question leading from that is one of the things that I find is I have a hard time asking for help from other people because I'm the one that's always the helper.

GABBY: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

DIANNA: Do you find that something that's normal with that?

GABBY: Yeah, a hundred percent. So often when we're in the place of being the fixer or the, I'm gonna save everybody else, we have a belief system and I'm just gonna speak for my own.

Which is, if I'm not doing it, nobody else will.

DIANNA: True.

GABBY: And so the feeling is if I'm not doing it, nobody else will. There's an extreme fear around actually letting other people help because there's the fear of the disappointment of not having our needs met.

DIANNA: Yeah, which when I was a kid was pretty normal.

Every day. I was the one that was, yeah. Kicked to the curb and told I had to take care of everybody else, so…

GABBY: There's all the answers right there, and I'm gonna just close this with you just by saying that you have a tremendous amount of self-awareness, love, and you are really doing great work. And even your ability to see the fixer is extraordinary.

And I want you to be really proud of yourself. And also be in that place of compassion towards the fixer because the fixer has been working really hard to stay safe because what that part of you is doing is in many ways numbing the extreme suffering of being a child who is told you have to fix everything.

Beautiful work. Thank you my love.

DIANNA: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

[AD BREAK]

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LAURA: Hi.

GABBY: Hi, Laura.

LAURA: It's very nice to see you.

GABBY: There's a lot of noise in the background, so I'm gonna have you just go straight in with your question. Okay, sweetie?

LAURA: All right. So I study a lot of the things that you talk about. So I've actually gone into the Gabor Maté’s Wisdom of Trauma course. I've read anything I can get my hands on, Dan Siegel, your books, all the media things that I can get my hands on.

To be quite honest, I was put through like the universal wringer. I was in foster care, I was parentified, I was traumatized. I went through a marriage that went sour, you know, all that good stuff. And I try really hard to not allow my experience of being triggered influence my son. I try really hard to mindfully parent him. He is turning five. I know our kids are like really close in age, so you can probably—

GABBY: They are. I totally got you, baby. I got you.

LAURA: It's just that I would really like to be able to parent him better without being so triggered in the moment. It can be really hard.

GABBY: Is he, where is he right now? Is he crying right now?

LAURA: No, um, that's another child. Um, he's a, he's in class right now.

GABBY: Okay, beautiful. Well, it's nice that we have a child crying in the background because it's an opportunity to work on this. Okay. So I wanna offer you an opportunity to just check in with what comes up for you emotionally in those moments when you're triggered by him.

LAURA: He can do things that can consciously or unconsciously trigger me, and so I can be overwhelmed with my personal emotions sometimes.

I'm really trying to work on it, but it's very difficult for me sometimes.

GABBY: Okay, so I'm gonna give you a tool that I'm working on. There's a bunch of things that I do and I think that I can share this with you specifically. I have a four and a half year old. I too have complex trauma from my childhood.

I wanna give you a lot of respect and love to the child parts of you that were parentified in foster care and all the trauma. And I wanna just give you a tremendous amount of respect for all the hard work that you're doing and for your major commitment to heal and you’re a f*cking rockstar, mama. So congratulations right there.

And I also just wanna acknowledge what an incredible mother you are for having the bravery to go here and go there and do this work. So let's just start there. Baseline, you are kicking ass and I'm proud of you. And you know, a lot of parents out there, even that don't have the adverse traumas that you and I may have, just don't even contemplate their triggers in the moment with their kids.

So just take that in. It's humongous. So what I want you to think right now about is just those moments when you're triggered, if there is a possibility in the moment. And like I said earlier, sometimes we can't do it right away, but it could be like halfway through the activation. So just check in. Just check in with your body, check in with your somatic experience.

What are you feeling in that moment? What sensations are present with you? What thoughts are coming up? What are you noticing? And by directing your attention inward in that moment gives that activated part of you a little bit of witnessing and being able to witness in that moment what's happening on the inside might offer you the opportunity to start to slow down the inner activity.

Okay? And so maybe if you start to notice it, you start to breathe into the feeling. Maybe if there's a sensation, like a physical sensation that's super up for you, you can actually just place your hand on that physical part of your body. Just place some breath into it. If there's a thought that's coming up, maybe you can just witness the thought.

Notice the thought. Forgive yourself for having the thought. Whatever happens in that moment, that power of being the witness of the activated state and to just extend some calm to the sensations, feelings and emotions inside and thoughts inside can start to settle your system in the moment. Maybe that would be enough to start to down-regulate that sympathetic response to whatever the trigger might be.

Of course, we know breath, even just the way I'm talking right now, just this connection that we have. Slowly pacing with the feeling, right? So we stop at the beginning of this episode. You saw I was activated. You all saw it, poor Joey over here was like, God bless the man.

He must have been like sweating. Because I was like, we gotta move things forward, and that's a triggered part of me. I was like, we need to get this done. We have episodes, right? What's going on? It's a young part of me. She often wants to be like, what the f*ck is happening? Right? It's like a little devil inside, but she's not a devil. She's just a little girl that's just freaking out.

And so just slowly down regulate and just calmly and compassionately. Just check in. And you're not gonna get it right every time. If you can just even halfway through, check in. Check in, notice what you notice.

Even if the kid's having a moment, the second that you start to check inside you, what happens is that he can start to have that same response because his mirror neurons are just firing, firing, firing.

And children are in a constant state of searching for safety, searching for something that feels connected and safe because that's what they're hardwired for. And so, the second that you start to care for the inner children with inside of you and start to calm energetically, you're caring for him.

Trust that. Trust that that just witnessing practice is enough. Breath extending breath, extending your hand, noticing. If it feels way too overwhelming in the moment, just that heart hold, just placing your hand on your heart, your hand on your belly.

The other thing is there's gonna be times where you're just gonna fuck it up and you're just gonna have the trigger. And the best thing you can do then is as quickly as possible repair with him. Just put your hand on his hand or just be present with him. Once you're back in your right mind and just say, sweetie, I'm so sorry, mommy got really activated. Mommy was really, really upset and sometimes mommy and big people get big emotions too, and we have big feelings and we just don't always know how to handle them in the moment.

But I'm with you again, and I'm here and I'm safe. They say like one third is being a great parent. One third is f*cking up and one third is repair. Okay?

LAURA: Yeah, I really resonated when you had Dr. Becky on and she said that it's really important to have that repair cuz it gives us the opportunity to grow.

I know that I never will get an apology from my mom, but I know that my son gets an active and very present mom at all times.

GABBY: And he gets an apology.

LAURA: He does get apologies quite often at any moment that I'm very aware of it, and maybe it's compensation. I actually don't want an apology from my mom.

There's nothing that she can say. She, at this point in my life, I truly feel like she has been the one that has missed out because I do a lot of volunteering for other foster kids, and I'm part of a peer council in my area called the Wisdom Council, and we do like big works for people who are between the years of 18 and 30 years old, which is even older than most organizations, help people who were in foster care.

GABBY: My love. You are a miracle worker. You're showing up for the child parts of you, for your child, for other children who are suffering. I want you to just take this moment with me as a quantum shift to just be super proud of yourself. Cause you're kicking ass. Keep coming back, baby. Thank you.

LAURA: Thank you so much for connecting with me today, Gabby.

GABBY: So much love for you. The episode started and I was just super activated and super triggered, and I was in that place that I get into when things are out of control or I just feel like things aren't being efficient or moving the way I need them to move. Instead of overriding that and just pushing past it and just trying to just perform or do whatever.

I just decided to just call it out. And I decided to be present with it. Look, we don't always have the privilege of being able to run the show and just decide how we're gonna call things out. But often I think that we do have the chance to take that pause, whether it's internally or externally, and give voice to what we're feeling and give the witnessing to what's happening.

And just notice what we notice. And in the respect and the connection to the activated part of us, we actually can take a breath. We can let the pause be the directive. We can let the pause put us in a new direction. We can let the moment of clarity and the moment of connection be enough. And so in those moments when you're triggered and you're activated, the message for today is to just check in.

Check in, notice what you notice on the inside—feeling sensations, thoughts, and emotions—and just give a little breath to it. This is a great topic. I hope that this really supports you with your triggers, your anxiety, all the big stuff that comes up. If you love this episode, share it with friends. I think this is gonna be one of those episodes that's gonna get passed around a lot. And leave us a review.

We really, really love all of your feedback. You can also leave questions for me in the reviews. We do some dear Gabby Q and A’s from the review questions that come through. So do not hesitate to leave me those questions, those reviews, whatever wants to come through. I love you guys.

If you made it to the end of this episode, that means you're truly committed to miracles. I'm really proud of you. If you wanna get more Gabby, tune in every Monday for a new episode.

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