Gabby Bernstein is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back and Super Attractor. She’s an international speaker, and a self-proclaimed spirit junkie who has made it her life’s mission to empower people to gain more confidence and live their purpose.
In 2018 Gabby joined Dr. Hallowell to talk about her book, Judgment Detox, a six-step method for releasing and healing judgment so you can feel good and restore oneness. She and Ned talk about why we attack one another, how shame and vulnerability play a part, and why it’s important to find a better way.
Learn more about Gabby Bernstein on her website, GabbyBernstein.com.
Check out Gabby’s book: Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs That Hold You Back from Living A Better Life
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This episode was originally released in January 2018.
Check out this episode!
A transcript of this episode is below.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
This episode is made possible by our sponsor, OmegaBrite Wellness. I’ve taken their Omega 3 supplements for many years and so as my wife, and that’s why I invited them to sponsor my podcast. I’m proud to have them. You can find all of their products online at OmegaBritewellness.com, and bright is intentionally misspelled, B-R-I-T-E. OmegaBritewellness.com. This episode is also sponsored by Landmark College, another institution that I have warm personal relationship with in Putney, Vermont. It’s the college of choice for students who learn differently. Learn more llcdistraction.org.
Gabby Bernstein:
I don’t like to preach to people who are unwilling. So my hope is to gather the willing and really the question is, are you willing to feel better? Are you willing to feel safer? Are you willing to feel more connected? Are you willing to feel more compassionate towards yourself? Are you willing to attract more of what you want into your life? If the answers to any of those questions are yes, then I invite you to join me on this journey and open your mind to these steps.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Hello, this is Dr. Ned Hallowell. Welcome to Distraction. Today we have an extremely interesting guest and truly, stay with us, because I think you’ll be intrigued. She’s onto a topic that I think almost everyone can relate to. She’s a woman by the name of Gabby Bernstein and her bio describes her as a number one New York Times bestselling author, international speaker, and spirit junkie. She’s a recovering addict, certified Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher, featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a next generation thought leader, New York Times named her a new role model, co-hosted the Guinness World Record largest guided meditation with Deepak Chopra and her new book, which will come out today, just absolutely captivated my imagination when I read the title. It’s called Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs That Hold You Back From Living a Better Life. Rather than me telling you why I find that so interesting, I asked Gabby if she would just tell us about her journey and how she came to writing this book. So welcome, Gabby.
Gabby Bernstein:
Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited to talk to you about this.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
How did you come to the place in your life where you wanted to write this?
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, I’ve been in this field of personal growth and spiritual development for 12 years, and this will be my sixth book. And I have had the privilege of helping people in many different ways shift their perceptions and choose to align their thoughts with higher thought forms and use power of prayer and positive thinking to change their experience of life. And in the last two years, as I was preparing to write this next book, I was becoming very conscious of a really huge pervasive issue that we were all coming up against in a way far bigger than we’d ever known before. And that’s the issue of judgment and the issue of division and separation. I was writing this book during the 2016 election and seeing not only just our country, but the world, really far more divided than we’ve ever really seen before.
Gabby Bernstein:
And actually the truth is, is that I had the idea for the book a year earlier. So it was almost like I had a sense of what was coming. And my concern always has been that, when we have these belief systems, but then when we start to voice them, we bring even more energy to them. So what we were seeing over the last two years, and up until even this point today, is the vocalization of the judgmental belief systems that many of us have always carried and had. So we’re just seeing it all very magnified at this time. And the judgment’s not just judgment towards others, but also judgment towards ourselves and living with these belief systems, this separation, is what’s causing, I believe, all of the issues that we’re facing today. Racism, terrorism, fear, all of the fear based experiences that we’re experiencing, unfortunately, every other day throughout the world.
Gabby Bernstein:
So my feeling was the best contribution that I could give to my readers and far beyond hopefully, was to help people begin to learn how to clean up their inner belief systems so that they could stop polluting the planet with their fear and their judgment and separation. And I believe that as we begin to shift on an internal level, we have the power to start to experience shifts within our local communities and our families and our homes, and that ripple effect spreads far beyond our local environment. So my mission as a spiritual activist is to really help people clean up their belief systems, clean up their side of the street. And as a result of cleaning up your own inner terror, you begin to really heal the world around you. I believe that is a solution and that’s the intention and energy that I’m focused on bringing to the world today.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
What if a person says, well, that sounds fine, but I just see so much horribleness in the world, I can’t stop myself from judging it? I’m not just going to say, Oh, well, that’s okay and walk on by. I have to judge it. I have to say, that’s terrible. I hate it.
Gabby Bernstein:
Right. Well, this is something I address in the book. I don’t by any means, ask my reader to be apathetic or to turn their back on what’s happening in the world. And in fact, I don’t do that myself. I’m very loud and clear about what I believe is right and what I believe we need to do politically and globally. But the goal here is to be able to learn how to speak up from a place of love and compassion, not a place of attack. When we meet attack with more attack, we just create more of it.
Gabby Bernstein:
When we speak up and voice our opinions and voice our desires, and start to show up more socially in our lives, when we do that from a place of love and from a place of oneness, that’s when I believe we can be truly heard. So that’s been my experience, having a platform where I speak up about these daily issues that we see showing up, and I’m not going to stay silent, but I’m never going to take it from a one-sided approach. We can’t fight an attack with more attacks. And that’s been my experience.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
I wrote a book about forgiveness and it was very much in keeping with what you’re saying, and it didn’t sell very well. I often thought if I wanted to write a best seller, I should write a book called Get Even, because I think people would much rather respond to an attack with an attack. It’s sort of wired into our brains to forego the attack response. You have to appeal to your higher brain centers, and that’s hard for folks to do.
Gabby Bernstein:
It’s very interesting that you said that because it’s actually much more comfortable. Just as what you’re saying, is much more comfortable for us to fight back because that becomes … Because judgment ultimately has become this great protector. It’s become the way that we protect ourselves from feelings the shadow part of ourselves that we do not want to recognize, protect ourselves from the fears of the world, protect yourself from feeling unlovable and inadequate. And ultimately to your point, we get high in many ways off of judging because it’s a way of anesthetizing the deep rooted pain. But underneath that high is deep rooted guilt because it’s not the truth of who we are. So that’s really the bigger issue is that, even if we get that quick fix or we get a quick moment of relief because we’re put pushing out and reflecting out what we don’t want to feel within, we feel relief for a moment, but an unconscious sense of guilt begins to come over us because, deep down, we know that’s not the truth of who we are.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
In the attack position and the judgment position, we don’t have to feel vulnerable.
Gabby Bernstein:
We can avoid vulnerability. We can avoid shame. We can avoid feeling any or acknowledging any of the wounds from our past when we’re in the stance of judgment.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
So why should we do it?
Gabby Bernstein:
Because ultimately, living in that place of judgment, we are constantly standing there with knives out, right? Constantly ready to fight, and every day we’re triggered and every day we’re fighting each trigger and then we’re triggered again and we’re fighting the next trigger. Our nervous systems cannot handle this. And from a global standpoint, when we magnify these individual movements of judgment and attack, that cumulative energy begins to create what we’re seeing in the world today. I think this is a really important point is that we need to take a personal responsibility for the terror that we’re seeing in the world today. Because even those moment to moment judgmental thoughts are contributing a negative vibration that has a ripple effect.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to my friend, the founder and creator of Omega Brite Wellness, Dr. Carol Lark, about the benefits of taking Omega Brite Omega 3’s, CBB, and other supplements. Here’s a clip from one of those conversations. Could you tell us a little bit about the study, recent study, that showed Omega Brite reduced inflammation and anxiety in medical students?
Dr. Carol Lark:
This was a great study. It was done at Ohio State and it was done on medical students, 68 medical students, without any medical problems, done over 12 weeks. And it was a blinded study, meaning the researchers and the students did not know if they were taking the Omega Brite or the dummy capsules. And what it found was a 20% reduction in anxiety and a 14% reduction in the inflammatory cytokine il-6. So that you had a very powerful benefit from the Omega Brite shown in this study, and that’s something that people could use right now in their life, reducing their anxiety and stress and inflammation.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Distraction listeners, you can save 20% on your first order at OmegaBritewellness.com by using the promo code, podcast 2020. All right, let’s get back to today’s topic.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
So Gabby, I agree with you 1000%. It’s just, how do we persuade people that it’s in their, ultimately not their, but the whole world’s best interest to override these primitive responses that people seem to so want to go with?
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, Doctor, I don’t really like to persuade anyone. I like to invite people to give … Offer an invitation. And I really, truly, I don’t like to preach to people who are unwilling. So my hope is to gather the willing. Gathering the willing, there are many of us out there. Anyone who’s listening to you today, anyone who’s read your books, anyone who’s read my book. There are people out there who are willing. And really the question is, are you willing to feel better? Are you willing to feel safer? Are you willing to feel more connected? Are you willing to feel more compassionate towards yourself? Are you willing to attract more of what you want into your life and the answers to any of those questions are yes, then I invite you to join me on this journey and open your mind to these steps.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Let me just encourage everyone who’s listening too, if you’re a part of the willing, and I think most people listening to this podcast are, join Gabby. I mean, get her book Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs That Hold You Back From Living a Better Life. I mean, really, and it sounds dramatic to say it, but I believe it with every fiber of my being, the future of the world depends upon our somehow galvanizing this energy that she’s talking about. And if you join her in her efforts and more and more people join that, then we can start all of us together generating that positive energy. Don’t you think, Gabby?
Gabby Bernstein:
I couldn’t agree more. It’s absolutely the reason I wrote this book. These are the times where we have to be very, very serious about what we’re putting out in the world and begin to show up for in a really big way.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
And you offer the invitation sort of by modeling it, would you say?
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, yes, absolutely. I think that we, in any moment, have an opportunity to look at our life, and people come to me all the time and they’ll say things like, I don’t have time. I teach meditation. I teach really beautiful, mindful practices and people will say, well, I don’t have time for meditation, or I don’t have time to read the books and do the work. And my response is, do you have time to feel like crap? Right? So I do model it because in all of my books, and particularly in this book, I share many, many personal anecdotes and experiences of how releasing judgment has set me free. I’m very forthcoming with my reader of all the ways that I have judged, all the ways that I have detoured into fear and been unforgiving and held on to resentment.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
So give us a couple of examples of how releasing that has set you free.
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, I wrote this book at a time where I was going through a lot of personal struggles with my family, with some friends. I applied the principles that I was living, the types of principles from the book, and have truly forgiven the people who I had been holding resentment towards. Truly forgiven them. I’ve been given very clear direction on how to carry out the next phase of those relationships.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
How did you forgive them?
Gabby Bernstein:
I accepted that, one of the steps in the book is called, see for the first time. And I practiced this step and truly seeing the people, seeing these specific people for all the things that I love about them and all the qualities of them that I admired most. And then I took the others parts of the book, which were the first two steps, which were really owning my shadows and looking at my wounds and seeing my part, seeing my judgment and the issues. While I may have felt like the victim of a situation, I spent some serious time auditing my part and seeing how I was contributing.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Did you do that alone or with a guide?
Gabby Bernstein:
With the guidance of the book that I wrote. I followed the steps from the book and really did the work to see my part. And I practiced emotional freedom technique, which is the second step in the book, which was using EFT to really get to the deeper ones that live beneath the judgment. I’ve practiced that third step of seeing for the first time. I practiced the steps of really, prayer and meditation to really get grounded in healing my belief system so that I can be free from the projections I’d placed upon these people. And then the final step of the book is forgiveness.
Gabby Bernstein:
And I put that step at the very end because I felt that these other steps were very necessary to get to the place where we could finally be willing to forgive. And then the practice of forgiveness in the book is very passive. It’s really about offering our desire to forgive up to a power greater than ourselves, and really inviting in a spiritual intervention. Really opening up our consciousness to allow the miracle of forgiveness to be bestowed upon us. And it’s not a very active step. It’s a step of releasing and surrendering.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
I’m fond of saying forgiveness is a process, not a moment.
Gabby Bernstein:
Yes. I love it.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
It’s something that’s sort of ongoing and you’re much better heading in that direction then heading toward revenge.
Gabby Bernstein:
Couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Yeah. And yet so many people, when they say I demand justice, what they really mean is I demand revenge.
Gabby Bernstein:
Often that is the truth, yeah.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
But what you’re speaking is so, if only people could see it’s in their best interest. They think they’ll feel better when they get revenge, but they don’t. They don’t feel any better. They still carry that pollution inside.
Gabby Bernstein:
Right. People feel like they, when they walk around with that revenge, they feel like in some ways they’re protecting themselves. They feel like they are in some ways, that that would be the way that they would stay safe. Particularly if someone has been traumatized or if someone has been deeply wounded, which can also be reflected trauma, a traumatic event. They use that feeling of defense, that defense mechanism in efforts to avoid having to feel the severe pain that lives underneath it.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
I want to tell you about Landmark College in beautiful Putney, Vermont. It is the best college in the world for students who learn differently, with ADHD, for other learning differences or autism spectrum disorder. It’s fully accredited, not-for-profit, offering bachelors and associate degrees, bridge programs, online dual enrollment courses for high school students and summer programs. They use a strength-based model at Landmark, which as you know, is the model that I certainly have developed and subscribed to, give students the skills and strategies they need to achieve their goals in life and really expand upon what they believe they’re capable of doing. It is just a wonderful, wonderful place, and I can’t say enough good about it. I myself have an honorary degree from Landmark College, of which I am very proud.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Landmark College in Putney. Vermont is the college of choice for students who learn differently. To learn more, go to lcdistraction.org. That’s lcdistraction.org. Okay. Let’s get back to today’s topic.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
What were the worst wounds that you suffered?
Gabby Bernstein:
Some of the things that I’ve uncovered throughout the process here is traumatic memories from my childhood, healing, forgiving myself for detouring so far to the places of drug addiction and alcoholism.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Those were the traumas, the drug addiction?
Gabby Bernstein:
Yeah. I got sober when I was 25. So I’ve been sober now for 12 years.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
When did the addiction start?
Gabby Bernstein:
Probably, I’d been running for most of my life, I imagine, but the drug abuse and addiction was pretty fast, probably off and on for a few years and then got pretty bad towards the end.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
You weren’t an addict in high school?
Gabby Bernstein:
Not in the sense that I would have recognized that I needed to get clean and sober, but I did have a dysfunctional relationship to drugs and alcohol when I was in high school.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Do you happen to have ADHD?
Gabby Bernstein:
I probably do.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
The reason I ask is there’s a big relationship between addiction and ADHD, and the biggest undiagnosed group are adult women. So we ought to talk about it at some point because it’s-
Gabby Bernstein:
We might have to have a private conversation.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Yeah, yeah.
Gabby Bernstein:
I definitely think that I may have ADHD. And in some ways I think it’s been one of my greatest virtues and in some ways, of course, it can be [crosstalk 00:00:19:36].
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Well, that’s the whole thing about it. What makes it so interesting, if you manage it right, it’s an incredible blessing. Some of the most talented, most successful people in the world have it, but on the other hand, it’s got a downside that can hurt you. So I’ll get in touch with you when we’re finished and we can talk about it. I’d love to talk about it.
Gabby Bernstein:
I’d love to talk about it.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Yeah. Yeah. So where did your gift come from? How did you develop this sort of … You’re obviously incredibly intuitive and spiritually connected. How did that develop?
Gabby Bernstein:
To be honest with you, I think that I was really quite willing to just release all the barriers that were in the way of those gifts that are within me. And I don’t think I’m any different. I think we all have the same types of gifts within us. They just manifest in different ways. And I think those of us who are brave enough to wonder what the blocks are that are holding us back from stepping into those gifts and do whatever it takes to get closer to consciousness and get closer to a more peaceful path. When we have the willingness to be that brave and do that work, then we can allow our true gift to be expressed. That’s been my experience. I’ve just been really brave. I’ve just been willing to go there.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
I agree with you. What do you think others are so afraid of it? I suppose, getting hurt or feeling embarrassed.
Gabby Bernstein:
Feeling embarrassed, being hurt, facing the feelings of shame. I think the biggest thing that holds us back is the terrible, terrifying fear of facing our shame. And not even many people wouldn’t even have a name, wouldn’t even know that shame was what they were running from.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Right. And you just said, okay, I’m going to feel it and release it, and then …
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, I’ve been doing this work on myself for over a decade. So it’s been many stages of development. I think some of the heaviest lifting I’ve done on myself has been in the last two years. Not I think, I know. Even more than when I got sober. [inaudible 00:21:34] any of that. Some of the biggest, biggest work I’ve done on myself was over the last two years.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
What was the hardest part of it?
Gabby Bernstein:
Facing my shame. That is definitely been the most terrifying. But the beauty about it is that, when you do give voice to your shame and you face it finally, then you finally feel free. You feel truly free because you don’t have to run from it anymore.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Now, listeners would say, what in the world do you have to be ashamed of? You’re a beautiful woman, happily married, well educated. You’ve written six books, you’re successful. What shame could you possibly have?
Gabby Bernstein:
Well, first of all, I think that we all carry shame from traumatic events from our childhood. And those traumatic events may be something as simple as somebody calling us stupid in the classroom or something far more significant, seemingly significant. But regardless of what the minor or significant instance was, it creates an imprint. And obviously this is what you teach and write about, I’m sure, but those imprints are shameful moments, feelings of being unlovable, inadequate, not good enough. And we do whatever we can to avoid feeling those feelings. It really creates a tapestry that becomes our life. And we have to begin to redesign that when they want to heal.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
That’s a wonderful gift you’ve given. And I’m so impressed that you’ve done this. Gabby Bernstein, enlightened, gifted woman who has done an awful lot in her still relatively young life and is on her way to doing a lot more. Get her book. I’m quite certain it will set you free in many ways. Thanks a lot for joining us.
Gabby Bernstein:
Thank you so much for your time and thank you for having me on your show.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
Take care. Bye-bye.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
You can find Distraction on all the social channels and you can find me on TikTok. My username is @drhallowell. I’ve uploaded a bunch of ADHD related videos, 60 seconds a piece, and I’d really love to hear what you think. Send me a DM or email [email protected] That’s [email protected] Distraction is created by Sounds Great Media. Our producer is the extraordinarily talented Sarah Burton, and our audio engineer and editor is the equally extraordinarily talented Scott Person. I’m Dr. Ned Hallowell. Until next time.
Dr. Ned Hallowell:
The episode you just heard was made possible by my good friends at Omega Brite Wellness. I take their supplements every day and that’s why I invited them to sponsor my podcast. Shop online at Omega Brite, and that’s B-R-I-T-E, wellness.com.
