Finding Your Own Healing with Gabriella Barnstone
Manage episode 347329078 series 2980544
Today, Yuliana introduces Gabriella Barnstone, a certified yoga therapist, and together they talk about the pivotal moment that redirected the course of Gabriella’s life. For her, it was her father’s mental illness and eventual suicide that changed everything. As she says, everything in her life was leading up to that moment of the untimely death by suicide of her parent. She reflects on these heart-breaking moments and opens up about her family history of mental illness. She also shares her story of dealing with trauma and accepting the fact that healing is a lifelong process.
Next, Gabriella gets into the details of her family history of mental illnesses. Looking back on the most tragic family events, she tells us about the impact of bipolar disorder on an individual’s life. Not only does mental illness impact a person’s life, but it also touches everything and everyone around them. Unfortunately, that was also the case with Gabriella’s father. His mental health struggles left a mark on those that loved him but also shaped them to become stronger and more resilient. To this day, Gabriella continues to unpack her trauma and complex emotions as she helps others heal and recover using yoga as therapy. She’s truly an inspiration to everyone dealing with grief, loss, and sorrow.
Episode Highlights:
- Coping with tragic events and complicated family history
- The impact of bipolar disorder on a person’s personal and professional life
- The effects of suicide on family members
- Understanding mental illness in family
- Self-healing
- The lifelong process of processing trauma
- The songs that most resonate with Gabriella
Quotes:
“There's this other side of my personality, maybe you’ve seen it, Yuliana, that was bold, and just go for things, and just really try to carve out my own way and take chances. I think that comes from that too. Those kinds of situations that are scary really make you adaptable in some ways.”
“Up until then, I was like, why are people mean? And why are they mean to me? And then when I read that letter, I was like, no, wait, people who are mean are in pain.”
“The next phone call I got was from my cousin. He said, ‘Gabby, I just want you to know that there's nothing you could have done.’ I thought that was like the most generous thing that anyone could do. Because he knew where the mind goes. Because he had been through it.”
“I feel like even today, things will come up. I feel like it's a lifelong process of unpacking, it's so huge that there's no sort of processing it, and then be done with it.”
“I would say that things change. I don't think I would say, ‘You're going to be okay,’ anything like that. I would say ‘Just know that now is not what you're always going to be feeling.’”
“So one is Iggy Pop ‘Passenger’, which is a song that I love because it's just about experiencing life. That's what it is to me. I like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Despair’, do you know that song? Because it's all about sort of, like, facing despair and sort of, like, concreteness. That bluegrass song. ‘Keep on the Sunny Side’, which by the way, is not what it sounds like. It doesn't mean like, just be happy all the time. There's something about it that suggests, like, effort, you know?”
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