Gabby Bernstein’s Guide to Not Falling Apart During Difficult Times

When the shit hits the fan—and it will, repeatedly—the usual self-care just doesn’t cut it. Enter spiritual guidance that’s more than just face masks and journaling prompts. On Dear Gabby, Gabby Bernstein shares five deeply healing, soul-soothing, and spiritually aligned steps to help you survive the worst moments of your life. Her approach goes beyond typical woo-woo advice—it’s about showing up for yourself when everything feels broken.

Step 1: Stop running from yourself

When disaster strikes, the instinct is to numb out completely. Doom-scroll until your eyes burn. Drink wine until the edges blur. Shop online until your credit card screams. Bernstein gets it and acknowledges this impulse without judgment. “You have the first choice, which is to check out…which is fine if you did do that at first, because you know what? You’re in survival mode, my friends.” But survival isn’t living, and you deserve more than just getting by.

That’s why the first step in Bernstein’s spiritual guidance process is what she calls the “self-help check-in.” Instead of avoiding your inner landscape, you deliberately turn toward it. “Focus your attention inward and choose to check inside, giving your inner part of you some attention,” she says. It’s a subtle but most of us rarely do this. We’re trained to push through, power over, move on. Bernstein suggests the radical act of stopping and asking: What’s actually happening inside of me right now?

Step 2: No shame spiraling

Once you’re in, don’t judge what you find. This isn’t a time for shame spirals or self-critiques. It’s a time for curiosity. As Bernstein explains, the second step is all about asking your inner self some tender questions: What do you need? What is going on? How long have you been around? How old are you? Where do you live in my body?

These questions invite you to connect with the parts of yourself that you usually suppress or ignore. The angry party, the scared part, the part that feels fundamentally unlovable. “These beliefs are stories we’ve carried for decades, and these beliefs deserve the love and the attention and the care that they did not get as children,” Bernstein says.

Step 3: Give yourself grace

Now that you’ve tuned in and asked the hard questions, it’s time to give those parts of you something they’ve probably never had: unconditional love. Gabby calls this “compassionate connection,” and it’s the heart of her spiritual guidance method.

Her advice is simple, but not always easy: “Ask that part of you what it needs.” This is about meeting your pain—not fixing it, not rushing past it, but being with it, with warmth and grace. That’s the kind of energy that transforms trauma into truth.

Step 4: Notice what shifts

The final step is the most subtle—and the most miraculous. As Gabby explains, “Witness the calmness. Witness the clarity. Witness the creative energy buzzing through your fingertips. Witness the courage.” The fourth step is about noticing what’s already changing when you show up for yourself with love.

She recommends doing this two-minute practice every day: “Two minutes a day. Four steps. Check-in. Check-in. Check-in.” Because when you build the muscle of inner presence, “you can align with hope and faith and love when you know that you always have somewhere to turn.”

Step 5: Bring love back into the world

Gabby didn’t stop at the internal healing, because proper spiritual guidance is never just about you. It’s about how you move through the world. She reminds us that love is both a lifeline and a ripple effect. Your inner work becomes a gift to everyone around you: “We bring more love. Love will cast out all fear. We show up, we smile at strangers, we hold the door, we give a hug, we put down our phone,” Bernstein says.

Her message? Use your healing as fuel. Use it as evidence that love is the way. “We have no more time for being angry,” she says. “We have no more time for petty arguments. We have no time for playing small. We have no time for living in the burden beliefs of our past.”

Here’s your (spiritual) sign

Whether you’re dealing with heartbreak, burnout, loss, or just the existential dread of being alive in 2025, this episode of Dear Gabby is your sacred pause. It’s your reminder that spiritual guidance isn’t just for gurus and glowing influencers—it’s for real people, in real-life messes, looking for real answers.

As Bernstein puts it: “You made the right-minded choice. You made the love-guided choice. You made a choice of hope and a choice of resilience and a choice of grace and a choice of faith in a higher power, in a better plan.”