Ep 29 l Identity After Trauma Series: Rebuilding Identity (Part 1)

Identity, Re-Birth, Acceptance, Self-Transformation, Growth, Emotional Healing. 

In this new series I’m doing ‘Identity After Trauma,’ I will be giving step by step guidance on the process of finding yourself again after the re-birth of you. Trauma changes you…forever. You can never go back to quite the same life or same way of navigating the world after your mentality has been altered by trauma, no matter how slight or major. 

In Part 1 of this series, rebuilding identity, I give tips & tricks to finding this new, better version of you. Because that's the thing - trauma doesn’t have to provide a change for the worse. In fact, trauma can help you expedite & expand your personal evolution, but only if you choose to elevate your vibrations and lean into the good energy, instead of focusing on the bad. 

But how do you do that? Listen and find out the route you need to take to embrace your more lit life, albeit different from the old one.

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

– Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Win most, lose some

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Transcript

Rebuilding your identity is not something that comes super quickly or super easily. It’s hard work. It may take months or years, and you may have to go back and revisit a step and recalibrate something you realize you haven't fully done. That's all part of the process. Trust the process.

Almost dying taught me how to live. Being struck by a car left me in a three-and-a-half-week coma with 15 broken bones and 16 surgeries to complete, including brain surgery. However, I woke up from that coma in an even greater place than I ever foresaw for myself. How? The universe will guide you out of the darkness and into the light if you allow it.

Often spirituality comes off as too highbrow. I'm not about that. Welcome to the podcast that talks and teaches about it through the lens of humor. Together, we'll harness positive energy and use it to work with the universe, all while giggling the entire time. Welcome to Gabriella Rebranded: Win Most, Lose Some.

Hello, everyone. This is the first episode that I'm recording in the new year, so very, very cool. I got first episode in ’26—first episode I’ve recorded in two calendar years—so that’s pretty fun.

This episode is part of a new series I’m doing called Identity After Trauma. This is part one in that series. And it’s not going to come out consecutively, because that would be boring if I just released episodes talking about different categories of the exact same thing for several consecutive weeks.

But this is part one in the Identity After Trauma series. This episode is about rebuilding your identity after trauma. And I thought this was a great way to start the new year, because the new year is kind of about a reset, a recalibration. What a perfect time to rebuild your identity.

Not really. I don't actually believe that. I think New Year’s resolutions are very stupid, and your growth should not be put on a calendar. But you get it—for the sake of that. You know, New Year’s is a largely celebrated thing globally, so it made sense for rebuilding your identity after trauma.

Many of us who go through trauma feel like they are not the same person that they were before they went through trauma. A brain injury adds a thick double layer to that, but most people who have gone through a significant trauma—honestly, all people—don’t feel like they’re exactly the same person as they were before they experienced trauma.

Unfortunately, trauma takes away your innocence, your naivete about the world, and that changes you. You are no longer naive, and you see life for what it actually is.

Before I get into the rest of the episode, remember to like, review, subscribe—do all the things. Follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Gabriella Rebranded, and sign up for my newsletter at gabriellarebranded.com. Pretty, pretty please, and thank you.

So, after trauma, you are changed—but not for the worse. At least, it doesn’t have to be for the worse if you choose to make it better. The trick is: how do we make it a good change and accept it, and not a bad change that we frantically try to run from—using unhealthy coping mechanisms to run from our discomfort and fear?

People could feel that I was this unstable, frantic entity. You attract things—people, opportunities—that you are a vibrational match for. So if your vibrations are unstable, scared, frantic, and sad—and this is a big one—in*authentic, you’re going to attract inauthenticity right back to you.

You can’t build a peaceful life on an unstable foundation.

So what’s the first thing to do when you feel like you have to rebuild your identity? Accept. Accept that you have lost at least a portion of your old life and that it’s not coming back. Exactly who you used to be is not coming back, that exact life is not coming back. And that’s ok, that’s actually a really good thing because after surviving a trauma albeit physical or emotional or both and going through ego death, and you have seen more, you know more—once you accept that instead of running from it, you vibrate higher. You become more authentic, and people can feel your authenticity.

So as soon as you accept it instead of running from it you vibrate higher, you are more authentic instead of running from it and and denying it, you start to attract real, good things.

Unfortunately, yes—you had to see a little bit, or more likely a lot of bad, to get to that place and to get to this place. And probably for the rest of your life, you will see a bit more bad, just because you know more about humanity and people and life and the world. You can’t unknow things or unsee the bad that you live through.

So you need to accept that this knowledge and your lived experiences will always be with you, whether or not you want them to be there.

That may seem really dark. Like, okay—because I was traumatized, I now have to always be sad and know that there is more bad out there. But no, no, no. I promise that’s not where this is going. I mean, yes, you know what’s out there—but once you accept that, that’s actually when things start getting really good, because acceptance brings peace.

Once you've accepted the not-very-lit circumstances, you can redirect your attention and focus onto what’s going great. And while you now know the ugly, you’ll now be so much more thankful, appreciative, and grateful for the beauty that there is in the world. And you’ll celebrate it more, and accept it more.

And redirecting your focus emphasizes this a lot.

Now, acceptance—while it does bring peace—it is not always pretty. And that is something that took me a while to learn. It is not just like, “Okay, I’ve accepted. I’ve accepted that all this bad happened to me and now things get really good.”

No. I wish it was that easy, but it’s not.

In order to truly accept, you have to grieve what you lost. You can’t go create a new, brilliant life in this new strong identity without grieving your old life, and grieving the person that you used to be, and all the things that went away. In order to truly rebuild your identity, you have to say goodbye to the old one.

And justified, earned grieving is not dwelling on the past.

Part of the reason why I refused myself this grieving period for so long is because I thought grieving meant dwelling on the past. And all the spiritual books and teachers tell you that you're not supposed to dwell on the past and you're always supposed to move forward. But what the spiritual teachers and all the books and all the leaders—like Gabby Bernstein, Dr. Wayne Dyer—also teach you is that in order to truly move forward, you have to fully let yourself feel emotions, including the negative ones.

And this helped me a lot to get this grieving period started.

Write out what happened to you—whatever that means to you. What happened. Your significant trauma, the events that caused this change—just write out what happened. Don’t bullet point it, write it like a story. This is a big one that changes everything. Because when we handwrite, because when we handwrite we think things three times as much, we process three time as much, so more will come out of you. You won’t believe what comes out and things that are really deep down there come to the surface.

This is the biggest trick: when you write this out, when you write this story, write it as though you are talking about your child self—regardless if you were a child or an adult when your trauma happened. Like, my accident happened when I was 23. Doesn’t matter. Write it like you're talking about your six-year-old self.

This will humanize your trauma more and naturally make you stop laundry-listing it the way trauma often makes us do.

I was so used to listing off what had happened to me for various people—doctors, therapists, people that I met that just asked me a million questions like it was a Barbara Walters interview—because people love trauma porn.

I was so used to having to perform this monologue of the girl who lived that I began bullet-pointing the story of myself. I talked about my accident and the residual effects like I was studying for a test. My neuropsychologist told me that I was talking about myself like I was a piece of meat or a case study. I’d been objectified by so many people for so long that I was objectifying myself.

Writing out what happened as if I was talking about my child self allowed there to be so much more empathy. And so much more trauma and things that lived within me became unearthed, which was beautiful—because I finally started connecting with certain points of my story, rather than them just being these things that I had been told happened, or these blurry, fragmented memories that I didn’t really want to think about.

The writing aided my acceptance process so much and really let me know what pain points were under the surface—what exactly I was grappling with. Many things bothered me way more than my laundry list made it seem. And a lot of those things I didn’t even know I was struggling with—but they came out when I was writing the story of myself, and a really dark sentence would appear. And I was like, “Oh, okay… let’s unpack that a little bit.” And then I unpacked it in neuropsychology.

That’s why you need to handwrite—because if you just quickly type it, your brain is probably protecting you by really not letting you process how bad and painful things are.

But when you do the handwriting, and you really let yourself process, so many emotions and pain and pent-up anger and sadness can come to the surface, and you can really start to understand yourself.

Once you've written the story of what happened to your child self, write a letter to your old self. Tell he or she or they all the things you miss about them—and will always miss. Admit that there are things that you do miss. For a while, I didn’t want to admit that there was anything that I missed about Gabby because I thought if I admitted to one thing than everything was worse, but that’s a very all or nothing, black and white way of thinking which, unfortunately, trauma makes us do.

So say what you miss. Tell your old self what you love about them, what you wish you could get back—and you won’t. You have to accept that.

But then also tell your old self about all the incredible things about the new you, and what you really love. What good has come into your life, what you’ve gained from this experience, what you are so fucking proud of. A trauma survivor has so much to be proud of.

And wouldn’t you love to tell your old self about all the things you’ve done that you wouldn’t have thought you could do before?

And include some pop culture or taboo updates to make it a little more giggly for yourself so it doesn't feel too sad and down in the dumps and dark. Like, for example: I told my old self that Harry Styles is rumored to be balding, and it’s rumored that he’s been wearing a hairpiece for the last several years—because Gabby would be losing it at that one. She would not believe her jaw would be on the ground.

The second part of the letter is so key because it transforms the fear of ruminating or dwelling on the past into a celebration of the love that you have for your new self—a celebration of the rebirth of you.

That’s probably the most important part, because it draws it back to the positive while allowing you to hold space for and accept the negative, instead of denying it. Recognize that the negative is a part of you—but again, don’t let it become you. Just let it walk alongside you.

Once you’ve done that, as you continue on the process of rebuilding, just allow and do what feels good. Stop over-scheduling yourself, and stop trying to force something to happen or make something work. Just allow. Slow down. Follow the things that feel good. Do those things—and only those things. And not in a bad drug way because the withdrawal makes you feel like shit and all that. Do things that only feel good, that always feel good. No matter how silly these things may seem - just do things that feel good. 

Spend time with people that restore you energy, don’t drain it. And that might include saying goodbye to some old friendships—that makes sense. Your vibrations have changed, so you're not going to be vibing at the same level as you were with everyone before your accident. Not everyone who once did fit is always going to fit. We all outgrow things—trauma or no trauma.

And you may have picked up people along the way who matched your shaky, inauthentic, unstable vibes and entertained some unhealthy coping mechanisms. Once you accept and ground yourself, you may not be a fit anymore. There might be a small period of loneliness, but that's okay, because eventually you’re going to draw in so many people that match your new vibes so much more, and there will be so much more love that you’re exposed to.

It might take a minute to start, but you’re going to draw in people who match your energy—of the new evolved version of you. So you’re going to draw in people who match your evolution and are equally as evolved and aligned with you.

Remember: the universe delivers people, things, opportunities that you are a vibrational match for. So lean into the good vibrations. Follow the restorative energy. Do what feels good.

For so long, I was trying to force myself back into the exact same career and the exact same friends, and everything being the same. But it didn’t all feel good. The career definitely didn’t. It felt desperate and disappointing because it didn’t fit with the new me.

But once I accepted and started allowing—stopped trying to control, stopped trying to force—things came in that fit with a more fulfilled version of me. A more fulfilled career. More fulfilling friends.

I never cared much for exercise before I got hurt. Now, exercise feels great. So I made sure that I chose a life path and career for me that allowed all the room for exercise—which may sound silly to some, but for me, it feels right, and it helps my mental health so much.

And that led me to a lot of friendships and opportunities for this new career of mine. Exercise leading to opportunities for a podcast? Damn straight it did. I would not have gotten this thing off the ground without my commitment and dedication to exercise—and the friends and people I met with shared values—and all the opportunities that appeared.

And that’s amazing for me. And old Gabby would never have had that. And she never would have believed it. And she would be so bewildered by where my career is now and who I am now—which was really exciting to tell her about in the letter.

See? I followed the good energy that came from exercise, and it led me to more opportunities and friendships, and it led me to this podcast and this career of mine—even though that was not the initial goal.

When you follow energetic momentum, things will fall into your lap.

And restorative energy doesn’t mean you’ll never be tired. Working on this podcast can be exhausting, but it’s exhaustion that makes me feel proud—and exhaustion that makes me happy and fulfilled to have done all the work that I’ve done.

Not an exhaustion that makes me feel like, “Oh my God, I so regret spending my time on that tedious thing.” You know—an exhaustion that makes me miserable and just praying for it to be over.

No. It’s an exhaustion that feels like a long day’s work, and it makes me feel really good.

Rebuilding your identity is not something that comes super quickly or super easily. It’s hard work. It may take months or years, and you may have to go back and revisit a step and recalibrate something you realize you haven’t fully done. That’s all part of the process. Trust the process.

I would love to say that rebuilding my identity happened overnight, but it’s had several benchmarks over the course of four years—learning new things about myself, correcting thoughts and behaviors and emotions, feeling all the things—and I’m still not done.

Remember: we’re always healing, and it’s not linear. You’re going to change, and you’re not always going to be operating at the same level. Another thing that’s highlighted by a brain injury.

As I biologically healed more, I learned more about myself, and learned more about what things I needed to refine or adjust or accept. It sounds confusing and tedious, but the healthy identity rebuild always comes down to these basic steps:

Accept. Allow. Follow the good. Don’t force. Don’t try to control. And be sure to let yourself grieve.

Sure—rebuilding your identity is complicated. Trauma always is. But it’s simultaneously just as simple as that. Where you’ll end up will be so much easier and simpler. I promise.

This has been Gabriella Rebranded: Win Most, Lose Some. X-O. Bye.