Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace by Gabrielle Bernstein

Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace Reviews

• 
  Christine Jolley

  always nice to hear other peoples stories on trauma. Whilst most of it was good sometimes just felt like it was going all over the place and no real sense of organisation. A bit disappointed in the resource guide. It wasn’t as extensive as implied from the book (which constantly referred to it so my expectations were high!) and if you wanted more in depth resources you had to pay more money (only $97!! ) for her happy days bundle. A lot of Gabbys healing she has had the financial privileges to have access to that many will never have. Charging more for resources just amplifies the gap many people face in overcoming their trauma which I’m not sure Gabby understands at all. Despite some annoyances with the book there were some Well written and helpful sections.
• 
  Elizabeth

  Remember when Gal Gadot corralled a handful of celebrities to sing ‘Imagine’ during the pandemic in an attempt to help the world feel more unified? That’s how this book felt to me. It was a complete miss.
  
  I really adore Gabby and have loved all of her books, but this one didn’t sit well with me.
• 
  Kate Henderson

  Disappointed!!
  Nothing new in this!
  Heard it before from Bernstein.
  
  I adore Gabrielle Bernstein but just found this book to be the same as what she’s said before in previous books.
  
• 
  Katie

  This book felt like it should’ve been:
  
  A) A TedTalk that I didn’t want to be a part of
  B) An audio book, as the author often had “guided instructions” with step one being close your eyes… did no one catch that? That’s a little difficult to do if you need to read step two, no?
  C) An infomercial trying to sell me specific products (aka Bernstein’s website and other talks of hers she’s proud of) and treatments (that you already know are $$$ and that only someone in her position would be able to afford)
  
  The angle of this book seriously comes from a position of privilege in the sense of a lot of what Bernstein recommends will not be viable options for the everyday person to try themselves. EMDR? Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing? Yeah, I’m sure that’s something covered by the average insurance company.
  
  I’m glad that the author has found the help and guidance that she needs to heal. I really am. But I also didn’t pick up this book expecting it to only push me to a website to learn more or to sign up for new, essentially sponsored treatments that Bernstein recommends.
  
  I definitely wasn’t the target audience for this but yes, it really was that bad. Definitely not what I was expecting and I haven’t been this disappointed in a book in a long time.
• 
  Laura Scherer

  I appreciate the message here and am familiar with many of the methods discussed in the book for healing trauma. However, I think it’s highly improbable that the average person would have the time or resources to dive this deep into all these different therapies. If Gabby Bernstein is getting this much therapy to “feel normal”, then the rest of us are screwed.
• 
  Kelsey Meyer

  TBH there really isn't anything in this book that you can't find in any other self-help or spiritual book. Journal, meditate, exercise, eat healthy, de-stress, blah blah blah. If you are struggling with trauma, I'd suggest seeing an actual trained medical professional/counselor/psychologist and not waste your time reading a self-help book about a VERY wealthy woman, who has all the money to access mental health services, treat her unresolved trauma.
  
  If you are looking for something spiritual to read, I'd suggest something from Thich Nhat Hanh or someone who isn't trying to sell their products via a book about themselves...
• 
  Cassie Schultz

  By far her best book! In the past I often felt like Gabby was preaching toxic positivity. For me, this book was her most relatable and the one I most appreciate.
• 
  Lali Love

  Such an inspiring and powerful, vulnerable book on self-healing and realization. I recommend it to everyone that is looking to transform their people-pleasing behaviors.
• 
  Jacky

  I loved the book. It was inspirational, safe and healing. All the information was nicely put together with helpful practices in between. The book had a nice flow and the chapters were short and sweet. Yes its information that I knew because I’ve been on this healing journey for years but people have to always have an open mind and never start reading with “I already know this”. Even though I’ve heard the concepts before, the way Gabby spoke brought a new awareness and really soothed me. One of the mantras on there I literally say daily and I actually feel the inner support from the Universe - it has truly shifted me. The audiobook was lovely and I highly recommend it - especially for beginners.
• 
  Kim Coenen

  Toen ik de aankondiging van dit boek zag bij Lev. Uitgevers was ik gelijk nieuwsgierig. Ik kende Gabrielle Bernstein nog niet. Maar een persoonlijk boek over trauma en herstel dat vind ik persoonlijk enorm interessant. Zeker omdat ze ook werd aangekondigd als bestsellerauteur had ik er gelijk hoge verwachtingen van. Gelukkig kreeg ik van Lev. Uitgevers de kans het boek te lezen en te recenseren, dank je wel! Het boek heeft een aantrekkelijke en passende cover voor een boek dat een persoonlijk verhaal vertelt.
  
  Gabrielle Bernstein neemt ons mee op een pad om trauma te helen, angst te overwinnen en liefde te koesteren. Hoe zou jou leven eruit zien als je geen angst zou hebben? Zonder spijt naar het verleden kijkt, omdat je weet dat het een doel had? Hoe zou je leven eruit zien als je je gelukkig, vredig en liefdevol zou voelen? Dit kan, Gabrielle Bernstein wijst je de weg.
  Ze toont ons hoe je pijn uit je verleden om kan zetten in hernieuwde kracht en vrijheid. Heel je trauma's, verleer je angsten en onthoud de liefde.
  
  Wat een helder en inspirerend boek is dit.
  Gabrielle Bernstein heeft een hele prettige, heldere en open schrijfstijl waardoor je gemakkelijk mee gaat in haar verhaal. Het boek heeft een hele prettige opbouw. Waardoor ze je stap voor stap door het ontdekken van je trauma's en je triggers leidt om ze te zien, observeren en later te voelen en ermee te gaan werken. Naast haar open en persoonlijke verhaal, komt ze ook met uitleg van verschillende soorten therapie om dingen aan te pakken en staat er stap voor stap oefeningen uitgelegd om met jezelf gelijk aan de slag te gaan. De oefeningen zijn uiteenlopend van schrijven, klopoefeningen op je lichaam, meditatie etc. Hierdoor kan iedere lezer denk ik wel een oefening vinden die bij hem/haar aansluit.
  
  Het binnenwerk is erg prettig vormgegeven, met niet te lange hoofdstukken, alinea's, paragrafen met belangrijke uitspraken en de oefeningen. Door deze indeling leest het boek ook erg prettig. Ook al is het geen boek dat je snel even uitleest, aangezien ik zelf wel de oefeningen uit het boek gelijk wilde uitproberen en voor sommige oefeningen even de tijd heb genomen.
  
  Door het persoonlijke verhaal van Gabrielle Bernstein krijg je als lezer ook echt het gevoel dat je op een lijn komt met Gabrielle en haar herstel weet je zeker te inspireren dat deze oefeningen en manier je zullen helpen. Ik heb echt genoten van het boek en de oefeningen en raad het zeker voor iedereen aan die aan zijn haar trauma's en herstel wil werken. Ik weet zeker dat ik het boek in de toekomst nog vaak uit de kast ga pakken.
• 
  Mila

  I can understand this as a memoir. I cannot understand this as “the guided path” that the author is adamant she can take the reader down. Deeply off-putting to hear an author or spiritual leader advising a framework (flimsy at that) on such a deeply nuanced topic (trauma!) with complexities that outnumber the pages of this book….when they are not themselves an expert or professional in the field. While the Internal Family Systems (IFS) that she references is notable, she is herself not a trained professional and the recommendations were very personalized to her unique situation. Due to those reasons, I cannot (personally not professionally) recommend this book, especially in light of the way that it is positioned and marketed.
• 
  Smitha Murthy

  I came across Gabrielle Bernstein or Gabby as she is more popularly known through her podcasts. Those podcasts are great - and I was intrigued to read one of her books. Give me a book with the word ‘trauma’ in it, and I am likely to swallow it whole.
  
  What I really liked was how vulnerable Gabrielle is - there are many useful exercises and practices as well. It is not serious work on trauma, but it definitely can be part of your healing journey.
  
• 
  Dorothy Inoa

  Happy Days
  
  I love Gabbys books and have read many. I loved she opened up and shared her own trauma. I love the big T and little T and how they both affect us in life and we need to heal them.
  I do not like the techniques she brought up, most of them need a counselor/therapist help.
  Some are not able to seek those services.
  I will start seeking counseling and trying meditation.
  
• 
  Hope Cotten

  I love Gabby. I’ve read all of her books, this book is specifically about trauma and how to allow it to transform you and not be held hostage by it. Each week on her podcast she gives this book out and I had such a block to reading it. The universe aligned and in perfect timing (as there only ever is) the words on these page, though heavy for me to digest, provided me resources I had been searching for. Most pain and patterns we will circle back to throughout our life and we must meet these moments with openness not resistance. Grief/trauma is complicated and we must make the time to find understanding without judgement so we can continue to evolve into the souls we are meant to be. You’ll know when this book will serve you and until then let this just be the reassurance that support/resources are waiting for you when you are ready.
• 
  Leanne

  Although I wasn't keen on the live seminar that came as a free option with the pre order, I really enjoyed this book.
  
  I don't understand some of the reviewers' responses that it repeats stuff mentioned in other books because much of what is in this book is Gabby's response to things that have happened in the past few years though it touches upon trauma she experienced as a child.
  
  Her experience with postpartum depression resonated with me as I suffered with it as well and found it helpful to hear of a speaking talking about it. It's a horrible thing to go through and there are things that we can take for granted that actually makes life much tougher when you go through postnatal depression.
  
  Gabby also references different forms of therapies that she has undergone and gives credit to the relevant pioneers for the therapy. I have a lot of respect for her because there are other motivational speakers who I can think of who take credit for therapies that belong to other people.
  
  If anything reading this book makes me want to go back through the list and read the books of hers I haven't read including Spirit Junkie.
• 
  Reema

  Audiobook: This is a 3.5, really. Really great information & exercises that I may go back and do as I just listened through it the first time. However, I don't feel like I had any great a-has. A lot if the info was already familiar as I've listened to, and read, a lot of Bernstein. That said, if felt good to red in the wake of my father's death - someone who but only suffered Trauma, but inflicted T/trauma.
• 
  Jen Brodehl

  4 Stars- Lots of great tips in this book with a focus on healing trauma.
• 
  Giovanna Jansen

  4,5 ⭐️
• 
  Brianna

  Great message but I little too interactive for someone listening to it on the go! I definitely think I would have gotten more from this book if I was able to interactive with the guided meditations / exercises, but since I was listening to this while doing chores and driving, I wasn’t able to completely participate.
• 
  Jamie

  I very rarely write reviews (if ever) but I have to with this one.
  
  I've loved several of Gabby's books (Universe has your back and Superattractor) but this was a huge disappointment... and, I think, quite an irresponsible, potentially damaging, dangerous and harmful book too.
  
  So much of the book is about Gabby's personal experiences with trauma and the many (many!) healing modalities that she takes to heal and overcome that trauma. That's fine if it's just a sharing of her experiences as a means of offering empathy and understand to others who may have suffered the same. But it's deeply irresponsible to then make this book out to be a guide to healing and overcoming trauma. As others have already noted, this kind of healing journey that she has had the privilege to experience and that she widely suggests/ promotes throughout the book, and the access to these kinds of therapies just is not feasible nor financially viable for most people.
  
  She offers very light, superficial versions of practices based off of these therapeutic systems (tapping, internal family systems, EDMR etc) but doing these practices can be extremely triggering and activating, and ultimately worsen the effects for someone who may be suffering very severe trauma and who does not then have the same wealth of resources and therapeutic teams as Gabby does to follow up and support any serious fall-out (and yes, she literally uses the word "team" to describe the system of support she has around her).
  
  The practices she offers are disjointed, not well connected and too shallow to effect deep healing - at least not without the added support of trained professional / therapist / coach, which not everyone can access. There is little to no advice on what to do after these initial suggested practices beyond going to her resource page to find further help from an EDMR/IFS/EFT therapist and praying a bit harder... which seems a little irresponsible and a convenient passing of the buck.
  
  These practices are in turn accompanied by lots of grandiose waffly promises all through the book about getting to experience the greatest peace and freedom you'll ever know, finally releasing decades of pain, learning to love yourself deeply etc it's a lot of fancy, cliched phrases that actually don't mean anything tangible or real.
  
  If you're really suffering from trauma, please find actual help from someone who is trained to treat these conditions. Not someone who's just basically sharing her stories and 'lite' suggestions of the (often expensive) practices that have personally helped her at various points in her life.
  
  At the very least read a book written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about, like Widen the Window by Elizabeth Stanley, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van de Kolk, or the works of Gabor Mate.
• 
  Elizabeth Davaze

  I’m sorry, I have read Gabby’s books before so I knew what I was in for, but this was too hokey even for me. The main issues? The unchecked privilege (who has the resources that this woman has?), the regurgitation of others’ work (including references to an unnamed *shame researcher*), and the preaching. Girl, how many times can you fall into a pit of despair while continuing to preach all the answers to the rest of us? I would have found it easier to swallow all of this if there was even a whiff of humility, but it really felt like listening to advice from that hot-mess, scatterbrained friend we all have in our lives who always has some new scheme. You know, the one you world never take advice from. You have to be a special kind of person to “pray to self”, or ‘ask self to take your parts outside for a walk’. I can’t believe I made it through the whole thing.
• 
  Mia

  I love Gabby but this book is a hot mess
• 
  Khara

  Although different than what you might expect from Gabby, this book is an honest, vulnerable look at what has worked for her to change her life. She says throughout the book that she believes that books and authors are spiritual teachers and guides for us, coming at exactly the right time, exactly when we need them. Happy Days is that book for me.
  
  This book is transformational in a lot of ways. I know I am changed from reading it. I'm aware of a lot of my tendencies and triggers and have tools to help cope with or release these negative aspects or habits. There are several great activities in the book that I have already found useful and can say they have made an observable difference.
  
  However, the book is all about Gabby sharing the steps she's taken to take control of her life and find inner peace and markets itself as if you read this book and do the activities and you too can find that same control and inner peace. When in reality that's not the case. She lists at least three types of therapy in the book with just as many if not more therapists that she worked with in order to get to the inner peace and happiness she's at now. The likelihood that all her readers have access to multiple therapists is slim--access might be restrained by finances, therapist availability, or many other factors.
  
  So, while reading this book can improve your life a great deal; it's important to understand that if you are seeking the type of healing discussed in this book, it will take years of therapy, using three different types of therapy approaches; for example, she talks about IFS, EFT, and EMDR.
  
  4 stars because it's a great book with a lot of great advice; loss of one star because the kind of transformation talked about in the book can only be done through years of therapy with multiple medical professionals in multiple specialties.
• 
  Alyssa Strong

  In the last 3 months I have read every single book by Gabby and she has truly been my spiritual guru. Her books have helped me grow my faith and become spiritual… which I have been longing to do for many years but just didn’t know where to even start.
  
  Because I’ve loved spending every morning for the last 3 months reading Gabby’s books I naturally had to read her new book, Happy Days. Going into it I knew it would be a little bit different than her other books, but I still wasn’t ready to stop spending time with her each morning so I decided to read it anyways.
  
  If I was ready to read a book about childhood trauma and ready to think about my own trauma and issues then I probably would have loved this book. But I’ve spent so much of this year in a positive state because of my new spiritual practice, and reading this book kind of pushed me out of that positive state.
  
  I found myself becoming more emotional, more angry, and I simply wasn’t ready for the exercises in this book.
  
  For ME, at this moment in my life, I would give this book 2.5 stars, but that’s because I wasn’t ready for what this book is all about. With that said, for a reader who is READY and NEEDING to dive into their past trauma I think it deserved 4 stars because it really does get you to do that. You just need to be ready for what lies ahead.
  
  I also appreciate Gabby for her honesty and vulnerability. I can imagine it is extremely hard to be open about her struggles and especially admitting where she has gone wrong in the past when it comes to mental health struggles.
• 
  Abi

  I’ve read all of Gabby Bernstein’s books. I’m not big on “the secret” or anything but I do, strangely, think that manifestation can be a thing. I think people take it too far, and there’s a zillion other factors, but I do think keeping an overall joyful view on life has helped me tremendously.
  I happened upon one of her videos in my Instagram feed at a time when I needed it. I read “the universe has your back” and somehow it started me on a journey where I found a great therapist, and got my life to a better place. I feel calmer and more mature now.
  I always sensed that Gabby Bernstein had a complicated relationship with evidence-based medicine (call it Western if you like, but not just westerners practice it, and I find it’s mostly wealthy people who deride it as a concept) until she had her baby, and it made me a bit uncomfortable. It’s nice to see that she’s learned and grown since then.
  If you have read books like the Body Keeps the Score, It Didn’t Start With You, Widen the Window, etc, I don’t think you’ll walk away with any new insights. This book is meant for people who have not really gone on the mental health journey. This book seems to be for that person who got into manifestation, but doesn’t understand why they still struggle with negative emotions, flashbacks, or triggers. I mostly skimmed through it—it was fine. I hope it helps those who need the help.
• 
  Nithiya S

  I listened to the audiobook version of this book. If you are dealing with severe trauma/anxiety or depression, this book isn't for you. This book is more of a documentation of a person's journey to inner peace and tranquility. Like most self help books out there, this book addresses the issue of mental health on a surface level. Dealing with mental health issues requires a lot of work. This book has several stories narrated by the author and lacks continuity. At best what one can learn from this book is several tools that one may use for dealing with stress and anxiety. I wouldn't discredit this book because I definitely learned a lot of tools like EFT, tapping, mantras etc. But, there was no flow in this book. The author preaches concepts like spirituality, faith, meditation and science on a very surface level. This book does not offer quick fixes. It requires tremendous effort from self in order to go on a path of recovery if you decide to follow this book's advice. My advice is to not solely rely on this book for dealing with any kind of mental illness. If you are not well, seek a professional, get support from family and friends. Know that you are not alone in this journey. Talk it out. I'm sure you will find the help that you are seeking.