Gabriella Rebranded | Healing After Trauma, Spiritual Growth, Brain Injury Recovery & Dark Humor

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Can you learn to trust your intuition and recognize when your gut feeling is trying to tell you something?

In this episode of Gabriella Rebranded, Gabriella sits down with Elizabeth Rea, a psychic medium who describes how a near-death experience at 16 changed her life and shaped her intuitive abilities. Elizabeth explains why she believes intuition can be developed, how journaling past gut feelings can help you recognize patterns, and why intuition should complement, not replace logic, data, and critical thinking.

00:00 Introduction to Elizabeth Rea and Psychic Abilities

02:50 Elizabeth’s Near-Death Experience at 16

06:10 How Elizabeth Turned Her Intuitive Abilities Into a Business

13:50 Intuition, a Dangerous Stalker, and a Dog’s Warning

15:50 Intuition vs. Logic and Skepticism

18:45 Cold-Case Investigation: The Sealed Evidence Box

23:15 How Intuition May Reveal Hidden Agendas

26:00 The “Ugly Pants” Story: Suspected Deception and Financial Abuse

30:00 Can You Develop Your Intuition?

35:45 Internal Intelligence in the Age of AI

39:25 How to Work With Elizabeth Rea

Explore near-death experiences, psychic abilities, red flags in relationships, and why developing your own internal judgment may matter even more in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Elizabeth works with leaders, founders, CEOs, and investors through her business, Insightful.

Explore her work at https://insightful.foundation/

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Is egg freezing worth it when you’re 28, single, and unsure if you want children? Gabriella shares her personal experience freezing her eggs at 28, explaining why she decided to preserve her fertility and what the process was really like.

From hormone injections and egg retrieval to bloating, fatigue, mood changes, and emotional recovery, Gabriella opens up about the physical and mental side effects of egg freezing that she wishes she had known about beforehand. She also discusses the cost of fertility preservation, her experience navigating healthcare, and the financial barriers that can make egg freezing inaccessible to many women.

01:24 Why I'm Talking About Egg Freezing

02:40 My Egg Freezing Experience: 15 Eggs Frozen

04:45 Why I Froze My Eggs at 28 While Single

07:15 Egg Freezing Cost, Insurance Coverage & Fertility Inequality

14:05 Egg Freezing Side Effects & Recovery

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Get 14% off your first subscription order or 10% off a one-time purchase.

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What happens when trauma changes who you are? Writer, Zen Buddhist student, and traumatic brain injury survivor Lee Carlson knows what it means to lose the life and identity you once knew. 

In this conversation, he shares how a serious brain injury changed his relationships, career, and sense of self, and what helped him begin building a new life.

1:15 Rebuilding Your Life After a Traumatic Brain Injury

03:50 Can Meditation Help With Brain Injury Recovery?

06:10 Lee Carlson’s Traumatic Brain Injury Story

14:10 How Journaling Can Help You Process Trauma

22:30 Lee’s Books on Zen, Mindfulness, and Spirituality

33:50 Finding Our Humanity in the Age of AI

If you’re struggling to feel like yourself after trauma, learning to live with a changed reality, or searching for peace while you’re still healing, this conversation offers a reminder that recovery isn’t always about returning to who you were. Sometimes, it’s about discovering who you’re becoming.

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exercise, neuroplasticity, neurotransmitters, neuroscience

Plot twist: exercise changes your brain perhaps even more than it does your body!

To close out the season, I’m breaking down the actual neuroscience behind why movement helps mood, motivation, focus, recovery, brain fog, stress, and mental health—and how I experienced it rebuilding my life after being my accident - surgeries & come & all - and training my way back into myself.

We get into neuroplasticity, BDNF (basically brain fertilizer), neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, nervous system regulation, inflammation, sleep, and why exercise can make your brain feel online again when it’s been stuck in survival mode.

This episode isn’t fitness hype. It’s brain chemistry, biology, scientific evidence, and lived experience.

I'm standing ten toes down: work out for the brain, the body will follow.

Win most, lose some

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healthy boundaries, medical trauma, invisible disability

A long recovery can change far more than your physical body—it can completely alter how safe you feel in relationships, and suddenly something as simple as saying “no” can feel threatening.

 I’m joined by Jessica Miller of Mind Your Boundaries to get very practical about what it actually looks like to set boundaries after medical trauma—especially when your symptoms are invisible and everyone assumes you’re fine because you “look normal.”

Listen, boundary setting since getting hurt has been a double black diamond treacherous slope, but Jess gets right to it with her simple tools & education.

We talk about why trauma can keep your nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight, how to regulate before hard conversations, and simple tools you can use in real time when you feel yourself spiraling.

We dive into the raw, messy reality: family members who don’t understand your limitations, people pushing back when you finally start saying no, over-explaining yourself, people-pleasing, guilt, resentment, and what happens when protecting your peace costs you certain relationships.

If you’re navigating recovery from medical trauma, brain injury, chronic pain, or any life-altering health event, this episode will give you practical tools, actual scripts, and a reminder that protecting yourself is not selfish—it’s necessary.

Win most, lose some

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Mind Your Boundaries Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpFOiBujrj00OAxWnCpsX_g

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trauma-informed care, recovery, boundaries, emotional healing

“Just get over it” sounds like typical advice from the outside, but to someone living through trauma, it sounds dismissive and cheapens their experience.

Let's unpack why that mindset fails—and what survivors actually need: patience, consent, compassion, and support that doesn’t turn into an interrogation or Barbara Walters interview (have sat for many of those). 

You rarely know the full story behind someone’s pain and even survivors can still be uncovering the ripple effects years later. I also share what it feels like to be judged by people who know an itty bitty titty fraction of what happened—and why “mind your damn business” can be a very healthy boundary.

We break down the difference between checking in with care versus pushing for details, how to encourage support without trying to control someone’s healing. 

(I make it really easy for you, I literally I give you a sample script for how to ask someone about their recovery respectfully.)

Let's all show up for people better.

Win most, lose some

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Trauma can erase the version of you that felt familiar. Then, you’re left figuring out who tf you are now. And that figuring out period, girrrrlllllll......

In part 3 of the Identity After Trauma Series, we're talking that fun lil Identity CRISIS aspect that gets violently pelted in. Trying to “go back to normal” can make recovery feel so damn much worse. And why??? Isn't the point of healing to get back to feeling like your old self?? 

- Not exactly, but I promise, it's ok!

When your old life doesn't hit the same, that's not failure - that's change.

We get into why forcing the “old you” leads to burnout—and how to sit in the in-between, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and define alignment in a way that actually feels good.

I share what that looked like for me—letting go of a dream career, finding a new pace, and realizing I didn’t actually want everything I used to have.

To all those in a season of recovery or major change, you’re not behind. You’re becoming.

Win most, lose some 

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trauma-informed coaching, career pivot, TBI, recovery

A brain injury or any health scare will clean up your priorities fast. Enter Stephanie Ang, a fellow TBI survivor who agrees with me that she would not let her pain be for nothing. From it, Stephanie created SGA Coaching & Consulting: trauma informed transformational coaching with an emphasis on TBI survivors.

Stephanie & I talk about what happens when “just get back to work” doesn’t work for your brain, your energy, or your nervous system. We get into the grief of losing the old plan—and the unexpected relief of admitting a 9–5 isn't for you anymore.

Stephanie turned her experience into SGA Coaching & Consulting, and we unpack what “holding space” actually means, why validation matters when systems don’t get you, and how to stop living by “shoulds.” If you’ve ever wanted to scream at someone who claims “I understand” when they absolutely do not understand—you’ll feel this.

We also hit career redesign: job interviews or tasks that flare symptoms, toxic work culture, and why entrepreneurship can be an accessibility tool. Plus her “four F words,” tiny confidence-building experiments, and gratitude that isn’t gaslighting.

If you’re navigating concussion, TBI, trauma, or a life plot twist—this one has real tools, not just vibes.

Subscribe, send it to someone who needs it, and tell me: what are you trying to reframe right now?

Win most, lose some

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Stephanie's links & contact

@sgacoaching on Instagram

Email: [email protected] 

Website: Sgacoaching.co 

@stephaniegrace ang on LinkedIn: 

The Navigator's Letter by Jan Cress Dondi

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Patient/Female Advocacy & Agency, Cervical Cancer, Double Mastectomy, Uterus & Ovary Removal

They can take your organs, but they don’t get to take your identity...and they can give you back your organs if you relentlessly remind them.

Time for a brief exhale. Same story, same reality—but this time we giggle. Alissa & I are still talking cervical cancer & BRCA2, but now it’s about what happens after your body has been through it. When you’re trying to feel like yourself again (or figure out who that even is).

We touch on the messy parts—yeah, the system is still the system—but this is more about reclaiming. Expanders, reconstruction, making choices for you after a series of trips where it felt like everyone else was calling the shots while you rode shotgun within your own body. Femininity, vanity, pleasure…turns out those things still matter, and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for wanting to feel good in your body again.

And because Alissa THANKFULLY refuses to be boring about any of this: she asked for her uterus and ovaries back, named her uterus, and keeps them as proof that she made it through. That's a f'ing WOMAN!!!!

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body—or like you had to fight to get it back—this one will land in a different way. Subscribe, send it to a friend, and tell me what part made you feel like yourself again.

Win most, lose some

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https://www.alissamilo.com/

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Patient advocacy amidst a double mastectomy, ovary & uterus removal, & the 2024 election  

Contrary to popular belief, hearing “You have cancer,” is not even close to the toughest part of the journey. Alissa's real grind was everything that follows: decisions she never wanted to make, pain she did not expect, and a medical system that can feel weirdly casual while patients, like Alissa, are quietly panicking about their own mortality.

As promised, a true trauma porn episode: Alissa Milano & I sit down and trace her path from a cervical cancer diagnosis at 31 to the reality of a radical hysterectomy. We talk about what “radical” can actually mean, why recovery is not a nice & clean lil six-week timeline, and how trauma can show up after treatment - when everyone around you thinks you should be celebrating. Alissa gets blunt about intimacy, vulnerability, and the mental health crash that can come when your body changes.

Since the body & mind are s closely connected, when your body completely changes, so do the mental coping mechanisms...but wait, there's more! 

Alissa was also given a fun n flirty BRCA2 genetic mutation diagnosis. For the common tongue, she was carrying a high lifetime risk for breast and ovarian cancer, in addition to already having been violently "treated" for cervical cancer.

Alissa breaks down the nuances, difficulties, and cruciality that comes with patient advocacy and why screening versus prophylactic surgery is such a personal call. We also get into the part nobody glamorizes: insurance authorization battles, inconclusive results, false positives, and the dehumanizing feeling of begging for care while still trying to keep your job.

The episode closes with her preventive double mastectomy, ovary removal, surgical menopause, and hormone replacement therapy, plus a tease of the deeper conversation coming next about femininity and women’s health care.
If you have ever felt dismissed, rushed, or forced to become your own medical expert, you will feel seen here. 

Win most, lose some

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