Faith, Family, Friends, Freedom with Danielle Bernock

Today I visit with Danielle Bernock, founder of 4F Media and international award-winning author, speaker, podcast host, and self-love coach. Danielle discusses her journey through personal trauma and how it shaped her mission to help others achieve emotional, spiritual, and physical health. She outlines her approach using faith, family, friends, and freedom to guide people from mere survival to thriving. Through sharing her personal experiences with eating disorders and emotional neglect, Danielle emphasizes the importance of self-love, continuous learning, and healing from past traumas for achieving true wealth and well-being.

Danielle suffered for years diminishing the truth of the complex trauma in her life. She founded 4F Media (Faith, Family, Friends, Freedom) in 2014 to promote inner healing and personal freedom through the power of The LOVE that heals, using all forms of media.

Her book Emerging With Wings: A True Story of Lies, Pain, And The LOVE that Heals was the first work to carry the message that TRAUMA IS PERSONAL, and God is “The LOVE that heals.”

You can find your free Emotional Life Journal and more at https://www.daniellebernock.com/free-resources/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:44

Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. Today, Danielle Bernok joins us. Danielle founded 4F Media, Faith, Family, Friends and Freedom in 2014 to promote inner healing and personal freedom through the power of the love that heals. Using all forms of media, beginning with her first book, the following quote from the book has gone viral. Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated when it is ignored or invalidated. The silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin. Danielle wrote that in Emerging with Wings, a true story of lies, pain, and the love that heals. Danielle is an international award winning author, speaker, podcast host, and trauma informed self love coach who helps men, women, and organizations emerge with clear vision of their value, take ownership of their choices, and chart a path to their purpose. Coming victorious souls who embrace the change from survive to thrive through the power of the love of God. She has authored four books written for numerous online publications, and her stories have been published in two book anthologies. Her mantra is love yourself from survive to thrive. To thrive. And she's known as that lady on the internet who loves you. A long time follower of Christ. Danielle lives with her husband in Michigan near her adult children and grandchildren. Welcome Danielle.

Danielle Bernock: 2:35

Oh, thank you for having me. Magic. It's great to see you again today.

Magic Barclay: 2:40

It's so good to be here. So listen, as I appeared on Danielle's gorgeous podcast and I'm so blessed that she's here to talk with us today. Okay, Daniel, I asked the same three questions of all of my guests and everyone gives me different answers. And I know yours are going to knock my socks off. So here's your first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health?

Danielle Bernock: 3:11

I help people deal with trauma and that affects a person's emotional and spiritual health. It's the very core of what I do and trauma wreaks havoc on people's emotional health and spiritual health, physical health, every aspect. of their life. So I feel like I deal with something that is a very core thing that I had to struggle to heal in my own life. My desire is to help others not have to struggle to find the answers and steps that will actually help them because they don't have to make it up themselves. I had to search and find and get the answers myself. And now I've gathered them and I want to share them with others. So that's where my expertise is. I did this myself and now I share that with my clients and with my readers and my students in my courses.

Magic Barclay: 4:10

Now, our second standard question is around wealth. People often think wealth is just the financial, but it's also emotional and personal wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating wealth?

Danielle Bernock: 4:25

I love how you elaborated on wealth because wealth is money, but wealth is much more than money. There are people who have a lot of money and they're sick. Or they have terrible relationships. They have other things going on. So they're not truly wealthy to me. Wealthy is a whole life thing. It's not just money though. Money is a part of it. Top three tips on that is you have to constantly learn. The world is changing. We don't know everything. We have to constantly be learning. We need to be a continuous. Learner. And we, the second thing is we have to learn how to love ourself. Because if we don't love ourself, we will constantly self sabotage, self medicate, maybe by going shopping, or other ways of overspending and also sabotage relationships. So you have to deal with your emotional health and loving yourself, because We love other people through the lens of how we love ourselves. So we really have to work on self love. And we have to heal. That would be the third one is to heal from the things that tear us down that keep us from loving ourselves. We have to not sweep things under the rug. We can't pretend it didn't happen. We can't say, Oh, I'm fine when we're not. Because if we don't deal with those things, they're going to tear us down in our life, and we are not going to be fully functional. We have to be fully functional to have wealth, to have relational wealth, and physical wealth, and financial wealth, and all the different ways that we can be wealthy to have a good life. So we have to take care of our inner world, and that's through learning, that's through taking care of ourselves, and healing ourselves. Not just loving ourselves, but healing ourselves. Dealing with the things that trip us up going forward.

Magic Barclay: 6:26

And our final standard question is around weight loss. Have you ever battled your weight? If so, how did you win that war? And what can you offer the listeners who may be on that journey?

Danielle Bernock: 6:39

Well, I was waiting for this one. Yes, I have battled weight. I have battled weight because I had eating disorders. I struggled with anorexia and bulimia. The sad thing is My weight problem was in my mind and I believe much of the time I don't want to say all of the time because there's no all of the time for everyone because there's people have different things going on and there's conditions people deal with. I believe a great deal of weight issues is really a mindset. issue. How you think about yourself. Are you loving yourself? Are you taking care of yourself? Do you care what you eat? Do you care how you, if you're sitting on the sofa all day long, do you love how you look or do you hate yourself so much? It doesn't matter if you, you know, we're down to, you know, 20 pounds, which is ridiculous. I'm being excessive there. That's where my problem was, was in my mind because I had trauma. I had self loathing. I had relational issues. I thought I was horrendously obese, which I was not, but I would exist on 30 calories a day. And then after a while, it turned into bulimia, which It was actually a more self attacking way of living because it really wasn't about the weight. It was about the scale and I developed a fear of food. It was like food was the enemy. I was afraid of eating it. It was going to make me fat, which I was. It was, it was in my mind. A lot of it was in my mind because I wasn't horrendously obese. And even when I got pregnant, I struggled with my weight. My doctor yelled at me because I was trying to lose weight while I was pregnant, which is not a wise thing to do. That just lets you know how deep it went. I couldn't help myself. And I want to interject here. If you struggle with bulimia, and you're not aware of one of the side effects that will come back and smack you upside the head later, it doesn't just give you sores in your mouth when you're purge a lot and it gives you sores on your mouth. It will destroy your teeth. I have five crowns in my mouth. I have many fillings in my mouth. I have to go get another crown after this. And I had beautiful teeth before that. So you may not have thought about your teeth and later in life and you want to keep your teeth. But the whole basis of that Was how I thought about myself. It wasn't until I addressed the trauma that was promoting that, that I really got the victory over it in life to start loving myself, to care about my body, to care about being healthy. I used to be a sugaraholic kind of thing. I loved sweets. If I was going to eat, I would eat donuts. I'd eat candy. And then I'd have a Snickers and I'd say, oh, well, it has protein in it. You know, make up those excuses that you do. But it was all a lie. I was believing a bunch of lies and I had to start loving myself, start caring about what goes in my body and how I feel because it changes how you feel when you take care of yourself. When you start loving yourself and you start taking care of yourself, exercising, eating things are actually good for you. You feel better and you sleep better. So that's a really long answer to that question. Yes, I struggled with weight issues for a long time and the biggest problem of it was in my mind. So I think that's a big problem with most people.

Magic Barclay: 10:34

It's a long answer. It's an honest answer. And I think it's an answer we all needed to hear. And I thank you for that, that raw honesty that you've just given us. all right, we've covered the standard questions. now I'm opening the floor to you, Danielle. Why 4F Media and why are you doing what you do?

Danielle Bernock: 10:58

4F Media came to be with the writing of my first book, Emerging with Wings. I wanted to publish it myself. Traditional publishers would buy my story, but then they would own my story. I did not want anyone to own my story. I would not be able to change it or do things with it because someone else would own it. I was very intentional with self publishing. I did not want to publish with my name on the imprint. That felt cheesy. It felt not professional. It felt less than, you know, what a book deserves. A book deserves a proper imprint. So I created 4F Media for that imprint, but I gave thought to it. It's like, well, what am I going to do? And what will happen after this? And so I tried to do some forward thinking with that. And I thought about the four things that were most important to me, which are what 4F Media is. Faith. Family. Friends. and freedom. Faith is the core of who I am. Family means the most to me. We can't live without friends and I had to get free from the trauma and we can be tripped up in so many things. Even how we had just talked about The weight we can get imprisoned to our body, to our mind, to our eating patterns or whatever, and there's so many things that we need to gain freedom for, and I imagined moving forward, hopefully very sheepishly, I will say a little bit because I was not as bold then as I am now. But I think I had a very hopeful view. So for F media, I was for all forms of media because I was publishing a book, but I knew that there were many other ways to share a story. I had no concept that I would have a YouTube channel back then or a podcast and all the things that I do now, but I think I was just. reaching for possibilities and I wanted to be ready for that with 4F Media. So that was the imprint for my first book, Emerging with Wings. And then after I published it, I ended up republishing it because I discovered a copyright issue in it, which is Hilarious to me now. I was so anal about not putting anything in there that would break copyright or would infringe on anything. So much research I did. Then to discover that, I was so horrified. So I had to republish it, but it worked to my favor. I had a new cover. I got endorsements for it. I was able to update some things with it. So it worked really well. And after I republished it, And that was only in a few months that I did that. So it's all in the same year that it took place. I started getting feedback from people that quote that you had shared. Trauma is personal. When I penned that writing the book, I believe that was a revelation from God. For me, I had been busy dismissing my trauma. Because I compared it to catastrophes. I compared it to other people and theirs was worse because it fed into the trauma that I had in my heart and in my soul because trauma leaves that mark there. It strips a person of their sense of value and their sense of self. So I really struggled with that. But when I put it out there and that quote started going around the world, people were writing me the reviews on it. I was getting emails and texts and my story resonated with people. I discovered I'm not as alone as I thought I was and how much. My story is needed. I believe my story is needed. There are many people who have had sexual trauma. I do not have that. That is one of the things that caused me to dismiss my trauma, because it wasn't that. I have a huge pile of emotional trauma, which I had been raised to dismiss. Because emotions were bad, and you suppress them, and you don't have them, and there are bad emotions, and good emotions, and all of that is a lie. It's all a crock of that smelly stuff. And so, when I learned That people were being moved by this. This was helping people. I had to try and reach more people. I mean, with how little my book went out, I mean, I self published. I didn't go through any marketing thing. I didn't do a book launch. I didn't know about a book launch. But still, I got an enormous amount of response for what I had done, and I knew I had to reach more people with it. So I started researching that. How do I even do that? And I came across an article. That said, every book needs a blog. I'm like, what's a blog? So I had to research that. I started with a blog. I took courses and it's been little by little by little that I have grown into where I am now. I started 4F Media back in 2014, because my book was published in 2014, and I've just grown with the whole thing, growing with how I can serve people, because my heart is to help people. I was miserable for so long, and I didn't understand why I was miserable. I didn't know how to stop being miserable. I didn't know what caused it. So I was just kicking and screaming and clawing and climbing and reading and researching and striving to just stop being miserable. In my book, my first book, I said, I have gotten to where I am today by refusing to stay where I was. Change is something that I've had to go through over and over and over and over again. And people resist change. That's part of what I do is help people to embrace. the change from survive to thrive. People get comfortable in survival mode and it's great to survive. That really is a good thing to survive. I don't slam that at all. That's congratulations. You've survived, but there's so much more. There's so much more to life than just surviving. And I try to help people to dare. To go past that survival mode. Do you want to thrive? Do you want to live a best life? Do you want to feel good? Do you want to get rid of the misery? Do you want to get rid of the things that hold you back so that you aren't satisfied with life? You don't have that wealth that we talked about. You don't have a wealth of enjoyment in life. I believe God created us to enjoy it. Life. I mean, I'm a Christian and Jesus said he came to give us life and that abundantly, but it doesn't just land on your head. You have to be a participant in life. Because life happens to people. Bad things happen to people. The world is full of all kinds of things that happen. Nobody gets out of here without trouble. There's just no way around it. So I want to help people to embrace that change from survive to thrive. And love is so core. to all of that. I didn't know that I was loved. I grew up feeling unloved. That's a side effect of something called childhood emotional neglect. And it's really rampant out there. So I have become that lady on the internet who loves you. Some people think that's cheesy, but I don't care because people show up. To listen on my podcast, to watch my YouTube channel, to hear me do my lives, because I do all of my short little things for my podcast. I do them live. Almost all of them I do live on Facebook because I want them to be vulnerable. I want them to be real. I want them to see me. And they have told me, I show up just to hear you say that you love me. That's such a big need in the world. People need to know that they are loved. We die without love. We shrivel up from the inside out when we don't know what that we're loved. So that's why I'm a self love coach. That's why I'm a trauma informed coach. I'm also faith based. Cause I mentioned that not everybody who's listening is probably, but I'd want to be honest with who I am. So if you're not into that, well, then you wouldn't be into me. Yeah. I love you no matter where you're coming from. No matter what your faith base is. No matter who you are or what you've done. God loves me all the time and he loves you all the time and I am here to tell you, you are loved. You have great value. And if I can help you to get out of misery and get past thriving, get past surviving, I'm sorry, to thriving. Then I, that blesses my heart. Nothing makes me happier than that. And something I wanted to make sure that I wanted to say in this podcast, I thought of earlier, I forgot about it during the weight part because this was just so powerful to me. One of my coaching clients, When she came to me, she didn't really know she had trauma, which is par for the course with many. She didn't, she would dismiss trauma. She came for a different reason, but she ended up dealing with trauma and she was overweight. After she finished coaching with me, she ended up dropping about 50 pounds or something like that. It was astounding. She looks fantastic now. And she told me, I think I was full of tears. And once I got those all out of me, The weight just came off. And so I want to share that story because dealing with your trauma can help you in so many ways to be healthier in multiple ways. Not just weight, not just the poundage, not just inches and stuff like that, but your physical health because trauma somatizes. It makes you sick in different ways. And it makes you have coping mechanisms that feed into feeling bad and being overweight. And this One lady just dealing with her trauma that she didn't even realize that she had. She lost all that weight and she is feeling so much better. It's people like this that drive me for what I do because I love them and to see transformation in someone's life. There's nothing like life transformation. That is what I am all about because I do. I love you. You who are listening. I love you.

Magic Barclay: 22:35

I love that now. I just want to touch on trauma and you mentioned that, you know, many people kind of shove it away. They try to think that there is no trauma affecting them. What are some ways that it can trip you up if not treated? So I know for me, it was the constant yo yo of my weight. It was the feeling of not being good enough, kept popping through. And so I would almost self sabotage what I was doing because I had to make that. True. So what are some ways that people might be, I guess, experiencing past trauma that they need to watch out for?

Danielle Bernock: 23:19

Oh, there's so many ways. There are relationship problems. Everyone has relationship problems. I'm quick to say that if you're a human being, you're going to have relationship problems because we're human. But relationship problems that are associated with trauma are related to attachment issues. When children are born, they need to attach to their caregiver, hopefully their mother. I know that's not always the case, but for explaining, I'll use the term mother. They need to attach to their mother and if their mother cares for them and loves them and feeds them and holds them and that child grows up feeling very loved and secure, they will develop secure attachment and you know, they'll have regular everyday normal relationship problems because they're a human. But when a child, a baby is born and they have a mother that does not do those things, maybe one that does not take care of them. They sit in their diaper for a long time. They don't get fed when they need to be fed. They, they are left crying and they are not taken care of. They will develop an anxious. attachment where they get fearful all the time because they don't know if that anyone's going to take care of them. And that presents itself as someone who can become very clingy. They can go from one relationship to another relationship to another relationship simply because they can't stand to be alone. They have to be by someone. So it represents itself in an anxious attachment in their adult relationships. Or if the baby Has a parent or mother who is hostile toward them, yells at them, um, maybe abuses them. And these are not all exhaustive ways of explanation either. These are just a few examples, but that child can grow up and develop an avoidant attachment, where they're not going to get too close to somebody. They're gonna, I don't trust you, you are not safe, other people are not safe, I am not sharing my emotions with you, you are not safe, so they keep everyone at an arm's length, and so that affects your relationships. And then there's the fun one called disorganized. That's when a child has gone through where the parent is there, sometimes, oh yeah, the parent's there to take care of me, oh, and then sometimes the mom is not there, and so I don't know if mom's gonna show up, or, and then sometimes mom yells at me and hits me and stuff, and I never know what mom's gonna do. I don't know. So that's called the anxious avoidant together or also called disorganized. And I know that one very well because that was the attachment style that I had developed. how that represents in adult behavior is your Wanting people to be very close to you, but then you push them away and then you want them to be very close to you and then you push them away and then you, you text them all the time. I would say that now I, when I had it, we didn't have texting, but now you text them all the time and then you ghost them and you won't talk to them for a week or you're want to be with them all the time and then you break up with them, it's, it's very chaotic and it's relationship problems. That's a really big one of the ways being sick and not knowing why. There's a thing called MUPS, Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms, MUPS. If you've been to the doctor, they can't figure out what's wrong with you, they're telling you it's all in your head, but you're like, it's not, I have, or they're like, yeah, I can see there's something wrong, but we can't figure it out. That could be your body somatizing something that you're not dealing with. So those are two examples. I don't know how many you want me to give, but those are two very common examples of how. Trauma can present in your life as an adult and you not know that, Oh, that's why.

Magic Barclay: 27:13

I think those two examples will cover a heck of a lot for people who may be listening. Now we have discussed a fair bit today. What is something we haven't touched on that the listeners need to hear?

Danielle Bernock: 27:27

You are worth the work. You are worth the work. It will be work. It will take courage. It will take choice. Because getting free doesn't happen all by itself. I have a process and the last, the last part of the process is F for free. It's self, the acronym self, S E L L. But the last one, the F is free, that's how you get free, but you don't get free Without doing something someone always had to do something for freedom. Even if you're enjoying freedom, wherever you live, someone provided that freedom for you. I live in America and there were soldiers that went and fought wars to make us be able to be free in this country. So I enjoy freedom. Someone else paid for in that sense, but emotional freedom and personal freedom, you have to fight for it yourself. And I want to encourage you to do it. And yes, it will be hard. And don't do it alone. Don't do it alone. Maybe you have to start alone because you're scared. I get that. So buy a book. Buy a book, take an online course, something that you can do all by yourself to start, but don't stay alone because trauma happens within the confines of relationship and healing happens in the confines of relationship as well. Do not go it alone. Get a counselor, get a coach, get a support group, get a friend, a minister, whatever it is that you need, but just don't do it alone. And I just implore you, if you're not sure. then you can find out. I'm sure Magic has ways that you can find out. I have ways on my website you can find out. There are ways to find out. If you want to find out, there are ways to find out if you have trauma hiding in your life and then do something about it. I just implore you to do something about it. dare to do something about it. That's a word I like to use because telling people to do something People tend to back up, say, don't tell me what to do. So I dare you, cause when we say that word, dare kind of gets us riled up on the inside of like, okay, okay. I can do that. You don't, you tell me what I can't do. So I like that word of daring. I dare you to love yourself enough to fight for your wholeness. To fight for your freedom, to see what's going on in your life, to expose why it's going on, to love yourself enough, to take that step of freedom because you matter. And I love you.

Magic Barclay: 30:04

Beautiful words indeed. Now we love freebies here, Danielle. So what can you offer the listeners and where can they find it?

Danielle Bernock: 30:14

Something that I think would fit very well with what we talked about today is I have an emotional health journal available on my website danielleburnack. com on the tab free resources. It's a 30 day journal. It's absolutely free. It has inspirational quotes or motivational quotes one every day. And it takes about five minutes. You could take longer if you want, but it doesn't have to take a lot of time. And what it is, is it asks you five questions every day, and it causes you to pause, to be self aware, to pay attention to how do you feel, to take care of your emotional health, because everything flows from the inside out. So I'd like to offer you that for free so that you can take care of your emotional health because your emotions matter.

Magic Barclay: 31:08

So that website is danielle ock.com. Look out for Danielle's gorgeous podcast, and also all of her amazing work and books and everything on YouTube. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us today.

Danielle Bernock: 31:26

Oh, thank you for having me and letting me share. It was such a joy.

Magic Barclay: 31:30

Certainly was. And listeners, thank you for your time. We really do appreciate the time that you spend listening to these episodes. And for now, go forth and create your magical life.