Finding Your Voice: Bradley Gabbert on Childhood Trauma, People-Pleasing, and Healing Later in Life

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Selling My Story, the podcast where we explore real life stories, personal growth, career journeys, challenges, and the lessons that shape our lives. I'm Henry Chiwetelu, and today we are having a very personal conversation about childhood trauma, people pleasing, emotional healing, finding your voice, and the possibility of changing deeply rooted patterns even later in life. My guest is Bradley Gabbett, author of The Agreeable Child, a yogic journey from tragedy to triumph. Bradley's story began when he was just two years old, when he was struck by a car and spent two weeks in coma. He survived, but the physical recovery was only one part of the story. As he grew older, Bradley became what he described as the agreeable child, someone who was accommodating, conflict-avoidant, and often willing to let other people make the decision. Decades later, he began asking an important question. What happens when being the nice one becomes a way of disappearing? His search for answers eventually led him through therapy, breathwork, yoga, meditation, and deeper reflection. Bradley has worked as an industrial engineer, pursued professional acting as a SAG-AFRAN member, raised a family, and built a life that appears successful from the outside. But his story reminds us that surviving something and healing from it are not necessarily the same. Today, we are going to explore what it means to recognize the patterns we have carried for years, reclaim our voices, and begin choosing differently. Bradley, welcome to Telling My Story and it's a pleasure to have you here with us today.

Henry, thank you. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here, and I look forward to our conversation.

All right, Bradley, your story begins with a childhood accident that happened when you were only two years old. Can you take us back to what happened and what you know about that experience?

One Sunday morning, we were all planning to go to church and church. Two of my two of my siblings were not there. The other two were. And we were all getting ready to go out and go take care of getting into the car and going out. And I was I was all excited. I was I was all excited. I want to be out in the car. I want to go on the trip and. and be with the family. And my sister was given the task of watching over me to be able to get out to the car. She was also given one additional task to take care of a stroller, actually my baby stroller. And so both of us were on our way out. She managed to divert her attention very quickly to me. to the stroller and I took that as an opportunity to kind of like try to race her out to the car. And so I was out there, I was really chugging along and the car was out in the street and I was out going around trying to get around and I was hit by a car. Um, the impact of that, um, my head, it turned out to be a traumatic brain injury. Uh, my head hit the pavement and as soon as my head hit the pavement, I was in a coma. Um, yeah, so I, um, so I, in there, I was in, in that coma for two weeks and, um, pretty much came out, uh, came out as a, um, uh, needing to learn to walk and also speak. So went on to that. When I was going through the