Episode 78: Sabrina Trobak identifies core beliefs

Sabrina Trobak is a counselor who works with clients to get to the bottom of their core beliefs to help them challenge and manage their anxiety. As a child, Sabrina always wanted to be a teacher, and ending up doing this for 20 years. When she was suddenly put into an administrative position, she had to attend graduate school to continue in that role. While she had no interest in administrative work, she did have an interest in helping people, so she got her master’s degree in counseling psychology.

After working as a school counselor for a year, she attended a three day workshop focusing on suicide. The modality that was used in the workshop was about people’s core beliefs. This inspired her to learn more about this modality and take it on herself. The model of therapy she learned focused on people’s core beliefs that contribute to anxiety which is common in people who have also experienced trauma. For many people, this core belief is “not good enough, not important, not valued”. Sabrina believed in this modality so much that she took a huge leap of faith and left her job to pursue private practice. This decision paid off and within six months she had a wait list which has continued today.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about this modality, how she developed her book, and how she works with clients to challenge their core beliefs and replace them with more positive ones.

Key highlights:

• Challenging core beliefs is important because they are the source of anxiety for many people. “I can take 4 or 5 sessions and teach you how to manage your anxiety but then you have to manage your anxiety for the rest of your life”

• She explains that as we go through life we “fill our buckets” with thoughts and beliefs that contribute to the core belief we have. In her work she helps people go through their buckets and pull out those things and examine this. This also helps people to continue doing this through their lives and not just in therapy

• Many people can only recognize that they’re anxious when their anxiety has reached a high level. This means that they’re not doing anything about managing anxiety before it gets to that point. But at a high level, anxiety has cortisol flooding the brain, making it that much more difficult to calm down in the moment.

• Anxiety often stems from a belief that we cannot handle something. “Anxiety and confidence are almost like on a teeter totter with each other” so as confidence increases, anxiety decreases and vice versa.

• “We are not good at feeling our emotions. We just push them down and suppress them. That means we’re getting fuller and fuller with emotions and that makes it harder and harder to just cope with daily life.” This helps to reinforce that core belief of ‘not good enough’.

• Marketing her book has been one of the biggest learning curves for her on her Climb. Farmers markets and free workshops are how she’s primarily promoted her book. She also started attending health and wellness expos and appearing on podcasts to help promote it. Something else she has done is to focus on growing her social media.

Sabrina’s links:

⁠Website⁠

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn