Part of our series featuring the clinicians behind the COC Marketplace.

Most people talk about heartbreak as if it only happens when a romantic relationship ends, and we’re just supposed to move on. But anyone who has truly felt pain, whether their own or someone else’s, knows heartbreak can look very different. It might be a relationship that made you question yourself, a job that slowly wore down your confidence, a betrayal you never expected, or a loneliness that isn’t visible in pictures.

Dr. Irene Bernard built her work around those exact wounds.

Dr. Bernard is a licensed addiction and trauma specialist (LADAC II, CAADC, QCS) based in Tennessee. Throughout her career, she has worked where addiction, trauma, and emotional recovery meet. These are the places where pain can build up, and healing takes more than just good intentions. From this experience, she created GAL: Beyond The Heartbreak Empowerment Library, a collection of structured, evidence-based healing guides now available on the COC Marketplace.

The library currently holds three guides, and each one takes on a form of heartbreak that rarely gets named out loud:

Beyond Toxicity gives you a guide to recognizing unhealthy dynamics like manipulation, gaslighting, and repeating patterns. It also helps you rebuild trust, agency, and self-esteem afterward. The guide covers both toxic relationships and toxic workplaces.

Beyond Betrayal walks through what it takes to recover when trust has been broken, with guided reflections that move at the reader’s pace.

Beyond the Silence looks at social, emotional, and existential loneliness. This is the kind of loneliness that can hide beneath addiction, depression, and disconnection for years before anyone notices or asks about it.

Each guide can be used in two ways: as a self-guided resource for people working on their own healing, or as a tool that clinicians can use in their practice. Each guide costs less than ten dollars because Dr. Bernard wanted this library to be practical and accessible, not just something to look at from afar.

This is exactly why the COC Marketplace exists. Clinicians of color have valuable expertise that often stays within their sessions. The marketplace gives them a place to share their knowledge, so a trauma specialist in Tennessee can offer her tools to a therapist in Delaware, a counselor in California, or anyone working through something difficult.

When you buy from GAL: Beyond The Heartbreak Empowerment Library, you get resources created by licensed, verified clinicians with clinical experience. You also support a clinician-owned business.

Browse Dr. Bernard’s full library here:
GAL: Beyond The Heartbreak Empowerment Library

Explore more resources made by clinicians of color, including workbooks, therapy tools, digital resources, and live trainings, at cocmarketplace.com.

Are you a clinician with something to sell? The marketplace is accepting new sellers. Open your shop at cocmarketplace.com.