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Before the age of two, children seek unconditional love, but not a lot of parents are able to provide it, resulting in unmet needs, fear of rejection, and fear of dying. These childhood experiences can now manifest as fears and sabotage your current relationships. That’s what Tracy Crossley realized after a series of dysfunctional relationships.

In this episode, Tracy talks about insecure attachment, how it can interfere with your relationships, and most importantly, how to break free from this vicious cycle and have a happy and empowered relationship.

Tracy Crossley is a Behavioral Relationship Expert, author, and podcast host who specializes in treating individuals with unhealthy life and relationship patterns. Tracy helps clients transform impostor syndrome, insecure attachment, and negative belief systems, breaking the cycle of narcissistic damage, destructive self-talk, and more.

With a background in psychology and an innate emotional intuition, which draws from her own personal experience, Tracy shows her clients how to permanently change the repetition of unhealthy, unhappy, and unfulfilled cycles, both personally and professionally.

In this Episode

5:19 Tracy's lightbulb moment following a series of failed relationships.

11:13 Getting out of the insecure attachment loop.

17:42 How your emotional armor is limiting you.

21:01 What to do when you're in an uncomfortable or anxious situation.

30:48 Ways to overcome your fears.

46:53 Learn more about Tracy’s work and programs to help you overcome your fears.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Build your internal self-worth and give yourself permission to matter as much as you want others to find you important.
• Make yourself emotionally available.
• When you're in an uncomfortable situation, pay attention to what's going on inside you.
• Be gentle and compassionate to yourself. Take one step at a time.
• Remember that it's okay to have some fears as long as you don't let them prevent you from achieving your goals.

Mentioned

Overcoming Insecure Attachment! 8 Proven Steps to Recognizing Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Styles and Building Healthier, Happier Relationships (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Connect with Tracy Crossley

Websites: tracycrossley.com

Facebook: facebook.com/TransformativeCoach

Instagram: instagram.com/tracylcrossley/?hl=en

Podcast: Freedom from Attachment

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Tracy, thank you for joining us today.

I am so happy to be here and share anything that can help people with their relationships.

No kidding. As I've gotten to know you and your work, I just so appreciate the different frameworks that you're incorporating in what you teach. I love the multi disciplinarian approach. I think you do such a comprehensive way of bringing a lot of the brain science and relational patterns and attachment theory into your work. 

And really, I think the thing I felt from you the most is just really trying to help people get the result, right. Not a lot of people can do a lot of listening to podcasts or reading and really just how to support actual change and the experience around that. 

I know my interest today was to focus a little bit more around how to work with fear. I think some of us can recognize fear, but then what do we do about it? So that's the thing I'd love to kind of get your insight around here today. 

And then before we do that, for people who don't know you, are you open to sharing a little bit about you and your story, what got you interested in helping people? We'll just start there.

Sure. I was laid off from my job in 2008 like so many people. I worked in advertising. I had a management position. The advertising company literally focused on ads for employment when there wasn't really any employment going on. Long story short, I was laid off. 

At the time I was also reading a book. I tend to read books and find information about other books through them. I'll always write it down. I'll be like, “Oh, I got to check that book out. Whatever.” So, long story short, I ended up reading the book and meeting the author of the book. 

When I met her and I wasn't working, she's like, “Oh, you could do sales and marketing for us for our program.” I'm like, “Sure.” I met her business partner. Her business partner was like, “Oh, you need to be a coach.” I'm like, “Oh, no. Really, I don't need to be a coach.” “No, you really need to be a coach.” So, it was this whole thing about fighting it but they basically made me a coach. I went through their training. 

I still didn't really know what to do with it because again, I am not working. So, there was a series of circumstances that occurred. I would call it a little bit of synchronicity. I ended up working at this boutique that was like a new age boutique. And so, what happened was I ended up having people come. I'm also psychic so I ended up doing psychic readings. More people needed coaching. I’m like, “Hmmm. Okay.” So, it kind of went from there and then the whole insecure attachment piece. 

I was divorced many years ago. And then, I just had a series of dysfunctional relationships where I always thought it was the other person. I didn't realize it was me. Ha-Ha. And then, as I was taking a deeper dive into trying to figure it out at different times, I went, “Hmm, this insecure attachment thing.” 

I thought I was a love addict, but I’m not a love addict because I really didn't fit that. I kind of fit it but not really. So, long story short, insecure attachment, I started doing research, I started understanding myself more, I had an aha moment in the middle of it where I was in this dysfunctional relationship with someone I was attached to. I had gotten rid of him again because that was my MO. I’m going to get rid of him. Go away. 

He popped back up and I realized that when he popped back up, I had the same feelings, the same anxiety, the same attachment. I thought, “Oh, my God. This guy can be gone for a week, a month, whatever. And the minute he shows back up, here I am again. Okay, this has to be me. It was at that moment that I made this promise to myself to be staying with it emotionally, which was a total stretch, by the way. Emotionally until I came to clarity and resolution. 

That was really hard because I was used to just, you know, “This isn't working. Get out of here.” You know, doing that kind of stuff and not really understanding my part in it. So, that was a really long way of how I got into it but that's how I got into that and into insecure attachment.

Thank you for sharing not only the professional journey, but also the personal and how relationship provided in a lot of ways. I'm hearing a confrontation and a recognition around what you're experiencing internally that then you began to kind of turn towards and just how profound that has been for you.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I'm hoping that listeners are going to really resonate with your message because I know a lot of people who listen to the show or attracted to the work that I do tend to be pretty high performing, might even utilize the strategies that you talk a lot about in your book. Over performing, I know that's not the way that you language it but just a sense of perfectionism, and even methods of perhaps control or people pleasing. 

These tend to be mechanisms that are reinforced, like you talked about in your book, and I talk about too that we get a lot of benefit from and success from in the world. However, it turns us away from the thing that you're talking about, which is our inside, our internal, our vulnerability, the fears, the things that perhaps we are not really slowing down enough to come into contact with, and then to be able to work with more directly. Am I hearing that?

Absolutely. Because the bottom line for me and for the people that I tend to work with is, you know, we can be successful. I mean, on my last job I was the vice president in an ad agency, right. And so, I thought on the outside, I looked pretty cool. I thought I had it together and that people would respect me or give me the love, the attention, all that stuff that was missing. 

The bottom line was, I didn't realize emotional well-being was missing. And then, it was when I made that commitment and I started this journey. I was like, “Oh, my God. I haven't loved myself.” I may look like I love myself but there ain't no self-love going on. I didn't understand what that meant until I was taking these actual steps that were building my internal self-worth, my inner peace, my feeling of empowerment.

Thank you. I'm wondering for people who are listening that get it intellectually, are you able to give us a side-by-side example around what perhaps perfectionism or control or the different people-pleasing techniques that the end goal might look similar because the values of success or health or relationships might be similar, but the way in which we're approaching and our process is entirely different? Do you know what I mean? Can you give us an example of what that could look like in a side by side?

Sure, you're talking about the dysfunction versus functional? Is that what you mean?

Yeah, because we might want to be successful but how do we go about it? Is it with the people-pleasing and the disconnect with self versus the self-worth and the well-being that the internal process and the approach might be very different, even though the goal might be so similar?

Got it. Okay, I get what you're saying. Okay. So, basically, I was thinking of examples. I'll give you one. I was in an unattached relationship. I was with somebody who stood me up. We were supposedly seeing each other, right? What was my idea? Oh, my idea was, he stood me up. Why don't I have him come over the next night and offer champagne and, you know, freshly baked goods, okay. 

So, people-pleasing. I'm the perfect woman. I'm also going to have sex with you and blow your doors off. I was very strategic. You are very much in your head in intellectualizing when you're trying to get to that goal so all you're doing is thinking of, “Well, I'll do this. I'll do that. And then, da-da-da-da.” 

When you are in an empowered happy relationship, like I'm remarried. And my husband, I would never, ever do any. This isn't even like come into my reality, right? So, I want my husband to love me or whatever but I don't really want him to. He just does and I love him. And so, part of it is my own emotional availability and my ability to be open and honest.

I get a better result because I'm being me. I'm not using any strategies. He loves me, and I love me. And so, it's allowing yourself to actually matter as much as you want other people to find you matter instead of going, “Oh, I matter to them. I'm okay.” That's where that switch, like the cookies and whatever I baked for this other guy. It was, I need him to say I matter. But in a healthy relationship, I don't need you to tell me I matter. I know I matter because I breathe.

Yes, there's so much that you have to say around this. I think it's incredibly powerful. I appreciate you spelling out the approach or even the orientation just feels entirely different. And if I’m understanding what you are saying in this moment right here, is that it’s almost like laying down because it’s armoring up, right? 

If we really look at the needing to be perfect or orchestrating everything on a certain way, and that the visibility of what’s really true and authentic on the inside is not there. And so, perhaps we might feel even anxious that, are they loving me because they checked all the boxes? Or do they really love me for my essence and my beingness? Can I see what happens if I let that armor down?

Well, I think most people who are wearing armor don't know they're wearing armor until they have some kind of awareness. I didn't know. I had no idea. I lived everything out in my head. I had an idea. Obviously, I inherited wonderful conditioning from my parents and their relationship but I think I also had movies and other things and how it's supposed to look, but I didn't know how it was supposed to feel. 

I always waited because in society, isn't the other person supposed to show you? Well, no. You have to be open. You have to be emotionally available. That takes a lot of courage. To me, stepping into that courage, I was like, I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I just knew I couldn't keep doing what I had done because I was getting the same results. 

The results were I'm anxious, I'm attached, I don't know what I'm going to get from this relationship. I lived in uncertainty. But I was also the one creating that. I was used to uncertainty. I had a dad issue with him being in/out. I mean, he was there. He was a workaholic, but he went through all sorts of stuff. His childhood came into, obviously, how he parented, right? 

My mom had her issues and my point is I basically reflected that. And so, I didn't even know what I was really doing. I don't think most people in a dysfunctional situation know what they're really doing. We're just looking at something to plug up the emptiness. It has to be that intensity. It has to have that intensity or something that says, “Oh, my God. They knock my socks off.” But you really have to look at what am I feeling with or without this person in my life because that is a clue to your own self-worth.

Okay, I love this. This feels like a really good segue. And before we do that, it just sounds like you're saying those old strategies weren't working, right? You were continuing to say yes to a certain dynamic or even running certain patterns that you felt exhausted, anxious, unfulfilled by. 

I would even bargain, perhaps some people listening will feel like I have all the successes. If you look at things on paper, I should be incredibly happy, at peace, and fulfilled and yet I still feel this sense of I'm on the hamster wheel, and I need to keep it going. Right? 

The stars don't always align for us to be able to orchestrate everything where we get what we want but even if we did is the point I'm trying to make, it still doesn't satiate on this deep level that you're talking about well-being because it's so orchestrated. Is that right? 

Right, exactly. You're so far outside of yourself when you're doing that.

And you haven't really let yourself fully be seen and be visible to have that more genuine relationship and to be in contact with the self and work with fears. Okay, so let's turn towards this because it's some of what you're saying and what said a moment ago is we're not even aware of what we're doing. Okay, talk to us a little bit about this and how fear interacts with the way that we're functioning.

We have a fear that something is inherently wrong with us. We do a lot of the strategies that we do to overcompensate to not look like there's something wrong with us that we're not worthy on some level. So, we're lacking self-acceptance. We don't have self-acceptance. We don't know that because we are striving. 

And so, this is all fear based. There is no love there. You have fear or you have love. When you're coming from fear, it's what you, again, have been conditioned to. You have a fear of loss, like I'm going to lose whatever. I don't want to lose how people perceive me. I don't want to lose respect, love, blah, blah, blah. All the things I think I have, but I don't know that I have, but I assume I have. So, fear leaves you in the place of assumptions. 

When you move out of fear, what you end up doing is you move towards love, because loving actions, loving words, well, then you're more honest, and you're not having to assume. You don't assume things. You now will ask the questions. You will now do the things that feel like you would rather eat sand. You'll start stepping up because you realize, “Oh, I have some value here.” 

It's starting to outweigh the fear a little bit because now I might take a risk that I could lose this person or they might think something different of me but I'm willing to do it. But other than that, fear will just keep you playing on the same playground. It will not let you off that playground.

Are you willing to say a little bit more about how this originates? Because I can just raise my hand right here and say, I've worked really hard and continue to work what I noticed in my nervous system that was very much formed in earlier years.

Our parents weren't consistent on how they gave us love. Or they withheld it, or all of the realm you have from overprotective parents to parents who are abusive, whatever. They're just passing down what they learned. So, everybody's passing things down. 

As a child, before the age of two, you're looking for that unconditional love. You're looking for that unconditional giving. A lot of our parents didn't do that. And so, we have a fear our needs aren't going to be met. We have a fear that we're going to die, because it's about survival instinct. That's why your whole limbic system is all about that. 

And so, when it comes to this fear, you learned it by observation, and then putting it on you. And then it became a belief because it's in repetition and that's how you're seeing it. You develop perception. And so, you go around life going, “Well, if this happens, whatever this is, that's a bad thing. If this happens, it's a good thing. So, I'm afraid of this happening. I want this to happen. So, I'm going to try and control it outside, out here.” 

We do this as children, right? You learn how to react to reward and punishment. You learn how to react to things, and you're afraid of the bad over here. Don't want this, let me get this. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Like, look at where you might be trying really hard to avoid what you fear and it happens anyway. So, the origin is always in childhood. We're little sponges. That's just what happens.

Yes. Yes. There's so much research and so much more to be said about what you're saying. I realize we're trying to really kind of encapsulate a lot here. When we look at the nervous system, the amygdala, how it stores and really primary goal is to keep us surviving and just avoid pain, seek pleasure. There's just a binary function there at play. It's pretty rude and crude in the sense of it's not super sophisticated. Right? 

And then, we look at the attachment model and our sense of needing to feel safe with others and what we've known whether or not it's I'm overwhelmed by what's happening or I feel the pain of my parents and I feel like I need to help and care give or whatever it is. There's so many things. I experienced a loss. Or they're intruding on my personal space, or they're being shameful or even abusive. 

There's so many ways in which we might experience that attachment system. That's going to heavily inform what we feel. This is thoughts in our body, our emotions, and also our strategies. And so, thank you for just slowing down with me with that. 

Okay. So, you help people become conscious of fear. And partly what we're seeing is sometimes we don't even know. One way of recognizing is we're not getting the result that we want. We feel this void. We feel this anxiety. What are some of the other signposts that you might be able to kind of give people some indication of?

Most of us because we're so externally focused and we're not intrinsically focused, we tend to just look at situations. That's really what we do. We look at the situation. “Oh, that's not working out. I'm afraid now.” Right? And then you feel a certain resistance. I don't know if anybody who's listening is aware of what resistance feels like but resistance feels like a heaviness. It's like the thing that stops you from doing something. 

It's like if you say I'm going on a diet and you're a day into it, you start to feel like oh, God, I'm on a desert island all by myself. You have a sense of resistance to the thing you're doing. That feeling you have, that's resistance. Okay? I was trying to come up with something simple, but it's really about what do I resist? Okay, why don't I look for that feeling in my body of resistance, because that's going to give me a clue about my fear. And then you're going to want to dig deeper. 

The work that I do is emotional. It's somatic. It's intuitive. It's because I didn't want to walk around like this anymore. I just didn't. I've taught many people how to change that. The reason is because they were at a point. They were at a tipping point, the tipping point of, “I know I've got love and fear here and I've been more on this fear side. But now, I'm kind of in the middle, and I got a lit

tle bit of an opening.” So, you always want to look for that opening. 

And what I mean by that is when you have a situation and you feel anxiety, you feel uptight, you feel uncomfortable on some level, what you can do is you can take a break from it. And what I mean a break is you shift your focus. I don't care if you have to close your eyes for a second, whatever it is. You're going to basically go inside and focus on some part of your body. If it's your arm, your foot, your stomach. 

When I started doing this, I would focus on my gut. How do I feel? Sometimes I felt nothing because a lot of us do feel nothing. We haven't learned how to connect to our emotions. A lot of us think anger and crying are emotions but those are just reactions. You always want to go deeper. What's happening inside of me? If you're in the middle of a reaction, when you first start doing this, you're not going to be able to stop and go, oh, I'm reacting, let me do something. 

But as you learn to get in your body more, you're going to notice that you have a sense of peace that starts to happen. The more that there's peace there, you will find their space there. That space allows you to see yourself to be more aware of what you're doing. This is a really simplistic thing. I'm saying like the work that I tend to do goes a lot deeper than this but this is just like sticking your foot in the water and going, “Okay. I'm going to try this.”

Well, sometimes very complex and intricate psychological dynamics are best explained in principle. Right? I think you're really trying to distil those into, if we catch that our tendency is to be so focused on what's outside of us, the other person, the situation, and stop there or stay there, right. 

I think it's really normal, the human impulse to point to the thing that hurts, but then if that's just the end of it, there's so much that's getting lost. You're saying we can get really stuck by focusing on the outside, focusing on the other person. (A) we can't control them, (B) we're probably utilizing old strategies that are ineffective and maladaptive now, right? 

They don't serve us now. They might have served us early in life. It had been the best move, and then see, like, we're not connected to even what we're experiencing. We're abandoning ourselves, if you will, because we haven't even turned towards ourself. 

Right, exactly. We don't know how. We have been so attuned to paying attention to everything, again, outside of us that even taking that little switch and going, “Wait a minute. Inside of me? Wow.” And the truth is, everything outside of you can act as a trigger. It's not really the problem. And if you can remember that, in the situation, if this isn't really the problem, it's just a trigger. Well, what's going on inside of me? 

Be curious. I always say curiosity can really change things too. Maybe I should be honest here. Oh, wow. Okay. I don't mean honest as far as an opinion. I mean, honest with myself in terms of what am I experiencing, what's happening for me, and then even taking it a step further and sharing that with someone. Like, this is what's going on with me. Not blaming them. Not telling them it's their fault, but okay, I am feeling this feeling inside of me, and this is what I'm experiencing. I really need to investigate this more, or I really need to get clear. Something like that. Most of us are afraid of being that vulnerable. But to me, that's such a great place to start.

Yes. And if I might even dig in a little bit here, I love what you're saying in regards to so much of what triggers us or activates us is really an opportunity for us to look at what's happening and we get to see how we're responding. 

I will say, in addition to that, there have been times where I might recognize I'm not okay with this, or this is uncomfortable. I want to set a boundary but doing it from a place of I'm understanding where my limits, where my boundaries, where my preferences are. I can assert that and do that in a way that's revealing, which is vulnerable, right? 

What you're saying in combination to the deeper vulnerabilities that perhaps bring a lot of intimacy, right. So, it's not that everything's awesome, right? We're not going to feel pained by something that is hurtful. But that so much of what we get hooked into is focusing on the other and getting really caught up there and not even knowing what we need and what's true for us.

I would say that, and I also want to just quickly say what you were talking about with boundaries. Most of us don't understand what boundaries actually are. That's the issue right there because I used to think it was, “Let me go and put my boundaries on other people and tell them what to do.” 

Until you actually take that inner journey, it's really hard to stand for your boundaries. Meaning, if I'm going to say, “Well, I need to be respected.” you have to look at how you don't respect yourself. You have to look at internally, what is my motivation to not respect myself in this situation, because once I get it and I change that, I'm automatically having a boundary that I don't have to think about. 

Because as I respect myself, I'm not going to put myself in situations where I don't get respected. I'm going to remove myself or I'm going to say something about removing myself and then remove myself or whatever. But the point is, that's how you manage a boundary, but it has to be from the inside out. That's the only way you're going to know what really matters to you anyway.

Yeah. The boundary is something that I'm willing to stand for, I'm willing to recognize the ownership. If I'm not comfortable with being talked to in a certain way, how come I am continuing to dialogue or participate in this dialogue or this conversation when I'm feeling talked to in a certain way that upsets me and I hear you. 

I think the other thing that we're both saying is that a boundary is not to control someone else. It's not to control the situation. It's for us to understand how that self-awareness and be an ownership of that, and then we can share that with someone else but it's really more about what we're willing to do for ourselves. 

Right, exactly. Okay. Yes.

Okay, let's come back to fear because one of the things that I was feeling, Tracy, when you were talking is this is perhaps so counterintuitive that it might be the very thing that I don't want to do. The very thing of turning towards the inside, the fear, is like maybe the last thing I want to do. Would you agree?

Totally. Yes! Nail on the head. Most of the time, all of the strategies, all the things that Dr. Jessica mentioned at the beginning about the overperforming, all that kind of stuff, that is a way of avoiding yourself. It's a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings. But here's the good news, you can handle these feelings. 

It's the child, you know, that child part of you, the emotional maturity, most of us tapped out who have any kind of attachment issues on emotional maturity around five years old. We stopped right there. And you kind of can tell and other people too because all of a sudden you're having a conversation that turns into a fight and everybody's acting like they're five years old. 

You really have to understand that you can, as an adult in a bigger body, and with your life experience that you can handle those feelings you couldn't handle as a child. Even if it overwhelms you, it will stop overwhelming you the more you get in touch with it because otherwise, you're always going to be mentally trying to manage and you're always going to have whatever feelings you have inside, whether it's numbness all the way to anxiety, or anything in between.

Do you want to spell out any of those other ways that we might avoid, like, I can tell I get busy, right? That might be a way that I avoid what I'm feeling or the fear that I'm feeling, or I might procrastinate or different things? Are you willing to spell out other ways that we might avoid?

Well, we have a ton of different ways that we avoid. I mean, we really do. You can numb out. You can, like you mentioned, distract. You can basically invest in an activity that will take your focus. Meaning, let's say that you're dating. You can date a bunch of different people, right? I don't have to feel anything. 

We have different strategies we can work. I was a workaholic. I could just dive into work and never get out of it. We tend to do these things, and they can look okay to other people. “Wow, that person's committed.” But meanwhile, we're not having to deal with what's inside, we can go numb. When you distract, you basically feel numb or at least you don't feel as bad. And sometimes you also can sit there and eat a gallon of ice cream and watch movies, or you can go out and drink. I mean, these, again, are all forms of distraction. 

Over exercise, I used to do that, too. So, I mean, there's so many different ways. Look at what you're doing. Catch yourself. If you're driving, whatever you're doing, when you're listening this podcast, what are you doing? What is the point of what you're doing? 

When you start to ask yourself those kinds of questions, not to be a jerk to yourself, by the way, because you're curious. Why am I doing this right now? Why am I avoiding? What's happening in my life? Am I happy? You don't have to ask all these questions at once. You can ask questions like that, like one question at a time is good. But it's really to get to know what's driving me right now? 

Oh, look. I mean, like, I was talking to somebody. And basically, this person cannot sit still. This person has a bunch of different commitments. The busyness, that's a distraction, right? I'm so busy. They're just going from one thing to another. So, all they're thinking about is, “Okay, got to go here. Got to go there. Got to do this. Got to do that.” Right? So, when you do that, the problem becomes, you've completely avoided yourself, and you probably, again, don't realize that that's part of it.

So important. On all levels, right, everything in our system could be experiencing this discomfort, that fear. When we feel what I think most listeners who are here with us right now, and I'll say for myself, when I can viscerally feel the fear of something happening that's frightening, it is unpleasant. It is uncomfortable. It's sometimes awful.

I think what we're suggesting is, let's turn towards this, right. It's really difficult when you talk too about our nervous system as wanting to keep us safe. And in our comfort zone, we're going to do things habitually just because that feels like the safe ground. Part of the thing that we're really looking at here is one of the things you talk about in your book is really helping feel the feelings. 

Another way of saying that would be to reprocess what wasn't able to be processed, or to look at the value of being able to allow space for, you know, you talk about disappointment. In another way I was feeling that inside me is when I've experienced grief and the loss, right. Sometimes these feelings have never been processed, and we're doing all these mechanisms to avoid it, but we never have an opportunity to process.

Right. Exactly. Well, again, we're not really taught how to process. I don't think anything in our society is showing us that. Like, “Oh, hey, this is how you process something.” A lot of times, again, we're taught to blame other people. We're taught to look at, “Well, if they would act differently, then I would feel differently.” Instead of, “Hey, why don't I take care of my feelings by feeling them because they are there telling me something?” And giving them attention, which, by the way, those two things, what you're doing is you're starting to fill up an empty space when you give attention to yourself and you feel your feelings, because that is what you're seeking from other people, you're seeking attention. 

You're seeking somebody who can change your feelings. When you're giving that responsibility to other people, they can't really do that for you. I mean, they give you attention but if you don't give yourself attention, you're not really going to, I would say connect or treasured that attention. So, it really helps in a couple of different ways. It builds your self-value to just feel those feelings even if they feel horrible. They're not going to feel horrible forever. Just know that. They're not going to swallow you whole forever. 

Yes. I love there's a section where you talk about the fears. What are some of the common fears? That is one of them, that it's going to overrun me and like, I'm not going to be functioning anymore. I'm going to be a big wet puddle on the floor.

Right. I would have clients all the time go, “Oh, my God. I felt like I was stuck in it.” So, here's something to remember. This is a hard one. I'm saying it's hard because you want to pay attention. When you get stuck in a feeling like you're going, “Okay, I'm going to feel my feelings, Tracy.” Notice if you are ruminating at the same time. 

A lot of us we're stuck in a story about something. We have a perception that this situation is this way. Like, it can't be any other way. This is what I feel like I'm reacting to or I'm being triggered by and therefore, that's just it, right? Instead of going, “Hmm. Okay. I'm being triggered by this but maybe there's a different story here.” It's not just search for the other story. It's so that you don't ruminate on the story you think it is. You don't need to go find a new story. You just need to be aware of your rumination because that's what happens. 

A lot of times people go, “Oh my God. He doesn't love me. He doesn't love me. He doesn't love me.” You know, over and over, and the story playing itself out. And then you just feel horrible, horrible, horrible. You're reacting. Your true feelings, the ones that aren't, let's say reactions, don't grab you and carry you. Your stories grab you and carry you. Your reacting feelings grab you and carry you with those stories. Does that make sense?

Yes, what a great distinction. I think that's something that people can work with because that is a really good indicator of where one might be when they're in their process, so to speak. Trac5y, I'm wondering even as we're talking, it feels as though for some of us, I'll speak for myself here, when circumstances and upbringing didn't allow me to feel loss or grief or did it allow for me to feel fear or terror or whatever the thing I was feeling, that that didn't get processed, right. 

And so, now in adult years, I'll just use myself again, that in my early years of dating my husband, right, it was unclear to me whether or not we were going to really be super committed. I could tell I was super into him. We were kind of doing our song and dance around just dating, which is part of the terrain. I had to really recognize the fear that would come up in me and how to be giving myself space for that. But then also the grief that came up around like, “Oh, I've known abandonment. I know how awful it feels to really care for somebody and lose them.” 

And so, it's almost as if the way we're talking it's like giving myself. And that makes perfect sense, right? I don't think I would judge that. It's almost as if we're parenting the part like giving that space of feeling the feelings when maybe we haven't had the space in the past. It's almost like this is critical. And maybe I've never known how to give myself space to feel and process but this is part of the development and developing that is building. You made a connection between secure attachment and emotional intelligence, right? This is part of how we can grow and evolve.

Right, exactly. And you do grow your emotional intelligence in this manner. What I always find with emotional intelligence was interesting, because there's so many different theories around that. I tend to go with the original theory. One of the tenets of the original theory was, they weren't sure that people could actually grow emotional intelligence. But what I have found is, when you do take this inner journey, you absolutely do raise it because now you have an awareness of something that's going on inside of you that you can do something about.

Yes, and it's valid, and it's real. We don't need to do all these attempts to get the need met that are probably ineffective and not helpful anyway.

Right, because you're usually trying to choose somebody who is reminiscent of one of your parents or both your parents in some way. It's not that, “Oh, God. This is dad or mom.” but some of the things that they do, can cause the same reaction in you that you experienced as a child, where you weren't given the space to know how to feel your feelings. 

I was told I didn't have any feelings, that my feelings didn't matter, to pipe them down. I was in trouble all the time. And so, you learn how to just be reactive to a situation all the time. Oh, this is what's happening, I better do this. That's what's happening, I better do that so I can avoid that pain. Processing? What's that? No, I just don't want to feel the pain. 

As an adult, like I said, you get to stop doing that if you choose to. It's just be kind to yourself, be compassionate with yourself and take baby steps. Don't try to do everything like I've brought up today at once. Just a little bit, and you'll see a difference.

No kidding. I can just endorse that most transformation is in small steps. I have known that even what feels like huge monumental steps in my life, right, if I look at the over big picture, it's part of the work, right? It's just this progression. 

I wanted to say before we start winding down here, it feels as though one of the things that you're also touching in on is when we can look at the bigger picture that what we gain from doing this work is so beneficial and so rewarding that that can be part of the motivation of tolerating some of this discomfort when we turn towards fear.

Absolutely. I will just share briefly. When I met my current husband, I have been doing this work for a long time. I will say two things about this. One is, in having done this work for a long time, I didn't realize that being by myself and working on myself had almost no bearing on dating or being with somebody. Because the minute you bring something new into a situation, you'll find that you have a different reaction, different feelings, so on and so forth and fear comes up. 

If I'm in a vacuum working on myself, “Hey, this is great.” But you want to make sure that you're living life, right? Well, I did that. I made a commitment before I met him that I was ready for a healthy happy relationship. I was going to be consistent and all these other things that I decided I'm going to work through my stuff. 

I share this because when I met him, I still had fear. I want you guys to know it's still okay to have fear. Let's say you're opening yourself up, you're out there, you're curious, you're paying attention to the things you're doing, saying, all that good stuff, and you're feeling your feelings. You may still have some fear, it's okay as long as you don't let fear be what guides you or what gets you to do whatever you do. 

And even if you do have a reaction and you do something to at least own it and go, “Oh, gosh. Okay, this is what I'm doing. Do I want to do that? Do I want to throw out the baby with the bathwater? Do I want to run away? Do I want to hold on tightly? Or do I want to feel what's going on inside of me, and then be honest with the person that I'm dating about it?” 

That's what I did. I mean, it was hard at times. Yes. But it's what actually kept our relationship growing. I took responsibility for it. I didn't put it on him. Even if he triggered me and I said, “When you did that, this is what happened but I'm not telling you what you did is wrong or bad or your fault or anything. I'm saying in all of my experiences, this has now been something that triggers me.” It was about time. He was a minute late or something. It was ridiculous. It was really so over the top, and I knew it. I was aware of it. But I at least could speak through the fear and share that with him. 

Those were game changers for me, because I had so much fear about sharing things like that, because I didn't want to be vulnerable with somebody who could possibly use it against me because that's what happened as a kid, or I didn't want to be put in a position where I looked powerless, or, “Oh, what's wrong with you?” Not that my husband would ever say that, by the way. But it's things like that, that would have kept me in the quiet before, or trying to have a strategy so that I didn't have to feel that or I have to deal with it or I'd pretend everything was okay, when it wasn't.

Thank you for sharing that. I just so resonate and feel similarly that the steps in the work that I did and continue to do, it was terrifying. Like, terrifying. I had my own back. I felt like I didn't abandon myself and I was in that real relationship versus whatever techniques I might have been using unconsciously beforehand. So, this is incredibly powerful. 

Tracy, thank you for sharing so much with us here today. I know we're trying to really capture something so huge. In a short episode, it's hard to do justice. So, what would you encourage people to connect with or learn more about with you and what you're up to?

One of the things that we have currently, I would say recently launched is our business has launched the Institute for Mindset and Motivation. We are offering our first program, which is called The Method. The Method is something different than what I have done before. I've been doing this for 14 years. What the method entails is giving you a tool that I haven't really seen anybody else put out there, but it's something that I use personally. 

It's something that we teach over a six-month period of time. It's a training. It's not coaching. It's training. We train you in this method, and then we give you a practicum. Plenty of time to really be able to embody it because the goal is to give you a method that becomes second nature to you that no matter where you are, what you're doing, you're going to be able to feel confident that you have something that's going to work for you inside of you, as far as giving you a sense of peace, a sense of competence, a sense of being yourself, grounded in yourself, and knowing that you can handle pretty much anything.

Where may people find this?

They can go to my website, TracyCrossley.com. There is a page there. It should be on the menu. And yes, I'm assuming at this point right now we're putting it up. I'm thinking that will be the case in the next few days.

Is there anything else that you want to let people know what they might be able to find on your website?

Yeah, you can also find my podcast, which I've had for the last six years called Freedom from Attachment. The other one we do is moving on where I do something very similar to what I'm doing today, except I'm the host. I talk to people about experiences that they've gone through and how they've moved through it, how that's impacted what they do for a living today. 

The other thing is we do have coaching available. We do one on one coaching, and we have a program called Mastery. Mastery is now a six-month program, where you learn everything I talked about today. You learn this on a deep level, and you learn certain tools and techniques on how to get there. 

Most people get in who are single end up in a relationship. People that are in dysfunctional relationships end up in more functional relationships. I mean, it's amazing to me to watch. So those are the other two offerings that you'll find on my website. You'll also find that I have a free group on Facebook you can join. I don't know if I'm leaving anything else out. I know I have a lot there.

Right. Well, it sounds like the hub is your website. We'll also put links to your social media pages and handles. It sounds like the hub. I'll make sure to put that link and perhaps even put a couple of other links to just make this so accessible for people here listening today. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed our conversation today. 

Signing Off

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