Tracy Crossley- Helps Us Break Unhealthy Patterns

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Hey there, everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me Tracy Crossley. And Tracy is a behavioral relationship expert. She's also an author. She's a podcast host. And she specializes in treating individuals with unhealthy life and relationship patterns. She helps clients transform imposter syndrome, insecure, insecure attachment, negative belief systems, breaking the cycle of narcissistic damage, destructive self-talk, and more. With a background in psychology and 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, personally and professionally. Tracy's popular weekly mental health podcast is called Freedom from Attachment: Living Fulfilled, Happy, and in Love. Happy and in Love offers listeners a different perspective when it comes to breaking the cycle of unhealthy behaviors that keep them stuck repeating pain-inducing actions on autopilot. The podcast addresses folks who want to deal with their emotional baggage and get unstuck, get happy and have a clear mindset. She also has a monthly podcast called Moving On where she invites guests to speak about their life experience and overcoming difficult times to be successful and to be happy in their lives. So with that, I want to welcome Tracey Crossley to Grief 2 Growth.

Thank you for having me on. I look forward to our conversation today.

Yeah, I'm glad to have you here. I know that's something that we can all relate to being stuck in life. You know, I'm actually taking a little life coaching thing right now, a little kind of a brush up.. And the guy was talking about how we all have things in our life. We know we're, we're unhappy or we're never quite fulfilled. So it's nice to have someone that can help us get unstuck from those behaviors. So what's, what's your approach to that?

You know, my approach is, as far as working with people, depending on what's happening in their lives, it always comes back to number one, how we view the world and ourselves in it, right? It's our perception. And when you start digging deeper into the perception, there's motivation. Most of us are not aware of what motivates us because it's on autopilot. It's based on beliefs that we gathered as children and the patterns that uphold them. And so my work is really about getting to the deeper beliefs and what the motivation is to continue to have them in place. Usually it's about, you know, I would say most of it's fear-based, and that's because we are of course trying to survive. You know, this goes way back to when we lived in caves, right, our lizard brain. And so I try to work with people emotionally and somatically in getting to the deeper emotions so that they can break patterns and they can lead a healthy, happy life.

Wow. Wow, that's good. I like that. So when you say emotionally and somatically, some people might not understand what does that actually mean?

So, okay, when it comes to emotions, it's completely different than psychology. I'm not trying to get you to think differently. And getting to what you feel, because our feelings do drive our thoughts, which drive the stories that we live in, right? Which again, fits into the perception of how we see the world. And so when you start working with people at an emotional level, your emotions don't live in your head, your emotions live in your body. It's where you feel them. They have sensations, like actual physical sensations. So we work with going in to break patterns and shift beliefs at that level. It's not just like you go in one day and boom, you're done. This is a process because we have a lot of layers of resistance. And our resistance is, let's say that something's happening in your life and you don't like it and you fight against it, or you won't do it, or you avoid it. You're basically in a state of resistance. You're not in a state of acceptance of whatever it is that's happening. And acceptance is not saying, oh, I'm so happy this is going on. It just means I'm not going to fight against this. I'm going to accept these are the circumstances that are beyond my control. And I'm going to work with what can I control? Well, I can control, you know, what I do, what I say, my intentions, and to some degree, my thoughts, once I start to do the deeper inner work.

Yeah, I think that's really important. Because I think, as you kind of mentioned, we go through things in life a lot of times kind of unconscious about these things. And so having someone help us kind of break that down and understand it, I think it'd be beneficial.

Definitely, because in my own journey, I had anxiety all the time. And whether I was in a relationship or not, whether I was in a corporate job or— actually, I should say, when I was in a corporate job, I was probably much more anxious than I was owning my own business. But the point is, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of lack of trust of my own choices, always second-guessing myself, all these things, you know, being a perfectionist, a people pleaser. Getting stuck in these dysfunctional relationships, and not just intimate relationships, but other relationships. And I would always find that I was in a state of pain, like I always had this heaviness I was carrying around. And I thought, am I going to spend the rest of my life feeling emotionally heavy? I have to do something about this. And therapy for me only took me so far, you know, as more I'd walk in, and I just vomit out whatever was happening in my life.. And then I'd walk out feeling like nothing had changed because nothing really had changed. So I, I didn't know what I was doing at all. I just knew that I had really cut off from my emotions and that all I could really feel was the anxiety or, you know, really negative feelings. And I, I just didn't wanna feel that. And I remember saying, ah, I don't wanna feel any emotions. But the truth is I was so disconnected because of my childhood, my belief system, all of that around it that I, I didn't know how to even connect. And that was sort of like a hit and miss, like you're going through a maze and you don't know where you're going because you've never been there. And so for me, that helped along with my Coach training, you know, and what I had been trained in coaching-wise. Both of those together really just made a lot of, I would say, made the difference because I don't feel anything like I used to.

Let's talk about that, what you just said there, because I think it's really interesting. You said you talked about being in therapy, and that didn't seem to be really getting you where you wanted to be. So what's the difference between being in therapy or going to see a therapist and what you're doing with people now?

You know, so what we do is not therapy. Um, and I always have to clear— I always clarify that because people will go, well, if it's deep work, isn't that therapy? But What we do is we really look at what beliefs are driving a person, you know, and I can tell pretty much when I start talking to somebody and they start telling me a little bit about themselves, what they actually believe about themselves in the world. Most people don't feel like they're good enough. Most people on some level feel, even if they're, let's say, putting out a bravado or they're putting out some kind of a character that seems to be confident, a lot of times people aren't necessarily confident in who they are. They may be confident in a skill, you know, they may be confident in their job, but as a person, most of us have, I would say, holes in that. And so what happens is we are not sitting here, you know, in a session, you're on the couch and somebody, yeah. And then I'm, I, or somebody I've trained is going, okay, so when you were a child, and not that we don't go back to childhood, but we're not looking to make it therapeutic. What we're doing is we're wanting people to recognize points of that. I would say points of meaning that matter where an incident happened that created a belief. And what we try to do with that is we try to bring different points together, meaning we want emotion, which is feeling, to come with action and awareness, like all at once. Because when you do that, you're taking like an emotionally risky action, something that is of risk to you emotionally. Not necessarily financially or what have you, although those are emotional risks too. Um, and when people do that, you basically can break a pattern. You can basically break down whatever has been there. So it's not therapy, it's more about going directly into the emotions and working with them by taking action. Most therapy is not action-based. Most therapy has nothing to do with, um, coming up with, well, what is actually going on? Usually it's at the level of, or at least it was for me, it was at the level of what's going on today, what's happening now. Okay, great. This relates to your childhood, but never was given tools beyond thinking differently to do anything. And so in our work, we really do try to differentiate that because we have people who have shown up who have had mental disorders, right? And like somebody I worked with had schizophrenia, but she was on medication. We're not trying to solve her schizophrenia. You know, we're not trying to solve disorders. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there. Yeah, and that's, I think that's a really important distinction. Because I think sometimes people think about, you know, people that are coaches like you and I are and think, well, this is just like me going to a therapist. And it's, and it's really very different. And we typically don't see people for years and years on end, you know, either we're there to, you know, start solve certain things. So you talked earlier about like our beliefs and how that affects us, who we are, and the assumptions that we make. So how do you help people kind of discover what their beliefs are and how those are holding them back?

Well, when I start asking somebody, why are you here, they're going to tell me a story. And I've been doing this for 14 years, right? And so as somebody is talking, I can already see what beliefs are at play. I can already see where they have resistance. I can already see, you know, how disconnected they are emotionally. I can see how much they're responsible for themselves. Like, there's so many little points in a conversation just by listening to somebody for 5 minutes where I'm like, okay. So then what we start to do is we start with awareness, because you can't really take action until you're ready. Like, if somebody comes to me and they are in a dysfunctional relationship, I don't ever tell people, first of all, what they have to do, because that's not my job. Secondly, I do not become a proponent of them leaving a relationship as a solution, because I feel when you're in a relationship, that is a great place to learn why you're there in the first place. Because if you never learn why you're there in the first place, you're bound to just keep going and repeating the same cycle over and over again.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, talk— you, you mentioned insecure attachments. What is, what is an insecure attachment? How do I identify what that is? And, and so what is it?

Well, when we are babies and we come into the world, we attach. We either attach securely or insecurely. And there was a theory that came about in the late 1960s by Dr. John Bowlby, who was talking about this with babies and seeing how some would securely attach where their needs were met, their emotional needs were met, their physical needs were met. They weren't acting out to either get attention or to avoid attention or ambivalent to intent attention. And this was proven out through Mary Ainsworth, who was his assistant. A couple years later, she did something called the Strange Experiment where those, let's say, styles of attachment were shown. So What that comes down to as an adult is we carry these things forward because again, this all gets on autopilot. It's not that you're aware, oh, I'm an ambivalent 7-year-old. Nobody's doing that. Um, you're not noticing why you're anxious. You don't know why you're anxious. You just think I'm just an anxious person. But the truth is we develop these patterns and then we go into our adult relationships when we're not securely attached and we're looking for either a repeat of our childhood because it's familiar. Meaning, you know, we may on a deeper level, let's say, desire emotional intimacy, but if we'd never had it, we're afraid of it. And so we perpetuate these same cycles. Like, if you had a parent— let's say you're anxiously attached, so anxious attachment with the parent would show up as clingy, you know, and we call that person needy or this child needy. They would always be needing something. They would cry when their mom leaves, cry when the mom comes back. They could be inconsolable. And then in a relationship, they don't trust the other person. They feel they're going to be abandoned at any moment. They react by holding on tighter. They try to control things, but you really can't control, you know, you can't control other people, but people try.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, and that would be somebody who's exhibiting anxious attachment.

Okay, okay. So you help people kind of identify that they've got this anxious attachment, and then what's the— what would be the next step?

So when they identify that, it just, you know, to me, I don't like labels a lot, and using insecure attachment is one of those things that it sort of gives people a little education mentally, like, okay, this is what's happening for me. And, um, you know, what we start to do is we, we want them to become aware of all the ways that they uphold their attachment. So when they come in, you know, all of my coaches have been trained this way. It's really listening and going, okay, right here they're saying something. I can take a deeper dive. And we start to show people things that they weren't aware of in themselves before, but that they can totally go, oh my God, you're right, I totally see it, right? Great. So that's the first thing, is the awareness. The second part of that is they gotta feel their feelings in their body. Sometimes it can take months to get people in their bodies to feel their feelings. When you've had trauma, one of the first places you go is to your head. You just stay there as a kid. If you had any kind of abuse, any sort of trauma that happened, you are probably very strategic in how you live because you are always looking for safety. People that are insecurely attached don't feel safe in the world. And so they're not in their bodies. They're not feeling their feelings. 'Cause when you're a little kid and you're having overwhelming feelings, the last thing you wanna do is feel those, right? So we learn these coping skills where we are outside. We're always looking out here, what's happening out here, and whatever's happening outside of us is really controlling what's inside of us. But we're really designed to be working from the inside to the outside. So we work with people Like I said, awareness to feelings and then taking action. It depends on the person. Some people can do it right away and we start small. We don't have people, you know, okay, great. You're in this dysfunctional relationship. Like I said, I don't go, go ahead and break up with them. But a lot of times, and this is really a testament to how people get stuck in these patterns. A lot of times we start with them speaking some kind of a truth. In a conversation, and I can have people go months and not wanna do that. They're so afraid of what the other person's reaction is gonna be. And the truth is, if you are not speaking your truth and honoring your own feelings, nobody else is gonna do that. You are showing other people how to treat you. If your emotions, your feelings are unimportant to you in that way where you express something again without blaming the other person, Okay. It's not a blame fest. It's taking responsibility and saying something that's true can feel very scary because you're breaking a pattern. And if you're breaking a pattern, it's gonna be uncomfortable. It's not gonna be comfortable. It's not gonna be like the tooth fairy coming and waving their magic wand. You know, it's really going to be where it feels kind of risky to say what's true for you. But the more you do it, you build a muscle and you start to care about your own feelings in a different way. Because now you're giving attention to yourself where you've probably never had attention. Most of us feel like we haven't had the attention of being seen at a deeper level, but until you see you at a deeper level, it's hard for others to see you at a deeper level.

Yeah. Why do you, why do you think that is, that we don't see ourselves at that level?

We have never, well, number one, unless you're securely attached and, and even people that are securely attached don't always see themselves at a deep level.

Mm-hmm.

But who's gonna teach you to do that? Not very many parents when they have children are equipped in that way. I mean, I have 3 grown children and I look at them and I think, oh my gosh, had I been doing this kind of work when they were younger, you know, could have really helped them. But I wasn't. And I feel like I did better than my parents in a sense. I was more aware. But we, we don't have a lot of awareness. I mean, most human beings don't have the level of awareness to really have that insight to themselves. They need to have somebody, first of all, help them to see it, more often than not, and to sustain it. Because you really can't teach people what you don't experience yourself in a way that's going to help them in the long run.

Yeah. Yeah, that's— I think that's a really important point. And I think a lot of us feel, you know, I don't want to feel like there's something wrong with me, that I have to go to a therapist or go to a coach. And, you know, I should just know this stuff.

Right? Yep. That's how I felt for years.

Yeah, yeah, I can, I can definitely see that. So you also mentioned, when I was reading your bio, you mentioned imposter syndrome, which I've become, since I've been doing this work, very, very much aware of. So talk about imposter syndrome and how common or uncommon it is.

It's pretty much almost every person has it in some situation. You know, a situation where you don't feel confident, a situation where you may feel you don't fit in, a situation where you feel like you have to be a better version of who you see yourself to be. So we develop these caricatures, in a sense, that's what they become, where, okay, I'm going to do my best here. And not that most of us wake up in the morning and go, I'm not going to do my best today. Most of us, even if we're kind of laying around the house or we feel a certain way, that's the best we can do in the moment. But We don't give ourselves that, right? We try to live up to the standards of what we think somebody else wants. And a lot of times we want to live up to the standards so we don't fall into criticism from somebody else or ourselves. You know, we do these things because we think it's the way to be successful, whether it's with a person in a relationship or it's in a job or friends, whatever. You know, you might be that friend that does everything for your friends. And yet nobody's really close to you. Because when you have imposter syndrome, like I said, you built a caricature, and it's sort of like you put this false front up and then you're behind that, right? You're back here. You don't want anybody getting back here. You're afraid for people to see you as you really are, even though you still desire it at that deep level. So it's kind of a contradiction, but most of us, that's what we're doing because we haven't accepted ourselves. We don't think whatever this is is good enough. And I need to be this other person.

Yeah, it's almost as if we're all wearing masks for each other, right? We're all projecting this thing. And we all think we're the only ones that are feeling the insecurity. And everybody, everybody else is okay, but just not me.

Right? Yep. And that's, that's a real unfortunate misnomer, because it's just not true.

Yeah. So you mentioned, I asked you to send me some questions beforehand. And one of the things you said was to ask you about how to change your life in 90 So how do we do that?

Okay. So, and this is a great, you know, my clients are always saying, I did the 90-second thing. I did the 90-second thing. This isn't the only tool, but it is one of the tools we use because it, again, it's a great one for having awareness. So when you are, let's say, going out on a date, I'll just use that as an example. Okay. And you're sitting there and you're not liking this person. You don't even know, number one, why you don't like them. Number 2, you're wanting to get the hell out of there like your butt is on fire and you don't know why. Okay. And so you're— all you're doing is thinking about excuses about how you don't want to be there, about how you're stuck. You know, this is just like you're ruminating, right? And maybe you're sitting there smiling and they don't have any clue. So what I do is I tell people, you need to stay 90 seconds longer, but you need to actually pay attention to what your motivation is inside of your body to want to bolt. Because when you do that, what starts to happen is you find that a lot of your fears— because that's fear that's driving that, by the way. It's fear that's making you want to leave because there's nothing that's going to happen. The ceiling's not going to fall in, you know, it's not like the place is going to start on fire. But the feeling you have, you're already in fight or flight. It's to be curious, why am I wanting to leave? Not— and it can't be because the other person— they can be a trigger. Okay, but they are not the reason. You want to know what's happening inside of me, what's being triggered inside of me that says I can't sit here and just be here and, and find out why I'm so bothered. What is it? Because a lot of this goes back to childhood again, right? So these are the things that go on autopilot. And not that you're dating when you're a kid, but you've had situations where you've wanted to leave because you're afraid of what's going to happen. And so what we do is that's a pattern. And you've gotta know my pattern is when I'm uncomfortable, I don't like something, I need to leave. Well, then you sit there for 90 seconds and you go, okay, what am I actually feeling? Oh, wow. I'm not really afraid. I'm just not really engaging with this person because I say I want a relationship and I don't know that I really want a relationship. Like you may start to uncover on a deeper level that your motivation is you're expecting somebody to be perfect when they walk in and they're not a perfect person, cuz that doesn't exist, right?

Mm-hmm.

And you immediately have shut down. And so it's to be curious. And then you could go, why don't I ask questions I would never ask? Why don't I say things I would never say? Right? So what you start to do is you let yourself out of a prison that you've put yourself in, in the past. And so in 90 seconds, you can do that. You can become aware of what's going on with you, your motivation, and you can do something different. And I will guarantee you, you will not have the same reaction again on a date because unless you're sitting across from a mass murderer or something like that, you know, literally, unless there's some kind of like, okay, this person's really out there. Um, you're not going to have that reaction anymore. It's not going to happen. And that's the best thing in the world is when you can do something like that, because it gives you awareness. Of what is operating inside of you. Because otherwise, we're just like little robots going through our day. And we don't know why.

Yeah, I think that's really important. And that's one of the things I've learned since I've been doing the life coaching thing is that really helping people understand these, these underlying beliefs, these underlying patterns, because most of us do. We operate on autopilot, which is because it's efficient, right? It's just, it's easy to do. And if we tried something and it's working, we're not going to change until we actually realize that it's really not working for us, right?

Oh yeah, definitely.

So, um, you also meant— you talk about, uh, how to stop saying yes to breadcrumbs in dating and, uh, relationships and, and work. What is that? What does that mean, to stop saying yes to breadcrumbs?

So when you stop saying yes to breadcrumbs, what you're basically doing is a couple of things. Number one, this goes back to how you were raised, okay? So let's say you're insecurely attached, and let's say that you always feel people are going to leave you. So you go on a date, all right? And what happens? Oh my gosh, we've hit it off. Both of you are like, oh my gosh, this is a great date, let's do this again. And maybe you do, maybe you do it a few more times, maybe you do it for a few months, and the other person all of a sudden starts to call less, show up less. Seems less interested. You could be asking them, hey, what's going on? Because you were sure interested in kind of getting that. Maybe you're not. If, if somebody even has the courage to do that, right? So bottom line is this person ends up going away, ghosting you in a sense, but then they come back and you let them come back because they've given you just enough breadcrumbs to keep you holding on, to keep you thinking, this is my soulmate, we had such a great first date, or a great first month or whatever it is. And you're not getting the whole loaf, you've gotten little pieces of attention that are breadcrumbs. And you're making it into more than it actually is. And again, it's not because there's something wrong with you, or, you know, you are undeserving. It's how you feel about you based on, again, how you were raised and how you believe love is given to you. Because a lot of us think we have to work really hard, or there's something wrong with us. Why would somebody love us? Why would somebody want to give to us. You know, we really don't dig that deep, but we take whatever someone's doing out here. And if they're just giving us little bits, we're trying to make the best of it. We're thinking, that's all there is, folks. There's nobody who's going to give me what I want, so I got to work for it.

So you also mentioned that in the workplace, and I could see the same kind of same thing, similar, when people get into a job situation and they think, this is, this is it, this is, you know, this is as good as it gets. So what is the way— how do we, how do we break out of that?

So, you know, these things that you're asking today are awesome. Because, I mean, I always go back to awareness. And I'm saying they're awesome, because so much of this, we want to have a quick and easy answer. And it's not quick and easy. And so, you know, when you go in there, first of all, you have to get in reality. Okay, so reality is I'm interviewing for a job. Reality is, let's say I get the job. Reality is I don't know what the job is going to be like. Most of the time when you interview for something, you're like, "Ah, I've gotta have this job. I've just gotta have this job, okay? And it's gonna fit me, it's perfect." But you don't know. It's the same thing we do on dates. You don't know until you actually are there and you're experiencing it. But when you have this fantasy thing going on, you're in for a world of disappointment because there's nothing in the world that is going to be perfect. There's nothing in the world where you're going to be riding on a dragon in the sky going, oh my God, this is so amazing. It's the same thing. And so I always say to people, you've got to start with reality. And it is very difficult because people don't like to deal with disappointment. And when you start to actually deal with being disappointed or not having crazy expectations and really just go in and you're neutral and you're like, I like this, I like that, you know, whatever it is that you like at the job, but to stay realistic with it. Another thing that people do to try and, let's say, I would say accept breadcrumbs, is they don't really say what's true for them, right? Especially at work. We're afraid we're gonna get fired. We're afraid we're not gonna be part of whatever the team is, you know, oh gosh, there's so-and-so, she's always, or he's always speaking their mind. Don't wanna hear from them. You know, we're afraid we're gonna be that person. Mm-hmm. And then we're gonna lose the job and you know, there goes the opportunity. And then all we do is dwell on it and ruminate on it for years to come afterwards.

Yeah, I can, I can definitely see that. And, you know, I've noticed that pattern kind of myself back when I was interviewing for jobs. You know, you always felt like, oh, it'd be so great just to get the offer, even though it might not even be the job you want. I mean, why do you think it is that we have this, this almost desperation for, you know, for relationships, jobs, you know, whatever it is?

Because again, it goes back to our lack of value. You know, we never learned Your parents could say— okay, I'm going to back up a little. Your parents could say something like, wow, you did a good job on this. Okay, but you are listening, right? And all of their actions, are they telling you that you're okay all the time? Not that you're great, not that you're amazing, but that you're okay. As a kid, you're reading this, you're a sponge, you're soaking it up. And for the most part, there is no parent that's perfect out there that's always telling you you're okay, or that their actions support that. So there is always going to be some level of an insecurity inside of us about who we are and what is possible, right? A lot of us, we feel certain things are impossible. So, you know, you may go into something and you don't really believe you can have it, and oh my gosh, you get it. Then what? And then you feel like you're going to lose it. Like, I remember getting a job like that, you know, where, oh my God, I'm going to be a vice president.

Oh boy.

And then I was afraid I was going to lose it. How am I going to screw this up? I know I'm going to screw it up, right? I go right into that negative thinking because because that is what is at the base of am I really okay? No, because we have a lack of deserving, a lack of feeling like we should have that.

We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, his book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com, www.grief2growth.com. If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grieftogrowth, www.patreon.com/grieftogrowth. Grief2growth.com to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.

Yes, yes. And you know, it's interesting, as we're having this conversation, I was watching a television program, I think it was just last night, it's called Black-ish. It's a sitcom. And they were talking about the messages we give our children. And they were, they were freaking out about like, we want to give them self-esteem, but we don't want it based on their behavior. Because a lot of things we got when we were kids was like, you're very attractive, or you're so smart, or you did a good thing. So we think we have to earn, you know, our way in the world. We don't think— we don't really learn about inherent value. And I think that's a real problem in our, in our society. We don't teach people, just because you're a person, you're deserving of love.

Right, right. And that's the problem, because our parents, they weren't taught that either. So And in certain cultures too, big time. I mean, I work with people of different cultures and it's funny because different cultures are really the same. People think there's so much difference, but we're all more alike than we think. But it's interesting because there's some cultures, I'll just say that they are so success driven. Like if you don't become a doctor, you don't become a lawyer, and you can probably think of like 5 or 6 different cultures at this point, right? That there's something wrong with you. And you are from a small age. Like, I had a client who was a doctor who wasn't even sure she should be a doctor, right? And she's like, if I'm not a doctor, I'm a disappointment. Both of her brothers were doctors. She had to be a doctor. And it wasn't, do you want to be a doctor? Does that even work for you? No, it doesn't matter. And so that's what happens to a lot of us too. We're still trying to please our parents, or, you know, the society we live in, instead of what is it that works for me? Maybe I just want to play the piano. Maybe I just want to, you know, be a librarian or whatever. But we don't give ourselves that because we're so afraid we're going to fail. Because failure is a big part of loss, right? Everything goes back to our fear of loss.

Yes, yes. Yeah, I can, I can, I can definitely— and I've seen that play out in a lot of different people's lives. It was when I was a kid, my parents like, oh, you're, you know, I was, I was smart, you know, you're smart kid. So you should be a doctor. And I very nearly went into medicine. I was, but I was like, no, this is not really what I'm going to do. But the same thing happened to my daughter. She actually started off in the medical field and then realized after her freshman year, I'm really proud of her, said, you know, no, this is not really what I want to do. But that it can be hard to break that pattern when people give us— we, we feel like we have to earn people's approval, right?

That's what I'm saying, because we don't give ourselves approval. We don't know how to do that because we weren't instructed how to do that. And, you know, and again, we feel that the validation always comes from outside. So there's a theory, it's called the self-determination theory, which is a theory I absolutely adore because it really breaks down intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And you're talking extrinsic motivation whenever you need validation, or it's more, you know, it's more important to get validation or appear okay to other people rather than intrinsic motivation, which really speaks to the joy of doing, feeling you're making autonomous choices that feed you and allow you to do things that, you know, really light you up. And so that's really difficult because we'll do those as hobbies. But we're not going to do that as a full-time thing. Or, you know, we're going to put what we feel is more important to other people, or we think is more important to other people, first, until we become self— I would say self-actualized, where you become self-possessed. And I believe in that place you actually have more to give to others than when you're in a place of trying to please others.

So as you were saying, I was thinking, is— was that maybe a definition of what insecure attachment is, is when we're relying on external things to give us our, our self-worth?

Um, that's part of it. I mean, not, you know, that, that's a part of insecure attachment because what, what you're talking about is there are outgrowths to insecure attachment, like perfectionism. It comes from insecure attachment. People pleasing. Saying yes when you mean no, you know, where you'll sacrifice yourself, comes from insecure attachment. Like, all of these patterns that are unhealthy and fear-based do come from there. Um, but at the same time, there's certain things that are like an outgrowth of it, like motivation. Okay, most people, if they're externally motivated, they have, um, there's also a locus of control, you know, where we have an external locus of control where we feel like the outside is controlling the inside. We're taught that and conditioned that as children. People that have an internal locus of control, they feel like this too shall pass. Everything is really okay. I can handle whatever this is, and they keep moving forward in their lives. They don't feel the same feelings, let's say, that people who are insecure attached or feel like something's wrong, their pants are on fire, whatever. You know, there's a, there's a big difference.

Yeah, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. So let's talk about your, your book. What, tell me what your book's about.

So my book, it's so funny. It's funny because my publisher changed the title. And so, so it started off as Deal With It, We Are All F'd Up: 8 Ways to Happiness No Matter WTF. Is going on. Okay.

Yeah.

So anyways, and I say that because it's not just about insecure attachment, even though it's named that. Uh, it's about the drama triangle. It's about all the ways that we stand in our way and sabotage ourselves. And my goal with writing this was to give people a how-to manual. Hey, if you can't work with me or in one of my programs, you can do this and you can find your way with it. Because to me, this book was all about taking people from being in their heads and repeating the same cycles, the same patterns, the same misery, the same, you know, I'm stuck, to really being able to move out of it with real tools that you can implement and start changing your life immediately. Um, you know, you have to obviously be motivated to do that, and I feel like the book, there's stories in there that help people like, oh my gosh, I've been, you know, I've been in these shoes here, I totally relate to the story. And then hopefully that helps people because, you know, we always learn from stories, but helps people to be motivated to actually take action.

Yeah, you know, I, I like it. I like your title. I like your original title because I think it's really important to normalize this, to normalize the fact that we're all effed up. We're all, we all have some damage. And I, and I I've come to the conclusion that's actually part of the design of being human. I think it's, I think it's, you know, kind of one of the reasons why we're here is to overcome it. But most of us are set, are taught, as we talked about earlier, to put on the mask, to buckle up, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Don't show anybody, you know, any pain or any vulnerability. And we're all just kind of suffering through and thinking, well, I'll be happy when. I'll be happy when this happens. Again, that external circumstance thing. And we're not even given permission to, to explore our own, our inner landscape.

We don't unless we take the time to do that. And that again goes back to what I was saying earlier about how we can work with people and like 6 months later, they still haven't taken action. Sometimes people are so locked into these patterns with other people They're so afraid of disappointing the other person because they're so afraid of either criticism or the person seeing them differently. You know, they were so afraid of all of that outside of them that they put themselves in the position of never ever exploring, never ever taking the time. No, I got to do this. No, I got to do that. Distracting the heck out of themselves and not ever paying attention to what really matters to them or getting to know what really matters to them.

So do you find people resisting when you, when you're trying to give them the tools to do things? You find people saying, I don't Well, that's too much or that's too risky.

You know, it's so funny because sometimes yes, and I will— again, I'm not here to force people or to bully people into doing anything because why, right? So I really— when we're— we do these things called discovery calls, and I don't do one-on-one coaching myself anymore, I have coaches that do, um, but we really want people when they're in a discovery call to learn what we teach, you know, like, this is what it's going to be like. And this is our expectation that you're going to show up and do the work. We have people that will disappear. And that's fine, because they're not ready to do it. But there are people that show up and they're really ready to do it.

Well, you know, the thing is, I'm going through— I just started week 2 of this intensive, like, 7-week thing I'm going through right now with coaches.. And it's, it's, it's uncomfortable. You know, it's uncomfortable to— there's different terminology, but same things we're talking about. The, the, the, this thing I'm in is called the saboteurs, the perfectionism, the avoidance, all these things that are going on inside of us that are kind of, kind of holding us back. But when we start to look in and see those things, at first, it's like, I don't really want to do this. You know, and then, you know, I had a client that she was a pleaser. She had all these people around here, they were, they were literally just driving her crazy. They were always asking her for things. And I said, let's start small. Find one person that you think might accept this, you know, and go to them and say, this is what I need from you. You know, take them out to lunch or whatever and just get a little victory. And she disappeared. I don't— I didn't see her anymore after that. Just, she just couldn't do it.

Yeah, yeah, there's so many. And, and that happens in my business. We'll get people, you know, one of the things, and I'm telling people, you know, we do not give refunds. Why don't we give refunds? Because we don't want people who come in and they're like, oh my God, this is so hard, I can't do this. We want people who are like, you know what, I want to stick to this. If we give you an out, you will take it because this work is so hard. You know, people want a quick and easy solution, right? But we don't realize it's taken decades for us to get where we are. And not that it needs to be decades that, you know, it's gonna take you to undo it, but it's just so wild that we have an expectation that it should be painless. And the pain comes from within you. The pain is not outside of you. The pain is always there and you cover it up on a daily basis. And most of us are afraid to let it out because we don't know what's gonna happen if we let that out. But in reality, you let it out and you learn how to deal with your emotions. You are becoming more emotionally intelligent. You are growing yourself and your capacity to handle things. So you become more emotionally mature, but you know, it sounds great in theory, but when you're in the thick of it and you're having to do things where you're like, ah, I don't know if I can do that. Then like your client that went running off because they wanted to stay a people pleaser. So I find that we try to do it in baby steps. We really do. Otherwise, people are going to bolt. People aren't going to do it.

Do you find that people have to hit some sort of a bottom before they come to you, before they're willing to do this work? What's your experience with that?

You know, yes and no, because I feel like most people— okay, so, and I, you know, it's funny because I've been studying this for the 14 years I've been doing it, right? So most people, if you would have asked me 5 years ago, yes, they have to be going through some major thing. For some people, it's really that they've hit this, uh, place of, I am doing the same thing again, I don't want to do the same thing again, I cannot do the same thing again, I need to just stop and I need to do something, right? Um, like somebody wrote to me yesterday now I get letters all the time. And this person was saying, I realize I'm anxiously attached and my attachment issues are creating problems in my relationship. And I also have two young children and I'm afraid that I'm gonna pass this on to them. So then we reach out to her, but we haven't heard back and we probably won't. Right. And, and that happens a lot, but for people who recognize that and actually join a program, good for you. It's not that everything had to fall apart. For you to do it. So that's why I'm saying, like, I used to think, no, they got to be going through a breakup. But, but sometimes people will join who are going through a breakup, and they're not necessarily ready to change anything either, right? Even though you would think so.

And when I said a bottom, I don't mean— again, not even externally. It's not like it has to be a divorce or a death or something like that. It's that I think we had a point in ourselves where we just say, this is not— I'm not happy. I just can't keep doing it. You know, I'm going to take the red pill now. I'm going to, I'm going to open my eyes and figure out what's really going on. Because human beings, I think, are wired to— as if something's working, we're just going to keep doing it. And yeah, realize this is not working. And then, but sometimes that, that bottom, that thing can just be like, like you said, I just can't do this anymore. You know, I'm tired of this, this same old pattern.. But people have to know, and that's why it's important to have people like yourself with your book and your program to know that there is an opportunity, there's a way to get out of it. So that's awesome about what you're doing with that.

Thank you. Thank you. I, you know, I feel like I've always wanted to help people in terms of, you know, when I was younger and I was in school, I was always like Dear Abby, uh, and so I was always helping people, but I used to help people to my detriment. And I feel like at this point I don't help from my, from a detrimental place because I'm always filling my own gas tank. And that is the difference. Like your client who's people pleaser, like once that person learns what real generosity is and how to actually give to themselves first so that they have gas in their tank, it changes your whole relationship with the world because then you don't feel like you're sacrificing all the time and you don't feel drained and exhausted and miserable and mad and resentful. You feel good.

Yeah, let's, let's talk about that balance. I think that's really important for people who are people pleasers because we feel like, okay, well, it's good to be a people pleaser. It's good to, to want to make people happy. It's good to want to serve other people. What's, what's wrong with doing that?

Well, it's all what your motivation is. You know, if your motivation— we're just gonna, you know, pull this one in because this is one of my favorite things when people say this to me. It's, it's like, okay, So your motivation is what? I want people to like me. I don't want people to leave me. You're manipulating. Okay. That is so different. People pleasing is manipulation. If I wanna give to somebody and I wanna do something nice for them, there are no strings attached. I don't worry about you thanking me. I don't worry about what you're gonna do with it. I feel good in the action. That's called intrinsic motivation, and that's called generosity. That you want to come from, but you can't when you're draining yourself by being a people pleaser, which comes from fear. It does not come from love. Love and generosity go together. Fear, manipulation, people pleasing, that's all together. So there's a huge gap between them. And I always tell people that, and then they see themselves and like, oh, you're right. You know, I'm, I'm trying to get somebody to think I'm a good person, or I want them to love me, or I want them to do these things. And I've done— I used to do this stuff all the time, so I'm really aware of it. And, you know, of course, that makes it where when people come walking in, like, oh yeah, I used to do that. Yep.

Yeah, I think a lot of us in this field probably have been people pleasers. And we, and we learn how to do it from a different place. But, you know, you can see it still coming back sometimes, right? We keep putting ourselves out and we want— we all want people to like us. I mean, that's, that's a normal thing. I was talking with a client the other day about, you know, being a people pleaser. And I said, well, we don't want to become sociopaths either. We don't want to become to the point where people— we don't care what people think. And we don't, you know, we don't— we're not trying to, you know, make other people happy. There's got to be— there's got to be a balance. So sometimes people can go too far to the other extreme. And I've heard people say, well, I shouldn't care what she thinks about me, you know, I should be— I should be totally intrinsically motivated and not care what people think about me. I don't know how you feel about that.

I actually feel good about that. And I'll tell you why, because that's one way of looking at it. So let's say that I am all about my intrinsic motivation. So I'm a happy person, right? Because I'm taking care of myself.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's so much easier for me to relate to other people without feeling the pressure to have to be somebody that they want me to be, or I, or better yet, I think that they want me to be.

Yeah.

Because I don't even know that they want me to be that person. If you ask somebody, they'd be like, of course I want you to do what you love. Of course I want you to be happy. Of course, you know, duh, we all want that, right? But we assume in our heads these stories that we have to care what other people think. You don't. And it's not in a sociopathic way either. It's not. It's making choices that feel good to you. I mean, people are really going to love being around you because you're probably going to be very honest with them. You're going to be very open with them. You're going to be very loving with them. You— that's a totally different thing than let me try and please somebody when I really don't know how to please them, but I think I do. And, you know, and I am afraid to ask, and I'm afraid to do anything differently.

Yeah, we're giving them what, what we think they want, and then when they don't react the way that we expect them to, then, then we're upset. You know, we're upset with them because they're selfish people. Why aren't they giving stuff to me like I'm giving stuff to them?

Right, right. And so, I mean, it's just kind of funny. I had a client who's actually one of my coaches now who used to run errands for all her friends. And one of them in particular, I remember her telling me that she was driving 30 miles out of her way to go and pick up a pair of pants for her friend. And I'm like, and do you enjoy doing this? Did you have other things planned? And she's like, yeah, but it's hard because this person expects me to do it because I've done things like this before. Right. And it's to say to somebody, hey, guess what? I realize by me picking up your pants for you that I am actually resentful. And that people forget, right? So I may look like I'm pleasing you, and you may think I'm pleasing you, but secretly I'm hating you, or secretly I'm mad at you. And what is that? That's not emotional intimacy. That's not truth. That's not a real bond. That's a bunch of BS. And that's where, you know, and she stopped doing it, and she no longer was friends with that person, not because of, um, it being where my client was like, okay, I can't be friends with you. It just happened because they had nothing in common.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes those relationships, the, the person might be actually manipulating you unknowingly because you're willing to do everything for them. And, and when you cut that off, you might lose some relationships which are not real relationships anyway. And, you know, as, as coaches— and this goes back, I guess, maybe we were talking about earlier about the imposter syndrome we're not perfect. I'm not a perfect person. So I just yesterday, I have a relationship with someone that we've been friends with for a long, for a long time. And I realized, I never really tell this person how I feel about certain things. So I just finally said, okay, this is how I feel about this particular thing. And I'm not doing this thing with you tomorrow that you asked me to do. And it felt good. You know, it felt good. And I don't know how that person is going to react to that. But I just knew it was something I had to do as part of my truth. So We're all works in progress. We're all, you know, recognizing these things as we go along. And it feels good when you finally, you know, do let your real self come out to people.

I totally agree. I mean, it's funny because years ago, people would say, oh, Tracy, you always say, you know, you're always saying it how it is, right? Well, yeah, as long as it didn't have anything to do with me. I didn't say anything that had, you know, was real when it had to do with me that made me vulnerable. But I had to become vulnerable. I had to become very real.

Yeah, that's, that's part of being, you know, a real person. And then that's— and then, you know, people love you for who you are, not who you're pretending to be.

Exactly. And that, to me, is a greater gift. Some people may not be able to handle that. And that's okay. Because what would you do? Like, once you start doing this, you start to realize, what would I be doing? Will I be trying to please them? And I'd be miserable. And I can only control what I do, right? So why would I make myself miserable to make someone else happy and like me, but they're not even really liking the real me? I don't— you know, there's a huge break right there, because some people, they're so afraid to have people not really like them.

Yeah.

And they may not like you anyway.

Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. We can never guarantee that anybody's gonna like us. And, and when people— and I've seen this also, when people realize that you're not real, they might kind of pretend to like you, or they might, but they don't really feel intimately attached to you. They don't feel like— we can, we can spot the pleasers, right? We can spot the people that don't tell us the truth and the people that are always, you know, happy and sunshine and all that stuff. And we're not typically attracted to those people.

Not typically.

Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about your, your podcast. I know you have two, so tell me about each one of them.

So I have, uh, my first one is called Freedom from Attachment. And so with Freedom from Attachment, I'm basically talking about all the things we're talking about today. And, you know, I go on for about 15, 20 minutes. I've been doing it for 6 years and I have over 600 episodes.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. There are people that have listened to all of them. Congratulations. Uh, you know, but, uh, there are a lot of episodes about these topics. I'm always looking at, you know, the difference between love and fear, because fear makes us attached. Love does not make us attached. And so it's all sorts of things. I mean, I even talk about a little bit about, you know, being on the job, things like that. But it's really about freedom from any kind of attachment, which means you're being in love. And then my other podcast, Moving On, is where I have people come on, um, experts or people that have been through some kind of trauma or drama to get to where they are, sort of like what your podcast is about, you know, where people have gone through something that has significantly changed their lives. And then how did that play out? What was it that happened? And then how is that affecting you at this point? Because a lot of my listeners have been through a lot of trauma and drama. And so they're always looking at Oh, wow, you were able to do that? Well, maybe I can do that too.

Yeah, I think that's— I think it's really important because it goes back to that belief thing that you talked about at the very beginning. And I believe that's the core of everything. It's what are the stories we tell ourselves? What are our beliefs? And that's why I asked you about the rock bottom thing, because a lot of times it's the, it's the trauma that gets us to the point where we realize our belief system is not working anymore. You know, I thought this was the way it was going to be. I thought this is the way things are. If I did X, Y, and Z, then everything would be okay. Well, I did X, Y, and Z, and things aren't okay. So what happened? What's the disconnect between my belief system and the way the world really works?

Yeah, because most of us are— I'm gonna say this— most of us are brought up with a lot of fearful beliefs, and we're not really brought up with a lot of loving beliefs. And If we actually came from love, the whole world would look different.

Yeah, I can— I say it all the time. So I'm glad, I'm glad that you did say it. I think, I think the beliefs we have is what, what molds our world. It's what we, what we believe about ourselves and we believe about other people. And my, my big thing I say all the time is the biggest problem in the world is we've all forgotten who we are. Nobody knows who we were. We don't, we don't understand our intrinsic value. We don't understand that everybody has intrinsic value. We don't respect that in ourselves. We don't respect it in other people. And we live in a culture that tells us that you have to earn everything, including love and approval.

That is so true. It is perpetuated outside of the home, inside of the home. And, you know, it's even perpetuated in movies, TV. It's perpetuated everywhere.

Yeah. So it's real. It's important to have people like yourself helping people to break these patterns and to recognize these patterns. So you mentioned that you don't do one-on-one coaching anymore, but you have people that do that, that you have coaches. So tell me how your, your business model works. Do people come to your website and sign up for coaching? How does that work?

So usually people will come to the website, they'll start listening to my podcast, and then we'll usually hear from them. We do a couple of different things. One is I have these short-term programs. In fact, I have one that starts today, actually, right after we're done here. Um, and, you know, we, we do like 2 to 3 week programs Those are sort of starter, get your feet wet, kind of, you know, learn a little bit about what we do. Um, but our main program is called Mastery. It's 12 months. And usually people who are really ready to make a change do it because like I said, it can take a while to be able to get into your body, which is a completely different way of feeling your wellbeing. Like you feel completely different. Like, oh my God, I can't believe I've not been living this way. Right. So we do this over 12 months. We have 12 different topics that we cover. And we really work, you know, my coaches work in the program. And that is, to me, like the gold standard in terms of what I would suggest people doing. Some people don't want to be in a group. And so my coaches do offer one-on-one sessions for that. I also have a digital course and my book— whoops— and my book too.

Okay. So I want everybody to know all your, your website, We talked about your book. I want to make sure the name is prominent. We'll put this in the show notes, but sometimes people don't look at the show notes. I like to have it in the audio also. Awesome.

So you can find me at tracycrossley.com, and all of my social media links are also listed there. Uh, they're different. They're not just Tracy L. Crossley. There's Tracy L. Crossley 13. So anyways, just click on the little logo there. And then, um, as far as my book, it's at all booksellers stores that I'm aware of, like Walmart, Target, obviously Amazon, Barnes Noble, you name it, you can find the book anywhere.

Okay, and the book is Overcoming Insecure Attachment.

Yeah, so here it is.

Yeah, and it's Crossley, C-R-O-S-S-L-E-Y. So I want to let people know that so they can find you. So Tracy, what last things would you like to say to people as we, as we wrap up today?

It's okay that you feel however you feel. And what I mean by that is a lot of us are trying to not feel how we feel, and to let yourself just feel how you feel is okay. And don't worry that you're going to be stuck there, because you're not. Because the point is— and I didn't mention this earlier, but it's really important to know that the stories in your head are just stories. And once you actually start questioning the stories, your feelings are much more manageable. And that therefore it makes it easier just to say I'm okay, however I feel.

Yeah, thank you. I think that was a great way to wrap up. Tracy, it's been wonderful meeting you. Thanks for being here today. And have a great rest of your day.

Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed being here.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful, and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, there are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of grief to growth. For more about Brian D Smith and Grief 2 Growth, Visit www.grief2growth.com.

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