Simply Abundant Intuitive

Does this sound like you? After a series of boring dates and incompatible partners, you’re still single. It’s not you; you just haven’t found the right person yet. Maybe you even have a list of traits your perfect match will have when you finally meet them. Each time you go out with someone new, you wait for that wow factor, the spark, but it never comes. If you’re starting to think you’ll never find your soulmate, I have a secret to share with you: You might be the problem. You’re stuck in a cycle of toxic relationships because you’re scared to find the one. Without realizing it, you’re shutting yourself off to a healthy relationship because you don’t see your true value. You can stay stuck in your cycle of bad dates, or you can open yourself up to the possibility of love, but you have to decide that it’s time for a change. Are you ready? On today’s podcast, you will learn useful tips to recognize your behaviors and finally approach dating with an open heart.

In this special series, Tracy will be answering your questions around emotional baggage. This week she dives into the hot topics of apologies, dealing with an avoidant, emptiness and what it means to be emotionally available. Want to submit your question? Watch live on Facebook every Thursday at 9am PST. You can submit your questions here: http://bit.ly/2sQ4sJT

You cannot cobble together enough breadcrumbs to create a satisfying meal, and yet many people accept breadcrumbs when it comes to relationships. When you meet someone and there is chemistry, you can get hooked pretty quickly. You may become attached to the idea of what it could be—a loving, fulfilling relationship. Then perhaps they stop contacting you and you are a ball of anxiety, wondering what you did wrong. Once you have accepted they are gone, WHAM, they come back. They have fed you enough breadcrumbs that you believe they are returning to give you the whole loaf. But of course, they don’t… so the cycle repeats. This can go on for years, waiting for them to change their behavior because you are attached to the idea of what the relationship COULD be. When you’re in this scarcity-driven relationship, you work hard to collect crumbs of attention, validation, and acceptance without even realizing it. You’ve been doing it for so long it feels normal, but it is not the path to a healthy relationship. The se

In this special series, Tracy will be answering your questions around emotional baggage. This week she dives into the hot topics of manipulation, fatal flaws and self-respect. Want to submit your question? Email info@tracycrossley.com and watch live on Facebook every Thursday at 9am PST.

In this episode of “Surviving to Thriving: Overcoming My Darkest Moment” I talk with Alton Pete, U.S. Army Veteran and Author. Listen in as he takes us on his journey through the military and loss of his mother and sister to now where he sheds light on PTSD and Depression as well as just completed his first book "Life is so Precious." Learn more about Alton Pete at altonpete.com

Men and women are wired for intimacy at birth, but some are conditioned to reject it. If you are insecurely attached, you probably didn’t experience a lot of true intimacy as a child so you learned to see the world as an emotionally unsafe place. You may have learned that love is not easily shown or given; that it’s conditional upon behavior; that it’s inconsistent. As a result, intimacy as an adult has the same limitations—regardless of gender. Fear of engulfment or abandonment wreak havoc on intimacy to create distance, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Intimacy is built by stepping toward those fears, not away from them. Some people believe being emotionally distant is just how they are. False. We are ALL wired for connection, and distancing yourself from another person is a choice. Until you open yourself up to intimacy, you’ll never fully align or bond with your partner. And no, intimacy does not just happen in the bedroom. It doesn’t appear in certain moments and then vanishes. It comes and stays. If

In this special series, Tracy will be answering your questions around emotional baggage. This week she dives into the hot topics of boundaries, triggers, and people-pleasing. Want to submit your question? Email info@tracycrossley.com and watch live on Facebook every Thursday at 9 am PST.

Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic used to make you question your reality, but when you’re insecurely attached, you may not trust your own reality to begin with. You look externally for validation because you believe other people know how you should feel more than yourself. If your partner says you’re horrible at budgeting, you may feel a deep sense of shame, even if you’ve always felt you did just fine in the budgeting department. After a string of negative comments, you question your budgeting skills and wonder if he/she is right. You also wonder if you’re being gaslighted. Everyone has their own point of view, however, so who’s to say their version of reality is more accurate than yours? When you question your own choices, you can become anxious and wonder if there is something wrong with you. To trust yourself you have to connect on a deeper level and stop guessing what other people think is right. It’s about stepping out of your comfort zone and dispelling the belief that others know how you feel or w

Depression sometimes results from pleasing others at the expense of yourself; by trying to be someone else in order to make others happy; by defining yourself through your actions for others. As a kid, if you felt you were unlovable or unacceptable in some way, you hid those unsavory parts about yourself and doubled-down on the parts that received validation. All that time spent seeking approval from others and trying to make them happy probably led to years of hiding and self-loathing. But you were good at hiding the self-loathing too, putting on a happy face so you wouldn’t be found out. Refusing to be who someone else wants and choosing to be fully yourself is HARD because you have to love and accept all those disowned parts of yourself. The truth of who you are matters… even if no one else agrees. Let’s say you go on a single date with someone who you’ve decided you really like and then tells you they want a partner of the same religion—no compromise and you’re not that religion. Already thinking about h

Are you afraid of expressing your true feelings because you might upset someone? Or do you think they will shut you down because they can’t handle the truth? If you were yelled at as a kid for doing something wrong, then shared how it made you feel and were told your feelings don’t matter, you learned to shove your feelings down. As an adult, this might manifest as trying to keep the peace so everything appears ok on the outside while suffering on the inside. Holding your emotions in or denying them, however, leads to all sorts of emotional and physical (yes, physical!) issues. It also allows somebody else to control your emotional state. Nobody enjoys hearing criticism or blame, but it’s actually not about that. It’s possible to express your feelings without doing either when you focus on how their actions impact you. You can simply share what is true for you (i.e. your feelings were hurt) without judging them, asking them to change or doing something differently. But first, you need to get clear on what yo

What do you do to block pleasure? Do you create obstacles for yourself to jump over in order to earn pleasure and happiness? Do you look joy in the face and say, “What did I do to deserve this? This must be a mistake!” If you are more comfortable with pain than pleasure, you’re not alone. Even if you WANT happiness and even visualize what it may look like, you probably fear it. Even during those fleeting moments of pleasure, there is a good chance you are waiting for the other shoe to drop, which means you never truly enjoy it. When you view life through the lens of work/reward, you believe you have to endure pain to get to pleasure. Pleasure comes from allowing it; not when you have “earned” it or when the work is done, but every day. And you have the power to let it in. But allowing is uncomfortable when pain is what you’re used to. Deciding to enjoy an experience instead of trying to protect yourself from disappointment or figure out why it’s happening is a choice, and it involves breaking old patterns. P

People who are beyond anxious and can also be characterized as ambivalent, avoidant, disordered, etc., may have been raised by a narcissist. These are people-pleasing perfectionists who lack self-trust and tend to hide out because of guilt, shame or fear. They don’t feel connected to their achievements even if they work incredibly hard, and are definitely insecurely attached when it comes to relationships. They may feel defective and worthless even though they wear a mask that projects confidence and value. So how does all of this relate to a narcissistic parent, and what can be done about it? You learn how to handle (or NOT handle) feelings from your parents, including the giving and receiving of love. If your perception of yourself as a child was invalidated, you may be riddled with self-doubt as an adult. Perfectionism is about avoiding criticism, which you probably endured from a narcissistic parent. Maybe you felt weird, different or unlovable. As an adult, the inner critic keeps all of this alive and w

Everything you think about someone online is an assumption. Most people know this, and yet we use social media as a way of finding information to confirm our beliefs. You may look for people who fit into your worldview, whether it’s about raising kids, relationships, religion, social mores, etc. And when you encounter those who don’t share your view, there may be a tendency to react and get defensive. Of course, you’ve seen behavior online that you would deem unacceptable, like belittling others, name-calling or acting holier than thou. Or maybe you have felt emboldened to say something on social media that you would never say in real life. How consistent is your online life with your offline one? Social media reflects how strong our beliefs are. Maybe you compensate for your belief that you’re an outcast by sharing a group photo. Or you may post a photo of yourself at some swanky party if you believe you will never be successful. But how does that feel afterward? And how does it feel when you judge someone

How much time do you spend analyzing the behavior of yourself and others to understand or figure things out? What about analyzing your feelings? Do you try to deconstruct why you’re feeling a certain way, or focus on how you SHOULD feel instead? Analysis keeps you in the same pattern of thinking, and thinking solves nothing on an emotional level. The only way to get emotional clarity is by actually feeling. A common example is trying to figure out if you are in love with someone or attached to them. You start thinking about this person and the story you’ve created, so you’re not actually uncovering your true feelings about them. Instead, you have to go into your body and locate the physical feelings without analyzing or judging them. When you picture yourself with this person, do you feel connected to them, or do fear and anxiety erupt? Thinking about your feelings is safe, but when you analyze and ruminate, nothing changes. Connecting with your feelings allows you to piece together the parts of yourself you

It’s easy to get stuck in your story, believing nothing will ever change. Maybe you curse the universe for working against you, saying nothing ever goes your way, but it’s not anything external that keeps your life on repeat. It’s you. More specifically, it’s how you perceive life and interpret experiences. If you believe you’re doomed, that’s what you will help create. It’s safe and easy to draw on past experiences and use those as signposts for what’s ahead, but that leaves little room for anything new. If the story you tell yourself is you always sabotage relationships, you better believe that’s what you’ll keep doing because your perception creates your reality. Let’s say you were insecure about your skills in bed from a past relationship. Now in your current relationship, your partner is often tired. But instead of acknowledging the reasons (health problems, late nights working), you start to think there is something wrong with you. Those insecure feelings from the past resurface and you start to distan

In this episode of “Surviving to Thriving: Overcoming My Darkest Moment” I talk with Anthony Trucks, former NFL player turned serial entrepreneur. Listen in as he takes us on his journey through foster care to the NFL to now where he is a master of navigating the identity shifts that life puts us through on the path to reaching our full potential. Learn more about Anthony at www.TrucksTeam.com.

I hear people say they want to change all the time—whether it’s getting divorced, changing jobs, finding a partner or improving a parental relationship. They say they are willing to do what it takes, and even connect with their feelings, but the needle doesn’t move. Frustrated, they go into victim mode by getting defensive (but I’m doing everything I can!) or blaming others (my therapist is useless). The problem is, these people are only scratching the surface. To make significant changes, you have to address your subconscious patterns and beliefs that live deep inside, tangled up like barbed wire. Many people are resistant to this deeper work because it’s painful, but their unwillingness creates the barrier to change. The more you dig your heels in and insist you’re doing everything you can, the more you’ll remain stuck in the same old thought process where you prove to yourself over and over this is as good as it gets. Until you’re willing to “go there,” you’ll keep battling yourself. Part of you wants to

It’s easy to label someone as toxic, obnoxious, boring, etc. in order to dismiss them. Sometimes it even happens without knowing much about the person. Why do you do it? What is happening inside when you are quick to write someone off or decide they are no good? Perhaps you feel threatened in some way, like part of you believes they are better than you. Judging them can provide a sense of superiority or self-righteousness. But who’s to say you’re doing things right and they’re doing things wrong? This happens a lot on social media where someone proclaims they are dumping the toxic people in their lives or getting rid of negativity without looking in the mirror to ask what they are doing to attract it. Once again it is NOT about other people. Toxicity is a judgment we use to keep from looking at our own behavior. Labeling others is an excuse to engage in bad behavior, and it doesn’t make you superior. When you catch yourself labeling others, ask how it serves you. What benefit do you get from it? Needing to f

How often do you find yourself in a situation where you just cannot take being there another minute longer? The appeal of running away, distracting and hiding when anxiety or discomfort surfaces is huge. Our society even teaches us how to dispose of things: cut bait, kick someone to the curb, cut your losses, etc. Those tactics may provide immediate relief, but it doesn’t help you grow. You may not even realize you do it, because you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s just what you do. Let’s say you’re on a date and don’t feel attracted to the other person. In fact, you have this overwhelming urgency to leave but you don’t know why. You picture yourself at home and cozy in front of the TV, so your mind tries to quickly plot an escape. Sure escaping is easy (and the voice in your head sure is persistent!), but what if you became curious about why you want to run and explored that for a minute? Don’t you want to know what is happening inside of you that creates this feeling? What you are trying to avoid is exa

How do you usually wake up feeling? Are you excited about the day ahead, or do you worry about what could go wrong? Maybe you awake in a panic. You don’t know why, so you start racking your brain for what you may have forgotten. Or maybe you simply have an anxious feeling you can’t shake, so it ruins your day. However it manifests, it’s horrible and you want it to stop. Maybe you even try to drown out the negative feelings by focusing on positive affirmations, but that does nothing to quell your anxiety. Because negative emotions are difficult to accept without understanding where they come from, you create a story (or search for a story) about what they mean. It’s very possible, however, that your feelings are not tied to anything specific. If they ARE related to something, sooner or later that will present itself so stop trying to figure it out. Moving out of an anxious state requires surrender and allowing the feelings to be what they are. When you wake up each morning, do a body scan and focus on what yo