SDS PODCAST

EPISODE 357:

EMOTIONS,

RELATIONSHIPS,

AND BEING KIND

DURING THE

PANDEMIC

Kirill Eremenko: This is episode number 357 with Behavioral

Relationship Expert, Tracy Crossley.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. My name

is Kirill Eremenko, Data Science Coach and Lifestyle

Entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you inspiring

people and ideas to help you build your successful

career in data science. Thanks for being here today.

And now, let's make the complex simple.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast,

everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on

the show. Today's going to be a very different and a

very exciting episode. In this particular session, I

invited my personal life coach. So we're definitely are

not going to be talking about data science, we're going

to be talking about emotions, psychology, and lots of

things to do with mental wellbeing. And why is that?

Why did I decide to invite my personal life coach to the

show? Well, this is because of the current situation in

the whole world where approximately one billion

people, it's mind blowing, one billion people all over

the population of the world are under lockdown due to

the Coronavirus.

Kirill Eremenko: And that has its consequences, not just economical,

financial, career consequences, but also emotional

consequences, psychological consequences. People are

in situations that they no normally deal with, we have

to stay indoors, we might be surrounded by people we

love, but we were not used to spending so much time

with them all the time and that can cause conflicts,

that can cause arguments. On the other hand, some

people might be stuck alone and you're used to seeing

friends or used to having a social life, and you can't

right now and you're feeling isolated, you're feeling

lonely, you're feeling down.

Kirill Eremenko: Some people might be starting to feel depression

setting on, some people might be starting to feel

anxiety and all these negative feelings, negative

experiences that some of us may be going through,

many of us may be going through, and that's why I

invited Tracy to talk about this, how we all individually

and collectively can get through this time better and

come out better people on the other side. And that's

exactly what we focused on. So in today's episode,

you'll hear Tracy's professional opinion on the

questions like, what to do if being stuck at home with

your significant other is making you want to break up

or driving you crazy.

Kirill Eremenko: How to change yourself in time of uncertainty while

letting your partner be themselves. How to deal with

anxiety of the unknown and make this time work for

you. Being isolated from others when you're single and

how to make this time a game changer for you. How to

maintain your social life during this time and build

connections, and many, many other burning questions

that everybody is facing right now. I highly recommend

this episode to everybody. I enjoyed it a lot. And even if

you're not in the space of data science or you know

somebody not in the space of data science who needs

this help, after listening to this episode, please send it

to them so that you can help them through this time

as well, through this difficult time, difficult for all of

us.

Kirill Eremenko: And on that note, let's dive straight into it. I bring to

you, behavioral relationship expert, Tracy Crossley.

Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast, everybody.

Super pumped to have you back here on the show.

Today, I have none other but my personal life mentor,

Tracy Crossley. Tracy, welcome to the show. How are

you?

Tracy Crossley: I am great. Thank you so much for having me, Kirill. I

love being here.

Kirill Eremenko: It's really a great pleasure of mine and an honor really

because you have a podcast of your own, and I

remember before we met, listening to your podcast and

now I feel starstruck that you're on this podcast. It's

really cool. It's really cool to have you here. How long

have we known each other?

Tracy Crossley: I want to say it's been over a year now at least. Yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, I would say so as well. I don't know if I told you

this story, but one of my friends in Brisbane, she, a

long time ago, maybe two or three years ago... We

weren't really friends, she was a friend of my brothers

and I met her, I thought she was a great person, but

we didn't really click, and I didn't really understand

her psychology or her behavioral aspects, that didn't

really mesh well with me and I knew we couldn't be

very good friends. But then a few years passed, maybe

two years passed and I met her again and she was

completely transformed, completely different person,

no more victim, no more blaming, guilting other

people, completely full of light and energy and all

herself.

Kirill Eremenko: And I was so shocked and my brother was shocked as

well. We asked her, "What happened, how'd you

change?" And she said, "Well, I've been listening to this

podcast by Tracy Crossley. You should check it out."

And that's how I found out about your podcast, I

listened to it for a few months and I couldn't wait and

reached out to you for a discovery session. That's

where it all started, I guess.

Tracy Crossley: Wow. I did not know that story. I love that story. That's

great.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, I'll definitely pass on this episode to her. She'll

be excited. So for the past year or so, we've been

catching up almost weekly, I would say maybe two,

three times a month on average, and discussing my

favorite topic, Kirill, and Kirill's personal issues. How

would you describe the work that you do so that

people who aren't familiar with your work know a bit

better what to expect from this episode?

Tracy Crossley: There's a couple of things. One is, I work with people

to help them break negative beliefs that they have,

which hinder whatever it is they're trying to be

successful at, whether you're trying to be successful at

being an authentic person, whether you're trying to be

successful in a relationship, whether you're trying to

be successful at work, whatever it happens to be, we

get down deep and we really get into the belief system.

So if you're in a dysfunctional relationship or you're

single and you can't seem to stop being single because

you're afraid or you don't even know the reason, I

basically help people to move on from that. And that is

my specialty.

Kirill Eremenko: Got you. And for me personally, as I told you before

the episode, I was a bit hesitant to... It's a bit

vulnerable to invite your personal coach onto your

podcast, but in light of the situation in the world with

the Coronavirus, there's a lot of things I think that you

can help our audience with overcoming that they

might be struggling with right now. A lot of people are

struggling right now sitting at home in isolation or in

lockdowns, so I thought it's definitely a necessary

thing to do. And while we're on this topic, I wanted to

say that personally for me, my biggest experience with

you has been working through my emotions, my

feelings.

Kirill Eremenko: I'm a person who, I don't feel feelings that well and

don't really deal very well with... Not that I don't deal

with my emotions, I don't even experience emotions

properly, experience feelings properly. A lot of the time

I feel like numb to them or I overanalyze instead of

feeling feelings. And so that's a part you've guided me

through, in my view, very successfully and I've learned

a lot about myself and also relationships. Like when

we started, I was seeing one person and that

relationship... I learned through the coaching with you

and understanding myself better and I understood

what I want from a relationship. Now, I'm in a different

relationship and I feel I've progressed and improved a

lot.

Kirill Eremenko: So definitely I can attest that sessions with you have

been... You definitely have the expertise to walk people

through. How did you learn all this stuff? That's one

thing I don't think I've ever asked you.

Tracy Crossley: Well, I can tell you. Basically, I not only have a degree

in psychology, but my own personal experience really

led me, and it's kind of a long story, but I'll try and

shorten it. But I was reading a book, I had been

recently laid off, and this was back in 2008 when the

whole economy took a dump here in the United States.

And I was reading this book and I thought, "Wow, this

is really interesting." And the book was called The

Wishing Year. And it was fascinating because this

professor at a college in Northern California had

written it and she had not believed in wishing, she

didn't believe in the law of attraction or anything of

that nature. And her book was really fascinating.

Tracy Crossley: It was a year in her life of her wishing and all these

things started happening. Well, I wrote to her, I tend to

write to authors that I like, so I had written to her. And

in her book she'd also mentioned this other book. And

I tend to, if I read a book, I tend to take down all the

titles of books that these authors, other authors,

mention. So one of them happened to be this book

called Calling In The One. And I thought it was

fascinating because my own love life was completely

dysfunctional. And I had a habit of getting out of a

relationship, but not ever being done emotionally

where I'd be attached still and I could never figure out

why.

Tracy Crossley: And then I had a habit of making it into something

bigger and better like, "Maybe this is my soulmate," or

something like that. Anyways so I ended up contacting

the author of the second book, who happened to be

here in LA, and I scheduled an appointment with her.

And at the time I was unemployed and no money, and

I somehow scraped together $300 to go see her

because I thought, "Okay, maybe if I go see this

woman, she's going to help me." But what ended up

happening instead was the session wasn't really

helpful to me at all. But I met her business partner

and they asked me if I could do sales and marketing

because that was my background, if I could do some

sales and marketing for their programs.

Tracy Crossley: And I said, "Sure, no problem." So then I started doing

that, I want to say it was a couple months and they

had a coach training program and they called me and

they said, "We want you to be in our coach training

program." I said, "I don't want to be a coach. How am I

going to make money being a coach? That's ridiculous.

Who wants to do that?" So long story short, they kept

pushing it and finally I took the coach training

program, and when I took it they were saying, "Oh my

gosh, you're like a natural coach. You're great at this."

And the funny part is, I was trained as a love coach,

which at the time my love life was not doing anything.

Kirill Eremenko: So you needed to coach yourself?

Tracy Crossley: I needed to coach myself, but I was really good, I will

say, this at compartmentalizing back then. So my

whole life was falling apart at the time, but during the

hours that I had to coach people, I could do that. I

could separate out my feelings, which isn't necessarily

a good thing unless you're in the middle of like say an

earthquake or your house is on fire. But when it

comes to living your life, you want to be connected to

your emotions, otherwise that's actually a great cause

of anxiety, and I didn't realize it at the time. I could

have suffered so much less had I known the tools that

I ended up gaining later on because I also hired other

mentors to teach me how to do transformative

coaching because it really is transformative

coaching/ontological coaching.

Tracy Crossley: Ontological coaching actually was developed in

Australia.

Kirill Eremenko: What is ontological?

Tracy Crossley: Ontological coaching is mind, body, spirit coaching.

And so it was a mixture of that. And transformative

coaching is basically along the same lines, it has a

psychological basis to it. In fact, one of my mentors

was a professor at a graduate psychology school here

in California. So I started picking that up, I learned

things in my own life and my own experiences because

I had a lot of growing to do myself, and that's pretty

much how it began and how it went.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. Fantastic. Fantastic. So you've been doing this

for many years, like 10 years or so?

Tracy Crossley: I've been doing this since 2008, so 12 years.

Kirill Eremenko: 12 years. All right. Well, I guess let's dig in to a couple

of things. The main issue right now, how do you see

this whole situation right now with Coronavirus, of

course it's very important to preserve life and

healthcare systems, that's why everybody's staying at

home to make sure that we flatten this curve. But at

the same time, that has consequences. Of course,

there's economic consequences, we have a huge stock

market crash and businesses are going out of

business, people losing jobs.

Kirill Eremenko: But at the same time it has, what at the start may

have seemed as hidden consequences, now I think is

quite evident to many people that staying at home and

isolation can be very traumatic for such a long period

of time, whether you're by yourself or you are with

your family members. What are your thoughts on that,

and why is it so traumatic?

Tracy Crossley: Well, a couple of reasons it's so traumatic. First of all,

you don't have a choice. Most of us feel the freedom of

choice usually, and when it's taken away from you, it

makes you feel almost like you're a prisoner to the

circumstances. And of course, if you're watching the

news, which makes it far worse because now you're

feeding into, "Okay, what's happening and could this

happen to me?" There's all sorts of mixed emotions

and then of course you have that going on. But the

problem most people have if they're stuck at home,

let's say with another person or their family members,

they're not used to spending this amount of time with

them.

Tracy Crossley: And if you're in the house, what ends up happening is

all sorts of issues are going to crop up, the way you

live, the way you do things. It starts to be where

maybe your partner or family member or whoever it

happens to be can be very nitpicky, so you may want

to escape them because I know at least for me, like I

have a lot of introverted qualities and I'm really good at

entertaining myself, and I have a husband too who's

pretty much the same way. We're great, we're fine. But

those people that are more, let's say extroverted are

going to struggle because you get in your head and

you start thinking all sorts of things.

Tracy Crossley: You can get into the doom and gloom or you can feel

like this is going to go on forever or you're never going

to be outside again with your friends or going out or

doing travel or whatever it is that you enjoy doing, and

so there's a limitation again. And so people tend to

react to limitation rather than being curious and

understanding, "Hey, this is a great time." In plagues

in the past, you have Newton who discovered gravity,

you have all sorts of people who have been able to, I

don't want to say pivot because I think that's an

overused word, but to put their energy into a positive

place or a creative place or a curious place.

Tracy Crossley: And what happens instead for people is they can get

into a state of anxiety and worry and feeling like the

world is going to collapse or their world's going to

collapse, and so that obviously has emotional

outcomes with that. And if you're living alone, you can

feel even more alone and you can feel totally

disconnected, and that can make you feel depressed, it

can make you feel heavy, it can make you feel

unmotivated. There's things you can do, but the point

is, it's to even recognize what's going on with yourself

and not avoid it and not distract. It's to go, "Okay, I'm

feeling this way," and to be with that.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I had this thought a few days ago that this virus

as much as it is terrible and destructive on many

levels to societies, economies, people. At the same

time, it's like a reality check for all of us where we've

been using our busy-ness, our occupations, our

external social adventures and lives to distract

ourselves from facing who we truly are internally, and

now that we have to face who we are and there is no

escape, that's when a lot of issues come on. We've got

a couple of questions that, thank you, you helped

prepare and you actually came up with all of these

great topics for discussion.

Kirill Eremenko: So I think let's go through them one by one and see

how people can help themselves in these times, what

tools you can equip them with. Does that sound right?

Tracy Crossley: Yeah, that sounds great.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. So question number one is, what to do if you're

being stuck at home with your significant other and

this whole process of being stuck together at home is

making you to want to break up or is driving you

insane? I think we're starting to hear stories of that on

the news, we probably all have friends who are going

through this experience or even ourselves. What do

people do in these situations? You love the person in

normal life, everything's great, but being stuck

together is causing a lot of conflict. What should

people do?

Tracy Crossley: So, first of all, like I was saying a few minutes ago, it's

relatable because most people don't recognize what

triggers them until you're in a situation where you're

sharing a home and you're not leaving the home and

so what it is that triggers you about that person, it's

on steroids, it's multiplied. And so, one of the things

you want to pay attention to is your own reactions.

"Why am I having this reaction in the first place?" It's a

great time to try and grow yourself, actually, instead of

going, "Should I break up with this person or let them

drive me crazy?" It's, "Why is this person driving me

crazy? What is it about me that I am feeling completely

triggered by them?"

Tracy Crossley: Because we are all doing the best we can, which

sometimes isn't that great. And so when you're

basically in lockdown with this person, you may tend

to blame them for how you feel, and you have to

recognize you're responsible for your own feelings. And

that's why it's a great opportunity to dig inside and go,

"What's happening inside of me emotionally that's

making me feel this way? Maybe I'm already scared or

maybe I'm already on edge." Or something is

happening emotionally and you want to know what

that is and then what's being triggered on top of it so

that you're blaming your spouse or your significant

other.

Tracy Crossley: And the thing is too, you married them or you're with

them for a reason and you don't want to forget that.

But at the same time, again, it's about taking that

responsibility for yourself and really looking at what

you can do. The other thing to involve them is, you can

have a conversation with them. If you've ever noticed,

asking somebody to stop a certain behavior really

doesn't work because a lot of times people aren't really

aware of their behaviors all the time, especially

something they've been doing their whole life, and so

you can bring it up and say, "When you do A, I have

the reaction of B. I know I can't ask you to stop, but

I'm sharing this with you so that you're aware of it, so

that if you see me reacting or I seem intense or

anxious or on edge, you're going to know that's what's

happening for me."

Tracy Crossley: You can share this, you can communicate, and it

should go both ways.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I love what you said, and that's one of the

biggest things that I've learned from you in our time

together, that you are responsible for your own

feelings. The whole phrase that, "You are making me

feel like this and that because of your actions. I feel

bad, I feel terrible because of you." That phrase doesn't

have any sense to it because feelings... The way I see it

is feelings come, they can come up in our bodies. You

might feel fear or hatred or you might feel curiosity,

you might feel joy, whatever else, in a split second

because you're just triggered by something or

something happens around you, and that's just the

nature of things.

Kirill Eremenko: Do you wallow in it? Do you let it fester? If it's fear, do

you hold onto that fear? If it's hatred, do you harbor

that hatred? If it's joy, do you prolong that joy? Or, do

you let it go? Somebody once to gave me this example

of, it's like if you throw a pebble into water and you see

the ripples, that's what a feelings should be like, the

ripples should appear and then they should go away,

you should let go of them, whereas sometimes people

choose to hold on to feelings. And I've been there, I've

torn through feelings for a day, a week or like a few

hours or longer, and like negative feelings because,

there's many reasons that maybe gives you

significance, that brings attention to you, that makes

you feel important, and other reasons like that.

Kirill Eremenko: So that's probably a great first step, that if

something... And I'm not a psychologist, I'm just trying

to summarize what I've learned from you and what

we're discussing here, is that if somebody is triggering

for instance for me, I'll talk about myself, right now,

I'm in lockdown with my girlfriend. And for us, it's

quite different, we're different personalities. I'm an

introvert, she's an extrovert. So there are triggers

between us occasionally. Maybe I will need some time

alone, and that might trigger her to think that maybe I

don't want to be with her specifically, whereas I just

need time alone.

Kirill Eremenko: Or maybe she'll want a time together and that might

trigger me as if she's overstepping my boundaries. So

whenever I'm triggered, I ask myself the question,

"Why am I feeling this?" And then I make sure or I

prompt myself to take responsibility for those feelings

to definitely not put it on the other person. The other

person has nothing to do with what I'm feeling inside

my body, it's my choice.

Kirill Eremenko: Hey everybody, hope you're enjoying this amazing

episode. This is a quick announcement and we'll get

right back to it. We are hiring at SuperDataScience.

With the recent pandemic and the Coronavirus, we all

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Kirill Eremenko: They're Superdatascience.com/careers. Check them

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Thank you very much for your help, and let's get right

back to it.

Kirill Eremenko: So I think that's a very good first step. What else can

people do in situations like that?

Tracy Crossley: Well, they want to recognize that if they are blaming

their partner, that they are a victim and they have no

power, because if you're ever waiting for somebody else

to change or to accommodate your feelings, you are

going to feel bad. But, you also may be used to being a

victim and it may be something that you use as, I don't

want to say a power tool, but a lot of times when

people are feeling sorry for themselves or feeling bad,

or in this instance where you have been, I don't want

to say trapped against your will, but in a sense you're

trapped against your will, you tend to go to the

patterns of behavior. There's something called the

drama triangle that means you have the victim, you

have the rescuer, and you have the persecutor.

Tracy Crossley: And it really does go through our whole society and we

don't realize it's a relationship dynamic. And so people

in a relationship, and this only takes two people,

doesn't mean three just because it's a triangle, but we

tend to switch positions and it's another point of

recognition of, "How do I victimize myself in this

relationship and make the other person the

persecutor?" And then I expect them to rescue me from

my victim position. So we can feel there's some sense

of power in it, but it's really powerless because it

means other people have to do something.

Tracy Crossley: So you never want it, your emotional state, you never

want it to be where you're expecting anybody to do

anything for you because that expectation means that

you're always going to have a focus on what the other

person isn't doing for you or doing right or is doing

wrong. They're impacting you in some way where

you've set yourself up to fail in that way.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow, fantastic. And that's a great segue to a topic

number two, changing yourself in a time of

uncertainty while letting your partner be themselves. I

find it quite a difficult thing to work on yourself while

at the same time not pushing other person to work on

themselves while just leaving them alone and focusing

on yourself. What are your comments on that? How do

you accomplish this growth while letting the other

person be themselves?

Tracy Crossley: I think that it's such a great time because I can use

my own life as an example. So how I decided when this

went down, when first of all we heard about the

COVID-19 and I decided, "Okay, I am not going to

handle this in a way that I would have handled it years

ago where it would have been heavy and I would have

felt victimized myself by it." I don't feel victimized really

by anything at this point, but I noticed that I made a

conscious decision that I was going to use this time to

be curious and to grow myself, meaning, how can I do

that? Well, here's a great example of that. When let's

say I see the news and I don't watch the news, I

stopped watching the news many years ago, I don't

like my emotions manipulated by outside sources and

so I tend to get my information from let's say non news

places usually.

Tracy Crossley: So if I have a reaction to that. Okay. Any reaction I

have to something is an opportunity for growth

because if it's, let's say a negative reaction and I feel

myself, let's say getting angry or I feel myself getting

sad or I feel something that feels like a negative

consequence, I can jump into that feeling and be with

it and go, "Where does this originate from? Why am I

being triggered again in this way? Why is it that this

piece of information is doing that?" And then I can look

at, "Well, maybe I feel a loss of control. I don't feel safe.

I feel bad because maybe I'm a person who's doing

something wrong or I think I'm doing something

wrong." I look for whatever my reaction is and then I

go through that fear because it's a fear-based reaction,

and I go through the fear, the feelings of the fear, and I

make a different choice.

Tracy Crossley: And it's hard to do right off the cuff, but the more you

get connected to your own feelings and understand

your own reactions, you can actually start changing

your reactions, and it allows you to grow as a person.

You can have more compassion for yourself, you can

have more compassion for the person living with you

because now you're not in a state of reaction. A lot of

times we don't realize it, but let's say you listen to the

news and then you go talk to your significant other

and you don't realize your feelings are all amped up

and you're in a reactionary state, and now you're

bringing something from another place into your

relationship and you're both reacting to it because now

you're probably coming across to your partner in a

way, maybe you're being aggressive or maybe you're

upset or whatever you happen to be, and your partner

is going to have a reaction to that.

Tracy Crossley: So it's really about paying attention to that and

understanding that each of you in this situation, both

have choices and you want to be able to honor your

own choices. And I'm talking about inside of the

relationship and your partner to honor their choices.

And it's to be curious, of course, when things happen.

So as things happen outside of us, we hear the news,

"Oh it's spreading," or, "Oh it hasn't peaked," or

whatever about the virus, we can tend to ride that

roller coaster as another example. And so you again

want to have the self-awareness and you want to look

at, another thing you can look at besides your reaction

is your resistance.

Tracy Crossley: So we tend to get into a state of struggle when we don't

like something, every time something happens, "We

need to go fight this." Well, you don't have to fight

yourself, but we tend to fight ourselves by resisting

what is happening in reality. So it is a place of

accepting what is happening rather than struggling

with what's happening. The more you can accept it,

the easier you're going to be to live with. But

acceptance isn't something you can snap your fingers

and go, "Wow, I can accept that this is happening." It's

a feeling exercise. Again, it's a state of, "I'm resisting

the fact that I'm stuck like this." And you may struggle

with this all day long and it comes out in how you

treat your partner. It comes out in how you treat your

life.

Tracy Crossley: And instead of doing that, it's to recognize it, be with

the feelings of resistance, and then accept, "This is

what's happening, this right here. I have no control

over it and I have to accept it." And this is all, again, a

feeling exercise.

Kirill Eremenko: I was talking to our company coach, the person who

coaches our team, and he actually mentioned a very

beautiful thing. He said that the word surrender,

surrender to an experience, to a situation, the

circumstances, that's I guess as a form of accepting

them actually has beautiful meaning when you think

about it. It's just accepting what it is and accepting

whatever comes out of it without struggling and

resisting it. And yeah, I think that's a good... it's on

par with what we're talking about here, so it's great to

hear this from two different sources.

Kirill Eremenko: Now, when you were talking, you mentioned a couple

of times that to work with your partner or work with

your significant other, about not reacting to the news

or to these other things, somebody listening to this

podcast might make the conscious decision to follow

the advice you're giving and to actually work on

themselves and use this time to understand their

emotions, understand what's triggering them,

understand how they can be a better person. How

would you recommend for somebody to talk to their

partner, to get them on board as well, to convince

them or to even bring up the idea to, "Hey, let's use

this time to grow together"? Of course, that person can

grow on their own and just leave their significant other

to be themselves, but I think it could be great to grow

together. How would you suggest bringing up this idea

of growing together?

Tracy Crossley: Okay. If you're coming out of, I don't want to say left

field with this, where you don't communicate in a

manner that let's say, is positive in your relationship,

so you have to back it up a bit and you would need to

look at how do I communicate to my partner? Do I

communicate in a loving manner? And this is for

anybody who really doesn't communicate or if you're

already communicating from a loving place, then it's

much easier, but it's really to come from the feeling of

love for that person rather than the feeling of they're

going to be the loser in the argument, you're going to

be the winner or there has to be two different sides.

Tracy Crossley: And a lot of times people tend to, in relationships, not

really be on the same team. So it's really establishing

that first like, "Hey, I really would love for us to be on

the same team as we go through this, be partners in

this. What do you think?" It's always to ask, it's not to

tell. When you tell someone what to do, nobody likes

that. I don't know any person who wants to be told,

"This is what we're going to do." The other thing you

can say besides I'd love to be in partnership doing this

and so let's establish what that looks like. What do

you think that should look like? It's again, asking

questions, being curious, being able to listen.

Tracy Crossley: You cannot convince someone again, by telling them

and you can't convince them even if you do ask these

questions, what if they don't handle it that way? What

if they really are a ball of worry or they really can't

seem to focus on doing anything productive in terms of

connection with you, in terms of growing the

relationship or having a common bond. They may be

so isolating with their emotions that they're shut

down. And so you still can't force them, but you can be

compassionate. And so these are steps by the way that

really do grow you as a person because the more

compassionate you can be for yourself and for them, it

just makes you feel better. And that's really all you

have control of is making you feel better, but if you feel

better, you're going to treat other people better.

Tracy Crossley: So that's really all you can do because again, you don't

want to tell the person that you're with what they're

doing wrong. You don't want to tell them what you

think they need to do to improve or how they should

change or what they should be. All you can do is say

how you feel and what you would love to see happen

between the two of you, but you have to say it also

from that place of not forcing that outcome.

Kirill Eremenko: And if they don't accept it, that's okay as well, you can

always work on yourself.

Tracy Crossley: Exactly. You can never force somebody to change, you

can never force them to get on board with you, it

doesn't work.

Kirill Eremenko: Speaking of being on the same team, my girlfriend and

I started this interesting practice where every time

now, or almost every time we have a meal, we aim not

to sit opposite each other because somebody told me

about this study that sitting opposite each other at a

table, like for instance in negotiations, is the most

adversarial type of positioning of two people that you're

going to come up with. It's better to sit on the corner,

so one person sits on one side of the corner, the other

person sits another side of corner, but the ultimate

best is if you're sitting both on the same side of the

table and you're looking in the same direction.

Kirill Eremenko: So like before the lock downs, we would go to

restaurants, we would specifically look at tables where

we could sit near each other, maybe on a couch or just

on a bench. And now when we're having dinner at

home because we're cooking most of the time, we

make sure to put the place on the same side of the

table, so we're sitting on the same side. And that

promotes the idea that we're not opposite each other,

but that we're on the same side, we're on the same

team.

Tracy Crossley: I like that. I tend to sit next to my husband. It's funny

you say that because it made me think about when we

go out and we're always sitting next to each other,

unless there's no choice, unless there's only one chair

on one side or one on the other, we usually choose a

booth so we can sit next to each other.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. And after you do that for a while, it even starts

feeling weird to sit opposite each other.

Tracy Crossley: It does. Yeah, I agree with you. That's an interesting...

I've never heard of that before, so that's pretty

interesting to me. Makes sense.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. All right. Let's move on to somebody who is

single, somebody who is by themselves and they're

isolated. And being an introvert, for instance, in

December, I was working on a big project, I was

recording a video course like this past December, and I

spent the whole month by myself out of choice just

because I needed to focus a lot. And I caught up with

my brother occasionally, but predominantly, like 95%

of the time I was all by myself, and I found it

absolutely fine except for by the end of 30 days, I was

starting to go a little bit insane. I was starting to talk

to myself out loud and even as an introvert, I could feel

this is taking a toll.

Kirill Eremenko: I can only imagine how difficult, I probably can't even

imagine how difficult it would be for an extrovert right

now, somebody who's not used to being by themselves

to be in isolation for so many days without any social

experiences. So how can people who are single and

isolated make this time a game changer for them as

well?

Tracy Crossley: There's a few different ways that they can do that, one

is to evaluate if they're happy to begin with. A lot of

times because we can get into the program of life

where we're just doing the same thing every day, and

then now we've had a disruption to that program. And

so it's to really evaluate, "What do I want for myself?

This is such a great opportunity, what do I really want

for myself?" Maybe you really want a relationship or

maybe you are thinking, "Okay, I want to start dating

because I haven't dated in years or months or what

have you." So it's a great time to go, "Okay, I want to

start dating or I want a relationship." So it's an

opportunity to go, "How can I grow myself today?"

Tracy Crossley: Well, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, you

want to look at what resistance do you have to it?

What is your fear if you're single of connecting to

someone else right now? Because you can do it

virtually. You can also do things from a place of social

distancing. I guess it depends on where you live. You

could meet, but you could be six feet away, like I saw a

guy, actually, I thought this is so cute and some

people might think it's creepy, but he saw this woman

on the rooftop, I think it was in New York. and he saw

her on the rooftop and he had his drone deliver his

phone number to her. And it was creative, but what he

did was, they started talking.

Tracy Crossley: And then, I don't know if it was her first date, I think it

was her first date, he sat on his patio and she was on

the rooftop and they had their roommates help them

by being the waiter or waitress, I guess to their dinner.

And then they were on the phone, FaceTiming each

other. They could see each other. So it was quite a

distance, obviously, but that was being creative, and

that was a desire to step out. And this guy had not

dated in a long time and he had just seen her and

something about what she was doing on the rooftop,

she was dancing on the rooftop, I think that's what it

was. Anyways, you want to look for inspiration at the

same time.

Tracy Crossley: Use the internet, use your family, use your friends to

communicate and be authentic and honest, don't hide

your feelings. Part of what we try to do is we try to

sound like we're feeling better than we are or we can

sound like we're completely out of control, but for most

introverts, we're usually trying to sound better than we

are because we usually tend to tamp down our

emotions and not connect to them and really stay in

our heads and do things, read a book or do whatever.

But it's really about connecting to your emotions and

sharing that with another human being because that's

how you establish a bond with people is being

vulnerable and being open and honest in that way.

And even if you go on a dating app or I guess it would

be a dating app at this point, so you go on a dating

app, it's really about connecting in a very vulnerable,

authentic way.

Tracy Crossley: And if somebody rejects you, it isn't any worse than if

they reject you and you're not being vulnerable, when

you're being vulnerable, you can actually recover

quicker. A lot of us have that Impostor syndrome,

going on where we tend to try and portray ourselves as

someone different other than who we are because we

think who we really are is going to be rejected, but it's

actually easier to be rejected for being who you are

than being a caricature of who you are. So it's really

an opportunity to take down those walls and just be

you and understand that, let's say you do start doing

online dating, and it's like the courtship evolve where

you're just communicating with somebody online and

yet you're establishing some communication and

maybe you're being honest and open, and it feels good.

Well, that's connection.

Kirill Eremenko: That was a beautiful story about how they met

through supplying a number through a drone. There's

lots of places where people can connect online, for

instance, like virtual events are becoming more and

more popular because many events had to cancel their

physical events and they had to start virtual events. So

that could be one way of meeting people, and they

have this like networking component in some cases.

And more creative ideas, people are going to start

coming up with more creative ideas, things we haven't

seen before because we hadn't experienced this

situation before. And I'm sure even at the time this

podcast goes out, which is in a few weeks from now,

there's going to be even more opportunities for people

to socialize online.

Kirill Eremenko: So while right now off the top of my head I can't come

up with, apart from virtual events and flying around

with drones, if it's legal of course, I can't come up with

other ideas, I'm sure there's going to be more. So have

a look out on the internet, it's definitely not the end of

the world in the sense of that you can still meet

people. Tracy, do you know any other ways people can

maintain social life during this time of isolation?

Tracy Crossley: Well, there is. You can definitely get in your car and

you could go and be, I don't want to say six feet apart,

but you can go, and I've seen people gathering in

groups like that where they're in a neighborhood as an

example and everybody's on their driveway, they're not

near each other. So you could do something like that. I

believe hiking as long as you could be, again six feet

apart, but I don't want to, again, depending on where

people live, there is different experiences of lock down

right now. So that was one way. Getting on the phone

and talking on the phone is another way. I would also

recommend, again, taking the time though, and this is

something that I did a long time ago and that was

when I decided that I really wanted to have a real

relationship with someone because I was single on and

off for a long time, and I decided, "Okay, I want to have

a relationship."

Tracy Crossley: I realized that I had things standing in the way of that,

mainly fear. And so I really started to work on my fear

and I would challenge myself every day, "What can I do

to get out of my comfort zone?" And that's really what

you have to do because a lot of us are in a comfort

zone and we don't realize it, we're doing the same

patterns of behavior and it's really stepping outside of

that that's uncomfortable. So if you shy away, let's say

from internet dating or you shy away from joining

things online, it's really to step up and do it. There's a

lot of opportunities, like you were saying, and people

are having virtual cocktail parties and if you get

invited to one, maybe you'll meet somebody on there or

at least you're going to have some kind of interaction

with other people.

Tracy Crossley: And it's really to keep stepping out of your own

comfort zone and get uncomfortable, that's the key. If

you get uncomfortable, you know you're changing

something. If it's just easy for you to do, you're not

really changing anything. So I look at it that way,

that's what I do. Right now, I've made choices not

necessarily to do with, because I'm not single, I'm

married, but more to do with my work rather than my

personal relationship because my personal

relationship already have this kind of foundation that

I've been talking about anyways. And so I'm not having

issues with my husband, but when it comes to being a

single person and feeling isolated, you have to take the

steps to get out of your own way.

Kirill Eremenko: Absolutely. Your mention of cocktail parties reminded

me I've been meaning to invite... My girlfriend and I

would discuss that we want to, invite our friends,

actually Vitaly, he's been on this podcast, Vitale and

his wife to a dinner. The only challenge there is that

they're in Australia, we're in the England right now

and the time difference is about like I think nine hours

or so or 10 hours. So if we are going to be having

dinner, they're going to be having breakfast, if they're

going to be having breakfast, we're going to be having

dinner. So it'll be funny. It'll be funny. Okay, great.

Now, moving back to relationships, I think based on

your topics, and I would agree with this, is your belief

that taking responsibility for yourself can change

almost in your relationship. Would you care to

elaborate a bit on that? How does taking responsibility

for yourself change in your relationship?

Tracy Crossley: That goes back to what I was saying earlier about the

Drama Triangle and being a victim, a lot of people go

into a relationship expecting the other person take

care of their feelings. And the problem with that is

nobody at all can take any care of your feelings if

you're not taking care of them to begin with. So it's

almost like going in and saying, "I don't care about my

feelings, but you need to care about my feelings." And

that's how a lot of people go in and it doesn't work, it

really creates a divide between you and the other

person because you have an expectation that's going

to be unfulfilled. Even if, let's say, in the beginning it

seemed like, "Oh my gosh, I was getting all this

attention and this person was acting in ways that

made me happy."

Tracy Crossley: That was still a choice back then to look to the other

person for your happiness or look to the other person

to fulfill the need of your feelings, whatever your

feelings were, instead of looking to yourself because

again, somebody is going to disappoint you that way.

Nobody's going to be able to keep up the level of

attention, and I'm all about when you start dating

people to just be your authentic self and don't go over

the top and don't try to prove or don't try to chase or

don't try to do these things that are really over and

above. It's really to be yourself so that when you're in a

relationship with someone, there's never an

expectation for you to be someone else.

Tracy Crossley: But, going back to the responsibility part, it's really

about a sense of freedom you get from that because

when you realize that you're responsible for how you

feel, you're responsible for what you do, what you

think and what you say, those four things. If you're

responsible for those things, then you get to be in

control of yourself, you get to control your own

emotional state rather than looking at someone else to

control it for you, because that's what we do a lot of

the time, we're looking at our partner and saying, "Oh,

you need to do this for me. You need to do that for

me." We're setting ourselves up to basically put them

in control of us. And that's really, again, a victim

position.

Tracy Crossley: So you want to make sure, what can I take

responsibility for? Well, let me stop complaining to my

partner that they don't pay attention to me. Why don't

I pay attention to me? What can I do to give myself

attention? What is it I need? And sometimes for a lot of

us, especially in a busy world, sometimes it's just to sit

for a few minutes and be still with yourself.

Meditation's great and I'm a big proponent of it, but at

the same time, it's really about what you're doing to

connect to yourself. So the more connected you are to

yourself, the better you're going to feel and the less

you're going to make someone else responsible for your

feelings. And then it goes back to also what you

communicate, and if you're truthful and you're honest

about your feelings, it's all of that.

Tracy Crossley: It's if you say something to your partner and you take

full responsibility for what you say or you do

something, you take full responsibility. You don't go,

"Well, you did this, so I did that." It doesn't work,

because that just creates a dynamic of being on the

battlefield with somebody, then you're not being in

partnership. It's about being that person because what

starts to happen is, the other person will feel less

pressure, they're going to feel something's changed,

they're going to notice they have more freedom. They're

not walking on the egg shells waiting to be criticized,

because that's what we do and we are putting all the

responsibility on someone else for how we feel or what

we think they should do or what we think they should

say.

Tracy Crossley: It's really about taking it back yourself and you start

to feel better, so you're feeling better because now

you're paying attention to yourself, you're giving to

yourself, whether it's attention or you're doing things

in a self-care manner or maybe you stop people

pleasing, you stop trying to be perfect. We do all these

things in relationships because we're trying to hold

onto somebody rather than just being ourselves and

letting go of the things that we do that aren't really us.

And then the expectation of course, that you have of

someone else, when you let go of your own

expectations of yourself, the expectations you have of

someone else, they also change. And so the other

person can feel that there's less pressure, that other

person can feel better.

Tracy Crossley: And even if you guys still don't get along in a great

way, you're both still going to feel better because now

there's not that pressure or that hook that you've got

to do something, you need to make me feel better. It's

not there.

Kirill Eremenko: I really liked what you said about that the other

person, if you do your part, if you improve yourself,

the other person will definitely feel what's going on

and, well, they feel something's going on there. And

they might even become curious, they might ask you

like, "What is going on? How are you working on

yourself?" And they might also start working on

themselves. So that's very cool thing. I wanted to ask

you your opinion on something. At the start we were

talking about the situations where you're like, things

get really tense where people start maybe feeling, "This

might not be the right person for me, I want to break

up," and so on. And a lot of it is to do, of course with

the current situation that we're in, but in these

emotionally heated situations, it can be very difficult to

think rationally and people might say things that they

will later regret or that will cause consequences that

they actually don't want, including breaking up and

divorce and so on.

Kirill Eremenko: Some idea that we had with my girlfriend is, and I

wanted to get your opinion on this, we haven't

discussed this before, so a bit of coaching on the

podcast. So the idea we had was, we sat down and we

talked, maybe we had a bit of some debate about

something, nothing serious to the extent that like, "Oh,

we want to break up." Or, "You're not the right person

for me." Thank God, but we realized that in these

circumstances, things are going to be different. We are

going to be exposed to each other more and we're going

to be exposed to each other's feelings and our own

feelings, we are going to work on this, we are

committed to work on this, but there'll be times when

we will have arguments and we will have

misunderstandings.

Kirill Eremenko: And so when we sat down a few days ago and we

agreed that we're not going to threaten each other to

leave the relationship, we're going to commit to this

relationship for the next 60 days, no questions asked,

fully and entirely, and work on it as much as we're

going to work on ourselves, discuss things and be

brutally honest with each other, but knowing that

we're secure that everything is going to be... We are

committed to work, we're not going to just throw

around these phrases that, "Oh, maybe this is not the

right thing." No, we're going to be committed. And then

after 60 days, we're going to sit down, maybe together,

maybe individually and evaluate for ourselves, "How

do we feel? Is this something that we truly want? Is

this something we want to continue doing?"

Kirill Eremenko: And if indeed the answer is yes for both of us, then

we'll do it again and maybe commit to a longer period

of time, depending on the situation in the world,

depending on what's going on, what circumstances

we're in. So we found this safeguard quite useful for us

because that way, it removes out additional stress,

you're the fear, that you can't say absolute brutal

honesty because other person might misunderstand

you and just explode and leave or whatever else. And

yeah, I just wanted to get your opinion, do you think

that's a good practice or you would suggest something

else?

Tracy Crossley: Well, it depends on if your brutal honesty is an

opinion. So opinions, everybody has them and it comes

from your perception. So if you have an opinion about

something, that's your perception. Does it mean it's

right? No. Doesn't mean it's wrong? No. It's your

perception. So I think when you are being brutally

honest that it's not about, "You know, you should do

this or you should do that." We tend to tell other

people what to do, again, going back to telling people

things like that, and that's not really to me helpful in

the long run. It's better, again, to say what's going on

for you, and maybe that's how you guys are speaking,

I don't know, but it's better to say what's actually

happening for you, "I feel this way." A lot of I

statements, "I feel this way. I don't know why, I'm

trying to figure it out."

Tracy Crossley: And I say things, like if my husband triggers me, I will

say, "Okay. I am triggered." I have the wherewithal to

know that. Does it mean that sometimes we won't have

a spat? No, it doesn't necessarily stop the spat from

happening, it can still happen because when you have

a lot of intense emotions from let's say, the current

situation we're under, you can go and be snappy, but

is that really truly authentic? Is that really truly being

brutally honest? No, that's expressing, you're feeling

intense, but you're not really saying, "I feel intense and

this is what's happening." And a lot of times when

we're in a spat, we're arguing. And so we don't really

argue very much because we catch ourselves and we

go, "Okay. What is going on with me?"

Tracy Crossley: And so again, the brutal honesty can be like, "Okay,

I'm going to share something," because I'm one of

those people that I can't stand to listen to people chew,

I can't handle it, my brain just loses it. So I married a

man who's like the loudest chewer ever, and so I tend

to use humor. And he knows, I've shared it with him.

And I can't say, "Stop chewing your food." It's not like

he's chewing his food and his mouth is open and food

is falling out or anything like that, it's literally, he just

chews loudly. So I really can't ask him to do anything

different and nor would I?

Kirill Eremenko: Stop eating food, only liquids.

Tracy Crossley: Those are loud too by the way. And so what I do is,

sometimes I'll make funny faces or whatever because

he knows and then he'll do something funny and we

make it funny. And we use a lot of humor in our

relationship because it's not so much that you want to

always be digging deep, it's that you want to be also

human. So I think that what you guys are doing, it can

be great as long as it's not critical and as long as the

other person isn't taking it personally and trying to

walk on eggshells to accommodate your feelings.

Kirill Eremenko: Great advice. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. I think we

should wrap up here. We are getting to the end and I

wanted to, of course, ask you just some questions

about like, first of all, do you have any final thoughts,

final recommendations for people in this time, maybe

something we haven't covered. What's something that

you could wish to our audience in this difficult time?

Tracy Crossley: I would say the number one thing is to be kind, to be

kind to yourself, and if you are around other people, to

be kind to them. Everybody may feel like their

emotions are hair trigger right now, and so the best

thing you can do when you get up in the morning,

before you even get out of bed is to check in first of all

with your feelings, "How am I feeling?" If you feel fear,

just let yourself feel it in your body, get in your

physical body, feel the fear, let it run its course, which

usually only takes seconds. I rarely have had it last

more than a minute because usually you'll find that

once you start connecting to your feelings, you're able

to let go of them and move on to other things.

Tracy Crossley: And the next thing I do, it's about, what can I do to be

kinder myself today? What would be a kind act for me

today? And you feel better when you're doing uplifting

activities for yourself even if you're stuck in the house,

you feel better. You feel connected to yourself, you feel

good. And I say that that's the basis of self-care, it is

not to do things against yourself. If you get up and

let's say that you've been hanging out in your

refrigerator this whole time, like, "Okay, I'm going to go

and eat the worst foods in the world for me." And then

you're going to feel even worse. So it's really be

mindful, it's not to say, you can't have something that

tastes good, but there's this dealing with your

emotions, but not eating your way through your

emotions, is an example of being kind to yourself.

Tracy Crossley: It's to really try to be aware of what you're doing and

what you're saying and how you're acting. And you

can't be obviously self-aware 24/7, but the more

awareness you can have of your own actions, because

you might automatically be sitting on the couch and

go, "I'm going to go get something to eat," and find

yourself in the refrigerator. And before you know it,

you're gobbling down, I don't know, a cold pizza or

something. And the point is that, you really want to

become aware, "Why am I going to the kitchen? Am I

feeling a sense of emptiness? Maybe I can just sit here

with myself for a few minutes. Maybe I'm trying to fill

up the space and eat my emotions," instead of be with

your emotions. So those are just some things that I

would say, but it's at the basis of being kind or being

compassionate with yourself.

Kirill Eremenko: Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you very much for that

lovely message. Tracy, where can our listeners find you

and interact with your work in case they want to

further learn more about themselves and grow

further?

Tracy Crossley: They can go to tracycrossley, all one word, .com, and

they can go to, there's Work With Me page. And so

there's different levels of working with me and you can

send me a message through there. An easier way to do

it, once you've been to my website and maybe you're

not sure what you want to do, just send me an email

at happiness@tracycrossley.com, and we can set up a

short time to have a chat and see how I can best help

you.

Kirill Eremenko: Fantastic. So Tracy's spelled, T-R-A-C-Y, and Crossley

has double S, C-R-O-S-S-L-E-Y. And of course, the

Tracy Crossley Podcast also have wonderful resource, I

love your podcast. How long have you been doing that

for?

Tracy Crossley: Five years.

Kirill Eremenko: Five years. Five years of awesome episodes. I just

recently went on there, I checked out one of the ones

on Feeling Your Feelings, definitely a great resource as

well. On that note, Tracy, thank you so much for

coming on the show today and sharing all these lovely

insights, please continue your work. Of course, I'm

looking forward to our sessions every weekend, but I

mean, continue work on the podcast, is helping

thousands of people. Very, very glad that you exist in

this world.

Tracy Crossley: Thank you. Thank you so much, Kirill. And thank you

for having me on your show. This has really been

enjoyable for me.

Kirill Eremenko: So there you have it everybody, thank you so much for

being on this episode today, for listening in. And if you

did enjoy, if you got some valuable takeaways, please

forward this episode to somebody you know. They

don't have to be a data scientist, they don't have to be

in the field of an analytics or machine learning or

Python, please send this episode to help them through

this difficult time. I'm very grateful to Tracy for coming

on this show and sharing her insights and giving us

tips on how to cope, not just cope but thrive and

become better or stronger, people who are much more

in touch with ourselves, how to use this time to our

advantage. So I'm very grateful for that, and if you

know someone who might be struggling or feeling

lonely or maybe not getting along with the people that

they're in isolation with, send them this episode.

Kirill Eremenko: Very easy to share, send them the link,

superdatascience.com/357. That's

superdatascience.com/357. There you will also find all

the materials mentioned on this podcast, things like

the Drama Triangle, there's a great article by Lynne

Forrest, and a short YouTube video explaining the

Karpman's Drama Triangle, very powerful tool in the

world of psychology. Also of course, you'll find a link to

Tracy's Podcast. You can also just look it up on your

podcast app, it's called The Tracy Crossley Podcast,

with double S. And also a link to Tracy's website where

you can sign up for a discovery session if you'd like to

take things up further with Tracy. So there we go, that

was our podcast for today, make sure to share it with

somebody you know who might be needing the support

at this time. And I look forward to seeing you in the

next episode. Untill then, happy analyzing.