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Mainstream mental health is flawed and I’m pulling back the curtain.
I’m Andrea Clark, a former family therapist, who walked away from the system to expose the truth. After my own journey from medication maze to holistic healing, I’m here to challenge the status quo and reveal the mental health truths most people don’t know.
”The Truth About Mental Health” is your radical roadmap to wellness. Raw stories, expert insights, breakthrough solutions – this is where traditional modalities end and real healing begins.
Andrea Clark (00:00)
Hi, Crystal, how are you? I am so pumped for this conversation. So before we even dive in to the reason why I invited you onto the podcast, can you tell everybody a little bit more about who you are and what you do and just all the amazing things that you stand for?
Crystal The Oracle (00:02)
Hey, doing good. Happy to be here.
Well, they call me Crystal the Oracle and I am the queen of potions because I make and sell potions to energetic tools that help you change your life. I'm an intuitive life coach and yeah, and I teach other folks how to get to know and befriend and trust their intuition. ⁓
I'm also a somatic trauma therapist because the only thing that keeps you from trusting yourself is typically your nervous system. And so I do that on Instagram to an audience of, you know, 150 something thousand friends. And we all are just like madly in love with each other and healing our nervous systems together.
Andrea Clark (01:06)
Ooh, I love it. That's amazing. And you're really fun. Like your bio is so fun, right? Having a snacky snack and all of that. I love how much you just like own who you are and your energy. And it's an incredible example to other people in the world, right?
Crystal The Oracle (01:22)
Well, here's what I'm gonna
tell you. Every bit of energy that you spend being anything other than purely authentic, you're not spending innovating. You're not spending figuring out what's next for your life. You're not spending experiencing. So the more we are ourselves trying to be something even a little bit more polished than we are, the less we're spending.
Andrea Clark (01:45)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (01:47)
pulling, extracting what's next for our lives and our human experience from the universe. So authenticity always, cause you know, also, also, you can see I'm just going to start talking cause this is what happens when all experts going, but also, um, authenticity gives other nervous systems permission to be authentic because we are a co-regulated species.
Andrea Clark (01:52)
Ooh, I love.
I love it, do it.
Crystal The Oracle (02:12)
Human beings have something in our nervous system called neuroception. That's what, in the magical spaces, we call it vibes, you know? In mental health spaces, we'll call it being an empath or something like that, or hypervigilance. But what it really means is my nervous system sees your nervous system and real recognize real. So anytime I am as real as possible, other people feel safe to be real, feel safe to be themselves. If I'm...
Chiseling away at what I really am then it makes you feel like you have to do that too and it's hard to find safety and belonging and feeling like you matter in that place, so Yourself always
Andrea Clark (02:49)
100%.
I love it. which actually leads in beautifully to what drew me to you in the first place. I came across one of your reels and it was very viral. I'm many of your rules are, but this one in particular was so magnetic to me. I was laughing so
hard, so fucking hard. And I was like, my gosh, I need to, I just need to bring her onto the podcast. So you were, you had all, you had all the, I'm going to link the reel and the show notes you guys, so you can see it for yourself, but you had all this stuff on and I think you had, what were they like, like stilts? You were on stilt, like little pogo stilts. ⁓
Crystal The Oracle (03:30)
Yes, those are my kangaroo shoes. They're called Kangy Jem. Rebounding shoes.
So I'm on my rebounding shoes. I think you, it's a series by the way, of me doing these ridiculous wellness products because guess what? I like all of us. Yes, I like all of us are wellness hacks. I'm a junkie for wellness hacks, you know?
Andrea Clark (03:44)
Yeah, I saw a couple of them.
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (03:53)
If you can give me,
give me the thing that's gonna stimulate my vagus nerve while I'm in car line. Like give me the thing, like let me try it. Is the acupuncture mat the thing that's gonna fix me? Like which one is it? What's gonna fix me? And really, if you know anything about the nervous system, in the absence of a threat, the body is always moving toward health, healing, and homeostasis. So in our healing journeys, what's most important is not to fix anything.
or heal anything, it's to eliminate the threats. It's to make the choices that shift your environment from something that you want to heal from to something that's healing. And I find, and this is why I don't do somatic work one-on-one really, but I find most of us reach for healing so that we can better withstand environments we need to get out.
Andrea Clark (04:47)
1000%. So this whole reel was like you trying to regulate your nervous system without making other choices. And I thought it was amazing. And so let's and brought a lot of humor to what so many people are struggling with understanding that you can do all the nervous system packs and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you don't make actual changes in your life and in how you operate,
Crystal The Oracle (05:03)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Clark (05:13)
It doesn't really matter. So let's talk about that a little bit more.
Crystal The Oracle (05:17)
Yeah, for sure. You know, the thing about the nervous system is that it can't be negotiated with. The nervous system going to take you the experiences you've had in your life, and it's going to decide what it needs to protect you from. And the nervous system is going to operate 300 times faster. Your trauma responses are going to go 300 times faster than your conscious mind.
Andrea Clark (05:24)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (05:40)
And the way to heal your nervous system and the way to actually get to healing is to give your nervous system what's called disconfirming experiences. So it's actual experiences in your life where you are feeling different, treated different, not rushed, more rested, more well fed. Your nervous system is so protective of you, way more protective of you than you are of you, right? And so...
Andrea Clark (05:49)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (06:07)
It's not going to negotiate. It's not going to let you hack it into believing that you're safe. So that's why I do those rules. I think they're so fun.
Andrea Clark (06:13)
Yeah.
They're amazing. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. Actually, just this weekend, my husband and I recorded a kind of like a podcast episode together for a private coaching course that I hold for women. And I actually had a very dysregulated experience before we start. Well, we tried to start multiple times because in our past, when we were in an unhealthier
like patterns and energies, he would kind of just like take over and just say stuff off the cuff, like not in that environment, but in other environments. And it would, it was really upsetting for me, right? Like in places where, you know, I had mentees and different things and it felt like he became a little unhinged at times. And then I was responsible for some of the things he said, because it was like,
my circle or whatever it was, right? And I didn't realize how much that had affected me until we sat down. We've been doing so much like repatterning and, and work being in our healthy, you know, feminine, masculine and, and really like polarity. And so we sat down to record the episode about it and I like freaked out. But here's the cool thing is that I did provide, we both provided our nervous systems.
Crystal The Oracle (07:31)
you
Andrea Clark (07:37)
disconfirming experiences because I didn't freak out to the point where he didn't, he like started freaking out and he stayed super grounded and he kind of negotiated with me. He's like, let me show you I'm different. I know you're freaking out, but let me show you I'm different. And so I did it, even though it was very uncomfortable. Like my whole body was like, don't do it. It's going to be a disappointment.
Crystal The Oracle (07:54)
And...
Andrea Clark (08:05)
it's going to be a waste of time, we're going to get frustrated. And we ended up having the most beautiful conversation. And after we both, we both were like, my gosh, this is crazy how much we are shifting together and individually. And these are the kinds of like micro risks and micro pivots that you have to make to create like, yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (08:27)
my gosh, it's huge. Because the brain, yes, yes,
because the brain has a negativity bias. Your brain is supposed to remind you of everything that has ever triggered you before. That's what the whole purpose of your brain, it's not a machine for your thriving, it's really just a machine for your surviving, right? And so I love what you said. You said, I sat down, I agreed to do this thing, I felt braced for impact.
Andrea Clark (08:37)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (08:56)
I shared in the dysregulated messy way. By the way, all relational couples therapy, this is my latest soapbox, but like all relationships and couples therapy and anything that's based on behavioral management for me, I'm always like, because it's not gonna be a regulated person who's making regulated choices from their prefrontal cortex in those situations. We gotta have techniques that work with each other's.
Andrea Clark (08:57)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (09:22)
dysregulation. So I love that that you guys, you guys came together, you felt the dysregulation before it had gone off the rails and you were able to speak it even imperfectly. In the past, right? It has felt like the story I'm telling myself, my body or one of my favorite things is describe the state, not the story. Describe the state, don't tell the story. So instead of it being you always
try to mansplain in my spaces when it's time to go. You know what mean? Instead of that, right, which is violent communication, you were like, I am feeling braced and I am unsure that we're gonna get through this successfully, right? Talking about yourself, how you're feeling in your own body. I take it a step forward, further and say, my breath is short.
Andrea Clark (10:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (10:16)
My hands are sweaty. ⁓ I feel like my arms are stuck to the side of my body. Just describing the state you're in without naming, blaming, telling him a story, telling your nervous system a story. And then he's able, as someone who loves you, just another nervous system walking through the world that loves you, was able to say, you know what? Let me try to show you something different. And then when it works, it's the most healing thing we can offer each other.
Andrea Clark (10:42)
Yeah, it was crazy. felt like we actually jumped timelines together in that moment in our relationship.
Crystal The Oracle (10:47)
I love
that! Did you give him some real good good when he did? I don't know what your audience is like.
Andrea Clark (10:52)
This podcast is like nothing is off off limits
Crystal The Oracle (10:57)
because that would have been exactly the time for the kind of reinforcement with your face in the bed and your butt in the air, you know what I mean?
Andrea Clark (11:04)
Yes, gets reinforced that way a lot. So it's been, yeah, it's been crazy. And I think that there's a lot out there in the wellness space and the coaching space that it's all about simple hacks for your nervous system and you should be good. And...
Crystal The Oracle (11:23)
Yeah, and you know, the thing about the nervous system is it
is so simple, but it is also unrelenting, right? Like I said, you cannot negotiate with your nervous system. You're not going to hack your nervous system. You can't lie to your energy, right? And so once you sit in the space where you are literally telling yourself the truth, I'm dysregulated in this way. This environment is working. This one is not. Here's what I actually want for my life.
Andrea Clark (11:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (11:53)
Here are the ways that I have room to grow, right? If you are truly in the place where you're being honest with your nervous system, then the silly little walk and making sure you have enough water and just getting enough sleep and the silly little conversation where you eke out your truth. All of those things are so incredibly deeply healing, but we are willing to...
scale Mount Kilimanjaro and have electroshock therapy and get injected with stuff and then do the hokey pokey and turn ourselves around before we're willing to pick up the phone and tell our mom that she's crossing our boundaries consistently. You know what I mean? So it's little actions that are really going to make a difference in your healing.
Andrea Clark (12:37)
Yeah, you can't, I firmly believe you can't out hack these very necessary things like calling your mom and saying, you're crossing my boundaries and I need to do X, Y, and Z at this point, right? And those are like the, those are for people, it's like the last thing they wanna do, but they don't understand that those are the things that are keeping them in the most dysregulated space.
Crystal The Oracle (13:05)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Clark (13:06)
And what's your insight on that?
Crystal The Oracle (13:09)
Well, there are three core needs of the nervous system. Yes, there's three core needs of your nervous system. Safety, belonging, and mattering. Humans are a core, we're co-regulated species, we're herd species. So those are the three things that our body codes as survival. Safety, belonging, mattering. Trauma is any time you have to exchange one for another. So in order to stay safe, you've got to decide you don't matter.
Andrea Clark (13:10)
those types of things. Okay.
Crystal The Oracle (13:39)
In order to belong, you've got to decide, I'm going to just people please. I'm just going to make sure. I'm making sure everybody matters other than me, right? And so in order to capture one of the core needs of the nervous system, oftentimes we're neglecting another. And we could get into trauma responses, fight, flight, freeze, appease, right?
polyvagal theory, ventral vagal where you're healthy and your sympathetic nervous system where you're in fight or flight or dorsal vagal where you're frozen or people pleasing. But what I find is when we've been under this chronic stress, chronic dysregulation, right, we have dropped down most of the time into states in our nervous system where we're either frozen or people pleasing. Most of the time, that's where especially female audiences are, right? And so the thing that tells your nervous system
Andrea Clark (14:21)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (14:31)
that you are safe and you belong and you matter is those little micro ways that you tell the truth, speak up for yourself, right? Insert yourself and the people around you accept you. Now, it's not easy necessarily. It's not immediate either because we have co-created the dynamics that even don't serve us. But I find that you find one or two things.
Andrea Clark (14:47)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (14:59)
You either find extreme healing or you find the people who are not gonna be able to walk with you. And both pieces of information are really valuable.
Andrea Clark (15:06)
one that.
Okay, this is, I love this conversation because this is the conversation I have in my personal brand. I mentor women. I mentor like high achieving women and high achieving women as bad ass as they are, they lack boundaries. They just self neglect. I mean, it's just the worst. I'm a recovering, you know, self neglecter and... ⁓
I really think that it's interesting because when, sometimes when they take that, like what I call a micro risk, right? Sometimes it doesn't work out the way that we hoped. Like not everybody's gonna go, okay, yeah, I'm not gonna, you know, like I'm gonna respect your boundaries or I'm gonna, I'm not gonna ask you that anymore or whatever, right? And.
And some people take that negative experience as a see, I told you, like when I try to advocate for myself, this happens, or you can't trust women, because you know, one, a one off person, like it's very, very skewed, very black and white. I'd love to hear your perspective.
Crystal The Oracle (16:10)
Yes, the
thing your nervous system is telling you though, before you do it, is that you're going to die. That's what your nervous system thinks. Your nervous system thinks, because guess what? statistic, whoa, the statistic is that we take in more information, more change, in a week, than a human being 100 years ago would have in their entire lifetime.
Andrea Clark (16:36)
Of course.
Crystal The Oracle (16:37)
So the nervous system sees, the only thing the nervous system sees as safety is staying the same, right? Staying this equals safety in the nervous system. So anytime you're gonna make a change, the nervous system's gonna go, if you change, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, right? And that's how it really feels. It really feels like I might die if I send this email, right? And so even if you take the micro risk,
Andrea Clark (16:44)
Mm-hmm.
We're.
Crystal The Oracle (17:05)
to send the email and you get the rejection or the person tells you off or they stonewall you or they show up in whatever their dysregulation is, right? Even if that happens, you've still proven to your nervous system that you didn't die, right? So the next time that is logged in your amygdala and in your hippocampus and also in your hormones,
Andrea Clark (17:22)
Mm-hmm.
Crystal The Oracle (17:31)
people are on HRT that just need to set a boundary with their family, right? So log all of those things. And this is a side note, but when I got out of my abusive marriage, I had kept myself silent so long that my body had assisted me to that end by turning down my levels of testosterone to assist me in staying quiet, right? So I had to speak up.
Andrea Clark (17:55)
Yeah, there's a
lot of, yeah. Well, I was gonna say a lot of high achieving women who I work with, myself included, low testosterone. like, they're gonna our own testosterone in different ways, right? Something like that or similar, like the same type of, know, need or energetic like suppression in some way. ⁓
Crystal The Oracle (17:58)
Mm-hmm.
yes, of course!
Yeah, suppression is exactly
it. This is the thing about high achieving women. ⁓ We're typically high achieving because we've got this crippling fear of failure or a crippling fear of success sometimes too when we're procrastinating in our high achievement, right? And so the thing about capitalism is that it rewards our self-neglect.
Andrea Clark (18:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (18:43)
It just does. The thing about people pleasing as a trauma response is that, you know, it feels kind of good, even if temporarily people are happy with you. You don't have to field people being unhappy with you. So it's a really smart trauma response. The thing is, you know, like I said, a hundred years ago, we wouldn't have trauma responses like this in our everyday life. It would have been a response to like a bear, right? The bear would have been coming to attack us. We would either fight the bear,
Andrea Clark (18:43)
Totally.
Crystal The Oracle (19:13)
Run from the bear, right? Play dead or make friends with the bear. But now we've got to understand that the bear is not a bear. It's typically an email or a bill or a conversation with your sister or your partner coming home in a funky mood. And if you can just tell yourself, it's not the bear, this is not a bear. I can do this and I will not die. And if you can just will yourself for 30 seconds to do it and prove to your nervous system that you will not die.
Two things will happen. You will know that you stay alive. It'll be easier to do it the next time. And you'll be able to navigate whatever the consequences of the action is, regardless of if they're what you wanted them to be.
Andrea Clark (19:57)
Yes, 1000%. So when you're mentoring people to make these real shifts that are going to actually regulate their nervous system long term, right? Where do you have them start?
Crystal The Oracle (19:59)
Mm-hmm.
I typically, so this is gonna, it's gonna feel like a left, but I typically have them start with dancing. It's working to be specific.
Andrea Clark (20:18)
Ooh, I love it.
Love it! Tell
us what
Crystal The Oracle (20:23)
Because so you're a human nervous system that has been stuck in dysregulation, trauma, suppression, any of those things. They are storing that in their hips, typically. Their hips, their psoas, right? You know, just like when you are in extreme levels of danger, human beings, when they're extreme levels of danger, typically their libido will turn down. Typically...
You know, we are not a species who will reproduce when there is extreme danger in the environment. Like all of that is biologically how we're hardwired. So you can give your nervous system the clue that you are safe just by moving your hips, right? There are also studies that show that dancing is one of the most effective antidepressants, chemical or nonchemical, right? Just dancing.
Andrea Clark (21:15)
.
Crystal The Oracle (21:16)
movement of the hips. It's called proprioception, a frozen suppressed nervous system. If there was a bear or saber tooth tiger to be afraid of in the environment, you would not be, you know, with your hands on your knees shaking it. You wouldn't do that. Right? So your brain knows that. You would, you would clamp down, you'd be quiet. So really just, I'll turn on Meredith Brooks, bitch. I'm a bitch. I'm a le-
Andrea Clark (21:34)
Close enough.
Crystal The Oracle (21:44)
I'm a child, I'm a man. You know, I'm gonna just turn that on and I'm gonna move, just move, move. Stretch your arms as high as far as you can. You know what I mean? Show your body that you are safe to take up space and do it with nobody around. Your brain does not know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. You are having that experience when nobody can see you. So put on some music, shut the door, right? Let your kids little fingers come from under the door and be like.
I'm doing my thing, leave me alone, you know? And just wind your hips. That's really where to start. And you'll feel energetically a little more, put spot, right? To be able to have that conversation.
Andrea Clark (22:29)
love it. So it sounds like you give them a starting off point and then it's almost like intuitively they expand their own understanding of where they need to go next with boundaries or changes or different things like that.
Crystal The Oracle (22:42)
Well, what
will happen is you will. You'll get an energetic impulse, right? But here's the thing. I don't know anybody for real that doesn't know what they need to do next. What they don't know is the whole plan, right? But they know we always know the next right step. And I always say,
Andrea Clark (22:48)
Yes.
Right?
Yes. Yes. Sometimes we don't know
the how. Like maybe we don't have the skills for the how, but I agree. Like we always know.
Crystal The Oracle (23:09)
We may not know how.
But we have an idea, right? We may not know the how, but we do know I could send that DM. Right? We do know that. We do know I could just go by the property in the strip mall and ask them what the price per square foot is for this thing I want to do or this thing I want to open. We do know
Andrea Clark (23:22)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (23:37)
don't feel like being solely responsible for every morsel of food that everybody in this house puts in their mouth every single day. We know that, right? Right? Well, we don't know how our children are gonna grow up and think of us as a mother if we don't pack every single lunch and then put a post-it note with a heart and if we don't, and then my mom did, we don't know all that. But we do know today I don't wanna cook.
Andrea Clark (23:46)
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (24:03)
And if we can start little by little honoring what we do know, honoring how we really feel, it makes such a big difference. And here's the deal. You don't have to, you know, raw dog your change. You don't have to surprise everybody and like unveil it. You can tell the people around you that you are practicing something new. I'm unhappy because I think I have an anxious attachment and I've been people pleasing.
and I have been listening to these silly ladies online and they are telling me that I need to be speaking up for myself for so for the next three days I am going to practice y'all. Get your own laundry. How did that feel? You're able to announce to the people around you that you are practicing these new habits and they're going to do what you think they're going to do. They're going to go, what is going on with her?
Andrea Clark (24:44)
Thanks for watching!
Crystal The Oracle (24:53)
but then they are also going to feel the permission in their own nervous system because I promise you, if you've been walking around your house and you've been people pleasing and you are resentful, every single person around you is on eggshells. Nobody around you is pleased, right? Because of their own neuroception, yay, that's right, because their neuroception, they feel your dysregulation coming into the room. And so just take a deep breath, right?
Andrea Clark (25:08)
Yeah, that's because of the neuroception, right?
Crystal The Oracle (25:23)
And if you feel yourself dysregulated, another thing you can do somatically, one of my favorite things is just think about the backside of your body. I say, remind yourself that you have your own back, right? So the science of this is when there's danger, right? When your eyes, your prefrontal cortex is perceiving danger, right? All of your attention goes very forward facing. Your body's like, what's the threat? What's the threat, right? And you can disengage that by just
Bring your awareness to the backside of your body, the back of your head, the back of your neck, the back of your shoulders, your butt, the backside of the room, right? Your eyes don't even have to be closed. I'm doing this a lot of times in conversations I don't want to have. I'm just thinking about the backside of my body, and they're like, gosh, you're just so regulated, right? I can do it for a little while, then I'm going cuss them out. But after that, you know?
Right?
Andrea Clark (26:15)
But do we really think that when we speak our mind that it's always out of dysregulation? You know what I'm saying?
Crystal The Oracle (26:22)
Ooh,
ooh, I love that you said that. I love that you said that.
Andrea Clark (26:25)
really
struggle with this idea that that, you know, any kind of negative emotion means you're dysregulated or any kind of behavior always means you're dysregulated. I'm like, No, I very calculated said what I said, like, and I meant it and I would say it again, it's not like I was out of control and just said it or whatever.
Crystal The Oracle (26:33)
honey!
Mm-hmm.
100%. So the thing that trauma tells you, the only thing that trauma takes away from you is your agency. And so a lot of people think healed means you're quiet and you do the thing and you don't say the thing and you don't, no, no, no. What healed means is that you can choose your response to the external stimuli, right? If you are choosing your response, whatever you feel like is correct for you,
Andrea Clark (26:59)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (27:15)
then that is a healed response. And nobody can tell you that healed means anything they want it to mean.
Andrea Clark (27:23)
What do you think about that though? Like I feel like that's a message in the coaching and healing space and I find it to be very damaging.
Crystal The Oracle (27:33)
yes, for sure.
Andrea Clark (27:34)
Like love and light
all the time. I'm just like this bullshit. Like, you know what I mean? It's not real.
Crystal The Oracle (27:40)
Yeah, it's not real. It's actually spiritually bypassing, right? I, you know, I'm always going to go through this spiritual lens, right? We are not human beings having spiritual experiences. We are spirit beings having a human experience and the entire breadth of the human experience is available to you. Now, are you able to go through life just
flying off the handle and fighting everybody and hitting everybody with your car. Absolutely not. And we know we're not even talking about that. But you being able to healthily assert yourself is a healthy nervous system. You being able to say, hell no, is a healthy nervous system, right? Healthy does not mean that it's going to look a certain way. Most of the time, the way that person, you know, I always say the people who have a problem with how you talk,
to them or about them may need to be behaving different. Like, worry about yourself.
Andrea Clark (28:35)
Yeah, it's so interesting. think it's confusing for people and it's unfortunate.
Crystal The Oracle (28:40)
Yes, I think we have put all of our nervous systems, like collectively, especially the healing spaces, we have put our nervous systems in these boxes. And like you said, love and light is kind of this spiritually bypassing name of the game, but you need to be able to touch all, it's the law of universal law of polarity. There is no love and light without a.
not love and darkness. There's no perception of it. You are all of it. And literally the only thing we love about being warm is the fact that we understand our experience of cold. We need the breadth of human experience. The thing that feels sweet about being that oxytocin, ooey gooey dopamine yummy with the people that love us is that
Andrea Clark (29:09)
darkness, yeah. ⁓
Crystal The Oracle (29:33)
is that we know and trust that we will be able to assert ourselves in situations where that is not appropriate, right? And so that healthy assertion is what makes love feel like love. So yeah, don't let anybody, if somebody's listening, don't let anybody tell you that it is wrong to tell people what you think, because you get to do that.
Andrea Clark (29:56)
Okay, I want to switch gears just a little bit and talk a little bit more about your work as an intuitive coach. Is my understanding correct that you help other people get more in tune and tuned into their intuition, right? Their inner knowing. Okay. Okay.
Crystal The Oracle (30:04)
Mm-hmm.
Oh yes, yes, yes, that's the main thing that I do. I do
one-on-one sessions via Marco Polo. They're on my website. And then once a year, I have workshops all year long about different things. I have a whole list of workshops on my website. But once a year, typically February, March time frame, I do a big group coaching program called Oracle U. You are your own Oracle. And let me tell you something. After Oracle U, people, they know their higher self.
They are able to trust themselves. They can do physical healing work. They understand their psychic gifts or intuitive gifts. They understand kind of how to move the world. They trust themselves. The, I doing it right? Falls off like, ⁓ it's so good. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Clark (31:00)
That's incredible. Can we talk just a little bit about how people can start to get more in tune? Because I feel like it goes very much hand in hand with the nervous system, but it's when you said you usually know the next step, a lot of people think they don't know, right? And they want somebody to tell them and we understand where that programming comes from, but it's like, how do you like...
Crystal The Oracle (31:15)
yeah.
Andrea Clark (31:26)
What's the initial of breaking free from that, right? When most of your life you've been told like you don't know, like people have made you second guess, your self-hunt's a huge part of your program.
Crystal The Oracle (31:37)
Yes, okay, so I'm gonna lay two foundational things. The first one is your intuitive gifts come through your senses. The only way your unseen intuition can communicate with your human body is through your sense of sight, sounds, right? Sight is called clairvoyance, hearing is clairaudience, that gut.
Feeling is clear sentience those chills you got when that person walked by that's called a clear tangency You know what I mean? So the thing you just knew like how did I know that that's called clear cognizance, right? So your spiritual gifts are always communicating with you the We talked about the law of polarity a little bit right how hot and cold are polar and the experience so Faith and doubt are poles, right? So how do you start believing more?
in your intuitive gifts? How do you start trusting them more? You start paying attention to what your doubt sounds like. Because you're much more practiced at that. So if when you start to doubt, you have this hit, you're like, wait, and then you start to doubt real strong, right? Of course you doubt real strong because doubt and faith are the same thing, just different sides of the same coin. So when belief comes to you, right?
Andrea Clark (32:37)
Yeah, that's good.
Crystal The Oracle (32:53)
you're gonna be on one side of the pole or another. And typically, when you're starting to grow this muscle, it's gonna be the voice of your doubt. So what does your doubt sound like? Are you just worrying, like imagining pictures, just imagining, and you can see images of everything going wrong. Hmm, you're probably very clairvoyant. Grab that from the primal part, your amygdala, put it into your prefrontal cortex where you are consciously making decisions and saying, no,
gonna visualize this going wrong. You know what? I'm gonna visualize it going right. Right? If the next, if you are going through, you get this intuitive hit, you're hit with belief and you go, I just can hear. I can just hear the voice of my mama saying that it just is a, and then it's gonna be a, pull that.
Andrea Clark (33:38)
I know.
Crystal The Oracle (33:38)
Your amygdala
has hijacked your experience, but it only happens between six and 90 seconds. After that, you get to tell yourself whatever damn story you want to tell yourself. And you want to lean in to reteaching yourself, retelling yourself better stories through however your doubt showed up, because that's going to be your strongest spiritual gifts.
Andrea Clark (34:01)
Ooh, I love it. I love it.
Crystal The Oracle (34:03)
So like some
people will go, I thought about doing it and I just felt sick to my stomach. I just didn't think anything was right. It's like, ooh, you did. That means you can trust your gut, right? One of the things you can do is speak to the doubt aloud. We don't fight thoughts with thoughts. We fight thoughts with words and actions. So you can say, I feel it body. I feel activated in my belly. I'm not going to name this worry. I'm going to name this anticipation.
Andrea Clark (34:30)
Mm-hmm.
Crystal The Oracle (34:30)
Right, cause story follows state. So the more you can just notice the state and not automatically attach the story, the more you're healing. Now, what fires together, wires together in the brain. So you've had years of this feeling firing with this story. So it is literally wired together in your brain, but you can see, you can go to YouTube and like,
Andrea Clark (34:39)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (34:56)
and YouTube like brain synapses forming. And you can watch the little guys as you think new thoughts go like this and then he goes like, right? And once you have that visual, you can go, I'm gonna snatch that thought. It's just the highway that my brain has automated and I'm gonna release a new thought. And the more I do that, the more the synapses are gonna lock those thoughts together.
Andrea Clark (35:06)
love it.
I love it. I absolutely love it. And so what about people who they're not even to the point where they're understand like that they're even ready to fully embrace their spiritual gifts, but they know then they know something, but they automatically override it with programming from, let's say childhood of like, you can't do that or, know, especially like
around boundaries and people pleasing or following your dreams like these types of things where you do know but then it immediately it's like we're taking a different route it's like the programmed route what would be would you say to do the same thing but just in that regard like how would you encourage somebody or coach somebody to start making shifts that way
Crystal The Oracle (35:58)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. This is when
I invite them into my bed. I say here, not literally, but energetically. Come to my bed, I'm hug you, we gonna eat ice cream out the pint together, baby, and I'm gonna tell you something, right? Here's what I'm going to tell you. For this to be a universe based on infinite possibility and free will, there's not gonna be any of those, we started back to the alpha, right? There's not gonna be any cupping you can do.
rebounding, electroshock therapy, there's no potion, no crystal, no hypnosis, no hip, no anything, right? You can do whatever you want, but none of those things, they're all gonna influence your energy, but none of those things are going to force your free will, right? So what you're gonna have to do is get as much support as you can around yourself, get whatever scaffolding you need, be it you as a mentor.
Andrea Clark (36:56)
See you tomorrow.
Crystal The Oracle (37:05)
be it ⁓ some affirmations taped to your mirror, whatever it is that you need to be able to will yourself for just 30 seconds to take that step. But it is going to always come down to that matter of your will, right? And here's the deal. I think a lot of people feel very stuck. I went viral for saying this too, but there's, think a lot of people feel very stuck because they are seeing every choice as a decision, right? And choices and decisions are very different things.
Andrea Clark (37:16)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (37:35)
A choice is just that. It's just a choice. You go to the coffee shop, you choose the coffee, you choose the syrup, you choose whip or not, and then you taste it. Do I like that? You decide if you like it. So the more you can, you can distinguish choices in your life from decisions, right? The less stuck your energy will feel. So you can say to yourself, you know what? This is just a choice. I, and you can announce to everybody, I'm gonna try.
Andrea Clark (37:58)
way.
Crystal The Oracle (38:04)
just for three days to, right? And then you're gonna experience, you're gonna offer your nervous system that experience and you're gonna decide, do I wanna keep choosing this or do I wanna choose something different? You can always, always, always make a new choice.
Andrea Clark (38:17)
Yeah, I love that. I tell people all the time, like you can make a new choice and try it on and if it doesn't work out for you, you can go back like you can always go back.
Crystal The Oracle (38:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But again, you know,
in our childhoods, our moms was like, pick a snack and eat it. In or out, right? You made me buy this saxophone, you're gonna learn to play it, right? Our mothers, our caregivers, and I'm a mom of three, so I can be a little cheeky about caregivers, our caregivers, doing the best they could with the tools they had,
Andrea Clark (38:32)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (38:50)
in life, right, and scarcity have built up in us. But any time, and you know, there are choices, like I gotta be real, there are choices that are harder to unravel than others, but there aren't any that are impossible.
Andrea Clark (39:03)
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think we have a lot more flexibility than we often allow ourselves to believe that we do. ⁓
Crystal The Oracle (39:11)
Uh-huh. think
what I can say with certainty is 100 % of the people who are living in the luxurious privilege of being able to listen to the two of us gab for an hour on a podcast, I know for sure that your life is set up in such a way that you can choose differently more the next thing, right? Just by the privilege of being able to have access to the internet and an hour of spare time.
Andrea Clark (39:23)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (39:38)
So if you're under the sound of our voices, you are able, right, to take inspired action toward whatever it is you want.
Andrea Clark (39:46)
Yes. Can you talk about this belief system that, you know, I didn't have a choice? It really pisses me off when people say that. And I get it because I've been there. Like I had no choice or whatever with hard things in my life. But usually once I come out of that a little bit, I realized that that was something I was saying to myself to make myself feel better and to not really have to look at how I co-created that.
thing, for example, like my ex husband's affair or right, like these different things that are so hard. And I, you know, I see especially women get mad at me, which is fine, whatever, like when I say certain things about our agency, and like the energy we bring into our relationships and things. And it's like, I don't have a choice. Like I didn't have a choice. And I'm like, No, you fucking had a choice. Like I know you didn't think you did at the time, but you actually really did. Right? Like
There's all this domino effect off of things that we do and people just really struggle to understand that, right? I'd love to hear your perspective.
Crystal The Oracle (40:45)
I think so.
I don't typically argue what has elapsed with people. So if that version of you really felt like she didn't have a choice, that's cool. I'm going to say thank you to her for having endured the experience that has now transformed you into the you you are now who's able to look and now make a new choice. Right? So
Andrea Clark (40:53)
Right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (41:14)
Do you still feel like you don't have a choice? We can talk through what choices you might have or staying this, like I said, sameness is what feels like safety. It is okay. Like I sell potions. Potions move energy. Potions are energetic catalysts. I'm also a crystal person. There are some times where I'm gonna put the potion aside, I'm gonna grab the crystal and I'm gonna admit to myself I want to stay the same, right?
Andrea Clark (41:31)
Mm-hmm.
Crystal The Oracle (41:41)
Anytime there's this really amazing book that I talk about all the time called existential kink Everybody should read this book, but it existential kink And it talks about the ways that we Find certain things in our lives juicier than we would like to admit sometimes
Andrea Clark (41:42)
Mm-hmm.
Crystal The Oracle (42:01)
we've got these subconscious energetic contracts that are just like universe spank me harder, right? And we've got a number of
You gotta be able to, you know, be real enough with yourself to admit, you know what? I kinda do like the idea that if I worked really hard, I'm gonna give you called a good girl. You know, I do like the idea that maybe it doesn't come with ease for me or like maybe it was a little harder for me than everybody else. Ooh, that feels good. You know, you gotta admit. So what I say to my people is anytime you go, why am I like this? Ask yourself, why do I like this?
Now, hey, are there, because your energy is always in service to you, right? Anytime you say, why am I like this, ask yourself, why do I like this? How is this choice keeping me safe? How did that past experience where I didn't feel like I had a choice keep me safe, secure, right? Give me a level of stability I wouldn't have had otherwise, right?
yourself these questions. That's if you really want to do the work. You don't have to. You can just continue. You free will, baby. You can continue to tell yourself a story that someone else outside of you is going to have to come and rescue you and you can wait for them. That's your choice too. It's your human experience. You can navigate it however you want. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Clark (43:26)
Yeah
I love it. I love what you said about how that like past version of you, if she felt like she didn't have a choice, that's okay. We thank her. And then it's like, okay, but right now, do you feel you a choice?
Crystal The Oracle (43:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, and be real careful the loops you get stuck in about talking about past versions of you. Because every perspective you have is built from an experience that she lived through that you've decided you can't. You won't, right? And I say all healing begins with either having the conversation or deciding I'm never having this conversation again. And so this
Andrea Clark (43:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
that.
Crystal The Oracle (44:07)
version of you in the past, right, is the one who decided I'm gonna have the conversation, or I'm never having the conversation again, gave you the experience, the survival, the skills, the perspective to get you to where you are now, right, and how you talk to her, your future self is listening to. So if you wanna get to your future self, right, you want your future self to feel safe to manifest, right, start being real thankful for the past versions of you.
Because right now in your skin, you are the past version for future you. That might have gotten real existential, but be really careful with that relationship with past versions of yourself.
Andrea Clark (44:43)
No, it makes sense though, because it's quite-
If you're criticizing the past version of yourself, the future version of yourself is like gonna be totally, that's why I always encourage women to, it's like we're just approaching with curiosity and understanding. It's not about judgment, it's not about shaming yourself. Like it's just about really gaining some understanding. So if you wanna make different choices moving forward, you have information to do that.
Crystal The Oracle (44:54)
Why would I even show up? Right?
Yeah, and I don't go digging up like a lot of people are why people and I get it but I don't go digging up like versions of my past Like it presents itself and it wants to be processed then good, but we've got a One of the things source said to me recently was Crystal don't ask me a question unless you want the answer to the question
You ask me a lot of questions where you want the answer that you want. And if you know the answer that you want, what you have isn't a question. What you have is an intention that you need to set and work toward, right? But you're delaying making, taking the action by asking the question. So we gotta figure out when, how, and it's so sneaky and yummy and smart.
Andrea Clark (45:43)
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Crystal The Oracle (46:05)
of our little brains and nervous systems to keep us frozen, you know, information gathering, right? Or digging through the why or analysis paralysis, right? All of that is just sneaky, yummy ways to stay the same when all you have to do is stand flat-footed and go, you know what? I'm going to do something a little different today. And it doesn't, you don't have to start by doing the different thing on the thing that's the thing. You can do
Andrea Clark (46:09)
Mmm.
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Crystal The Oracle (46:34)
different thing by walking out to your mailbox on the right side instead of the left That's gonna tell your brain something's changing You can go to a different coffee shop to co-work than the one you went to before You can call your besties in a different order, right? You can sit crisscross applesauce on the floor instead of on the couch where you sit all the time right little ways to change right because
Andrea Clark (46:48)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Crystal The Oracle (47:01)
Anytime you ask the universe for something, any prayer, petition, any hope, dream, anything that you name, right, is asking the universe to take you incrementally from where you are to where you want to be. What you are asking for is a series of changes. So the more resilient you are to change, right, the more magical your life will seem.
Andrea Clark (47:26)
Mm-hmm. I love that.
Crystal The Oracle (47:27)
Because source is
chivalrous. The universe is really kind to us. So if we ask for a change universe, I think I want something brand new in my relationship, right? The first thing that happens is the energy of change. Let me tell you, I'll tell you a little story. I had a petition. I wanted something completely brand new. And you want to know what happened? The Chick-fil-A, which, you know.
Andrea Clark (47:32)
you
Crystal The Oracle (47:53)
My kids love Chick-fil-A and we do our best around here, right? So like, listen, I ain't about to argue with them minions. know, I'm gonna offset it by other, but whatever. The Chick-fil-A that was on this side of the street decided it wanted to move to the opposite side of the street. You wanna know what a fit I threw about that Chick-fil-A moving? now it's gonna be traffic. It's gonna be a different thing. The traffic patterns are different. That left.
is harder than the right, you know what mean? your source is like, Crystal, do you want change or do you not want change? Do you want to be a person who can throw a pebble in the lake of the time space continuum and cause a ripple? Why do you think that you are going to literally be able to bend reality to your will, which is that's what all of us want, right? And nothing's gonna kink along the way.
Andrea Clark (48:33)
Yeah.
Crystal The Oracle (48:46)
So start seeing those little places of change, those little inconveniences that show up in your life as evidence that the manifestation that you put out is happening. It's like, ooh, now I'm like that. I'm like, ooh, the mailman used to come at two, now they're coming at six. That's a change. The timeline has shifted. I'm looking for the rest of my changes, right? That's how you do it. That's how you feed yourself the kind of stories, right, that change your life.
Andrea Clark (49:13)
my gosh, I love this. Okay, where can everybody find you? It'll be linked in the show notes, but I want you to also tell them.
Crystal The Oracle (49:20)
Yes, I'm Crystal the Oracle on Instagram. I'm Crystal the Oracle on TikTok, but I'm never over there because I'm old. I'm going to try harder though.
Andrea Clark (49:27)
Let's...
Crystal The Oracle (49:28)
I'm crystaltheeoracle.com. mean, anywhere it's Crystal the Oracle, they can find me. And I really do, I get hundreds of DMs a day, but I do try to actually get to them.
And I love it. just want everybody to just kind of come join our community because we are healing and taking inspired action together. And we're making it really fun and funky and funny because, you know, what's not fun about this thing we're doing called being human, right?
Andrea Clark (49:54)
1000%. I'm so excited. You guys need to go follow her and join her community. And I'm so grateful you made time. I know you're so busy. And she you guys she does answer DMs because she answered mine. And so I love how much you try to make yourself you know, reachable to people. And thank you for your wisdom and just have like I had such a blast with you and
I can't wait for people to hear this episode. Absolutely.
Crystal The Oracle (50:23)
I love it so much. Thank you for having me. It's an honor.