The Crappy Childhood Fairy Podcast with Anna Runkle

When you weren’t loved properly as a child, your brain will tell you that the first person who is kind to you is the ONE, and you have to be with them, and you have to be with them NOW. CPTSD and attachment wounds can push you to attach instantly with someone you don’t even know. And often, after you’ve lost all boundaries, you start to see that the other person is NOT what you thought. But your a...

One thing that hurts relationships is comparing your partner to others. But something that ALSO hurts relationships is discarding them when they make a mistake. In this video, I respond to a letter from a young woman who was devastated by her boyfriend’s comments about his own exes. How to Tell if Someone is Partner Material?: FREE PDF Download: https://bit.ly/3YBwKkj 🟢 Order My New Book, RE-REGU...

Even if you survived the trauma of abusive or neglectful parents, it’s very likely that your brother or sister or someone else in the family absorbed the chaos, and their trauma-driven behaviors end up hurting you again and again. In this video, I respond to a letter from a woman who must decide whether to help her suffering siblings, even though she risks getting sucked into their drama. Difficul...

One thing trauma experts don’t talk about enough is the connection between growing up with trauma – and UNDER-EARNING. This is a huge problem for so many of us with CPTSD. And when you’re underearning – it can be hard to see clearly why that’s happening, and what you can do to get your income UP to a fair and sufficient level. This is part of healing too. In this video, I’m sharing one of the most...

If you're rebuilding your life after trauma, you may have experienced "Productivity Crashes" -- my term for when you emotionally collapse (and often physically retreat) after big, courageous accomplishments. Too often, people with CPTSD struggle to follow up on their successes; or get stuck in "freeze mode" for long spells, or avoid advancing their careers because it feels too overwhelming. In thi...

It’s human nature to require justice. Somehow we NEED to know in our bones that the kind of harm that was done to us as children is NOT RIGHT, and should not have happened, and someone should have come to our aid. And yet the people who harm kids rarely take responsibility for it. So many of us never get an apology, or we lack the basic support of a family, or get shamed and ostracized by them. An...

Living through a rough childhood, it’s hard not to hope that ONE day, the parents who neglected you and made life chaotic will SEE – they’ll come around and admit what they did, and how they didn’t take care of you, and they’ll tell you how sorry they are. In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who wants to heal, but imagines that only when she gets an apology can she ever be free of the...

Abuse and violence are crimes, but having your own opinion is an essential part of trauma healing. Those who grew up with narcissistic abuse were forced to conform, comply. People who "cancel" others almost always think they are doing something heroic for the benefit of others. But in fact, cancel culture is a game run by narcissists, where destroying other people -- at any cost -- is a source of...

People who were abused or neglected as children long to feel a sense of belonging. But it's an almost universal symptom of CPTSD to feel like you can't connect with others. You may feel like you don't belong in with groups, that people ignore you, or for reasons you can't explain, you struggle to form good friendships. Few understand the way CPTSD is an injury to the ability to connect to other pe...

Trauma in your childhood gives you a blind spot that makes it easy to become attached to people who are AVOIDANT – they pull away when you try to pull close, they don’t GET it about being present for someone, or honoring them on special occasions. Avoidant people can do some parts of relationships really well, but over time, they can leave you feeling neglected, disrespected and alone. But what is...

Once in a while, I get a letter seeking my advice that’s so serious I’m not sure if I should read it on YouTube. Usually I decline, but in the case of a letter I received just a few days ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about the danger that everyone is in, and thought I’d better tell the letter writer – who asked me to be as harsh as I needed to be – the URGENT TRUTH. Hear my advice to a man about t...

For a lot of people who were abused or neglected in childhood, going to the doctor is a huge trigger. The questions they ask, the fact that they need to TOUCH you, and the control they have over whether or not you get to HAVE help at all – it can feel overwhelming, invasive, accusatory, demeaning, invalidating. Most doctors – even though they are trained – don’t yet have a meaningful, working know...

As a child you developed the ability to use "magical thinking" to cope with abuse and neglect, but NOW, as an adult, it just might be blocking you from ever escaping troubled relationships, finding inner strength, and living a full life. In this 4-video compilation I share four of my most popular videos about damaged perception and how it makes us vulnerable to believe lies. Hear my advice on how...

You have a friend you’re secretly in love with. You thought you had to act like just a friend, to keep them as a friend, because you were sure they would never have feelings for you. That could be true, or could be your low self-esteem talking. What if all this time, they were pretending to be just a friend too? Should you risk telling them how you feel? In this video I respond to a letter from a...

When traumatized people date, it’s easy to detach from reality, and create elaborate constructs that explain why other people do what they do, and why we feel hurt by it – without having to actually admit what's really happening. In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who is feeling confused (a tell-tale sign you've been "soft-ghosted" when the person she's dating is treating her badly....

Even if you're good at acting confident, you may be giving off signs that you feel "less than" other people. Low self-esteem can have the effect of pushing good people away from you, and this in turn makes it harder to grow in confidence. In this video from my archive, I teach about what I call "the underdog effect" -- the unspoken signals you may be giving off, that you don’t feel good about your...

People neglected as children sometimes spend their WHOLE life longing for love – chasing it, fighting for it, and never having it, all because of an attraction to unavailable people. This includes people who are married and can’t really be with you (but string you along), or people who flat out aren’t into you. Yet your wounds from childhood make you the perfect person to give all your energy, lov...

It’s a terrible form of abuse when whole families gang up on one person. Sometimes it’s scapegoating, where they blame you for problems you never caused. Sometimes it’s just plain bullying and cruelty, and of course it leaves terrible wounds, even when you KNOW the abuse was about them, not you, and even when you’ve worked hard to create a good life for yourself – you can end up feeling disconnect...

Some people get consumed by narcissistic loved ones they’re trying to stay connected with. Other people get off the treadmill by going no contact. But a lot of people are in the middle, with a mix of concern, and a desire to help – with total exasperation, feeling drained and fed up with the narcissist’s endless demands for attention and free labor. There IS a way to keep an eye on relatives who –...

I have a secret portal that allows me to see and understand what childhood trauma does to people -- the different patterns it follows, and which kinds of people end up making rapid progress, and which ones stay stuck. I get this insight from letters and YouTube comments -- thousands of them. And there are basically two kinds of comments: One is the kind that comes from people who are very stuck in...

If you grew up hurt by your parents -- neglected, not heard, not seen – chances are good that you get emotionally dysregulated. This means your nervous system reacts to stressors with EXTRA strong emotions. When most people would be hurt, you’re devastated. When you fall in love feels ENORMOUS. And getting angry (unfortunately for the people who love you) can turn into RAGE. In this 4-Video Compil...

A lot of us who grew up with trauma have trouble shaking off the feeling that we’re somehow different than non-traumatized people. It seems sometimes like everyone else seems to know how to act, what to say, how to be connected -- but that we never got the memo. Do you ever feel like that? In this video I talk about the feeling among people who were abused and neglected as kids that we are "differ...

Everyone MUST be free to pursue the relationships and the way of life that makes them happy. Provided what they are doing is legal, we can’t condemn them. But even though some behaviors are legal, it doesn’t mean they aren’t destructive to others -- I’m talking about bullsh**ing vulnerable people into having intimate relationships that are NOT in their best interest, and that they don’t really wan...

So many people are feeling blocked from connecting with other people. If you find yourself trying and trying, but nothing seems to lead to friendship or people even seem to be pulling away from you, there might be a problem with your *attunement* – your ability to sense another person’s openness, or to “read the room". In this video I'll tell you signs that your attunement to others may be isolati...

It's popular to call out relatives and ex-partners as narcissists, but what about the self-centered behaviors and thinking that are common in people traumatized as children? In this 4-video compilation, I share four of my most popular videos about the way ordinary people may exhibit narcissistic behaviors. These traits can make life hard while they're untreated, but with healing, you can change! T...