The Crappy Childhood Fairy Podcast with Anna Runkle

Healing trauma is more than psychological. It's physical, it's practical -- and here's the part where trauma experts are curiously silent -- it's spiritual. Abuse and neglect are injuries to the spirit, and where we are spiritually injured, a vulnerability opens to further harm from destructive people, and even from our own self-defeating behaviors. This is how the battle between good and evil is...

I make it VERY clear that I'm not a therapist or doctor, but sometimes viewers ask why I didn't go the route of becoming a therapist, and how I learned to do what I do. In this video, I give the full story on how I recovered from my own Complex PTSD symptoms, and how teaching my method grew from a few people to millions of people over the course of 30 years. My focus is not on childhood or the ori...

Everyone, not just traumatized people, gets dysregulated sometimes. And virtually everyone eventually re-regulates. But if you were traumatized at a young age, it can cause you to get dysregulated more easily than other people, and stay dysregulated longer. How can you do this ON THE SPOT? In this video, I teach you my expanded list of emergency measures to re-regulate. This is super helpful for p...

When you’re into someone but you hide how you really feel, don’t be surprised when the reality of the situation smacks you down. People who were traumatized as kids are particularly vulnerable to this “just friends” behavior. And unhealthy people can detect that in us – the way we see what they just did and -- and how we pretend it didn't affect us. In this video, I respond to a letter from a woma...

The stories you tell yourself are an expression of what YOU believe is important about you. And if you're wedding to saying life is never fair, everyone’s terrible, they take advantage of you, you never get a break – this is actually another sign that you might be playing SMALL. It’s something that those of us who had a rough childhood can sometimes get stuck in. And while trauma really happened,...

The Daily Practice is a set of two techniques -- a specific form of writing, followed by a simple meditation, that I was shown 31 years ago when I was in extreme distress after a series of traumas, and was barely able to function. I teach the techniques in a free online course (you can register for it and learn it in less than an hour -- the link is below), and I lead regular free Zoom calls for p...

People who were abused and neglected as children sometimes struggle to stay emotionally regulated. Part of healing is to learn to self-regulate; this is a skill that, in substance recovery programs, is called "Emotional Sobriety." Is it the same with trauma? In this 4-video compilation, I share four videos where I teach how the wounds of early trauma can leave you prone to lashing out or getting s...

In this video, I interview fellow YouTuber and Family Systems expert Jerry Wise. He has a deep background in counseling and marriage and family therapy. Now he's on YouTube teaching people how they can separate themselves from the "WiFi" of their families -- this is the pull, the ethos and the nervous system chatter of their family of origin. He teaches about the "family super self," and the "umbi...

Just when you think things are going well for you, BAM! Someone criticizes you, you get rejected, or you don't get chosen for an opportunity that meant everything to you. A rush of anger, panic and shame rises up, and next thing you know, you feel like you CAN'T. DO. ANYTHING. You freeze, stuck in procrastination, struggling to stay focused or follow through on plans. This disabling reaction to em...

People sometimes use the word “privilege” as an accusation that allows the accuser to feel better than the person they accuse, and even to shame and discredit them. Recently, Dr. Nicole Lepera (@TheHolisticPsychologist) posted an Instagram reel where she pointed out that the ultimate privilege is having a *support system,* and encouraged those of us who grew up neglected to stop comparing ourselve...

Recognizing your worth after neglect in childhood – where adults literally don’t care for you appropriately, can lead to a kind of emotional “leakiness” where -- even though you’ve created a good life and set goals as an adult, -- you feel disconnected from people when they are close to you. For people with CPTSD, that memory of NOT being cared for can creep into every situation – you feel it with...

If women want to be equal, they should always pay their own share of the bill on dates with men -- or so my mother told me. This is the third video in my "Stop Playing Small" series. In it, I explain what happened during the years I was always quick to throw down money on dates -- what my real reasons were, how that turned out, and THEN what happened when I decided to let the man pay. Dating may b...

There are two competing ideas in our culture about how you should pursue happiness: One is that anything that happens to you, you have to MAKE it happen. And the opposing idea is that there’s something "unspiritual" about that level of certainty, and that what you REALLY should do is “go with the flow.” I’m here to tell you that if you’re doing either of those things, you just might be playing sma...

If you’ve been hurt by others SO many times that you can’t face conflicts, disappointments and sad moments, – that’s what I call playing small. And it stops you from being able to heal or change. Life involves friction. Facing it is how we grow. I played small for most of my life -- and maybe you have too. In this video -- part of a multi-part series -- I show you what I looked like when I played...

A classic sign that a person grew up traumatized is that their life is full of hostile, cruel, and punishing people. If you were abused or neglected, you may freeze up when people are unkind, or lapse into "fawning," trying desperately to make the hostile person happy, as if that were your responsibility (or even possible) In this 4-video compilation, I share some of my most popular videos about m...

The problem with romantic attachments, especially for those of us who were hurt and neglected as kids, is that our attachment wounds make us feel so.... attached! Ending a relationship can make it feel like you’re dying, even when you don’t like the person. Even when you don’t want to be with the person. Even when the person has been abusive to you – You’ll start having thoughts of going back to t...

When you get angry and people can hear it in your voice? They don’t like it! And you know what? That’s OK! Because in a healthy relationship, it’s OK for you to express your anger. In fact it’s necessary. But it’s all about how you express it – not cruelly, not constantly – of course that can hurt a relationship, especially when there’s kinda subterranean resentment and wounds underneath that mayb...

With unhealed trauma wounds, it's easy to make terrible mistakes at critical moments. Times of stress (which is often when you have to make important decisions) can shut down critical thinking skills, and push you toward emotional thinking that can lead to bad outcomes. This is common for people with CPTSD. In this video, I talk about trauma-driven decisions, and how you can stop them before the d...

Romantic obsession with someone you can’t have is a sneaky, life-wrecking toxin – a "drug" that feels great at first. It seems like if you could just have that person, your life would go from empty... to amazing. It treats pain... until the drug wears off, and next thing you know the “solution” you’ve found has become the problem, wrecking everything good in your life. Can it ever be true that thi...

Work is the worst place to fall in love with someone you can’t have – or rather, someone with whom you're forbidden to pursue a relationship with. Workplace affairs have the potential to ruin your happiness and theirs and cause both of you to lose your jobs. One thing that can make this all much worse, is if you are prone to limerence, i.e., you tend to get romantically obsessed with people – at t...

The trouble with being abused is that it can wreck your thinking... You disconnect. You go numb. And when you feel awful inside, you can't always tell where the feeling is coming from. In a dysfunctional family, the hurt and blame can go flying in all directions, and become like glue – binding everyone to the toxic dynamic that hurt them in the first place. So how do you heal? In this video, I res...

Jeff Krasno, the founder and CEO of the global wellness platform Commune Media, thought he was pretty healthy. Though he suffered from brain fog, chronic fatigue, and bouts of insomnia, those symptoms seemed utterly normal in today’s society. When he learned he had diabetes, his first thought was, How can that be? I run a wellness company! In this video, I interview Jeff about his new book "Good S...

So many people are stuck in their CPTSD symptoms. How can you face your trauma symptoms and make REAL changes that last? In this 4-video complication, I share some of my most popular videos about TRANSFORMATION -- how you can overcome some of the common challenges associated with trauma in your past, and become more successful, more connected, and more FREE to live your life happily. Ten Signs You...

When your heart’s desire is to find a love that’s lasting and real, listen to that. This is what you are meant to have. And if you grew up with trauma, what might be blocking you from what you want is unhealed trauma, wobbly boundaries, and a big cluttered pile of half-relationships all over your life. You can’t be open to real love when your emotions are like a cluttered home. No one can get in t...

This is what it feels like to fall for an avoidant: First, there’s a STRONG feeling of connection, like the feeling you knew was possible, and you recognize it like you’ve found home at last. Then you attach quickly, while you can, because the signs that they can’t love you back begin to appear immediately. They don’t look like red flags to you, because that incredible moment when they are right i...