I’m Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy, and I teach people to recognize and heal the symptoms of Childhood PTSD. Welcome to my podcast!I’m not a doctor or therapist; I know about childhood trauma because I lived it, and I discovered a radical approach to healing that focuses first on calming neurological dysregulation, which is common in people who grew up with abuse and neglect. In my podcasts, I teach about dysregulation – how to know if you have it, what it can do to yo ...
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S*x Work Thrives On Dissociation and Blocks Your Healing
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Unpopular opinion, but so-called “adult entertainment” could not exist if there weren’t a steady supply of people who were abused as children, and skilled at shutting themselves down emotionally so that other people could use them for “pleasure.” It’s one of many ways that manipulative people – or those they have manipulated – like to normalize an …
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Isolating to Manage Stress is a Trauma Symptom
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There’s an almost universal symptom that people who grew up with trauma will tend to exhibit - and it’s a sense of isolation. Either you feel isolated even with people, or you literally isolate. Shutting people out feels like it's the right, best, most self caring thing you can do sometimes when you're under stress. But if you think that's a good t…
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Limerence Is Toxic Fix for Lonely, Joyless Life (4-Video Compilation)
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If you were emotionally neglected as a child, you may be extra-prone to direct your romantic energy toward people who are not with you. It’s the consequence of an injury to our neurological development, and it can have terrible consequences for you and the people who love you. In this 4-video compilation, I share some of my most popular videos abou…
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Walking on Eggshells So THEY Feel OK Means It’s Time to Go
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Just because someone got a credential to practice therapy doesn’t necessarily mean they’re mentally stable, or able to prioritize the attention that you deserve, over whatever it is they’re feeling. If you had a parent who neglected you or exhibited narcissistic traits, you may have a blind spot for this behavior in others. In this video I respond …
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What “I’m Not Ready For a Relationship” Really Means
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So many of us who grew up with trauma live as “divided selves” – longing for real love, but playing along to keep people around who DON’T want that – not with us, anyway – but who are happy to soak all our attention and time Iand of course, sex). Your ability to believe you can change how they feel by giving them all you've got – but never honestly…
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Some People Lash Out. Others Shut Down. Which Are You?
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When we talk about trauma symptoms, we talk a lot about strong feelings, acting out and emotional dysregulation. But there’s this other side of how trauma wounds and CPTSD can control your behavior, and it’s through *self-suppression*. In this video I teach the signs that your trauma is driving to suppress yourself. You may be surprised how much it…
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How Trauma Makes It Hard to See What's Real (4-Video Compilation)
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When it comes to healing CPTSD, there's abundant advice and hundreds of treatments, but they rarely take into account that trauma wounds make it difficult to learn, process, remember, and categorize information. When your thinking is distorted, it's hard to tell what is your responsibility and what is not -- and to recognize choices available to yo…
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How to REALLY Declutter Reminders of the Painful Past
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A huge number of people who lived through trauma have ended up with a LOT of physical clutter. And because clutter can hold you back, it’s a good thing when you release belongings that you’ve held onto that you DON’T need, that you can’t use, and that only bring you a sense of stress and obligation. But what about the old letters, gifts and cards t…
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Why It's Hard to Tell if a Friendship is Good (Or Toxic)
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If you’re like a lot of people who grew up with trauma, you feel most comfortable with friends who also had trauma – people who struggle at times with the same trauma-driven problems you’ve struggled with. These people can feel like HOME for us – until we start to heal from trauma, and their actual flaws become more visible to us. Should you try to…
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If You Had Trauma in Childhood, Healing This Will Change Your Life
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There is a massive, almost universal trigger for Childhood PTSD symptoms – and you probably have it (even people who were not traumatized sometimes have it). It is HURRYING. We all do it. But when you have Childhood PTSD, hurrying very easily turns into overwhelm, and can trip you up and sabotage the most important things in your life. In this vide…
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Heal Insecurity-Driven Relationship Patterns (4-Video Compilation)
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People who were neglected as children often struggle to form stable, lasting relationships. One big reason is insecure attachment -- a wound of trauma (particularly neglect) that creates a chronic sense of anxiety that you're not wanted, or you are about to be abandoned. You might RUSH in and get enmeshed with someone you just met, or exhaust yours…
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Believing You’re Responsible to Fix Them Is Why It’s Not Working
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The reason I say codependency is so destructive to everyone it touches is that A) it drains the person who has abandoned themselves to become entirely focused on fixing another person, and B) the person being fixed is NOT fixed -- and doesn’t like it, and will usually leave. But that’s not what it FEELS like when you’ve been showing up in good fait…
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When people want a “just-sex” relationship, they can hardly resist the lure of traumatized people who will pour out pure gold from their heart and yet suffer in silence that their “friend with benefits” never returns their love. Neglect in childhood does that to people – makes you feel ashamed that you want and need something more than a fling – it…
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These Triggers Are Telltale Signs You Were Neglected and Ostracized in Childhood
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It's painful for a child to be left out, ignored and never included. This counts as trauma, and leaves behind telltale signs in the form of triggers in adulthood. You may find yourself reacting strongly with anger, anxiety or self-abandonment when people overlook you or disappoint you now, in adulthood. Unfortunately, this aspect of CPTSD can desta…
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Effects of Neglect, Abandonment & Chaos In Childhood (4-Video Compilation)
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If you were neglected or abandoned as a child, or your home life was full of chaos, you may still feel the effects through a pattern of triggers that push your nervous system into a dysregulated state. In this 4-video compilation, I share some of my most popular videos about CPTSD triggers that are common -- but most people haven't connected them w…
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Trauma Wounds Trigger Dissociation and "Flight" When You’re Loved
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Imagine finally finding someone who loves you as you are. And after so many painful attempts to find love, THIS person is right by your side and wants to be with you. So what is it in people who grew up with trauma, that the presence of someone THIS good, can shut you down, and make things feel "not real"? In this video I respond to a letter from a…
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How Trauma Bonds Wreck Your Mental Health
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Even rats will get obsessed if you alternate kindness with abuse. So it isn’t any wonder that people who grew up with trauma would have a tendency to fall in love even HARDER when the people who say they love you suddenly kick you out the door. Non-traumatized people recognize this as abuse by an unstable and selfish person. In this video I respond…
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Here are Signs No One Listened To You in Childhood
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Children normally learn to handle themselves in the world from their parents. If you were ignored, you had to figure things out by yourself using a child's logic. In adulthood, you may find yourself going into a stress response when you try to communicate, especially when expressing emotions, or setting boundaries. This cold be a sign you weren't l…
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Free Yourself From Your Family's Dysfunction (4-Video Compilation)
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If you were born to sick people who neglect you, exclude you, and they couldn't give you proper care or protect you from harm, it was only natural for you to feel as a child that your family's shame was yours too. In this four-video compilation, I share four of my most popular videos about the harms that come from growing up in dysfunctional famili…
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If Love Is What You Want, Here’s What to Do Differently
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When someone writes to me and says “I’m dating this guy,” I learned to understand that “DATING” for some people means “just having sex.” No friendship, no commitment, no talking about real things, no helping each other through tough times JUST. SEX. So it breaks my heart when someone with the ordinary understanding of dating gets walked all over by…
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People who were neglected in childhood often turn out with a false identity that they were pressured into by parents who couldn’t see who they were AT ALL. This a pattern I’ve come to recognize in hundreds of letters I receive. There’s a developmental delay, almost, in forming a sense of self – of knowing your preferences, what make you make happy,…
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Watch This And Find Out How Far You've Come (Further Than You Think!)
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Watching videos about trauma can take you down a rabbit hole of bad memories, scary diagnoses, and fears and doubts about whether life will better for you. Chances are, you’re ALREADY getting better, and in this video I teach you the signs that your healing may be well underway. Watch this and soak up validation and encouragement for all the hard w…
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How To Stay Sane When You Fall In Love (4-video Compilation)
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Nothing ruins new love like an agenda. If you grew up with trauma, you may end up romantically attached to people before you've gotten to know them, but there's a better way to date! In this four-video compilation, I share four of my most popular videos for people with CPTSD who want to change trauma-driven dating patterns and find real love at las…
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Obsessive Love Can Cross The Line Into Dangerous Delusion
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I get letters from people who claim to want to heal from limerence – which is an addiction-level romantic obsession with someone who doesn’t want to be with you. But sometimes, the letter itself feels toxic to me – like they want to tell me about their limerence and PRETEND they want help, when what they really want to is to tell anyone who will li…
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Unhealed Disorganized Attachment Triggers Emotional Abuse
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A Disorganized Attachment style is a trauma wound that can drive you to LONG for love and then push it away again and again, every time you feel irritated, or vulnerable, or disappointed. Childhood trauma is almost always the cause of this, and THAT wasn’t your fault. But when you need to manage your well being by constantly breaking up with someon…
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Life will always have hardships, but everything you do to improve your life will run aground unless you know how to also lift your mood. It's not just happy talk. In this video I teach actions you can take right away to start feeling better, and to gradually change your life. Eleven Strategies to Feel Happier Today: FREE PDF Download: https://bit.l…
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Yes, Anger Can Be Healthy But NOT Like This (4-Video Compilation)
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** Anger is a natural emotion. It exists to activate you in the face of danger, and as a response to unjust treatment. Anger is healthy... unless it gets stuck in a loop and can't be processed into either action, or memory. In this 4-video compilation, I share some of my most popular videos on the proper role of anger in our lives, and how unchecke…
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Happiness Begins When You Know What You're Here For
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Everyone longs to live a purposeful life. You need intuition and persistence to discover what you're here to do, but childhood trauma can block this awareness, and keep you feeling trapped and unable to find your purpose. In this video I respond to a letter from someone who feels lost; hear my advice for steps to take to find and live your life's p…
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People Who KNOW They're Inflicting Emotional Damage Need to Hear THIS
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There's an urban legend out there that if you think you might be a narcissist, you're not a narcissist. Many people display narcissistic behaviors at times, and are wise to be aware and work on that. But in this video, I share I letter from a man who believes he's a narcissist and almost sounds like he wants to stop hurting others. Is he trying to …
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The Real Reason It's So Hard to Recover from Childhood PTSD
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Abuse and neglect in childhood can set in motion lifelong trauma symptoms. The people who hurt you are 100% responsible for this harm, and it's good if you can acknowledge that it's not your fault. It's also true that in adulthood, many of us continue to retraumatize ourselves with what I call "self-defeating behaviors." These are the habits and te…
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Focusing Too Much on Others Damages Your Life (4-Video Compilation)
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Many people misunderstand what codependency actually is -- a compulsion to donate all your focus to another person's life, and then to try to control them and extract your happiness from the hope that THEY will change. In this compilation, I share four of my most popular videos about codependency and the ways people with trauma are particularly vul…
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Here’s something I WISH I had known when I was younger, so YOU can avoid some of the mistakes I made that cost me years of happiness. Casual sex sounds like it’s ordinary and fun and not a problem, and evidently that’s true for a lot of people. But if you have attachment wounds (and this is especially for young women) the emotional bonding that sex…
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The Constant Push/Pull of Their Affection Grinds You Down
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Healthy people run screaming from avoidant partners. But there’s something about neglect in childhood that primes you to fall harder for someone when they constantly pull you in and then push you away. At first see it, and it gives you pause. But if you stay with them, and you keep hoping that THIS time will be different, your thinking and percepti…
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The "Upper Limit Problem" Hits When You're Taking Big Steps UP
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It's hard to explain, but just when you're accomplishing positive things in your life, obstacles and discouragement appear your path in the form of criticisms, attempts to stop your work, and self-sabotage from within. Author Gay Hendricks calls this "the upper limit problem." I call it "the nefarious force": Those of us with CPTSD seem especially …
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If It Doesn't Help You Re-Regulate, It Probably Won't Help (4-Video Compilation)
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We now know there's an underlying trauma symptom that drives almost all the others: Neurological dysregulation. And until you learn to notice it and get re-regulated, it can hold you back and complicate every part of your life. In this four-video compilation I share four of my most popular videos on dysregulation. Order My New Book, RE-REGULATED: h…
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CPTSD Partners Only Change When THIS Happens
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Anyone with CPTSD can admit (if we're honest) that our symptoms can be VERY hard on those who love us. We lash out and become emotionally dysregulated, and we sometimes mistakenly believe that others are CAUSING us to to feel the massive waves of anger and and grief that come welling up from the wounds of the past. Healing work helps us gain clarit…
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Limerence For Someone Who Rejected You IS a Form of Avoidance
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Your mind plays tricks on you when you fall in love with a long-distance loner who says flat out they don’t want a relationship. This absent character, present only as an electronic voice or a digital image but never as a real person at your side who loves you -- ican be the perfect blank canvas for lament fantasies. “If only we could be together…”…
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Don't Let Childhood Trauma Define Who You Are
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There’s a big mistake that people who were traumatized as kids make when they’re trying to heal, and unfortunately it can stop your progress. When you're working on healing, there’s a temptation to “identify” as a traumatized person, and focus heavily on what happened to you, how it's harmed you, and what the diagnoses might be of the people who hu…
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Here's What It Really Takes to Find a Match (4-Video Compilation)
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Trauma during childhood can damage your powers of discernment, leaving you vulnerable to choosing immature, unavailable, and even abusive partners who drag your life down. How can you override the limitations of CPTSD, to choose a good partner, and work out the inevitable bumps in the road? In this four-video compilation I shsare some of my most po…
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How to Tell Your Friend They are Driving You Crazy
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Sometimes close friendships fall apart, and even though you try to work on them and accommodate the other person’s quirks, their behavior drives you nuts. You try talking about it, but it only leads to conflicts. You try ignoring the problem but it only gets worse. So then what do you do? In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who can't t…
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Your Boundaries Get Foggy When You’re Grieving and Lonely
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People with Childhood PTSD in the past often become uncertain of themselves, confusing behaviors that LOOK like love with the real thing, and then finding themselves entangled with manipulative people who want to take their energy. In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who has given her emotional energy to someone who isn't giving what t…
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For Healing Trauma, Venting Your Rage is Overrated
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If you had childhood trauma, and you’ve sought help for the problems it’s caused you in your life, you may have been told that you needed to get in touch with your ANGER to heal. If you've been suppressing your rage, venting anger can feel great... at first. But for many people with Childhood PTSD, getting pushed to go deeper into anger can be a da…
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Heal Your Anxious Attachment Style (4-Video Compilation)
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When you need love desperately, it's easy to fill in the gaps and attach to people who turn out NOT to have love to give, and this in turn can activate your CPTSD symptoms. This is one of the ways an "anxious attachment" style can sabotage your trauma healing work. In this four video compiliation, I share some of my most popular videos on anxious a…
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Can An Emotional Affair Become The Real Thing?
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Past trauma has a funny way of driving us into the worst kinds of relationships. A warm body or a diamond ring can feel like a little island of respite from the ocean of fear, shame and loneliness that often overwhelm's people with Childhood PTSD. So what happens when you wake up after the wedding and discover that real love is nowhere insight – or…
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Don't Let Trauma Keep You Stumbling Through Life
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Even if you grew up in a neglectful or abusive household, it’s not too late to create a vision for what you want in your life, and what you want in a relationship. Too often, those of us with CPTSD cast around for a partner with no clear sense of what would be good for US. We’re driven by how partners see us, and how they feel about us, focusing en…
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"Emotional Sobriety" Makes Trauma Healing Faster and More Sustainable
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While many people think the goal of healing is to feel MORE of your feelings, people with Childhood PTSD more often need emotional self-regulation. There are short-term strategies and changes you can make in your life that make it easier to stay emotionally steady. If strong emotions hurt your relationships, "Emotional sobriety" is a way of life th…
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Don't Waste More Time on Trauma Healing That's Not Working for You
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If you're living with the effects of Childhood PTSD, you've probably had to work extra hard to accomplish things that come easily to non-traumatized people. But everything gets better when you find an approach to healing that works for YOU. It can take trial and error to find effective treatment, but don't give up! In this 4-video compilation, I sh…
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Blame-y Apologies Are Worse Than No Apology
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If you’ve struggled in your life with self esteem, or making good friends, chances are good that there are some damaged and dysfunctional relationships in your past. If you’re like many of us with CPTSD, you may feel confused about whether you owe an apology. Apologies can be healing for them AND for you -- IF you get them right. In this video I re…
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It Doesn't Involve Sex, But It's Still a Secret
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An emotional affair is a relationship where a person already in a marriage or committed relationship has a secret life with another person, that isn’t exactly sexual, but it’s highly charged with romance. Charged enough that both parties hide and lie about what’s going on. In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who is keeping her relation…
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Watch Out For These CPTSD Beliefs That Ruin Relationships
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The problem with growing up with neglect and abuse is that it can drive your thinking, constrict what you believe is possible for your life, and make you see only what is ugly in the world. These are what I call trauma-driven beliefs. I can often predict who in my programs is going to make tremendous progress quickly, and start changing their lives…
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