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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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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Trying to Please Others Makes NO ONE Happy (4-Video Compilation)
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If you grew up with an abusive or neglectful parent – and especially if you were the oldest child -- you may have learned to dance around and do everything in your power to make Mom stop being sad. You may have erased your feelings and needs and instead poured ALL YOUR ENERGY into the parent. People who have done this often have a hard time getting…
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Why It's So Hard to Face Reality About People Destroying Your Life
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There’s this strange thing that happens to families when one member falls into destructive addiction. We know that addicts’ thinking gets distorted, and they fall into denial and lying and blaming and sometimes stealing. That’s what you’d expect. But, as I know so well from bitter experience, the “presumably sane” people who LOVE the addict ALSO su…
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No Sense of Self Comes From Childhood Neglect
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A chaotic and neglectful family life can deprive a child of forming an identity – not just who they are, but what they like, and what they might like to pursue in their lives. In adulthood, you may try to fill this empty space with relationships – or rather, the IDEA of a relationship – to give you direction and a sense that your life matters, and …
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CPTSD and The Curse of Loneliness: How to Heal
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There’s a symptom of trauma that is common in everyone, but it’s almost universal for people who were abused or neglected as children. It's a haunting sense of loneliness, and not fitting in, that can make any effort to connect with people extra stressful. This is not just an emotional hurt. Abuse and neglect caused an injury to your ability to con…
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Heal These Trauma Wounds and Watch Your Productivity Soar
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Have you ever struggled to get even basic things done, like get to work on time, put wet laundry in the dryer, or make a phone call? Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but for people who were abused or neglected in childhood, procrastination can take over your life and hold you back. In this four-video compilation I share some of my most powerful v…
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Male/Female Friendships Are Tested When One of You Gets A Partner
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If you're a woman and you say your "close male friend" is just a friend, one test of your true feelings is how you feel when he gets into a relationship, and how she feels about you. A lot of people will gaslight the girlfriend, or blame the boyfriend for not standing up to her, but often there’s something else going on here. My letter today is fro…
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Some CPTSD Partners Can’t Read the Signs You Need Support
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A history of abuse and neglect can make a person crave extra emotional support. But when both partners have CPTSD, communication can be fraught and feelings of abandonment can turn into hours-long processing sessions. Can you teach a partner to listen to the needs you express? In this video I respond to a letter from a man who loves his partner in …
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Stop Agreeing to Stay Vague, Undefined & Unfufilled!
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If you had trauma in childhood, you may find yourself feeling that you have to hide how you feel in a dating relationship, and pretend you're "fine" when in fact you feel manipulated and hurt. Maybe you fear you'll look foolish or drive away what little love is available. But it's never worth faking a relationship just so you don't have to be alone…
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CPTSD Overloads Your Nervous System (4-Video Compilation)
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One in three people (and even more among people with CPTSD) report that most days they feel completely overwhelmed -- emotionally, mentally and in terms of all they have to do in a day. Just about everyone has lost at least SOME of their power to FOCUS during the last decade. For many, it’s become much harder to feel alert and peaceful inside, and …
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The Price of Losing (or Keeping) Hurtful People in Your Life
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It’s natural to want a loving connection with your own parents. When one or both of them have either abused or neglected you, and they continue to undermine and criticize you, it can be hard to know what to do when the parent who hurt you KEEPS hurting you. Even if you love them – even if you wish you could have a good relationship -- keeping them …
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Childhood Neglect and the Attraction to People Who Don't Care About You
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*LIVE Webinar May 14. Recover Your Vision of The Life You Want: https://bit.ly/3ifhJ8U* *Do You Have CPTSD?* Take the QUIZ: http://bit.ly/3GhE65z FREE COURSE: *The Daily Practice*: http://bit.ly/3X1BrE0 Website: http://bit.ly/3CxgkRY *** Extreme neglect in childhood – where adults literally don’t care for you appropriately, can lead to a kind of em…
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Hint: It's Not Because You "Want to Re-Create Your Childhood"
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17:39
People who were emotionally or physically neglected, or literally abandoned in childhood often find themselves getting left by partners over and over again. The reasons feel mysterious when it's happening to you. But this is how CPTSD can damage your ability to form healthy relationships AND your perception about why this happens. In this video I e…
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Change These Habits to Heal Damaging CPTSD Symptoms (4-Video Compilation)
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Everyone knows that abuse and neglect in childhood can have negative effects on us as adults. But there's a taboo around admitting the damage we do to ourselves with our own trauma-driven behaviors. it's not your fault you were abused or neglected, and it's not your fault it left you prone to these common problems in life. But today, the only perso…
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Trauma Can Blind You to the Power YOU Have to Change
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It’s easy to get sucked into terrible relationships with people who treat you badly, especially for people who were mistreated and neglected as children. You may find yourself with narcissists, manipulators, liars and people who just plain grind your spirits down. But so long as you stay hyper-focused on what’s wrong with THEM and what THEY did – t…
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Limerence Flares Up When Life Feels Empty and Sad
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Romantic obsession with someone you can’t have is a sneaky, life-wrecking toxin – almost a drug that feels great at first and *seems* like if you could just have that person, your life would go from empty... to amazing. This "drug" treats pain. And the drug wears off, and next thing you know the “solution” you’ve found has just swept like a massive…
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Do This to Heal Broken Red-Flag Detector
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If you look around all the friends and partners who you've led into your life and you discover there's kind of a high proportion of people who bring trouble and danger into your life --- guess what? Your red flag detector is broken. It's supposed to be sounding the alarm when when bad or dangerous people try to walk into your life. You're supposed …
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This Trauma Symptom Hurts Others The Most (4-Video Compilation)
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Abuse and neglect in childhood can leave its mark on your ability to regulate your emotions. They come out too strong, causing you to lash out, burst into tears, panic or fall madly in love at an intensity that doesn't fit the circumstances. This is often the result of changes in children's developing brains. In this 4-video compilation, I share fo…
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It’s When The Terror ENDS That Trauma Survivors Sometimes Break Down
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Living through a traumatic childhood takes extraordinary survival skills. You shut down, act tough, dance around to make other people happy, even when it means losing yourself. Sometimes the pain of all you’ve been through doesn’t show up until after the trauma ends. In this video I respond to a letter from a woman who is reckoning with a lifetime …
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Some People Are Not Wired to Experience Romantic Love
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Most of us who have ever had a relationship have fallen love, and most of us have also had someone not love us back. But what if you’re with someone who WANTS to be with you and loves you, but they say they don’t feel IN LOVE with yoU? What does this mean? And is there ever hope that their feelings will change? In this video I respond to a letter f…
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The Great Love You Crave Is Not a Fantasy
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Your Childhood PTSD symptoms have likely created a lifetime of problems in relationships -- choosing unavailable people, clinging to bad relationships or avoiding love altogether. But the reason you long for a real love -- a "great love" even -- is because you were born to love and be loved. How does a person move past the hurts of the past and lea…
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Early Trauma Can Make It Hard to Connect and Commit (4-Video Compilation)
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People who lived through trauma in childhood often develop an "avoidant" attachment style, which can be hard for their partners who may crave reassurance, commitment, and frequent expressions of affection that don't come easily to avoidants. In this 4-Video compilation, I share four of my most popular videos about being avoidant, dating an avoidant…
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Is It Cheating to Take a Job with Boundary-less Employer?
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Charming and powerful employers have a knack for tempting people who are desperate for a big break in their career. They can offer money, fame, and connections that you might never access again. But if the price is to operate a sexually charged and boundary-less environment, what is the real price of working for them? My letter today is from a woma…
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Don’t Let Wounds of Neglect Trample Any Possibility of Love
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t’s common in our culture for people to sleep together almost as soon as they meet. And people act like that’s fun and easy, and only foolish people can’t handle it, or think it should be avoided, in favor of something better. So for people who grew up neglected and abused, there’s a contradiction – their attachment wound is crying for someone to l…
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Don't Let CPTSD Block You From Becoming Your Full and REAL SELF
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Trauma in childhood can leave with obvious problems, but also a subtle tendency to hide your authentic self, and to avoid reaching for big goals that are important to you. In this video I share common reasons why people who were abused in childhood will cope try to manage their vulnerability by playing small. I'll teach you strategies to gradually …
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You're Madly In Love But Pretend to Be "Just a Friend" (4-Video Compilation)
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Limerence is the name for an obsessive infatuation that becomes more like an addiction to someone who cannot or will not be with you. It's especially common in people who were emotionally neglected as children, who will often go to any lengths to avoid losing HOPE that their love may someday be returned. They will pretend to be a friend, and lie ab…
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Childhood Trauma Corrupts Your Thinking and Pushes You Into Danger
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No matter how much you pull yourself together after a childhood full of abuse and neglect, the injury of trauma will TRY to suck you back into horrible dynamics of your childhood without you even realizing it. Your trauma-driven thinking will like to you that a clearly bad situation will be different "next time." In this video, I respond to a lette…
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Unhealed Trauma Compels You To Cling to Horrible People
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There are two terrible ways that self-centered parents can wound you in the way you have relationships – and in particular, when they didn’t take an interest or support the unique little person that you were, and they didn’t help you learn to detect and say NO to mistreatment. And if this happened to you, you may find yourself struggling to have fr…
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