A Chat With The Crappy Childhood Fairy - Anna Runkle

Patrick Teahan sits down with Anna Runkle, the Crappy Childhood Fairy, for an honest conversation about childhood trauma recovery, the challenges of healing, and practical strategies for moving forward.

By Patrick Teahan

you know first thing i want to say is thank god for youtube because we all now have this amazing resource to connect with the larger community about childhood trauma and educate ourselves on trauma and you know when i was first thinking about putting up a video on youtube about childhood trauma i was just sort of curious about like who's talking about it and one of the first people that popped up was now my good friend anna uncle who does the crappy childhood fairy um and that was a very inspiring experience for me to sort of see somebody talking about cptsd talking about emotional regulation talking about their own experience in such an authentic and real way that i don't i feel like it's really missing in the therapy world so um you know anna and i connected and we decided to have a chat we did we became friends in the last couple weeks and i was just i'm honored to introduce her if you know if you're not familiar with the crappy childhood fairy it's an amazing resource of self-regulation exploring your own self-healing through cpsd and really looking at what happens to kids in these traumatic dysfunctional families kind of like what and she's the one that actually inspired me to start my own channel so without further ado here is my conversation with anna and we had a blast just kind of talking about our own wacky triggers we talked about what it's like finding therapy in this day and age um and also just kind of how we both survived as kids like looking at stuff like sort of looking at tv to feel like what's normal so without further ado here's my discussion with anna it's interesting and maybe you know i relate to this you probably relate to it as well is you know not how do i put this is we feel bad but we don't know why we're really you know what i mean if you ever like sort of like you're on a bus with somebody you just don't really you instantly don't like them and you sit away from them or sometimes that's good intuition or whatever but i think that that's what i'm trying to explain is like as trauma survivors we really we're kind of detached from these memories and we're detached from our reality so we just are it's a little bit like we're just kind of a mess of emotions in real time without no meaning to it that begins with like a bad feeling but i you know the concept of emotional flashbacks was an epiphany for me to understand like what is this why have i woken up in such a terrible mood and feeling like the world's against me and it was such a pattern and when i finally had a name for it it was great but you're right there is sort of a more subtle version of that there are certain things like about men in the 1970s you know the giant belt buckles and the handlebar mustache that are actually they give me a bad feeling and i've i've had to consciously work on it you know to to be at peace with people however they may dress you know or shave or not and and to be at peace with people and it's a kind of an obvious trigger you know i grew up in a commune and there were you know hippie guys and getting drunk and getting violent and smashing windows and things and so for a long time i was well aware i was i didn't like the sound of breaking glass uh but then i was like no and like big mustaches and big thick belts and things and totally i don't even know what the memory is but i just know it's there's it's just it's loaded for me right but there's so many things like that i just wouldn't even know where to start i know exactly what you mean for me like um this is a fascinating conversation if i would drive through neighborhoods that reminded me of home specifically if i drive by an old dive bar because i grew up in bars just you know what i mean like which is like the you know you they're just bars for butterflies that's what that likes

you know what i mean and it's just sort of like the the the real shitty miller light sign that's like half lit neon like that just gives me a vibe and used to really give me a vibe and sometimes you know it's interesting that um we can drive through those neighborhoods and not know why we're bummed out right right and then have you has your healing helped you to become more like neutral to just clues like that this random triggers like passing a bar you can't avoid it yeah right like yes and now it's sort of like it's it's now i just now i name those are just things i don't like to hang out in you know what i mean like i hate malls

i hate them anyway i hate shopping shopping is extremely triggering for me yeah actually right you know for the same kind of stuff but yeah nowadays it's not you know this it's like um it's i it's i love that question um i used to work jobs where i could be the superhero at the job high stress i worked in patient psychiatry you know what i mean like in because my like you know that that old thing about trauma survivors really being good firemen or emt people or whatever that kind of stuff but at this stage in my healing i just know that those places um i don't get triggered about those places or those situations i just know now that they're just not for me i'm not gonna i'm not i'm gonna lose my wellness i'm gonna lose my my good vibes or my crowdedness if i go back to work in those jobs i'm much better i'm kind of a crappy employee too so um that like that that kind of stuff so i think these things change over time where my mentor and her husband also say that you know when we go through some significant healing we lose interest in those stories where the bar used to give you the heebie jeebies you know uh you know and now it's just kind of like ah it's just not a place for me i'm disinterested in all that mess of it it drains so much energy to be triggered by something that's the thing it's like you're carrying such a when a trigger is active you know you're just like sort of going through it just it just takes all the focus away i used to say that having cptsd was like wearing headphones and being stuck listening to ac dc really loud but pretending that i can hear you and i'm very tuned into how you feel right now but i can barely hear and a bunch of people wrote and they said i love ac dc and i'm like okay why you don't like i don't like them but i just mean it's really loud and and percussive and just like i can't really be present yeah because it's i love the analogy if we change that to nickelback i i'm more into the analogy because i like ac

or sugar ray [Laughter] something like that yeah although it could be really a really good analogy where you know there's so much going there's so much trauma noise in our head and i think as trauma survivors we just have to like um much of it is just pretending that you're normal in the world when when you don't feel that

this is funny this is a conversation i've never had but like your odd triggers like your smell of the bar i know what you're talking about and there's this bar smell with food in it that is a positive remem you know memory because my dad took me to a bar all the time a place in berkeley called brennan's and it's finally gone sadly but i used to go there just to like smell that bar smell with roast beef in the air to feel his vibe and then my mom

this is very weird um but she her the bottom of her leather purse always had like tobacco in it and mints to cover up the smell of alcohol but like bits of tobacco from all her cigarettes getting smashed in there um over time and the smell of like mint and tobacco and leather together i'm like mommy i know right there's this alcoholism smell and it's um i smell it when i go into a public bathroom sometime this is kind of an icky thing but some people might relate to this but it's the smell of renal failure like mild renal failure it like when people have peed in a public bathroom and their kidneys aren't working that well and there's been alcoholism it has a certain smell and that one it's not positive but i'm like mom is my mom here is my mom here right she she died quite a long time ago but later when i learned what that was it's a smell of sick organs you know from alcoholism totally i mean it's yucky i'm sorry everybody but that's like that's when we talk about triggers it's a strong trigger for me and i never knew what it was as a kid but when i smelled it it means things are not okay you know we're in trouble now we are so unsafe right now absolutely for me to continue the bodily i know i know exactly what you mean for me we grew up where the pets weren't taken care of yes or trained well and stuff so if i smell cat pee yes like that can remind me of those sort of situations yeah yeah a lot of i know a lot of this stuff is i think like reclaiming that it's okay it's okay now in the present do you what i mean like if if a cat pee's on a rug it's just like that just like kind of a normal pedantic part of life yeah but used to take us back to these really but i think that that's what i mean about like what you just described to honor that is like it really takes you back to um a time in your life where i don't know what you know like if you were really young or whatever where you shouldn't been smelling that or seeing that or been exposed to all that but it's just like it also i think and smells are very powerful um the it it takes us right back to sort of like the emergency of it the dissociation of it you know i was in a group therapy with someone that um had a very violent violent alcoholic you know like quasi homeless father that would pop in and pop out and he did something called an experiential and this may this may seem kind of radical but in the in the group work that i do and that i was doing back then um is in the experiential we bring up the ex the trauma experience in a good enough way and he created this kind of like almost like halloween straw man kind of dummy of his dad and he poured like the specific alcohol all over it to get the smell the cigarettes and it's those tactile things i know the sounds this sounds intense because it is intense those tactile things get the person triggered back to their trauma but then in the therapy session we try to have a different outcome oh how do you do that because to me to me having had difficulty in therapy it feels like oh that's you're treading on thin ice there patrick i know and i kind of wanted to ask you about that because i know you don't do a lot of like work around like dysregulation and being able to sort of as best as you can you know or knowing when the judgment call is how much of it is too much you know right and for those people doing that work is there was a whole year and a half of group work of cultivating safety and knowing about what happens to our inner child and when somebody is preparing their own experientials that way like like a role play that i do or a rescue for a terrified child or doing some rage work there's a lot of slow lead up to that point this it's not just like week two it's like okay make a dummy of your dad and like you know what i mean bring in the paul malls and you know what i mean like the really cheap generic brand whiskey and you know what i mean and his bad attitude and bring him in tomorrow long long slow wind up to that but the different outcome is we might um have group members kind of arrest the dad and get him out of there wow or have a social work come in or a therapist come in or somebody really takes care of their inner child and then it's i mean what's wild about it is the subconscious doesn't know that it's not real we're bringing up the trigger trauma brain essentially and then we're doing work while that's triggered to cultivate what should have happened that dad gets taken off to jail that the other siblings get some care that the person's inner child um gets some simply debriefing you know it was scary to be around your dad when he was drunk like that so prof you know like that's where um and it when the person walks away is well it's very scary to do they're super nervous to do that kind of work there's a lot of prep work i might be working with them for a couple weeks about sort of prepping this experiential or something like that i did one and i know not everyone's trauma is about alcoholism or growing up in bars or cigarettes sometimes you might have a uh you know perfectly pretty household white picket fence but no one can do emotions and someone's a covert narcissist or you know what i mean or it doesn't have to be that but in my own group work um when i was struggling with drugs and alcohol myself i did an experiential around i brought in the six-pack that my mother drank and her brand of cigarettes and i did a whole experiential about giving back what she exposed me to because i was taught those coping strategies from her so i think that that's what i mean like when you when you smell that stuff in a bathroom and it takes you right back is that's what i mean about the triggers telling telling us that we might benefit from doing some work down the road about those things uh how interesting i i counted i've seen 11 therapists in my life and i've talked on this channel about the experience a lot about my need to find a different way forward because to my knowledge none of them had this themselves and they had an outsider's understanding of what some of these problems are plus it was pre you know so much has emerged in the last 10 years about this being a neurological phenomenon we're not just like you know unconsciously holding on to stuff like our brains got hurt and it's very hard to manage when your brain is kind of limping along so i'm really into the brain healing pieces yes man sorry about that we're holding on to the past yeah well yeah i'm trying to recreate my childhood and i'm just trying to avoid love or something and i was just like i think that's not true though i think i'd like to have a good life now and of course i'd like to be loved i just keep making the same weird mistake over and over again and i can't see it coming and i don't know why and i'm ashamed and and you know as good as my therapists were they would just be baffled by my behavior you know my continuing to make the same mistake and the way i was so defensive and angry about it where i seemed so reasonable before but now i i just was so liberated when we learned about the brain injury of of complex trauma that there's neurological changes that certain things become very hard that your reasoning gets hampered when you're under stress and your emotions get bigger and like that right there explained it but just knowing like it's physiological i'm not doing this on purpose and i can't help it and it's not my fault it's not my fault and that was you know people had told me all the time your parents problems were not your fault and even when i was four i knew that i didn't take that on but it's just like why am i so screwed up why do i keep you know acting weird i'm i've um just made plans to go see um a cousin and an aunt who i haven't seen in many years and most of my extended family is out of touch with me and i've never known why and i always have this like shame attack feeling it's like it's because of the mistakes i used to make which i'm not really sure they even know completely about but but uh sure i don't know if i'm gonna talk to them about it like that just never feels safe to me to go talk to normal people about it and be like you know is there some reason why you stopped talking to me but i guess i don't know why this for whatever reason this is coming up right now but um i had a um some kids in my family that their parents lost custody of them eventually they got custody back but when that happened it was this huge crisis and i was the only person who could help at all and i could only take one kid and it was very hard to make happen so i fostered a child from my own family and um totally destructive to my relationship to the other to the parents who i had previously been close to and it was this really hard situation but when i knew what was what the kids were going through both before they were removed and especially after actually when they were in foster care i would have done anything you know i just would have done anything i just would never want a kid to have to be in a rough situation like that and and right now the thought of seeing my an aunt it's coming up now i'm like why didn't you do something why didn't you do something surely you knew i talked to like friends parents i'd be like i don't know if you know this but you know my mom was an alcoholic and there was all this violence going on and they were like oh yeah no we knew yeah but in those days you know what do you do right what do you do they knew and what they did do right is there were a lot of um teachers and friends parents who came in and like they're like you want to come over you want to go to summer camp with us would you like to learn to knit how about if i paid for ice skating lessons for you and my daughter you know right it's like sort of passive addressing i mean it's you know what i mean i don't know how to take it away yeah not it's not i think every kid in that situation um i know exactly what you mean you know like i i you know i can't tell you how many clients have said the same thing where you know they reconnect with an aunt years later at thanksgiving or something like that it's like sort of like oh you know i told even in my own family like you know someone said like well i told your mom not to marry your dad

you know that in that case it's sort of it's sort of an example of someone seeing it at the time you know which is a clue and it's helpful for my own processing but there's so many sort of like oh we knew you were in trouble we just what were we gonna do there's something to that it is very hard to intervene it's hard yes there is a society kind of problem there but but son of a [ __ ] do you know what i mean like it's just sort of there are other people who um profoundly you know i was on tick tock and i you know somebody was saying they were sort of saying i took in my three my three-year-old nephew because i knew my brother was like a heroin addict and abusive and i knew i knew that the mom was really sort of in in really bad shape or similar or hitting him or whatever and no questions asked i just kind of essentially i just took him you know and i got custody and he just went off to college yesterday

so those stories like really make me well up and sort of but coming back to your question is um what you know in a way it's like unless i just think that unless that person is insightful or safe or or whatever is um and sometimes it's almost like we have to just let the let there be an elephant in the room if it's not going to kind of go anywhere but i i do know what you mean well it'll be interesting when um if if anybody asks me i mean one thing about my family is there isn't these these people are pretty cool i think it's gonna i haven't seen them in a long time so i don't know what to expect but by and large my family never asks about my life if i if if i ever do have contact with them it's that kind of family right i don't think people necessarily know what i do for a living or anything but if it comes up then i'll say oh you know i have this thing called crappy childhood fairy and that sort of you can't help but sort of open the can of worms

like did somebody have one of those about what happened to us yeah yeah but of course like so many families it's um you know the older generation had trauma too on that side for sure they they i think they had an alcoholic dad i never met him he died very young um and they were so poor they were so poor and they had to worry about food all the time and right yeah and you know in a way i think um these families are really tricky and related to that trauma in a way that you might want to talk about it with them but there might be a part of them wants to too but doesn't know how yeah you know just i think that like when you think about the generations of you know i'm just thinking about like that you know despite who my parents were about what their trauma you know like where it's fascinating to be alive in this time of day that someone can look at this conversation between you and i like an 18 year old and can be like you can talk about that you can talk about growing up in a bar or you can talk about that your dad was slimy or you can go there is blows my mind because when you and i were 18 you know i was lucky enough to land with a therapist who was really good and could help me and like she she could just see it on my face about what i went through and she's the one that drew it out of me

but now people have these resources and that you know what what we can and we can't talk about you know or acknowledge yeah yeah and you and when you and i were chatting the other day and you said something about we were talking we were like oh let's talk about you know what's a good trauma therapist which i i do want to talk about but it's been saying oh they have to ask about the trauma and it's funny what i was reflecting on afterwards was i used to have to make a rule with therapists and say i'll give you this much time to talk about my family but at a certain point i insist we begin to talk about my life because i'm sick and tired of it always being about my mom you know yeah okay right and i always felt like um and i've this is i used to say it's like um my family drama porn it was like that's such a harsh way of putting it but it's like something that people couldn't look like therapists couldn't look away and it was so compelling and it was so like oh wow surely we you want and need to talk about that and after 11 therapists i had talked about it in my case what was really helpful was to like stop talking about it after a certain point and bring the focus in because i was spending decades like talking about what happened to me rather than um including or moving on to like but what's going on here because i was starting to make grave mistakes you know the older i got that were really you know a real source of trauma too and i call you know that's like i talk about that a lot in my work it's like when you grew up traumatized and disregulated you end up with these habits and patterns and stuff like you know i don't know i smoked i smoked heavily i lashed out at people yeah sure stuff like that was really causing a lot of problems for me and so talking about my mom wasn't helping me solve those problems in theory maybe if we had gotten far enough but we were working on this assumption that if we just talked for enough years about what had happened that i would have some breakthrough and instead of like feeling better or feeling closer i was going down and there was this myth happening of like well it's gonna feel worse before it gets better but it's like for six years you know i was like oh i felt like i was afraid i wasn't going to make it right it makes me think about a couple things the first thing is i think that there is a uh and i think therapist you know i think of the old guard like sort of psychoanalysis 60s and 70s and 80s or or people they assume there's like a hollywood idea of what that is do what i mean like like year 12 of two times a week then someone says like oh my mother wasn't capable of love or they didn't you know they they my mother loved the idea of me not the real me yeah and there's i see it now i'm healed you know and there's just some like you know like and then the therapist would like you know like sort of sports you know the tweed thing with the arm with the arm patches so like well you've done amazing work here and then you're cured you know like it's such a it doesn't it doesn't work like that it also makes me think about for about uh four years between an internship and a job i worked with veterans and every time a veteran would get reintroduced to the system about whether they had they needed a psych eval or whatever or needed a new therapist or whatever there would be this person asking them psychosocial assessment where do you live what was your childhood like what are your current things and the veteran would have to repeat this three to four times a year yes to the point that it was just you know they they they would get enraged which i you know what i mean i even hated asking them you know what i mean i i started i started breaking the rules and just copying and pasting about stuff because to ask them again yes well first of all it's very much like medical system stuff and just sort of like it's just whatever but it made me think about your experience but i when i got to therapy it was sort of we started talking about my family instantly but i was being trained to use my story to make my present better right out of the gates there was a certain context about what it was being used and even people who do my groups they have the same point like you know why patrick why are we still talking about my mother we're in like year two and a half in this group can we can i just move on and like you know like i just want to find a soul mate move on with my life and have a kid and you know like whatever and i'm sort of say like well i think we should keep talking about your mother because you keep sabotaging your relationships and it's not like i'm in a power struggle with them it's just sort of like even even my own clients get sick about talking about it but it it's not good to keep beating in that dead horse unless there's a rhyme and reason to it i agree i agree and it was that myth i'm thinking of the movie good will hunting it's a great movie but that scene where we're matt damon and robin williams it's like he finally admits what the pain is and then he's like he had a breakthrough and he's all healed i i saw that what how long ago however long ago that's when i was in the middle of things and i remember feeling that way every time i had somebody somebody would say oh therapy's great i had such a great experience i'd be like yeah how is that supposed to happen like but that just knowing that like doesn't do it for me and and i suppose that's where finding out about this regulation was so helpful to sort of fill in that gap like a person like me cannot process just just talking to me and me saying stuff i could say anything i could see it in that session but by the time i'm out of there because of just regulation i can't even form a memory of it that's what i love about your channel because what i find is people who had similar experiences to you in therapy incidentally like i hit the lottery about finding someone good at 19. yeah i love hearing about this what and what i've learned over the years is like most people don't have that experience in therapy so i just happen to you know what i mean yeah whatever i'm intently grateful for but what

no you have i think you're uniquely gifted for what you're doing right now to share this with people to have gone through it yourself and then to professionally help people have that experience of breaking through their traumas like what finally all that suffering means something now because now this is a superpower thank you but i always come back to my mentor because it wasn't when people would see her it became you have to see this woman like i got to her through word-of-mouth referral by someone who just really trusted her so she was just really good at what she did but people really really saw safety in her much like a safe mom that they had never there was just something about her but in in you like what i hear is when when a client comes to me they'll say what you're saying i've been to 11 people some of them helpful some of them not and it never concluded do you know what i mean like they would always be asking about my dad or or even not some of the other people like not going there at all and what i love about your channel or what i love about sort of like the sort of a movement of social media or this kind of stuff is some people are trying to heal themselves because the services are not out there and let's be blunt they're not out there there's very little of it and it's expensive and most people don't have that kind those resources and most health plans aren't going to help with it and so now there's youtube right and even well-meaning therapists cannot be sort of trained yeah or you know what i mean or their working place of you know and i don't want to like poop like there are some really great therapists out there on the field but i think that the field needs a lot of work when it comes to people's stories or how much too soon i think so too and i think that there's a lot of work going on right now in early childhood intervention which is fantastic so that in the future hopefully there'll be fewer people like me who don't even get to get any help till they're an adult but but i saw another thing i see going on right now is it's kind of a popular topic there's a lot of sort of grant funding to do some kind of intervention and so you have a lot of people who have taken some kind of continuing education credit you know for trauma-informed care and and it could be anything and that's you know i have i have a professional history as a um you know analyst of research and i look at it and that's one of the things that's always disturbed me is it's not very transparent so when people say go find a good therapist it's like what is that how would you even know what that is what are the markers is it reported anywhere if somebody you know is actually really successful at helping people with trauma and that's one of the things that i think youtube and social media as much as they carry a lot of problems a lot of negativity it does help it does help people who know what to do become visible to ordinary people who can now find them it's not just like behind this giant curtain like it used to be there was no way to know so i wanted to ask you patrick like what for somebody who's thinking i'm gonna try therapy or i'm gonna try a new therapist what should they be looking for

yeah um sort of do you mean in general or do you mean for childhood yeah for childhood trauma for this thing that hasn't been very well cared for in the past and is rarely handled well it's emerging and this was good information for the therapist listening to like what skills to cultivate what awareness to cultivate for the therapists who are interested in providing childhood trauma i really have a strong opinion about this is don't do it unless you've done significant work yourself if you're going to go into that field or go into that world i think you have to kind of talk the walk and really have some mastery over your own childhood before you start working with other people you know what i mean and i want to be fair there like that can be even hard it's hard it's hard for general population people to find a childhood trauma therapist it's hard for therapists you know what he means but i really think for before a therapist wants to get into that is to really not approach it like sort of like oh depression is interesting you know you know do some research do some maybe do some mindfulness cct and that kind of don't don't approach it from a an academic kind of place all of um what i do who i am as a youtube person or therapist or whatever came from my experience in therapy not from my master's program not from any really trainings is i kind of went into getting a license and i already knew kind of what i i just wanted to do what my mentor did in that i was like a sponge for that model so there's that but for people who are seeking um a trauma therapist is um hard they're hard to find you know it's if anyone's listening if you want to create an amazing website create a national reserve of vetted childhood trauma therapist and make that website don't go into it as a as a money maker just go into it as do you only mean like here you know here they all are and it'd be amazing if people could sort of vet therapist or whatever and then have them be you know you if you're in michigan you want to find somebody boom there they are so because most people go on psychology today and then they just type in by oh i have blue cross and i live in the zip code and i think that this is the best way to answer your question then it's not wrong to assume list and this is what's sad about it most people if you're 22 and you do that zip code and then health insurance then there's the assumption of i can talk to these people about my mom and they'll know what that is and that's probably wrong most of those people some of them might but a lot of them won't or won't know how so given that problem is i really tell because i think most people and i'm sorry to be so long-winded i just moved and i needed to find a new primary care doctor right and i called um a local sort of hospital system do you have any people you know physicians taking new clients yes we do they're over here you know and then i said do they take my insurance and they're like we don't know call your insurance so i call my insurance and i confirm all that and do all that if i'm struggling like this i'm not but you know it doesn't matter but if i was struggling with diabetes i can put good money that that person is going to know how to treat my potential diabetes it's not the same with therapists so what i what i tell people is to really read the profiles and if if a therapist says i work with couples families uh bipolar mindfulness i do this i do that and their list is so long that tells you they're cut trying to cover too many bases do you want to find the person who is sort of saying childhood stuff trauma issues and they're not covering all of these bases so yeah if that was a rant i just have a strong opinion and it's because it's really frustrating to find somebody yeah that's such a good point and i think there's hardly anybody who doesn't put ptsd in their profile i've noticed yes looking around everybody puts it but really do you and and then cptsd is a separate thing and right and it's it's it's not totally the same thing and understanding that and and then even people who are deep into the topic they're going to have different approaches this is this is why when i when people ask me what should they look for i say well first of all first make yourself sovereign to this you don't have to like hand over control of your healing to somebody just because they take your insurance and even if they could heal you they you know like well they can't like nobody i think i feel like there's in it's in health care generally but in mental health care there's a little bit of this paradigm of like we deliver healing to you it's like well you deliver attention and and professional experience but the healing happens within through you know and you get some help with that and so what i i read my youtube comments and i know i bet i know you you know you learn so much about like the human condition by reading what people are writing there and so many people i've noticed particularly in the uk for example when they when it's identified that they have childhood trauma they go on a list to get access to a trauma-informed therapist and it could be like two years but then they have this perception that healing has now been prevented for two more years and i always say to them it's like that's too bad but first of all you don't know that that person is actually going to be able to be your person you know it's it may not be a fit and right now you can start doing self-led things to start healing you do not have to have a therapist for every part of your healing like it's it's it's a special thing that's not like anything else but honestly my strongest my you know my strongest tools it's this for me because for me negative hamster wheel thinking is is a lot the form my trauma takes and when it starts kicking up the thoughts i can't tell which thing comes first i go a little bit unconscious when i'm triggered or when i'm getting dysregulated but i have some really tell-tale signs my nose goes numb and like when we got on the phone this this morning to start taping my nose was a little bit numb and i i just kind of did my i did my drill till it's like come back come back nervous system activate on not off i know what you mean you know to bring it back because and knowing how to do that is like it's it's so powerful and had i known this when i used to go to therapy i could have gotten so much more value out of that very expensive hour you know each time if i had known how to stay in my body if they had known how to recognize that i was you know kind of like you know falling away from presence right one other thought i know what you mean like every related to what you just said i'm a musician and every time you know i'm i'm a pretty good musician until you put a mic in front of me because i think when either a camera or a mic on me or starting with somebody or you sitting across from a therapist is i think our body starts to feel attacked because i think in childhood to be seen was to be attacked yeah yeah and i think that that's what that is but coming back to a little bit about finding the therapist is i tell people if you can get the therapist on the phone about a potential session ask them how do they work around childhood trauma and if you get uh well i'm trauma informed and i like to use mindfulness or something like that and that's fine and good again i'm not poo pooing that is i'm saying you want to be looking for a response if someone were to ask me that like well how do you work with childhood trauma then my spiel kicks in about sort of like well i'm i work from an inner child perspective i think you know or if you don't like that term inner child amygdala hippocampus the trauma brain the inner child looks at the present through the lens of childhood and we do a lot of connecting the dots between the two and a lot of sort of you know as you as we sessions go on we talk more and more about shifting out of the unfitness business from our you know like that's like a canned i'm immediately going to be talking about that because that's my gig that's what i do that's what i'm passionate about do you know what i mean if it but i guess you know i know it's so much needle in the heytak haystack stuff but you know we don't have to ask like a general physician to sort of say well how do you approach diabetes because they all have a systemic you know what i mean they all probably hopefully have a training about getting your insulin checked and looking at things and blood work and then maybe looking at a treatment protocol and it's pretty cut and dry

yeah yeah it's it's so comforting for me to hear you say this about saying specifically where you're coming from of course there are different approaches and different approaches work better for different people and if we as a person who needs help we can tune in like does this speak to me or not does this speak to me is this calling to me is it comforting to me to hear somebody talk about how they approach it yes and i want to be clear well i was just going to say when you said mindfulness there is a lot of that and i know mindfulness is a really important tool for a lot of people yes but i feel like the people who believe like that's going to be sufficient for cptsd obviously don't have cptsd it's you know it's a little thing in the context of a lot of things even though for everybody like stopping and being more mindful is helpful like it's just so much more than that and so that is that is a trigger word for me mindfulness i know yeah like you know i want to be clear like i don't want to throw other clinicians yeah therapist life coaches or healers i don't want to throw anybody under the bus yeah so not my intent to sort of you know to sort of do that but i think that if you're if for anyone's listening if they're seeking that is you know i want to say to people's inner child you have the right to ask questions yeah you have the right to discern about how it's going to go the other piece to it too is that it's not going to work unless you like the therapist it's not going to work unless you like the person and there's good vibes kind of going on there um so it's it's just it is it is kind of really tricky and really hard um in that way the other piece is like when i was 19 and got the therapist i could have benefited from a mindfulness person for six months to regulate my system i'm not saying it's all bad i'm just sort of saying like those things are really really good yeah sometimes clients come to me and they you know if i ask them have you been in therapy before they might say i was with somebody for a year and a half they helped me through my divorce but that what we didn't really get into childhood trauma amazing or we did cbt for a while and that really helped with my depression i just want something deeper amazing you know but i also get you know like well i kept going to this person and i just was just they just stared at me blankly for six months and i just didn't want to go through the rigmarole of finding a new one that sucks yeah it does it does i'm sort of a i'm a i'm a connoisseur of things that are regulating and um i was taught mindfulness techniques when i was in high school really i don't think it was called that yet but but uh luckily because of like acting classes and things i had teachers who were teaching meditation practices and also you know the mirror game and theater it's you're actually getting very regulated and following along with somebody it turns out there there's all these regulating practices that have been with us for thousands of years oh sure what's the miracle but i i'm always curious about them and how to use them and so a lot of in the early days when i was first trying to recover and not finding help through everything i just found that for me i i've noticed some people have a very sort of body-based dysregulation and that's the place where you begin so stuff like yoga you know or somatic type things help my body tends to be kind of triggery and the place the easier place the easier entrance point is through language and thinking and writing and and there's and i've noticed you know now i have the pleasure of friendship and camaraderie with so many people who have what i have and all of us you know for uh for me and them it's been this experience of like no one's ever described what i have and when i first started saying my experience people would say i have that too and i would just cry i'm like you're kidding you have it too and every time somebody tells me that they relate to something i put out in a video some experience of what it's like i'm so moved to find out because every time it takes another layer off of self-attack it just takes another layer off of self-attack you know like so it's not my fault so i couldn't have helped it so this is a common pattern of how how normal kids become adults and and struggle a little bit it's like there it's like almost cookie cutter sometimes you know the way it plays out and that was such a relief to be off the hook and to just know i have a normal reaction to an abnormal injury and that is uh to have that understood by each other so many of us say to each other you've done more for me than anybody ever has only by just reflecting back you have that too you have that too and then and then people share knowledge about how you know how did you get over it so now i'm learning about all the possibilities out there of how to do it and some people are also doing a sort of um mechanistic approach where it's like stimulation of the vagus nerve or or movement techniques there's so many ways that people are coming at it and so it's also really increased my open-mindedness and respect for what works um that people are different and it it's going to require helpers and professionals who have different approaches and who can name it and who can take those approaches seriously and not just think that childhood trauma is something that everybody just understands off the bat right but to also understand that you know um i want to come back to you said something about can i ask what was that thing you mentioned about mirroring in theater when you were oh yeah have you ever played the mirror game you stand and face somebody you get assigned to somebody it's when you're in high school and you feel like you have a fat stomach it's just torture you know yeah somebody's looking at you but you you know one person puts their hand up and the other person mirrors it and puts it right there and so you follow each other along and when i look back i think oh yeah for for being on stage you want to be aware of your body and your movements and it's an exercise to tune in and tune into another person but actually from a nervous system point of view no wonder i loved theater no wonder i loved theater right it was all about presence and intimacy that's intimate it's painfully intimate that's what i call fire hose intimacy also like when my dad would ha my dad died of als when i was a teenager and he um he had always been a very loving dad for all for all the problems we had as a family and i didn't get to have as much time with him as i would have liked but but uh he would he would always let me know that he thought i was wonderful and he loved me and that was totally positive for me but when he when he was dying and he had a throat tube and you know he could barely talk because of the als and he go oh so much it would be like it'd be like somebody shining a clean light in my face like it was so much love i couldn't even handle it right and i couldn't i i got very shut down from the trauma that i had been going through and i couldn't receive that love and brilliantly i don't know if it was just me or maybe his spirit has helped out i don't know but his love seems to have been like time capsule for me and received in my 40s when i was raising young kids and i went wow my dad loved me so much and and that helped me understand how how the cptsd response is actually so genius sometimes you know it does it preserves you know it gives you a coping mechanism it's like i'm shutting down i feel nothing i might have to do drugs or you know do reckless things in order to feel something right now but when i'm ready and situations right i'm going to come back out and it's going to be a little bit hard but i'm coming back out and i'm going to you know that's like the word recover i'm going to recover that full awareness that i was meant to have and that's what i think is so exciting about recovery we're not just trying to feel better we're trying to come back come into bloom in a way that we never have before with all that stuff that was tucked away by trauma packed up yeah right for me we had different experiences but the same thing for me i got that from group um and then later like 12-step meetings about being in a community because i think again i think the theme to what we're talking about about when i was say four years old and around my dad who was sort of scary it wasn't safe to be visible so i think that our our cphse is like repression of ourselves repression of our emotions and then i think the body freaks out when we try to reverse that process and be present or whatever so there's a lot of i think that that's maybe what recovery is is like tolerating yeah you know you mean tolerating more and more intimacy and tolerating more sort of stuff but i'm also fascinated by like can you tell me more about like what what other self-regulation things you know what i mean like really worked for you well as the year rest you know yeah

i think in my 20s i was able to i feel like my cptsd it's sort of like i don't have alcoholism but i'm very affected by alcoholism obviously and i learned in 12-step recovery myself about how alcoholism is progressive and fatal like a person could stop drinking and everything would be great and then you know 15 years later they drink again and their alcoholism is much progressed and that's i feel like cptsd is like that that that it it requires um for me a daily maintenance and that i when i start having good days i'm like oh i don't really need to use my tools or do anything because i'm i'm healed now i'm good i've got this nice husband you know everything's great but actually what happens when i don't stay in my sort of daily routine and the stuff that i do to support myself which includes techniques but also connecting with people like lockdown has really taught me how sensitive mine and a lot of people see ptsd symptoms are to isolation and it's a self you know it's like a it's a bad spiral because you start isolating and then you can't deal with people you can't tolerate right it's it's just so triggering and so whatever the triggers are so so for me part of my routine for regulation involves things that are sometimes out of my comfort zone like participating speaking up not speaking up like learning to just have a little bit of like choice about that and so i'm not like lashing out but nor am i um sitting there suffering in silence and getting elegant i had a gathering at my house the other night and some guests got a little bit heated in a discussion about something and i saw other guests sort of shifting in their chair and yeah in my heart i was thinking um i'm starting to get triggered i don't know if everybody else is getting triggered but i still had my capacity you know because i'd used my techniques before the party you know faithfully but i i just was like before i get triggered and before everybody else gets triggered i need to find an elegant way to sort of like calm this situation without being super codependent without being controlling without shaming the people who are getting a little bit heated you know because it is it's a party that i have periodically for people to discuss things and it's wonderful but of course it's going to get heated sometimes and people feel strongly and they're good people and they wouldn't be there if i didn't have faith in them so we had had a presenter and i went over to her and i put my hand on her shoulder because she was presenting and some people sort of digressed and were getting heated and i put my hand on her shoulder and it's what i it's what would help me a hand on the shoulder just like ground me please come you know call me back and she's a young person who had prepared a lot for the presentation she gave for people to discuss and i put my hand on her and i just said i really want to hear what our presenter was going to say would everybody be okay with that could we hear that and when i went to bed that night i was telling my husband i was like i am so proud of myself like i didn't freak out i was a good hostess i took care of the presenter i took care of the people who were getting heated and everything kind of like naturally shifted and later um as the party was winding down people were chatting with each other and saying that was kind of intense i was worried but then it got better and i was just like nobody knows my private victory that i was able to be part of the sort of thing people getting heated and yelling is like used to be just kryptonite for me it just would ruin everything and i would be likely to either totally shut down and never want to see those people again or lash out and say things that were way more intense than i meant for them to come out and damage my relationships with him so the minute i get triggered i go into terror i'm going to ruin my relationships i'm going to ruin my social circle no one's ever going to like put up with me again so there's this thing i was so proud of myself so people on my channel know i i i use a technique i've used it 27 years it was taught to me by this young woman who was pretty fresh off the streets who had learned it in a a she taught me how to write my fears and resentments on paper and then ask for them to be removed and at that time like asking at some kind of a higher power was just like and she's just like well you told me that you feel like dying so you know if you want what to try what i do i would recommend you just pretend there's something that will help you with this because what else are you gonna do and at that time i was in therapy three times a week so i had that piece so she taught me to do that and it was like so powerful for me my mind it took about two weeks for my mind to kind of like snap into place like legos i just like all of a sudden i could focus i could hear the headphones with ac dc came off you know so to speak and and i could be present but then i had a lifetime of habits and self-defeating behaviors to start to understand and work with so it didn't like getting regulated was the beginning but i i grew up poor i grew up in a house with violence i grew up with a lot of shame i sought regulation through stuff like you know um you know stupid sexual relationships when i was too young and had no idea what was going on and got very hurt by them like a lot of things i or smoking pot or you know all the things that i used to seek out for regulation either were ultimately self-destructive or they just weren't sufficient and the writing for me i follow it with a really simple meditation that those two things were enough to put me up on the playing field to start having choices about like what conversation am i going to have right now how will i choose to deal with it if somebody insults me you should just start having a choice about it it's been a you know it's it's a never-ending process so i don't want to talk about it like and then everything with cinderella but of course not i know

but once i could stay regulated i was a human being again yeah we're so wired in a similar way i call it that you know um and also going to 12 step is i matured in 12 step i think the group therapy work was very healing for me but i kind of really grew up in those ideas and i would learn i think a lot of recovery is just learning healthier ideas from healthier people yeah so i just think having a community or having people to bounce stuff off of and then i love what you that victory you were talking about because if i was in your shoes there was a time in my life where i would go and become the mayor you know what i mean in like work well you know let's let's well we got crisis we got to work this out you know it just kind of take over and in a way that people didn't need that from me like your guests they didn't need an intervention you know they didn't need someone to take over or get reactive or whatever you know what i mean it's like it makes me think about um the part of me that like had to and i'm sure you did too i've just had to make [ __ ] happen because the adults are out of control oh yeah yeah i mean i'm i'm actually grateful for my my coping mechanism of being somebody who takes control of situations and it you know became a nightmare later but it sure got me through i had to raise younger siblings and or help with that quite a bit and right and then also that uh to put on a outward happy face too sometimes i just second guess myself and go well maybe if i had appeared to have more significant problems i would have gotten help but i think at the time i grew up not really um but yeah yeah so i appeared to have things together and i made myself an attractive friend for you know the girls who were my friends and their parents would want me over and and that was good that's like a survival strategy like be a nice kid and you'll get to stay over there a lot and and i had to go over there for food frankly you know when i was under 10. i grew up with a lot of hunger you know just wasn't together my mom was perfectly educated it wasn't that right it was i was at the friend's house i went to friends houses for a reprieve and everything that you're saying is so right on you know like we have to come up with these like fake selves the good kid you know what i mean or the shy one or the goofy one or whatever um and they really keep us alive they really keep us going you know or whether it's trying to get food and presenting a certain way or um i just sort of i just wanted peace and i would go to my friend's house because they had more peaceful households but then i'd leave in a shame attack knowing you know what i mean that i wasn't part of that family yeah or you know like you just kind of i think what sucks about this stuff we always knew in the back of our mind that we were coming from ratty families or messed up families and that what we didn't know is that sometimes the friends that we would seek peace or food from were going through their own stuff so we also assumed it was all us that's why i think community is so relieving or what people in the comments just just like oh my god you sound my mom sounds like your mom but when i was 12 i literally thought that i was the only kid on the planet that had those experiences yes yes

do you have any insight about where you think all this may be going now that the you know so much there's so much more knowledge suddenly available do you have a vision for i know you talked about like having a clearing house where we could have you know we could see who's the therapist and actually one silver lining of the pandemic is we've learned to do to do services on zoom so we're freed up geographically you know for when that's appropriate yep um i have no idea where it's going but what i do know is that you know when i went to therapy at 19 it was the therapist who said read john bradshaw about childhood stuff so back in the day you had to get the secret in code you know what i mean to be aware of any kind of sort of thing in the restaurants that i worked at or in french up circles in the late 90s or whatever or with girlfriends i mean people might share their stories a little bit but like i was just so you know what i mean and now in a way i love that it's almost like it's i don't want to be generous and say it's common knowledge but it's available knowledge that a 15 year old can watch you and i and get some ideas about maybe how to recover or what the process was like for us or whatever can you imagine at 15 you know the resources for you and i when you were and i were 15 years old was like ending up in a church basement somewhere or like a youth group yeah oh my gosh i remember somebody told me you should go to alatine and i remember when i was 15 i would like i wouldn't even dream of going to alatine in a million years you freaks you know i had an aunt tell me i should go to a latina it wasn't bad advice but i was 15 years old i was like you know guns n roses pot smoking drummer i'm not i'm not going to a church basement and talk about with other loser kids about their family no it's like carrying adults

or even like a high school guidance counselor who just tells you to be kinder to your mom you know like that was that was about it yeah and now what i think where i see where it's going is um there's so much more available that i think that a 20 year old can just jump on youtube at 2am and being able to name because people have these epiphanies they're just like oh my god my mother is you know what i mean my mother's suffering from borderline personality disorder that's what all that was or whatever or my you know my dad's an alcoholic and yes i i knew that i just have someone naming it you know or they can take tests or whatever sometimes it's too much because i have a lot of um like a lot of like clients who grew up in trauma they think they're on the spectrum when they're not oh you know because they're this there's too much overlapping of symptoms i mean adhd and childhood trauma look mirror image to me yesterday and borderline and yeah yeah like a lot of people are misdiagnosed borderline yeah or maybe they are and that you know it's like it's kind of a the drawback it's a little bit messy in that way but where i think it's going is um progress is slow though like you remember like 10 years ago when we figured out that bullying was bad that is a social innovation that's been marvelous you know my kids grew up in in radically improved there were other problems obviously but the concept of bullying being bad and unacceptable they were like oh yeah you know i see this stuff on old 90s tv shows that would never happen i'm like really wow wow right right sorry i cut you off there i got excited i'm excited too but yeah but like the progress is just kind of slow we put him in on the moon in 69 but it wasn't until 2009 that we figured out bullying was bad yeah so what i what i would really love to see i think but the other side of that coin i think that there's better parenting out there at least kind of well maybe at least what i sort of see in sort of communities that have the resources to be you know or whatever and um but at the same time too progress is slow yeah it just takes a really really long time you know and i wonder if um when that generation who's watching these videos now and can name these things and maybe get into therapy or maybe go do some healing work or whatever um can you imagine if our parents had done some work on themselves before they had kids i can't even imagine it honestly but yeah but yeah i know theoretically yes right well i think that you know my parents even if they were exposed to the resources they wouldn't have been interested in them no i don't think mine would have either and i would yeah i don't i don't think i think that's still true for a lot of people you know people just are where they are and they can handle what they can handle but i'll tell you what is patrick is i think that people like you or or and me we're we're changing the game because the voice of survivors is not just you know we don't have to wait to be invited to the table which we never were you know when they yeah every once in a while when some like board of directors i used to work in public health you know and occasionally they'd have a youth representative or something everybody was a token you know and they i never there was just no way to be at the table to talk about that there were a lot of assumptions um and those assumptions have been just horrible like as a kid i grew up really poor i'd go to the doctor they always were just they'd be like oh white kid fine parents must have everything under control goodbye you know they would never question they would never ask the right questions for that and likewise i think they made assumptions about kids of color too you know conversely like just assumption based well now we're all at the table and that's what the kid of color doesn't need anything because they're a kid of color yeah yeah or it's their fault or you know blah blah blah you know if we cannot speak for ourselves our voice cannot be considered in the way that we shape health care and mental health care and now we've claimed our place at the table without their permission it doesn't matter whether they agree with us or want us there we're there we're having we're having an influence and direct influence on each other and with you know great power comes great responsibility i think you know not everybody who has a public voice in this area is helpful um but everybody's going to have to find it for themselves you know like find the channels that really here's something that i want to advocate for people is find something that helps you feel better now we must feel comfort now um and that this is something i tell people when they're like what do i look for in a therapist i'm like don't buy the idea that it just has to feel like terrible and worse and worse forever like if they can't help you like feel better right away while you work on stuff that's hard it's not a safe place yeah like there needs to be comfort there and i think that that's true for youtube but the thing is is like sometimes what gets confusing is that what temporarily feels better is anger and i think our anger has been played um as a fake you know solution like once you get angry it's great it's like no once you get angry it's a step up off the floor of like suicidal depression but now what now where are you how are you going to process that and so i that's the second thing that i suggest to people is you know don't stop at anger don't settle for somebody who only knows how to get you into tears and rage you know like help some find help to become you know all the best part of you too right it makes me think about it so helpful like with the like say the culture of there's so much focus on narcissism i mean sometimes even on my channel or whatever but i try not to make it the focus but i think like in a way that someone figures out that their parent is sort of npd or has you know what i mean is sort of if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's probably a duck or whatever but i i worry that it stops there and people just think that to continuously name it is the healing when it's not there's more and i love what you sort of talked about sort of powers i think that people are more empowered now to sort of get the resources that they need they don't need to sort of like kiss the ring of some health insurance company or some person get the expert or whatever when it's readily available and sometimes better than coming off the mountain or something like that you know so i i i agree with that but also there makes me think about um you know

in my work i keep talking about holding our parents accountable and there's other sort of you know there's plenty of other clinicians out there or youtube personalities that sort of say um you know your parents are survivors too you have to make peace with that up front and the older i get the less opinionated i am it's like to to the viewer it's really find about to your point find the people that really resonate and work with you because either those things my thing about holding your parents accountable until you're heating until you're healed and then you can move towards forgiveness whatever that is after the fact you know what i mean like that's not going to work for everybody and i think that there's so much choice out there but to your point i think people i get comments like sort of well so-and-so said this and what do you say and it's i don't want to i don't want to have that i don't want to be there like well that's that's wrong that's wrong here's what's right that's wrong yeah completely wrong there's too much in this world it's like it's just really what works for you and what doesn't do what i mean because like i've had clients if i'm kind of say like we're gonna spend some time cultivating anger about what your father did that doesn't work for everybody i think it's part of it i mean in my experience it is part of it but it doesn't end there and that's where i think i i i think the therapists i've had have always been really good people but some of them were i don't know i think that they didn't have an imagination for what comes after that that there was they they didn't have any tools left in their belt for now that i was angry and being like enraged is a really tough place for me to stay right getting there getting there was important i i'm on the end of the spectrum of cptsd where anger has never really been a problem in fact the problem is like it's hard to like like now come out of it you know that's more that's more the challenge and i totally know people who they can't get in touch with their anger and i um but one thing i learned from you know the woman who showed me the techniques that literally saved my life that night it was that it was that the anger needs to be expressed but it's not like it's not like a coat you wear

yeah exactly we can't get free of something we can't express and also to have that validated like hold your parents accountable those are powerful words for me to hear because it's hard for me to do because it's just so because because if i can't if they did something i can't fix it uh you know that makes me feel really helpless but of course it has to be acknowledged yes in context um it's it's sort of about holding them accountable for how they parented between zero and eighteen years of age where and then very magically boom you know right i know and then it's then you're done but i just need to know but yeah you know like it's i tell people if if someone comes to me and if they're a parent and they just they get triggered by the work because they're like i'm a terrible parent i'm not being you know what i mean like i'm not being good around my own children you know like they're not gonna you know i really have to get them to get the perspective of you're here to be processing what your parents did what that whole experience was like you know just because you're here you're in the clear you're already a much better parent you're much doing so much better yeah that kind of a thing but um holding parents accountable is a not forever thing it's just about getting the survivor to recognize it's okay to have feelings about what happened to you it's okay to look at the ways that they failed no one's bad in that then when that's healed we can we can look at what happened to your parents it's just like it's more of like a step or whatever but most people lose interest in it so it's it is a really complicated thing but something you said earlier made me also think about um i lost it but um maybe it'll come maybe it'll come back to me at the table parents yeah yeah that's that's very powerful for me um you're you're helping me see just right there like i have trouble holding my parents accountable because it's so painful really and and it's a phenomenon i recognize in myself and i recognize it in so many people who i've coached is it's a little scary to put down your defense mechanisms it just feels like everything's going to go out of control for a lot of people it is anger anger is a protection it's it's a boundary before you have really like clever boundaries you know really nuanced boundaries just to be an angry person and go everybody just get away you know that's a boundary right when i ask a client to not codependently protect their parents about what they did or make excuses for them i'm asking them to jump in a pool and they don't know how to swim

that's those defenses you know what i mean it's where so that's why i go slow with people or whatever yeah but if i'm if i'm asking a very very codependent person to who never brings anything up to bring something up with me or a group member or their partner i'm asking them to jump in a pool without any floaties on without the knowledge of how to swim like that's how protective these sort of things are and i think this is what i was what i forgot earlier is i think the therapist who might get you to anger and then there's no follow-up it's i just think that you know in a way that they they don't know what they don't know you know i mean like there's so many sort of therapists out there that you know what i mean like well you've talked about it good for you you know what i mean you've opened up some doors here and i just sort of like again just really grateful for my mentor because she had a process of starting and stopping and you know what i mean it's just sort of like there's a there's even a syllabus to the group work that i do that comes from her so i just think that therapists who kind of are in that it's not like they're bad it's i just think that they just don't it's hard to explain but they just don't know what they don't know you know they don't they never have really looked at oh you can have a client hit the bag and work on their rage work you can have a client like do empty chair work with their with their mother who is sexually off around them you can do this or you can do that so it's just sort of but i also think coming back to that from the mountaintop is a lot of people are like whoa you're really going to activate people and part of that is true you know but part of like yes but that's the point and to have a different outcome towards the end of it but again it's it's we don't do that right out of the gates uh this has been a long conversation and you that is something i've always been meaning to ask you when you talk about sexually off i'd that's a phrase i hadn't heard before but i i think i know what you mean and it's so significant people who are sexually off around you when you're a kid like mom goes through a divorce and she's making out with men on the couch while you're in the den you know what i mean and you're eight and there's no process around the divorce you know or the classic thing that is rampant and i think you i went from what i know in american culture is you know before the internet i feel like every kid found a stack of playboys or video cassettes that they weren't protected from and that's another version of being sexually awesome yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oh i could i that's we could do a whole video about that and way more common than we think yeah like 70s and 80s and 90s and 50 wild wild ride oh the 70s were a mess because at the time there was kind of an idea like actually this is healthy for the kids you know to stop being so like puritanical about this stuff you know sex is normal nudity no big deal we had naked people around the house right and uh like yeah communal stuff and whatever you know yeah then we're watching brady bunch where it's not that you know that was one of my famous moments in childhood i was eight and i came in and um to my mom and my stepdad to be at that time and i came in and i was crying and upset about things and i and they she was just like what what and i just said why can't we be like the brady bunch and they just thought that was so funny because in their value system that was just stupid fake americana everything that you needed to run away from and i've watched it since then i showed it to my kids and they're like this show's so dumb and i'm like yeah i guess it is but to me it was an anchor i could go into you know just everybody yeah brady bunch laura ingalls wilder the little house books those were like my lifeblood of and and they've influenced me greatly and creatively and spiritually and yeah and the parenting that we get from watching like tonight on a very special growing pains [Laughter] like an issue would come up like one of the kids smoked pot in the woods or whatever and was caught by the guidance counselor and then the parents had an actual sane conversation around like that's you know that was like an anchor for me yeah or from what i learned from my clients for all of them too yeah yeah well to this day tv is how i learn how you have good communication with people there's certain shows i'm really into ted lasso right now and the way he can just have so much levity and compassion with people who are being jerks i'm i'm like totally clocking this i'm like okay how do you do this right absolutely you know like i've only seen like little segments of that but i gotta get into that show just because yeah yeah right yeah and all the feel-good shows the show parenthood for a long time you know i would watch like how are you supposed to have how are you supposed to have conversations and it's like oh first you say something to indicate that you heard what somebody said then you show them a little empathy for it although ironically when in my former career i did a lot of um i trained teams of workers to do better customer service and patient experience and so i i had to know what are these bullet points for what to do because i had to teach myself i was totally feral in terms of how do you have difficult conversations how do you express yourself in a way that's paced and considerate and then at the right kind of emotional dinner and

i would start out trying to be civil yeah and then i end up like an angry like beaker from the muppets do what i mean like just like sort of like but that's how my family thought i'm not like get that out of my head now be here from the muppet well i just think that there's an author um who he wrote the book no more mr nice guy which i i think is a really valuable book and he talks about it he talks about something called victim puke and i that victim puke and i wrote it right away and what it is is like a codependent person put you know takes the victim blow again and again and it's like i'm not going to say anything i i never complain i don't push back i just go along nicely and then one day it's like

that's a thing very destructive relationships i can testify better to communicate along the way and and

so much good thing everything good in life depends on being able to do that right i think that what that victim puke thing it just makes me think about my own childhood and i know we gotta wrap up in a second is that um uh it would you know in a way i think we repress we take it we don't say anything because it's futile yeah but then i think we hit this not today satan kind of moment and we lose it but the way that we do that becomes like um self-filling prophecy kind of a thing and people like oh patrick how could you you know like that kind of a thing yeah and it's just bad the way that that's on cycle repress blow up repress blow up blowing up is a little bit like it's just like the methamphetamine of emotions it's it's a quick it's a quick escape from what you're feeling you know and a feeling of empowerment and self-assertion followed by periods of remorse and you know it just it's a it's a quick hit and so like like so many things in life it's it's just not wholesome and it takes true healing to start to learn how to handle all the inevitable improv improvisations of life in a way that's truer to yourself and honest but and yet caring honest caring right um lastly is my mentor would say that you know it's like when she was teaching me about triggers she would say well being self-righteous is a sign that you're triggered oh interesting very that blew my that blew my mind so if you if you were like late to this and i was self-righteous and i was just like well uh why you know i showed up at 12. yeah you know you get that like i'm using it as a weapon but it's a sign that i'm defending against something up and something is up with the person's childhood when they become that self-righteous and you could see it all over social media all over that's not there's nothing zen about it there's nothing fair or mature or balanced i mean we do have the right to be angry but i love seeing someone um modeling healthy anger without being like passive aggressive about it or whatever i think that i think that that is actually more powerful yeah when someone can be in charge of their anger as opposed to kind of being a mess about it but like where where the the nature of the trigger is usually most clients including myself when we're self-righteous in our head like with our partners like of course you didn't get the nutella i mean if i can only put on the list like 12 times just pick up the nutella like that's just one of those fights in our head self-righteous rants yes yes and it's coming from that earlier disappointment from childhood of course you didn't [ __ ] pick me up from stuff i never get whatever i want no one cares yeah no one cares no one cares yeah yeah those little mantras that come in those little triggered mantras that come in are a cue and i know it's good to know that my one of mine is i don't need you i don't need anybody if i'm thinking that thought time to stop drop use the tools yeah anything that comes out of my mouth after that i'm thinking that is not going to be good yes right or when you're this close to like a sopranos you're dead to me

like that's a that's a thing for childhood trauma survivors you know they're falling in love with somebody and four months into the relationship the person says oh i have to reschedule who needs you yeah that to me i love it oh there's so many things we could talk about well this was this was wonderful i love that we connected i love your channel and i love what you're doing and let's do this again i never run out of things to be curious about your work patrick because you have this gift to to talk about things that are real and powerful and it like touches me and i think oh here comes my feelings and then you you you have a way of like keeping anything from just going out of control it just gets guided into an insight plus you're funny as hell this beaker thanks i love i love people who are funny it makes it possible to take in information that there's no other way i could it makes it comfortable and i could do this yeah me too me too well we have we've had such fun conversations so let's definitely do it again um i wanna make sure people know where to find you it's patricktntn on youtube and your videos are just flying out of the stratosphere right now they're doing so well you are really hitting a nerve and and i'm so impressed with you and proud of you and happy to be your friend and i love talking with you you're just like really fun and easy to talk to and i always had that experience when someone is really authentic and what i really love about it is that you know you're sharing your story as well do you want to mean it just you're just so human and i have a confession to make it's sort of like when i started my channel i would look at you look at your channel and kind of go like like how does she do that like how does she you know what i mean like this just like sort of like and i was also super relieved that somebody was also not only talking about childhood but it was in the title it's in the name of your channel and i was sort of like immediately drawn to it so i love that we just like sort of like we're just really kind of like like talking about the same thing yeah people need to hear this it's easy to imagine having been friends back in the day but of course absolutely right we would have been ripping butts behind the cafeteria

i know i've put all the links to patrick's things right in the description section below so if you missed me telling it don't worry you can open up the description section and find it there and link directly to his his website his youtube channel and his courses patrick and i have each made our own videos based on some long conversations here and you're going to want to see patrick's video definitely get over to his youtube channel and check that out [Laughter] [Laughter]

In this special collaboration, licensed therapist Patrick Teahan and Anna Runkle (the Crappy Childhood Fairy) share a heartfelt conversation about childhood trauma, recovery, and what it really takes to heal. They discuss common struggles survivors face, the impact of dysregulation, and offer grounded advice for anyone on the path to healing from a difficult upbringing.

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Information provided is not intended to be a substitute for in person professional medical advice. It is not intended to replace the services of a therapist, physician, or other qualified professional, nor does it constitute a therapist-client or physician or quasi-physician relationship.

If you are, or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call a local emergency telephone number or go immediately to the nearest emergency room.

If you are having emotional distress, please utilize 911 or the National Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255

A Chat With The Crappy Childhood Fairy - Anna Runkle

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childhood trauma

triggers

alcoholism

anna runkle (crappy childhood fairy)

complex ptsd (c-ptsd)

inner child work

employment

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