Ep. 507 Feel Disconnected? – The Most Overlooked Symptom of Childhood Trauma & How to Heal It with Anna Runkle

I am thrilled to connect with Anna Runkle today. Anna is known to more than a million subscribers across many platforms as the Crappy Childhood Fairy. For the last 30 years, she has shown people how to heal the symptoms of childhood trauma to live happier, freer, and more fulfilling lives. 

In her work, Anna almost always noticed a haunting sense of disconnection from others as an adult symptom of childhood trauma. Today, she shares her story, and we dive into complex PTSD and shame, exploring the adverse childhood event study, dysregulation, and how neglect affects the brain and impacts emotional regulation, memory, and learning. We discuss disconnection as a trauma response, obstacles to isolation, and finding your voice in complex PTSD and menopause. Anna also shares her daily practice and explains how writing helps to regulate the nervous system. 

You will love this invaluable conversation with Anna, also known as The Crappy Childhood Fairy, who is a fantastic resource for thousands, if not millions.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• How Crappy Childhood Fairy originated

• The differences between Complex PTSD and PTSD

• What does dysregulation look like?

• Unseen aspects of emotional dysregulation affect daily life

• Ways that childhood traumas can impact the brain

• How early trauma often leads to a chronic sense of disconnection

• Ways those with CPTSD can learn to cope with the stress of dealing with others and start connecting

• Anna shares her daily practice technique for emotional regulation

• Why the transition to menopause can be particularly hard for trauma survivors

• The importance of addressing trauma in healthcare and the need for better education and support for trauma survivors

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“The core symptom of PTSD that drives many other symptoms is dysregulation.”

– Anna Runnkle

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Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  

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Connect with Anna Runkle

• On YouTube

• Anna’s book, Re-Regulated, is available on most online bookstores 

• Pre-order Anna’s new book, Connectability, and insert your receipt number to gain access to exclusive free bonuses.

Transcript:

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives. 

[00:00:29] Today, I the honor of connecting with Anna Runkle, known as The Crappy Childhood Fairy, to more than one million subscribers across multiple platforms. Over the last 30 years, she has shown people how they can heal symptoms of childhood trauma and live happier, freer, more fulfilling lives. In her work, Anna noticed that a haunting sense of disconnection from other people is an almost universal adult symptom of childhood trauma.

[00:00:54] Today, we discussed her story, the role of complex PTSD and shame, the impact of dysregulation, as well as the adverse childhood event study, the impact of neglect on the brain, specifically to emotional regulation, focused memory and learning, how disconnection is a trauma response, obstacles to isolation, finding your voice in complex PTSD and menopause, and lastly, what is the daily practice and how this focus on meditation and writing can help with proper regulation of our autonomic nervous system. I know you will find this to be an invaluable conversation. Anna is an incredible resource for thousands, if not millions of people. 

[00:01:43] Anna, such a pleasure to connect with you. I was telling you before we started recording that I had not been familiarized with your work prior to setting this podcast up, but tell me about how The Crappy Childhood Fairy came to be because once I learned about your work and started watching your videos, I kept realizing how many of my patients, my clients, my friends, my family would benefit from the topics that you discuss and talk about so brilliantly and so beautifully on your YouTube channel and in your books. 

Anna Runkle: Thank you. Well, I was 53 years old when I got started with this. It was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time, and I was finally in a place where I could do it. I was remarried, my kids were in high school, and there was more time and energy for me to do it. But the big thing that helped me was I learned that there was a word for what I had always suffered with, and its complex PTSD, and that its core symptom that drives many other symptoms is dysregulation. And I really had never heard those words. It's hard to imagine now everybody talks about it, but I was out there early going, “Everybody, there's this thing,” [laughs] when I discovered it. 

[00:02:55] But I had-- 31 years ago, I was in a trauma storm. I call it a trauma storm. My mom was about to die. I had my heart broken earlier in the year and was still very depressed about it. And randomly, I got attacked on the street and beaten unconscious by a group of guys. And not robbed, just broke my jaw, my teeth and I developed PTSD, as you would imagine. 

[00:03:20] Now, as you would have a hard time believing. They did not diagnose me with PTSD. They did a CAT scan. They said, “Your brain's not bleeding. You're fine.” But I was not fine. I had just classic symptoms of PTSD. And as I now know will happen for people who had childhood trauma, it sort of gets out of the bottle sometimes with an adult trauma. And I was barely functioning. I was really depressed. I was flying into rages. I was pushing all my friends away, I was crying, freaking out, couldn't sleep on a regular schedule. 

[00:03:49] The doctor said take three months off from work. My work said, “No, you can have a week.” And I needed the job. And so, I was back at work. And then I almost lost my job because I said really inappropriate things. My brain was not working for me. So, I was going to therapy. And the therapist had been talking to me for years about how my mom was an alcoholic, my family was violent, I had grown up poor, I struggled in relationships. And when this happened, she suggested I come three times a week and talk more. 

[00:04:17] And we now know I'm like-- a lot of people with childhood trauma that can be extremely dysregulating, having to talk about trauma. So, I was there saying, “Okay, well, so I was walking down the street. They came out of nowhere. First, I didn't realize what was happening, but when I did, it was too late.” And telling the story over and over again, and it would retraumatize me. It would throw my whole body into cortisol, adrenaline, freak out, couldn't use my hands. And we would do this for an hour, three times a week under the idea that it would soon make me feel better, it didn't. And instead, I was becoming suicidally depressed. 

[00:04:49] And the doctor-- I went and saw the doctor who said, “Well, your brain is fine, but I'll give you Xanax.” And so, my instructions were, “If you feel freaked out, take Xanax.” And luckily, though, my family is full of-- I grew up in a hippie commune, so many drugs and alcohol, but that never really did it for me. It doesn't make me feel better. So, I was not drawn to excessive use of drugs. And the drugs would, I now know, sort of paralyzed my ability to get reregulated. I was dysregulating from talking. I couldn't get reregulated. And I was about one day away from making that final decision. And I happened to confide in a friend who showed me a different way.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:32] Your story is so inspiring. And as someone who grew up in-- my ACE score is 9. I had a lot of childhood trauma. The whole concept of complex PTSD, in many instances, is not even properly recognized in the DSM. We just did a podcast with Eamon Dolan and The Power of Parting, and he was talking about, it's poorly understood, it's poorly addressed. So, help listeners understand what differentiates complex PTSD from the traditional kind of vernacular. When people say PTSD, they're like, “Oh, I have PTSD because I almost got hit by a car.” No, no, we're talking about something that is quite different. 

Anna Runkle: [00:06:09] Yeah, well, complex PTSD is a special kind that comes from chronic, ongoing exposure to stress, usually during childhood, but not always, but that's what I had. And I had all the classic severe alcoholic family problems, and I had all the classic symptoms of complex PTSD, but I didn't know what it was. I thought I was weak, dumb, pathetic, disorganized, unlovable. I had a lot of adjectives for myself because of the way that my symptoms affected my life.

[00:06:39] So, it was in 2014, I learned that those are classic signs of complex PTSD. And the minute I knew it was a thing, half the burden of all my trauma came off of me because there was just so much shame about making so many mistakes, choosing the wrong guy, always having credit card debt up to my ears, and falling out with my neighbors and friends all the time. It's just very normal stuff. And I found out for the first time I wasn't crazy. I wasn't a bad person. These are normal symptoms for somebody who grew up the way I did. And I had just remarried my wonderful husband, and he was dealing with me getting emotionally dysregulated on him, and he was feeling scared for us. 

[00:07:21] And when I got this book, because I promised him, I said, I will deal with this. I'll find out what's wrong. And I did the whole therapy thing, and nobody ever told me-- Eventually, I saw a therapist and I said, “I believe I have C-PTSD.” And they said, “Yeah, I think you're right. That was my diagnosis.” But the diagnostic criteria, even now, it's not consistent across countries or practitioners. And then what you're supposed to do about it is pretty much all over the map. And one of my beefs is you can say that your trauma informed based on a two-hour workshop or a lifetime of specialization. It's not a meaningful term. I'd really like to see there be a lot more structure and meaning to the whole thing. 

[00:08:00] But in the meantime, I found something that helped me get reregulated. I didn't know that I was dysregulated or that was even a thing. For 20 years, I was using these simple techniques this woman showed me back in 1994. And it had to do with a specific writing technique to get my stressful thoughts on paper and then following it with a simple meditation. And at that time, she suggested I learn transcendental meditation and that worked like a charm. And I immediately began to recover from PTSD symptoms as well as depression. I had a lifetime of problems that I'd built up around money, people, [laughs] relationships. And that took more time to work on, but I finally had perspective on my problems, I could see my role. And I had a friend who agreed with me that it was time to stop talking about my mom and it was time to focus on the life problems I had and so she helped me kind of dig out of that. 

[00:08:51] And my recovery was so dramatic, people started to ask me. I went to Al-Anon. It's the 12-step program for families of alcoholics. It's terrific. It was so helpful to me. But because I was recovering so quickly, within a month people were asking me to sponsor for better and worse. And so, I started getting experience, trying to support others. I was gradually able to get better at that. And over 25 years, I think I sponsored about 300 women. And that was one of the things that led to what I do. 

[00:09:20] And then I built my own business. I worked in healthcare, creating education for clinical professionals for a long time, and that turned out to be part of becoming who I am now. And then I had been a professional comedian after college, that really come-- If you can do comedy, you could pretty much do anything.

[laughter]

[00:09:37] And then I had created a video production company. So, I made a lot of online education and marketing videos for other companies like Zoom and Kaiser Permanente. I was always out there learning from people and thinking about what makes good video? How do you make good training? 

[00:09:52] And then I just one day decided I would go learn. I just wanted to teach my method. And unlike a lot of people who want a memoir to tell about the trauma, I wanted to teach the method, I'm like, “This thing works. So many people have been helped.” And it was taking half my waking hours to keep taking phone calls from all the people who wanted to know how to do it, so I made a blog and I made a video. And I first had some very boring name called something like Your Healing Year. [Cynthia laughs] It sounded like a feminine hygiene product or something. [laughs] And then I just realized, I don't know, I just remembered how funny it is sometimes when you remember some of the things we used to do and suffer from and how great it is to be free of it. And I came up with the funny name Crappy Childhood Fairy. [Laughs]

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:36] It definitely pulled me in. I was like, “Oh, I must know more.” [laughs]

Anna Runkle: [00:10:41] One of the functions it serves is it goes, “Look, this isn't therapy. This is different.” But happily, about 15% of my audience, they are clinical professionals in mental health and the medical field. And my work is now being adopted by training organizations for psychiatrists. A lot of people use it. It makes a few people angry, they think, “You're not a licensed person. You shouldn't be talking about this.” And I'm like, “Just telling what worked for me.” [laughs] 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:08] Well, I've learned a long time ago that I view each person with their own merit and their messaging. And I think for a lot of individuals, making the information accessible. As a clinician myself, like for me, I appreciate and value when people allow individuals to be able to kind of do some work on their own. When you talk about this two-factor technique, which I know that will kind of expand upon, but when we're talking about the trauma response, you talk about this dysregulation. How does that show up? So, if listeners are perhaps not familiarized with that terminology, what does dysregulation look like?

Anna Runkle: [00:11:49] Well, your nervous system-- Everybody's nervous system gets dysregulated sometimes and most people will eventually reregulate. But for people who had trauma, especially early in life, there's like an injury that seems to cause a lot of glitching in nervous system function. And the more--

[00:12:03] Every year that goes by, we're understanding more and more what the consequences of that are. We learned from the ACE study several years ago how a history of trauma, and its dose dependent, the more trauma, the more symptoms. But it's very strongly correlated with almost every chronic disease there is. And heart disease, diabetes, cancer, not just depression and anxiety like you'd think, but autoimmune disorders.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:12:27] And earlier menopause. 

Anna Runkle: [00:12:29] Yes, yes, early menarche. And it affects your hormone system. Initially, when they noticed that traumatized people had physical problems, they blamed us. And, for example, there's a correlation with obesity. Sexual abuse is correlated very strongly, especially in women, with obesity later on. And I remember and the ACE researchers speculated, “Oh, they're just trying to avoid sex.” I tend to be iconoclastic. And I was like, “I don't think that's always the case. I think that it's probably something else.” And now we know, yes, there is endocrine disruption and things that affect sleep and cortisol and reproductive hormones that play a big role in the weight gain. And I was just looking at the statistics on that, somewhere around a 60% increase in the probability of obesity-- And that's after controlling for socioeconomic and in a likelihood of becoming obese later in your 30s or 40s, and, I love hearing that. I, for one, have struggled with food and weight all my life, and I could never understand how some people would just go on a diet, and it was solved, and I wasn't like that. 

[00:13:36] And what's so great about learning about trauma and getting to talk to people like you is I keep learning all these things that are cracking the code open, like a lot of this is not our fault.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:46] Right. 

Anna Runkle: [00:13:47] And it's kind of like we thought we can just take that shame off and then focus our attention on things we can actually change, so-- 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:53] No, I was going to say, I think that's such an important realization, because I know that when I was a new nurse practitioner a long time ago, I might have actually believed, because we weren't talking about the science sufficiently or at all. And I was trained at a time when we talked about big ‘T’ Trauma, murder, rape, homicide, I mean, those kinds of things. And so, I think for so many of us, I was like, “Oh, I didn't deal with any of that as a child, so it wasn't that bad,” but we understand now that actually little ‘t’ trauma, those little micro insults, can actually be, in many instances, based on the research, can actually be worse over the course of a childhood or a lifetime, so it's looking at trauma as a wound. 

Anna Runkle: [00:14:34] I feel like we need empty trauma, though. Things that are neither micro wounds nor murder. But having an alcoholic parent living in a constant state of anxiety about whether you were going to be able to keep a place to live, worrying about violence in the home. That sort of thing, it causes brain changes. It causes changes in the immune system that can increase the risk of autoimmune disorders. 

[00:14:57] So, I have three autoimmune disorders. I work very hard to stay regulated because I don't want another one. The ones I have are livable and not disabling. And I consider it precious wisdom that we now know that this was real, that what happened was real, how it felt was-- How it felt is what it is. It felt like something was going on with my body when I would get very triggered by something. And when I say triggered, I don't mean my feelings were hurt. I mean it initiated dysregulation through my body. And I want to talk about the dysregulation symptoms.

[00:15:27] The ones you can feel are the tip of the iceberg. And at the very top of the iceberg is the stuff that other people can see in you, and that's emotional dysregulation. When you're just lashing out and freaking out, that's what they see, so a lot of people confuse all dysregulation with that. But underneath, there's like becoming clumsy, discombobulated. You can't remember the last half hour of driving, but you must have gone over a bridge, because here you are in San Francisco, [laughs] and you're going where you meant to go, but there's this checking out and checking out during crucial decisions, but that wasn't explained to us before. 

[00:15:59] And then there's this feeling of being kind of amped up and not quite in your body as a metaphor for what people say, “We are in our bodies, but I can't quite feel my hands. I trip on things. I drop things. I feel numb.” And then there's the vast majority of it, it's affecting how my capillaries, how dilated they are, and whether my tissue can heal, and it's affecting what my white blood cells are up today. And so, you can't feel that and nobody else can detect it. And for everybody who's ever been made to feel crazy or like it's all in their head or psychosomatic when you have been ill for reasons they can't see, it could very well be that this is what's going on, and it is real, and you can have tremendous healing. 

[00:16:45] I've had amazing changes to my health that I didn't expect, I didn't know that would happen. I didn't even know, but when I started to reregulate for emotional reasons, my body, my physical problems like asthma, back pain started-- It just vanished, allergies. And then later I had a complicated surgery that ended up way complicated and I had to have 14 more major surgeries. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:05] Oh, my goodness. 

Anna Runkle: [00:17:07] And it was when I was going through a hard time through my divorce and I couldn't heal and nobody knew why. And a couple years after that, I went back to my techniques and then I spontaneously healed and I was able to talk to different experts on this who went, “Ah, there was a somatic factor in why you couldn't heal,” but nobody knew that. This was not that long ago, 2006.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:29] Yeah, we weren't talking about it. I mean, and what you're speaking to is, you're right. When we think about dysregulation, we think about people that can't regulate their emotions. 

Anna Runkle: [00:17:36] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:37] What you're also speaking to is this fawning dissociation that many of us experience under duress.

Anna Runkle: [00:17:43] Mm-hmm.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:44] And it's interesting, I have a family member who's like a sister to me and we were talking about specific instances in our teen and young adult lives we were like, “Oh, I was totally dissociated, like I was there, but I wasn't there.” I was--

Anna Runkle: [00:17:55] Yeah.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:56] If someone were to see me, I looked totally normal, but my body was not processing what was going on because I got triggered for any number of reasons that can occur. Now when we talk about brain changes, what's happening, what is actually happening in our brains, whether it's being triggered and having this emotional dysregulation or the somaticized dysregulation or you know childhood, we're exposed to micro or macro traumas. What is happening in our brain that's impacting the physiology and anatomically what's going on?

Anna Runkle: [00:18:29] Well, I'm not a doctor or therapist and I'm going to leave that to you to describe. I've read it, I understand it. But what I really like to focus on is what does it feel like and what explains that. And so, one thing I know is that under stress, a person who has been through more trauma is more likely to have these symptoms, is that left front cortex where reasoning happens is going to go dim and inactivity. And right front cortex with emotions act, it flares up, and that's exactly what it feels, like “I'm very emotional, I can't think. I'm making impulsive decisions,” and that explains a lot. 

[00:19:07] And I know there's all these parts of the brain, the HPA axis, all this stuff is involved, but rather than trying to teach that, I'm going to leave that to the experts and invite people to focus on, “Can you tell when you get triggered does it ever feel like you just got injected with some weird cold poison traveling down your arms? That's probably your stress hormones, like very rapidly going through your body and changing everything quickly for you to have a stress response.” 

[00:19:32] And so, I do know also that when we were traumatized as kids, it can injure our brain's ability to process thoughts and feelings. And processing, I used to think-- I grew up in Berkeley and I have this funny aversion to feelings, words, and hippie dippy things [laughter] but I could be processing. That just sounds like staying up all night talking about stuff about an argument with your boyfriend. It sounds awful. But processing, I now know, is being able to turn an active, a stress reaction experience into a memory successfully. So, every time you think of it, you're not getting a big release of adrenaline and cortisol. It's a memory, you can go, “Yes, I remember that.” And so, processing gets hindered and that's exactly what it feels like too. And I used to say, “My head feels like a bag full of cats or it's like a beaver jam. I'm so jammed up, I can't think. There's just so much bouncing around in there. I don't have ADHD. I have difficulty processing it,” and so, we find--

[00:20:31] There are different aspects of trauma and why different modalities can be helpful the way for different people's sort of specific aspect. I'm a very-- Okay, I'm changing the subject. I just read yesterday that like 50% to 70% of people have no internal monologue. And I literally, I had no idea anybody didn't have an internal monologue. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:49] Neither did I. That's fascinating. 

Anna Runkle: [00:20:50] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:50] Mine's going all the time. 

Anna Runkle: [00:20:52] Mine is too. It's all I can do not to talk out loud to myself [Cynthia laughs] and my son has that too. And going to the gym, I have to be very careful if I put in headphones because I might not realize that I'm just chattering away on the treadmill and [laughs] everybody's looking at me and I'm like, “Oh.” So, I have a chattery mind when I'm under stress, those thoughts need to go somewhere. I'm not processing them fast enough and they need to go somewhere and that's a lot where writing techniques can be helpful for people with a chattery mind and for whom the trauma wound manifests as a lot of compressed stress thoughts and stress feelings, anger and anxiety. And so, it comes out, you can take it out in writing. It's a different pathway than talking about it. 

[00:21:34] So somebody like me talking about my traumas is very dysregulating, and that's not uncommon. It's not everybody with trauma, but it's not uncommon at all. You can write about it and express it. I can even read what I wrote and it comes out well. But here's one of the hardest things about complex PTSD. And I don't think we talk about this enough, but I've sure clued into it. Almost everybody who had early trauma, I notice, has a feeling that they're disconnected from other people and they will talk about, in the literature, “Oh, a chronic sense of disconnection,” but the huge way that plays out over life, the feeling that you have to somehow control your symptoms.

[00:22:11] And one of the ways we can do that is by just holding people at arm's length, avoiding them all together, a lot of traumatized people do that, or pretending to participate at work, taking a kid to go play soccer, hanging out with neighbors, being at a potluck, having friends. So, we pretend to do that, but we never get close to anybody. We don't really listen, and we don't really communicate about anything, and the result can totally empty out your life just like you were isolating completely. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:22:40] It's so interesting because when I talk to close girlfriends and those of us that grew up with quite a bit of childhood trauma, I feel like as we get older and as our kids become more independent, we're able to talk about these things more openly and in a way that the sharing actually makes us feel validated, that our experiences are shared in many instances. When we talk about disconnection and we talk about whether people perceive themselves to be introverts or extroverts, has it been your experience in your work that people that have had a trauma, traumatic childhood, or complex PTSD, do they tend to be one extreme or the other in terms of personality types? Do you see that there's more introverts that are just observational? Because the one thing I have found personally is that because I grew up in a lot of yelling and screaming, in terms of an environment, I was the observer because if I could tell the litmus test of the parental mood or the home mood, I was able to navigate decisions about what I should or should not do so that I did not have to experience more trauma at home than less.

Anna Runkle: [00:23:49] That is such a good question. I think about that too. I'm married to an introvert and it's given me a newfound respect. And he's not a traumatized person really particularly. But he gets overwhelmed around people and he needs to go lie down and he has permission. Like we have dinner parties with 20, 30 people sometimes and he'll just disappear. He's in charge of the kitchen. But where is he? Everybody wonders. And I know where he is, he's upstairs. He just needs to collect himself and that just needs to be okay for him. 

[00:24:19] But I think that introversion-- I kind of like to reserve a space for people to be naturally introverted. I think that we're supposed to be varied like this. Some people are a little bit more out. We get our energy from hanging out with people, other people more in. Now, I was a total extrovert, but because being around people when you're not managing your dysregulation well, we all have to reach for something to sort of manage the dysregulation so that we can function. For some people it would be taking a drink. Some people-- For me, it used to be smoking. I smoked two packs a day. I've been off for 28 years now. But it does reregulate you a bit short term and then it just creates all these problems for you that isolate you and make you sick, but it worked for a little bit. I needed something to keep it together with the way my brain was operating.

[00:25:05] And so, a really easy one we can go to isolating. And I feel like the pandemic was simultaneously isolating and traumatic. And it really-- That's my interpretation of what happened. Why did so many people get stuck in isolation and no longer wanting to date or be social and feeling so anxious about being connected with people. And I've had a firsthand view into that because I have such a big online community where I'm on Zoom with them all the time and hearing what people are going through. And so that's big theme that I'm working on now with my new book is how do we reteach ourselves or teach ourselves for the first time in most cases, how to gently, in a step-by-step way, start to connect with other people and learn tolerate the intense stress of dealing with other people. It's very stressful for some people. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:52] Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 

Anna Runkle: [00:25:53] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:54] So, how do we kind of walk through that process? Obviously, the pandemic, which is hard to believe is five years ago now, but I agree with you that I still hear people saying, like, “I haven't been the same since.” It's almost like the training wheels came off of the bike and they just never felt like they were balanced the way they were prior to the pandemic.

Anna Runkle: [00:26:15] Yeah. Yeah. So, you were asking about how do we do it? Well, the first thing to do is to understand that dysregulation plays a role in this. And I written my book to be-- You don't have to be a traumatized person. There are a lot of symptoms of feeling disconnected that also people on the autism spectrum will experience too. And a lot of people on the autism spectrum have C-PTSD as well, because they're so much more likely to be bullied or mistreated by parents because of the way they are. And so, we have a lot of people like that in our community. 

[00:26:48] And then there are a lot of people who are merely socially awkward or painfully shy or very introverted. And so, these are techniques I'm teaching that anybody could use. But it's stuff I had to teach myself because I'd just been through so much with other people. I just found myself, I could never stop walking on eggshells with other people. And it was exhausting and it was isolating. And I really hit this crisis at a point well after I learned how to reregulate, though I didn't know the word, but I been through another round of hard things in my life, and I realized I just didn't have close friends. I had a lot of friends, but nobody who actually would help me when I needed help walking to the bathroom and things like that after my surgery or picking up my kids from daycare or helping me get dinner on the table and washed up afterwards. 

[00:27:31] I was a single mom for nine years, and, boy that's a hard thing when you have 14 major surgeries as a single mom and you don't really have good friends. And my family, you know I didn't have family members. I just didn't have-- And I didn't have a spouse anymore, so it was a very tough time. And I had to learn how to connect with people in a way that I had never really done before and got by on like charm and friendliness and, I don't know, being a lot of fun for a certain period of time, being pretty. [laughs] 

[00:27:57] But I had to learn how to genuinely connect with people. And I used to be baffled by what are people even talking about. They would say stuff like being present. And I was just like, “Oh, there's another one of those crunchy granola words, present, processing.” Boundaries, that was another one. I was like, “Boundaries? What even is that? It's just psychobabble.” [laughs] 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:28:16] Right. 

Anna Runkle: [00:28:17] I didn't know I was a tough cookie. So, gradually I've learned my lessons about that. And boundaries actually happen to be very important for being able to be close to people. Because if you don't have them and you can't trust yourself to be able to get out of a situation. It's really dangerous to get into a situation. You can't even go to coffee with somebody if you don't trust yourself to deal with it if things get weird and you need to leave. So, boundaries are part of it. But there are--

[00:28:42] In my book, I go over nine obstacles that are just really common in traumatized people. I've been hearing from them for years and their letters and their comments. And the number one thing is “We're avoidant. We just avoid people as a way to manage ourselves and so our development is delayed. We haven't had proper social education.” What's it called in school, social emotional learning? 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:29:05] Yeah.

Anna Runkle: [00:29:05] If you isolate all the time, you don't learn that stuff. And because of my childhood and because of the way that I was holding back, I didn't know how to be gracious in awkward situations. I would often be rude or inconsiderate towards other people, not meaning to. I did care, but I just didn't know the language. So, avoidance-- It begins with healing avoidance and learning tolerate conflict, awkwardness, and these moments that are just hard to deal with. 

[00:29:33] So, my book is full of practical tools on what to do when things are getting heated with somebody. How to deescalate that right away. How to go into a social situation where somebody's sort of baiting you and is saying things to see if they can get a rise out of you or they're offending you. How to just sort of dodge that one without arguing with them, without them even knowing you just set a boundary and didn't go there with them because then they just get mad and what good is that going to do if your goal is to have a good time and so there's that. 

[00:30:04] And then boundaries and some unfortunate behaviors that are very common for traumatized people, we have this inexplicable attraction, many of us, to damaging people, troubled people, abusive people, manipulative people. And we don't know what hit us. It just next thing you like somebody. And not just romantic relationships, bosses, friends, people who we allow into our lives and then gradually we don't understand, like, “Why do I just feel awful every time I see them? Why do I feel like such a loser every time we just hung out?” And so, this is a big area to work on too, is to start to identify like what kind of a person is good for me to have in my life. And then to gently and thoughtfully start to release certain relationships that don't make sense for somebody who cares about themselves.

[00:30:47] And then this is hard for everybody, I think, is meeting the right people, meeting the kind of people you do want in your life or healing or repairing relationships with people that you want in your life who have been pushed away or who have distanced themselves and seeing if you can salvage those, that's an option too. So, it's a big mix of some like not contacting people anymore and then apologizing to people. I teach people how to do a proper apology and how to do a consideration process to get through that thing where so many of us do, where we're like, “Is it just me? Am I the bad guy here or are they the bad guy?” And it's like this black and white confusion and to start to identify what is the part that I actually brought to this problem, if any, and do I want to apologize for it? Because a really good apology, you don't get to command that they apologize too, you just do your side of it and you see what happens and see how that feels. 

[00:31:41] And then another one that I think is really harmful is sort of getting very other centered. A lot of us lose our identity. We had to perform and try to keep people from getting mad. And, you hear the car drive up and you can tell if they've been drinking by the way they park the car, the sound of the keys going into the door you know right? You remember that? So, there's this hypervigilance going on there. [Laughs] 

[00:32:04] So, there's this fruitfulness, this depth of personality that can come out once we can start to make our conscious choices about when I'm having a reaction to something and other people are just being themselves and they are going to be themselves, I can't really control what other people do. There's an adolescence period where we start to learn. I say, “No.” I say, “You can't do that.” And then they still do it anyway and then you're like, “Ah,” so I guess I would have to leave if I can't accept that, yeah, that was a hard one for me. And I think that's hard for a lot of people because we first learn about setting boundaries and having standards, and then, “Oh, yay, everybody's, you know--” [laughs]

[00:32:41] The sad thing is a lot of relationships end when you start to heal and you start to become strong and your real self, like, you don't really fit with a lot of people, and some of them will even resent you changing. They will sort of accuse you of being on a high horse or you think you're better than me. And if people feel that way, the friendship is damaged now, and there may not be anything you can do about it if they think you've betrayed them by becoming happy or being okay, there may be nothing you can do. But I'm a big fan of just kindness to people, never hurting them if we don't have to. If you have to end a relationship, you do it with the least amount of information, you don't give them the litany of all the 20 times. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:19] There's the 30 times that you have heard hurt me and this is why you know--

Anna Runkle: [00:33:22] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:23] The trajectory of our relationship. I mean, I think a lot of what you're speaking to is emotional growth, you may find that-- Even as an entrepreneur, I have people that I was really close to before I left clinical medicine, and then some I'm not as close to. And I think a lot of it has to do with emotional, spiritual growth that is part of the journey for each one of us in life, I agree with you. The circumstances were very rarely where I've had to leave friendships or other relationships. I found sometimes it's easier, to say the least, so that you're not being hurtful.

[00:34:01] And certainly, I know we were talking about this before we started recording, navigating perimenopause and menopause, when many of us were people pleasers through the trajectory of our young, adulthood and into middle age, all of a sudden, you're like, “Oh, I have tremendous clarity.” And now part of showing up and that emotional growth curve is part of the hormonal changes that are happening. Many women will say to me, “I feel like I finally found my voice. I created stronger boundaries. I got clearer about expectations,” and I'm curious If you've seen similar patterns with the clients that you work with, that they really do feel like in middle age they find their voice? 

Anna Runkle: [00:34:40] In the very-- I really hope they do, but some women, some, everybody. But since we're talking about women, they don't find it. They're still at the mercy of these difficult relationships where they've been people pleasing and they don't have a voice. And I can't think of anything harder than to be at this age in life and to still be having to play that game with people or being taken for granted or to not feel free. 

[00:35:03] And it's funny, because freedom doesn't always mean, like, oh, I just go off and live by myself in a trailer. That used to be my worst fear like I'll just have to live in a little RV park all by myself. And then I went through a phase where I'm like, that sounds great. [Cynthia laughs] I know a lot of happy people who do that. And then now I'm in a phase of like, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to be me whatever it is, and I'll be able to figure it out, like, that's the freedom. 

[00:35:24] I've noticed that-- And this is just an informal conversation I've had with some menopause experts who I've bumped into. I was like, “Don't you think that C-PTSD symptoms get worse in menopause when those symptoms are flaring?” And everybody says, “Yes.” And they said, “Don't you think that menopause is harder for women who have C-PTSD?” And I say, “Yes, I think it is. That's my observation.” And I think there's a little bit of research out there, and I don't know about enough of it to say that I know this to be a fact, but what I've observed, there's an interplay there. It makes sense because hormone disruption is part of the C-PTSD sequela.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:36:02] Well, it's interesting. So, part of my new book, we talk-- We unpack the research around trauma and ovarian senescence, which is the-- Our ovaries set the pacemaker of aging in our bodies. And the research, if you look at socioeconomic factors as well as racial factors, women that are at a lower socioeconomic status with less resources, they don't have a supportive partner. They absolutely will have an exacerbation in symptoms. So, taking what most of us experience and just magnifying it. And so, I always say that there are things we have control over and some things we don't, but I absolutely-- If you look at the research in this area, there's without question women of color, women of a lower socioeconomic status, especially those that don't have a supportive partner, it makes this transition a thousand percent harder and that's why I think the work that we do is so important to help bring greater awareness to those individuals who are at greater risk of having a worse transition from perimenopause into menopause. 

Anna Runkle: [00:37:08] Oh, I can't wait to read your book. This is so important. We've gone so long in history without this information. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:15] I know. 

Anna Runkle: [00:37:16] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:17] That's why I think the amplification of voices in these areas is so important, just to bring greater awareness. Because I was not-- Even 10 years ago, I did not know these things. I still was in the camp of “I didn't experience trauma.” Trauma is what I saw inner city Baltimore, that's not what I grew up in. And then, 10 years later, the recognition that when I talk to women there is so much trauma that's not discussed and we're not screening for it. 

[00:37:45] Actually, I interviewed a biological dentist yesterday, and she said “We should be screening women in every circumstance, and we're just not doing a good job. We just assume, you know we've got your weight, your blood pressure, your pulse, your lab work. And then we're not asking these questions that really impact the trajectory.”

Anna Runkle: [00:38:03] Here comes the iconoclast in me. What frustrates me is that even when agencies ask the questions-- Like, at my doctor, I'm like, “And then what?” So, you ask the questions, and then what do you do with the answers? And they're like, “Oh, well, then we just know.” And I'm like-- [laughs]

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:16] Oh no. Then, I'm uncomfortable. It's like then the provider's like, “I'm uncomfortable, so I don't know what to do.” It's like a hot potato, they don't know what to do with the information they've screened for. You're right. 

Anna Runkle: [00:38:25] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:26] The question is, do they then have the resources to refer people to so that they can get the support that they need? 

Anna Runkle: [00:38:32] I'll share with you a handout that I have. It's called 12 Things I Wish My Doctor Understood about Childhood Trauma. And it just has to do with what does it do? Why you can't just tell me a bunch of information, you have to give it to me in writing because if [crosstalk] it's bad news or difficult for me to process, I'll never remember it. Don't make assumptions on my race or anybody else's that I'm traumatized or not traumatized, just ask questions. And then don't assume that because I grew up with trauma that I'm illiterate or I'm not knowledgeable about my own health, but don't assume that I do know everything about my health. [Laughs] 

[00:39:06] I know it’s a tight-- It's a narrow path to walk, but to start to understand, like, the difficulty of processing information and that some of my health problems. I mean, all the years they just kept saying, “You just need to have less stress.” And there's a lot of platitudes like that, “Love yourself, have less stress.” It's like, “Okay, sounds great, but how?”

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:26] We have to teach our patients those techniques. And it's interesting to me that my background prior to nine years ago was in critical care and cardiology. So, I dealt with very sick patients, chronically sick. And we would talk about stress management, and it was literally like, “You should meditate.” And then we'd walk out the door and the patient's like, “I don't even know what you're talking about. I can't even quiet my mind, let alone try to meditate.” And so, I agree with you that there needs to be a much more proactive stance taken on educating our patients about how to support their bodies and then also making sure that healthcare professionals are comfortable addressing these things. 

[00:40:02] I have a wonderful internist, and at the top of my chart is always the narcissistic mother, alcoholic father, it's at the top of the chart. And he said, “This explains so much about your autoimmune things- 

Anna Runkle: [00:40:16] Yes.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:40:16] -and, all these symptoms you experience.” And so, he's probably the first clinician that takes that really seriously, but I acknowledge, even as a clinician myself, that's not the norm. 

Anna Runkle: [00:40:27] No, it's not the norm. It's not the norm. And there's so many ways that a person can feel not heard too. Even sometimes when people jump into expressing empathy and don't also recognize the resilience. I can think of one thing where the doctor says, “Do something about stress.” And I go, “Well, I'm trying. I've meditated for 31 years now twice a day.” And then they don't even respond to that. And I'm just like, [Cynthia laughs] I have meditated for 31 years twice a day. And so as much as I think providers need to be prepared to educate the patients, they also need to educate themselves. Because I know a lot of people who work in healthcare, they're throttled with their own trauma symptoms, they're experiencing a lot of stress. Everybody knows about meditation, but they're-- Well, nothing is the right solution for everybody. But that's a lot of why they come to me, is to start learning practical techniques to calm their nervous system. And then it's wonderful because they teach their patients. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:26] So, talk to me about the daily practice. You've alluded to it and I do think that this is the kind of information that is so important for listeners, because you're correct, a lot of healthcare providers don't have that information and yet it's practical, it's accessible. You don't need anything fancy to do it. You don't need a gadget. You just need the ability to understand how these things work to reregulate your body. 

Anna Runkle: [00:41:26] You probably don't even need to understand it. I mean, it worked for me for 20 years before I knew why it worked or what it was doing for me. It's a simple action that you take. But I think-- See, I think a lot of times I see this a lot where my technique, people say, “Oh, so journaling and mindfulness?” And I say, “No, those are separate things that are helpful for a lot of people and they're sort of common, accessible things you can do, but this is different.” And mindfulness as a technique, before I learned how to reregulate was not at all useful. There was no way that it was comfortable or possible for me to sit there and observe my thoughts. That wasn't something, I'm not even really drawn to it now, honestly, but I know that it works really great for people who are able to do that. And I know that a lot of people who do it would say, “Well, if you do it for a while.” But actually, for a lot of us who have trauma, that sort of quiet time will elevate stress, the stress comes and for some people even dissociation. 

[00:42:41] And journaling can be-- It's like-- It very easily can turn into ranting. So, journaling is-- I would define it as, journaling is where you want to write and record and document something that you'll want to see later and maybe look for patterns and record. The writing technique I teach is to basically just barf it out and you're going to rip it up afterwards. This is not stuff that you need to remember. Much of it will be forgotten and that's great because it's all your stress thoughts and feelings. But I'll leave you with a link because I have a free course and it takes maybe 40 minutes to learn and try the techniques-- or 40 minutes to learn them, 20 minutes to try them. And I would love to be able to give something out that's just like that does the trick. But it's very specific in that we're preventing ourselves from going into a big venting.

[00:43:26] We used to think venting was this great solution. You could talk about your trauma, you can scream and hit a pillow, but there's a lot of evidence that that's not the thing. And so, this is more about naming the fearful, resentful thoughts and it's done with a syntax of words that prevents you from just getting-- going down the rabbit hole of like, and they did this and they did that and they did this, because that's what my mind is doing, but we're starting to use just a sequence of words. 

[00:43:54] I'm resentful at my mom because I had fear, she got drunk at my graduation, and so she did get drunk at my graduation, but we're using this language that just puts a little wedge that just keeps prompting or preventing us from going into the rabbit hole of resentment. The rabbit hole of resentment is very dysregulating. And a lot of people who don't have that have confused getting dysregulated into a dysregulated rage with healthy expression of anger. You need healthy expression of anger. You don't want to go down into this thing where you lose yourself, and next thing you're hitting someone or yelling on the street corner or hanging up on the bank because they couldn't find something that you expected them to find. And so, we're all familiar with what that dysregulated behavior looks like when resentment gets the better of us, and it goes all the way down the train tracks, all the way to people killing each other on [unintelligible 00:44:45]. And so, it's one of the most profound things you can do as a human, is to get off that train, to start teaching yourself to take your resentment and unpack it. 

[00:44:57] It doesn't mean you never get angry. Anger is useful. But you take that strange, addictive, magnetic spiral for a traumatized brain to go down, and you unravel it right there on paper. And it's not this big, brainy thing. You don't have to think very hard about it. It's just a technique. You don't have to know how you're supposed to be instead. You don't have to try to be nice, nothing like that. You just name it. 

[00:45:22] And I initially learned it as a prayer, and later when I went online, I created a way that you can do it if you'd rather release it, if you prefer that instead of a higher power concept so people can choose their way to do it, but the goal is the same, I don't want this anymore. And I trust that if I release it, the part that I need out of that, like I do need to call the IRS or I do need to stand up to that bully across the street. The part that you need will be there but clarified for you and not all tangled up with stuff about your dad and what happened in first grade. And it just cleans up and tidies up your list of things to pay attention to.

[00:45:58] And I just-- Because of the dramatic change that using this technique did for me when I had acute PTSD symptoms and my brain was just constantly under assault of multiple thoughts and panic responses, I would speculate that what's happening is it's just processing the excess out so you can have a clear mind. 

[00:46:20] I remember it was really just about a month into my using-- I call it my daily practice. I was writing, I was doing transcendental meditation, that's what it was, suggested I learned. And just a month after doing both of those things, I could sit in a business meeting. Now, I used to go to business meetings at that time. People would be talking and I would be-- My mind would just be time traveling. I'd be remembering things. I'd be worrying about stuff. And every once in a while, I'd hear what people said and I'd think, “What am I going to say?” I'd be composing what I was going to say. I could sit there for an hour and listen to what was said. 

[00:46:49] And you can learn a lot in an hour of listening to what's said, including whose kind of blowing hot air, who's anxious? What's the opportunity here? What's going wrong? And so, I would usually listen, and in the last five minutes, I'd say, “Well, I have an observation,” and I'd say what I saw. And people were just like, “Anna,” [Cynthia laughs] because I was talking sense and my career just went-- And I wasn't so emotional about things anymore. 

[00:47:16] People who can't control their emotions like that. This isn't a popular thing to say, but you're not going to go far. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:20] Correct. 

Anna Runkle: [00:47:20] It makes it very stressful for other people and we prefer to work with people in harmony if we possibly can. And so, to learn how to contain emotions while I work out what do I want to do about this situation and then go talk to the person or let it go or whatever it is that needs to be done, I can do after a delay where I've processed my feelings so it doesn't come out like [onomatopoeia] you can't even come back from that sometimes it's so severe.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:48] No, I would agree. 

Anna Runkle: [00:47:49] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:50] I would agree. And even in like professional circumstances, even working in medicine, there were always people that had some degree of mood liability and they could be the smartest person in the room, but if they weren't emotionally regulated, if they had a tirade, everyone would just be quiet and observing, just like, “Okay, how do we [laughs] move forward?”

Anna Runkle: [00:48:11] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:12] So, you know to me, I love that your daily practice is actionable, attainable. For people that say they can't meditate, what do you say to that? 

Anna Runkle: [00:48:21] Well, of course you can't. [Laughter] It's really unnatural for a person who's mind is like a bag of cats. And so, our only goal in this kind of meditation is to take a little rest, a little mental rest, whatever that may be. For some of us it's going to be to fall asleep and which is allowed in my form. And sometimes because you're tired, you can't really control your dysregulation. And so, if you fall asleep, that's a lot what it feels like to do the daily practice is like you just had a little nap and you come out of it like, ah, it's something like that, so, falling asleep is acceptable. 

[00:48:54] You could sit up for the meditation. Just don't put your head back on anything. We're not inviting sleep, but if it happens, okay, if thoughts happen, okay. I encourage people to use a little anchor word or mantra like just something that's not a verb, like okay, okay. Not like “Make me awesome in every way.”

[laughter]

[00:49:14] That's a stress thought. And you can have those goals and aspirations after you're done meditating. But for meditations goal is just rest your mind because you're-- We trust that our mind just kind of knows what to do here. We're coming back to our mint condition state. We get dysregulated sometimes, we do know how to reregulate, we just have to keep practicing. And I would point out a newborn baby is very dysregulated and that's a lot what it is to nurture and hold a little baby and feed a baby. 

[00:49:43] A little baby comes out like crying, turning red, rigid. And then after touch and comforting and coregulating on your body, then the baby relaxes and comes up and can look you in the eyes and be delighted and delightful and that's exactly what we're doing. That's exactly what we're doing. And it's natural to do. And it's your body-- I remind people who have trouble believing that anything good can happen out of something so simple. I just remind them that you could skin all the-- Your elbow could be bleeding and you would not have to do much, you know, just don't let it get infected and it will heal. You have a natural pattern of healing in your body. 

[00:50:26] And functionally that nervous system injury, it's a body wound in a way and that's probably a little elaborate and it's got a bunch of cultural and behavioral stuff in there, but you're designed to heal. And it's a little bit like floating downstream, once you can sort of get the stress thoughts and stress feelings out of the way, you just allow that to happen and you keep practicing. 

[00:50:45] One of the best thing that can happen when you're doing this daily practice is you go out and stretch your envelope a little bit. Go to a party that used to feel too much for you. Then, you get all like, [onomatopoeia] [laughs] you get upset, you get offended and then you go back to your paper and you're getting that stuff out and it's given you the opportunity to face another layer of stuff that you've find hard or objectionable or triggering and you face another layer of it, you just don't have to know what you're doing, you just name it and say I don't—“I'm releasing this, rest your mind” and there's just less and less noise. It's remarkable like that. So, it can work very nicely with other modalities too.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:23] Well, I love the messaging and certainly I was partaking in the daily practice over the weekend, working through something that a little hiccup that happened last week. And I think for so many of us we're looking for things that we can do independent per se of others, ways that we can regulate our bodies, I think this is important work, important information. I could talk to you for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to purchase your books- 

Anna Runkle: [00:51:53] Yes.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:54] -how to sign up to follow you on YouTube. Like I mentioned, I love the name. I love the fact that The Crappy Childhood Fairy, no one will forget that. And it really kind of hones in on the things that we can do proactively to work through experiences that we've had throughout our lifetime.

Anna Runkle: [00:52:10] Yeah, well, most people find me first on YouTube and that's where my biggest presence is and where people can choose a video and start, you know, look for the topic that speaks to you there. I also I have webinars every month and I have online courses. I have live workshops here and in Europe every year and I'll be in Oslo and London next month and I lead retreats. So, I'm out there a lot working with people. My mission in life is to teach as many people as possible, how using these simple tools can feel better. And then once you know how to reregulate, you can start solving life problems. So, that's the second half of my work is I give advice that people ask for and a lot of stuff about relationships and friends. 

[00:52:51] And then I have books. I have two books. The first book that's out now is Re-Regulated. You can get it in online bookstores everywhere. And if you want to get a second book, here it comes, Connectability, October 2025. And this one is all about that trauma-driven disconnection. If you buy this book and you go to my website on Buy Books, I have a one, two, three area where you put in your receipt number and I give you tons of stuff. So, love that. Yeah, I've got a free course on lifting your mood and five free workshops for people who preorder the book. And it's this fun game. Every year when I put out a book it's like, “Come on everybody preorder it now.” And we're getting ready for just a launch where a ton of people are right there, they've got the book in hand and we're talking about it and we hit the ground running, so this is an exciting season. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:53:35] Amazing. Thank you so much for your work. 

Anna Runkle: [00:53:37] Yeah, thank you. 

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