Overcoming Trauma: How to Re-Regulate Your Nervous System for Better Relationships | Anna Runkle

0 (0s): So I was beaten unconscious on the street by strangers. Whoa. And I was already going through a lot. My mother died like that week. And, 1 (9s): And I think what happens with a lot of talk therapy, just like it cements you in the past and you're constantly like reopening this wound and you were like, why am I not healing? Well, you won't leave it alone and go onto this other thing, 0 (19s): This trauma that affects us, it's a thing. We're not crazy. We're not just like irrationally messing our lives up. 1 (26s): Patterns that we don't know that are happening that lead us to maybe dating the bad boy. 0 (31s): People will feel very attracted to the person they can't have or obsessed. 1 (35s): I know so many young ladies that's, that is the only thing that they're interested in. And they do get very obsessed and it's the totally unavailable person. Hello everyone. You are listening or watching, chatting with Candace. I'm your host, Candice Horbacz. Before we get started, make sure you hit that like and subscribe button. And guess what? We have video on Spotify, which I'm so excited about. So now you have multiple ways that you can watch or listen. And the really cool thing about Spotify is you can ask me questions while you're listening. So you can ask away. I see them directly and I will answer them as long as it's a good question. So submit your questions. Let me know what you think about the episode. 1 (1m 17s): And yeah, if, if you wanna support the podcast, go to chatting with candace.com and you can sign up for Patreon or click that little link that says Buy me a coffee. That was it. Thanks for hanging out for the intro. Now let's head into the episode with Anna Runkel. Anna, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and dealing with our technical difficulties. I'm really excited to have you on. I've been diving really deep into a lot of nervous system work and how certain patterns of behavior tend to show up for people and how we, we might not even be realizing it, but things that happened in childhood could be, you know, unconsciously making decisions for us. So I love the work that you're doing. Thank you. And I can't wait to get to learn more about you and your mission. 1 (1m 59s): Thank you. 0 (1m 59s): I'm excited to meet you, Candace. I like your work. 1 (2m 1s): Thank you. I appreciate it. I love your nickname that you have online. So you have the Crappy Childhood Fairy. Can you talk about the inspiration behind that and who she is? 0 (2m 14s): Well, I've known for 30 years that I wanted to write this book that's coming out Reregulated. As soon as I figured out the techniques that helped me feel better, I, I really wanted to share it with the world. And I had to start in a small way. And I did it one-on-one, and then I did it in meetings in my living room. And then I had a blog and then I started the YouTube channel. But when I was first really getting going with sharing it with the public, it started out, it had this very clinical tone and my background was like in healthcare and creating medical education. And so I was being so careful and clinical and it was boring me to death. I knew that I was never gonna be able to make content so boring. And I just remembered, there used to be this cartoon when I was a kid fractured fairytales and it had this little fairy and she would go in and go, nah, there there's a little wand. 0 (3m 2s): And I was like, like that. It's just kind of like not taking it so seriously. A little bit of a, a lighthearted approach to something that's heavier than anything else in your life. So that it was palatable. And it's the stories and how much, when I was with friends who were also healing from trauma, you know, we would cry together, but a lot of the time we would just be laughing our asses off, you know, because we all do the same things. We were all like, sort of like, and actually sometimes literally dating the same guy and wow. And there, there just was a lot of lightheartedness around just realizing it's a thing, this trauma that affects us. It's a thing. 0 (3m 42s): We're not crazy. We're not just like irrationally messing our lives up. We have a really common symptom pattern and that's what it is. And once you know that that's what it is, you can afford to have a little bit of fun with the healing process. 1 (3m 58s): So I, my, one of my favorite things to talk about are maybe patterns that we don't know that are happening that lead us to maybe dating the quote bad boy. That's such a thing with so many women. And I definitely used to be in that bucket where it's like, the only thing I wanted was the thing that was bad for me or the thing that didn't want me back. Where does that stem from? Like what belief system do you think is driving those decisions? 0 (4m 24s): Well, I don't think it's a belief system. I think that we've been pathologized a lot for the strange choices we make. And now that we understand a little bit more about the neurological injury of childhood trauma, you know, you can completely let yourself off the hook. It's, there's a change in the way your brain processes information and everybody, you know, nobody really has control over who they feel attracted to. And who we feel attracted to is a weird product of experiences that we've had. And then the way our nervous system handles that information. So if you had trauma as a kid and you know that the bad boy thing, I would sort of even broaden it to say unavailable inappropriate or even abusive people. 0 (5m 6s): Like there's this common pattern, not everybody with trauma has it, but it's a very common pattern to be attracted to those people and to feel like electrified by it. So a lot of times we were told, oh, you're just trying to repeat your childhood. And I used to always question that. It never felt right, but the nervous system will sort of electrify. Attraction is like a chemical reaction to things. It will electrify on certain things. And because we have trauma, anything stressful and meeting somebody deciding whether you're gonna like spend the night with them, that's a stress stress moment. There's this brain change that happens where your reasoning in your left front cortex stops working very well. Your right front cortex, which is emotion, does work well. 0 (5m 48s): And there's this, I would call it, this is kind of an extreme term, but eroticization of abandonment, that happens, but it's not a conscious choice. Just like, you know, people who are into feet or something, you know, they're, they didn't decide to be into it, it's just a, it's just their nervous system is responding to something. And some of us have an unfortunate pattern for that. There's also a pattern where people will feel very attracted to the person they can't have or obsessed, but like, they just don't feel it for somebody who's nice to them and cares about them, that can be healed. But that's a really typical pattern from trauma. And it's, it's not a choice. It's not something you're choosing. 1 (6m 26s): So if it's not a choice, how do you get if that, I know so many young ladies that's, that is the only thing that they're interested in. And they do get very obsessed and it's the totally unavailable person or the person that's very hot and cold with them. Yeah. Where, what are the steps to, to stop chasing after that and make healthier decisions? 0 (6m 48s): Well, you know, somebody blowing hot and cold just for the record, you can do that to a rat and the rat will become obsessed. 1 (6m 55s): Really. So 0 (6m 56s): Yeah, it's, so if, if you, I think that when we were neglected as kids, we maybe got primed, it's called intermittent reinforcement or trauma bonding. Some people think trauma bonding is more like people with trauma bond, but that's not it. What it is is the way your attachment mechanism is activated by love blowing hot and then cold, hot cold. And that's what you get with somebody like an alcoholic parent. That's what you get with somebody who's not into you and is manipulating you. And the more it happens to you, the more your nervous system is kind of primed for it. And so the first thing you have to do when you decide you don't wanna have that pattern anymore is you have to stop. And it's very difficult. Sometimes it'll feel like quitting smoking or, or worse because it doesn't feel true that something else is the answer and is ever going to feel attractive and exciting to you. 0 (7m 46s): But basically you would treat it like, well, I used to smoke cigarettes, I smoked two packs a day and when I, when I smoked, I really felt like there's no way that I can feel okay without cigarettes. And anybody's who's had to get past an addiction knows like, yeah, it feels like that at first. And then your brain heals and you can begin to not smoke. You can begin to, you know, you have to like cut yourself off from these obsessions with people when somebody isn't interested in you. And this is not helped by a lot of the hookup culture, you know, where there's a lot of rationalizations you can have. It's like, well, I just expect too much, or I'm gonna be very unclear about what I really want because I don't wanna appear like I'm needy. 0 (8m 28s): And all these things work against you. Because if you have a a a core desire, a heart's desire that you wanna be in a committed relationship, if you're having relationships that are anything less, they're taking you out of that. And they're starting to reinforce this thing where you fake it and you pretend you're okay and you're cool girl and you're just friends or whatever it is, you know, yeah, we can go to the movies with your new girlfriend. All that stuff is like stuff that we're encouraged to do in the culture. But if you have this fundamental attachment wound that you bond with people who aren't into you, it's, it, it, it makes it worse. So it has to be cut off cold Turkey. That's the trick. And I don't think a lot of therapists will tell you that. 0 (9m 10s): And I know when I was going through it, my therapist kept going, let's talk about it. Let's draw a picture about it. Oh, you had a dream. Tell me your dream. And all that stuff was just me ruminating on an addiction. You know, it'd be like sitting there, tell me about how much you love cigarettes. Don't do that. You know, you have to, you have to do practical things to get it out of your mind. But I teach a technique and my whole book is about this. I teach a technique to get these to process your thoughts and feelings. We now know that trauma complex, PTSD trauma that happens in childhood, it creates an injury to your nervous system that can make it hard to process thoughts and feelings. So a lot of us are walking around with a lot going on in here and it's old stuff, but it's still charged. 0 (9m 52s): And when you have a lot of emotional noise inside your consciousness, it's very hard to detect is this person, am I reading the signals right? That mixed signal, does it mean they love me or does it mean that they're just, you know, would like to have me around for one more night? So that's how it happens. Your brain's not working properly and you've gotta give your brain a chance to heal through, through healing techniques, but also structured changes to your life that help you stop doing the thing that's making it worse. Retraumatizing you 1 (10m 24s): So, so many places to go with that. I guess the first one would be how do you know if you're operating from a dysregulated system or basically what I'm gonna say is an injured or tra traumatized brain or if it's, or if it's something that's more in alignment with who you are. And we can use hookup culture as a really great example. So it's average like about three to 5% of women do have more of what you would call like a, a masculine sex drive. And they're more okay with casual sex. That's a very small number that doesn't represent what we're seeing with a lot of younger people, which is a very big amount of participating in hook, in hookup culture. So how would you know if you're part of that 5% that is actually okay with that, or you're part of the other chunk that's maybe doing the people pleasing thing and I wanna be the cool girl and I don't wanna make run 'em off and Right, you're, you're participating almost at your own expense. 1 (11m 19s): So where do you know if you're dysregulated or if it's authentic? 0 (11m 24s): Well, partly you're crying all the time. You're tearing your hair out, you're obsessed with whether somebody's calling you back. It's all you can talk about. I think, I think it's an experience to, to know this around relationships. Relationships is one of the key ways that childhood trauma affects you. But there's like a, a set of a symptom pattern. If you have complex PTSD and it includes an attraction to unavailable, inappropriate or abusive people, and not just partners but like bosses, friends, feeling really overwhelmed in social situations or like you wanna pull away. It's very triggering with people, a pattern of conflict with other people where you're, you know, just constantly kind of at war with your coworkers or your neighbors and the, the just your partner, the constant conflict also discombobulation. 0 (12m 16s): And this part is the physical dysregulation. You know, when we see dysregulation, a lot of people think we're just talking about emotions and emotions are part of it. But when your nervous system is dysregulated, it's like every system in your body, your immune system is dysregulated, your hormone system is dysregulated. So like when the immune system's dysregulated, you can be prone to autoimmune disorders or getting sick all the time when your hormones are dysregulated, you might go into puberty too years too early, or you might have difficulty with metabolizing carbohydrates because that's hormonally governed as well. Your heart rate's different, your breathing is different, and therefore blood flow oxygen, it's difficult to heal tissue. 0 (12m 59s): So there's like so many levels of your being that can be affected by n neurological dysregulation. I sometimes feel like the ones we can feel like I just keep being attracted to the wrong person and I keep repeating the pattern even though I swore I wasn't gonna do it. Like those are the ones you can see yourself doing, but you can't really see all of, all of the symptoms. So I'm really big on pay attention to that. The, the ones you can feel like when I'm just regulated my, the tip of my nose feels numb and that is such good information. 'cause then I know I'm slipping into it. And when I'm dysregulated, I know don't say anything, don't make big decisions, don't drive a car. 0 (13m 39s): And 'cause I have, when I'm dysregulated I have symptoms, like I'll trip over things, I'll space out, I'll drop things like washing dishes. Once I broke four different dishes, like once every five minutes I was like dropping something I couldn't really control my hands. So it's like a really physical thing. And it helps to know that because when you're like, okay, so those weird choices I'm making about relationships to not leave has a lot to do with it too. The nervous system is activated by being around this kind of person. Then if you have an attachment wound, you know, you bond very quickly. Maybe you sleep with them right away. Even if you realize the next day it was a horrible mistake, you can't leave because the abandonment wound that you have is so severe that it's not worth it. 0 (14m 25s): It'd be worth staying with somebody you're not even, that you don't like at all that you think is a problem, it's worth it. Instead of going into the abandonment melange, it's called depression. That can happen for people who actually were abandoned as kids. And so when I mention this to people, they're just like, oh my god, that's what I have. And I'm like, I know it's really common and everybody's psychologized it and kind of blamed us. And it's like, it's just a, it's a totally normal symptom pattern for people. People who grew up with something abnormal, which is not being cared for by a parent, by their moms and dads. 1 (14m 57s): Yeah, the way that I've kind, I've heard it explained that makes a lot of sense to me is that you have these imprints on your nervous system and then you also like the way that I look at, it's like years to a car and everyone's neutral is gonna be a little bit different. Like somes might actually be this calm and others are maybe like starting off in third gear. So if you have had a really tr like really violent or less than ideal upbringing, then you are used to chaos. So then when you find chaos in another person, your nervous system registers that as familiar and then that's why you kind of seek out these people that are bad for you. Maybe because it's almost like maybe peace seems boring when chaos is normal. 1 (15m 40s): Yes. And then you start to find that in other people, 0 (15m 43s): Yes, that much is true. That much is true, but it's not the whole story. It's 1 (15m 48s): What would you add to that? 0 (15m 50s): Huh? 1 (15m 50s): What would you add to that? 0 (15m 52s): Well, just that, you know, I, I think a lot of the ways that trauma has been understood by the experts is wrong. That they, you know, they, they don't have, they don't have it. So what it looks like from the outside is like, oh, we're making conscious choices. And then they think, well, if I made a choice like that, what could motivate me? Well maybe I'd be trying to recreate my childhood or trying to correct it this time. But I don't think that's, I think that while it's possible somebody has that, that's rarely the case and it's really just what activates and it doesn't feel normal again. You know, this is not something we're doing on any kind of conscious level. We're not choosing it. And there's also social factors because I think a lot of the experts also come from, you know, they're, they're often from the upper middle class, that's kind of the average, right? 0 (16m 36s): And so they have this upper middle class experience, but when you grew up poor, I grew up poor and on welfare and I wasn't cared for and I had free lunch and I had a lot of factors. Like I couldn't invite people home because my mom might walk in drunk and really inappropriate and the house was like hoarder v you know, it was, it was very, I was very ashamed of, you know, when I was a teenager I didn't quite have, I didn't have an ability to identify myself very differently from where I came from, you know, so I was just ashamed of myself all the time. So you have these things kind of working against you. I didn't know how you're supposed to act. I didn't know how dating is handled. I didn't know how relationships are formed. 0 (17m 17s): I didn't have anybody looking over my shoulder. So there's like cultural social stuff that goes on with that. But I grew up, you know, and my mom was a hippie. I grew up in a commune and everybody was just having sex on the floor, which was very upsetting to me as a kid. And so I had that level of upset. But at the same time, you know, growing up people were like, why are you so uptight? You know, hey babe, you're all in your head. You need to just relax. You have too many expectations. You know, these cultural messages that you're supposed to just be into casual sex or you're some sort of like, you know, failed woman. And so it was a lot of cultural noise and conflict in my head and it took a lot of maturity and healing for me to be able to even know what I want. 0 (18m 3s): And I, I was in my thirties, mid thirties before I was like, you know what? I wanna get married and have kids and therefore I can't ever date or even think about dating somebody who doesn't want those things. And on I, I kid you not, nobody ever told me this. And so my program is part, you learn to reregulate your nervous system so that you can think again and you know, sense your, your inner compass of right and wrong. And then it's to get your life together. And I teach a very structured way of not just dating, but like friendships work, you know, the relationship to work is very disrupted by trauma and, and also these sort of dysfunctional family things. 0 (18m 43s): Like a lot of people go to work parenty their employer and like, you don't get me, you don't see me in a and not realizing that work is actually transactional. And so, you know, if you don't go in and choose a job that works for you and pays what you want or change jobs when it's not what you want, you're not, you're probably not gonna get it. Or you have to ask for a raise. So there's all these little trauma driven behaviors where, you know, people self-sabotage, but nobody really tells you. And for me a lot of it was because the rule book is written by people who are of a social class where they just think this stuff is you, is by osmosis, you know how to negotiate career advancement, which you don't, if your parents never advance their careers, you don't know. 0 (19m 27s): So you'd have to really, really be brilliant to seek it out. 1 (19m 32s): Yeah, I would agree with that. I've, I think it's the way that I, at least from my experience, I feel like the more work I've done on myself, the more like coaches I've had or mentors, the more reading I've done, the more podcasts, the more retreats, like all of these tiny little things that are kind of like piecing myself back together, the more awareness I have of how unaware I was prior. And it was almost like a lot of the decisions you were making, you were making completely asleep. And you're like, why would I think that's a good idea? Why did I have that view of whatever the situation might be? And to talk about having conversations or with people and real automatically filtering out, like if they don't want marriage or kids, and these are things I want, obviously that's incompatible, but there's so many people I know that are entering like marriages with people and those values aren't in line. 1 (20m 28s): And I don't know if some of it is a sense of they unworthiness or that they can change someone or I don't know what it is, but all of 0 (20m 37s): The above. Yeah, 1 (20m 38s): All the above. Yeah. And from the outside you're just like, that is not gonna work. Or you're making such a big sacrifice and you, you are gonna pay that later and that's gonna lead to a whole nother situation of resentment and loss and grief and all of these things. And it just makes me so sad to know that people are denying themselves what they truly want, like what their soul wants in this life. 0 (21m 0s): Yeah, yeah. I see that so much too. The, and I've done it, I've done it too. But that belief like being, well I think that comes with being neglected as a child. You get very good at seeing love where there is no love or seeing the potential of somebody. So you marry the potential and then you just set about trying to make somebody change into what you wanted in the first place so that you can be okay, which is the definition of just like very toxic codependence to be just completely dislocated from the captain of your own ship, to lose all your agency, to try to invest in somebody else and try to make them be something is such a terrible waste of energy. 1 (21m 41s): So does forgiveness have any role in the work that you do? And if so, what role does it play? 0 (21m 49s): Forgiveness is a natural thing that happens when you've processed the fear and resentment to things. I think that in rare cases some people are just able to tell themselves to forgive somebody or it helps to be reminded and they're processed enough that they can make that shift. But I think that's a misunderstanding and it's, it's kind of shoved down the throats of people like, you know, it's a fairly significant number of people have been sexually abused by a parent, you know, not a small number. And that's terribly devastating to somebody's spirit and body. It causes all kinds of havoc in their bodies actually with hormones and things. 0 (22m 28s): And it's, it's one of the most disruptive things that can happen. And so when people are like, Hey, we were all traumatized, or you know, why don't you just forgive them? That's not really relevant. The forgiveness might come one day, but I, I think forgiveness, it's natural, it's na it, I always say it falls like snow. It's a very light energy that comes down upon you when you're ready, when you can see what's going on. And it takes maturation too. And I think it's ideal. And I also think there's way too much encouragement to blame and attack. You know, there is a such thing as narcissism, but there's a lot more, the proportion of mental health videos about narcissism is way outta whack with the proportion of mental health videos that are about like, how do I look at myself? 0 (23m 12s): How do I work on myself? And so, you know, we, we do need both. We need to be aware of like other people who are abusive, but nothing changes about life until we bring that focus in and start noticing. And you know what I teach with childhood PTSD, what my book Reregulated is entirely, it's like a end-to-end process. How do you do that? It's tricky to look at yourself. It feels very threatening when you've been through a lot. It'll feel like it'll kill you if you ever realize that maybe, maybe there was something you were doing at some point that was re-traumatizing, you now not in childhood, children are automatically off the hook. They are not responsible for what happened. But it was more like in my twenties myself, where I started to have behaviors that were making things worse for me. 0 (23m 54s): And honestly, I didn't know any better then, or I guess I could say I did know better, but I was very driven. My trauma, I was very trauma driven and so I treated people badly and self. I was selfish. And you know, many people are selfish and unkind to other people, but you don't hear people talk about a lot like how like it was me, I did it, I've had people do it to me, I've done it to other people, but the part that I could change was the stuff that I was doing. And it was really counter-cultural for me. When I encountered that message. I went to the 12 step program for Families of alcoholics, which I qualify for like a hundred times over. And I started learning there, you know, there's this philosophy in the 12 steps about like, you know, facing your own role in your problems. 0 (24m 42s): And it was really the first time I'd ever had like a structure to do that. It was extremely powerful. And what was interesting is I was in therapy three times a week at the time and I, you know, the therapist was very concerned, I shouldn't do that. And it was absolutely what I needed. And, but I also needed, I needed to reregulate and when I learned to reregulate, there was no word reregulation, there was no concept of complex PTSD, they didn't know what was wrong with me. They thought I was just, you know, kind of a nutty gal. I couldn't pull her life together. But I, my life came together like very quickly once I learned how to reregulate my nervous system. 1 (25m 18s): So is there any practice that you do or perspective that you have that's seen as really controversial to the healing culture or like that space in general? 0 (25m 31s): Not anymore. When I first started, I got a lot of pushback, but now I have a lot of fans in the therapy and medical world. And this summer, the, the Royal College of Psychiatry adopted some of my content to teach all the psychiatrists in the UK and Australia and New Zealand. What, how to do trauma informed care. It's a video, you know, some work that I did explaining here's what it's like to go to the doctor when you have what I have. And so that was, that was a great victory that now somebody like me, I'm at the table helping to define, it's like this, it maybe isn't always what you thought. And so when I was going to therapy, and this is not true, some people really get help from it, but by and large it's not that common for people with complex PTSD to benefit from talk therapy or medication 1 (26m 20s): That they do or they don't. 0 (26m 21s): They don't, 1 (26m 22s): Yeah, okay. 0 (26m 23s): Mostly they don't. And that's pretty much what insurance covers. That's the paradigm. It's starting to change, but it's still pretty locked in. And so it really threatens people. When I say, listen, I went, I had 11 different therapists over 17 years and all of it made me worse, not better. And I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I just like, I just have to be honest. Like I didn't get better. I was getting gradually worse. And then I learned these techniques that, because I didn't know what dysregulation was, I learned how to write a simple writing technique. It's not sim it's a very specific writing technique. And I, I teach people for free how to do it. I'll share the link to that with you, followed by a really simple meditation. There's a lot of, now, you know, I've been doing this 30 years every day now, but within two weeks of doing this technique, I recovered from depression. 0 (27m 11s): I recovered from what you might call a DHD type symptoms that were severe. Because when I first, when I first got into healing, when I first had to heal, I was in the middle of a total crisis. I was beaten unconscious on the street by strangers. Whoa. And I was already going through a lot. My mother died like that week. And, and you know, somebody I really loved had, had ended things with me six or 10 months before that I was, I was already in a bad place. And then I got attacked and I went to the doctor and they were like, you're fine, we're looking at a CAT scan, you know, not bleeding in your brain. I wasn't fine. I had PTSD. But as often happens for people who had a rough childhood, an adult trauma can sort of let it out of the bag and suddenly your childhood trauma is just like running your life. 0 (27m 57s): Whereas you kind of had it under control before, or maybe it made you a little odd in certain ways, but you weren't freaking out. Well then I was freaking out and I couldn't stop and I was going to therapy and I would just like tremble afterwards. I would be worse every time. And they just didn't have anything for me. So they said, take Xanax, you know, maybe you need more medication. And I was really worried I was gonna end up hospitalized like me. I was such a like tough, strong, competent person. And, and then I stumbled on this technique. I just confided in somebody I didn't know very well that I felt like I couldn't keep living like this. And she said, ah, come here, come here. I'll show you something. And she sh she showed me something that somebody had showed her. 0 (28m 38s): She was a, she was living on the streets in San Francisco as a teenager. She was so, she drank so much, she couldn't keep it down anymore. So she had to get sober, but she was miserable. And somebody showed her how to do this writing and this meditation and most people in AA don't do it. Some do a handful, but it's like twice a day. You do it twice a day. And for them it was able to, it just helped them be not only sober, but like the part of the aa thing of happy, joyous and free. And I remember when she told me about it, I was sort of like, I'm not an alcoholic. How, why would that work? She's like, I don't know, you might as well try it. And I did. And it just, it it worked so quickly and it would be 20 more years before there was a name for what was wrong and why it worked for me. 0 (29m 21s): And it was dysregulation. I was dysregulated. 1 (29m 26s): What is, I guess what is something that you see in this spa, the healing space that you wish people would just not do or not believe? Like what is the one thing that you see repeated and you're just like, ah, stop doing it. You don't, you're missing the mark. 0 (29m 40s): There's this really toxic word that people use all the time and it's because where people go, well yes I am, you know, doing this terrible thing like stealing from, you know, my employer or something. But it's because, you know, and, and we keep linking the self-defeating behaviors with the thing that happened. And there's a lot of people who will enable you to do that. And I get it, you know, it's true. Like trauma left leaves you with wounds and self-defeating behaviors. You did not ask for that. But you know, now you're grown up. If you don't change, it's gonna take your life down. It's gonna keep you trapped in trauma and feeling worse. And people who don't get better from trauma, by the time they're older, you know, they get pretty messed up. 0 (30m 24s): We all know such people. They're up and down the streets here in the Bay area and, and you know, with false solutions of focusing on, you know, my mom, what happened, society and yeah, you know, I had a pretty messed up mom. I live in the same society as everybody. Some advantages, some disadvantages. But here's the thing, if you don't learn how to notice your symptoms and calm them, it, you're just helpless. You're helpless against the forces of society or the force of nature. You know, all of these things are gonna happen. We're going to meet life's problems whether we are perfect angels or not. So becoming strong and aware is how we wake up. 0 (31m 4s): I think a lot of what we see in terms of, you know, people who are engaging in social conflicts by screaming on the streets and stuff, they're just regulated and, and they're, they, they, you know, there, there's a lot of encouragement for that and a belief system that the more you scream and punch pillows and blame, the better you'll feel or you're somehow gonna be effective. But that's not true. We can see with our eyes that doesn't make you better. We know from our experience it doesn't make you better. And we know from science it doesn't improve things. And what improves things is self-regulation. I really believe people ha you know, we, it takes all kinds of people to make the world a good place and people are gonna have different opinions and they're gonna have different angles and they're gonna be like this about things that part's normal. 0 (31m 50s): But if you're coming at that dysregulated, you're pretty much just making things terrible for everybody. And I do think that that's true. It's true. And that, that if you learn to reregulate, you can start to be effective. If, if what are you, what are you trying to do? Earn money, advocate for a certain public policy, you know, change the world, save people. You can't do anything with dysregulated. You're, you're, you can't even access your own thoughts because there's so much noise in your head. So you can't do it. So this is it, it keeps coming back to this core problem of neurological dysregulation. You can't really heal diabetes when you're dysregulated. And diabetes and other autoimmune diseases are very much a product of dysregulation. 0 (32m 35s): If you had, you know, serious childhood trauma, it radically increases the odds that you're gonna have diabetes, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, reproductive disorders, you name it. So when we learn to reregulate, it starts to bring our bodies back into line. It starts to bring our perception back into like just reality. And it can be a little bit addictive, that sort of exciting world where, you know, there's like the bad guys and the good guys and there's the narcissists and the angels and, and you know, you can come back to something a little more real where it's like, wow, everybody's like a little bit bad and a little bit good. And if you wanna fight the good fight, you gotta be fighting within yourself to amplify the good in you and start to get a better handle on the the bad side. 0 (33m 18s): Every human has it, every, everybody's capable of bad things, you know, when pressed and traumatized people, maybe even more than other people. And so we, we start working on ourselves and then you become enlightened about like, I see an opportunity, I have an idea, the techniques I teach in my book Reregulated the Daily Practice. What what it does is it's a way to start taking those fearful and resentful thoughts and allowing like detaching from them for a spell. Maybe some of them are needed, most of them probably aren't, but you don't know yet. You detach a little bit and take a rest. And it's kind of like taking a shower from your belief about what's bad and what's good and what you have to do. And then you rest your mind in meditation for 20 minutes. 0 (33m 58s): Very simple. And then when you, you tend to come out of it a little clearer about what your next steps should be, it's occasionally it's like a white light inspiration. A lot of times it's just kind of like a, some common sense comes in, I should get to work, I should get to work on time, you know, I was late yesterday, I should get there on time today. Like those are really healthy thoughts. That's what healthy thinking looks like. 1 (34m 21s): Is that so, oh my gosh, I have two people, I have three people in my life. That time does not exist for them. And I think as with most things, you give people a lot of slack in the beginning, but the more that it happens, the more it ticks me off. And I'm like, it is just so disrespectful to everybody when everyone is constantly waiting on you. Yeah. And it doesn't matter because there's always a reason. They always have a reason or they're always super like charismatic about it so that you don't have a reaction, right? Like trying to control everyone's response to like their very disrespectful thing. And what I see with one of my friends, it is 100% a form of self-sabotage because it's always when it's like a work thing. 1 (35m 7s): And it's also, I think it goes back to where this person's nervous system is comfortable. 'cause it's comfortable in that I only have two minutes, I'm so stressed and I'm gonna get like I'm gonna, right. It's this thing that they're giving themselves 'cause they need it in some way. Yeah. Do you have any like quick I guess, insight about that or how to handle that or if you have a friend that does that? 0 (35m 30s): Well I, I, it's interesting 'cause when I was most dysregulated I was late to everything and it, it was partly 'cause I was always trying to get, get some extra stuff done. I was a single mom and I always, you know, had to try to get a lot done. But actually I think by and large, in most cases everybody's not the same. But in, in many cases it's avoidance and avoidance with when you have dysregulation, the reason we avoid people and situations and structures is basically 'cause they're triggering. And I wanna emphasize when I say trigger, I mean it, it kicks off some dysregulation in your nervous system. The brainwaves are going out of sync. It's very hard to manage. It can throw you off your game, you know? And so we're just unconsciously finding ways to like pretend we're showing up but not show up. 0 (36m 14s): So we say yes to the invitation, but we don't come, it's too much. We're still sort of like in the car kind of, it's all, it's not always very conscious, but that's, I call it covert avoidance. Some people just hole up in a cabin somewhere with their dog. Other people, they participate, maybe they get married, but they never have honest conversations. You know, they agree to coach softball, but they always find reasons why they can't and they're always on their phones. That's avoidance. So we're avoiding things and avoidance become very lonely. But a avoidance is a, it's a way to manage your own triggers that when you don't realize that's what you're doing, a lot of bad things we do, you know, seeking exciting romance is trying to manage triggers of that fear of being alone. 0 (36m 57s): And smoking cigarettes is managing triggers. You know, you get to go outside and by yourself and take a deep breath, you know, take five minutes. You know, a lot of what we're doing is just trying to manage that. So if you can learn a system to kind of bring yourself back into a state of regulation, everything gets easier and your potential can, your, it's like so fast the way your potential will just start to rise up out of you because you're not sabotaging so much. You will, you're human, you know, you're never gonna be perfect. But there's so much less of that. And you can see red flags when they're waving in your face and you can start to feel a natural affinity with people who are being open with you and kind. 0 (37m 38s): And it, it wakes up. It's like we're sleeping beauties. This stuff had to be shut down for survival and now we're giving it space by reregulating to come back. 1 (37m 49s): Is there any childhood trauma topics that you see widely discussed that you wish to illuminate on or correct or wish that people stopped subscribing to? 0 (38m 3s): Well, I try not to be a hard ass about this because I must respect that different people have had a different experience. But I think in the public health sector, they put a lot of emphasis on things like generational trauma and hardly any trauma is not generational in that, you know, parents pass it on to kids in particular through the way we have relationships, it generates babies and then, you know, sort of trauma driven relationship. So it's always that. But sometimes I think that that is another way. It's not that it doesn't exist, but it's not very helpful to, it's like, it's good to know like, why am I like this? Oh, it's not my fault. That's nice to know, but it's not gonna get you healed at all. 0 (38m 46s): I think only people who don't have trauma think that if you just know this, if you just have the right brochure, if I just explain something to you, you won't have this. No. Even if your parents like come around get sober and say, I'm so sorry that I didn't deal with you and I abandoned you right when you needed me and I put you down and hit you. I'm so sorry. Even if they do that, the damage has been done. You have this neurological injury now from not being, you know, from not being attended to as a small child, your brain develops differently. So you have to work on your brain no matter what everybody else does. And I think the easy road and people who, people who don't get paid because you actually got better. 0 (39m 27s): You know, a lot of people like nonprofits are some therapists, you know, they're gonna get paid because you are not well and that's fine, that's fair. You know, people should get paid for these things. But I really believe in incentives. I happen to have a master's in public policy from, from long ago, and I'm very keyed in like we respond to incentives and I think the healthcare system has terrible incentives. My own doctor, I'm, I go to, I get my healthcare at a healthcare system that was part of figuring out the role of trauma and creating these long-term problems 25 years ago or more. But when I went there and said, Hey, I know that I have this, I have a very high score in terms of trauma and I have all these, I have like two autoimmune diseases. 0 (40m 14s): And that would be, that indicates like that, that's very common for people with a lot of trauma and I'd like to participate in clinical trials or you know, advisory groups or anything. I'm really into this. I create a lot of, you know, I'm an author and my doctor said I could refer you to a domestic violence hotline. And I was just like, what? Is that what you heard me say? You know, like that's, they, they really were not prepared. And so now they screen people for trauma, but I don't think they always know what to do. They will immediately refer them to go talk about their lives, which we all need that somewhat. But for healing trauma, there's this other thing. And we even know talking about trauma active can re-trigger the trauma reaction. 0 (40m 59s): You know, your whole nervous system goes into freak out, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, some other Fs, I think. And you go into this reaction. And so that has to be healed first. And so there's a lot of things in my life, like I couldn't go to grad school until I knew how to reregulate. I can't really have a conversation about emotions without getting dysregulated until I know how to reregulate and know how to notice. Oh, here I go. So I teach people a lot of tips for their relationships. Like when you notice when you're getting dysregulated now stop trying to have the conversation. 'cause like dysregulated me, I'll be like with my husband, I need you to understand me. 0 (41m 41s): You have to understand me. I'm not gonna be okay until you get it. And you can say something that, I don't even know what the magic words are, but I haven't heard it from you yet. Fix me, fix me. He doesn't respond well to that and he can't. And, and so if I start getting into that mode of feeling like it's dire, it's urgent, you just don't understand. It usually means I actually, I need to withdraw. I need to write what's, what my fearful and resentful thoughts are. For me, it started as a very spiritual practice. You don't have to be spiritual to use my technique, but that's how I do it. It's more like a prayer. But I have a way to get those thoughts outta my head and onto paper and released and then I rest my mind and I have a much different perspective. 0 (42m 23s): So instead of all of this, I come to him with, I, I got all these problems I can come to him with like this and this is this much he can deal with and we can actually come up with a solution. So it's the like this magic property that we can cultivate in ourselves to be able to handle life's problems and life's wonderful things too. Like having a relationship is such a blessing, but it's pretty hard to do when you're, you know, in reactivated trauma. 1 (42m 50s): Yeah, I, I totally agree. I'm not a big proponent of talk therapy. I don't think it does much for anyone. I really loved Abigail Schreyer book, bad Therapy y Yomi Park. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she's one of the, she's escaped North Korea and her story is just, it's just devastating. It's like the darkest thing I've ever heard in my life. And she's just so bright and light. And when she, I think she got into the states, or maybe it was when she got to South Korea, someone was like, are you going to therapy? And she's like, no. Like it, it happened. I survived. I'm strong. And like, she's just future oriented. And I think what happens with a lot of talk therapy, just like it cements you in the past and you're constantly like reopening this wound and you were like, why am I not healing? 1 (43m 36s): Well you won't leave it alone and go onto this other thing. And then you start to identify it with it in a way. And then you're like, well who am I without this? So I'm not a big fan. I think there are so many other tools, modalities, plant medicine, like lots of other things you can do that are not sitting on a couch paying someone who expects you to be there next week at the exact same time. 0 (43m 56s): Yeah. And focusing on the past, I mean, two things, two things that I really needed that I wasn't getting in all that therapy was how to reregulate and how to change my life from all the like moral mistakes that I was making. I was immoral and amoral. I, you know, my head was like a, just a bag of ideas that I could self justify anything I was doing. And I was pretty destructive. I was, you know, on a bad road and I was never called on that. And so there was this idea that that would be victim blaming. And I, when this woman told taught me the technique, this, you know, I was 30, she was 23, she was from the streets practically fresh off the streets, covered with tattoos, you know, and she, but she was just like, you know, I'd been carrying a torch for an ex who was married and the therapist was very interested in the story of that week after week. 0 (44m 51s): My friend from the street, she's just like, oh yeah, we don't do that. Stop. And I was like, stop it. What? And later, one of my mentors said, because I was really having trouble meeting appropriate marriageable men, this is much later. I already had kids, I was divorced. And who said, well your emotional availability is kind of all over the place and what I suggest you do is cut off all your relationships where one of you is attracted, but the other one isn't. Like, you know, it's never going anywhere. Or maybe one of you is hoping it will, but you end that you stop that, you stop that. And so I I, it sounded preposterous and I got up the nerve because at that point I was willing to go to any lengths to just like cut the terrible relationship patterns I was having once I had kids like, game over, I gotta get this together. 0 (45m 43s): And when it didn't work out with their dad and I tried dating and immediately it started looking very, very messed up. I got very real about changing my life on it. And that was one of the things I stopped having these friends and they were great to have. They had a crush on me. They would always come over and watch movies with me and my kids or you know, whatever I needed companionship for and sort of get me through that. And I was scared to stop, stop being friends, friends because I would be alone and I was alone for a while. But that's what I needed. I needed to reset totally and stop having these kind of like vampiric relationships where you're taking somebody's romantic energy and using it to feel like life is fun and interesting. 0 (46m 25s): You know, either I was doing it to them or they were doing it to me. Mm. And as soon as I cut off those relationships, it's like this, like inner power just like went whoosh inside of me. And it, it was very soon after that that I met my now husband. I didn't have to keep dating after that. 1 (46m 40s): Oh, I love that analogy. Like 0 (46m 42s): A standard. Yeah. 1 (46m 43s): I got goosebumps. Yeah. Yeah. That it is, it's like a relationship with a vampire. 0 (46m 47s): Yeah. And the other thing that is a, is a, if you really wanna change that pattern is you have to go slowly. If you have like attachment wounds that tend to take you into the dark side very quickly, you have to not, you just have to not let that happen. And how you do that, nobody wants to hear it is, but you don't have sex. You have to wait on that. And you know, that's very counter-cultural. And a lot of it was just funny the, when I met my husband, he was, he had the same agenda for himself. He's like, I'm gonna go slow. I'm sort of sick of the results I'm getting, you know, the other way, the common way. And I was like, well that's so cool. And so that's what we did. And it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It was very difficult. It was really emotionally challenging and so much communication was required. 0 (47m 30s): But I can't tell you how many, you know, friends of mine, I don't mean the ex-boyfriend kind. I mean just like coworkers and stuff. They're like, what? He wants to wait with you. Is he gay? Is he, you know, is he a misogynist? Is he, I mean they were really unsupportive. Hmm. And so that's what I've noticed. When you wanna heal your trauma part of what you're doing, it's so important to have friends who are like-minded and who are walking this path with you, who are behind you all the way for these tough decisions you have to make sometimes about, you know, for some people it's gonna be, you're not gonna go home for Christmas because it's just too crazy and it's gonna throw you off your, your beam for too long. For now it might be like, you're not gonna sleep with somebody you're in love with yet. 0 (48m 14s): You have to make these hard decisions. And it's good to have friends who help you kind of stay principled and real about that. It's very easy to become manipulative. I wanna hurt my parents. I wanna trick, I wanna drive this boyfriend wild with desire by pretending I'm not, you know, none of that's gonna work. That's like, nobody's gonna love you for some fake version that you construct to manipulate them. They're gonna love you for who you are and how you're a little bit wobbly in that. So you need friends to walk that path and try to like have a new, a new pattern, a new pattern of how you do this and wake up to what love really is and what, what partnership really is. Like. I had no idea. I had no idea. 1 (48m 53s): I don't think most people 0 (48m 53s): Do. No, 1 (48m 56s): No. And I know you have a hard stop. We'll have to do this again and we have more time 'cause I could keep going with you. Yeah. Can, before we wrap up, do you wanna tell the listeners where they can follow you, how they can support you? And I will make sure I link everything below. 0 (49m 9s): Yeah. I've got a book coming out called Reregulated October 1st. You can get it online@amazon.com or other booksellers as a pre-order I, you can get it online on Amazon or other booksellers online. And I'm so excited, excited for this message to hit the world where I teach the whole method of my healing technique from end to end. You can also find me on YouTube. I have a really vibrant YouTube channel in huge community there. Crappy, Childhood Fairy. And I bring out four videos a week and a bunch of shorts. And it's always about like how we live with trauma and change our lives despite what happened to us. 0 (49m 50s): And you can also find my website at Crappy Childhood Fairy dot com. 1 (49m 54s): Well thank you again, Anna, this was amazing. I hope you have an awesome day and everyone go check her out. And that's it for this week's episode of Chatting with Candace. Thank you for, thank you so much for hanging out. Before we go, please hit that five star review. You can leave a little comment and I'll read it on air if you'd like and share the episode with anyone that you think would benefit from this. I have a couple friends that I think I'll be sending this to right away. So thank you very much. And I'll see you next week. Bye everybody.