Overcoming a Traumatic Childhood

Wake up, wake up with good vibes and variety. Oh my God, that's brilliant. We gotta do that. Sarah and Vinny. Alice ninety seven three . Alice, ninety seven three, Sarah and Vinny Alice's morning show, Jump Start MD is our sponsor. If you want to get in shape this summer start your, weight l journeyoss with Jumpstart MD. Mention Alice and save up to seventy percent in June call, eight five Jump Start or visit Jumpstart MD All right, we are we have a very special guest here in the studio with us . This is introducing to our audience crappy childhood fairy Anna Runkel. Hello . Hello. I stumble over that name every time Anna , because Because when you put crappy in first position, it makes it sound like you're crappy. But you're talking about people's crappy childhood. It was the crappy childhood. And I'm the fairy of that. You are. Yeah . So you kind of got on our radar because a situation has arisen where you're a person on the internet , like so many other people you give advice to people, you talk some tough love and you've never said , is this true? You've never claimed to be a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist. Not only don't I claim it, but everything I do has a disclaimer. I'm not a therapist. If you need a therapist, you gott goa to a therapist. Right. So how did we get into this mess where you're suing, they're suing? What is happening here? Well, almost two years ago I got this weird letter and I thought it was a phishing scam .. It was on the screen In the mail? In certified mail. And what's going on? You went, you know, that's usually not ever good. No. And it was a letter that said, You have to stop operating. You're practicing therapy without a license. You're claiming that you cure PTSD , that you treat people , and you have to stop everything and pay a fine. And I thought , obviously a scam because anybody knows that's not what I do . I mean, crappy childhood fairy, does it sound like I'm impersonating a therapist? Well, let me ask you though, so that was sent to you by whom ? It was sent by the California Board of Psychology. That's wild. Yeah. And so there's there's a couple dozen of these boards for licensing and they're governed by the Department of Consumer Affairs. I think that's who first sent it. They sent an investigator to my house . She said, Oh , this sounds great. She took home a bunch of my handouts. She just liked it. And then I thought I was fine. And then a year later I get another letter. And this time they're like, yeah, you have to stop. And so I thought I, guess I got to get a lawyer. And I got a lawyer. They're like, oh yeah, they do this, but there's no way this will go anywhere because it's so crazy. Right. Next thing you know, two hearings later. They're all on court hearings. Well, this is administrative court. Okay. And it's very interesting. A lot of people think these courts should be abolished. You have no due process rights. They have no obligation to tell you exactly what you did wrong or what they would like you to fix and you don't have a right to express yourself. I had to sit there for two days in a zoom meeting with all these guys just making like a hundred accusations from you're a grifter , you claim to be a fairy, you're a fraud , and I had no right to defend myself Yeah, I had a lawyer who sort of vaguely understood what I did. You know, we're just this is a very low level court . And they had an expert witness who went in there and of the four things he accused me of it was like, you speak with authority, you charge money to coach people , which is part of my business. Most of my business is free , but if it were all paid, I still have a right to do that. Right. Coaching is legal. Yes. People represent yourself is legal. Life coaches. Yeah , in any manner that you want to is completely legal. Yeah. Does it feel like and sorry to the Karens of the world for the reference, but does it feel like one person got it got it this up there, you know, and then just started pursuing you? Yeah . Well, there it was it all started with a complaint. I finally saw it last fall. I mean, you know, a year and a half why before I know anything about, what is this even about? How did it start? So somebody had come, I do these very large free zoom calls. I teach a technique for how to write out your tough feelings , then meditate afterwards. And it works really well, but it's very specific how to do it. So I was up there all the time teaching on zoom calls. Hundreds of people would come from all over the world . And these are free. And they're free. And you're just a woman who has been through whatever you've been through in your life and you're offering your experiences to others. I'm somebody who grew up in a commune in Berkeley. Oh, my o gohd radical Yeah , this is amazing. Yeah, everybody was on drugs and having sex on the floor and it was not good for kids . And your parents lived there with you or my mom sing,le parent? My mom, my parents got divorced when I was seven and then the whole thing went . So your mom joined the commune and you just formed the commune. Oh, she did. Now, you think commune and you think, oh, peace, love, ideals. It was like drugs and sex and craziness . So it was And you're a seven year old. I was yeah, seven seven to nine lived while we lived there and Yikes. It was yeah, it's a crappy childhood. There wasn't food, you know, there was there was drugs everywhere. There was violence going on. And in those days they didn't call CPS or anything like that. And so luckily I was very deaf at finding moms and teachers and be like, Hey, could I stay at your house tonight? It's pretty hectic at my house. And people would just quietly help me out. So that was yeah, yeah. Wow. That was a survival skill. So I thought I sort of coasted through it, but long about my late twenties , I got my heart broken, my mom died, and then I got randomly assaulted on the street just like out of the blue, very violently, broke my jaw, my teeth and unconscious, bad concussion . And I would say I had PTSD , but this was nineteen ninety four. They just thought of PTSD as something soldiers get. Right. And they were like, here, take some Zanax and go to therap y three times a week. And those were like two really bad things to do when you've had a terrible trauma is just like first go talk about the trauma endlessly and then take drugs to try to cope with how the drug thing I went when I was trying to quit drinking and I was like I got a real and I told the therapist all the stuff and she said it sounds like you're going through a real rough patch and, I was like, yeah , I'd say. And she's like, well, I'm going to prescribe and I went, I know, you're not listening to me at all. Yeah. I'm having trouble with this avoidance thing. I'm not dealing with my life. I don't want drugs. And she was like, well, that 's and I just went, okay, this is not the right person for me . And you have to go to someone else. Yeah. Find someone else that will help you in a way that you feel comfortable with. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well , therapy I'm one of the people. It turns out like statistically maybe a third of people who had early trauma. It does something to your nervous system and your brain where you might have a lot of good coping skills, but under stress, you'll start to kind of glitch , you know, overreact, space out , you know, start to get discombobulated, make really bad decisions . I didn't learn that until this book came out in twenty fourteen , The Body Keeps the Score. This is a book that influenced a lot of people, but I happened to read it and it said, This is called complex PTSD. It comes from a lot of chronic ongoing stress. It has a classic cluster of symptoms and I was like, my oh God. Finally somebody has explained it . And it has this key feature called dysregulation, which now people know that word. I don't know it. Oh, well, tell me. I'm going to leave you with a book. I wrote a book called Regulated that's like the story. Okay , how you figured out your dysregulation? Okay . Yeah, but it's your nervous system is this beautiful system that regulates you and it runs your hormones, your immune system , your ability to have cognition, to be perceptive, to read the room , to tell when something is safe or positive or a great idea, your nervous system or not. I'm like doing all this for you , but if you got neglected, neglect is really as harmful as like physical abuse , any kind of abuse , it can cause you to sort of glitch out on those functions . And so you see these huge correlations, people who were, you know, went through trauma as kids have extremely high rates of chronic disease, not just depression, anxiety , you know , addiction, things that you would expect, but like they have a higher rate of cancer, dementia, heart disease, hypertension . And then also hence the title. What's the title of the book again? Pre regulated. Like the no but the, body oh the body keeps the score right? Yeah. I think that's a popular idea out there now that I think this is a metaphor frankly, but it's that your body holds on to the trauma. Your body gets slammed by the trauma . It's a lot of hormones, it's a lot of malfunctioning. It changes how your capillaries function . So you get sick easier, it's harder to heal wounds. And so if like I had a surgery once when I was like at a really bad time, I had just gotten divorced. I had two little kids. Everything was terrible. I had no money. And I couldn't heal from the surgery. I ended up having fourteen surgeries trying to fix that surgery. And they kept going, why is this happening? And finally, I had answers. It's like , because when I'm under stress , my history of trauma makes my body not work very well . But when I know how to re regulate, my body does work really well. And so does my mind and so does my ability to make decisions and my ability to be loving when I want to be loving and present when I want to be present. And even have a choice. The bottom line here is you are a person who's been through it. Yeah . You have found things that have helped you cope in an effort to help other people find their own ways to cope and whether it's through your methods or just you're the first step , you're not telling them that you're a therapist or a psychologist . You're now you found yourself in trouble with this sort of low level administrative court. Is that why they call it? That we're done with them now. They ruled against me. They listened, you know, to everything and they just said what they were going to say anyway. At this level of court, it doesn't matter if the jud Ige have no right to know what the judge ruled. It doesn't matter what the judge ruled. They can still do whatever they want. So what did they want you to do once they made this decision? Well, initially they wanted me to stop everything, but they became aware, I think, somewhere in the hearing , like, oh, there's the First Amendment and on YouTube. They can't touch my YouTube or my books. And they called it my website and they said content. They didn't seem to really understand like the present media environment they were initially they're like, You're doing therapy on YouTube. I'm like, have you seen YouTube? Do you know what it is? Like you couldn't do that if you wanted to. It's not a zoom. It's not two way. Right. Yeah . Yeah. So but then they zeroed in, I do do coaching and I can't now, I'm now prohibited. I did coaching. I did search. People could pay me to come be in a small group or come talk. It's really like a consult. I would only do one off s. I'm not interested in seeing somebody every week. It's not that structured. They'll be like, look, I have this relationship. What do you think I should do? And you go, You want to know what I think you should do? I think you should do this. So I got that. So I've for thirty two years and a girl named Rachel here from San Francisco, she saved my life after that assault and the therapy was I was honestly about to, you know, do myself in. I was so hopeless. I was getting worse and worse. And she said, Do you want to try this thing? And she learned it from this one guy named Tom in AA . I'm not in AA. I don't have that problem even though everybody in my family did . But I might as well have because of the way I was functioning was that serious . And she just showed me how to how to do this writing. She said go learn meditation. And within two weeks, I would say I wasn't depressed anymore. I didn't have PTSD symptoms. this method. I just had this like shitty . Ooh you can't say that no dump it. We're talking no S word. It's okay. Yeah. We're talking a crappy childhood fairy. Yep. Anna Runcle. Yeah, yep. And then I have a question before we move forward You mentioned your mom had passed away. Yeah. Did you and your mom reconcile before she passed away It would be hard to forgive . Yeah . Anyone more importantly , a parent that was supposed to have your back . The hearing that there was no food and everyone had their drugs going is heartbreaking. Well, I did everything I could to have a relationship with her, but she was very far gone with hard drugs and alcohol. Okay. Very far gone. She couldn't really do it. So in a weird way, it liberated me to realize like, if I'm going to be happy and okay, I'm going to have to figure this out. Like she's not gonna ever get the magic words here ? Yeah . Okay Start your day off the right way. Kidding.