Anna Runkle - The Crappy Childhood Fairy (1M+ Subscribers) | The Hidden Truth About Childhood PTSD

I was feeling very, very disconnected in my life. I was lost. I thought I had a lot of friends, but when the chips were down, I didn't. For me, and for a lot of people, not feeling a chronic sense of disconnection is a trauma symptom. Today's episode features someone who turned disruption into her calling. Anna Ronkel is a visionary strategist whose leadership has reshaped the landscape in, insert her feel. EG education, slash wellness, slash innovation. People who grew up with trauma when they were very young, like abuse is bad, but neglect is worse. It's going to lead to a life that's empty, emotionally and relationally. So much of our personal growth depends on being able to interact with other people. And what happens if that's stressful, we go into hiding. We were told that if we would go talk about it enough, we would feel better, but I was one of the people and I'm not alone and I don't speak for everybody. Am I some kind of a freak because I'm going to the therapist and I just feel terrible. She doesn't follow trends. She sets them from building initiatives that uplift communities to driving change and how we think about impact and purpose. Her work isn't just about success, it's about significance. This is Anna Ronkel. Once I had that experience of so quickly popping out of it, when I had better tools to deal with the thoughts and the feelings without talking about them, writing about them, and then following it with meditation, it worked like a charm. Don't give up. Do not get discouraged because this is hard. Anna, I'm super happy that you're here today just to kick things off so that everybody's on the same page. Help me define connectivity. It's a word that I made up when I was feeling very, very disconnected in my life. I was lost. I just realized I didn't really have people who were there for me. I thought I had a lot of friends, but when the chips were down, I didn't. And I thought to myself, some people have this thing, and my word for it was connectivity. They have this air about them that they find people easy. They're easy to be around. People like to have the most friends, and they easily get into a conversation where they hear the real point, and people feel heard, and all this stuff used to feel very elusive to me until I taught myself how to do it. Why do you think, I mean, this is obviously something that I think a lot of people feel and deal with. I mean, you wrote this whole book about connectivity. I think that, and you study this for a living. So tell me if my uneducated guess is correct, but it feels like it's just gotten worse since COVID, and it just keeps getting worse and worse, and people feel increasingly isolated. So what's going on just in terms of what's happening since COVID, but also just happening socially, culturally when people feel that they lack connectivity? What was happening with you? There's two layers that I'll talk about here, and one of them is what happened during COVID, which made everything worse, and I think everybody sensed that. There are those few people who are like, I loved COVID. Lockdown was my dream. I didn't have to deal with anybody. I wasn't one of those people, but a lot of people, whatever was odd about them, whatever they struggled with, got struggling or, you know, by the time those years were up. So for me, and for a lot of people, not feeling a chronic sense of disconnection is a trauma symptom. Now, it's not the only way you get to feel that way. For some people, it's baked into their personality. They're introverted. They're on the autism spectrum. They just are socially awkward. That's not uncommon. But people who grew up with trauma when they were very young, especially neglect like abuse is bad, but neglect is worse. There's some kind of neurological development that maybe got disrupted through that neglect, through not having that interaction with their parents as much as a baby needs. And we walk around life feeling just like there's a membrane around us, like somehow everybody got the memo and there's some sort of, I've heard somebody describe it as the Wi-Fi where everybody's kind of talking this nonverbal language and they understand each other and just feeling like a little bit like I don't know what's going on. I easily put my foot in my mouth. It's harder for me to feel close to people. I feel like I have to hide who I am. So that's the kind of disconnection. And when I started my work as crappy childhood fairy, which I backed into over years of just being somebody who taught people my techniques for healing trauma symptoms, when I got online and started hearing from thousands of people through their letters and their YouTube comments, I realized anecdotally, I'm not a researcher formally, but I have this huge sample that talks to me about what it's like to have this problem. They all said, me too, I feel really disconnected. And so I do find that it's a nearly universal symptom, a feeling of disconnection. I see three things, neurological dysregulation, disconnection, and self-defeating behavior. Like those are the three things that really need healing when you're walking around like the walking wounded from a bad childhood. So this all stems from early childhood. Does it all stem from early childhood trauma? No, I mean we all know people, everybody struggles with this a little bit, but early childhood trauma, it just has a unique opportunity to alter your nervous system development. And so if you had a perfectly normal childhood and then you went through a lot of trauma as an adult, sure it would affect you and it might make you feel alienated from people. But when it happens in childhood, you're actually in development, your nervous system is forming itself. And that just as a little example, I'm not a neurologist, but most of us have heard of mirror neurons. They're these neurons that develop and wire up because you're getting interaction from your mom or dad. And so literally neglect can cause these neurological deficits or disruptions. And I don't think we ever get a perfectly good lens on that. We don't have the technology to do it, but we know it's true. And you can sense it in yourself. And it's helpful to just assume, I assume I have neuroplasticity on this one. I'm going to work on it. And most things can be improved. And who even knows what your perfect condition would have been. It's a hypothetical. You know, how connected would you have been if your life had been different? Who knows? People are different. But for traumatized people, this has been an invisible symptom all along. You know, people really focus on other things that are quite obvious to others like depression, anxiety, terrible relationships, that kind of thing. But it's just like this is very sort of quiet humming in the background of your life. And you don't quite know and put and you can't put a finger on exactly what's wrong. But you feel like something's off because you see in others, they're optimized to a degree compared to your baseline. Yeah. And the way they relate to others and their family and the way they can just participate in groups, you just think how do they even do that? Like it takes this tremendous effort. And what's the toll? What's the toll of this? It's terrible. It couldn't be worse. It leads to, you know, if a person can't learn to connect with other people, it's going to lead to a life that's empty emotionally and relationally. I mean, that's so much of our personal growth depends on being able to interact with other people. And what happens if that's stressful for a person, we go into hiding. We use isolation as a way to manage our own symptoms. And I can't really talk about this without without defining dysregulation. The nervous system becomes dysregulated. Everybody gets dysregulated sometimes. It's when you feel discombobulated or out of sorts or you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. A little newborn baby cries and is inconsolable and then finally through love, holding, feeding, the baby calms down and becomes alert again. That's re-regulation. So we all know how to do it. Virtually everybody can do it. But people who were traumatized are dysregulated more of the time. They struggle to get re-regulated and it happens so easily. And the only part of dysregulation that's obvious to other people is the emotional part of it where we lash out or have a panic attack or be romantically impulsive or something. It's too much emotion. But that's just one little piece of the dysregulation pie. There's so much else going on there. There's disruption of hormones and an immune system and blood flow and learning and cognition and memory. And so people who were traumatized as kids have this way out of proportion, probability of having almost every chronic health condition there is heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, reproductive disorders, dementia. The list is very, very broad and it's hard to think of anything that isn't exacerbated by early trauma. So not everybody who has cancer had early trauma, but your risk goes way up if you were traumatized as a kid. The solving, I mean like now this sort of like puts your bodies of work in perspective. So this is why the solving of your dysregulation is a prerequisite. It's required. If you understand that you cannot be connected to people, if you understand that something's off, okay, we got to go to the root cause first. And I'm curious if you see just in terms of people that consume your content and reach out to you. Do you see a lot of people seeking out help finding band-aid solutions as opposed to dealing with the root cause? Yeah, some of them are obviously band-aids. There's different things for different people like the big thing about me that made it necessary for me to figure out what was going on is therapy didn't work for me. Talk therapy made me very dysregulated. And that's not uncommon. Made it worse. Yeah, made it worse. So I would go to try to talk about problems in my life. And it seemed like therapists were always very interested to hear how hard my childhood was. It was, you know, it's like, it's like catnip, you know, for therapists. When they hear it's like, you know, my mother was a drug addict and an alcoholic and she left me outside a casino in the snow and you could talk about this your whole life. And I'm glad I got a chance to tell what happened and to get validated. But talking about that stuff would always just make me feel very dysregulated. I couldn't focus. Couldn't feel my hands. I would just feel really shaky and forget where I was or who I was talking to not like unconscious but just very spaced out. And it turns out that's really normal. And in the past, I don't know, 10 years finally they're starting to recognize that. But not the whole not everybody. But there's some therapists who are they're working with dysregulation first. Nobody can really process information unless they're regulated. It it accounts for a lot of difficulties in school too, of course. And everybody knows the kids who had a rough home life, they struggle in school. But this is a lot why the left front cortex will start to go dim under stress like let's say you're taking a math test or something left front cortex where reasoning is starts to work less well. It's it goes dim on on a on a scan. The right front cortex which is emotion starts lighting up. So it's like panic panic can't think can't think. And then it registers as an inability to learn. There may not be an inability to learn. There's just dysregulation between you know the person and what they're trying to learn. And if you can learn to re-regulate, that's the only real level playing field I've ever found in my life is people who can re-regulate. When you so I guess you know I love people that think you can apply sort of entrepreneurship ideology to everything right like you have a problem and before we press the quarter talking about how entrepreneurs have a high level of agency and they want to solve their own problems. And I think this is actually the perfect example of what you did because you realized okay the de facto sort of playbook for making me feel correct however you define that it's not working. The therapy that's supposed to be helping is making me feel worse obviously something isn't working out here. So let me figure out how to actually solve it which is how you sort of started to understand about regulation and deregulation. I'm curious for somebody who's in your position when you were first starting therapy who's going through all these same things that you were going through is experiencing all the same things that you are. What was that first step towards regulation that you took that was actually helpful? Well I wish I could claim it was like I decided to do it. I was really like the like I was in therapy three times a week and things came to a head when I was attacked on the street once randomly. I got just beat up by a gang and they broke my jaw on my teeth and I was unconscious at a concussion and it triggered a lot of it triggered PTSD. And in the hospital and later when I talked to the doctor they never said the word PTSD they just said oh are you you know you're upset you should go talk to a therapist about this. Well I was already in therapy. I live in California there's a pot of money for victims of violent crime to go to therapy so I had this big pot of money and I started going three times a week as recommended. In every session we would sit and talk about this assault and there were other things going on. My mother died during this period too. There was just stuff going on and so I was sort of weakened. I was in a bad place already but I could not put my thoughts together once I had you know was it the brain injury? I don't think it was an official brain injury but it was a post concussion you know it's something but getting attacked randomly on the street is a trauma where you know it messes you up and my work wouldn't give me time off work. I had to go to work and I was saying incredibly inappropriate things and I would burst into tears all the time and I felt desperate for people to talk to me and like help me through this but I was being very annoying I think is what people said and they couldn't really deal with it. I was constantly asking for help but I was very much like I had been raised with the site not raised but through therapy I had this idea. I should be talk about this. People should listen to me this will help me never knowing that that's like the worst thing a person with my with complex PTSD. That's like the worst thing is going and talking about what just happened there's a lot of things you can do like with movement there are some treatments like EMDR, somatic therapies there are a variety of things it just happened that right when I thought I couldn't go on I mean I was so dysfunctional and I had alienated everybody and I was about to get fired for saying something inappropriate that I couldn't you know I only knew by looking at people's face and I'm just like nice girl you know what this was so out of character for me but they did not know what was wrong and what it was was classic signs of PTSD from childhood brought on and led out of the bag by an adult onset trauma like it's a really known pattern now but it wasn't then and I might have died I did not feel like I could keep going with the problems that I had and then magically this somebody I was in some improv group at the time and this woman said I happened to confide in her how bad I was feeling and she said oh do you want to come in and try this technique that I learned and she had been a homeless person in the tenderloin district of San Francisco in her teens and she had sobered up and went to AA I'm not an alcoholic but she had had this marvelous recovery and she was so miserable though even when she stopped drinking she was so unhappy and so somebody in AA a woman there named Sylvia walked told her do you want to try these techniques and what it was is and is for me I've still done it I do it twice a day still it's a specific technique to write fearful and resentful thoughts and feelings whatever's up you know whatever's bothering you and because I learned it from somebody who had learned it in a 12-step context now mind you most people in 12-step don't do this it's it's considered sort of arcane or too much or you know some people look down on it even but damn if it didn't save my life what she showed me how to do this writing then she said now you got to go learn meditation because if you're doing this you're not going to be able to sustain it unless you're able to go into deep rest afterwards each time she said do it twice a day call me when you like you can read me what you wrote you can get help from me if you want advice but I was 30 at this time she was 23 and she was like this street kid covered with tattoos she's not she's a she's a beautiful woman you know but I still know her so long time ago but I was I couldn't believe I was taking like life and death advice from this person she said the F word every other word and then she was talking about God and I was like this Berkeley girl who was like people who talk about God or stupid I don't know but I she just had credibility with me she knew about the life and death moments and so I did what she said and like that night I started to feel relief and within two weeks I really if I can diagnose myself as having PTSD I'll diagnose myself as having completely popped out of it and I was able to focus my mind better than ever before so I had a job at this non-profit I was the marketing person at the time and once I had this head injury I had a terrible time focusing I probably wasn't a one at it before that either but I really I could not sit in a business meeting and really track what was happening my mind was just all over the place when I started using these techniques I would sit in a business meeting and I would hear every single thing that was said and so my career rocketed forward because I would listen to the whole hour and at the end I would say well I'll tell you what I think blah blah blah blah blah blah I was able to synthesize what I just heard and I realized that very few people can do that almost everybody's mind was popping around like popcorn and you know that I found it very annoying once you're once you're able to really track with attention the way that people talk can be very frustrating they're all over the place somebody goes off in an anecdote you're like wait we were just about to like name that next bullet point what is it or they're making some chart on this used to drive me crazy when people are on the flip chart you know being like let's talk about stuff but it's like they're not matching things they're talking about like a phenomenon a person an idea and my mind was so organized that I was just like no no no it's like that so then I rewrite it and then I'd show it to people and they would be like oh my god she's like a genius now yeah I was just I could pay attention you know what I okay so when you're saying this I have I have a thesis and you can tell me if I'm I'm right or wrong so a couple ideas first I have heard that truly truly traumatic experience like early childhood experiences they get implanted in your subconscious and they're always like running in the background and this is why it causes so many other problems in your life because it's almost like a broken operating system impacts everything and this is what you're mentioning about all these potential health issues and cognitive issues and memory issues now that's something that somebody can pinpoint is wrong or at least they feel like their life is completely deregulated and that could be right or wrong I don't know I'm just spouting from somebody else that I've heard now I think most adults they don't maybe not all them have true trauma but they are deregulated to the point where their thoughts aren't clear as clear as they could be like to your point like in those meetings they don't see anything is super wrong because nothing really happened but they've never put the work into organizing their thoughts or clarifying how they think and then they can't communicate or they can't reiterate what that hour long meeting was about or they speak in circles or they're not so off base but you can tell they're not a hundred percent there so there's like levels to this now I think what happened with you is that traumatic experience was like pouring fuel on the fire to the point where you're like okay something is definitely wrong like I'm aware that something's wrong I can't even function anymore not just function poorly I can't function at all so this was you know it was a horrible event but it was kind of like the silver lining was okay now I got to do the work to get myself back on track and I think that a lot of people just meander through life without having this traumatic event that forces them to do the work to get back on track so they actually live in these sort of sub-par sub-optimal conditions cognitively because there isn't any work done towards reorganizing they're or fixing the way they think in the way they sort of sort of just meander through life I don't know if any of this is correct but this is just my takeaway from just listening to how how your life has played out yeah I probably use different words for some of it but yeah it's like that yeah that's so most people don't even realize that they're not that they're deregulated well yeah it's dysregulated deregulation is what we want to happen in California. It's the you know disruption of normal flow of nervous system operations and your nervous system governs everything in your body you're thinking you're digestion you're your hormones you know what age you go into puberty and to a large degree how you think you know with there I do think there's something there is something inside of ourselves that's beyond the scope of the nervous system but I couldn't define it that clearly I just sense that there's more to it it governs just virtually everything and so when it's not working properly literally your blood can't get this is I had a when I was going through a very traumatic period I I had a surgery and it just failed and they did another surgery to fix it and it failed even worse and soon I had 14 surgeries and later we were able to sort of diagnose backwards I was going through a lot of trauma my my my circulatory system couldn't adequately carry blood and oxygen to the damaged tissue so whatever they fixed wouldn't heal and it would just fall apart like that's how much the the presence of those that's whatever the substance of trauma is is affecting body functioning but people disagree about what is the substance of trauma I think some of the way people talk about it is metaphorical they think it's literal but when they say trauma is carried in the body I sort of question that little bit is that literal or metaphorical I know what they mean HubSpot is a success story partner now think about listening to this podcast right now you're probably multitasking you're probably catching 70 to 80% of what we're talking about but let's flip that and imagine you're only catching 20% that'd be crazy right it's really not a good use of your time if you only remember 20% of what we're talking about but most businesses most entrepreneurs are only using 20% of their data all the most important details and call logs emails chat with their customers it's just left floating in digital space not being used HubSpot it gives you the 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is it something that you have to do once or is this like a constant practice well I think it's kind of like brushing your teeth it helps to do it once but it's better to do it twice a day people will say well I'm having a good day and it's like well are you having a good enough day that you're not going to brush your teeth today like just do it just be be consistent and be steady it's like training I I didn't think of it like this way you know the science of dysregulation did not come out until I was 20 years into using the daily practice simply to feel better and function better then the science came out and I was like wow I now I know what it is that we're we're dealing with here and why this works and that's the last you know it's like 12 years or something since I learned that it's just been like the greatest thing in my life to find out it's a thing it has a name it's normal it's it happens to a lot of people and going out on YouTube to talk about what it's like has been this great experience where thousands of people go I have that too I've never heard anybody describe it before and so I get to witness all these people having that moment like you're kidding it's a thing I thought I was crazy well not yeah because you can put a finger on it now now now it's something that's actually fixable or at least treatable right that's what that's what stresses people out when they feel a certain way and they can't put a finger on it that's what's it's horrifying well yeah and we were told that if we would go talk about it enough we would feel better but I was one of the people and I'm not alone and I don't speak for everybody but a lot of us were like am I some kind of a freak because I'm going to the therapist and I just feel terrible and that's a really scary feeling when you think well then this must be the last house on the block I'm out of options I'm getting worse I must be really damaged and so it was just you know once I had that experience of so quickly popping out of it when I had better tools to deal with the thoughts and the feelings without talking about them writing about them and and then following it with meditation it just it worked like a charm and it's so simple that's the hardest thing when I've taught like a million people now how to do it and sometimes that's the hardest hurdle for them to grasp it is like no really it's this simple and I'm not saying it will solve all life problems but it puts you in a place where you can solve life problems it's you start to what what the benefits of having a clear mind are is you start to have discernment you go well this is interesting when I talk in this manner people get very offended why don't I ask them a question like did that offend you and then you have information and you can use it you start to you know suddenly the world is your oyster you can figure things out and it used to just be this like tumble this big like beaver dam of mess you who even knows why people feel the way they feel I better go hide and so it becomes solvable and so I'm always encouraging people like use the daily practice to keep rinsing off your stress about trying new things and making your life a little bigger every day um and then live your life and bump into the wall make some mistakes are there daily practices or habits or even like I don't know how deep this goes is drinking caffeine and and not sleeping enough like are there any things that really really hurt that people have to be aware of that they have to like nip in the bud right now well sleep is really important and sleep is really hard to do properly when you're dysregulated so it's kind of a it's a vicious circle or a virtuous cycle so you start working on one until you get better at the other and you keep going um caffeine I I drink caffeine some people find it kind of dysregulating I find it helpful there's a lot of things that are regulating but they don't work long term like for me oh cigarettes did they help me yes they helped me so much I smoked two packs a day for 16 years it had it came with so many problems it couldn't last and that was before I had any idea about any of this stuff when I learned the daily practice my friend said I was like I feel so bad I just can't stop smoking I know it's killing me and my mom had just died of lung cancer and and she said don't worry about it just keep going with this daily practice it'll fall away I was like you don't know this addiction does not fall away from me I've tried everything again and again but it took about three years and it fell away and I just one time I was doing some patches and that time it just worked I just didn't relapse and it was easy and for some reason that time that was like 28 years ago I've never craved to cigarette again it just it literally just like pop it just was gone so that was that's one thing that I would have to say is one of the miracles of my life that I would say that was a miracle so if people don't understand what's happening to them of course if they if there's a substance or an activity or something that isn't actually long-term healthy but short-term helps them see life better or operate better of course you're going to jump on it and you don't and even if it's harmful well it's okay let me let me be human and realize that yeah it could be harmful in 30 years but for the next 30 minute meeting it's going to be helpful so I'm not worried about the the long-term implications I can only process a short-term pain that I'm trying to get rid of yeah and and so anything that sort of gives a boost like anything that gives you a little bit of dopamine or adrenaline starts to be like so precious and hence enter all the addiction problems you know for everything from screens to food I mean sugar oh sugar you know that's like that'll give you a little temporary lift and then you crash and then you're very dysregulated and you know needless to say drugs and alcohol that's a lot how people manage it and for some reason like if I if I'm feeling kind of bad and I drink I feel worse so drinking his I just don't have the gene or something for that but a lot of people in my family did and they're not here to tell the tale that's a that one will take you out pretty fast so so a lot of people are really just trying to re-regulate and so my my second book connectivity is about one of the biggest ways people do that it's tied into everything and it's the urge to isolate as a way to cope with the dysregulation you feel really uncomfortable in your body dyscombobulated your feelings come out too strong you don't dare express what you really think to somebody because the way it comes out tends to damage relationships like almost every traumatized people when I talk about this they're like oh yeah the damage relationships I lashed out I you know later I was really sorry but it was too late and that cost people a lot and so learning to connect and to be able to hang out be present with people listen to them be yourself this is rocket science for a lot of us so the issue is that to connect with people you have to re-regulate but as part of the as part of the dysregulation you want to avoid people so again it's almost one of these cycles of where one thing is feeding into the other thing and basically your whole life is getting worse so I think the pandemic played a big role in giving us a lot of outs where we were not forced to deal with people and it's kind of like hey a lot of bad habits kind of got bigger for people during that time but the isolation I noticed in myself because I was already like pretty good at connecting when the when the whole thing started but when it was over and I started being fully social again I noticed that I was very rusty and I would just blurred out weird things and I was having trouble like reading other people like are you annoyed with me are you happy about what I just said like I was losing my abilities with that like you need regular contact with people to be good at dealing with people and certainly in work this is incredibly important to be able to read the room and to be able to know when to hold your tongue about something and instead have it as a private conversation like when I was dysregulated that was one of my big blenders again and again here's a story I was at a conference for this non-profit I worked for and everybody was sharing cabs to go to restaurants after the day had ended and you know I was just some like mid-level marketing person I wasn't like a big shot or anything and the CEO of one of the things was getting into the cab with somebody I said do you guys want to share a cab they said sure and she was with some older woman I found out later well what I did is I just ended up talking I was thinking maybe this CEO is going to give me a little like promotion or maybe I can negotiate something for myself here so I was just like blabbing about myself later I found out that the woman she was with was Susie Buffett and and they were discussing a big grant and I just completely left it up for her you know with and hopefully they salvaged it later but I just made a complete fool of myself and I had no idea I couldn't read the room I wasn't sensitive at all I wasn't like sort of going would it be appropriate if I the underling said something right now and probably not just but you know they were just letting me share the cab so that was the sort of thing I did all the time and it blocked me I never got promoted I was pretty smart I knew how to re-regulate but it was like life lessons that I did not have yet on how to act my parents were just like Marxist hippies they thought money was evil you know and people people who dress nicely obviously had a bad agenda you know and so I didn't know I didn't know how you're supposed to act so the whole experience of healing for me has been like going to charm school like how are you supposed to be a person and I find it really fun actually it's a delight to me now but it was very hard at first well I think that this is why COVID again to your point it's such an impact because people forgot how to be people and how to communicate and how to be social for whatever three three and a half four years and now work has accommodated not being social right with zoom and virtual and everything so I even noticed I listen I chat with people for a living and if I go a week or two without leaving the house and I'll go at the dinner I feel awkward I feel I feel dysregulated for a second we go home now because I just want to watch TV yeah I know and that's not how the world works I mean if you want to be successful at anything you have to figure how to interact with other human beings not just transaction like you have to build relationships with other people yeah and it's not just like saying things it's like being aware of how it's landing with them and then being able to sort of hypothesize what would be important to this person you know if I want something from them if I'm trying to like negotiate something or have a favor given or anything to to be able to anticipate like what do they care about dysregulation is like wearing headphones with acd black acdc blasting in your ears so loud you don't you don't actually hear anything you're just sitting there pretending yeah and you're it's it just desensitizes you and we all know people who seem to be blundering through social situations and a lot of times that's what's going on they're they can't tune in and it's it's not necessarily a permanent state that you can learn to re-regulate and be able to feel I call this feeling other people's nervous system there's we have all these phrases for it like tuning in reading the room being sensitive but actually our nervous system is very good at reading other people's nervous systems if you do go through these sort of steps these daily practices to re-regulate and you still feel like you have I mean you've coined a few terms like covert avoidance that's one of the ideas that I think just the way when you say it it just hits it's like you don't want you don't want anybody to know that you like being at home you don't want anybody to know that you don't like social situations it's almost like a shame that you feel but you feel it I think a lot of people feel it uh explain what that is but also explain okay so I have re-regulated I've gone through these daily practices but I still feel that I still feel like I'm not comfortable in these social situations like what's what's the the the thing that I have to do because this is hurting my career it's hurting my business it's hurting everything I can't date whatever it is well in my book I I list eight big ways that big obstacles that are in the way to being able to develop connectivity with other people and they're the they're the common ones you could probably name hundreds of them but these are the common ones and the first one is avoidance and people talk about this a lot in the context of romantic relationships like I'm dating an avoidant guy he won't really commit you know he blows hot and cold that's like a pattern so that's avoidance but a lot of us are covert avoidance we actually we make the commitment but we don't really put our heart in it we say yes to the RSVP you know request to the party and we come late and leave early or we just sit there and say empty things to people and never really connect or we just find ourselves too busy and too tired to really pay attention to what's going on you could have a family that you know needs your attention very much if you're a parent you you've got to be present and it'll be just like oh I'm just so I'm just exhausted and it's like that every day and maybe you are exhausted and maybe the way your life is set up that's the outcome of the whole thing and maybe a few people really can't control that right now but most of us can it's like a setting that we turn our dial up to so that we don't have to deal with people how could I be I was a single mom for nine years and all the time they put out these memos of you know come help with the bake sale or something and I I worked full time and being working full time and dealing with my kids was a lot to deal with and then I have all the surgeries and it was a lot to deal with but I kind of like permanently adopted this how can I be expected to contribute to the school I'm like a special person who can't possibly do that and then I felt left out because I wasn't really friends with the other parents and they were all going on camping trips and I'm like why weren't we invited it's like maybe because I never hang out with them and they have no idea who I am and that was that was my distorted thinking of thinking that they were sort of persecuting me I think that's incredibly common but actually we're avoiding truly connecting with people who we still we wish we'd connect with them but we're magically expecting them to like reach out and save us from our isolation and we've got to come out and meet people at least part way to have any kind of a relationship with them but I think screens have been a huge obvious problem for connection and it's a it's a form of covert avoidance I don't know about you but I have to force myself to put my phone away when I'm eating dinner with other people. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story partner now a quick podcast recommendation I've been listening to truth lies and work they're in the HubSpot podcast network just like success story it's this husband and wife team Al and Leanne Elliott they break down why people actually do what they do at work so if you have a business if you manage people if you have to hire people at any point you have to listen to the show I just listened to an episode on my good employees suddenly quit that's an issue that we all have and it totally clicked for me one of the reasons I explained is why it's not usually about the money it's about all these little promises that we as founders entrepreneurs managers leaders we break without realizing it like when you tell someone you just hired they're gonna learn all these new skills but you just keep giving them the same tasks over and over and over again it made me realize that I've probably lost a lot of good people for dumb reasons that I never 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learn and plus San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs decision-makers industry leaders peers who are actively shaping the future of business from September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone Center you're going to be surrounded by forward-thinking professionals who turn insights and ideas into breakthroughs don't just watch the future unfold be part of creating it visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today as i'm looking through some of the things that you've uncovered some of the some of the some of the things they're not going right in our life are a self-sabotaging but we're not even aware that we're self-sabotaging ourselves so of course if if again just this one particular example of of covert avoidance if i don't even realize that i'm doing it to myself of course i'm going to argue with you about it i'm going to say it's not my fault that you know the people at the party for example they're well we're not on the same page or you know they're not my friend group or i don't feel comfortable like they should be more accommodating to me or the narcissist play i'm attracting all the wrong people i'm going on the dates with the wrong guys well i'm just unlucky like how my how's it my fault that i'm attracting these assholes like into my life but there's there's subconscious sabotage that you're doing to yourself it's it is subconscious and you know the word grooming it sort of means you get somebody used to something that's illogical and harmful and you get them so used to it i call it crap fit you fit yourself to crap you fit yourself to unacceptable people in situations you were very good at it it's not your fault that you got groomed like this to be so good at it but literally no one is coming to save you now so once you can recognize it and it's very hard because it feels like a criticize criticism to to realize that you've kind of been making the same mistake over and over again and it was you and you could have not done that it's it feels like an existential threat to a person who's been traumatized like they've already been like put down so much that they're holding on to their ego in the good sense of the word by a thread so it can feel like like it can feel life threatening to accept criticism even though it's actually the most empowering thing you can point to somebody like that person who said to me you married the guy that was empowering even though i did feel slapped but things turned around after that and i was able to completely drop my adversarial relationship with him i just realized this isn't in my best interest it doesn't help the kids he may start a fight but if i don't fight back it'll be fine and within like two days we weren't fighting ever again not ever again but a lot less fighting like we have so much agency and and i'm not somebody who you know we get on my youtube channel i get people like oh grow up you're just a bunch of pansies you know everybody has trauma stop whining and the thing is what we're talking about the trauma we're talking about is some people have been sexually abused by a parent they have been hit over and over and over again they've been told they're worthless they've you know it we're not talking about imagined injuries these are grave injuries to the spirit to the body and it does affect people and it can have lifelong effects but what we're trying to do is detach that downstream effect of that of of that damage so that the damage can heal when you if you don't learn to re-regulate and you remain isolated you know if you think about it you can probably think of people you've known in your life you know like some angry guy down at the end of the block who hates kids and won't let them ride their bikes past the house or something and they're always yelling at them and you're like what what's wrong with that guy well he's probably been isolated his dysregulation got the better of him and he really believes that he's the victim of the children riding their bikes we get weird like that have you you've heard the concepts of locustive control yeah yeah and I think that that ties into agency and just a brief explanation is really external versus internal locustive control and if you believe sort of in a very simple definition does the world happen to you or do you happen to the world right you have agency and control over your own life basically but my question and I think that's a beautiful way to sort of just show how some people believe they happen to the world some people believe the world happens to them and that shift and I'm going to ask you like if you have an idea of how to make that shift from the world happening to me to me having agency and me happening to the world because that seems as we're going through we're going through you know dysregulation we're going through all the different things that you have to heal sort of the leading indicator of success and everything we're talking about is having agency and feeling like you can actually make a difference in your own life as opposed to just being the victim of whatever's happened to you in the past as horrible and horrific as it may be have you ever thought about how to actually gain agency if you feel like you don't have any well yeah I mean that's kind of how I make my whole living is helping people do that but I think there's well two things I want to add I want to sort of like append there is one is trauma is real the trauma injury is real and if you if you kick a dog and you neglect it enough you we've all met dogs where you approach them and they they're sort of wagging their tail but then they're shivering and they pee on the floor they're not trying to get attention they're not playing the victim card or anything they have trauma injuries and so it's a real thing to have to overcome so so it's not just like you flip a switch and go oh I have agency over this but it's part of it I think the part that conventional treatments have done well is be able to like say okay come talk about it you know have a witness here what happened to you but I think for people who don't have this trauma you know complex PTSD this is the kind that comes from chronic ongoing exposure to stress or symptoms similar to it I don't think everybody's been diagnosed but childhood PTSD I call it I think we instinctively know yeah the set of the cluster of symptoms that are common for people for people who don't have it it must look like they say the weirdest things and we joke about it on my channel but they say stuff like you just need to love yourself that's like the craziest cycle babble thing you could say like well how would why would I do that how why why would I do that like oh you're kidding I just need to love myself and it's kind of funny and and I I couldn't I didn't love myself at all I despised myself I was quite angry with myself and I've ended up sort of by extension loving myself because I did a lot of loving acts I cleaned up a lot of problems where I was hurting other people I didn't feel ashamed of myself I a lot of work went into me feeling better about myself to where I'm like yeah I feel good about myself and so I just think when people are like girl you just need to love yourself I'm like you don't have what I have it's not that easy or they say yeah your pickers broken it's true the picker is broken but they like and so what do you do what do you do about that and so again like learning to make better choices about who you let into your life is a combination of sensitizing through re-regulation you have to become sensitive and then you have to blunder along and let a few jerks into your life and go oh I see we had that conversation they actually told me the red flag at the beginning but I overlooked it because I felt really impatient to get together with this person and then when I realized they they were not a fit or they were dangerous I didn't want to leave because I was afraid of being alone like you have to develop a lot of self-awareness before you can start to like unpack why did you make self-destructive choices and the why of it isn't even the most important thing the guardrails are the most important thing so I teach people for dating for example because dating is probably the most potentially poisonous area for traumatized people to lose their bearings big consequences come this is how trauma goes into the next generation and and so I teach a lot about how to go very slowly a traumatized person who struggles to detect red flags who attaches too quickly who is scared to leave a relationship benefits immensely from going slowly so you can let information come to you and then you hang out with like-minded friends and you go what do you think you know I I was going to call because he didn't call and they go no no don't call you have friends who help you kind of make sense of reality and don't go off into you know a trauma-driven reverie of crazy behavior that will drive people away and so with tools to start re-regulating and friends to help you stay on stay grounded in reality you can kind of reason things out and start making your mistakes honestly and as soon as you realize you're dating a jerk you get out and if you have friends you can do that if you have nobody in your life and you don't connect with anybody few people feel they can afford to leave a relationship and they'll stay and put up with anything because they've gotten stuck in the belief there will never be anything else so we have to keep ourselves with guardrails of how to how to handle life friends to keep reminding us and tools that help us keep processing the information keeping in mind we struggle to process how do we how do we so we're talking about people that have trouble making connection but also boundaries are important as well so not over-connecting and not depending too much on people boundaries key if you don't have good boundaries you can't be close to people explain that so let's say I'm thinking of going to a party and I'm a little worried it's going to be a weird party and I won't want to be there so my boundary is if everybody's like doing drugs or something I'll just leave that's the boundary and if you don't have that boundary you go to the party and then you just stay and you think I better somehow crap fit to this party even though I'm getting weirded out or I should just do the drugs with everybody so they don't think worse of me boundaries are just like you know you know what your limit is and you observe it most people who say boundary they've confused it with an attempt to control other people don't you guys do drugs I'm not comfortable with it my boundary is you don't do this that's not a boundary that's a that's a request and is that the only way to to set up a relationship so that there isn't some sort of co-dependence or something that is a little bit too engaged I wish it were that simple well the eight obstacles I told you one of them is you you we have wobbly boundaries you got you have to have good boundaries and you need to understand the difference between what you won't put up with and things that you would like to request of other people that you're not really likely to get their compliance so that's that's one of them one of them is other centeredness a lot of people adapt to trauma by being excessively good at locating their being inside somebody else you know maybe starts in childhood trying to get a parent keep a parent from becoming too high or too abusive but it then turns into there are a lot of forms it takes of co-dependence people pleasing obsessive love where you just think I can't be happy unless this person who's not interested in me will come around so it's all about some other person and you lose your agency there you've done it again and so as so as the boundary thing you've lost your agency you guys don't do drugs or I'm not going to feel okay you've lost your agency and as somebody who's really tried to make other people change I can just tell you just abandon all hope it doesn't work you can ask in a perfect world what should somebody be striving for like what would that perfect level of connection and relationship actually look like well I think that each of us might have two or three people in our lives who really really get us and if we find those two or three people we're very lucky hopefully it would be a part it would be the spouse one of them and the other two would probably be friends maybe a relative but somebody really getting you means they they know who you are they understand the nuance of what you say and they they don't really judge you for being the way you are and that's a tall order if you're still in a state of trauma where you're acting out getting emotionally dysregulated unreliable friends saying cruel things sometimes so character development goes hand in hand with being able to form these true connections with people and so two or three very close people and then the rest of it is being like as a parent to be totally present for kids and as a person who works for a company or for clients whoever you're there are customers they're accountable to like I have customers really I'm accountable to them and to be able to keep my head on straight about like what that relationship means at what point like in my line of business because I'm dealing with people who are traumatized occasionally I get people who are abusive and so that means I cut off the relationship with them but other times I have to really get up on my toes and provide the customer service they deserve even though it's inconvenient even though who knows you know what happened so that takes a high level of functioning is to have professional relationships with people and then to be able to just to be able to go out on the street without looking out the window first and making sure that your neighbors aren't there to feel confident to bump into people you sort of know and people who are a little irritating and strangers and feel confident like I'm going to kind of know how to handle this situation in a friendly way I'm not going to add conflict to our relationship right now I know and then to know how to undo a conflict how to give a proper apology how to bring the temperature down when people are getting things are getting heated with people all this stuff you're supposed to learn growing up in a you know in a healthy family a lot of people didn't get that I didn't my parents fought all the time so I had to learn and now that I learned it's just I love this skill I love it so much I feel so free I just I just got back from traveling I was in London I was you know meeting up with all these people I would just chat with people anywhere it's like a new life for me where I'm free I and then I gave a you know I did a large workshop for hundreds of people and people come up and talk to me afterwards and I just it's a certain kind of like ease and confidence that's what connectivity is a sense of ease that I can I can pretty much be myself I trust myself to filter things that are not appropriate in this context I trust myself I know what to do if I make a mistake I know how to fix it too and then I don't know the whole world instead of living small you get to live as big as you please for somebody that's listening to this it recognizes signs of dysregulation in their spouse or their partner or their family member and there's somebody who they want to help and they want to fix like what do you do is because these are not people that hopefully you can you don't want to just cut them out of your life you these are people that you want to put work into and you want to help them go through their own is there is there something that you can do or just have to be something that they have to take on on their own well it's not always easy to make other people change or to fix them but when you've found something that you think might be of interest to them a lot of people find my work because a partner or a friend or a therapist said hey I think you should check this out a lot of therapists use my videos on YouTube to ask their clients to look at between visits so they can talk productively about something and the education piece happened offline you know before they met so it's okay to suggest things to people what I think is not okay is to try is to get angry at them because they didn't go for it it's a very personal decision to to decide that you're ready to take a step also you know one method of healing isn't right for everybody and so it's sort of like I don't know like religious fanatics coming to your front door you know if you just like insist like I know what you need that's a in fact that's a sign of deep codependence and I get this sometimes it's like like people write me letters like oh well I I bought my girlfriend 10 books about healing and she won't read them and I'm just like ah time to time to just like read the books yourself or let go you know like read them yourself but when we hang on to somebody who we don't find acceptable which is what's happening there it's possible we're being avoidant and sometimes it just helps to be honest like I want to fix them because I don't actually accept how they are and we've asked them to change we've shown them what we think might be helpful but I think if it gets to where you've asked somebody three times it's you that's it that's got to be the line you just have to like accept this is not something they're interested in and if somebody is abusive I don't think it's acceptable if they're not willing to work on being abusive but I really I just thank God for the people in my life who put up with me when I didn't know how to fix this and you know except for when I got really really bad they they they were my friends and some of them are still my friends sometimes people left me at that time and they see me again now or they see me on YouTube and they're like damn girl what is this you changed and I'm like yeah I changed yeah you put the work in I mean like but not everybody that's the thing not everybody wants to put the work in so there has to be there has to be a point where yes if if you're if you're with that person they're a spouse or a partner like you want to give them the tools and the resources to to re-regulate themselves if you notice if you listen to this and you're like I'm seeing signs that a little bit of this wisdom could help them out so maybe you tell them to go you know watch your YouTube or read a book or something like that or read a resource but there also is a point where I think that you know you shouldn't you shouldn't date or marry on potential you shouldn't go into business with somebody who's a business partner based on potential either I think that you have to be healed the healthy people going into this and I consider business relationships just as difficult as marriages in some cases and sometimes there's more money on the line too right so yeah you have to go into these things heal it's going to be it's going to be difficult but then you also have to know how to ask a little asterisk on the word healed because there's not really any such thing you know there's no island where these are the people who are all the way there and everybody else is at sea you know everybody's just kind of like dog paddling around right now and we're like we can kind of manage things or we can manage things pretty well or we can't manage things at all and so it's really you got to go in with open eyes and just decide can I accept this person when you when you realize that you do eventually have to end a relationship with someone what is the best way to do it I'm a connoisseur oh my goodness well I've had it done to me enough but I've also I've had to do it and I learned this is what I believe is the best way is if you're clear that you want to do it you do not try to be friends and I'm talking about romantic relationships here but when things have gone that bad leave in a business relationship is you leave with goodwill but you don't say okay now we're just going to be friends I don't know about you but I spent a long time trying to act cool in some situation where I was dying of heartbreak and jealousy trying to be like no no I'm cool with this and I did it to other people too and then you know kind of criticize them for taking it hard and that's ridiculous I'm old enough to know now that's ridiculous and the mature and loving thing to do is to just cut it off the way the Victorians did and perhaps in some time when things have literally cooled off and neither of you happens to be in another relationship there can be a friendship or really enough time has passed that it's it's there's no spark there or anything like that one of the things I did to heal was I stopped having friendships with men who one of us kind of had you know a little a little thing there you know where nobody would ever admit it and I just ended it I ended it whether it was me or them and I told them frankly and kindly you've been a great friend there's this thing in our relationship where you know I always feel like maybe you like me or or conversely I've always had this little attraction but I know this is not going anywhere and I need to end it and I wish you the best can't be friends and and in this culture that was like astonishing they they would just be like what you know I but I didn't and I go no you did nothing wrong it's okay we're just doing what people do but I'm trying to make a big change in my life and for me that's how I became emotionally available for the real thing is I stopped fridging away all my romantic energy on little things true connectivity and true healthy relationships and I get I get that healthy there's no end to this game it's you're constantly trying to move in the right direction but something that is not negative and not detracting from you and not toxic it's your own self-work it's work with you know strengthening connects with other people it's also making sure they're even the right people that you should be connecting and thanks like strengthening those relationships with so it's not just like a one it's not just like a one and done solution it's all of it it's it's it's sort of this 360 about how you first of all heal yourself put work into other people make sure they're even the right people yeah and and shedding the people who are not the right people is a whole chapter of my book about releasing the people who are mean and troubling you know just troubled all the time they just bring trouble into your life and some there's some people you have to hard hard quit or you know boot them out but sometimes it's just releasing you don't just keep them around you don't keep filling your weekends just because there's somebody to hang out with it does take up space and it keeps draining your batteries and it keeps dimming your light for those people who you could have that great affinity that's inspiring and positive and well matched for who you are today you know not to put people down who are not there right now like we're all just like working on it but we do tend to and we tend to connect with people who we match who we feel you know get us and aren't judging us too much and so when we make when we take a big step up people are gonna fall away you'll get a lot of criticism people will think you're acting too big for your bridges you know you think you're better than me you get a lot of that and that you have to release it just be like okay well best of best of luck to you and allow there to be an emptiness in your life and that's how the good stuff comes in what would be the one thing out of out of all sort of strategy or idea around connectivity and connecting with other people that people have the hardest time with I think it's human nature to have a really hard time getting out of ourselves to stop taking the temperature of how do I feel what does everybody think about me what do I look like where's all you know where is all this going and to be able when they approve when the situation calls for it when it's time to be present with somebody to give them your full attention and to be able to hear them like we all know how good it feels when somebody really listens and I don't mean active listening how do you feel how's that but just like just in the funny moments just to laugh at your jokes just to remember you know something you liked at the restaurant and be like oh should we go to that restaurant because I know you like that thing to attend to who that person is and what's special about them and to be able to like turn your radar to appreciating that person because people are so beautiful and amazing and we completely miss out on what a great experience it is to be in the company of another person when we're so self-centered and how it's affecting us and I think it's a you know it's a developmental delay and trauma definitely keeps us stuck in our feelings in our heads but I think that's also part of the culture and part of the downside of therapy culture it has many upsides but one of them is so much of that like inward focus that that can sabotage the the outer attention the right balance of outer attention you don't want to be all the way up focused on other people but to really be able to hear them and and appreciate them and that's those are the people we love and I was thinking I was talking to my son the other day I'm like all right you know why is it that everybody loves their grandma virtually everyone your grandma's so nice your grandma is just so happy to see you all the time it's like I said well then I'll be a grandma one day I think that sounds like a really good role where I'm just so happy to see you I thought about you when you weren't here and I got you some presents I would just feel like this is the best place ever you know somebody cares about me and so the connectivity happens when we can develop that capacity and not lose ourselves and others I love that if you had if you had one wish for people who are reading this book to take away and just to take the heart not the hardest part of of this whole process sort of just focusing outside of yourself but just the one takeaway that you hope would change somebody's life what would that take away be don't give up do not get discouraged because this is hard go slowly if you disconnected people need to go slowly persevere it's worth it the disconnection will start to be this loop that tells you people suck you shouldn't deal with them you'd be much better off by yourself but just fight it fight it and no your dog is not your child and you know and your books are not your friends and those books and dogs are wonderful but so are people before we wrap up just let everybody know so the book is connectivity heal the hidden ways you isolate find your people and feel at last like you belong and this podcast will be dropping the same week that it's out so you can get the book anywhere you get books amazon and is there any other places you want to send people website social youtube website and I have like a I have a couple of freebies you can use if this isn't too many things one is a quiz of signs that you might have complex PTSD or another one that might be more relevant you can decide I'll give them both to you one is signs that trauma is affecting your ability to connect it's very popular just a like a little one cheater and the other thing is it's a free course the techniques the daily practice techniques if anybody wants to take it I can give you a link it's free it's a free short course give all of these and I'll put them all in the show notes