The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #61 Featuring "The Crappy Childhood Fairy" Anna Runkle! Cracking the Dysregulation Code, Overcoming Trauma, Cognitive Techniques for Trauma Processing, The Power of Prayer and more!

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

Episode #61 Featuring "The Crappy Childhood Fairy" Anna Runkle!  How to OVERCOME TRAUMA!  Anna Runkle is a trauma healing expert and she does not hold back in her vulnerability discussing her tough experiences in the past, and how it shaped her purpose and meaning in becoming the Crappy Childhood Fairy. Conventional therapy didn’t help her, so she developed a radically simple yet powerful method to heal dysregulation, disconnection and self-defeating behaviors (so common for people who grew up with abuse and neglect). She explains how to identify dysregulation, get re-regulated, and get to work changing your life. Dylan and Anna then discuss the power of prayer in healing and how it has changed and shaped both of their lives!  There is also a discussion on how writing can help the healing process along with the importance of connection and community.  This episode is powerful, bold yet shows extreme vulnerability and compassion.  Prepare to take a journey into the ultimate healing process and learn how to defeat and overcome your traumas today!!  DO NOT MISS THIS EPISODE!   Check out Anna's Homepage and take her courses: https://crappychildhoodfairy.com/   Follow Anna on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crappychildhoodfairy/   Check out Anna's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/CrappyChildhoodFairy     Today's episode is sponsored by TIMELINE   To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN to save 20% OFF!! https://shop.timeline.com/DYLAN _______________________________________________________________________________ Get the Apollo Neuro for $90 OFF!! USE CODE GEMELLI to save https://apolloneuro.com/gemelli     TONUM supplements for the MIND AND BODY!   USE CODE "DYLAN" to save!!  https://www.tonum.com/DYLAN     THE BREAKTHROUGH MIMIO HEALTH FASTING MIMETIC SUPPLEMENT!  20% OFF with code Gemelli  https://mimiohealth.sjv.io/c/6588260/3323599/30611     TRULY Increase Your NAD LEVELS with WONDERFEEL NMN: https://getwonderfeel.com/?utm_source=DylanGemelli&utm_medium=podcast     MESCREEN: The world's first and only at home mitochondrial efficiency test Save $100 with CODE   DYLAN   https://mescreen.com/cart/47561239626013:1?discount=&ref=DYLAN       HIRE DYLAN ON THE MINNECT APP HERE: expert.minnect.com/@DylanGemelli     Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelli and PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and leave reviews!!   MAKE SURE TO GO TO DYLAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL for MORE video content!!    https://www.youtube.com/@DylanGemelliBiohacking Email Dylan for booking, collaborations and/or to apply for the Dylan Gemelli Podcast [e-mail] Visit Dylan's Homepage https://dylangemelli.com  

Hey everyone, Dylan Jameli here today with an extremely exciting announcement. I am now on the Menect app as an expert. That is Patrick Bet David's app so you can hire me today. You can ask me questions about hormones, peptides, neuroscience, cardiology, cellular health, finances, faith, religion, whatever it may be. I am there. You can book me for your podcast and you can also apply to be on mine. But go over, download the Menect app, find at Dylan Jemeli. I will answer either by audio, by text, you can get video responses, you can even book a phone call with me.

I'm extremely excited to be available to work with all of you, and I thank you all for your support, so check me out on Mnect today. Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies powered by Midepere. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most. trusted sponsor. These are the only clinically proven uralithin A gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives? What if the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years? This all starts at the cellular level. As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline, and one of the keys to living longer and

healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong and might appear targets this for us. control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to Timeline.com backslash Dylan to get started. That's timeline.com backslash Dylan. I assure you, your cells will thank you. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast. I have an absolutely wonderful, amazing guest today and I say this so often like, oh, I have such a great guest today. I'm so excited, but I'm telling you right now, I had a chat with her yesterday and blown away by her personality, like how much we had in common, how much we shared. And the conversation, what's normally for me

is about 10, 15 minutes turned into 30, 40. And it was like, I don't even want to get off the off I hear with you right now. So this is going to be one of those conversations that I think I don't even know where it's going to go, but I think it's going to go somewhere so special that this is going to be one of the most impactful episodes I've ever made. So brief intro on my guest today. She's the author of a really tremendous book. It's called Reregulated, Set Your Life Free from Childhood, PTSD, and the trauma-driven behaviors that keep you stuck. And it's actually been endorsed by a number of experts. And that would include a number one New York Times bestselling author. And that's Dr. Nicola Para. And my guest, You're going to know because she's the creator of the crappy childhood fairy healing methods. And you cannot forget that name. And it is a breakthrough approach to help people heal trauma symptoms and change their lives

and whether or not they have access to professional help or not, which is one of the things I absolutely love about her. She has more than a million subscribers on her YouTube channel, blog courses and coaching programs, and she teaches the principles and techniques that she's actually used to recover from her. her own childhood trauma symptoms. And her approach includes really simple self-directed exercises to calm emotional triggers and neurological dysregulation and to also begin changing the self-defeating behaviors that are common for people who have really lived much of their lives dysregulated. And she also has a brand new book coming out, and that is called Connectability,

heal the hidden ways that you isolate, find your people, and feel. like you belong. So my guest today, the crappy childhood fairy Anna Runkle. Thank you, Dylan. That's about the best intro anybody ever gave. Well, you know, I'm known for my intros. That's what everybody knows me for. So, I am so, so actually really blessed. I would say looking forward, but blessed to talk to you today. And so I don't want to take up too much more time of me talking. I want to talk about you because I think the people that don't know you are going to be enthralled and you have a ton to share. So first of foremost, crappy childhood fairy, where does that come from?

What kind of name did you develop there and why? Well, when I first, you know, I was thinking for years, 20 years, I got to write a book. I got to write a book. And I didn't have the wherewithal. I was a single mom. I was working all the time. I was mentally exhausted. my life was still pretty hard. I was largely healed in many ways from trauma, but there was

some lingering problems where my life was kind of exhausting. So finally the day came when I could get going on writing, and that was 2016. And I rented an apartment in the mountains. I got away, even though I had teenage kids, my husband stayed home with them. And I went away for a month to go, I thought I was going to write a whole book in a month. I didn't. I wrote it. Eventually I did, re-regulated and it came out in 2024. But I thought, oh, I can't do this. It's so boring. I'm just boring myself to death. And my background had been like in healthcare. And I was really used to making content, you know, that was very careful and clinical and sounded like a brochure for an STD or something. And like, we, we often think that maybe we should try, you know, it was very

serious. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I just, I would never want to read this book or this blog. And so I started drawing cartoons. And I was trying to explain this story. There was this guy who he just dumped me. He dumped me so hard, so awful. I barely knew him, but it just like hurt. And he told my friend, because he wouldn't tell me. He ghosted me. And my friend said, why you ghost Anna? And he said, she thinks she's special. She's one in 30 to me. I'm laughing now, but I was just like, so I wanted to tell that story. And I didn't want to, I don't know, I just thought it was funny. It was hopelessly funny now. And I drew a picture of a pig's face saying that.

She thinks she's special. She's one at 30. And that's when I realized this has to be lighthearted sometimes. Like trauma's really heavy. And you can go to a therapist and talk about the past and all the heavy stuff. And here we're healing. My book has like sunbursts on it. It's all about like hope and things getting better.

And so I kind of found my orientation there. And then I thought, what am I going to call it? And I remember. So there was this cartoon called Fractured Fairy Tales, which tells you how old I am. But it was this cartoon. I think it made it in the 50s. I wasn't born in the 50s. I wasn't born until the 60s.

But there was this fairy. And I actually finally checked it on YouTube. She does not have a cigarette, but she should. She looks like a Brooklyn janitorial lady, but she's a fairy. And she comes in and she goes there, another wand. You know, there you go. You got what you want. And that was my picture of it.

I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like that. And just once I got into that energy, the creativity just flowed out really easily. I kind of found my voice of what it was. It took a little while for me to get relaxed on camera and to even figure out YouTube was a good place for me to be. I was writing blogs and drawing cartoons. And then the whole thing just took off so big. That's hilarious. I love it.

You know, when I was introduced and I saw that name, I was just like, what in the heck is going on here? And then I started to look and then talk to you. And it's like, okay, not only does it make sense, but it is just, it's so well done and so well thought. And then that brings to you as a person and who you are and what you represent and what you do. And so then it even makes more sense to me that you would come up with something so wise. So punk rock, really? Yeah, but it means something that is appealing that yet has meaning. And so that would bring me to my first question.

Let's talk a little bit about you, your background. I know you have some things to share that you've gone through that led you to what you do now. And the impact that you've had, it started with you going through and suffering a lot to provide what you provide today. So let's get into that a little bit if you're comfortable with that. Sure. Well, I was born in Berkeley in the 60s, which some people will know, was a very crazy time in place. There was riots all the time.

It was a little bit like 2020, but then, you know, it was a little bit like that. There was a lot of like tear gas in the air. The Black Panthers came in and were running the schools. Parents, you know, she was very liberal. My dad was very conservative. They would, I remember when I was four, I was like, why do we talk about the Vietnam War? What is everybody talking about all the time?

And they started out going, well, I hope there's a war, and then it turned, it turned to blows. They just, they had, they were both alcoholics. They couldn't even talk to me about a question without ending up hitting each other. And, yeah, it was a rough environment. And when they got divorced soon afterwards, when I was seven, my mom turned the house into a commune. And all these people came to live with us. Some were pretty cool.

Some were entirely insane. And there was just a lot of drugs in alcohol, and they gave me a job. My job was to roll joints for the grownups. I was eight. I guess on the good side, I met interesting people. There was a woman there who ran the lights for the magic theater in San Francisco and then, well, then it was in Berkeley. And I got to go sit in the light booth at a real theater when I was a kid, which totally shaped my future, I think. And she was very nice. And she would buy me groceries. But that's how much the whole house was chaotic. Like somebody had to get us groceries. We often didn't have meals or lunch. And I had, I was crying one day. And she goes, what I go? I just want to have a sandwich and an orange and some Oreos and a lunchbox. Like, that was my dream. And so she got me those things. And it's just like one of the best days in my life.

I had a lunchbox like other kids. And my mom would send me with like a big brown grocery bag, you know, paper sack. And with whatever was available or nothing. But I remember, she gave me nory. You know, it's like dried seaweed. Like when I was a kid, that was foreign food. It wasn't common like it. There was no whole foods or anything.

So we had Norie and a big brown paper sack and that was my lunch. And I was totally ashamed, you know, when you're a kid and you're just like, oh, everybody thinks I'm such a loser. Yeah. And yeah. So we had this very odd childhood. And I made a lot of friends with kids' moms. I had some kid friends, but largely I had kid mom friends who I would, you know, kind of recruit to help me out, get me something to eat, help me have some clean clothes to wear, you know. I was very resourceful like that.

I found some people. And nobody ever reported it. They would today, for sure. Right. They were just, they just very quietly made sure I had what I needed. That's great. Well,

you know, everybody's got stuff that they went through and it's really how do they use that to shape, you know, and use it as fuel. We had that discussion, and I've talked about things that I went through and utilized that to become what I become.

And, you know, I think that when you're able to do that, actually, know when you're able to do that and take something traumatic or negative and use it as something positive, something great's always going to come out of it. Yeah. It wasn't the plan. You know, I wasn't, like, it's cool that this is so terrible. I'll do something with it later. But in a weird way, I think I did know. In a weird way, the things that I loved when I was a kid, I loved stories about girls who overcame and girls who, like, there's this story Heidi. Do you remember that story?

Yeah, I do. I was really into that. There was a movie with Shirley Temple, and there was another one, like a Hallmark special. I was really obsessed with Heidi. And Heidi goes and lives with her grumpy-ass grandpa. He's probably an elkie, right? He's like, I'm bigger alive.

It's been terrible for me. And she comes, and he just can't resist it, her sunshiny nature. And then there's Clara who's paralyzed from this terrible accident, and her mother died and there's this, her dad's all resentful because he could only save one of them when they fell in the river and he had to save the daughter. You know, everybody's got this trauma in the story.

And Heidi's just like so wonderful and she gets Clara drinking the good goat milk up in the mountains and then Clara can walk. And I think, I think in a weird way I was kind of like identifying, you know, where I wanted to go, where I wanted to go with all of this. So it's kind of cool. I knew early in a strange way. So what did you study then as you were coming up and kind of figuring out what did you want to do? What were your main focuses and things that you got into?

Well, I was always really into theater. And I did, when I was in college, I was a comedian. I was a professional comedian. And afterwards, yeah, I was a little too kind of fucked up to live in L.A. for too long. Really? I couldn't do it. I was very depressed. I had a hard time making friends.

And I think if I had stuck around, sure. And I know I wrote a lot of comedy that some of it got ripped off and used. So I think if I had just stuck it out a little bit, I probably could have gotten some work doing that. But that's like another thing. Like, if I had done that, I wouldn't do this. But I studied video production in college. And I was very good. I was the first woman TV producer at our little cable station at San Francisco State University.

And I moved to L.A. I couldn't get a job in production. And, you know, it's funny to remember, but in the 80s, when I got out of school, women didn't really have production jobs. They were newscasters and actresses and writers a little bit, but mostly not. You know, I was like a producer, and that was very rare only then. It's changed so much. So I ended up giving up after a couple years and ended up in health care. I guess that's where everybody ends up because there's so many jobs, you know, based for what you're doing.

There's always a job in health care. And so I did a whole bunch of things. But I wrote books. I created online education. And this is the funny thing too. My entire history, bizarre history of jobs added up to perfectly preparing me. The one thing I haven't used yet, but I think maybe I, you know, don't say never, but I have a master's in public policy from UC Berkeley.

Very hard to get into. Very prestigious. And when I completed the degree, I realized, oh, this, you're supposed to work in government to do this. that's not really me. I'm kind of a entrepreneur, you know, so yeah, that goes better in environments where I can sort of figure out what needs to be done and do that. Yeah, that doesn't seem to correlate. But yeah, that's amazing that you have that. I mean, that's a, like, yeah, that is prestigious to say the least. Yeah. So, yeah, I have that. I can say it. What it did, I'll tell you

something it helped me with. And this could be where it ends up useful. I feel like everything's getting used, you know, for for crappy childhood fairy. But I learned to read research and look at the sampling technique and it's a lot of analytical stuff. You look at like statistics, economics. So I have a surprisingly deep knowledge of a bunch of things that people don't expect. It's so good. I mean, to be that versatile is very, very important. I mean, I went back and did finance and business and because I realized everything that I want to do, I can get certified. it and do this, but you always need to know how to run a business and know, you know, how to have financial acumen. And that's why I did that. And I used it in everything that I do. And you don't

handcuff yourself into just being put into, like if you've got a sociology degree or an art degree where you're just kind of stuck in this one area. And so in my view, it's always best to be as multifaceted as possible with your knowledge base. But yeah, I don't know why everybody doesn't have a business. I don't know why everybody doesn't have a YouTube channel. So I guess it's lucky, it's lucky for us that, you know, it's not flooded with everybody in the whole world. But for me, like, this is like, I don't know, why would you want to, being self-employed? The beautiful thing, what I'll tell you what I love about YouTube, when I used to have jobs, I was always underestimated. It was very hard for me to get a job that fit my real abilities. I'm smart. I'm, I'm like a really

hard worker. I'll just like, I'll just figure stuff out. And, and I would hire me. I would do anything to find somebody like myself. You know, I just like, can do. And I would always be underestimated. And nobody would have ever hired me to have, you know, to create content about trauma or anything. It's just the beautiful thing about, about YouTube and some other like online media is it's just democratized our access. Like, if you have something to teach, you can teach it. And you'll find out if you're good. It's like comedy. And comedy, if you're funny, you will succeed. And you'll know if you're funny. It's not like up to some guy up on the top floor. If you're funny, they will laugh. And it's just like, it's so straightforward. On YouTube,

if your videos are good, people will watch. And there's like stats and you can just see how you're doing. It's so fair. And for a kid like me who grew up on welfare, who always felt underestimated, you know, like nobody told me about college. I did go, but when I started, I didn't, I didn't know that you had to apply or take tests or anything. Like, I was, I was feral. And so for a person like me, I feel like it's a way that I've been able to reach my full potential and do, like, use every cylinder I've got to try to, you know, bring what I've got into the world. And I take such pleasure in sharing these techniques and what, you know, how I overcame my trauma symptoms, which I'm sure we'll talk about. They were bad. And I thought I was doomed.

I didn't think I was ever going to get better. And when I did, I was more surprised than anybody. And I can't, it's like if I, if I found a cure for cancer, I'd be this enthusiastic, just this. enthusiastic. You know, I'd want everybody to know, look, there's something that can work. You should try it. And I can't stop talking about it. It's been 31 years now. So it's my pleasure. Like I get to watch a lot of people sort of have that epiphany that people get sometimes. Like a lot of people will try what I'm teaching and it'll be kind of good or who knows, I never hear from them again. But there's a lot of people where I've had the privilege of watching them kind of have their moment where they're like, oh, wait a second. It's an epiphany where all of a sudden, uh, they get something back, they get this agency backward, like there's a way that I can change how I relate to the world that can make this all go in a different direction. I'm like, yes, exactly, exactly. And nobody can really tell you that. So when you get to watch somebody have that experience, it's like watching a baby be born or something. It's very beautiful and sacred.

Now, you brought up that point about being overlooked, and that's one of those things I always felt, too. did take some steps back and ask myself, was I overlooked for a reason? Was it me? And I try to do that. And I actually am working on a project now series on accountability. And the lost art of accountability is actually what I'm going to call it. And so I am with you and I fully understand that. But I think sometimes that forces us to reflect on ourselves. And then we ask ourselves, okay, maybe there were things that were out of my control and maybe there's things in my control. And if it's in my control, what can I do about it? And that is going out on your own. And, you know, I also would have the presence of mind to say, why doesn't everybody have a

YouTube channel? But then I realize because not everybody can, because not everybody can convey the message, not everybody has the wherewithal to stay disciplined to do what they have to do to do it. not everybody has the ability to captivate an audience. And so. Or a miracle to talk about. Right. Yeah. Right.

Like you and I both have that. Like, look, this happened for me. Yeah. Yes. And you have to have something special. But the key is to understand what that is because if you really understand life and God, you understand we all do. We have gifts.

Yes. But you have to find it. And once you find it, then you have to learn how to utilize it. You know, be called discerning what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, discernment of gifts, exactly. Right. Help me with that. Yeah.

And that's how this all started. I had this, like, terrible feeling like I should be doing something with this. And I felt very frustrated and, like, life was passing me by. And I learned about spiritual gifts and this incredible guy who's, like, one of the top people in it, Father Michael Sweeney, his whole thing is about, like, lay vocation, just like ordinary people. finding what they're meant for. And I crossed paths with him and he spent a lot of time with me and he helped me think about. He said a sign. He said, what the sign we are looking for is, is there something you do that whenever you do it, everybody, a lot of people say, wow,

when you did that, something good happened for me. You know, it lifted me up or it solved a problem. And I thought about it and I knew exactly what it was. And it was when I tell my story. Yes. People tend to gather around. And, and he said, well, maybe it something like that. Is there anything else? And I said, well, I've usually made my living as a writer. He goes, well, why don't you try writing your story? That's where it started in 2016. You know, I'm smiling so big because it's, it correlates with so much that I learn daily. And one of those things is we ask ourselves, why the suffering? Why does this happen? Woe is me? You know, why, why does God allow evil to happen? Or why do these things happen?

But there's a reason for every single thing that happens. You went through what you went through for a purpose and a reason because you were put here for that purpose and said reason. And you took what happened to you. And instead of feeling sorry for yourself, now you deliver the goods seven days a week. And you're doing what you were put here to do. And perseverance is part of that. And when you study and understand why Jesus died on the cross, then you grasp the concept of, he went through the worst that anybody could go through. And if he did it, I can do it. Right. And so what you're doing now and what I want to get into that, you're suffering. What? That suffering happened. What did you go through? You know, what we talked about yesterday. I want you to convey, since I know you're open to talk about it, and how that has shaped what you do now for everybody. All of these things that I introduced you about that you wrote your books about how are you able to do that? Well, it was your suffering. So talk about your suffering and then your endowment and what it's led to.

Well, so you heard about my childhood with alcoholic and drug addict people around the house and the stuff that went along with that. about what you'd expect, violence, you know, a lot of neglect and creepy adults lurking around the house, you know, no adults to like keep an eye on that, us having to figure out how to protect ourselves from that. When I say us, I mean, my siblings in me and other kids in our commune at times. So my mom remarried and we moved to Arizona and when I was nine, what I loved about Arizona then, because from the Bay Area, this is 1972, the Bay Area then, it was like Vietnam War. time. It was hippie, crazy tear gas. In Tucson, it was functionally like 1952. It was, it was very backward in a lovely way. Any lovely ways. I'm sure not every lovely way. I went into this fourth

grade classroom and the kids were honest. The teacher was totally straightforward. We weren't learning kind of like slogans of big movements and stuff. Like it's Like in Berkeley, like they would, our teachers would tell us that we're all going to die soon because the planet and the, you know, the smog in the world, you're not going to be able to breathe and there was going to be an ice age and everything. Sure. And so we were in Tucson, they're like, everything's great. There's an Air Force base, you know, we'd stand up, say, the pledge every day. We'd, um, we'd sing a few patriotic songs. We had square dancing. Sometimes in the after, on a Friday afternoon, they'd let us play John Denver records or something. And, you know, it was just like so wholesome and nice. And the moms there, they were like stay at home moms and people weren't high. I mean, Tucson has its problems, of course. But not for us then. When we lived in a neighborhood where there were, it was like near the university. So there were interesting intellectuals in the neighborhood. And so that's what I loved about it. What I didn't love about it was I was a fish out of water. That was starting then, I just never felt like I belonged in. anywhere. It was always really hard for me to make friends. I know now that's a trauma symptom. So we moved to

Arizona. My stepdad, he was a good stepdad. He was, you know, honorable and, you know, not dodgy in any way. Yeah, he was, he was, he was that way. But I think both of them kind of resented that my mom already had three kids and they were kind of extra neglectful. And they had a kid who's my brother, who I love, but they treated him totally differently. And they sort of took their attention off of So nobody was looking at what happened in school. Do you have something you're supposed to do? Do you have clean clothes to wear? And then because my mom's drinking was advancing the whole time and she was the breadwinner. My stepdad was supposed to be getting a PhD in something that he never finished. He just got really overwhelmed and sort of sidetracked for the rest of his life. He's a good guy, but he had a lot of like sidetrack going on. And no wonder, married to an alcoholic as he was. And then having four kids. And we had this little 800 square foot house and we were really poor. My mom was a teacher and she would bring home. Her take home pay was $1,100, he told me. I had an adult chat with my stepdad when he was still alive. $1,100 a month and he said $700 went to booze and cigarettes. I'm like, well, no wonder we

were so hungry. And my grandparents would step in sometimes and I don't know, fill up their bank account so they could make ends meet. Everything was a wreck. My mom's alcoholism, you know, she developed a wet brain in my teen. She was quite advanced in alcoholism. It was no joke. And then my older brother ended up being an alcoholic and a heroin addict. And, you know, it's just like so much drama, you know, with those two. Drama, drama.

So I learned to kind of not identify with them and go to school and get some boyfriends. It was like boyfriends for me. I can look back and say, oh, my real dad, my actual dad who we didn't get to live with anymore or see much of, he got ALS. He died when I was 15. He got diagnosed when I was 13. He really loved me and my sister, and we lost him. And so that's one of the things I'm realizing.

My older brother, the junkie, was tortured us. I lost my dad. I used to focus so much on my mom. And yeah, that was hard, but there were so many ways that we just didn't get what we needed and we lost what we had had. And so my idea was I just got to have a boyfriend. And I look back and I'm like, well, that's an attachment wound. But you need something that feels like more than a friend, somebody who really stands by you.

But the thing is, like 14-year-old boys are not very good for that. It doesn't tend to last. And I just, you know, I just got shredded emotionally, you know, trying to have little boyfriends and getting sexually active when I was so young, definitely not old enough already. But lost, just completely lost and unsupervised. Luckily, I was smart. I did really well in school. Teachers kept an eye on me.

I went to a school that at that time was not very good. And it was like if you raised your hand in class, some of the classrooms you would get beat up if you raised your hand. It was she used. Yeah, it was just a rough school. And I didn't have to go to a rough school, but my mom, who worked for the school district, she was like, I've got to prove that if my kids can go to the worst school,

then it's not so bad or something that was about her, you know? And so I ended up, I ended up with perfect grades. I graduated a year early. And I did not know how to go to college. So it was just kind of a weird, weird thing. So my life got better when I got out of the house and I started getting some agency and figuring out how you do things. I worked as a house cleaner.

I went to a community college to like finally got the paperwork done so that I could go to the University of Arizona. And then luckily, because so many of my friends were like doing heroin. I got out of tone. I was like, I just knew on some level, like, if I stay here, I'm not going to turn out well. And I moved to California, and I lived with some friends, and I just scratched my life together. I had one pair of shoes, one coat, a car that broke, and I just, like, I just hung on, worked in a pizza place, did home health care, that sort of thing, and hung on. And at community college, I had this very good teacher who said, you know, you're very, you're really good at this.

You should go to a four-year college. And I was like, really? Because at that, that point, honestly, I was just going to school to get the social security check that you get when your parent dies. Right, right. I just needed the money. I didn't know what I was doing. I was very aimless. And then that's when I kind of, I discovered overworking.

It was like this great drug. I discovered overfunctioning, it's called. I just learned that word a couple years ago. Overfunctioning. And it's like a nervous system setting. You just set your nervous and go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. And I would drink coffee and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. And I always had stomach problems.

I weighed like 107 pounds, but I got straight A's, and I was just very driven, started my comedy group. So I was able to kind of get through my 20s on that energy. But what happened was when I was 30, when you're 30 in your relationships, like I had a good relationship and I blew it up. I had some other guys I liked and, you know, they didn't want me after a while. They dumped me. It was dawning on me that the path that I was on was not going anywhere good. It was me. It was never drugs and alcohol with me. And that was confusing. A lot of my problems mimicked what you

might see in an alcoholic or an addict, but that wasn't it. And the beauty of if it is drugs and alcohol, then in theory, you could stop and your problem would shift, right? But I didn't know what I needed to change. It was very confusing. And I went to therapy. And in therapy, we talked about my mom. My mom, she was very beautiful, very brilliant, very drunk, very spectacular. And you could talk about her forever and that's what happened. I just found like I felt like it was like porn or something. It was where somebody couldn't look away and I would have to be like, can we talk about me right now? Can we talk about me right now? And that's where I sort of developed some of my idea that I think that talking about the past and other people it needs to happen, but it might be weighted a little

too heavily because it's good to know, but it's not going to solve your problems just to know that. And it's represented that way in movies. One of my movies that really pisses me off is goodwill hunting, where Matt Damon is just like, well, it was really bad. And Robin Williams goes, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And he cries.

And then he's like driving off on the sunset with his girlfriend. It's all good now because he realized it's not his fault. I'm like, oh, my God, if it were only that easy. Right. So I knew I had something wrong with me. I just knew I had something wrong with me. But I thought it was very personal. I thought it was a unique and a problem.

and it would be years later until I found out what it's called is complex PTSD and all the classic symptoms and that's the kind that comes from chronic ongoing exposure to stress usually during childhood. So that's how things got rough for me.

I know it's a lot and I know that you went through a lot but you, it seems to me, that you have taken all of that and made it about as positive as one could make it and I know that there's probably gaps in there and different things that are going on. But I think you said enough to realize that you have,

I mean, it's almost torturous for how long and how many years and then how much you had to persevere. So tell me this. What age did it click to you where it was like it's time to do something with what has happened to me and make these shifts and changes? Well, I was always trying. I went to therapy that whole time up until 30. I was trying so hard.

I was doing everything that you're supposed to do, just that it wasn't working on me. And I can tell you now that I have a classic symptom of complex PTSD called dysregulation. And it's a lot better now, but it used to be quite serious. And it got very serious. When I was 30, I was walking back from a coffee shop with a male friend at night. And we were on a main street. And these four guys, they were gang members.

They jumped out of a car and just randomly, they came and just beat the shit out of us. They beat me unconscious, broke my jaw on my teeth. And it was already a bit of a troubled time. time in my life. And when that happened, I developed PTSD, but it was never diagnosed. I saw the doctor. They dealt with my jaw. They dealt with my teeth. They gave me Xanax for the anxiety. That what they diagnosed is anxiety. Right. And then they, and then I got all this pot of money from the state to go therapy three times a week where that therapist, who was well trained in doing everything she was trained to do, she was a PhD. She was quite special. But all her information was that you should get me to

talk about what happened. And that was, turns out, that's, that's, It's like the worst thing you should do because I was dysregulated, talking about what happened, for many people who are very dysregulated, it just makes them more dysregulated. Then throw some Xanax into the mix. You can't re-regulate. Okay. So here we go. Now we're going to dig into this. So when did it occur to you that everything that you were being helped, quote unquote, helped with?

Because let's not be cruel here either. They're doing what they're trained to do, right? or what's the let's be fair. Nobody knew. No, and I try to always be careful about that because it's not always the people. It's how they're trained and it's not their fault. Okay, so you've got the, you're going through this type of therapy. When does it hit you that, one, this isn't working.

Two, this isn't, you know, what I should be doing. And three, when did you kind of comprehend or understand or what taught you what dysregulation was? I wasn't going to learn about dysregulation or complex PTSD for 20 years after this point. That information was not available. I lucked into seeing the book as soon as it came out. The body keeps the score. And I was like, holy shit, that is exactly what I have.

Everything he just said. Like, nobody had ever, like, said it before. Nobody had ever seen it or said it. He just laid out what the symptoms are. And I was like, that's exactly what I have. It was just a 100% click. But I went 20 years without that. and how I got through those 20 years

is when I became suicidally depressed with the PTSD and not improving and feeling terrible and shaky and, you know, like I couldn't drive my car home from therapy appointments and starting to feel certain that I was unhelpable. You know, like everybody says therapy is so great. It helped me and helped me. I'd be like, well, why don't I get helped? What is wrong with me?

So I thought, and I had also, because when having PTSD, I was really pushing people away. I was very self-centered, abrasive, needy, making phone calls at midnight, forgetting who I was talking to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, just stuff that people found it hard to deal with after a while. And so my last friend one night I was in his car and he goes, look, I just can't deal. I was like sobbing. I just, you know, I was so taught that you're supposed to talk about your feelings when you're sad. And if you're so sad, like maybe if you talk to a friend.

But I understand it overburdened the friends. And he said, you know, I just feel really bad, but I just can't take this anymore. I don't know what to do for you. And I feel like you need to do something else because I can't help you. And I remember getting out of the car and thinking, well, that's it. I'm going to have to do it. I'm going to have nowhere else to go. There's just nowhere else to go.

And then the thing happened, the miracle happened. and the next day I was giving a ride to somebody. I was in this theater group at the time, and I went to rehearsal, but I was very, very quiet because I was having those thoughts of like, you know how suicidal people will start getting very peaceful? You know, it was like that.

And for some dumb reason, I told her, like, if you're really going to do it, I don't want to give advice about it. My plan had been, don't tell anybody, so they can't stop me. And I told her. I just ended up, Cat was out of the bag, I told her. And she just like really kindly and comfortably.

She said, do you want to come hear what I did when I got sober? And she was this very unusual person. She was funny as hell. We had this improv group. She was like the best edition. She was this incredibly funny woman, kind of like Lucille Ball, but very punk.

And she was covered with tattoos and always cursing and always talking about God. Now, in Berkeley, nobody talks about God. You know, that's for those horrible people in the flyover states, right? And she did. She just would talk openly. And she was just to be like, yeah, I abandon my life to God. And I would just think, oh, you know, I was like judging her, but look where I was, right?

Right. She was so happy. She had this, like, bubbly brightness about her. It was very attractive, very appealing. You wanted what she had. Everybody loved her. And her name was Rachel. Is Rachel.

She's still around. She's still my friend. And she made this cup of herb tea. She had this shitty warehouse in Oakland. And it was freezing. This was like February. It was freezing in there. And so we had these blankets and we were sitting there.

And we talked. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I think I told her my troubles. And I think she told me about her story. And she got me some pen and paper. And she goes, well, this is what I do. And what she showed me. So she was in AA.

And she was one of those AAs who, like, she needed. just stopped drinking. She was living on the street. She was 17. She couldn't hold it down anymore, and she had to stop. She stopped, and she was four years sober when she felt more depressed than she had when she was drinking, which happened sometimes, you know? There's like some healing that's not happening under there. And this woman named Sylvia came along. Sylvia D. was one of the founders of Narcotics Anonymous. She was from L.A., and she had come from, like, East L.A., and she was the most regal woman I ever met. But Sylvia met Rachel in a meeting and Rachel was talking about

how unhappy she was and Sylvia told her, do you want to try this thing and showed her what Rachel showed me. And all it is, it's a prayer that you write and you'll recognize the 12-step language in it. It's a, you write, God, I have fear and then you say whatever it is. And then you do that like 100 or 500, whatever, however many you got. And as you're going, if you discover that you're resentful, you name I'm resentful at, you name the person, then you say, because I have fear, and the reason you're resentful, and then maybe some other fears, too. Like, if I'm resentful at my doctor, right, for not really listening to me, let's say. So that's the thought. I'm resentful at my doctor because he doesn't listen to me.

What I would write is, I'm resentful at my doctor because I have fear he doesn't listen to me. And then if you, you know, sometimes if you hang out there a little bit, you know, fear no one listens to me. Fear doctors are so arrogant. There's just like usually a whole tangle of like these resentful, fearful thoughts and feelings there. Some of it's imagined. Some of it's very real. It's not just all false evidence appearing real. It's whatever you've got in your mind.

And you get it on paper. And then there's a prayer at the end asking God to remove it and to show you, you know, to, I pray only for knowledge of your will for us and the power to carry it out. So it was a 12-step thing. And I had never been to a meeting before. but she showed me how to do it. And I thought it was very weird, but as soon as I was writing, I started feeling better.

And she said, when you're done, you can read to me. But I was writing so much, the sun came up. So she said, well, go home, get some sleep, call me tomorrow, write as much as you want. So I called her in the morning. I woke up like feeling, I think the word I use in the book is delicious. I just felt delicious. I felt this like softness in my heart.

Just this grace had just filled me up overnight. and I had never really felt anything like it. So I called her up and I read to her what I wrote and she listened to it and sort of chimed in a little bit was like, that's right, good job, good work, you know. I get it. Uh-huh, that happened to me too. You know, just a little bit of relatedness, not giving me any advice or anything. She said, so keep doing that if you want, do it twice a day and go learn how to meditate. And that's what she told me to do. And with a little bit of like fight with my kind of self-will, my pride, you know, who's this 23-year-old telling me what to do? Right, right, of course.

I was desperate, and she's like the only person who had ever helped me with this. And so I called her again and again. And sometimes, that's funny, sometimes over the years I'd call her and I would like argue with her about whatever she had to say to me. And she'd just be like, well, fuck you. If you, you know, you called me. If you don't want it, what I have to say, don't call me. I would never, I was so like, oh, how could she talk to me this way?

And one time, this is when I'm like, this upset some people. They don't get it. You get it if you get it. In my fears that I was reading her, I said, I have fear that nobody cares about how sad my life has been. And she goes, well, you know, sweetie, you talk about it a lot. And, you know, you got to realize, like most of the time people don't want to hear. hear it. I was like, oh, how could she say that? But it was actually really good information. I was

talking about it a lot. A lot of people don't really want to hear it. It was just fact. And another thing she told me is like, I was like, I was carrying a torch for this guy who was married. And given a chance, I probably would have tried to ruin his life. Given the chance, I didn't have the chance. And I used to tell the therapist about that and the therapist would sort of go, oh, tell me about that. How do you feel? What happened? You know? And I go, oh, yeah, I had a dream about him or whatever. And she'd go, yeah, let's talk about that for an hour. Rachel was just like, oh, no, oh, no, we don't do that. You want to be happy? Do things that make other people unhappy. That's a done decision for you. Move on. And I, again, I was like, what? How could

you tell me this? But she just kept giving me straight advice. And it's not like she's the Oracle of Delphi. She doesn't know everything, but it was very easy to see from the outside where I was, where I had self-defeating behavior going on. It was impossible for me to have perspective on myself at that time. But what happened is two weeks into doing this technique, the depression totally lifted, and so did the PTSD, and so did this like kind of ADHD type symptoms that had been kind of building up over my life. And all of a sudden, I could totally pay attention. And I went to my job. And so at my job, I used to sit in business meetings and everybody would talk and I would be obsessed with what am I going to say? What does everybody think about me?

Or I hate that woman or, you know, or what am I going to eat or do you know, just very, very distracted by my inner monologue, really. And all of a sudden when I had this, what I call it the daily practice, the writing and the meditation, I could sit in a meeting and I could pay full attention for an hour. just like that, just pay full attention and take it all in. And after I'd heard what everybody said, it turns out I have a very analytical mind. I have an uncommonly analytical mind. I scored very well on this on the Chiarea. I didn't know. But I'm good at seeing the big picture of something or how things connect.

So I would listen for a while and a strength I didn't know I had just showed up. And I would be like, well, everybody's sort of noticing this. So maybe if we this, we could do it. And people would just be like their mouths would fall open. you know, like, oh my God, yeah, we could do that. So suddenly I went from being invisible and sort of an emotionally dysregulated pain in the ass to being insightful, helpful, able to listen most of the time, you know, respectful by and large. And so my career shot forward.

I went to the fancy grad school within a year, and that had not been in the cards. and then, you know, started doing jobs, but here's what took me down again. It was the guys. I was very slow to heal in the area of romantic relationships. So even though a whole bunch would be going well in my life, I'd get together with some very messed up guy, not see the red flags. Everybody else would see them and not me. And soon it would just, like, blow up in my face. And I was, you know, everything would sort of fall apart.

So that was the problem. I wouldn't say it was an addiction. It was like just, it's a very normal trauma-driven behavior to feel drawn to comfortable with somebody who is troubled and then to attach immediately to them. And then, because of the abandonment wound, to not be able to leave the relationship, even though, like, within five hours you realize this was ridiculous.

You can't leave, you know. So that's, I lost a lot of happiness over that problem until I got some healing around that, too. So then let's just talk about the whole dysregulation. Break down what it is, what are signs of it, how does it impact you, your connectability. Just kind of give a full, I don't know, deeper understanding of it because it's, you can't really tell just by looking at the term because it sounds to me like it could mean multiple things. And so how would someone know if they have this going on? Well, if you had trauma, chances are high that you have dysregulation because everybody is disregulated sometimes.

You could think of a newborn baby when they're like, they turn red and they're back as arched and they're like, yeah. And then, you know, they nurse, they calm down, they sit up, they're like smiling, they're connecting. They become regulated. So that's dysregulation, regulation. And they're doing it off their mom's body right there. So that's this beautiful connection that we're all meant to have. Not all of us got to have it enough. Or maybe our moms and dads were very stressed out or absent or, you know, we were feeling the vibe.

And so that's dysregulation. Most people, everybody gets dysregulated sometimes flustered, freaked out. Let's say like you're trying to merge into the traffic from the on-ramp and nobody's letting you in. and you're like, well, that's dysregulation. That's a disregulated feeling. A lot of people get it, but it's supposed to die down afterwards. And if you grew up with trauma, it just ends up sort of like being more intense than it would be for other people. It stays for longer.

It's harder to get out of. And so the trick of it is you want to learn that when you are dysregulated and then use tools to reverse as quickly as possible and get re-regulated. And it's an incredible thing that changes the whole thing. the only level playing field I've ever found in the world is regulation. If you're regulated, you have self-awareness. If you're regulated, you can see red flags. If you're regulated, you can get into a conflict with somebody, but sort of like withhold, you know, the urge to just like lash out at them

until you have more information and you've cooled off. That's some very high-level self-regulation. It's a very good thing to be able to do. Relationships become possible when you can do that. So that's, it doesn't, you know, learning to re-regulate by itself doesn't solve all your life problems, but solving your life problems is possible because you can re-regulate. And you see people all the time, like online I see videos of like students punching their teachers and people screaming and throwing rocks at each other and intentionally driving into each other. It's all this regulation to me. And it doesn't excuse it, but it's like somebody, what you lose is attunement.

You lose your attunement to the outside world. to other people and to yourself. And so you're sort of charging through like a bowl in a china shop everywhere you go. And it's very difficult to make good things happen from that place. So how do you fix it? Well, to learn to re-regulate, there's some different ways that people do it. Some people do it through body-oriented things. They find it through participating in martial arts or ballroom dancing or yoga or therapy,

like body-centered therapies like somatic experience. experiencing would be an example. Some people learn to re-regulate through, you know, some people say they re-regulate through talk therapy, but I tend to think that talk therapy is designed for something a little different. It's for insight, but not necessarily straight-up nervous system, although nowadays therapists are embracing this idea. Like, re-regulation is critical. They call it resourcing to help people when you can see that somebody's kind of, you know, getting hyperventilating. Outwood signs of dysregulation that you can slow down,

stop talking about it, just like come back. People call it getting in your body. But there's also dysfunctional ways of dysregulating like cigarettes, heroin, booze, crazy sex, drama. You know, a lot of things that take you out of your immediate reality in a weird, temporary way can help you calm down. I get it. But, you know, it stops working.

It stops working and you have to, find something else and everything depends on finding something that's healthy and sustainable and doesn't cause damage. Now me, the body stuff is okay, but the thing I really need is the cognitive thing. I have fearful, anxious, angry thoughts and feelings and they pile up. And I learned when I took this class in the neurobiology of trauma that your thoughts and feelings are literally hard to process. Trauma causes an injury that makes processing, which means turning a activated, you know, adrenaline-charged experience

into a memory. That's processing, you know, in a nutshell. It's no longer activating, making your heart race to think about something from the past. But with trauma, that function is injured. And so it's not working very well. So anything you can do to assist your consciousness

and your nervous system to take something that's very charged and discharge it, you know, discharge all that all that electricity out of it. Those metaphors don't work from you when they're like, trauma is stored in your body. You have to release it. It's like, how? What are you talking about? No, be literal with me. So for me, how I discharge it is pen to paper. I name what those fearful and resentful thoughts are. And I'm going to give you a link to a free course. You can also get it in my books, but

we'll give you a link to a free course so you can learn exactly how to do this technique because doing it exactly does matter. If you don't do it carefully or you didn't hear me right, it can it can be you can get yourself kind of worked up it does the opposite effect but this is a way to release just get that stuff named you face it you name it you get it on paper you ask for it to be removed or release it if you prefer and then you rest your mind and you let your mind kind of put itself back together and this is all about the premise that god will take this from you if you don't believe in god it's okay you can release it and uh you know just do the thing that you believe is true in the meditation time you get to rest your mind and nervous

system and it needs a rest. I got to talk to some of the big researchers about this and they were like, yes, I see what you mean. When you're facing and naming stuff that's traumatic to you, even though you're not consciously aware of it, it's taxing you. And when you take a rest afterwards, rest is beautiful. You know it's restorative to your body and mind when you sleep. But meditation is something like sleep. It helps you restore. It helps you re-regulate your mind. There's a lot of research to back that up. Both writing is very therapeutic, as is meditation. These are very simple, tried and true techniques. But you do it twice a day. And if you can, you do it with other people who also do it. So in my program, I have a whole membership program where everybody's doing it. We have a

group that has peer-led calls where we do the daily practice, like multiple times a day, different time zones. We make it possible for people to do it with other people if they would like to, which can help when you want to stay on schedule. It's easy to like not. do it. Oh, but it's just been such a lifesaver. I experimented with not using my techniques for a couple years. I got I got pissed off because my life, my first marriage ended and I thought, see, this never worked and when I quit for a while, but I went back to the old problems and actually they were sort of worse now because I had kids. It was no way acceptable for me to be living dysregulated. So trouble ensued. And I went back to the techniques and they very quickly just

helped me kind of come back together. So it's clear to me now. They're very good for me. Then in 2014, 20 years into this, I cracked open the book, The Body Keeps the Score. And I knew there was the name. So that's when I went from being a 12-step sponsor. I sponsored like 300 women over 25 years. But that's when I switched over and I created a blog and a YouTube channel to start teaching people, these are the techniques. This is why you do it this way. This is my story. This is, and started sharing it. And all I did that for is because I couldn't sponsor all the people who asked, who wanted something practical to help them with this. I couldn't manage all of it.

It was like 20 hours a week. I was a single mom. I couldn't do more than that. I put it up there. And then one day I looked at YouTube and there was like 2,000 subscribers or something. It was really, I don't know, the public was ready for it. And so I got into it. I got into it.

And then the pandemic hit. I didn't like that, but guess what? I just had all I could do all day was work on crappy childhood fairy and it just grew and grew. And I made these beautiful connections with like a million people. It was wonderful. Well, you're clearly connecting with a lot of people who need to help. I will ask you for people listening that may think they're going through some sort of dysregulation or aren't sure. What are some common signs and symptoms or tell tell signs like, hey, this is what's going on here and check it?

Yeah, so you might feel numbness in your hands or face or feet. Feel discombobulated. That's kind of one of the most common things. You feel flustered and discombobulated. Like, I'm trying to do something and everything's like kind of get my attention. And now I can't remember what I was doing, that frustrated feeling. You can feel like you walk into a room and you can't remember why. Or you're driving and you can't remember the last 10 minutes of the drive.

You got there fine, but you went on some kind of autopilot. there's like a whole bunch of your consciousness. It's like funneling off somewhere. Those are, that's one of the noticeable things. One of the most noticeable things for other people is emotional dysregulation where you're too angry, too scared,

too in love. You know, it's coming out, it's like too much. And it's funny. A lot of people will say, all feelings are good, it's never too much.

It's like, ah, you don't have emotional dysregulation. Yeah. I'd disagree with that. I've been there and I understand. I totally disagree with that. I'm not,

it's good to have. feelings is not to have, not to have too much of anything, right? Yeah. And most feelings are not an emergency. So you're just like freaking out, screaming at somebody, you know, calling names. Basically, when people become abusive, that's usually what's going on. It's emotional dysregulation. And how they got that way is not their fault. But absolutely now that we're adults, we are responsible not to be abusive to other people and we got to figure out how to do that. But zeroing in on on regulation is what's so great. And so if it's a dysregulation problem,

before you start to analyze or talk about why you're arguing, you can just go, can I have 15 minutes? I need to use my tools right now. So you can use these quick emergency measure tools. You can also just write. Writing is this great discharge of the whole thing, ask for it to be removed. A lot of times, like if I'm having an argument with my husband

and I'm dysregulated, in my mind there's like this much information that I've got to tell him like I need him to understand this right now he doesn't understand me he's not hearing me it's like this much I go in write first even for just 10 or 15 minutes and now it's like 20% that much a lot of it was just I don't know residue it was just residue and it was I don't know hormones I don't know whatever it is it's evaporated now and then it's come down to look I really need to talk to you about you know who's going to take out of the the garbage or whatever it is. Sometimes it's more serious than that, of course. And it's, people can hear you so much better. See, this is what, you know what this is? You're being reasonable. And you're literally, when you're re-regulated, the left front cortex is back online, and that's where your reasoning happens. Your emotions are still there, but they're not flaring up. When you're regulated, they're in balance, the emotions and the reason. When you're dysregulated, reason is down. Emotions are up. And really, it's very hard to deal with people who,

who are in that state, who are demanding that you listen to them urgently about all these things. They demand that you know and deal with and care about. And so that's a lot what used to push people away. I had no idea. I mean, I really thought, like, if I'm standing with you and I feel this bad, you are doing this to me. And you owe it to me to fix it. That would be my logic. And that's not a good dynamic for a relationship.

No. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So here, then, why don't you, why don't we do this then? so we can see just how screwed up I potentially could be or as to why I was screwed up the way that I was. So we're do a small assessment here and you tell me. So, all right.

I've told my story a million times going to prison and what, you know, I've never really gotten into more than why I went and what I became and everything. But I haven't gotten into what trouble did I have when I got out. You know, were there any things that bothered me or anything? any things that I struggled with. A couple things. And you tell me if this is dysregulation or what, what potentially this could be. And this is just to help people maybe if they're struggling with certain things that they were traumatized with. So for instance, when I got out, it took me forever to be able to sit down to eat because I always had to stand to eat because if I didn't want people swarming around me or my

comfort level of eating around people was it took me years, literally. And I mind you, I had an eating disorder on top of it. So you've got that coupled with the fact that in prison, if you had money, because I wouldn't eat the food there, so I bought all of my food. And so people would always stand around you and what are you having? What are you having? And it's like, man, fuck. You know, like I'm just trying to eat here. There was always, I would have these nightmares and these dreams about going back there and these things. So it would trouble me throughout the day. And I would get into these, you develop a routine. There every day is the same. Every single day is the same. aside from the weekends you could potentially get visitors. Monday you had, you know, church night.

And then like Thursday was the day your food got delivered and Wednesday you got new sheets. That was it. Otherwise, it's like Groundhog Day. So I would develop these routines and couldn't snap out of them. And I've always been a regimented person, but these things, they lingered and they kept. And I felt like for the longest time, I couldn't shake a lot of that stuff. It's taken me years to even be comfortable eating around people again. And so is that some sort of PTSD dysregulation or is that something else that would fall into a different category?

Well, of course, I can't diagnose Dillon because I'm not a therapist or a doctor. No, but if you're a professional opinion. In my non-professional opinion, as your friend, it sounds a little bit more like a trauma reaction than your nervous system is out of whack. But I will also say, so there's this deep stuff in dysregulation that you're not even aware of. There's this discomfort with things like for you, like sitting down and for many of us, it's dealing with people. This is where the connectivity comes in. Dealing with people at all is very triggering.

I could imagine in prison, it's especially triggering. You can't really trust everybody. And there's all that hierarchy and crazy stuff going on. So it's stressful. So in a weird way, you want to pull away. You want to isolate. You want to somehow manage your dysregulation. So for you, it was standing or eating in a disordered way.

you're trying to manage your dysregulation. If you, if you can re-regulate, you know, it doesn't solve all addiction, but it reduces the need quite a bit. There, you have a way to feel comfort, to feel comfort and ease, to feel calm inside, to settle down after something is upsetting. You have a way to do that, so you need less to control your environment, control other people, you know, hold yourself apart from everybody. And this, I think, is the secret, you know, of why, having trauma is so devastating. And I mean, everything that got you into prison and being in prison, no doubt, is extreme trauma.

So, yeah, it's an extreme trauma. So how do you manage it? You have to, like, lock yourself down in a lot of ways. And that's what we're doing. A lot of people who had trauma will isolate. And a lot of people will isolate anyway. And then isolating becomes its own trauma. And now we have this, like, like, vicious circle of isolation

and people dealing with their stress around people by doing further isolation. And it's not socially acceptable to be a hermit. So what do we do? We do what I call covert avoidance where you go hang out with people, but you look at your phone the whole time. You claim to be busy so much that you can't really be present with your family when it's evening time. It's time to hang out. You know, you go and watch TV all the time. TV, oh, the great relaxation box, you know. But it just takes you away from everybody. So it's not good all the time. And so covert avoidance is, I teach people like little signs, like, but how do you know?

How do you know? I'm like, well, have you been to a potluck lately? What did you bring? Like, if people are feeling very open to people, they might, like, go out of their way to bring something nice and tasty that they know people like to a potluck. If you're like where I was, when I was still totally dysregulated, you don't bring anything or you bring a bag of chips, you know. And then in the back of my mind, I had this little card I could play.

I'd be like, well, I am a divorced mother. Nobody could really expect me to do this. But as a matter of fact, I could have easily made some cookies or, you know, I could have done that. And so it's just like this way that I was sort of, oh, I would be late to everything. I would be late to everything. And then I would sort of like make up fibs about, oh, I'm, there was so much traffic or, you know, and just do that. But really, like, being late to something all the time is avoidance. It's just, it's literally like that t-shirt, that angry t-shirt that goes,

sorry I'm late. I didn't really want to be here. And you may want to be there. You want very much to have the relationships, but you don't want the stress that it comes with. And it's all sort of happening a little below your conscious level. So when you learn to re-regulate, you start to have a little space to connect a little more. And I, in my book, so this is the book, Connectability. And connectability is a word I made up back when I couldn't connect with people. I only had superficial friendships and it really all came home to me one day when I was a divorced mom. And I had been in and out of the hospital for four years because of this surgery mistake that happened, that I ended up needing 14 surgeries and everything just kept going from bad to worse.

And I didn't really have help. And I was like having all this like abdominal surgery and lifting my kids into their car seats and ripping my stitches. And I just couldn't get better. And I really needed help. But like it's very sad. Like it's many people listening right now are right now in the same situation. You don't have help that everybody ought to have, but this is what happens when you've been living in avoidance or isolation.

If you've been ostracized by other people, shunned by them because of something you did, if you're living in a culture that disapproves of you. You know, this can happen very easily to people. We see people who are in a state of aloneness out on the street all the time. Right. And that's always like in the back of your mind, isn't it? It's like, oh, boy, that's how far away is that for me? So it's a very terrifying thing. And I just thought, why do some people, why are they able to just hang out with everybody and they feel good

and everybody likes them and trust them and everybody's laughing? And they get the jokes that they tell each other. I'm like, what is that? They're like connectable. They have connectibility. So that was my word. It's like ease and grace that makes people want to be your friend. And I wanted to know how to have that.

I didn't think when I had that longing that I was ever going to learn it. I thought I really did use to carry a lingering belief. that I was unfixable. But now I'm very good at it. Like I even have women friends. I thought I could never do that. And lasting friendships and friendships where sometimes there's like tense moments or arguments and we survive. And I'm married now. I've been with my husband for 17 years and married for 12. And we're able to, you know, we're able to have a lasting relationship. All of that is a gift of healing your ability to connect with other people and to be regulated enough to hang out and care about another person, even when you're mad, or to apologize when you went over the line

and got too mad, you know, just lashed out to be able to really graciously apologize. So the book contains instructions in all of that, like how to first release all the mean and troubled people out of your life, how to gradually come out of your avoidance. It's got to be gradual. Like, I wouldn't recommend, like, running out the door really fast and joining every club. And starting to build self-awareness. I teach the daily practice. Like, you need to be a little bit of a way to just like if you're going to start dealing with people stuff is going to start getting stressful so you need a place to like release that all it every day and then good things start to begin to happen and I even teach like the last third of the book is sort of like etiquette it's about how to

get out of a conflict or how to calm a conflict not how to run away from it but how to face it and bring it down bring the temperature down stuff that I very PhD level stuff for me and how to be a good conversationalist like when I when I really like snapped out of my avoidance and I started connecting with other people. I started noticing all these things that I did and they did that just shuts down the conversation unwittingly. Very easy to do. So I teach that and we have a laugh about it.

I think I want to make some funny skit videos about it. Conversation stoppers. I love it. Yeah. Well, so for now, you do coaching, correct? So if somebody wants to come to you aside from reading your amazing book and watching all of your Yeah. Top-notch level content.

Do you also do group and singular coaching or how does it work if somebody wants to come and talk with you? Definitely there is group coaching opportunities. I have a membership program. I do do some individual coaching for some people. I prefer that they like learn my techniques before we begin. Yeah. But I have a whole team who will work with you to teach you that. So we have we have sort of a whole bunch of choices.

I do webinars every month. I do workshops in person. And so I'm very, very alive to the world and out there, you know, kind of working with people where they are on it. And it's easy to find me at Crappy Childhood Ferry. That's the name of the YouTube channel and the website. Perfect. Yeah. Well, I know your book is going to be amazing once it comes out.

It's releasing in October, right? I mean, coming up here soon. So October 7th. And we're going to be able to get that all over the place, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, books a million, Target, Walmart, all the big publishers. of course they want you. I understand. It's there right now. You can pre-order it right now. Yeah, definitely. Many people have. Yeah, I'm happy to say. I will link that. I would highly encourage people to get on that and also start watching your

content, following you listening. I mean, you learn so much. And you have a plethora of content that is going to be helpful and beneficial to people of all different ilks and issues and whatnot. And sometimes it's, even if you're not completely screwed. up you still need just to listen the the calmness the the possibility of it helping soothe you in some way or addressing something that you don't even know is there you know and it's it's nice to have that and it's look nobody ever wants to admit anything's ever wrong i know that i've been there i think once you start getting to the point where you realize that that's a fact and you can always you know use a little bit of help is when you really start to do well and uh you know people like you

are they're not out there everywhere. And so it's a real, real blessing to talk with you and share your story and what you do. I appreciate all of it. And I appreciate now calling you a friend. Thank you. Yeah. I'm so glad we're friends too. It's the beginning of a long friendship. That's right. Yeah. Well, tell everybody your website where to follow you. The name of your book again, which I will link everywhere. I want everybody to have the info. Crappy Childhood Fairy is the website. Same name for the U.S. YouTube channel. Most people find me on YouTube first. Right. Yeah. Right. They feel like they feel like we already know each other. I bump into them on the street and they're like, oh, I guess you don't know me.

And I'm like, no, but I kind of do, you know. I know you're like me. You are, yes, you are one of a kind. I told my wife, I said, you know, I said, I got on the call with her and I thought, uh-oh, she's going to be a little, little probably not quite as outgoing or whatever. And within like five minutes, I was like, man, I freaking love her. I thought I wouldn't be outgoing, yeah. Well, no, I just, I was like, probably not going to be like me because I'm kind of, I get a little aggressive and I'm, I'm so passionate. And I thought, you know, people are different when you are talking to them one on one or like this as opposed to what you see on a YouTube or the, some people play a character or a role. You just never know.

It's true. Are you different on YouTube? No, I am, you are with me. You are going to get what you get, whether it's here, there, or anywhere. else I am always the name. I curse less when I'm being a little bit more professional, but other than that. I curse more. Yeah.

And I'll be a little more. I'll tell the truth more about like embarrassing stories. Because you know, if you're going to put it on YouTube, it's like there forever. Yeah. You know, I used to do that. It was more like this role and this character. And I said, you know what? That's just not who I am.

The only difference you'll ever get with me is like I said, if I'm speaking on stage or at Nevada, I'm not going to curse. Other than that, I'm like the same. Yeah. Yeah. I'm mostly the same. People say I'm a lot funnier in person. Like if I do a workshop,

they say you're like a cross between a tent revival and Joan Rivers. I'm like, yeah, big sense. And on YouTube, I'm not that funny. No, you are. And authenticity is everything. And that, you know, that is why people resonate is when you're authentic and know that you're being who you are. And I love that.

And I'm going to always be that way. And I'm grateful to have people like you around that do the same. Yeah. Well, this was really fun. Thank you for having me, Dylan. Absolutely. And thank you. It's been a pleasure.

So, all right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. I am sure that this is going to resonate well and that you will enjoy this. So stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jameli and the crappy childhood fairy Anna Runkle signing off.