Sometimes even worse than the things that were done to you in childhood are the harmful things
that even in adulthood, you're still doing to yourself that make healing more difficult. Now some
of these are pretty minor and some of them might be major and it could be a question of degrees, I
call them self-defeating behaviors and they always start as an innocent way of getting out of pain.
I'm Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy and I teach people how to heal from the
effects of childhood PTSD, how to make changes in your life step by step from brain healing to
emotional healing to healing the ability to connect with other people and then on the way
to the really advanced levels is this, identifying and changing your self-defeating behaviors because
here's the thing, this healing doesn't tend to happen all by itself when you don't even try.
Now it's not your fault that you were hurt like this but now every bit of your courage is going
to be needed because there are things to be faced and things only you can change, do you know what
i'm saying? The horrible irony of surviving abuse and neglect in childhood is that the more you were
hurt back then the more likely you are to adopt these self-defeating behaviors that make the
effects of the original trauma even worse. These are things like the people you allow into your
life, the way you take care of yourself, the choices you make about partners, jobs, money, where you live,
the people you admire and listen to, the things you say and of course the way you act. Now we all know
how a rough childhood can increase the chances of really bad outcomes, i'm sure you know people who
are hit even harder than you, people who are sick, addicted, isolated, involved in violence or worse.
Now when the healing never gets to begin, there's always a danger of that negative progression
down but that doesn't have to be you. you can turn that around into a positive progression
and make the trauma stop. Now maybe you're at that point, maybe you're not there yet, there
just isn't time in any single video for me to cover everything that I teach in my courses
and coaching but I want to give you here some encouragement and hope by just describing the
signs, what it looks like, what it feels like when you're not re-traumatizing yourself anymore okay?
And I teach this because for me this was the hardest part of healing I mean yeah the stuff
that happened to me when I was a kid was bad, but in the end it was the stuff I did to myself the
bad relationships, the chain smoking, the lashing out at people I cared about, all of that stuff. If
you've taken my courses you've heard my story but I wasn't getting better for a long time because
of all the hurtful situations that I kept putting myself in and sometimes, dragging other people into.
But then I changed, it didn't happen all at once and i'm very far from being perfect today i'm
a work in progress just like anyone else but if you're stuck in the pattern that I used to be in
of just continually involuntarily re-traumatizing yourself and not able to move forward
I just want you to know I get it, I understand and i'm here to show you a better way. Okay so you want
to hear some of the signs when you're healed from re-traumatizing yourself all the time? And remember
you're not going to have all of these but you can see if you relate to some of them. All right,
one is, you no longer tend to see everything in black and white terms, people, yourself, situations,
you don't anymore hold them up as all good or put them down as all bad right? You begin to appreciate
the complexity of things and the way people can have faults but also be good people
and you'll have less outrage, that would be good, you'll have more curiosity, also good,
you'll have less impatience and more persistence, you'll lose the attraction to
extreme views or authority figures who are really damning of other people
and you'll gain the ability to just interact with all kinds of people. Now relationships
where one person dominates the other, it might be you might be them, those are going to become
more equal or they're going to just totally fade out of your life. It's going to be less necessary
to cut people out too because the ones who don't fit you aren't going to get in in the first place.
So number two is, you'll have a natural desire to care for your body and part of this is because
you'll have less drama and more energy to do things like exercise or floss your teeth or
shop for clothes that actually look good on you and you'll feel better, so that now when you end
up staying up till 1am watching Netflix, it's just not going to feel worth it and you'll have more
strength to make a different decision the next night, it's going to become more possible to face
addictions and to take action to overcome them you...you know what you need to do, is doing it right?
And when you're able to take at least small steps in the right direction you start to get
more clarity and more enthusiasm for your life and then you want to do more good things, that's how it
happens! So number three is, and this is another one where an old behavior will start to feel just ugh,
and that's around the way you eat, and being at the effect of past trauma can lead to everything from
obesity and eating disorders to a tendency to deal with stress by binging on carbs and sugar.
And these foods can be calming at first but take it from me, they end up being just yucky
and dysregulating in the long run and so as you heal, you're not going to want that feeling and in
fact if sugar and carbs are your weak spot like they are mine, i've included the quiz that i've
been mentioning, the carb sensitivity quiz that I found that really helped me change my eating, i've
put that down in the link and you can find out if you're carb sensitive too, you can find that later.
All right number four, you're gonna lose the compulsive desire to binge on tv and video
games and just looking at your phone all the time like a lot of us have that problem right? If you're
someone who's been into it long enough that it interferes with sleep, meals, job performance or
your ability to be present with people in your life, then you know you could probably legitimately
call it an addiction and getting free from that is going to be life-changing for you. And I know
I have to like look into a screen to say this to you and you have to watch a screen to hear it, so
it's not always possible to eliminate it entirely but everything in moderation right? All right
the fifth sign that you're not re-traumatizing yourself anymore is that you won't be tempted
to fudge the truth things like exaggerating, hiding important information about yourself,
or even lying about things. Now part of the reason is there's going to be nothing you need to hide or
feel ashamed about when your life is cleared up a bit, you're not going to have so many problems
so you'll be comfortable being more honest about what's really going on but it's also because just
being real, being honestly yourself feels better and you'll start to have like an uncomfortable
feeling when you're not being real you'll...you'll want the truth to filter through your life and
if there's anyone in your life who still can't handle who you really are and how you really feel,
it's gonna be okay, maybe they're not meant to be there, maybe when they're gone
even though saying goodbye will be sad, there's going to be this big nice space where people who
totally get you and are okay with who you are can come in and be your friends instead.
Okay the sixth sign...that's hard to say all right, sign number six is that your work life
will start to go better and you won't stay stuck in unfulfilling work, you're gonna change your
relationship to that job or get the new one and if a lack of work has been more the problem, all the
good changes happening are going to make it easier to get work and earn money that supports you and
the people who count on you. You're going to know how to steer clear of crap jobs and exploitative
or abusive bosses and you'll lose your appetite for conflicts on the job, you know the complaints,
lawsuits, all that stuff and just do good work and get along with people and be an encourager of your
co-workers as well as an advocate for yourself and your ideas when you need to, right? The seventh sign
that you're done re-traumatizing yourself, is that you'll lose interest in assigning blame to anybody
to yourself or other people for problems and focus instead on finding good solutions, that's where
all the power is. You're gonna feel less angry, less irritable and when something is your fault it'll
be easier to just own it and apologize and when somebody owes you an apology but they don't give
it to you, eh, you know you're not going to dwell on it, blamey, complainy news and social media
posts will start to put a really bad taste in your mouth you're not going to want to read them you're
not going to want to write them and the people in your life they may not know why right away,
but they're going to feel better about themselves when they're around you because you're safer.
The eighth sign is that an attraction that you used to feel to unavailable partners and
troubled people, it's going to let go of you. Now I talk a lot about that in my courses, about healing
relationships but so much life damage is done by this one self-defeating behavior where you connect
and bond and stay with people who are trouble or you avoid any kind of intimacy with people at all
even though it's what you long for or you abuse intimacy by acting out sexually which is still a
way of having no intimacy right? Now this is one part of CPTSD that can be hard to heal just by
like deciding to do it because it runs so deep it cuts to the the heart of the trauma wound but
when you've made real progress in other areas, it's going to be easier to stop re-traumatizing
yourself in this one, the spell is broken and there's peace when you're single, you're not afraid
of it and the possibility of harmony shows up and real love when you do meet someone. The ninth sign
is that you start to prefer just reality to fantasy. The tendency to check out by spending
too much time in a fantasy romance or a fantasy business, you know rich and famous in the future,
that kind of thing it's really common when a person is in the middle of trauma when they're
really going through it they just want to kind of take a little mental vacation there but ultimately
it's just a way to avoid real problems that need you here to take action. So when you're
healing, fantasy feels less necessary and when you catch yourself daydreaming you can come back
right into the land where you can actually connect with people and put your goals into
action which is right here, right now. Now finally, number 10 is that your material well-being starts
to come together in a really good way, now most people in the world, including most happy people,
live good lives without having a lot of money, very few people have a lot of money. Financial hardship
too can fall on pretty much anyone sometimes. But when you're free of trauma it's more possible to
earn a steady income, to let go of things like get rich quick schemes and to live within your means,
not get into debt, you can release the fear of the past maybe from when you were a kid maybe for more
recently when maybe homelessness was always a few hundred dollars away right? It all gets better, it
gets better in little pieces and then it starts getting better all at the same time, a little
here a little there, you can sleep at night, you can handle a hard day, you can hold your head up
even though you made a mistake because you're not sabotaging yourself anymore in ways that
make you feel fundamentally ashamed. This is what healing feels like when you're not re-traumatized
all the time so don't get discouraged, there are things you can do to start your healing
right now and I put a lot of them in links down in the description section below, I always do that,
and in fact i'm going to point you to a video right here that asks some very strong questions
that could help show you some first steps you can take to start feeling better today.