You, my audience here on youtube, have been asking these amazing questions about childhood trauma and
to answer them for you and all the people who happen to have similar questions, i'm
sharing them here on my Ask the Fairy show. I'm Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood
Fairy and I teach people techniques and strategies to heal symptoms of childhood PTSD.
And today i'm going to be answering questions about relationships.
This is one of the hardest things about having complex PTSD I think,
romance, getting into relationships, navigating them, getting along with people in general, so
a Youtube subscriber emailed me and says, "I've been with my boyfriend for three years, six months
of dating now and two and a half years living together, I also have two daughters from a previous
relationship, they're six and eight years old, who live with us too and the situation has gone from
bad to unbearable in this relationship. There's not violence but enough bad treatment that I
know I have to leave and because it's his house, it would be me and the kids who have to move out.
I know it's the right thing but the problem is all my abandoned stuff is up and I fear if I actually
do move out I will go back to the terrible place in my mind can you help?" Oh this is so hard um
if you inherited that abandonment wound what Pete Walker calls "abandonment melange" it's fear,
grief, and rage, all right those three things come together and it can be so intense
it's like getting kicked out of the world like you're outside the world everybody else gets to
be part of it and you don't so it's really super painful for people who have that abandonment
issue and I totally relate, it can be crippling on that power to get out of a relationship that
you know is no good that you need to get out so I just want to say this is what you can do
to try to like hold together that abandonment reaction so that you can do what you need to do
because you know what you need to do, you need to go. So the first thing is you need to remind
yourself and tell yourself I am having a fear of abandonment and that is one of the most powerful
things you can do, is just know and remind yourself this is a trauma reaction this is not actually um
an authentic emotional response to something that's happening, it's a memory coming back from
an old event and an old feeling that's coloring what's happening right now and making it seem
much more unbearable than it is. You can bear this, but it's essential right now to tell the
difference between this memory emotion and the proper emotion. Now even if you're completely in
present time it's hard, breaking up is hard and moving is hard especially with kids and from the
rest of the note I see that there's financial considerations but you know what? It can only
get better from here, it can only get better staying in a relationship that's causing people
to suffer is never a good thing to do and it's not good for the kids, this is not their dad and
the sooner you can make a clean break, don't even look back,
get your stuff, get an apartment, if it needs to be tiny so you can afford it that's okay you and your
girls can get through that, things are going to get better. You have a job, so you can be earning, the
kids can be going continuing to go to school and to child care and you can be picking them up and
you can start to have that delicious good feeling of living your life in a wholesome honest way
where you're not compromising yourself, you're not ashamed of the relationship you're in, you're not
modeling for your girls a woman who puts up with crap, so that's not good for them better
that they should, you have a bedroom while you sleep in the living room for a while even if
it's going to be a year or two years it's better they should do that than they should watch you in
a relationship that's full of tears and arguing and possibly worse. To do a big change like this,
the second thing you'll need is connection with people. You need connection, you need people to
support you and what I remember about being in a bad relationship like that is that I was hiding a
lot of what was going on, I was ashamed. People knew that I shouldn't be getting into that situation
and I had some prideful idea in my mind that I did not want to give them the satisfaction of
being right but you know what who cares, they were right who cares? They don't care they only want the
best for me. So me staying in that relationship or me hiding and isolating from everybody solves
nothing, it's not going to make my life better, it's not going to make the relationship better,
so it's just a bite the bullet and be honest with at least one person, maybe three would be better,
who can give you some emotional support for what you're going through. Now when we're going for
emotional support, it's really easy when you have CPTSD when you're drowning in emotions to start
dumping them all on on the people who are trying to help you and it can end up pushing them away,
has this ever happened to you? And so what's really important is that we start to have a line between
what we need to do to have emotional relief and actually getting support from people and
not try to use them for everything under the sun and this is where my daily practice came in
so powerfully for me it's a.. it's a place it's a piece of paper where you have a structured way
to start taking these emotions, this terror, this resentment and anger about what's
happened and you can take it onto the paper and start to get it out of here, out of your heart,
out of your mind and onto the paper and have some relief and have some relief you ask for
it to be removed or let it go if you're if you are completely trying to do this with your higher self
and then you rest in meditation and you come out and you just have less gunk to lay on other people.
So at that point you can call a friend, you can say can I tell you i'm having a hard day and when you
talk about it it's not going to be every 1000 things under the sun that was hurting you today,
it'll be the stuff that you really want some support on and that is a lot easier for other
people to cope with and to respond to. So those are my three suggestions, it's like
get real that moving on even if it's going to be a difficult situation is still the right thing to do,
to go ahead and get support from other people and get honest and just let your pride take the blow
so that you can be real and be loved and supported where you are,
and the third thing is to do the daily practice. Now I know some people who are going through
this are going to say I really don't have anybody but I want to tell you from experience,
the way we don't have anybody how that happens, is we were hiding things so if you have to,
go to a 12-step meeting go to something like Al-Anon go somewhere where you can begin to
talk to people because every little bit that you connect to people opens doors to more connections
and more support and you can let it be a little one step at a time process you don't have to like
run out there all at once, you don't have to have a perfect life to leave the relationship sometimes
you just have to start from where you are, and I and I promise you, that taking care of yourself
in this way even just having your simple dinner of some canned soup with your girls is gonna feel
so good and help you feel strong about your life so I really wish you well with that. Okay
all right next question is, "How do I help my boyfriend see that he has childhood trauma and
possibly narcissistic personality disorder. He has been ever so...as long as i've been dating him,
he's been having these episodes where he flies into a rage and he tells me to get out of
his life that he wishes he had never met me and wishes I were dead, then he's fine and he's sorry.
How do I help my boyfriend see that he has childhood trauma and possibly narcissistic
personality disorder?" Um...and then the person goes on to describe some pretty
horrible behavior that is what I would say is emotionally abusive but then it stops.
So just to keep this general for everybody, I would say I get this question a lot from people
who are partners of others who either we... it's well known that they had trauma as kids and the partner
knows it and the partner is working on it or the partner's behaving badly and the person writing me
is is uh thinking why would they do this to me, what's the possible explanation, they
know there's trauma, they see this material about CPTSD causing us to act badly sometimes
and they think maybe there's hope, and it's always true that there's hope, there's hope for everybody
but in a relationship where somebody is not acknowledging that they have a problem or
expressing a desire to change, I have a very different opinion than I do about
a situation where somebody says I have CPTSD i'm working on i'm trying to change. I also take issue
when people are saying that their partner has all these diagnoses and it might not be diagnosed
by a clinical professional like narcissistic personality disorder I mean just kind of like
throwing that label on someone, the question for me is why do you want to be in a relationship
with somebody that you believe has a disordered personality that means that they're incapable of
treating you properly? That's what I would ask and I would say that in my own experience that
I tend to look at that question as a hidden question where it's it looks on the surface
like it's about the partner, why is my partner like this, how do I make him change, the question
is really about the person asking it. It's...it's a codependent reaction to see you know can I
change this, can I get control of this horrible situation, can I make the problem stop and not
have to lose the relationship? And this is where we get into like the fear of being alone again
right? If your partner is mistreating you, I do not advocate that you keep trying to work that out.
If they want to work it out with you, they will come running after you and say "i'm going to work
it out," they will take action on it, they'll get in therapy or take classes or they'll be taking
action on it, they'll be the ones reading the book not you, them, they will read the book. So if you
find yourself, if you're the one doing all the research and you're trying to persuade them, you
just kind of know you've gotten into a codependent dynamic. Now the one time when I think this is
probably a perfectly fine approach is if you're married to the person um or you uh have children
together so you have a very strong investment to really go for broke and see if you can possibly
change the situation and how lovely for people with CPTSD that somebody cares for them enough,
But if you're just dating somebody and they're treating you that badly I kind of just want to
like hold you by the shoulders and look you in the eyes and go "Hey, this was not what you were
meant for." The person to date is somebody who treats you well and there are people who had
trauma who can treat you well, they can do that they can take responsibility for themselves, you
don't need to diagnose them, you don't need to research their condition, uh the dating...
the purpose of dating is to see if somebody is the one for you, the person who you want to be with and
if you see mistreatment i'm sorry to say it's very unlikely the person is going to change only people
who desperately want to change are likely to do it so if you want to tell them one time, I read
this book or I saw this video on youtube this Crappy Childhood Fairy lady and suggest they
watch it, do that but if they're not interested the sad truth is you've got your answer. This
is not somebody who cares enough to change how they're behaving and I would just really
suggest you let it go, just let it go and work on your own healing. When somebody asks me that and
when they're trying to fix somebody else like that I would just say work on your own healing.
What you're highlighting for me is that you have your own trauma and i'm telling you if you
if you've been living with somebody who has CPTSD active and they're not dealing with it, you have
your own trauma now and it's time for you to do your healing and time for you to get back in touch
with the good things that you want and work on the things that would have you kind of holding on,
you know being attracted to somebody who...who would treat you that way and then stay with somebody
like that. That impulse to try to fix them it's you know...it's coming from some old place, you know that
maybe a child has about trying you know hoping their mom will change or their dad will change.
So your healing goes right on ice when you start doing that, start having
the magical thinking that if you could just change somebody else you'd be okay.
Okay so the last question today is, "I'm 60 years old and i've just discovered this word complex
PTSD and I fear it's too late, is it too late?" Nooo! I just want to tell all of you out there it is
never too late for you to start healing, one of my students is in her late 70s and she only just
discovered this last year and she is having a whale of a time and she lives in a senior home,
and she's writing and meditating every day and she's serving others and helping them and you
should see her blossom I saw her on zoom the other day and she's just like pretty as a rose
her face is bright, her hair is flowing, her eyes are sparkling, and you can be that way
too whether you're 20 or 90 or even older it is never too late to start releasing the trauma
and start having a new reaction and bringing forth the person you were always meant to be so
don't give up, i'm Anna Runkle, this is the Ask the Fairy Show and I hope to see you again next week!