- That nagging feeling that you get
in the middle of the night, that life is passing you by,
that's you crying out for help to you,
because what you want, what everybody wants really,
is to really live and to be yourself
and bring all your talents and gifts into play.
Because even if your past was full of hardship and trauma,
and that's just about everybody here,
you know, I mean, you know on some level
that you're meant for something better.
If you have a voice inside that says,
"That's stupid," don't listen to that voice,
don't stuff down any longer
that feeling you've had all your life
that you were meant for something good.
You need your days to be purposeful.
You need this, we all do.
We need to know that all this work,
all this suffering and struggle
and paying rent and losing loved ones
and then building up our lives again,
that it's all for something.
We need that because it's true
and if you were abused or neglected when you were a kid,
chances are very high,
that your sense of purpose was knocked out of you
or squashed down or drained out or ridiculed out of you,
but no more, okay?
It's time to take this need
for purpose and meaning in your life very seriously
and we're gonna talk about that right now.
I'm Anna Runkle also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy
and I teach people how to recover
from those draining effects of childhood PTSD
and to get back your clarity
and your big heart and your purpose
and I wanna start by reading you a letter
from someone I'll call Tracy.
She says, "Dear Anna,
I'm looking for some help coping with my CPTSD.
I grew up in a severely toxic house
where due to lack of money and also abandonment issues,
I still live.
I was bullied severely in both primary and secondary school.
My father is a narcissistic alcoholic
and when I was growing up,
I was often a victim of his ongoing abuse.
I thought after high school
everything was starting to become normal to a degree
and I put all my meaning into younger members of my family
and they gave me a purpose,
but now as with everything,
they're growing up and I find myself having to face reality.
I've been seeing a therapist and she's helped me immensely,
but I don't know how to make the next move,
I don't know my life's purpose,
I don't have the motivation to think
what my career could be.
As a kid, when someone asked me what I wanted to be
I always just said, 'Happy.'
I wanna be independent and have a happy life
but I don't know how to.
If I even think about moving out or away
or even signing up for a course, I go into blind panic.
And how do I know I wanna work in a certain area?
Like teaching, for example, if I don't have experience?"
Good point.
"I know I'm looking for guarantees that life doesn't give,
but now I just need advice.
I don't know how to make the next move,
my head is like a bag of cats." (chuckles)
I chose Tracy's letter
just 'cause I especially love that phrase.
"My head is like a bag of cats.
Could you help?
Thank you, Tracy."
All right, Tracy, you came to the right place
and I am so sorry you had to grow up that way,
that is not fair,
and I just don't think
anybody could have gotten through that
without ending up with some sort of hollowed out space
where their sense of purpose was supposed to be developing.
I think that's really normal,
that's a normal reaction
to an abnormal set of circumstances.
So first, I just want to thank the younger you
who was able to sort of partition off the part of you
that has purpose to keep that intact.
The fact that it's not connected right now,
kinda points to that something in you kept it safe.
All this bad stuff was happening and you didn't get damaged.
So great job on that.
Now it's time to bring this part of you back online,
where you get in touch with your purpose.
So this is a totally good problem for you, Tracy.
So I'm gonna tell you some tips, all right?
For how you can start to bring this back online.
One is learn to reregulate and stay regulated
so that you can handle whatever you're experiencing in life.
When you can stay regulated all,
I mean a huge proportion of your CPTSD symptoms,
they just go away right away once you can stay regulated.
A lot of the problems are problems
that build up in your life because you were dysregulated.
You've been avoiding things,
you've been holding back from people,
you've been walling yourself off
just because the dysregulation was gonna kick in
and be so, sort of disabling,
that unconsciously, you learned to sort of avoid situations
that would bring it up.
So that's my first thing for you,
is time to learn to reregulate.
There's a lot of ways that you can do that.
I teach a method, it's always linked
in the description section below on my videos,
The Daily Practice,
so people can go look at that if they want to.
The second thing is to start looking for signs
of what your gifts might be.
Now, gifts and talents are two different things.
Talents are things that you're good at,
maybe you have a natural ability in something.
A gift is something a little different,
you might not even be good at it yet,
but a gift is something that you're endowed with
that is for the benefit of everyone or the world,
usually for other people.
And the signs that a gift is at work,
they have to do with feedback that you get.
So ask yourself, "Is there something that people tell me
over and over again that I did that benefited them?"
So it might be,
"When I come hang out at your apartment after work,
I just always feel so safe and at home
and like I can be myself."
Okay, that's a sign that a gift is at work.
If people say, "When you tell your story,
I all the sudden just wanna change my life."
That could be a sign that a gift is at work.
Or "When you taught me how to read,
you gave me so much confidence
that I knew that I could go on to the next step."
That would be a sign.
So you don't have to know right now, you're young, right?
You don't have to know yet what your gifts are,
but they will begin to start showing you signs
and it will be through what other people tell you,
benefited them.
You'll be hearing these things over and over again,
so you're gonna start listening for patterns.
Now remember, you gotta try things
in order to generate people's experience of you.
So for you to get feedback from 10 people
that something was helpful,
you might have to interact with many people to,
you just start, just doing what you do.
The jobs that you're attracted to
might sort of take you in that direction, but if you're,
here's a sign that you're not using your gifts.
You just feel so drained and not seen and miserable.
And who hasn't had a job like that?
Not all jobs involve gifts and that's normal
and that's actually okay,
your gift doesn't have to be the way that you make a living.
Some people's gift for example,
has to do with silent contemplation.
That usually doesn't pay very well. (chuckles)
Or some people are very perceptive
or they have a big vision,
those are things that sometimes can be used in a job,
many gifts can be used in a job,
but they're not always directly
the thing that makes you money.
So allow yourself to open up your mind
that there's gonna be the job that you do to make a living
and then there is gonna be this gift
and the gift may show up everywhere in your life,
it may just be in one part of your life,
it might be in your job, in a volunteer gig.
So you mentioned teaching for example,
and it sounds like you have a hint
that maybe you'd like to be a teacher,
so that would be something that you should go and try
and you don't have to know
that your next step is going to be fruitful.
Like who?
Nobody knows that, actually a few people,
I think like Mozart knew,
like he wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"
when he was seven.
So, okay, Mozart goes in some other category. (chuckles)
Most of us, we don't really know what we're cut out for,
we don't know what we're meant to do.
So we try things and that's what youth,
youth is a great time to try many things,
to have a lot of different jobs, to do volunteer gigs,
to go hang out with people who do things
that sound interesting.
It's smart to be just a little bit open minded,
you never really know,
these gifts are always evolving on us,
and they're gonna show us where they take us
and that's the beautiful thing also about gifts,
is they sort pf have a life of their own.
And when you start making way for them
by trying some different things, staying regulated,
because you know what happens?
If you have CPTSD and you get dysregulated
and things trigger you,
you could be out there doing your gift.
You know, let's pretend it's Mozart, right?
So finally, he's out there (chuckles)
playing his "Requiem" and he gets all triggered
and goes into CPTSD and he can't play and he gets fired
and he's not allowed to play anymore.
So that can happen.
So for people with CPTSD the great tragedy
is that dysregulation prevents us from developing our gifts.
Also, in many cases, the situation at home,
the chaotic household,
the parents who are antagonistic to you,
or just completely not present,
if somebody is meant to play the piano,
somebody is gonna have to teach them the piano,
somehow they've gotta learn that,
so a supportive environment does that.
Now with gifts, your job is to figure out what they are
by trying them.
And when you're in your gift, they're gonna make you fill up
with more sense of purpose.
That feeling that I started this video talking about,
that feeling that life is passing you by,
all the sudden, this is what hits the spot on that.
Yes, it's nice to have more money
or a great relationship or something
if you can put that together,
but whether you're in a relationship,
whether you have money or not,
being in your gift is gonna bring up
that sense of fulfillment in you and honestly,
fulfilled people who are being purposeful in their lives,
tend to have an easier time with other people,
they're fulfilled, they're not agitated all the time,
they're not sad so much,
they're not clinging to other people like,
"Come on," you know, "why don't you make me feel better?"
They can't, you gotta be in your gift.
So you know that, you mentioned that,
and the question that people ask kids is,
"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"
But that's not the total question.
Yes, it's nice to have a profession, but in youth,
I think the thing that you wanna be
is somebody who experiments (chuckles) with many things
to see where your gifts shine.
They will show themselves to you
in the way that people respond to you.
It's good, fun.
It's actually a great joy.
Even doing jobs that turn out to be a dead end, sometimes,
there were things that I thought were my gift
and I gave it a try, like it sounded so right,
I was good at it, it just seemed like it should be my gift,
but when you're doing something that's not your gift,
it's just like, it's just a dud, it's not going anywhere.
You just feel like the energy is draining out of you.
When you're using your gift, I tell you.
When I'm making a video for you,
which I feel I'm pretty sure is kind of me and my gift.
I end up, you see I have a cup of water here all the time.
My body gets hot,
I get hot and I'll drink like a quart of water,
making a video and it just goes,
it's just like evaporating off of me,
like a cloud. (chuckles)
I'm on fire when I'm doing these videos for you,
'cause I'm in my thing,
I'm doing what I was meant to do, I think.
I think I haven't got it perfect yet,
so I'm still working on it,
I'm willing to just keep showing up and trying.
It might be quite an evolution from where I am right now
to where I'm gonna go, I don't know.
I'm gonna find out.
And how I'm gonna find out
is the next thing I'm gonna suggest to you,
is that you use my daily practice.
I always say this and I mentioned this earlier,
when I was just like, "Yeah, learn to reregulate."
But the other thing about The Daily Practice is it quiets,
it helps to quiet down the agitated,
angry, fearful thoughts in you
that would ordinarily make you sort of collapse
and avoid life.
When you have less fear and less resentment,
you feel courageous to try, your mind is clear,
you're perceptive.
You're not so shut down.
And I always say, when you have active CPTSD,
it's a little like wearing headphones
with heavy metal music playing really loud
but you're trying to pretend that that's not going on
and that you can hear people,
but you're a little shut out of it.
So that noise comes down
and you can start to be perceptive
so that you notice the effect
that you're having on other people
and you can tell when they're sort of just like a dud,
(chuckles) like a comedian on stage getting no laughs,
they call that dying on stage, right?
That's what it feels like when you're not in it.
And when you are in it, it's just like,
it just feels good, everything flows,
there's a heat to it, there's a goodness to it
and it feels satisfying.
So that's what you're meant to do
and your job might be something, not that connected to it,
but that pays the bills so that you can have a place to live
and have food and do your gift.
Many gifts are like that.
Some people are artists
but that's not how they make their money.
Some people are very charitable, that's their gift,
is they go and they comfort,
they can't walk by a homeless person
without engaging with them and caring about them.
Well, that doesn't pay anything, does it?
So don't worry about that.
You're gonna make a living somehow
and as a person using gifts
that's gonna come to you easily too.
So I hope that helps you, Tracy.
I'm really excited for you.
I also, I want you to be using your gifts
because they give you power
and I want you to have the power to take your next steps
to get out of that family of origin home.
You're still living with the abuser,
and I realize that, especially in 2020 and 2021,
like there are a lot of extenuating circumstances
and it's necessary to live with family,
but as soon as you possibly can,
I think you're gonna love getting out of that house
and having a great big blue sky above you,
of what you can be and who you can be
and to start the process of no longer being defined
by what happened to you,
but rather by who you're meant to be.
So if any of you have questions for me,
write to me at hello@crappychildhoodfairy.com
and put in the subject line, ask the fairy,
so I know it's for this.
And if you liked this subject,
I have a video I'm gonna recommend to you next right here,
that's about the five phases of healing.
The fifth one is the development of your gifts,
it's the culmination.
And I will see you very soon.
(bright gentle music)