The Crappy Childhood Fairy: Who Is Anna Runkle Really?
You might not know the name Anna Runkle. But if you’re up to speed with the mental health condition known as Childhood Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, you will no doubt be aware of her alter-ego: The Crappy Childhood Fairy. Runkle has made a name for herself thanks to a revolutionary way of coping with the condition. But who really is the woman behind all the therapy-speak?
Stand-up comedian
On her official website, Runkle admits that she’s not a fully licensed therapist or medical professional. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that her previous careers include customer experience consultant and video director.
Most unexpectedly of all, she also used to be a stand-up comedian! Runkle also graduated from the Goldman School at the University of California with a master's degree in public policy.
Rough family
But despite her lack of professional qualifications, Runkle does claim on her official website that she still has the experience to help deal with the various issues that her clients face.
She wrote, “I’m someone who grew up in a rough family that was deeply affected by addiction and all the problems that tend to go with that.” These woes included poverty, violence, neglect, and shame.
The usual stuff
Runkle expanded upon this on her first online blog page. She wrote, “I’m just someone who grew up with several alcoholics in the family, and all the crap that tends to go with that.”
She then went on to list several specific examples, including “broken cars in the yard, welfare, emotional neglect, molest-y relatives, self-esteem problems, precocious sexuality, violence-prone Thanksgivings. The usual stuff.”
Adolescence to adulthood
Runkle acknowledges that her early years weren’t all bad, and that she was pretty much born resilient. But she also admits that the trauma she suffered as a youngster had started to take its toll on her.
Never was more the case than when the self-help guru made the tricky journey from adolescence to adulthood. And Runkle states that this ended up manifesting itself in both emotional and physical ways.
Unresolved issues
“I struggled with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain that seemed to have no cause,” Runkle explained. She also revealed that while she had a yearning to feel loved, she often found herself in relationships that were destructive.
Runkle also found it hard to maintain close friendships, due to her unresolved anger issues, which only got more intense as the years went on. In fact, they also significantly affected her career.
Sense of loneliness
Also feeling an inherent sense of loneliness by this point, Runkle started to try and seek help. She attended various group meetings and immersed herself in the self-help section of her local bookstore.
Runkle even agreed to seek therapy for the first time in her life. In fact, she underwent sessions with nearly a dozen different therapists. But nothing appeared to do the trick.
Stressful situations
“No one seemed to understand what was wrong with me,” a candid Rankle wrote. “There was no name for it.” Luckily, her problem has since received an official diagnosis: CPTSD.
This acronym stands for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s a condition which is caused by constant exposure to stressful situations, and in most cases, it stems from a person’s upbringing.
The Ex Boyfriend Recovery
In an interview with podcast The Ex Boyfriend Recovery, Runkle explained, “Even ten years ago, people didn’t really know a lot about this. They knew that kids who had a rough childhood were prone to depression and anxiety.”
“But gradually, the research has been coming out that there’s so much more to it, that there’s a neurological injury that can happen when kids aren’t taken care of properly… especially the emotional neglect… we know that physical abuse and sexual abuse are horribly harmful.”
Military veterans
According to the woman nicknamed Crappy Childhood Fairy, CPTSD is slightly different to the condition that many military veterans suffer from after returning from tours of duty.
The latter, for example, is often triggered by incidents which occurred during adulthood. Meanwhile things got worse for Runkle when she was the victim of a crime that happened in public.
Traumatic incident
Runkle explained to The Ex Boyfriend Recovery that the incident happened while she had been walking home from a date with someone with whom her friend had set her up. She said, “It was dark out.”
“But... it was the sort of thing that we did in that neighborhood all the time... walk home after dark from a cafe. And just out of the blue, these four guys jumped out of a car and beat us unconscious.”
Unprovoked attack
The completely unprovoked attack was so vicious that Runkle not only lost consciousness, but she also suffered a broken jaw, several broken teeth, and a notable injury to her head.
Still, it wasn’t her physical state that impacted her the most. She explained, “My injuries healed, but I could not focus my mind enough to read or use the phone for several months.”
“Emotional abyss”
Runkle went on to reveal that she suffered from depressive thoughts and panic attacks as a result. “Falling into an emotional abyss,” is how she described her state of mind at the time.
Unfortunately, the police didn’t manage to track down the culprits responsible for inflicting both emotional and physical injuries. Remarkably, though, these days the self-help guru is able to forgive those who’d caused her so much pain.
Jailed or dead
Runkle explained to podcast host Chris Seiter, “Now I’m a mom, I just think all those poor screwed-up guys, they’re probably like, I don’t know, late teens, early 20s.”
“And, you know… I’m sure they’re in prison now, or dead. It’s just like, you can’t start life that way. It was probably a gang initiation, there was like graffiti on the sidewalk afterwards.”
Difficult period
All the same, the attack had compounded what was already an incredibly difficult period for Runkle. She explained, “This was a time when I was very depressed, my mom was dying… two weeks later, she died.”
Runkle also spoke about the relationship she’d had with her mother. “I would never consciously want somebody like my mom,” she confessed. “She was a pain. She was really incompetent, and a mess, and unreliable.”
Pivotal moment
But commendably, now Runkle is able to take something positive from such a traumatic time. She said, “I wouldn’t be doing what I do today, if this hadn’t happened.”
“And I don’t wish it on anybody, including myself. But it was a pivotal moment, in my experience, because I had this very tenuous belief that I should be alive at the time I was really depressed.”
Life changes
Yes, Runkle’s life completely changed, and for the better, soon after the attack. It had been in the mid-1990s when Runkle happened across a couple of new approaches to her mental health.
She explained, “Only in the past few years has the research around early trauma caught up to explain why. Why these techniques worked, why therapy didn’t, and why my healing journey was so unnecessarily long.”
Passing on wisdom
Runkle went on to add, “With that little bit of healing, I was able to, at last, begin changing the self-destructive patterns I’d learned — common for trauma survivors — and change the course of my life.”
And having benefited so much from these two new techniques herself, Runkle was incredibly keen to pass on her wisdom to other individuals who have gone through similar troubling experiences.
Healing methods
Runkle started teaching her healing methods in both a one-on-one and informal manner. And by the middle of the 2010s she’d garnered so much interest that she started to put her work online.
Following the attention that her very first web video received from the public, Runkle launched a more intensive course. And then the website for which she’s become renowned, Crappy Childhood Fairy, came into being.
Going public
So what had inspired Runkle to put herself in the spotlight? Well, she explained on her blog, “Growing up in a traumatized family is a kind of a culture, a mindset, a tribe.”
“All my life, I’ve been drawn to others like me, and these days, sharing my experience and all I’ve learned to recover is such a huge part of my life, I decided it was time to go public. So here we are.”
1 million listeners
Runkle proudly states that nearly 1 million individuals have listened to or learned from her training methods. She added, “My mission is to change the paradigm of what’s possible for people like us.”
She went on, “And to help all I can to heal and lead lives of joy and purpose... Today, I work full-time as “The Fairy,” leading the company and the team of great people who work here.”
Not just science
So what exactly is it that Runkle teaches? Well, she explains on her blog, “My writing is not just about the science, but about all I’ve learned — and keep learning — about the peculiar nature of trauma.”
She explains it’s about “the thought patterns and symptoms that go with it, and the recent research findings that explain how trauma is causally related to so many other things in life.” Runkle believes that these breakthroughs explain a lot when it comes to her own situation.
Giving up smoking
This includes why she struggles to feel anything when she is particularly upset, for instance, and why she never benefited from the countless therapy sessions she underwent. And that’s not all, either.
According to Runkle, they also explain why she found it difficult to leave relationships that were detrimental to her mental health, and why she found giving up smoking such a difficult process.
Autoimmune disorder
It’s not just her emotional wellbeing that Runkle believes that these breakthroughs explain. She also puts forward the theory that her previous battles with back pain, migraines, and asthma may have stemmed from her trauma.
And if that wasn’t enough, Runkle states that her previous experiences may even be responsible for the autoimmune disorder she will have to deal with for the rest of her life.
Brain training
Runkle states that the technique she uses and teaches draws upon both spirituality and brain training. But there is also another aspect which she believes that everyone is capable of learning.
Runkle wrote, “And part of it is simply learning the rules for acting like a mature, considerate, temperate, capable human being, doing things that maybe you never had the chance to learn from your family.”
Tutorial videos
In one of the tutorial videos she has uploaded online, Runkle explains that one of her core techniques involves making an inventory every day of all your resentments and concerns.
She said, “It’s really that little hamster wheel of thinking about what I’m worried about, what I’m angry about. Those are the things that keep me from being really present in the moment.”
Lack of accreditation
So what does she say to those who are skeptical about her lack of official accreditation in her field? Well, she doesn’t seem too concerned, writing on her first blog page, “The thing about PTSD is that hardly anyone recognizes it.”
“Even experts are usually wrong about it, and almost nothing they do helps. But my friends and I have found what does help. It is my urgent desire to share it with you.”
Certain triggers
But this doesn’t mean that Runkle feels she is entirely free of her deep emotional trauma. She acknowledges that she occasionally still suffers from the effects of PTSD.
“I still get slightly alienated around normal people,” Runkle writes. I still collapse and overreact to certain triggers — some understandable, like getting yelled at, and some mysterious, like getting a haircut!”
Alcoholics Anonymous
And although she no longer attends therapy sessions for her trauma, Runkle told The Ex Boyfriend Recovery that she is still in the Alcoholics Anonymous program after more than a quarter of a century.
The self-proclaimed Crappy Childhood Fairy went on to clarify, “That’s the 12-step program for families of alcoholics which I certainly qualify... Most of my family was alcoholic and or drug addicted.”
Taking charge
And although she’s keen to spread the word, Runkle doesn’t believe in enforcing her views on others, either. She told The Ex Boyfriend Recovery, “I always say, you know, this is a really emerging science.”
“And so what I really recommend for people who have been through trauma and feel like it’s affected them, is to really be in charge; to be their own researcher and to be sovereign over their own healing.”
Different approaches
“And if they’re trying something that doesn’t seem to work for them, or they don’t feel like the big problem in their life is getting recognized,” Runkle went on to add, “That’s how I used to feel.”
She went on, “It might be time to find a different therapist or a different approach.” And Runkle also expressed how her techniques needn’t necessarily eradicate everything associated with trauma.
Roadkill photos
Yes, Runkle also confirmed that she still has a dark sense of humor and, slightly more bizarrely, that her habit of taking photos of roadkill is still very much alive.
She continued, “But I enjoy a happy family life and running my own business, and I stay very active helping other people who themselves are getting free of their own crappy childhood.”
Happy life
This happy life includes Runkle’s new husband, whom she talked about in her interview with The Ex Boyfriend Recovery. She admitted that as a divorced mother in her early 40s, she’d believed that her time for romance had passed.
And her previous difficult relationship with a drug addict had only made the self-help guru even more anxious and apprehensive about the possibility of spending her entire life with another man.
Tragic end
Runkle explained, “I didn’t know he was a drug addict when I got together with him.” And things came to an incredibly tragic end after she’d eventually discovered the truth.
She added, “I was making my lame attempt to get out of the relationship, which was messy and incomplete and dragged on for a long time; he flipped out and he took his own life.”
Accidental overdose?
Runkle then went on to question whether her extremely troubled former boyfriend really had intended to take his own life, or whether his untimely death was the result of an accidental overdose.
She added, “I was retraumatized all over again. And so when you grew up with trauma, these you end up kind of drawn to and attaching to see people say, ‘Oh, I attract narcissists.’”
Lifelong relationship
Thankfully, Runkle managed to find a man who made her feel that a lifelong relationship was a possibility. She explained, “He was so cool that he had it together on every level, he still does.”
The self-help guru continued to wax lyrical about her partner, saying, “And we’ve been together 15 years and married for ten now, and I still, like really, really believe in him as a good man.”
Nine dates
And the pair could never be accused of rushing into things. Runkle revealed that they had been on nine dates before even kissing, adding, “One day, I was like, ‘Listen, I am starting to have a concern. Yeah, you know, are we just friends? Yeah, you’re straight. Right?’
And he said, ‘No, no, I’m interested. And, but I just know that I want to go really slowly.’ Which he told me on the first date, but by nine dates, I was like, ‘Okay, good, right.’”
Similar goals
Runkle acknowledged how lucky she had been to find someone with similar goals and values. She said, “He wasn’t looking, you know, just for a good time, he was looking to get married like I was.”
“And he was willing to go slow to pick the right person, he didn’t want to go with somebody who didn’t meet the criteria. So it’s such a godsend that the first person that I really felt feelings for felt the same way about these, these things that I intellectually wanted.”
Abandonment issues
Taking things slowly was not an approach with which Runkle had been accustomed. Talking about her previous abandonment issues, she explained, “It’s a very common trait, to go rushing into relationships, sleep together real fast.”
“How that whole bonding thing happened, you know, and then like two days into the whole thing, you’re just like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I doing? I don’t even like this person.’”
Taste in men
“When you grow up in such a rough childhood, there’s an affinity that you have with other people who had it that bad,” Runkle acknowledged about her previous taste in men. But as she and her husband became closer, she discovered that he, too, had suffered with mental-health problems of his own.
Runkle explained, “I found out that he used to have social anxiety. And he was sort of dressed down, and he didn’t have confidence with women.” But pretty soon, she realized for good that he was definitely ‘the one’ and the rest is Crappy Childhood Fairy history.