Healing the Connection Wound with Crappy Childhood Fairy, Anna Runkle

This week on Everything Is the Best, I sit down with Crappy Childhood Fairy—aka Anna Runkle—to talk about practical recovery for adults who grew up with chaos, neglect, or inconsistency. We get specific about how trauma shows up in daily life (overreacting, shutdowns, people-pleasing, money and relationship spirals) and how to interrupt those patterns with simple, repeatable tools.

Anna—an Oakland resident and Berkeley native—has shown people how to heal symptoms of childhood trauma for nearly thirty years. Known to more than a million followers across platforms (including ~929K YouTube subscribers and 78M+ views), she’s a survivor herself, and her methods are changing lives every day.

We also dive into her forthcoming book, CONNECTABILITY: Heal the Hidden Ways You Isolate, Find Your People, and Feel (At Last) Like You Belong (Hay House; October 7, 2025). Anna explains why a haunting sense of disconnection is an almost universal adult symptom of childhood trauma (and increasingly common even for those with “normal” childhoods), and how to rebuild connection with clear, doable practices.

You’ll learn:

A plain-language framework for nervous system dysregulation—and how to come back online

The two-part daily practice (brief writing + short meditation) to reduce reactivity in under 20 minutes

How to spot “trauma time,” respond to triggers (yes, even unanswered texts), and choose self-compassion over withdrawal

Scripts and boundaries to rebuild trust, navigate conflict, and “read the room” without shame

Why consistency—not perfection—creates the conditions for real connection

About the book:

In Connectability, Anna offers research-backed lessons, self-reflection prompts, and daily connection plans to help you: notice early signs of dysregulation, lean into healthy vulnerability, set confident boundaries, master the art of apologizing, and build the kind of close, reliable relationships that support lifelong well-being. It’s a hopeful, practical path for anyone who struggles with people—whether you have a trauma history or simply carry old connection wounds in a lonely era.

Produced by Dear Media

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