The Real Reason You Feel Stuck (and How to Fix It)

Summary

The Tamsen Show

Episode Title: The Real Reason You Feel Stuck (and How to Fix It)
Host: Tamsen Fadal
Guest: Anna Runkle (Crappy Childhood Fairy, author of Connectability)
Date: November 5, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Emmy-winning journalist Tamsen Fadal explores the pervasive feeling of being "stuck"—socially, emotionally, and in relationships—especially among women in midlife. Her guest is Anna Runkle, trauma expert, YouTube creator, and author of the new book Connectability. Together, they unravel why so many people struggle with isolation and disconnection, the hidden roots in childhood trauma and nervous system dysregulation, and—importantly—offer compassionate, practical steps to break avoidant patterns and build genuine connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Epidemic of Modern Loneliness

• Social Disconnection Since the Pandemic ([02:33]–[03:39])
  • Both Fadal and Runkle note a growing sense of disconnection regardless of age or online engagement.
  • The pandemic provided space for isolation, making socializing even harder to resume.
  • Chronic isolation develops gradually, with serious emotional and health costs.

"We start to slip into this chronic isolation without even realizing that's what we're doing. And there's a big cost to that, many costs to it." — Anna Runkle [03:25]

2. Trauma, Nervous System Dysregulation, and Connection

• Personal Story and Trauma Background ([05:12]–[10:34])

  • Anna shares her upbringing in a neglectful, chaotic household and her coping mechanisms that enabled survival but led to chronic adult stress and complex PTSD.
  • She explains how unresolved trauma directly impacts adult relationships, cognition, and even physical health.

• Dysregulation Explained ([16:59]–[18:11])

  • Dysregulation involves the nervous system becoming "jittery," making everyday tasks and relationships feel overwhelming.
  • People with childhood trauma are particularly vulnerable, staying dysregulated longer and more often.

"Your whole nervous system can just sort of get jittery. ... But people who had a lot of trauma as kids have some kind of injury that's operating there. We certainly have more dysregulation than your average person." — Anna Runkle [17:15]

3. Covert Avoidance & ‘Crap-Fitting’

• Covert Avoidance, or Why We Hide ([01:49], [24:41], [27:41])
  • Solitude and self-care are healthy, but when isolation becomes the primary way to cope, deep connection suffers.
  • Many high-functioning people unconsciously use covert avoidance—avoiding meaningful connection while appearing socially engaged.
• Crap-Fitting: Normalizing Bad Behavior ([31:24]–[32:47])
  • Trauma survivors often adapt to toxic or unsatisfying relationships ("crap-fitting"), overlooking red flags due to ingrained habits from childhood.

"You fit yourself to crap... you become adept at like, it's okay, this person's awful to me... but it's okay, I'm such a good girl, I can just kind of deal with it. I'm thick-skinned— that's crap fitting." — Anna Runkle [31:37]

4. Breaking the Pattern: Practical Tools for Connectability

• The Daily Practice ([12:59], [20:50])

  • Anna describes a writing and meditation practice to process and release fearful, resentful thoughts—developed from twelve-step traditions and her own healing journey.
  • This practice fosters nervous system regulation, which is foundational for healthy relationships.

• Regulating in the Moment ([20:50])

  • Physical movement, exposure to nature, and body awareness as immediate strategies for self-regulation.
  • Regular, gentle exposure to social situations helps rebuild “the connection muscle.”

"If you could do one thing, I would say move your body. Move your body in any way that you're able. If you can move your body outside, that's twice as good." — Anna Runkle [21:28]

5. Building Connection: Small Steps & Setting Boundaries

• Gradual Reconnection ([39:09]–[41:07])
  • Connection skills are like muscles: rebuild gradually and gently.
  • Start by leaving the house, saying hello to neighbors, reconnecting with an old friend—assigning “points” for each small act.
• Boundaries Make Connection Possible ([41:08])
  • Boundaries allow for finite, manageable interactions, safeguarding energy and well-being.

"You must practice. You cannot learn it in isolation. There’s not a lot of things we can do in isolation." — Anna Runkle [40:18]

6. Relationship Red Flags & Raising Standards

• Avoiding Re-Traumatization ([31:17]–[33:42])
  • Learn to spot and avoid toxic patterns; trust emerges with healing and supportive relationships.
  • Be prepared for some relationships to fade as you grow—some people will struggle with your positive changes.

"As you heal, you begin to be able to do gut checks on things... be around people like other people who are also healing, who get it, who aren’t going to undermine your efforts." — Anna Runkle [33:00]

7. Repairing Conflicts: Direct Apologies

• How to De-escalate and Rebuild ([34:52]–[39:09])
  • When conversations get heated, pause and care for both your own and the other person’s dignity and security.
  • Offer clean, unconditional apologies—focus only on your part, without qualifiers.

"If you really want to do the proper apology, you focus entirely on your part... I imagine it felt like this. And I'm really sorry. And here's what I'm going to do so that I don't do that anymore... No qualifiers, no conditions." — Anna Runkle [38:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Social Rustiness Post-Pandemic:
  "We got rusty in a way that's been hard to come back from, where just doing anything with people is a little more stressful than it used to be." — Anna Runkle [24:24]

• On Avoidant Behavior in Ourselves:
  "But the thing that's going to change your life is when you start looking at, am I avoidant? Do I have narcissistic behaviors? ... If you're doing that all the time in the people you choose to populate your life, guess who's avoidant?" — Anna Runkle [27:41]

• On 'The Wall' of Disconnection:
  "But this feeling like there's a wall between me and other people, that they're kind of all in a world where they got the memo on how you're supposed to get along with people and connect, and we just somehow didn't get the memo." — Anna Runkle [22:04]

• Why You Can’t Heal in Isolation:
  "You cannot learn [connectability] in isolation. There’s not a lot of things we can do in isolation ." — Anna Runkle [40:18]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:33] Modern loneliness and isolation
• [05:12–10:34] Anna’s trauma background, defining complex PTSD
• [16:59] Nervous system dysregulation explained
• [24:30] Pandemic's impact on social skills
• [27:41] Obstacles to connection and avoidant patterns
• [31:24] What is “crap-fitting” and how do you stop?
• [34:52] How to repair relationships—conflicts, apologies
• [39:09] Small steps: The “points” game for reconnecting
• [41:08] Setting boundaries for healthy relationships

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Conclusion & Guest Info

• Anna advocates for gentle, incremental efforts to rebuild connection, awareness of both avoidant tendencies and toxic relationships, and the importance of nervous system regulation as foundational for deep, sustaining bonds.
• Anna Runkle’s resources: Crappy Childhood Fairy (YouTube & website), new book Connectability.

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If you struggle with feeling disconnected, avoidant, or “stuck,” this episode is a compassionate, actionable starting point for reclaiming connection in your life.

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Transcript

[A]

Today's podcast is sponsored by MIDI Health. I walked in with real symptoms. Brain fog, exhaustion, anxiety and walked out with nothing but a suggestion to wait it out. That's why MIDI matters. They actually listen and they treat what others ignore. This is midlife care that finally makes sense. Ready to feel your best and write your second act script? Visit joinmitty.comtamsen today to book your personalized insurance covered virtual visit. That's joinmitty.com Tamson Midi the Care Women deserve.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. A lot of people talk online about like, I'm dating an avoidant. Oh, it's so terrible. All the people in my life are narcissists and not to knock that like this could happen. But if you're doing that all the time and the people you choose to populate your life, guess who's avoidant?

[A]

Anna Runkle is a trauma expert helping millions of people break free from the patterns that keep them lonely, anxious and disconnected. I do things, but sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm okay if somebody canceled that plan and I'm not going to run back out and try to make another one healthy.

[B]

Solitude is a beautiful thing. When you're feeling overwhelmed by people. What could be nicer than just like, I'm going to stay home, I'm going to just do some me time and take care of myself. But the trouble is, if that's always the method you're using, to be able to regulate your nervous system and release stress is to isolate from people when it's time for you to ask for help. There's nobody who can really give you that help that you need. You may have shallow relationships and I've zeroed in on something that a lot of us do. Even if we're high functioning, we do this thing I call covert avoidance.

[A]

Is that damaging if you have ever felt, I don't know, relief when plans get canceled or find yourself choosing isolation over connection? I'm so glad you're here. You know, loneliness is something so many of us struggle with. Anna Runkle is here with her new book, Connectability. It's a roadmap to feel less alone and ready to belong. She's gonna show us how to break patterns, how to build Confidence, how to repair relationships, and the tools that she's about to share will help you create stronger connections and. And stronger community. Anna, I am so excited you're here. I have followed you quite a bit on YouTube and I just think you have great messages. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

I alluded to it just a little bit. I wanna talk about what is going on kind of with everybody at the moment. I feel like as much as I'm on social media, as much as I, you know, we get invited to things, I feel less and less social. And I hear that from a lot of people, no matter the age, that they're just feeling, like, a little disconnected.

[B]

Yeah. A lot of us ask ourselves, is it just since the pandemic that it got so hard for me to.

[A]

Is it.

[B]

Is it the pandemic hang out with people? Well, I think it gave us a chance to experience isolation in a new way. And I remember when I was first starting up my YouTube channel back then, half my audience would say, are you kidding? I love lockdown. I wish it would go on forever. Isolating is a natural go to. It's like. It's the technique that's always at your disposal. If you could just get away from people and calm down and feel safe and okay, you'd be better. And in our minds, we're always thinking, then I'll go out and connect with everybody. I'll say, no to coffee this time, but I'll do it soon. But then that soon never comes, and we start to slip into this chronic isolation without even realizing that's what we're doing. And there's a big cost to that, many costs to it.

[A]

Are you seeing it more and more? Is that why this book was so important to right now? Connectability?

[B]

Well, funnily enough, I was working on this topic before the pandemic. But my expertise is helping other people who grew up with a lot of trauma. I grew up with a. I had a very rough childhood, and I started a YouTube channel in 2016 to teach people the techniques. I'd learned to deal with that, and I discovered. I had no idea. I thought it was this very strange niche thing, that I had a hard childhood. Nothing that's out there had really helped me with that before. And I had learned these techniques to help calm my nervous system, get a clear mind, and allow my world to get a little bigger. That was kind of what the techniques do. They still do them for me. I've been doing them for 30 years. So I had to make a YouTube channel. So many people wanted to know how to do this, this technique. Since I started doing it, I put it out there, and then I just had this completely unexpected success. So many people were feeling the same thing. Just like, I can't deal with people, I get very flustered in social situations. I get overwhelmed, you know, by a lot of people talking to me at once. I go into a lot of fear and anxiety that people don't like me. I join groups, and then I feel like I don't fit in, like, all the time.

[A]

I feel like, check, check, check, check. We hear a lot of those things. What did you teach people to do about that? Because everybody comes with, you know, everybody comes from a different place. People have different types of childhood trauma. So how did you distinguish that? Tell us all a little bit about your background, where it started from.

[B]

Well, I didn't realize struggling with connection was a trauma symptom until further into this. It just sort of showed up as, like, what everybody was talking about. Once I was a public person talking about trauma symptoms. So I grew up in a commune in Berkeley in the late 60s and 70s, and my mother did a lot of drugs, was an addict, an alcoholic. And the stuff going on in our house was about what you'd expect for something like that. We were very neglected. We didn't always have food. There were weird people walking in and out of the house. Not always safe for us to be around. A lot of neglect. Among my siblings, I had a lucky sort of way of dealing with it. That's. It's not easy, but compared to what they went through is, you know, my brother died. Another sibling of mine is still very much struggling with drugs and alcohol. And my coping mechanism was go out and meet everybody's mom in the neighborhood, find out who has food. See if there's a really, like, secret way I can let them know, like, you know, we don't have anything to eat, could I stay here tonight? And a lot of moms and teachers help me. And back in those days, that's what people did. And I don't think that's terrible. I think it's better than calling CPS in a way.

[A]

How old were you?

[B]

Oh, it started. I mean, my parents were alcoholic from the time I was born. My mother was probably drinking heavily while she was pregnant with me, but they divorced when I was seven. And that's when the house really slid into, like, chaos with a lot of people. But they had a violent, mutually violent relationship. It was, you know, it's just one of those things that when this thing, the ACE study came out, if you've heard of that, these, like, they came up with 10 things that are common indicators that you had a traumatic childhood. It's totally not comprehensive, but it's ten things, and I have, like, eight of them. Okay. And I learned when that came out, I was, you know, I used to be a video producer, and I was making videos for an organization that was teaching about the effect of trauma. They were teaching doctors to ask about trauma. But what I learned was that the seriousness and quantity of traumatic experiences you had when you were a kid, especially when it was just like chronic, ongoing, is directly correlated with health outcomes later. And not just health outcomes, but relationship outcomes and cognitive abilities and the likelihood that you're going to get dementia and things like that. There's hardly anything bad that isn't made worse by having lived through trauma as a kid.

[A]

When did you first realize. I mean, you obviously realized how difficult it was growing up. When did you start to say the word trauma or really understand that, how it may be impacting you into adulthood?

[B]

Okay, so I'll tell you what happened. I was doing pretty well because of my coping mechanism of finding people who could help me. I was kind of resourced, as they say. I had ways, and I had very good grades. I was a good girl. I took care of the younger kids. I did all that stuff. But that personality type, it's not even a personality. It's a trauma symptom, you know, but. But that way of coping with things, the upside is, you know, you end up with a job. The downside is you can end up with chronic stress symptoms. So when in my 20s, I had chronic fatigue syndrome, back when they were first identifying what that was, I had a fever for a year. They'd say, well, you're just too stressed out. You got to be less stressed out. I went to a lot of therapy, like 17 years of therapy. And we would talk about my mom. We'd talk about what she did. We'd talk about, you know, terrible things that happened that didn't actually help the symptoms that I was having. It was validating, but in a weird way, it made me worse. And so the more I talked about bad things that had happened, the worse I felt. So one night in 1994, I had just had coffee with a guy. It was maybe a date. I don't know. We had coffee. We were walking back at night. We were on a busy street. These four guys jumped out of a car and just for no reason, didn't rob us. They Just beat us unconscious. I was taken to the emergency room by the police. They did a brain scan. They said, your jaw's broken. We'll deal with that. Your dentist will deal with the teeth. They did a brain scan. They said, your brain's not bleeding, so you're fine. Go home. But what was wrong was I was. My emotions had suddenly started just going all over the place. And my formerly like over functioning self could not function, which is terrifying for an over function thing was like, I'm just going to do more than everybody else.

[A]

And so your whole personality.

[B]

My whole personality changed and that. I went to the doctor again. He said, here, let me give you some Xanax. I went to the therapist. She said, let's talk three times a week about what happened to you. I got worse and worse and worse over like three months until I felt suicidally depressed pretty seriously. I know now that is so normal for somebody who had been through that experience. But they didn't seem to know that then I had ptsd. And classic PTSD is from an acute trauma, such as what happened to me, which was life threatening. And they didn't put that word on it. And so they kept treating it as though I had a psychological reaction to the fact that this had happened, which I did to some degree. I probably accepted that pretty well. But my brain was not okay. My nervous system was not okay. It was just kind of like just going randomly. Like if you were to put too much electricity in a television or something and it would just start like flashing and finally it would sputter out and it just wasn't diagnosed or understood. And so now they might have been able to peg that they would have.

[A]

Looked at it differently.

[B]

Yeah, but what's very common for a person who went through so much childhood trauma, there's another kind of ptsd. It's called complex ptsd. And it can develop when a person goes through chronic, again and again intense stress. It just goes on and on like an abusive relationship or a war that a person has to live through. Most often it's from a traumatic childhood like mine. And I didn't learn that word because it didn't exist. I learned about it when a lot of people learned about it. When Bessel van der Kolk published the book the Body Keeps the Score. And I had been searching Amazon for a book at that time because even though I thought I had a solution to my personality problems, I had really blown it with my then fiance, now husband. I had had a total meltdown about something and raged at him and I said, that's it. I don't want to get married. And to my surprise, he didn't. He just, like, wasn't okay with that. And he said, you know, if you're gonna pop off with statements like that, we can't get married right now. And we were five weeks from the wedding. We put all the money down, you know, everything. His parents were flying in from the wedding.

[A]

Did that change? You did that. Is that what made you say, like, I've got to figure this out?

[B]

I was determined I'm gonna have no debt when I enter into this marriage. And he was a software engineer, and he is. Was. Well, he works with my company now, but he was a software engineer. He had a startup. So we both, like, came into the marriage with, like, basically no money. I think we had $11,000 or something. So I was like, I'm gonna get out of debt. I'm gonna do it before the wedding. And how I did that, I got on Amazon and I bought that book, and I read the whole thing, like, in a day and a half. And then I went running around the house. I was like, guess what? There's a name for it. It's this thing. And he was very skeptical. He was just like, you know, if this is. He moved out, actually. He said, we're gonna live separately until we see if this works out. I couldn't wait to tell him about this. And it took him about two years to trust that I was onto something. But what had happened was it informed me what these techniques I learned in 1994. It informed me why they were working for me. And it was because what I learned from that book is I had neurological dysregulation.

[A]

And you had to figure out a way to regulate it.

[B]

I had to figure out it. Well, I knew how to regulate it. But the funniest was I didn't know that that's what it was. And I hadn't been taking it very seriously.

[A]

So what did you do from that point on?

[B]

Well, I'm going to go back. I'm going to go Back to that 1994, when I met this woman. I met this woman, and I said, I think I have to end my life. And I don't know why. I told her it was somebody I barely knew. It was somebody I gave a ride to. So she was this recovering alcoholic. She was 23 years old. She had lived on the streets of the Tenderloin in San Francisco. After four years of being sober, she was like, I can't stand so miserable and stressed Out. And this woman who ended up being one of the founders of Narcotics Anonymous, wow, showed her. She said, you want to see this thing? You want to see the. Can I show you something that helps? And showed her how to write her fearful and resentful thoughts on paper. Which is not that it's not like that strange or alien in aa, but it's. Most people don't do it. Most people don't do it as much as my friend told me. She goes, you got to do this twice a day and you got to follow it immediately with meditation. So it's a technique. I teach it for free. I have a free course. It's in all my books. Takes a little longer to teach than I can do right here. But in a nutshell, you are. It's a prayer. It's a prayer. And for people who are, you know, maybe don't. They're not higher power oriented. They would maybe want to do it from their higher self. They can adapt it, but it's to ask for your fearful, resentful thoughts and feelings to just be lifted. They get lifted for a while. And.

[A]

And did you feel that?

[B]

Oh, I didn't believe it would work, but she was just like, do you have anything to lose? I'm like, no. She goes, well, come on. And so she showed me how to do this. She said, just write. I sat in her house, in her. She had this like warehouse apartment. I was there all night. The sun starts coming up. She goes, go home. I gotta go to bed. Go home. Call me in the morning. But I've been writing for like three hours at that point. I went home, I wrote some more. I fell asleep. I woke up and I just felt delicious. I felt peaceful for the first time. And my PTSD lifted. And that's what it was. And all the talking about trauma had been upsetting me. Writing about it and releasing it was. Releasing was doing what was meant to happen, I think, from talking about it. So she said, well, do it again. Do it again twice a day. Call me when you want. Go learn meditation. And within two weeks, I wasn't depressed anymore. I didn't have PTSD symptoms anymore. I had this colossal capacity to pay attention and focus. So I started doing that every day, twice a day. And I kept going. And then she said, you gotta join some kind of 12 step fellowship. So I started teaching other people and sponsored about 300 women over the years, over maybe 25 years.

[A]

Women of all ages.

[B]

Yeah, the women who would go to Al Anon. So I had a lot of experience Helping others learn this and learn the techniques. And I had a lot of experience sitting and watching people in meetings like who gets better, who gets stuck? And I started learning the patterns of what happens after you start to feel better. How do you change the problems? I had so many life problems back then. So that's how the whole thing started. And it just got so that, you know, 20 years into it, I was spending about 20 hours a week sharing this with people who asked. And some of them didn't even, you know, I said, fine, I'm gonna make you guys a video. I'm gonna make you a video. You watch it. If you like it, call me. But I'm not gonna show you personally. Cause it takes an hour and I just can't do this all day. I have kids and that's how Crappy Childhood Fairy started.

[A]

And Crappy Childhood Fairy is a YouTube channel?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How many followers do you have on the YouTube channel now?

[B]

There's 950. 0 right now. And it's growing, it's growing fast.

[A]

What do you think made it grow so quickly? Do you think it's because it's a conversation that most people don't have or not aware of?

[B]

Well, I'm happy to say that the concepts of complex ptsd, which I did, end up getting a diagnosis after I self diagnosed with it. I talked to a therapist who was like, yeah, that's exactly what you have. I think when people talk about trauma, it's often the experts are talking about what you see from the outside. And I was somebody talking about what it's like from the inside, what happens on the inside.

[A]

Are there triggers that just happen throughout the course of the day, throughout the course of your life? Can you talk about that?

[B]

I think it plays out in three major areas of our lives. And one is our nervous systems get dysregulated. Everybody gets dysregulated. And now that's a term people are familiar with. You know, it wasn't eight years ago. Very happy. Everybody knows what it. Well, not everybody, but it's widely understood right now.

[A]

What does it mean?

[B]

So your whole nervous system can just sort of get jittery. Sometimes everybody has it, Sometimes most of us, virtually everyone comes back out of it naturally. But people who had a lot of trauma as kids have some kind of injury that's operating there. And not everybody who's traumatized will develop this, but many will. And we certainly have more dysregulation than your average person. We get dysregulated more easily. We stay that way longer, it's more extensive. And there's parts of dysregulation that are easy to see from the outside. Like somebody who's lashing out like I did at my husband, that's easy to see, but there's a lot of things nobody sees. Like your capillaries are not doing their job as efficiently. Your immune system is not quite sending the right things to the tissue that it needs to send it to. Your hormones are going out of balance.

[A]

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[B]

Well, yes, the writing and meditation technique that I call the daily practice is both good for the moment, once you've learned how to do it, and good for the long term. A lot of stuff changes in the very short term. If you need to re regulate your nervous system. Anything that helps you kind of get back in your body, like dysregulation is, it's happening on many levels that your body is a little bit like out of sync. So you can, if you could do one thing, I would say move your body. Move your body in any way that you're able. If you can move your body outside, that's twice as good. Being outside and sort of just seeing the weather and what time of day it is, it helps your nervous system, you know, kind of, oh, okay, I'm here on the planet Earth. It's this time of day, it's this season. Like we're created to sense all these things. Our bodies are supposed to know that, but we get very disjointed. So when we can't sleep on the right cycle, when we can't eat in a proper rhythm, you know, when we're not hitting puberty at the normal time or menopause at the. All of these things are aspects of a dysregulated nervous system.

[A]

You know, we're talking about isolating, so you're talking about re regulating and the book. You have re regulated.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Caused you to write this book.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Connectability.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Talk about the relationship between these two.

[B]

The experience of growing up with this childhood trauma is there's a. There's dysregulation. That's kind of the core symptom that's sort of driving most of the other symptoms. If you're more likely to be addicted, if you're having difficult relationships, if you're having health problems, you can trace it back to dysregulation. There are then the second one is a sense of disconnection. And I've learned, especially from my audience, this is where YouTube really informed me. The feeling of being separate from other people seems to be almost universal for people who had a traumatic childhood. And it's noted sometimes as a bullet point on the symptom. But the way that we experience it is almost identical, which was really illuminating for me. And then when I talk about it to my audience, they will often say this is the first time anybody's really talked about it. But this feeling like there's a wal between me and other people, that they're kind of all in a world where they got the memo on how you're supposed to get along with people and connect and we just somehow didn't get the memo. Now sometimes that could be. It could be that we had parents who really didn't give a memo. But the only other type of person who feels that no memo thing I would say that I've been aware of is people on the autism spectrum where there's some kind of non verbal communication that they don't have the WI fi for. And that's what it feels like. It's like, could I please have the WI fi password? How am I supposed to talk to the other moms at school? Like they seems to have such an easy time with each other and I always have my foot in my mouth.

[A]

Well, let's talk about that because I agree with you. And I guess I always have referred to it as being on the outside looking in. And I don't know if that's the right way to look at it or that's what it's like.

[B]

Well, yeah, it is like that. Or on the inside looking out.

[A]

There's a wall. There's a wall somewhere.

[B]

Yeah, there's a wall.

[A]

Do you think that that's why, I mean, people. Everybody's different, right? In social situations. So let's break some of those things down. Because some people feel like they're isolated because they don't connect in social situations, they don't know what to do. Other people feel like they just don't know who. And then there's other people who feel like they've got relationships but they don't know how to actually keep them. So it's very tempting to hide away and not Deal with any of that. What is your first suggestion for that? Connectability. To get that started again, a person.

[B]

Needs to know how to re. Regulate. I think the root issue for many people is that it's stressful to be around people, stressful to walk into a room. It's stressful to walk into a room to meet a new person. It's stressful to go on a date or a job interview. But I think especially since the pandemic, we got rusty in a way that's been hard to come back from, where just doing anything with people is a little more stressful than it used to be.

[A]

So how do you jump back into that? Because I would agree with you. I mean, I do things, but sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm okay if somebody canceled that plan and I'm not gonna run back out and try to make another one.

[B]

There's something, you know, healthy solitude is a beautiful thing. And when you're feeling overwhelmed by people, what could be nicer than just like, I'm gonna stay home, I'm gonna just do some me time and take care of myself. But the trouble is, if that's always the method you're using, to be able to regulate your nervous system and release stress is to isolate from people. You're going to have the same problems in life as somebody who lives in a cave that you're not connected. That when it's time for you to ask for help, there's nobody who can really give you that help that you need. You may have shallow relationships. And I've zeroed in on something that a lot of us do. Even if we're high functioning, we do this thing I call covert avoidance.

[A]

How do you identify if you're somebody that is dealing with that?

[B]

You know, there's nothing like a crisis like when I had, when I had. I had to be in the hospital for a month with a surgery when I was a single mom and I was putting out the call, can people help? I need some help getting my kids picked up. They had he, my, their dad works that somebody. I need help. And people just didn't volunteer. I needed people to pick me up from the hospital between surgeries. I didn't have people who would do that much for me. And I felt like I had been there for all these people. And I felt like I knew a lot of people, but when it came down to it, a lot of the people I knew were not the kind of people who were generous in that or connected in that way. And maybe I hadn't Contributed to our relationship in a, you know, a similar way. And that's what. I had no idea I had worked so much on myself, but I didn't have deep relationships.

[A]

Do you think that we're suffering from that right now? I know we. Even in New York City, sadly, before she passed, Dr. Ruth was our loneliness ambassador. That was the first in the nation. First city in the nation to ever have one.

[B]

I mean, that.

[A]

That says a lot, that we are living in a very lonely time. We're online all the time. We're living in a culture of convenience, you know, not walking some places. New York's a little bit different, but, you know, not walking places, working from home, seeing fewer people every single day. Do you think all of that's contributing?

[B]

It is. We're definitely more disconnected from each other than before in many ways. Now, personally, being disconnected in the Bay Area of California, I come to New York, and because everybody's out on the street, this feels like Disneyland.

[A]

What do we do to start coming back to being connected instead of cutting ourselves off even further? Which I agree with you, Happens.

[B]

Yeah. Well, step one is to start to learn how to release the stress you feel around people so you don't have to resort to these avoidant behaviors. Whether you're doing it, obviously, and saying, I will only see dogs, not humans, or you're doing it covertly and just sort of holding people at arm's length, not committing to things, looking at your phone when you get together with people, not cap. You know, I don't know about you, but I do find it harder to give people my full attention than it used to be before I had a mobile phone.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

They're captivating.

[A]

So let's talk about some of the things, because you really did break this down into different ways. There's obstacles to connection. Right. So we've got the avoidant behaviors that we went over. Some of those. Are there additional ones to mention?

[B]

Yeah. I'll tell you something about avoidance is we're all very fond of pointing fingers at how other people are avoidant or narcissistic or anything like that. But the thing that's going to change your life is when you start looking at, am I avoidant? Do I have narcissistic behaviors? You know, am I doing things where I hold myself apart from people and look down on them? And one example is there's a lot of people talk online about, like, I'm dating an avoidant. Oh, it's so terrible.

[A]

An avoidant.

[B]

Yeah, an avoidant person, you know, an Avoidant or a narcissist or all the people in my life are narcissistic and not to knock that like this could happen. But if you're doing that all the time in the people you choose to populate your life, guess who's avoidant?

[A]

So what do you do?

[B]

So when you're ready to make the change, it's a big change. This is not an overnight fix. But you have to learn to release the people who are holding you back in that way, who are keeping you constantly in pain, constantly triggered. And I use the word trigger, but I use it specifically to mean it throws you into dysregulation. Now you can't cope, you get discombobulated, can't do your job, can't focus staying. Keeping your nervous system regulated allows you to then make some more conscious decisions in the moment and globally in your life. Like why this is very common for traumatized people to have your life populated by a bunch of schmucks. You know, mean people, troubled people, people who bring a lot of drama into your life and sometimes it would be a legitimate choice to keep them anyway. They're a relative you love or something. But if are there so many that they're taking up all the oxygen in your social life, so there needs to be space and that means you're going to have a period of loneliness and.

[A]

You'Re going to have to be okay with that.

[B]

Yeah, and that's very hard to do. It's, it's, you know, nobody wants to be lonely.

[A]

Do you cut those people off? Do you make sure that they're. How do you do it?

[B]

You can cut them off. I think if they're abusive, cutting off is the right thing. Sometimes if you just stop calling them, it fades away.

[A]

Because you've been doing a lot of the work.

[B]

Yeah, I think a lot of us are afraid of being alone and we think we can't do better. So we're just sort of like trying to, to keep people in our lives. I'll speak for myself. I know I'm not the only one. So I started releasing those relationships. And then sometimes you can learn to become neutral to people. And when you can, that's ideal. If you can not get triggered, you will have no trauma symptoms. It's crazy like that. But nobody can really have no triggers.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

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[A]

Mean people, toxic people. How do you avoid them all together? I mean, are there red flags to look for?

[B]

Yes, you know, the red flags have been in your face all along. But especially if you grew up in a rough family, you've been very conditioned to overlook them. I call it crap fit. You fit yourself to crap to what?

[A]

Crap fit.

[B]

Crap fit.

[A]

You fit yourself to crappy people. Yeah, well, I mean it's very clear.

[B]

And situations and so you become adept at like, it's okay, this person's awful to me. They always put me down and I get overlooked at work. But it's okay. I'm such a good girl. I can, you know, I can just kind of deal with it. I'm thick skinned, that's crap fitting. And you can crap fit about the person who does your hair. You can crap fit about how do.

[A]

We stop crap fitting?

[B]

So you have to start having higher standards. And so this loneliness, the spell of loneliness, when you've released relationships and they're gradually slipping away and you're sc is this beautiful opportunity to start looking at where, where have I been crap fitting. And when you can regulate your nervous system, your emotions come back online. The real ones, not the like reactive nervous system jumpy ones. Your real emotions start to come back. Your perception starts to come back. Like a lot of us have very damaged perception. We don't know how to interpret reality. We always are qualifying. What we notice is like, is it just me or is this person always putting me down? Is it just me? And so it's really important to have good people in your life who can be your reality. Check on that. And they can go, it's not just you. I saw it too.

[A]

What are some of the red flags of somebody like that? If somebody's listening and going, I don't know. I don't know if I'm crap fitting or not. But I do know a lot of people come in and out of my life, and I sure like to know what those flags are so I can avoid adding any other ones.

[B]

As you heal, you begin to be able to do gut checks on things. And the trouble is, when you're still in a pretty traumatized state, advice like, always listen to your gut or always feel your feelings. Like, that's not always reliable when you have traumatized gut feelings. And so first comes the re regulation and the period of calm. I really encourage people, be around people like other people who are also healing, who get it, who aren't going to undermine your efforts, any of us. I'm sure this is true in your life, too. When you rise in your life and you move up a level or two or three, some people are going to abandon you, they're going to criticize you. You know, they're going to put pressure on you to not do that.

[A]

What does that come from?

[B]

What is wrong with those people? On the one hand, they're jealous, but there's this other thing that I think is almost spiritual that I really think that let's call it light. You know, when you start to have a lot of light and I'm somebody, I came from a very rough background. And as I started to heal, I started to be a more radiant person. And especially on good days, I feel radiant. And so sometimes, even when I'm sitting there happily talking to people, if someone's in a bad place, they look at me, they're like, she's kind of radiant. They start to think, I don't feel that way. She must be making me feel that way. And now I'm mad at her and I want to make her stop making me feel bad. And so there's like, we've all done this. We project that the way we feel bad about ourselves is being done to us by whoever's standing in front of us.

[A]

Conflicts come, whether you're in a great relationship, a good relationship, whatever it is. And sometimes those require a way to heal from those. Is there something in particular you offer to people to talk them through that? Because I think sometimes we're waiting for an apology from a person. We're waiting for them to change their behavior. What do you think? I know you talk a lot about that.

[B]

Yes. This is one of the best things I ever learned is how to calm a conversation that's getting heated and how to make up for it when it's scary blown up in your face. How do you do that when you hurt people? So when you want to calm a situation, usually things are getting heated because both people are triggered. And you have to be the bigger one, though. You have to be the one who starts and you just recognize if I continue to trigger this person, things are going to heat up no matter how nice I am or anything. And usually the thing that you're triggering people with is something that insults their dignity or something that makes them feel threatened with abandonment.

[A]

I'm gonna leave. I'm not gonna be here anymore.

[B]

Yeah. And so let's say it's with a partner and a conversation is getting heated, usually. Especially if you can feel like your heart's racing, your hands are shaking, you're starting to feel, you know, confused in space. You might be getting dysregulated. You can say, you know what? I need a minute to just kind of compose myself. I don't wanna fight with you. I don't want this to turn into a bad feeling thing. I wanna hear what you're saying. Could I have 15 minutes to just kind of of go re regulate and then come back and talk about this? That's how you can say it without threatening somebody. See, how I used to get that space is I would just like storm out of the house.

[A]

Not good. But you said something really important. It's either you're humiliating them. Their dignity. You're dealing with their dignity, you're hurting.

[B]

Their dignity, or you're threatening them. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I never broke it down into those two categories. That really is what an argument is.

[B]

Yeah, it's really simple. And, you know, there's, there's, there's a deeper thing going on and it's, it's, it's not always simple to serve solve arguments. You might have real differences as a couple or as a set of friends or as relatives. But first, if you can just release that harm to them, and even though you're furious, even though you're hurt and humiliated yourself, if you can just decide, I don't want to fight, I'm not going to fight anymore. So you take care of their dignity, you take care of their safety, you get what you need to re regulate. You might need 15 minutes, you might need an hour. Maybe you need a day. It's usually not urgent. If you're not in danger, it can wait. But asking for space from somebody will make them feel, you know, like you've dismissed, like you don't care or you. You're abandoning them. So you reassure them. I actually want. I want to hear you, what you're saying is important to me, and come back. And by the time you've come back, your perspective has often shifted quite a lot.

[A]

Sure. You've talked about apologies and how direct. Apologies are very important. What's a direct apology?

[B]

I learned this from the AA people. I'm not an alcoholic, but I've been to about a thousand AA meetings because I love what they're doing in aa. It's so helpful to me. And I relate to the life and death nature of their problem. And what I learned there is how they think of being resentful at somebody and having an unresolved resentment at people as something that's going to make them very vulnerable to drinking again, and it just has to be cleared up. They say resentment is the dubious luxury of normal men. I think a lot of things are dubious luxuries in that way. And so what I learned there is the template of a clean apology where even though usually both parties have done something to bring the conflict about, you just focus on your own part. An apology is for your part. It's not a qualified apology where you go, well, I'm sorry I yelled, but you were saying all these things like, that may be true, but if you really want to do the proper apology, you focus entirely on your part. And I recommend that people, you know, sit down and list, how would you feel if this was done to you? It's critical that you develop an understanding of what really are they hurting about? Because we all know what it's like when somebody has hurt you and they come back and they go, well, I'm sorry you feel that way. Or they minimize what the thing was. I'm sorry, you know, I offended you. But they didn't just offend you, they took all your money or, yeah, yeah, sorry. You're so sensitive. That does more harm than good. So you focus on your part and you think about, how would I feel? And you say, if anybody had done that to me, I would feel this. And I imagine it felt like this. And I'm really sorry. And here's what I'm going to do so that I don't do that anymore. Certainly gonna try, and I hope you can forgive me without qualifiers. No qualifiers, no conditions.

[A]

Anna, you've done so much incredible healing of yourself, of people. Your book is coming Connectability. I want to ask you one question. People Listening that might say, look, at the end of the day, I'm still struggling. I'm struggling with feeling rejected, I'm struggling feeling stress in a social situation. What do you say to them? Where can you just start? What simple step could you take today?

[B]

I like to think of it as a game. We need to go slowly sometimes, especially if you've been isolating a lot and you feel pretty stressed about people. Go slow. Don't go and sign up for every club there is is and call everybody you know and see if you can repair everything all at once. Even though that's a very good intention, it will probably tip you over very quickly. And you think of it like going to the gym. Don't go, work out for six hours the first time. It is very much like a muscle, connectability. And that's the word that I've always used. Like that magic thing that some people have that it's easy for them to connect with other people. They know the thing to say. They're regarded by other people as a good friend to have, nice to have around, trusted. And I used to see that and I'd be like, how do you get.

[A]

That I become safe?

[B]

How do I get connectability? So that's one of the things is you must practice. You cannot learn it in isolation. There's not a lot of things we can do in isolation.

[A]

So you have to go out little by little.

[B]

We're born into community, so we start going out and the game is. I assign points. Like, some things are easy. For me, I had to give myself a point to walk out to my car in front of my house without checking out the window first to see if people were out there, you know, because I just didn't want to run into people and have to have small talk with them. Didn't want it. So I would go, I'm just going to go to the car, come what may. If somebody's out there, I'll say hi, I'll deal with it. One point. If you end up like calling somebody and say, hi, my friend who I haven't talked to in two years, I know things got weird. I was never sure why and I wondered, do you think we could talk about it maybe? Could we have a cup of tea? Three points.

[A]

That's like 10 points.

[B]

I thought maybe 10 points depending on your friend, you know, a really difficult relative, go home for Thanksgiving, even though it feels really scary. But they're, you know, the book is all about having boundaries that you can use so that you can have loving interactions with people, friendly interactions with people. When you choose without losing yourself, without losing your time or your mind while you go, you can. You can have finite amounts of time. You can share your loving comments. You can just make your getaway, you know, and you're good.

[A]

Where can people find you?

[B]

Anna, I am at Crappy Childhood Fairy and that's the name of my YouTube channel. That's usually where people go first. I have a website, crappychildhoodferry.com and there are the courses, the webinars, the coaching programs and things where I help people.

[A]

Wonderful. And your new book, Connectability. Heal the hidden way as you isolate, Find your people and feel at last like you belong. Thank you so much. I so appreciate you being here with us. I think, I think this is such an important topic. Loneliness has been something I've wanted to tackle because I do think, and to your point, I don't know that it's all the pandemic to blame, but it certainly didn't help things as we've gone through this world over the past five years or so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, Anna, thank you.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

If this episode helped you feel seen less alone or inspired you to take even a small step toward finding your people, please share it with a friend. Follow Leave a review and you can always follow us at the Tamson show on Social if you have a topic you'd like us to cover. My email's in the show notes and thanks so much for being here. I'll see you next week. Hey everybody. I want you to know today's episode was sponsored by Midi Health. If you're ready to feel your best and write that second act script, visit joinmitty.com today to book your personalized insurance covered virtual visit. That's joinmitte.com MIDI the care that Women deserve.

[B]

Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Poynter, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health.

[A]

Institute in New York City.

[B]

I'll be talking to top researchers and.

[A]

Clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife.

[B]

Women'S health directly to you. 100% of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Poynter. Wherever you get your podcasts.