The Connection Wound: Healing Trauma-Driven Isolation & Emotional Loneliness w/ Crappy Childhood Fairy
Adult Child
Andrea Ashley
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2025
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’re not antisocial — you’re someone who had to choose self-protection over belonging. This episode unpacks how complex trauma wires your nervous system to treat closeness like a threat and what it looks like to slowly become someone who can actually let people in.
Anna Runkel is a trauma educator, YouTuber, best known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy and author of the new book Connectability: Heal the Hidden Ways You Isolate, Find Your People, and Feel (At Last) Like You Belong. Once someone who couldn’t read social cues, trusted the wrong people, and assumed everyone would eventually turn on her, she’s now created a life where she trusts her instincts, chooses safe people, and actually enjoys being around others.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️Covert Avoidance in Disguise — How trauma survivors “do the things” (parties, potlucks, group chats, even relationships) while secretly withdrawing, under-giving, or staying on their phones, and why it keeps them feeling unseen and emotionally isolated.
▪️Trauma-Built Beliefs About People — Why complex trauma wires you to assume others are selfish, unsafe, or about to discard you, and how those quiet assumptions silently shape your friendships, dating choices, and sense of belonging.
▪️Attunement After Neglect — How growing up around chaos, denial, or emotional neglect scrambles your ability to read red flags, and what it takes to rebuild intuition, social cues, and nervous system safety with people.
▪️Dating With Attachment Wounds — How CPTSD and anxious or avoidant attachment can make you rush intimacy, chase the wrong partners, or parent your person — and what changes when you slow down, watch for red flags, and let reciprocity lead.
▪️Releasing Mean & Chaotic People — How to recognize when your life is packed with bullies, addicts, and chronically troubled folks, why letting them go can feel unbearably lonely at first, and what opens up when you hold that boundary.
▪️Choosing Sovereignty Over Self-Blame — What it looks like to stop outsourcing your power to therapists, sponsors, or online “cults,” and how reclaiming personal responsibility helps you become someone who can build real, safe, mutual connection.
https://www.youtube.com/@CrappyChildhoodFairy
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How's the business going? |
| 0:01.1 | We're busier than ever, but struggling to get the staff we need. Recruiting can be such a distraction. We gave Job Centre Plus a try, and they've really helped us out. Really? Yeah. It was dead easy. We got our own employer advisor, Julie, who helped advertise our jobs, shortlisted candidates for us and letters interview at the Job Centre. We've hired some great people, and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle out of it, And there was no fee. |
| 0:22.7 | Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. you at the job centre. We've hired some great people and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle |
| 0:21.1 | out of it and there was no fee. Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. Find out more at |
| 0:25.9 | business.gov.com.ukes slash recruit. Eligibility criteria apply. You can have a full life on paper |
| 0:33.3 | and still feel like a ghost in every room you walk into. |
| 0:39.7 | My name is Andrea, and this is Adult Child. Welcome back to Adolte. Let's just let it all go. What's making you slow now? |
| 0:55.2 | Let it all go. |
| 0:57.1 | Welcome back to adult child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 1:04.1 | Ahoy, my dear shit shows. |
| 1:06.8 | For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. |
| 1:09.2 | I am a total uncleat chit show. |
| 1:29.1 | I'm a recovering alcoholic. I'm an adult child of an alcoholic and dysfunctional family. And I am the captain of this hot mess of a ship. This is where we talk about what to do when you realize that your childhood screws you up a whole hell of a lot more than you initially thought that it did. We curse here. You've been warned. I'm an acquired taste. You've been warned. So first things first, I am super excited to announce the next round of Breathe to Heal. So this is going to be a seven-week |
| 1:38.7 | breathwork course that will be kicking off on Tuesday, January 13th. So we're doing it on a Tuesday this time |
| 1:46.8 | instead of a Wednesday. So hopefully that'll, for some of you folks who Wednesdays weren't an |
| 1:52.1 | option, hopefully Tuesdays are. And so our first time that we did this, we focused on functional |
| 1:57.3 | freeze. This last time was on inner child healing. And this time, we're calling |
| 2:02.7 | this, breathe to heal, release, and receive. And so this is all about releasing everything that is |
| 2:11.5 | holding you back, the beliefs, the baggage, the old roles, the stuck energy, the trauma |
| 2:15.9 | stuck in your body. So you can make space for all the good, the peace, the safety, the self-worth, the abundance |
| 2:24.2 | that you want to call in. |
| 2:25.5 | And with this being the beginning of the year, this starting in the beginning of the year, |
... |
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