Latest / Radically Genuine / 208. When Therapy Fails: Anna Runkle on Escaping Trauma's Grip & the Spiritual Battle for Mental Health

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208. When Therapy Fails: Anna Runkle on Escaping Trauma's Grip & the Spiritual Battle for Mental Health · Radically Genuine

• Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:01.868) Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. I come to you today with a degree of humility. I am a clinical psychologist and I do provide psychotherapy. I have specialized and helped people who are struggling to reclaim their life after traumatic life events. Some cases it's a childhood that violated their own sense of safety, security, personal agency. in all situations, there are circumstances that are deeply powerful in how it has shaped their sense of self. I've studied the effects of post-trauma. I most certainly believe in the scrutiny of both the medical field and the helping professionals, professions, including the therapy industry. I want today's conversation to be somewhat uncomfortable because I believe it's in this discomfort where We are most likely to grow and transform. And so that includes asking very challenging and difficult questions. And one of those questions is the foundation of modern psychotherapy in itself. This idea that hiring a professional therapist, talking about your problems, emotionally processing them in the way that many therapists encourage their clients to do. might not just be fundamentally flawed as far as a paradigm, but it could even be actively harmful. So we can ask questions. If sitting in that therapist chair week after week, year after year, is it potentially possible that it's keeping many people sick and dependent in ways that we don't fully recognize? And what if the people we trust to heal view us? and understand us, our conception of us as human beings, they see us in a way that that perception is maintaining problems that keep them coming back and back and back. I mean, we know already that the mental health industrial complex ignores the presence of a soul. We don't talk about Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:28.01) life as a spiritual journey in any way. The metaphysical, the powerful problems that come with labels, limitations in language. There's just so much. And today's guest, she didn't just discover these uncomfortable truths. I mean, she's kind of built an empire, like actively proving that many of them may create more problems than they claim to solve. You may know Anna Runkle. She's known as the crappy childhood fairy. She's become one of the most influential voices in trauma recovery. And that exists without a single day of clinical training. And the more that I evolve in this profession, these are the conversations that I want to have because unfortunately the clinical training in itself exposes you very early to that flawed paradigm and conditions you in a way to get you to think and respond and engage with other human beings in a way that someone who's not in that industry who hasn't undergone that clinical training, they're free. They're open. They're, they're open to think about things more creatively. They're probably more open to connect, you know, with their own intuition and maybe higher forms of intelligence. And if these people who have this freedom actually engaged in a process of self-healing, then we need to have those conversations because we have to learn what they know. And that's how you evolve. That's how you evolve as a society, as a culture. Her YouTube channel, I mean, reaches over a million people. Her books re-regulated Connectability, they're best sellers. Media outlets and some of the top podcasts are seeking out her expertise. I believe in a way this threatens an industry and that makes her dangerous to the establishment and many establishment ideas. So today we're going to challenge establishment ideas and to be honest about how we believe people actually heal and recover. And I hope to add to what she brings today's discussion. So it's important that I'm highly critical of how I was trained and the ideas that fundamentally shape interventions that I have provided. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:55.052) I'll talk about my own failures and my own struggles and I'll talk about how I'm evolving and maybe we find some points of agreement. Anna Runkle, I want to thank you and allow you to the opportunity today just to speak honestly and to have a radically genuine conversation. Thank you for being here. Anna Runkle (05:13.55) Roger, it's an honor. It is. Thank you. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (05:19.286) You've been saying for years that therapy made you worse. I'm really just interested in learning a little bit more about your story. Why ever go into therapy in the first place? What brought you there? Anna Runkle (05:24.45) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (05:33.806) I had really normal problems for somebody who grew up with alcoholic parents. when I first tried therapy when I was 21, I'm 62 now, this was a while ago. This book had just come out, Claudia Black. Now I can't remember the title, but people will remember it. It was sort of the first ACA book. And my health plan had put me with a therapist who showed me the book and it said, need to, maybe the book didn't say this, but the therapist did. I needed to go confront my parents about my mom and stepdad, about their failure to protect me from abusive people who were in our midst all the time and who were completely checked out about the trouble I was getting into as a teenager. Well, I did that. I flew home and I told my parents that and they threw me out of the house long term. And we never talked about it. We never talked again about what I had brought up. So. I guess I started with a chip on my shoulder like, don't know if these people can help me, but going to therapy is just what you do. I grew up in a commune in Berkeley. It started out as like a normal family, but my parents were alcoholics and so things sort of degenerated and they split up. And my mom brought in a bunch of housemates. And since it was 1970 in Berkeley, it turned into sex drugs, a lot of drinking, broken glass, strangers walking in and out of the house. not enough food, no supervision. And I had some good survival strategies. I would go to friends' moms or teachers. I was very good at spotting who's going to help me here. And we had this way of coding the whole ask so that I didn't have to say exactly what was going on at home. But they knew. I found out later. Yeah, they totally knew. But in those days, people didn't call the authorities on this. They just sort of pitched in. And I think that might be good. It was good for me. And my school let me bring my, when I was eight, I brought my little sister. I guess I was nine, eight, nine, I brought her, she was three. And she would come to school with me all day and come to the cafeteria and have some lunch. And everybody just looked out for her. And we just found a way to make it work. So that's probably why, unlike my brother, I'm still alive. And other siblings of mine have had mixed results from growing up that way. Anna Runkle (08:00.696) But my tough thing was trying to look good. And I would try to make the family look good. I would cover what happened. And just one little reference point. I could tell a million trauma stories and they're so old and I don't like them. They just bring up the past. And I've had so many opportunities to go over it. But when I was six, my mom, who was kind of really into casinos and men and stuff, she said, we're going to go, I'm just going to go in this casino for a minute. We were in Reno and it was snowy. It was winter. And she said, I'll be out in five minutes. I'll be right back in five minutes. Just stand right here. the cops finally found her 11 hours later and brought her to the police station where I was waiting. They had picked me up. And I had had all that day, I had a nickel, a dime and a Tootsie Roll. That's what I had. But when the cops were like, where's your mom? I said, it's my fault. I ran away. She told me not to go anywhere, but I did. And I'm sure she's scared to death looking for me. I knew, and that's when one of the themes of my recovery is that part of how we can get away with having such massive bullshit going on in any part of life is that there's this cloud of torpor, the torpor cloud that everybody just sort of goes half conscious around. And when I try to ask myself, how could a whole community not realize that 2000 kids in a diocese were abused? That's how the torpor cloud, it's something that It just shuts you down. And I had to think about when have I done that? I did that when my mom did that. did it. I was sexually assaulted by kids when I was seven in school and I lied about it. They brought me into the office. had the kids lined up. They said, this who did it? And I said, no, no, no, I made it up. Sorry. Cause I knew they'd beat me up. And I just learned, I learned very early on, you cover up, you lie. And There's a lot of literature about how you cover for the family. It's like, yeah, of course you cover it for the family, but you cover for everybody. And it's carried into like the way the whole culture is now. There's such obvious, terrible things that go on. And if you talk about it, you could lose your job or your friends. And we're all sort of, see the whole culture is going through this mass trauma that we're still, it's still in progress because we're not allowed to say it's happening. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (10:19.747) So I'm curious to know some of how these experiences shaped you into maybe early adulthood. What were you hoping really to get out of going to therapy? You said some very interesting things. You used some important language like survival, right? You're reacting and you're responding in a way that you believe best allows you to survive in the environment that you're growing up in, which is incredibly neglectful at the very least. But eventually you decided like, there's something about me that has to change. And I think either following these ideas or going to this therapist or therapists, I will eventually find that answer. Anna Runkle (11:03.586) therapy was all there was. That's what you did. And that's still like, if you ever use AI, like I use it, I've just wrote two books in two years. And so I was on AI a lot going, what is this thing, this phenomenon again, and what causes it? I was researching a lot and it can never talk about a mental health phenomenon without saying you must talk to a licensed professional. And I got chastised a few years back. I got invited first to post my blog post regularly on this national clearing house for trauma related stuff. And one day I wrote about these techniques that I teach. They're very simple. It's a written prayer technique and then a meditation technique. Very simple. Anybody can do it. That helps calm the nervous system and release emotions that are getting too intense, which is, you know, this is the gold that you need when you're healing from trauma. If you can release those emotions and feel calmer, get your head clear. These are the techniques that saved my life. So I was just sharing about them in a blog post and I got corrected by the editor saying, this is all very well and good, Anna, but you really owe it to the public to mention that this should only be done in the presence of a licensed professional. And it was just like, really? Just like writing stuff and meditating? Like, is that the ivory tower you live in? First of all, you don't need to and second of all, what I've learned from being a YouTuber and YouTubers serve the entire world, there's no filter, everybody comes. Almost no one has access to therapy. So even if they had access, would it be appropriate for trauma? Not always. So quite a big luck of the draw. It's great that more modalities are sort of hatching right now. but they still are really laden with jargon and this basic paradigm that it's the provider who gives you the healing. And if you try to get it yourself, that's very dangerous. And boy, I'd be dead if that were true. Anna Runkle (13:03.328) So I went to therapy some more. When I was 30, I was, you know, for a long time I could really compartmentalize my trauma symptoms. I had classic symptoms of CPTSD, but they got worse through my twenties as I got worse at compartmentalizing them. I think it's healthy to be able to just sort of compartmentalize things and just try to get on and be able to become employable and go on dates and things. that are age appropriate and not just be all about the trauma. So I really wasn't thinking about it all the time back then, but I just noticed I had a really hard time keeping a boyfriend. And at work, I was always thought of as this upstart who would shoot her mouth off. And part of it was I was smart. I have this way of thinking sometimes that's outside of the box. I can't help it. So it was often perceived as threatening if I would just say, I see you're doing it all wrong. I did learn over time that's bad etiquette in the office. You're supposed to come up with a softer way to introduce it, but I could just see ways that problems could be solved. So they would keep me quietly. I used to always be able to craft a job for myself, but I was never promoted. I was never put in charge of people. There were things like that where the trauma was showing up as a big limitation on me. They appreciated what I could get done, but I was a loose cannon, I guess you could call it. Yeah, I was a loose cannon. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (14:20.004) So it's interesting with this, I just want to jump in there when we talk about the editor who makes that comment, like that's certainly fear-based. So that's coming from this place of like inherent fear that's been culturally conditioned in us that if someone holds that license, well, and we support it, well, That somehow may protect you from liability or protect the publishing company from any form of liability because you're recognizing, there's a trained professional and that trained professional is, has these inherent expertise and anything that requires helping. Anna Runkle (14:56.47) Well, that premise that not only must it go through them, like the Pope or something, it has to go through them, but also it assumes that they know the answer, that they know what they're doing. that I think is, I mean, I know plenty of therapists who don't have that attitude about themselves. They're open-minded, they're humble, they're questing, they're trying to get truth, which is a good attitude for anybody, but. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:02.17) . Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:07.289) Yeah. Anna Runkle (15:21.55) Yeah, I get hate mail sometimes, you who the hell do you think you are? Even about like giving dating advice. They think that that's a danger to society. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:29.742) You know what's fascinating is this whole professional help industry, the whole therapy industry, it's relatively like an experiment in human evolution. We've been alive, human beings have been alive for millennia and have been able to respond in terms of community support, tribal connections within yourself, connection to the divine, all these aspects of being able to find ways to... become resilient or overcome like the trauma of our lives, find some form of meeting and be able to kind of grow through it gets like this constricted and limited viewpoint of psychotherapy, which basically begins with Freud and evolves to today's like nonsense of like hundreds of different therapy schools. But there's this underlying like foundation and there's this underlying premise that helps I think support and prop all of them that being in the presence of a neutral party who's professionally trained and within that environment you get to express emote and bring to your conscious awareness memories experiences thoughts and inner world and by doing that in itself it's essentially curative right it's therapeutic to do so and then you have a chain a trained professional who is able to either interpret that or respond in ways to help you re-see and re-evaluate and encourage new coping strategies or behavior change. I think that fundamentally does support the whole therapy industry. And what we do is you rarely hear in culture people being critical of that. Like that is just inherently healthy. And the more people who do that, the better off Anna Runkle (17:03.938) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (17:27.512) we are, but yet the kind of the data, the statistics where we just are as like a culture and being able to surrender our autonomy and authority, it hasn't really, it doesn't bear fruit in the way we would think it would bear fruit if all those fundamental aspects of it were true. Anna Runkle (17:47.566) Yeah, I've always viewed them as like normal people information, but I'm not one of those people. It just doesn't benefit me. It must benefit people or it wouldn't be so popular. And I've heard many people go, oh, then I went to therapy and my whole life changed. And so I got suicidally depressed going, well, what's wrong with me? Because I go and I just sit in my car crying and shaking and I can't even drive for 45 minutes. What is wrong? I must be really, really broken. And so my big stint in therapy. I went for like 17 years, 11 different therapists. would, you know, after a while I'd be like, I'm not getting anywhere. I'd try, we'd have to start over, talk about my mom for two years, you know. And the last time I went, I made a deal. I'm like, can I just tell you for one session about my mom and then we move on? Because I've got like actual problems right now and I need some help. I don't know what to do. I'm desperate. So I had a therapist sort of go along with that for me. But I guess the two things that I couldn't get in therapy. well, I couldn't get relief. I just wasn't getting relief. after all the therapy, and you asked like, why? Well, I was just so sad all the time. I was so sad and I would have a relationship and the breakup would come and it would just be brutal for me. And I didn't understand why things weren't working out. It was such a mystery to me, but I don't know. I just would pick the wrong people. They were cheaters. They would end up with addictions. So I didn't know what was wrong and I was hoping I could get help with that. And I don't think that's crazy to think that a therapist could help with that. I'm sure some can, but the last one I had who was wonderful person, Jungian in approach, a professor, very kind, really cared about me, I'm sure of it, but was always basically enabling my immoral behavior by being very understanding about it. I was really screwing up my life. was starting to, I would call it narcissistic traits. I had to be so tough that I was just like, I don't care what anybody thinks and I'll do whatever I want. And if I want to get rid of this guy, I will, because this other guy came along. I was very, very selfish, intruding on people's committed relationships, that sort of thing. And I was never called on it. And she would say, do you want to draw a picture about it? Do you want to? did he call you? What did he say? Anna Runkle (20:08.173) you know, it was just like this big beautiful story to her that was treated like a bunch of archetypes or that I was getting in touch with my, I was running with wolves or something. I don't mean to make fun of it. she was earnestly trying to help me and I went along for the ride, but the relief never came and my life was getting worse and worse and worse. And it came to a head when I was 30, I was walking down the street. My mom was, just about to die from cancer. My mom, who would never say she loved me, you there was just, there was some like old pressure going on there, had this heartbreak that I had been seeing the therapist about for a long time. And I was walking down the street with a male friend and we got beaten unconscious, you know, completely. And four men came around me and kicked my head and face as hard as they could until by some miracle, some part of me woke up enough to go, you know what, actually don't want to die. I'm going to have to make this stop. And I drew this big, deep breath. Like if you were having a bad dream where you can't, where you try to yell and you're like, I thought that's what would happen. I thought I was in a dream, but I opened my mouth and what came out was a really loud scream and they ran away. the people who lived around where this assault happened at what, like one in the morning. Cause the man, the way, was beaten, beaten too. They looked out their windows, they called 911. They wouldn't let us in the door. They didn't know who was who. We were bleeding. And the cops came and they were very serious about it. They tried to catch the guys. They didn't. They got us to the hospital and... That was like the beginning of my new life. I had terrible PTSD after that, terrible PTSD. And they didn't call it that then. Nobody ever said that word to me. They kept saying, well, were you raped? No? Hmm. I don't know why you're so upset. It was this mystery. I went back to the therapist and the state of California gives you a big pot of money if you're a victim of violent crime. So generously, they gave me enough for lots and lots of therapy. And I was going three times a week as suggested. Anna Runkle (22:17.858) So we'd talk about the assailants, we'd talk about my mom's death, we'd talk about the guy who broke my heart, we'd talk about all the bad stuff. And I became suicidally depressed. And I was afraid to even tell her because I knew like you can get locked up for that. And I thought, well, if I decide to do this, I don't want anybody to get in my way. I was doing some sort of, after a while I was performing somebody who was just above where I was or something. And she didn't know. I went to the doctor and said, I'm not getting better. I was like, every time something's moving in my left field of vision, I'm having a panic attack. I went to work and I worked at a reproductive health care clinic at the time. And I went to work and I was so checked out of like, know, appropriateness. I was upset at my health plan because they wouldn't see me for the broken jaw. I had a broken jaw and I had to wait five days and work made me come back right away. They wouldn't give me time off. Later, the doctor said I needed three months, but the work said, well, we can't do that. So I went back to work, but I ended up saying, I'm so mad at my healthcare, so mad. My jaw was shut. It's times like this, I wish I had a gun. And they were like, woo. And that's what I remember about that time is that I had to see other people's faces to know how I was coming off. I just had no internal attunement to the energy of what I was communicating. I was so cut off. I had no connection to people. So I thought like, you're supposed to call people. I would call my friends. I'd talk to them. And more than once, I would be talking, talking, talking endlessly. And I couldn't remember who I was talking to. And then I'd have to play this game to be like, so what are you doing? where did that happen? trying to get them to tell me who they were without admitting that I couldn't remember who I was talking to. And I interpreted all of this as shameful. Like what a sh- What a shameful woman I was, so selfish, just not functioning. And right when I actually had a plan to do what I planned to do, I gave a ride to an acquaintance woman. I was in this theater group and I'd gone to a rehearsal and I was giving her a ride home. And for some reason I picked her, like I never told anybody what was really going on with me, but I picked her. And I was 30 and she was 23. Anna Runkle (24:39.059) You Her name is Rachel, I still know her. She has tattoos all up and down and she had been living on the streets of the Tenderloin in San Francisco as a teenager and her alcoholism was so severe she couldn't keep it down anymore. that's unbearable for an alcoholic who needs to drink. So she had to get sober and she went to AA and she was able to get sober but she was not able to get happy. She always had what I call the bag full of cats in her head. torturous thoughts and feelings all the time, unprocessed thoughts and feelings, a lot of disturbance. And this, woman named Sylvia came along and Sylvia had earlier been one of the founders of Narcotics Anonymous in San Francisco. Very regal woman, very special woman. But she took Rachel aside and she said, do you want to see how to do this technique of writing? So this is something like in regular AA, people do the steps many ways. kind of individual how people do it or whether they do it. This is a pretty hardcore daily way of doing it. And sometimes people would call us a cult, you know, because it was very rigorous. It was for people who were gonna kill themselves, basically. You need something to lift you up again and again and again and again, as just whenever the trouble hits. she, so Rachel, I told her out in the car, I said, I think tomorrow I'm gonna kill myself. She said, I totally know that feeling. Do you wanna come in? I can show you something. And so I went in and that night, that's the rest of my life. That's the turning point of everything. And she showed me how to write. It's kind of a written form of prayer, 12 step based, but again, not what everybody does. you put God at the top of the page, which I balked at. I was like a Berkeley woman who was very involved in reproductive rights and things. I was terrified of Christians because they picketed clinics and things. I was actually really afraid. Anna Runkle (26:39.34) I thought I didn't know any. It turns out they just couldn't reveal themselves to me because I was so mean and judgmental towards them. just the word God, I said, I don't believe in God. And she goes, well, you you're going to be dead tomorrow, so maybe you need God. And anyway, what do you have to lose? So I put God at the top of the page, and she taught me how to write God. I have fear. And then you put what it is. I have fear. I just can't handle this. Fear I made a total fool out of myself. Fear my shoes are worn down in the heels. You know, whatever it is, just the top layer of what's disturbing your mind. And the other thing that it could be is resentment. It's like two buckets, fear, resentment, the anxious category, the angry category, and resentment. I had a lot of resentment. And I know now that early trauma actually impairs your ability to process thoughts and feelings, which explains why some of us just have so much. so much, so much feeling and so many thoughts and it's so noisy you can't really isolate a new thought or a new perception about something. It's very cluttered up with old stuff. It's unprocessed. It's like a hoarder house in there. And so this gave me a way to just like item by item get it on paper. Then there's a little prayer at the end based on the 11th step prayer asking for it to be removed saying, you know, I pray only for knowledge of your will for us and the power to carry it out. I'd never even heard AA stuff before and I'm not an alcoholic. I went to a lot of open meetings, but I wrote that on the page. I wrote and wrote and wrote. She said, write as long as you need to. And the sun was coming up. So she said, why don't you go home, call me in the morning and read to me what you wrote. And so I went home, I went to sleep. And when I woke up, this is what I felt like. I just felt good. I felt good. It was lifted. that horrible junk was lifted. And then it just starts coming back. That's the nature of it. It starts coming back, but it was lifted and I called her. said, I can't even believe this. I feel so much better. And she's like, yeah, it's great, isn't it? And she said, so do you want to read? And I read to her and my fears were pretty ugly. Some of them were so hideous. And I was embarrassed at first. Like I can't tell anybody. But she said, I totally have that fear too. And it was just stuff about like, Anna Runkle (28:59.724) you know, my butt cheeks are ugly and you know, look at this and I, you know, fear I'm an idiot and fear people think I'm a whore and it was this stuff that I, never, if you were to tell a therapist, they'd go, no, no, of course, no, all women are beautiful and you're fine and you've done nothing wrong. They're trying to help you. But what Rachel said is yes, a whore, I know it's, you know, give it to God. Who cares what you did, you know, like. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:26.737) Hmm. Anna Runkle (29:28.524) Like she was just, was just, it was so frank. It was so honest. And one of the things that was my principal problem at that time was an obsession with a guy who was married and, you know, very unhappy that I couldn't have that. And she, she heard me read about that. And whereas the therapist for years was so interested in my obsession, Rachel said, honey, no, we don't do that. No, if a man is married, he's off limits. Are you ready to cut off contact? And I said, I guess, and I was like floored, like nobody had ever suggested this to me. I thought it was like 1950s TV values or something to be that way, but I thought it's all okay. And when I look back, I don't know why I thought that. All the messages are available, but in Northern California, yeah, it's like thousand messages about how to live and you're supposed to like pick yours. It's syncretism. I'll be very Buddhist about this and a Catholic about this. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:19.271) Mm. Anna Runkle (30:24.832) and I'll just be whatever I want about this depending on my mood that day and no principles underlying it, no right and wrong. I definitely was raised with the idea that right and wrong were constructs that were old school that were used to oppress women in particular. Rachel just blew in, she had been raised in a Christian science family in Sacramento, working class. She had no problem just going, no, we don't do that. And so when I went to, she said, if you want to come to one of the AA meetings, but she's like, put on a dress and put on some high heels. And I was like, that's so not feminist. She goes, yeah, but we show respect on Sundays. And so I did it. And so I just discovered some of the pleasures of being part of something, part of a system of principles and a way out. But the real thing was that I made contact with God very quickly. And within about two weeks, I didn't have depression or PTSD anymore. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:20.509) That's a beautiful story. want to reflect on it a little bit. Some of the things that you're, you're certainly talking about, I've observed and written about, which is the impact of like progressive left orthodoxy and the training of therapists in itself. there's a number of, I think, potential difficulties for a therapist who's trained from a certain model and that model being moral relativism and feminism in itself in the way that the progressive left has pushed it is that they have a very difficult time intervening in an honest, authentic way by recognizing that you could be thinking, acting, or living in a way that is somewhat self-destructive to you that continues to create harm. And to be clear about that, that there are boundaries and limitations that are created from a moral perspective that serve our collective humanity. And one of the things that you were able to get from your friend Rachel is that she was just authentically herself and then being able to be clear with you that, there's certain ways of living that you're engaging in that there's no way that you can actually feel good long-term living like this. You know, the seeking of pleasure so quickly. Anna Runkle (32:24.397) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (32:37.851) Right? Without considering like long-term impacts of engaging in any type of relationship, this can actually extend to why people, you know, have turned to various drugs and every other thing is like we're escaping and we're trying to, to fuel ourselves with, with pleasure. And we don't have any idea of how to create a long-term purpose and connection. And so you walked into that relationship with Rachel, which seems somewhat disconnected from something greater. Anna Runkle (32:46.414) Thank you. Anna Runkle (32:52.472) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (33:06.745) a greater force, call, you we'll use the word God, but, you know, people can use different language and words to describe the same spiritual kind of connection that we have to a greater force. How did that transform you by kind of shifting the way that you were thinking about your life? Anna Runkle (33:11.821) Yeah. Yeah. Anna Runkle (33:26.048) Well, there was a radical transformation and it had first, first I lost the depression and the PTSD symptoms. And again, nobody diagnosed me with PTSD. It didn't occur to them that I obviously had PTSD and complex PTSD under that. was very, I had just classic symptoms of both, but that just wasn't in the dialogue back then. But the experience that I had with her, was a few weeks after that, we were taking a walk in the hills in nature for a long time and we were just shooting the shit about stuff. But she had this light about her and she was spiritually awakened and I had not really met anybody I respected or could communicate with. The way she understood my sorrow, the way she didn't try to fix it or reframe it, the way we just, it was. This technique is all about you just lay it on the page, you just name it. You're not trying to fix it or reframe it or anything. You're just like, bleh, there, please help me God. I just can't deal with what's in here. Then the meditation, the meditation, you know, now that I've had 31 years to learn and reflect on it, writing is therapeutic. I've had the pleasure of being friends with James Pennebaker who did all the research on expressive writing and why does that work? I think you could say this is a form of that. then scientifically, meditation is well known to have good things. The two together though, the two together, this is kind of novel, where you name it and release it, then you rest in meditation. And it's the rest that's key. I believe that what's happening during that rest is the brain and nervous system are able to put themselves back in order. Everything in my body puts itself back in order when it's disrupted. I scrape my skin, it heals, I don't have to know how it happens. I don't have to control my capillaries anymore. It'll work. And every time I've had a bacterial infection or a virus, it runs through me, I recover. And it was my experience that it was something like that. But there were some very distinctly spiritual things about it too, where I could feel my hands, my lungs, my face sometimes, this feeling of like cells regenerating. And I kept saying it like it was a metaphor, but I think it... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (35:13.704) Mm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (35:37.758) Mm. Anna Runkle (35:41.23) I think it was regenerating. My countenance changed. I looked rosy instead of pallid. You know, I was a heavy smoker and I kept smoking for a few years after this transition. The word for the transition is metanoia. I learned there's a word for that one. Just like a radical shift in perspective. Like it never went back to the old way once. It was on that walk in nature. I was grieving. My mom was just about to die. My mom had asked me to assist with her suicide. and I had said I would and luckily it didn't come off. was in no condition to be involved in such a thing. Really grateful that didn't work out. She did die. But yeah, was still like very heartbroken and sad and we were walking and all of a sudden I popped out of time and the plants, there were these artichoke plants, it was February, they're very small in February, but I saw them sort of come up out of the ground to their summer form. and they were alive, I was alive and it came into my mind, it was the presence of God saying, it's all, you you are part of all of this, all of it's alive. And I, you know, I had a question, even the rocks though, but even the rocks and I looked at the rocks and it was kind of rainy and the rocks were shining and the rocks were part of the life too, there was everything was part of it. I had this, finally I knew. that despite everything I am supposed to be here, even the rocks are essential, even the rocks. And there was me there and all my colors, all my possibilities was there. And I knew the value of my own life and how precious and beautiful and intentionally it created. am. And I just it was a knowledge that I had and it stayed with me for an afternoon and then it faded back into normal consciousness for a while. But I was never the same. I expected it to go. I expected to be disappointed. Everything had always been disappointing. I would put my faith in some new thing, some book, some group, some therapy or something. This is going to be it. This is the thing that's going to change everything. And you're going, you're doing it sincerely for a while. And then the creepy disappointment experience happens. We just realize, it's more bullshit. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (37:55.133) Yeah. Anna Runkle (37:56.898) But it never came, it's here just 31 years later and I'm still relying on it and teaching it. I've tried, I've experimented with not doing it and I change in the wrong direction quite quickly when I don't do it. It just really helps me to keep doing this. But it's the way that I came into spirituality was through this very natural thing that was about like, I've got too much going on, will you help me? I wasn't raised in religion so I didn't have that to rebel against. I wasn't forced into religion. I just discovered these to be true for myself. and had a series of experiences from time to time after that that kept revealing a little bit more of the true nature of things and where I fit into this. And I came to understand that the way that I had suffered was known and it was part of it. And that I, know, this wonderful healing that had happened for me, which was a complete miracle. it gave me a natural desire to share it with other people and that's what happened. just, I started talking to people about it. People would just ask me, you changed what happened. And so I would show them the technique and hardly anybody I showed would stick with it. They wanted what I had, but they didn't want to do what I did. You know, that was, that's common. So I was, I was going to the 12-Strip Program for Families of Alcoholics and I sponsored a few hundred women over 25 years there. And it was a fantastic way to learn how to help other people. It was my training program. A year into all of this, my career started rocketing. went to grad school at UC Berkeley in public policy and I got in like well after the deadline on the strength of, I don't know, charisma and a really good essay or something. I just had, I don't know, the wind was in my sails at first there. Now caveat, a lot of my life problems, when you grow up with this kind of chaotic childhood and parents who are just like morally all over the place, moral chaos, I call it. You end up with life problems. And that did not go away overnight. And I had to learn and practice and read books and consult people and get braver about who to consult. First, I wanted to consult the people who were easy and not very demanding and be like, well, you can basically do whatever you want. And there's some little secret that's gonna make it go better. But in the end, I had to get down with the ancients. If you want it to go better, you're gonna have to follow the core principles of our civilization. Anna Runkle (40:18.368) of how to be a good person. And that's eventually what I needed to follow, but I was brave enough to ask for help in those things and to follow advice from people who knew me and could see the way I was totally screwing up. like a male friend of mine taught me about how to date. When I met my now husband, he taught me how to date. I was like, can you help me because I just blew it with this guy. I'm so coarse, I'm so pushy and forward and I don't know, know, trauma-ridden. My boyfriend before that had committed suicide. You know, it had been two years of monastic living to get ready to even consider dating again. But when I did, I was pushy again. And this guy said, well, I know you really well and I care about you. want to tell you. Do you really want to hear the truth? And he taught me how to not push and use dating to have it revealed to me where somebody's coming from. What? I'd never even heard of that. It's like, you know, you just go really fast. Then if you wake up and you realize you've made a horrible mistake, well, too late. You're very attached to them now because you have attachment wounds and because you have abandonment wounds, you can't leave. And now you're stuck for X amount of your life. That was my experience before. So I learned how to kind of like, he said, just sit on your throne and let information come to you. And he was just a lay person who I I had the intuition to ask for help. So people like that. a Catholic priest, got help with some very specific things. And then my husband, when I first met him, I'd have to say he was one of my mentors about how to be a temperate person, how to be polite. He's from Northern England, he's very proper. And he would just cringe at the way I would send emails on behalf of both of us and stuff as an RSVP. would just be like. And I was like, well, how would you do it? And I learned how to just be much more considerate of other people. I just had a lot of learning to do. I still do. I'm still learning, but it's helped so much to learn how to be a person. And that was just all of this stuff was not something they felt like the class difference with me couldn't be touched. And the great thing with the league of mentors who showed up in my life is they had permission to just say, you you're being Anna Runkle (42:36.214) gauche, you're being rude, you're acting like a poor person here, like precious information about how to get ahead. And so I ended up having a lot of progress in my life and the hardest part for me to change was to stop it with the impossible men and that was a very unconscious thing. Now I have opinions about this. I used to get told you do this, you go for those terrible men because it's what you know. and you have like a repetition compulsion and this time you want to win. And I used to think, okay, it didn't sound right. My real dad was actually very kind and loving. Okay, he had a violent relationship with my mom, two ways. It wasn't that great, but I wasn't trying to recreate that. I was sure of that. I wanted something very good. so as I started, when the science began to come out, the first thing I ever saw was Bessel Van der Kolk's book. and it blew my mind. was just like, my God, this is what I have. But it was, I learned that what's going on in the brain of a person who's traumatized, I was just gobbling up research on this, that your left front cortex where your reasoning can happen is just like going down and you can't reason, you become unreasonable, very emotional, can't think. That's exactly like the beginning of every relationship I ever had. Very emotional, can't think. And it was very hard for me to see red flags. Just couldn't see them and... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (44:01.601) Hmm. Anna Runkle (44:04.376) So people used to call it quaintly, your picker is broken. But it's like a, it's a fatal trait. how you pass trauma to the next generation. You get together with people who you're gonna go into a very negative dance and it will affect the kids. so I think that, I think if I ran the world, I would be like, we have to be much more straightforward about how careful we must be about who we have sex with, who we bond with, that bonding is this incredibly sacred thing. And when you throw it around like that, I mean, once my eyes were open to it, a lot of the people I help are women who have been damaged by casual sex culture. And I'm not this big prude, you know, that's not where I'm coming from. But just like, you have, I don't think it's good for anybody, honestly, but that's up to them. But if you have attachment wounds like me, you're just gonna get slayed by this. Trying to pretend you're cool. I always say, if I had a dollar for every... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (44:39.456) Thanks. Anna Runkle (44:58.446) you know, woman who tried to pretend she was okay with her polyamorous boyfriend or something and came to me just like, just, just like devastated and cannot tell the truth about it. That's the worst kind of trauma is like when you have to pretend you're cool with something that's just like stabbing you in the heart. It's awful. And I just like, but I do have a dollar for everyone and I was able to buy a house. So there you go. Like people are really hurting about this, but you're supposed to be very non-judgmental. So Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (45:21.856) Thank Anna Runkle (45:25.908) YouTube is this incredible place where you can say what you think. You might get hate mail, but you're not like a therapist where you are more, you know, you're obliged to be more neutral to people, more supportive, no matter what's going on. You can't give direct advice. I do. I'm called Tough Love Fairy. They write me letters, you know, what should I do? What should I do? I'm like, that guy's shit. I'm not anti-man. That's why men like me. I recognize it could be anybody who's falling short. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (45:56.061) There was a woman by the name of Dr. Marsha Linehan. She developed a therapy called dialectical behavior therapy and actually got the name of my podcast, Radically Genuine from what is the highest level of validation from a therapist. So it's like anti-therapy speak, right? It's anti validating everything and making sure someone is constantly reassured because you're just so damn afraid of their emotions. Radical Genuist is being truly who you are. Anna Runkle (45:59.843) Yeah. Anna Runkle (46:23.491) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (46:23.604) So it's like eliminating that therapy speak, the fear that exists in the room and being truly honest as another human being in that room. I wanna unpack some of the things you said because I thought there's so much there when you started telling your story and talking about ultimately what your recovery is that I feel like I have a responsibility to try to simplify some of these, although they're complicated and may be difficult to add into. Anna Runkle (46:35.713) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (46:50.538) practice, but I think you're starting to refer to certain ideas that I think are absolutely necessary for us to create a life of value and purpose. I want to first ask if you've been exposed to two books. Have you ever read A Course in Miracles? Anna Runkle (47:10.694) Yeah, not every page. It's a very long book, quite a bit of it. visited a church once where they were, it was a church of theirs, Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (47:12.382) And the, it's very dense and very long. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (47:20.628) There was a follow-up book that claims that it was the channeling of Jesus. Actually, there's multiple volumes. It's called The Way of Mastery. I am just about done with it and... Anna Runkle (47:31.459) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (47:37.398) They sound revolutionary. It may be the most influential book that I've ever read. And it helps me to actually see the Bible a bit differently in some of Jesus's teachings. And I feel like you're actually starting to refer... Let's put organized religion to the side. Let's say organized religion never existed as an institution, but yet there were these core principles. Anna Runkle (47:44.578) Thanks. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (48:07.755) that were communicated in books such as the Bible or other spiritual traditions, ancient wisdom, cross-culturally. And then we had to kind of rely on some of those teachings in order to create a culture that's flourishing because I think we both agree that we're in a sick culture right now and we're producing sick people emotionally, mentally, physically, and we're trying to heal a sick culture. Anna Runkle (48:30.05) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (48:36.607) So I want to take it step by step because the first thing you did when you met with Rachel is that you considered the possibility that there is a greater power. There's a higher form of love intelligence that could exist in your life and that you could not do this on your own. And there is like an illusion of separation. Anna Runkle (49:03.192) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (49:06.133) which is certainly discussed in both the books that I just referenced. And very quickly the next morning, after this, at least opening yourself up to this recognition, it's almost like there was an energetic shift that began. Anna Runkle (49:09.666) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (49:21.228) yeah, not almost do it. Yeah. A whole spiritual shift. My spirit, the thing lifted, the problem lifted. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (49:29.537) What do you think happened? If we had to say there's a mechanism of action, like, all right, well, now we're going to be scientific, right? We're studying a mechanism of action that led to a result. What was that mechanism? Anna Runkle (49:36.748) No. Anna Runkle (49:41.016) from a scientific perspective. I think my nervous system became re-regulated. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (49:42.816) Yes. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (49:47.263) So would you say that puts you in alignment with God, alignment with nature, Christ mind, whatever words that we use. Anna Runkle (49:54.806) Well, I'm actually a Christian. I don't talk about it much because my audience is vast and my tent is large. But I am explicitly, I had a strong conversion experience, you know, soon after the part I told you. And so that's what I am to this day. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (50:12.469) Can you share the conversion experience? Anna Runkle (50:16.034) It's very personal. I would just say I don't want to be too explicit about it because it's so tender. You know, it can be cheapened by putting it online and soon the hate mail comes and the criticism and your comments and everything. I live here too, but... It was a most unwelcome message. was not something I was looking for. My mother had died and my brother died that year. It was that year that I healed and I was alone on a Saturday night, very sad and lonely and crying. I had pushed away everybody in my life. It was this, that valley of, you know, the leap of faith when you change, you lose everybody before you gain the new people. And then I lost those new people in many rounds. Like as you grow, you lose people, but I was alone and With all those deaths in my family, I was meditating, just doing my writing and meditating, praying, and I had a visualization of a temple and of myself sweeping up ashes. it was just like I was feeling like it was the ashes of the people, the people who had both abused me and I loved and missed and was sweeping them away. And it was just this kind of reverie or something. And... an image appeared in front of my heart, maybe a few inches in front of my chest, an image that I knew to be Christ. my first reaction was, I know who you are, I know what you want. And also just like, now I'm never gonna have a boyfriend. It was a very like down, salt of the earth reaction to this, but it stayed with me for about half an hour. But I thought, do you want me to be a nun? Because I do not want to be a nun. And I've since learned, no, people who don't want to be a nun should not be nuns. That's a special calling for people. But there was a calling for me. And I knew the essence of it, even though I was only beginning to live it. And the calling has involved a lot of resistance, a lot of lurching forward, a lot of suffering. But the calling 31 years later, Anna Runkle (52:31.66) It's a straight line from that to what I'm doing right now, talking to you. I'm teaching this, I'm teaching this, I'm teaching this. There's another way. what I enjoy about what I teach and the pleasure I have of watching people, and because some people I get to know like in a retreat or they're in my online community, or I get so many emails from them, they describe what's happening to them and they're having metanoia, that feeling of that radical transformation. where their perspective shifts. And usually the shift of perspective, you could sum it up like this. no one's doing this to me. And it's this mindset of suffering that's focused on the trauma. And therein lies the problem. The trauma is real and it needs to be talked about at some point. But it's a consciousness of suffering to stay there. I just think that's a wrong, I think that's a wrong idea that the more you focus on it and recover your feelings and memories and people are always like, I I had trauma, but I can't remember. And I'm not a therapist, so can say what I really think. I'm like, good, you know, carry on. know, it'll get you, if it needs to talk to you, it'll come, you know, it'll come and talk to you. But it'll be a good time, because like inside your spirit knows the good time for this stuff. If you're writing and meditating a couple of times a day for 30 years, you're going to face a lot of things. I always say it's like a little brush, just a little archeological brush. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (53:37.762) Mm. Yeah. Anna Runkle (53:53.966) You don't have to dig, you don't have to go into everything bad that ever happened. It'll come to you. And the great thing about doing it twice a day is you enter into life every day and you make friction. People hurt your feelings, somebody breaks your heart, you lose the job, you have money worries, all of life's problems come and hit you. And you fill up with fear and resentment. And I got scammed on the phone the other night. I had to write and write. I actually gave people the... the password to my bank account. How did they get me to do that? We stopped it in time. The bank was very good to me, but I was so upset. I was so violated. So I still, I can get this like my whole nervous system just goes like that. Or if I have an argument with my husband, it can be quite brutal for me and I need to come back. I need to come back. So every day I'm just taking the top layer. What happened? The thing that I'm worried about. The thing I heard in the news, the health problem, the ache in my side. Do we have milk? Are we out? You all these things, they just count as like the problems of my mind. get them on paper. I release them to God. then I just have some space to get some insight. And the insights that I get, I get the idea of like, it's not always like quality information, but some of the greatest things that have ever come to me came in that window and they come and I think of who I should call and I think of something I'd like to read. And then I go waste a lot of time, but I go back out into life. I get all effed up again about my friction with the world and how much I hate everybody and that's against me and I just have that. And every time that happens, it brings up more and I get the opportunity to face and be rid of all that crap that's in there, the accumulation of fear and resentment that's coming from my past, probably the collective conscience. Also, right now, all the delusions I have about the nature of reality that would have me think, the The odds are stacked against me. You know, then I heard about the Atlas comet and everything and I'm like, here we go. The world's coming to an end. And then I'm just writing it and I'm just like, yeah, whatever. And I have space. So I get these ideas and the idea keeps taking me in this solid direction. It's characterized when it's happening of love, respect, kindness, patience, tolerance. Those are sort of the emotional characteristics of the general direction, but also Anna Runkle (56:17.346) So you might be able to see it. I have a picture of Saint Dymphna back there and she's the patron saint of people with neurological injuries and sexual abuse. And she's got a sword in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other. And that's what I think. Living in Northern California and all this, hey, it's all fear, know? Jesus gotta let it go and just go with the flow. I'm like, no, you don't. That's how you get sexually abused, kids. All those platitudes of like. you're being too in your head or you got to get in your body. That's often like sexual manipulation. So, you know, when you become honest with yourself about how this trouble happens, just clarity appears. Clarity is naturally there for the taking. It just comes to me. Clarity comes to me and it helps disabuse me of distortions and delusions about things and anxieties. the things that the news would have me believe. Oh, so believable, know, so compelling, then it's, it just sort of, things dissolve away and I come back, I'm in reality. I like reality. I'm probably, you might say I'm a stoic, but sort of a mystic. And so what I was tapped for when I just had that very raw sort of encounter with Christ was that I was supposed to share this. I was supposed to share this with other people. I, yeah. And I get the pleasure of watching it happen. And I know it's not me. So many people get this experience of getting released from the sort of mesmerizing belief that the trauma, the trauma, the trauma, the answers in the trauma, they get released from it. And I'm not saying I wanna say that to anybody who's listening. I'm not saying that we deny that it happened. It happened and it was significant and it was so, so damaging. It's just that it doesn't have the solution for you in there. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (58:06.421) Yeah, first of all, beautiful story. And I love a lot of the things you said. One of the things I've certainly realized about the therapy industry, the schools of therapy and the training is we end up talking about people and events as if they're all quite similar and we can intervene in a very similar way. You being able to talk about the role that fear exists in our life, like boundaries, a number of things that, you know, are developed when you're, especially you become acutely sensitive to them when you've been exposed to danger in your life, especially during key developmental periods, is that one thing that I love about the work is that you never meet the same person twice. And each person has this individual story and their lives are very meaningful. So I'm a very spiritual person and I see even the darkest aspects of our lives to have great meaning. In fact, one of the things that I say is to protect us and for some degree of immunity is to actually to re-see everything that has happened to us through a different lens. Now I see that through the lens that we are eternal souls and that we have incarnated into this body for very important lessons and often those lessons are to bring us closer to love or to bring us closer to like source consciousness, this idea of everything what God is and those lessons are often in love. I see the greatest growth and I see And I'm exposed to the greatest wisdom in people who have suffered, in people who have struggled. And I'm in the presence of that. I feel like I'm in the presence of God because what happens when you prevent people from kind of finding their light in the only the way that they can is that you kind of keep them stuck in that dark space and they over identify with it. And then you begin to see they identify themselves as a trauma victim or a trauma survivor. whatever word that you put in there. And then you start identifying with a label, a psychiatric label that's been applied to that person. And although there are some selective truths in trauma therapy work, like for example, like there are people who repress and avoid and escape, they numb, they go into drugs and all those things. And by keeping everything that happened to you in the dark, it kind of maintains that entire process. And you do have to bring that into the light, but there's some limits around. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:00:31.446) Right? You, you do have to experience and release that powerful energy of those emotions. Emotions are energy in motion. And you have to understand that the patterns that have been created in your life may be out of survival, may out of events where you have not been allowed to fully understand and learn. Dating was a great example for you. You have to be able to learn to be able to change those patterns in ways that serve you. Anna Runkle (01:01:00.238) Mm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:00.83) what serves each individual can be so different because we're talking about unique life purposes. And if you feel disconnected from greater, a greater love and purpose to everything that you're doing, then you're never going to be able to find what I think your soul is trying to get you to find. And you're talking about getting in alignment with that, that your awakening process included I have a very meaningful purpose in this life. So that means like this conversation right now is holy because you've placed in a situation where you're to bring up this type of content, right? To talk about it in this way. And there's a freedom to that because you're not bound by any license, any orthodoxy, any theoretical orientation, any professional association, everything where the professional can be Anna Runkle (01:01:30.883) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:01:35.042) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:58.457) controlled by fear, like don't speak outside of the limitations and the boundaries that we've provided you. This is what you do. You're free from that. And in some ways you're suffering and what you've gone through in your life has provided you insights and awareness and allowance to be able to say, hey, there are other ways for you to heal. Here's what works for me. And I'm sure you're not saying this works for everybody, but you're saying, hey, maybe there's something core here. There's a mechanism here. that if you're not alone, if you can release this to a higher power, if you know that you are more than just a body, that you're stuck in this physical world, this physical reality, you're here to learn, it's gonna give you all the gunk, your mind, your egoic mind is going to sometimes take you down places that are going to make you feel like shit and you're gonna make mistakes, but inside you there's this soul and you're connected to something much greater to you and you have this ability to actually surrender to it. And when you learn how to quiet your mind, that you're exposed to this information, maybe you're even guided and that you have a new insight and a new awareness because it comes from this light that loves you and cares for you and is gonna guide you in a direction away from your mind, which is keeping you kind of stuck in the pain of this reality that you're kind of, that we're all here for. Anna Runkle (01:02:59.95) Mm. Anna Runkle (01:03:08.14) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:03:17.888) Okay. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:03:28.974) Does any of that sound like if we're going to start talking about like core mechanisms here of healing, like is that meaningful what I just said to you? Anna Runkle (01:03:37.878) Yeah, I think the one thing I could add to it is it's about truth. Truth is the medium of God. God can't reach you through anything that's not true. And so first you have to be in the truth. And my friend was telling me the other night, I'm not directly familiar with the quote, but I was going, whoa, was was confusion. And it was this idea that if people can't say what's true, then very soon the civilization collapses. And if we can't say what's true, that is so much what, you know, so many forms of abuse can, in a family can be is you're not allowed to tell people or I hit you, I hit you. And if you tell anybody, I hit you, I'll hit you again. And, and you learn, you learn to suppress the truth about all these things. So there's this huge suppression of your truth, recognizer. And one of the, thing, the first piece I ever read of yours, Roger was, about mitochondria and being able to apprehend God, if I'm phrasing that right, being able to know God consciousness, because that happened to me. I think, I don't know, in a way, I think when God wants to reveal himself, it doesn't matter the state of anything else. just got, you I was, I was had. But when you have that shut down, that's what I noticed that my, my 25 years in 12 step meetings, it was a, it was like a longitudinal study of them. of the eyes and ears, you know, of what happens to people who come to meetings and who are working on themselves. And some of them would just always be talking about the problem, which is mesmerizing. And some of them would go get a sponsor and work the 12 steps and try to be of service and do the things that it says and do the assignments and reckon with their mistakes and apologize. And I just noticed, like, if you have a 25 year trajectory, it's night and day. What happens is it's the people who embraced the action of becoming someone new and so it's it's truth and truth finding and I just find it is so hard to be honest with oneself it's hard to be honest about other people like I told you I had you know I've twice had boyfriends in the past when I was still sort of under the spell of trauma very much at the effect of trauma who unbeknownst to me were heroin addicts and both of them died this happened like 10 years apart Anna Runkle (01:06:05.398) And it was so humiliating and tragic and horrible. And then later he's just like, why couldn't I see that? I had so much capacity to shut down to the truth. And it's as if stress sort of shuts down my ability to know what's true. And I can go into magical thinking. I teach a lot of people how to overcome trauma-driven dating patterns and magical thinking of like, well, I know he doesn't love me, but we had a past life together or. I think he's actually quietly communicating through social media with me, you know, through songs. I've actually sort of evolved into one of the world experts on limerence, the obsession with people who don't love you back. And without a license to do so, but I've done a lot of content about it. I've answered hundreds of letters about it. But the capacity to see love where there is no love is extremely well-developed and neglected people. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:06:46.586) Mm. Anna Runkle (01:07:01.034) could you feel it you see it and it always calls to mind the experiment from long ago with the monkeys with the wire frame mother and the bottle of milk if you remember that a baby will a baby will cling to the furry mother and give up food you know to feel loved the furry frame rather than the wire frame of the bottle just to get love and it will die it will just starve to death sounds a little bit like things that turn out to be an urban legend but it feels true for for trauma but I think it is true. think somebody wrote to me and said, no, I was part of that study. And so you get this very good capacity to sort of construct a life and all that like natural desire to love and attach to a partner and create babies and all that good stuff. It'll just start going in the wrong direction. And it's like a train that's very hard to stop. And I just understand that intrinsically from having gone through it myself. And I teach people a practical way to get out of that. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:07:50.819) Mm. Anna Runkle (01:08:00.63) one of my specialties. And it's cold turkey, no illusions, cut it out, it's heroin, stop. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:08:02.949) Yes. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:08:07.822) Yeah, I mean, what I'm reminded what is true is always true. So we have to be very careful about how truth can be manipulated. And there's a grounding in what is always true. And let's see if we can try to identify them together. When we say truth is always true and we're talking about the nature of reality, what do you believe is always true? Anna Runkle (01:08:10.794) Mm. Anna Runkle (01:08:17.911) telling you. Anna Runkle (01:08:30.178) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:08:37.538) Well, I don't think we're in a simulation. I do believe that all things are in motion, like all living things and objects are in motion. I read Aquinas for Dummies, so let me tell you. Causation. I did, I literally read Aquinas for Dummies, it was the best I could do. But it has five proofs of God, but it's just like because things are ever moving and life is just ever unfolding, there's a cause behind it. Once I became aware of the presence of God and the vibration of God in all things, it doesn't go away. I won't say, I won't be that absolute. I've had some bleak, dark nights of the soul, and I was like, there's nothing out there. I'm a fool. Yeah, I've been an idiot. Nothing's any good. And then came crawling back and things just, yeah, the life comes into things, but I just, sense that there's a life in all things. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:09:23.174) you Anna Runkle (01:09:37.682) And you could think of it like a river, metaphorically. It flows like a river. And you can fight the river, you can stay out of the river, or can kind of like let it take you. But the river is going in a direction that's full of friction and logs. Yes, it is. There's some stuff in the water, but it's taking you towards the fulfillment of who you are. I also believe that every single person is born with gifts and spiritual gifts of something they're meant to bring into the world. And because a priest helped me discern mine, I do what I do. It started with that. said, I'm so frustrated. I feel like I'm supposed to be doing more. I had a video production company. I was pretty good. Zoom was my big client. Kaiser Permanente. I was doing pretty well. was proud of what I was doing, but I was just like, I know I'm supposed to be doing something more. And I was 53. And the priest said, well, what is it that people tell you over and over again really helped them that you did really made a difference for them? That was that's one of the signs of a gift. And I said, well, I guess when I'm in the 12 step meetings, when I tell my story, people will be on the edge of their seats listening. And they say, wow, I got so much out of your share. Thank you. And he said, all right, do do more of that. And I said, I may be writing. I've always made my living as a writer. I'm good at it. So, OK, so maybe write your story. And so that's how it started as a blog. And I made videos to show how to do the technique. And then it took me like a couple years to even look at the numbers over on YouTube. I put a couple videos there, but I was just using it to host into my little blog, my little WordPress blog that's still there on my website. And then it just turned out that YouTube was taking off. was me, it's, you know, one is never supposed to be too certain about what the gift is. I call it a probable gift. seems to be like a lot of people are responding to it by healing. So there's something. that I'm being used to bring into the world and it feels very good for me to do it. It feels very fulfilling and that's a sign too. It just it tends to feel good. You're not necessarily good at it but I when I looked over at the YouTube numbers it had just like I had like a couple thousand subscribers there and maybe 60 blog followers just friends mostly and and they were people were watching my YouTubes and so what I've just come to accept Anna Runkle (01:11:59.502) And YouTube is such a cruel task mistress too. I'm so like sick of it today. Today I just do not want to make more videos. It's so much work. I make five a week. It's so much. But it keeps the algorithm going. just sort of keeps the energy of what I'm teaching kind of moving through the world, which is the object of the game. But YouTube, it's me when I'm talking and my voice. And even if I'm reading off a teleprompter, which I do sometimes if I'm talking about trauma. I don't like to talk directly about trauma. Trauma instantly puts me in dysregulation. So I can read the tel... I can write it, put it on the teleprompter and read it. And because I directed 2000 interviews with people as a video producer and I used to be a professional comedian, it's just this great medium for Anna Runkle. It was like it was made for me. And I can be my intense pushy self. That pushy intense aspect of me that's a lot for people in real life is perfect for YouTube. It penetrates the screen. So... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:12:55.11) Mm. Anna Runkle (01:12:58.562) So I love hate it. I don't really hate it. I hate it today just because I have to stay on schedule. I'm like, I don't want to. So I decided not to. I decided to take a break. And I've got to do that sometimes. But now I'm off schedule and I have to tell the team. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:13:13.938) I want to take you back then because I want to find the truths in what you said. It seems like if we identified that there is a greater power, there is a God that is present in all our lives and recognition of that is really necessary for health and mental health. Would you say that's a truth? Anna Runkle (01:13:15.469) Yeah. Anna Runkle (01:13:38.392) I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I look at the culture and I definitely am one of those people who thinks you can really tell the difference between people who feel there's a higher power and people who don't. But not strictly, you know? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:13:42.82) Can you? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:13:53.83) Ken. Yeah, can you be like, let's say that I'm one of my truths is that disease, the body at this ease is when we're not alignment in nature. So the more disconnected we become from nature, the sicker we become. And so I have a truth that believes that our bodies, physical bodies have to be connected to nature, know, sun, the grass. Anna Runkle (01:14:03.97) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:14:13.026) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:14:22.252) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:14:25.92) animals and what we put in it and all that is like necessary. But spiritually speaking, we have to be aligned with a purpose in which our soul has come here for. And when we're off that path, we're inherently we're at diseased and some of the pain that's created from that is designed to put us back on that path. Anna Runkle (01:14:43.01) Yeah. There's no happiness until you're in your gift. I believe that. That's where happiness lies. You're in it. You're fumbling along. You're doing your best. You're sick of making videos, but you're making them anyway. know, it's like the gift is happening. And I try to surrender to it. That is happiness. I, and nature, I do believe strongly in nature. However, I think sometimes the miracle happens under any circumstances. I was in and out of the hospital for four years with a... a medical mistake that required 14 major surgeries that caused 44 emergency room visits, tons of hemorrhages and septic infections, medical devices. And then finally the news, this isn't going to get better. And you're not going to die, but you're never going to get these things taken off your body and you'll never be able to function normally. I was, had, that was, I told you, I got, I was just like, this is all bullshit. I've been a fool. There's no God. It happens that that was when I was in that state. I sort of went downhill, the boyfriend who committed suicide, that happened all in this window. And I was in this very bad place and it was a bleak world. And then I was very sad. I was a single divorced mom of two little kids. I was really scared of my own potential to bring bad people into their lives. And I knew I never could let that happen again. This guy who turned out to be an addict and died. And I did this prayer that was the best kind of prayer I ever found. it happened, it just occurred spontaneously. You just throw yourself on the floor, you cry, you go, God help me, I don't know what I'm doing. And that's where I was. And I sort of came back and had a couple of years of deep focus on how to get my life together and the mentoring. And things began to come together again. And so nature was nature part of that. I don't know, there's a... Anna Runkle (01:16:39.384) There's an alchemizing property to being utterly bereft. It's ego death, you could call it. It's just like nothing works anymore. And you ask for this power to come help you and something changes. It's the only compelling thing. never take, and I think having faith is a good thing, but I can't do it. have experiences. And that's the only thing that convinces me, but that life came back into me. It's like a life comes in and it propels me forward and things start to come together. And I don't want to sugarcoat it. Like life, even under the best spiritual circumstances, people die, bad things happen, your car breaks, you know, the whole thing, money problems, blah, blah, crime. But you meet them with this purpose and this lightness. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:17:21.701) So let me throw another truth. Okay, yeah. I wanna throw another truth at you. Is finding purpose and meaning in the challenges necessary? Anna Runkle (01:17:29.44) Yeah. Anna Runkle (01:17:34.008) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:17:40.674) Well, I think it's later stage, it was for me. I was 53 before it showed up. I was 30 when I spiritually awakened. So I was just slogging along there. I had a lot, you know, there's a lot of stuff to learn, but my purpose turned out to need those 20 years of healing. my purpose, everybody's purpose is different. Like some people, they're there to like lift up spirits in a parking lot all day as they sweep. You know, their gift might be something profound that doesn't necessarily take. Maybe it takes preparation. don't know. Mine was a lot of preparation. Even the comedy ended up being used. I thought I was the world's worst dilettante. I was a data analyst. I was a patient experience consultant. just, you know, I was a medical writer. just did all this. I wasn't going anywhere. And then all of it came together. I know when I wrote to you, somebody had characterized me as somebody who didn't know anything and shouldn't be talking about these, shouldn't be giving advice. And I was defending myself and saying, you I was involved in clinical trials where we worked on a 25 year plan for clinical integration. Cause I know how long it takes for people to get a change of heart about medical protocols. And I know mental health is the same way. And we're not there yet about trauma. You know what bugs me Roger? This thing about trauma informed. It's such a fake word. Everybody's like trauma informed. Everybody has the bullet points on psychology today. Trauma informed care. But that could be anything. It could be whatever people want it to be. And not that I'm being a stickler that it has to be one thing, but I feel like trauma is so mysterious right now that everybody should be very humble before and go, I don't know what this is. It does some weird number on people. Like, what is it about sexual abuse that is so destructive to so many aspects of a human being? It's so very destructive. Why? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:19:31.493) I feel like the word has lost its meaning because I was really like slapped in the face with how our culture is pushing the word trauma. When I had like back to back sessions and in one session, you know, I dealt with somebody who was brutally raped in a way that, you know, destroys feels like it destroys your soul, you know, and you're questioning your will to live. Anna Runkle (01:19:34.006) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:20:00.941) And then I had another session with a teenager where the mom was kind of berating the work I was doing with her because I wasn't getting her to heal her trauma, which was her best friend moved when she was seven. Anna Runkle (01:20:22.722) Sorry, I don't mean to roll my eyes, but I'm rolling my eyes. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:20:24.868) Yeah, so for people who listening, that's an eye roll. And therefore, every of every struggle that occurred after that can be attributed back to she was abandoned by her best friend, like a very normal life experience growing up is people move and now had been solidified in this idea of like, what is traumatic and I and I just lost my cool with this mother because I just got went through a 90 minute session with somebody who was deeply Anna Runkle (01:20:27.373) Yeah. Anna Runkle (01:20:51.043) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:20:53.208) deeply wounded and traumatized by such a horrific violent act. And for her to be framing the reality of what trauma is for her teenage daughter was just infuriating for me at the time, was a lot of years ago now, but it was a wake up call. Yeah, it was just a wake up call. And you see this all the time, you see this on social media is people are now, they want that label as if it validates and justifies struggle and pain in their life. And that... Anna Runkle (01:21:06.592) I don't know this person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:21:21.088) is something that I've seen in our culture is that we've lost this collective language for suffering and how we can communicate and support ourselves to kind of get through it. Now, if that young girl, you know, really was felt like that loss in her life had powerful impact, I'd meet it with compassion and empathy and try to support her. But I saw a mother that was trying to push an identity on her own daughter as a way of kind of justifying problems, real problems that we needed to face in that therapy. And this girl had to be able to overcome. And she's saying the only way that can be done is what processing the fact that you lost your best friend when you were seven. Well, okay, you're 16 now. And now you're not going to school. You're not doing this and all these other problems are coming in your life and the real problems we have to solve them right now. And no, I am not going back to seven for the next three or four months where she can't get to school, where she's staying at home and you're letting her stay at home. So you see this been pushed on to us and they're created. There are cultural narratives that get created and they begin to define our understanding of existence. Anna Runkle (01:22:27.447) Yeah. Well, I'm not a therapist, so I can just like say, you my intuition says that that mom messed something up and can't face it. And trauma is this convenient catchall that you can say, well, it wasn't me, it was this outside thing. And you know, the self will loves to blame. And that's another thing if I had a dollar for everybody who's like, I bought your book for my boyfriend, but he won't read it. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:22:42.34) Exactly. Anna Runkle (01:22:55.19) or you won't use your technique and he needs to and, you know, learn the hard way like me if you must, but you just can't control people like that. That's the thing. All of healing is what you can address in yourself in present time. The two things you can't change are the past and other people, but funnily enough, that's what you're encouraged to focus on so much in old talk therapy, other people in the past. And this whole thing about everybody's a narcissist. I know some people are. My brother was diagnosed. I suspect a couple people in my life, but a couple. Not everybody. And when people are like, everybody in my life is a narcissist, or I attract narcissists. I have this, I have yet to make it into a t-shirt, but I will. And it says this, I attract mosquitoes, but I don't sleep with them. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:23:46.582) Hahaha! Anna Runkle (01:23:47.474) Just like we have agency and everything depends on are you going to discover your agency and if you're going to use your agency properly you're going to have to have standards. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:23:52.708) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:23:56.453) Isn't it the allure of the victim narrative? Like, we're so attracted to that in Western culture, American culture in particular, because we're just like, born into these, so many of these narratives through media and through television movies of this victim perpetrator narrative and then, you know, that becoming that victim and then overcoming the oppressor. Anna Runkle (01:23:59.246) Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:24:20.814) to be able to achieve this higher version of yourself, but we don't talk enough about how it's self protective. Like if I'm a victim, then I'm handing over my personal agency and a lot of my challenges and problems that occur after that victimization can be attributed back to that person. You going back to this earlier podcast, like they thought you needed to go to your parents and you know, that somehow doing that was going to... provide you some degree of like forgiveness and they were going to just say, yes, we did this. We harmed you. It's our fault. We're sorry. And then that healing is going to magically manifest itself into you becoming a new person. Anna Runkle (01:24:54.573) Yeah. Anna Runkle (01:24:59.458) Well, I think that might've been what would have happened if they went to their parents. And that's how I see a lot of things from weight loss programs to therapy is you have to ask yourself, does this person's experience, do they know what it's like to be me? Because that could be why what they see as a solution is a solution for them, but not me. But that's what used to make me think I was some kind of extra broke and worthless person is... when everybody said, you know, it so great. I talked to the therapist. had this epiphany. Everything went away. And I'm like, gee, I'm just, this just goes on and on and I feel worse and I must be unfixable. And it turns out I had just really normal symptoms of trauma. They didn't know what it was at the time. Having a way to process that out of my head was the first thing. Finding out there's a word for it. It's a thing. It's not just Anna Runkle's personal failures and weirdness. It's a thing, it's a very common pattern. And that's one of the things I tell people when they join me in any kind of a Zoom call or in videos. I'm just like, these are normal symptoms. You're normal. You have normal symptoms for somebody who went through what you went through. And it was an abnormal situation. But even then, I feel very disturbed. I heard a statistic that a quarter of adults, maybe I heard it from you, are cut off from their parents. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:26:19.137) No, that didn't come that didn't come from me. What do mean by cut off from their parents? Anna Runkle (01:26:22.818) They don't speak to them. A quarter of adults in the United States don't speak to their parents. Yeah. gosh, what I wouldn't give to talk to my messed up parents, you know? They died so long ago, but I wish I could go back and talk to them now that I'm able to be more neutral to them. It's easy when they're dead, right? But I... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:26:27.223) Wow, that's pretty high. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:26:43.267) Yeah, there's so many, I mean, we can do an entire podcast and try to unpack that if it's true, because some of it's cultural, right? We live in this individualistic culture that we're kind of, we're kind of pushed to leave the nest, to create things for ourselves. We're kind of disconnected from our elders. We're disconnected from traditions. we're, that is something that has certainly interfered with our society. I think it's purposeful. think it's designed for, to, to create like the state to be the ultimate authority versus. Anna Runkle (01:26:52.151) Yeah. Anna Runkle (01:27:00.077) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:27:12.769) you know, your connection to like God and family, but that means Anna Runkle (01:27:16.046) I've come to this myself and it's very hard to face because it's so terrible, but there's no other explanation for why it's so pervasive. I call it the nefarious force. It wants us disconnected, it wants us divided, it wants us not in truth, it wants us not to have agency. what's so cool is the rebellion is that you connect with people and love them and you show up and tell the truth. It's terrible, you lose your job and all your followers and all that stuff. but it's glorious, you know, to just like be in the truth at last. It's where all the energy is. Because what happens, I have these salons at my house every month for people who are often well-known journalists in free speech. I'm a free speech nut. And I really... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:28:03.937) Not a nut. Anyone who doesn't value that's the nut. Anna Runkle (01:28:08.097) Well, yeah, I live in Berkeley and as a kid I was dragged to those things and somehow I ended up really caring about it. And in these last 10 years, really more here in Berkeley, it's been going on longer, where people, you're afraid to say things. That's just really a big theme that I'm working right now is the spiritual energy of the truth and how things collapse when you can't call things what they are, when you can't say what really happened, healing isn't possible. It's just not, you can sort of heal, but there's this attachment. It's so hard, I think it's hard for us women. We wanna be liked so much. I wanna be included. I wanna be one of the girls so much. But there's this, this tyrannical requirement to conform and I just can't, I just don't always see things the same way. And it was a big liability now. And that's what I love about getting older is it's just like, well. not so much to lose anymore. there's a lot to lose, but there's everything to gain. So I have these gatherings in my living room and they're wonderful. And I meet people on Substack even, and people will end up flying from other countries to come meet with my friends so we can have a potluck dinner and just talk about stuff. And yes, well, you're invited. By the way, I really like you to come and everybody's already heard all about you. It's this ever... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:29:20.963) I'm waiting for that in- Anna Runkle (01:29:31.746) growing list of people. But one of our rules is, you know, this isn't a debate. This is like we listen, we ask questions. It's pretty great. But so... Where was it? What was I trying to tell you about this? Free speech and saying it. It's going very deep right now into this. It's the whole group. There's a consciousness that we're forming because for years we were deprived of companionship where we could just sort of like float ideas and talk about them and say what we really think. I think it was Matt Taibbi who drew a chart lunch and said, if you forbid a topic of conversation, it takes about 20 years for it to disappear from consciousness. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:29:45.987) free speech. Anna Runkle (01:30:13.07) just leaves the culture. Like people, you get an idea, maybe it's kind of crazy and people go, no, no, you know, it's not an alien, it's a comet. But you have to talk about it. You have to talk about it. And there's such a freeze on that. went, oh, yeah, well, it's very freezy here where I live. And so it's this sanctuary where we've been talking now. I started this years ago. Crappy Childhood Fairy grew out of that, where Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:30:13.078) Mmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:30:22.325) haha Anna Runkle (01:30:41.134) because I was terrified. I wanted to do this for 20 years, but I was afraid to go out there and say therapy didn't work for me. And rightly so, you know, they come after me, I'll tell you. Some people really don't like it and they want it to stop. They don't want you to say that it didn't work for you. And because I worked in medical education, I use very scrupulous language and I never claim like, I'm not saying what you're doing is bad. I'm not saying, you know, that. Everybody should follow what I'm doing. I'm very careful about it, but for every one of those hate mails, I get about, I don't know, 200 from people who are in clinical fields, know, in psychology and the medical field. They come for their own healing. They never learned how to heal themselves. They recognize themselves in stuff that I'm saying. And I've asked them, 73 % of them also refer their patients. So a lot of people who would ever like pay me for a course or something. or come to a retreat, they say their therapist sent them. And that's what makes me feel good, because there was a time, one of my old videos is called 12 things I wish my doctor understood about trauma. I think doctor's offices are one of the worst things. And they're trying to do better now. And that means the world to me. I don't think we're there yet. But that's what I'm trying to do. But if I can't tell the truth and I just get resentful and start just making shit up. I ruin the whole mission, the whole thing just, you know, this is such a demanding job where I have to be very self-critical, you know, to stay on the beam and to be like, but is this true? So when you say, what are these truths? I think this is the best question we could talk and talk about that. Looking forward to when we meet again and we can talk about that. What do you know to be true? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:32:25.282) Yeah, Anna, so I have one final question for you and it's around what do you know to be true. I'm going to say something that I believe to be true that I don't think we're talking about enough. And if I was sitting in your living room, I would probably bring this up. And we refer to a lot about spirituality today. Is there a spiritual battle that exists outside of our five senses? Are we just, are we limited in this physical world and that there is something Anna Runkle (01:32:31.758) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:32:52.95) that is just spiritual that exists. And when we see a lot of nefarious behavior that there is a spiritual component behind it. So for example, I believe SSRIs cut you off from God. SSRIs are mitochondrial poisons. I think that there is a real concerted effort from transhumanists to be able to like alter human DNA and to, you know, really disconnect us from Anna Runkle (01:33:04.919) I believe too. Anna Runkle (01:33:15.875) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:33:22.122) source consciousness and to be able to control us, we have to be disconnected from God. so emotions are powerful energies. And whenever you give somebody a pill that really kind of cuts them off from full exposure to the pain that they're going through in their life so they can be able to get closer to finding that light, I think that's nefarious. So if I brought it up in the living room that, we're in a spiritual battle and that's part of it, we need to be more open about it in our society because that is truth. What do think? Anna Runkle (01:33:53.23) 100%. And this has been my strange observation. I told you I watched people for 25 years in 12 step. And with all respect to people who need to be on the medications, who that's where they are right now and that's where they want to be, I'm not trying to mess with you. But people who are on them usually can't benefit from my practices. getting all, Speaking about the trauma, it just regulates you and then taking the medication stops you from re-regulating. but the God consciousness never comes. And as a person who believes in God and who's been walking around with this consciousness in a world where most people think it's silly, I'm very aware of the difference between people who are with me in this consciousness and people who haven't had it yet or reject it. But when I read your article about the mitochondria and the awareness of God, and you wrote this article where you said, I'm gonna lay something on you I've never told anybody, I think that's the first one I read. And I was just like, what the fuck is this? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:34:50.37) Ha Anna Runkle (01:34:51.586) Who is this guy? I was reading it. was waiting for the shoe to drop thing. It's like, no. And I was just like, he knows, he knows. And he's actually a clinician. wow. And I was very excited because that's exactly what I think is going on. When I was in therapy and I started having an experience of God and I went in and said, I don't want to talk about the trauma anymore. I've had an experience of God and I'm feeling good. The therapist is as kind as she was. You could see her be like, woo-woo. And she said, well, I am obliged to keep seeing you for a while because if you're talking to God, this really concerns me, you know, if you think you're talking to God. It's, yeah, it's bad. It's what else, you you name it. But I basically just got fine. I got okay right in front of her. And... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:35:30.892) think it's your bipolar. You know, that's the stuff with our pole. Anna Runkle (01:35:41.518) I don't know where she is today, but I will say that after that, though, I went to the obligatory three visits to satisfy her need to know that I wasn't going off the deep end and, you know, that's fair. Okay. But she showed up in my 12 step meeting that I told her about and she never said hi, which is a little awkward, but she came and I was like, well, of course you're human too. And I knew enough about her to know she had similar trauma to me and I was so glad she was there. But there's a... I think, so I've written a lot of content about this. I believe that when you abuse a child, you take evil from you and you put it in them. And I was just listening to a podcast where Brett Weinstein was saying, talking about the unique characteristic of child abuse, that it has this infectious quality, you know, like a virus and it causes, in some cases, the child will grow up and then perpetrate the same abuse on other kids. And it's just this uniquely, it's like life destroying, he said. I appreciated what he was saying. But that's my hypothesis. I'm certain of it. It's a transfer of evil. So evil gets into us. And I just think, I believe in evil literally, not figuratively, not symbolically, that there's a battle of good and evil within us and without us. And basically what we need to do is rise up and join the battle for good. And it's time, it's time. We've been afraid to do it. I speak for myself. I've been afraid of what people think. I've been afraid that this is crazy, but I'm sure of it now. The evil is so palpable and it's hurting more and more people. And it's hard to fight something that you can't quite see all the time. And it's just like shape shifting all the time. That makes me sound crazy. I fear people who think I'm crazy, the therapist was right. But I mean, shape shifting in that it shows up. One of my favorite books is C.S. Lewis, the Screwtape Letters. Because the whole joke is that the devil is so clever at sounding just like so great, know, just like, yeah, I do want goodness for everybody, you know, but the form it's taking, it would actually end up leading to terrible things. So I do believe it's a battle of good and evil and that... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:37:40.086) Love it. Anna Runkle (01:38:01.63) It's very unpopular right now, but you have to cultivate the virtues in yourself. You've got to stop all the crap. And it's like lying about other people online, cutting yourself off from people when repair is possible, trying to be a light in the world and to bring love in situations where it's not there right now and to be like a ray of the sun. If God is the sun, to try to be a ray, like an extension of what God would want for us, which is love, peace. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:38:31.019) Well, Anna, I can't wait to connect with you. We're going to be at a mutual conference next month. And so I can't wait just to get deeper into some conversations and hopefully we can do this again because I just feel like we can get into more and more specific conversations. But for my audience right now who have not heard of you, where can they find your work? Anna Runkle (01:38:36.856) Mm-hmm. Anna Runkle (01:38:47.586) Yes, yes. Anna Runkle (01:38:55.308) Well, Crappy Childhood Fairy is the name of my YouTube channel. That's usually where people first encounter me and get a taste of whether this is for them. So that might be a good first stop. I have a website by the same name, Crappy Childhood Fairy, and I have a couple books out, Connectability and Re-regulated. And Re-regulated is the one to start if people heard something of what I was saying and they want to learn those techniques. And the techniques I also teach in a free course that's available on my website. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:39:21.515) Great. I'm really grateful for meeting you and even more grateful for tonight, this opportunity to sit down and get introduced to you for the first time and looking forward to future connections. So thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Thank you. Anna Runkle (01:39:33.366) Yeah, thank you, Roger. Thank you for all you do.