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“Individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naïveté but because they cannot help but be true to themselves”
―Alice Miller,
I was listening to Anna Runkle, aka Crappy Childhood Fairy, a lot, perhaps 2 years ago, but now I have come back to her with a renewed commitment and respect. I chose a starter video to share. I mentioned her, without naming her, in this morning’s post, about our new commitment and focus on individual shock and trauma recovery.
I so appreciate not being performed to, or informed from above, or set straight, or dazzled; Anna Runkle is gentle, kind, clear, and forthright. I love it because she manages to communication with traction, connection and empathy.
She brings a kind of Mister Rogers safety level to the tone and content that I love. (She says Rogers helped her survive her childhood—watching his show, experiencing his paternal safety and care from the TV.)
I have yet to try Anna’s “daily practice.”
But here is why I’m doing this:
I see virtually no situation, story, person, politician, set of words, frequencies—From all wars, Ukraine, Israel/Middle East, from Donald Trump to Hunter Biden, mass media, all modern “life”—not shaped by untreated trauma.
So I’m taking it seriously as a core subject now.
The part at the end where she says she can’t stand being tickled—I had an experience with a massage therapist who felt I needed to lighten up and tickled me, despite my pleading protestations. I was so angry, at being tickled and then angrier still that he didn’t “accept” how angry it made me. It happened more than once—tickling was how he ended massages, it was one of his techniques for getting people…relaxed? I can’t tell you how many times I have been re-traumatized by healing practitioners who impose the healing on you with you not even present.
To heal trauma, we really have to move away from people who can’t hear us, even though nothing is medically wrong with their hearing.
I also want to hear (some) other people, better. I used to be able to hear people really well. That’s all a “journalist” is—a designated listener.
“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.”
― Alice Miller