Karen Connelly, Author

A little brain-care to help put things in context. We so often think that language will always be there for us--we're used to using our words as powerful tools (which they are). But when we can't speak, in times of high stress, upset, or traumatic reaction, when words won't come, the reasons are physiological as well as emotional and relational. It helps to remember that. Brain care is an essential part of our meditative and visualization work in The Courage Room Creativity ...Collective. Bilateral stimulation can aid anyone and everyone in calming down after a stressful event: i.e. self-regulation. Go for a walk, tap left hand to right shoulder, right hand to left shoulder. Dance. Hum and sing-song without words--lalallalaaa-ooo--mmmm--lllalalalal! Becuase rhythmic sound stimulates many areas of the brain at once. OEI, Observed Experiential Integration, the trauma modality I use and continue to study, is based, in large part, on bilateral stimulation of the brain, which has a calming effect on the nervous system. May your brain work well today. Sing to it if it's misfiring. Take it for a walk. #goforawalk #ptsdisreal #pstdrecovery #traumatherapy #bilateralstimulation #bilateral #brainhealth #selfcare #therapyworks #takecareofyourbrain

I've written here before about the tendency of narcissistic parents to use enmeshment, often focusing it on their most empathic, often gifted children--the ones who are most porous, most likely to give emotionally. Thus the child's empathy is used by the parent for the parent, and using her own empathy for herself becomes forbidden. It's a subject that I'm currently exploring in various ways, and I'll continue posting about it here, too.

Awwww! Let's slow down. K? There is a way to do this SAFELY. Now, what was your name again? ... #funnynotfunny right? Friends, I KNOW THIS IS A SERIOUS TOPIC. Yet even as a therapist, humour is dear to my heart and body. Laughter in the right moment, in a loving tone, can be healing. And comforting. OMG FUN, remember that, fun?? Humour connects us--when we laugh, even in our separate worlds, we know that the intelligence and absurdity of the humour speaks to something in many people. So thanks to @therapist.memes.fordramaqueens the maker of this meme. And I know I've said it before but I will say it again: laughter, even fake laughter, lowers a speeding heart rate, helps us to regulate our breath, and apparently, so the studies say, even strengthens our immune systems. #laughteryoga for beginners . . . Humour also sometimes helps us hold great pain with a little more lightness and connectedness. And sometimes not. I know. I really do know. I grew up in a family where humour was weaponized, was often cruel . . . Where laughter could be used as punishment and there was little acknowledgment of our shared traumatic reality, even at its worst. So perhaps I love these #fridayfunnies because I consciously use humour for my own delight. Heard any good jokes lately? #laughteristhebestmedicine #laughtertherapy #traumatherapy #thathurts #ptsdrecoveryjourney #dysfunctionalfamily

This is something that we've been talking about over in the Facebook GROUP (not so much on the page) The Courage Room with Karen Connelly. What is self-love anyway? Is it buying candles and taking baths or is it a radical approach to being fully human, open-hearted, with healthy boundaries intact, able to engage fully in one's own life and the wider life of community? Whatever is the definition, I know from my social media explorations that self-loathing, self-hatred and trauma get a lot more clicks than self love! We are habituated to our pain. But our love ( of self) is a serious challenge. Hmmm ....

Simple questions, I know. Sometimes the answers, though, are complicated! At some point over the next few days, when you're feeling quiet and not scrolling through your phone, take a moment to say these words out loud and see how you respond to them. ... No Means No. Try that one out loud a few times. Just to see what it feels like. Think of times when it was difficult or easy to speak these two little words. Yes. No. Yesterday I wrote about listening, being listened to. Listen to the Yes. Listen to the No. It's part of our explorations this month in The Courage Room Collective, the online creativity membership. The Collective meets four times per month for a creative visualization and a Group Write. ($27US/month--$34 CAN/month) . . . DM me for more information. I'll be listening . . . #nomeansno #nomeansnoworldwide #ptsdhealing #YesMeansYes #ptsdrecovery #SafeSpaces #itscomplicated #selfhealers #ptsdisreal

I have a strong inner brat who rolls her eyes at these serious, courageous questions. She's like, Oh, puh-lease, I'm sick of listening to YOU! And that's fine--she can be a brat. That is both humour and a vestige, a remnant, of how my own family, especially my older siblings, dealt with difficult emotions: by making nasty jokes. By not listening! My tempered adult self knows that so many people in this world--children, adolescents, adults, elders--feel like no one is reall...y listening. No one hears them. The effect of living unlistened-to makes people feel very alone. Children, especially, who are just trying out their voices to learn who they are. So. How do we go about listening well to others? And to ourselves? How do we learn this if we didn't learn it in childhood? The state of not-listening has immense political as well as personal implications--for the othered and ignored populations of the planet, for the planet itself, with all her creatures and plants and waters . . . . . . Listen . . . This month in The Courage Room Collective--my creativity membership--we are exploring Voice and Communication. Part of working with our own voices creatively concerns listening empathically to others and to the Self. #AmListening #AreYouListening #Listentome #thecourageroom #voicework #innerchildwork #lonelinessthoughts #lonelypeople #listentoyourself #strongvoice #atribeofwomen #womenswork #menswork #takecareoftheearth

Secrets! They often have so much power over us, and inside of us . . . Especially in families that have functioned with a lot of enmeshment--poor boundaries often lead parents to burden their children with secrets in an irresponsible way. It's possible for us to live a good portion of our lives holding these secrets for others without fully realizing that this is not our burden. In The Courage Room Collective (through the month of April) we are exploring Voice and Communicat...ion. And exploring family secrets are definitely a part of freeing the creative voice! (Please get in touch if you'd like to join this membership community : [email protected])

This is just one of the shares we're doing this week in The Courage Room with Karen Connelly, the Facebook Group. (Do a quick search and you'll find it; answer the membership questions and YOU ARE IN.) Research shows that Tuesday is the week's most productive day. (Talk about pressure!) Yet small steps begin the journey. Give it a think: what are three goals OR intentions you have for this DAY OR for this week? Be courageous. Research also shows that writing down goals and intentions AND telling others about them helps us achieve them by making those intentions more real. In The Courage Room, we actively support and comment on each other's shares. It's a beautiful and slow-growing community. Have a lovely day.

The other day, in the Facebook group The Courage Room with Karen Connelly, we had a Self Love Raffle. We actually did! Does that make you cringe? That's exactly why we had one! To find the love beyond the cringe. Here are some of the people who were involved from the group. Three people won books. My job this weekend is to pack the books up and mail them off to the winners . Hop on over to the Group (not the Page, the Group) if you'd like to join a community of gifted (and gifty) people. xok

For over 40 years, Ron Kurtz developed, refined and practiced a form of mindfulness therapy that became known as the Hakomi Method (after the Hopi word ‘hakomi’ ‘How do you stand in relations to these realms’which is the Hopi way of asking ‘who are you’) This was an early, ground-breaking form of body-centred therapy which continues to be explored and practiced. Ron Kurtz was continually refining his and his colleagues' methods and eventually called his simplified work as...sisted self-discovery. I like that . . . (It's another meeting place between art and therapeutic work: I know some paintings and quite a few books, plays and sculptures that provide assisted self-discovery . . .) Though I haven’t trained in Hakomi, its combination of relational (not solitary) mindfulness, body awareness and appreciation for the client’s somatic integrity and basic wisdom is refreshing. And Kurtz was famous for his graceful and skilled work with clients. While it’s not neural (brain-focused) work like OEI, it shares OEI’s awareness of breath, body and movement. The gift and burden of the human condition IS there to find every one we meet. Though sometimes we forget to search for it . . .

Over in the Community (The Courage Room with Karen Connelly) we begin each new month and each week with a series of questions, to help members plan and achieve both practical and spiritual goals, often related to creative work (because many of us are creatives). If you're interested in checking out the Group, just do jump in through the link below or a FB search. Or, of course, feel free to use this as a journalling prompt on your own.

When you feel afraid to go ahead and do something, practice becoming curious about the fear. Ask the fear or anxiety where it's coming from? How old do you feel? What will happen if you give yourself permission?

For the next two weeks in The Courage Room FB Group, we're having show and tell: The Erotic. Link in first comment.For the next two weeks in The Courage Room FB Group, we're having show and tell: The Erotic. Link in first comment.

This is the exploration of the week over in The Courage Room, a creativity/spirituality Facebook Group that I oversee. Link for memberships is in the first comment . . .

Family Day--at least in a few Canadian provinces . . . (And Louis Riel Day, I think, in Manitoba: Long live the Metis Nation.) Here in Ontario, it is Family Day. Over in The Courage Room with Karen Connelly, my FB Group, I've invited people to share images or poems about family--your own or others'. Or even just a couple words that encapsulate 'family' for you. It doesn't have to be the official 'happy family version' either. The word 'family' is endlessly beautiful, often ...painful . . . Each of my siblings bears the burdens of our dysfunctional family background differently, as my parents bore their traumatic histories differently too. I'm mindful today of the gift of my own small family--so different from my First Fam. Whoever and however your family is, may you find a way to hold the (complicated) gifts and burdens with grace. As a therapist, therapy client, and practioner of therapeutic self-work, I have to say: if therapy is good, it can help us hold our family histories with more ease. Here is one of my favourite songs about family relationships . . . Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child in my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? Mmm-hmmm . . . I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM7-PYtXtJM

What a tonic it is, to hear hopeful words. Happy New President, America!What a tonic it is, to hear hopeful words. Happy New President, America!

Remember Sitting in the Courage Room, from the spring and summer? People from various Canadian locales and half a dozen countries came together at the beginning of Covid to cultivate creative and sacred space, to visualize, to explore language, to commune. It was excellent! I’ve taken the participants’ wonderful advice about that spontaneous program and developed something new and more organized.... It’s called . . . Come Alive In The Courage Room. Because sitting is not enough! Every week, we meet on Zoom, come alive through a different practice, then we write together. Each meeting is one hour. Ideal for writers working on a long project who need a sense of spiritual / healing community. No problem is you can’t attend in person: the Creative / Teaching portion of the gathering will be posted on The Courage Room portal of my (soon-to-be-launched new) website. Among other things, I’ll teach neuroscience-based techniques to soothe the brain (and thereby regulate the nervous system: ie calm the whole package down. Because: this !!!) Weekly meeting time is Thursday at 12 pm Canada/US EST. THIS THURSDAY AND NEXT THURSDAY OUR MEETINGS ARE FREE . . . so you can try it out to see if it’s a fit for you. DM me for the Zoom link. Come Alive is its own creative experiment. I’m inviting YOU, my founding members. The founding member cost for this first year is $27/month. I recognize the precarious finances of Covid Time, so I’ve tried to keep the price as low as possible. DM me here or drop me a line at [email protected] for the link.

When it comes to injury, the inner witness and the outer witness are both critical. Much of my work as a writer has been about witnessing, listening to the stor...ies of injury that have happened in political and personal realms. And my work as a therapist also involves witnessing. What does it mean to be seen, to be held, to be heard, after years of silence and lies? Part of the intensity and confusion of feelings in the United States right now is the inner and the outer witness of a body politic finally breaking into voice, into a cacophony of conversation about what has been happening in plain sight for (longer than) four years. When people feel invisible in their suffering, unheard, unwitnessed, the injury becomes greater, the burden of the wound becomes heavier and the path to healing more complicated. These burdens are inside us, around us and in the larger world. They are political as well as personal. Sometimes the harms or the crimes are too great, and amends were never made, and forgiveness has no place in the equation. But when we see and are seen, when we acknowledge the truth of our own or someone else’s suffering--simply that--we become more familiar with the possibility of peace. Unbinding from hurt and bitterness. Freeing the heart.