Angela Connolly

I hope you enjoy listenng to my interview with Angela [32:19 duration]. There is more information about Angela at the bottom of this page including her contact details.

best wishes

Tania.

Transcript of interview :

Tania:  0:08 

So welcome, Angela.

Angela:  0:10 

Thank you. Thanks, Tania.

Tania:  0:13 

Now, I’ve asked you to join me here today because we’re going to discuss Mindfulness Based Inner RePatterning.

Angela:  0:21 

Yeah.

Tania:  0:22 

And I know you have done a lot of work on that technique. You’ve worked with many people on that. So, thank you for agreeing to join me so we can discuss that.

Angela:  0:32 

Yeah, you’re welcome. I think I’ve been working with Mindfulness Based Inner RePatterning for, I think is three years now. I was just looking back over the numbers of people that we’ve worked with. Last year, I have definitely used it over 300 times just in that one year. So, I’ve worked with a lot a lot of people.

Tania:  1:00 

Yeah. And you know, what would you say to you is the benefit of a technique like Mindfulness Based Inner RePatterning?

Angela:  1:11 

Because my role was training in skills and working with parents, I loved MBIR because you could facilitate group work. First of all, there’s a lot of techniques out there but it’s difficult to work with a number of people at the same time. The technique I’ve used most is MBIR because it doesn’t matter really how many people are in the room. You can use MBIR. You can use it in different stages so you can choose the intensity that you work with MBIR from just using it for relaxation, anxiety reduction, to go into really deep inner work with the inner child. It’s so, so flexible. That’s one aspect I love about it.

I also love it because many people who I work with are vulnerable. They’ve been through trauma. And just to walk into a room, whether it’s a group of people, it’s very traumatic for some people. It brings up a lot of anxiety. The women who sit there and they think, “Oh, I can’t even say my name in this group. I might cry, you know, my voice will wobble.” And so, to have MBIR was amazing because you don’t have to speak. You can use the technique. I don’t need to know any personal details whatsoever about that person. They don’t need to disclose anything to me. Nobody else is going to know the business. Because sometimes people are quite fearful of people finding out anything about them because they’ve got that much history. So, it was perfect for the people who couldn’t talk and didn’t want to speak. I’ll let you step in now and ask questions.

Tania:  3:25 

I would just say, you know, that that’s one of the beautiful things I would say about the technique, isn’t it? Because we don’t have to talk about our problems in order to clear them because my experience having been in this business, or worked as a psychotherapist in the psychotherapy field, is, you know, been in there for about 27 years, is that some people can talk a lot about their problems. Their problems are still there. So just the act of talking doesn’t clear problems. Even the act of understanding your problem doesn’t get rid of your problems because many people come to me and they totally understand everything there is about my problem. And yeah, they come and say, “I know everything and yet here I am. Problem is still there.” So, talking about things or even understanding it doesn’t clear it. The beauty of MBIR is for me that it puts us into a natural healing state, a state in which the body can heal itself.

Angela:  4:32 

Yeah. It allows people to relax and breathe. Sometimes, people have gone to sleep because they don’t sleep and that’s the first time that they’ve felt that relaxation. The other aspect of that as well we’re speaking is, especially from a group perspective, that when you do speak about your problems in a group full of educated people, then you get natural people who want to mother other people or rescue other people with no understanding of where they’re coming from. I like it that I don’t ask people to speak because they stop that judgments coming from other people as well. And advice coming to people which would cause harm sometimes.

Tania:  5:27 

Yeah, I certainly come across. And advice is often given with a good intention, isn’t it? Someone who’s depressed will say, “Well, think positive.” Another person they go here, I’ve heard so many times, they are telling me what to do but if I could do it, I would do it. I know it comes from a positive place and we want to help you, but it doesn’t always help in any which way, does it really? In fact, it can create extra layers to a problem.

Angela:  6:02 

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, this is just perfect. And not just the [unclear] word for individual work as well it’s absolutely amazing.

Tania:  6:16 

Yeah, it’s just saying when we’re in a group really what you’re doing is you’re switching off the fight or flight response.

Angela:  6:24 

Yes, yeah.

Tania:  6:25 

And the thing is, once we switch out of fight or flight, and equally on one to one work, if switching our fight or flight going into what the body naturally does repair and regenerate phase, and when they’re in that phase, that’s what shifts the problems for us. Isn’t it really?

Angela:  6:41 

Yeah, yeah. It gets them into that coherent state and allows them to be open to letting things go where, you know, when people walk into a room grid for a very long time since then, 2008 probably. And as soon as people walk into a room, they close down because they see what’s going to happen next. I don’t know. I say, “Well, what will I be asked to do? What’s expected of me?” And the judgments running around people’s minds just shuts them down straight away. So, to come in and to lead with something like MBIR. It sets the stage for them being open to receive a lot more education about themselves as well.

Tania:  7:37 

Yeah. So, I know you’ve got extensive experience Angela working in a lot of environments. Maybe you could give people a bit of information around that. I know you’ve done a lot of work in schools with a lot of different people. Where’s your main body, the main part of the work that you’ve done in your career?

Angela:  7:55 

I worked a lot with children. So, you know, my main foundation degree is in supporting the learning and development of children. I worked for Sure Start Children’s Centres up to high schools with special educational needs. So, I’m training from nought to 10 really in children’s development, but because when my son was about two, I noticed that there was something not quite the same as other children. I kind of went down the route of having to learn and help myself to help my own child. And it turns out that he had dyspraxia.

So through that personal experience, I decided that you know what, I could help as many children as I can, but I know from experience that those children go home to parents who get triggered, get frustrated, and they’re at their wit’s end because they don’t know how to help that child and how to communicate in the best way. So, my passion is working with the parents. And that’s why I’ve taught groups of brand-new moms with six-week-old babies. I’ve taught groups to parents who’ve got children in primary school. I’ve never worked with high school parents, but I’m about to enter that stage myself. So, who knows?

Tania:  9:38 

Yeah, so extensive experience working with a whole body of people. You’ve also taught a lot of teachers how to use these kinds of approaches, haven’t you?

Angela:  9:49 

Yeah, when I was funded with some government money to start because I had the idea that actually if the teachers knew these skills, then they could help the parents. They could help the children at the same time. And it would reduce a lot of anxiety, create trust, and create bonds within the school and reduce referrals. So, while I was running my parent groups, I took two teachers into a group and I trained teachers in my program and also in EFT and in MBIR. I did a lot of training across about six, seven skills, doing the full amount of training with my program, but all the skills drip fed into singular parts of the training. So, I’ve worked with a lot of teachers as well, helping them to learn how to communicate differently, and see things from a different perspective that actually there’s a root cause to every problem. We can’t just see a problem and then put things in place and that problem will resolve. We need to actually trace that problem with the emotion, trace it back to where it started and try to heal it from within rather than structure without.

Tania:  11:12 

Yeah, very powerful. Now, you’ve actually, you said a lot of people were using the MBIR in schools and there was a kind of a positive outcome from that. So, what would you say what was the thing that happened with that?

Angela:  11:28 

So, teachers started to use it in skills with the parents and they brought it in with the children as well. So, you know, MBIR is so flexible. You don’t have to use the full thing and do therapy with every child. You can just help them to be in that coherent state and use colour flush and different parts of the technique to help the children relax.

The teachers will be using these with the parents and with the children. They started to say, you know, there were other things kind of included as well. But what happened was we’re… in September to December there would be a lot of referral to outside agencies for intervention to help children with anxiety or behavioural issues. Those referrals started to reduce in one school by about 60%.

Tania:  12:29 

Sixty percent?

Angela:  12:32 

Yeah. And the skill was… and it wasn’t offset. It was siams. I think the word is siams. They had an inspection. People didn’t know which children had been worked with using MBIR but they took random children from classes and interviewed the children. There’s one little girl and it’s September, she couldn’t get over the threshold of the school gate without screaming and melting down. This question was around January, February. The person who was inspecting came back to the pastor or worker who we trained and spoke with this little girl who was then going into school and they said it never ever met a five-year-old who was as emotionally articulate as this little girl.

Tania:  13:42 

Very, very beautiful shift, isn’t it, from an anxiety disorder to being the most articulate kid at five years old.

Angela:  13:51 

Yeah. That they could speak well. What do you do? What do you do if you don’t like something? Now you need help, and she was like, “Well, I noticed my body. Where do I feel it in my body? And then, you know, I realized.” I mean, I don’t know why all skills don’t do that. It’s probably because they don’t know about it, you know, and it’s hard to get through that door. There are a lot of barriers to getting through that door. But once it’s in there, you know, one person could use this in an assembly event to help the children. It’s so flexible. And it helps so many people. It would create massive change, massive impact. I’ve seen it.

Tania:  14:47 

Yeah, you’ve seen a lot of really, really good results with this. Maybe if you have permission to share some of the results that would be lovely to hear.

Angela:  14:56 

Yeah. I just made some notes so I’ll just look down on my notes. And so, I found this still brilliant when I’ve been working with people who haven’t necessarily had a physical trauma event happened to them but they’ve had, they’ve been manipulated or in a very controlled environment growing up and they haven’t been allowed to express themselves. So, you know, I worked with a girl and she came into my class and she said, “All I will do is cry for your class because that’s all I ever do. All I ever do is cry.” And she was so suppressed and in victim from everything that’s happened to her. So, I’ve worked with her over a number of weeks. It was a full year actually, over about 30 weeks. And it turned out that she got so much childhood abuse you’d like to raise her siblings, she’d been sexually abused, she had to go to court at a very young age. They said that she was lying. She actually had this practice so she had a cognition delay, and she couldn’t get the information out as they were questioning her.

We worked with that and she’d gone from shrunken, I could just describe her as shrivelled and small, to this person who’s got a vice back. She applied for college and she’s been and started learning. And, you know, she’s got a job. She’d never been to education, been in education since she was 16. She was 30 at this point. She gone to college. She’s now got a job in a school where I worked with her. She started her family life. She’s put boundaries in place. She’s just an amazing, amazing person. And that’s through MBIR being so gentle and non-threatening that she could express these emotions without that fear of being judged. And so, that was brilliant to witness.

Tania:  17:35 

That’s a very big issue, isn’t it really? I think a lot of people who’ve got that degree of a problem might find it very difficult to get from where they are to where she is because there’s a huge issue there, isn’t it really? That pileated every area of her life I would imagine.

Angela:  17:52 

Yeah, it definitely did. And there’s so many people who I say… who they can’t blame an event or they can’t pinpoint something really negative that’s happened to them. And so, they go into judgment of themselves. Why am I feeling like this? Because there’s no proof. There’s no evidence. But yet the people around them have been so manipulating, or controlling, and [unclear] that we’ve taken the vice away, they’ve suppressed the will of that person. And that person hasn’t realized what’s happened because they’ve been taught not to question.

Tania:  18:37 

Because it’s all they have ever experienced, isn’t it really? How can you learn things wrong if you’ve only ever experienced that? It just might seem normal to you?

Angela:  18:47 

Yeah, it does. In a lot of cases, people say, “Yeah, this happened and that happened. But that’s just normal, isn’t it?”

Tania:  18:57 

It’s impossible to know what’s not normal if that’s all you’ve ever experienced. It would be your normal wouldn’t it?

Angela:  19:03 

Yeah, it is their normal.

Tania:  19:07 

And that is a big, big result. But you know, MBIR, which is an energy therapy and mindfulness, it’s a combination of some interesting things, isn’t it really. But there can also be fast results with that. That took longer because of the degree in the fact you needed to do it in a very safe way for him, which MBIR does tend to be a gentle, more gentle approach. So we can also get fast results. What’s been your experience there with fast results as well?

Angela:  19:36 

I’d had a girl who came to me and she said, you can’t help me because I’ve seen a psycho therapist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a counsellor, and a sexual therapist, and none of them made a difference so you won’t make a difference. Okay, Angela. No pressure.

So, I said that, “Okay, none of those people are me. And none of those people got my skills so I just need you to trust me and work with me. And we’re going to use this gentle technique.” There are two things, actually, but the results were so fast. She’d been raised to 10 years old. And also, her dad was an alcoholic, and he used to lock her away. She was an artist. So, there were two big things there. So, we were within MBIR, it was just… Well, it was amazing. These things were so big for her that we’d work with the MBIR. After three days later, you know, she needed to lie down on the couch. Because when you’ve got such huge trauma, you have no… And it’s moving out of the system. It goes, “You do need to rest.” She needs to rest for a few days. But prior to that she’s shock, and she stopped shaking. She cried all the time. All the time. And she stopped. That crying stopped. She didn’t have that response. She couldn’t articulate herself to authority because of this fear of being locked away. She just very, very slowly started to say what she needed to the school and they were fabulous children.

She just blossomed. I watched her be this fearful, stock wounded child and blossom into an adult. It allowed her to grow up. It’s hard to describe what you witnessed sometimes when MBIR because it isn’t always fact to allow provable evidence, but you can see it in the person’s aura in the way that they start speaking and this subtle changes in the body language, and the reactions that they have. And now, she’s taken her child to be assessed for his learning needs. She’s made big decisions to go back to college and to become a teaching assistant who works with these kind of things MBIR and she’s going to do some training with me. She’s helping me out on some of my personal courses as well. So it’s just lovely to be on that journey with people and to see that, you know, in one or two sessions that happened.

Tania:  23:00 

You put that into perspective, what you’re looking at is. That substantial massive trauma that she experienced. She’d had treatment for it but no result with that. She didn’t act here. She didn’t expect any kind of result with this technique either. So, because you don’t have to believe in this technique for it to work. So, she didn’t come in with any expectation. But I would imagine she did what you said because there’s that kind of relationship you had with her. She was able to shift and her body was able to. I think of it like, in a way a computer. Her body was able to reboot itself. Reset itself back to balance in a more balanced place. And then, she comes into her own for the real person that she is, as you say, as the assistant with you and the person who’s got the dreams and aspirations. Setting boundaries and coming into their own really. It’s a very beautiful story though.

Angela:  24:09 

Yeah, it is beautiful to watch. Yes, she will definitely go on to help other people because of those experiences that she’s had with systems that don’t work and that haven’t supported her through all her childhood. I think that.

Tania:  24:26 

Yeah, I’d say the point to maybe point out is you didn’t have to talk through the traumatic events, did you?

Angela:  24:33 

No, I didn’t. But it was very clear that she knew.

Tania:  24:38 

Oh, yeah, she would know. She would have known. She didn’t have to articulate that to you. She didn’t have to go into the detail because sometimes when you get to talk about traumas, you reexperience them. You’ll be traumatized. She didn’t have to do that for her body to clear it out of it.

Angela:  24:56 

She didn’t and she couldn’t have it. She couldn’t have talked about it because it was too big.

Tania:  25:02 

Yeah.

Angela:  25:03 

This was perfect for her. Perfect. Yeah.

Tania:  25:11 

Yeah, thank you. So, you know. I mean there’s a lot of good feelings that go with that when you see something as powerful as that. Is there any other stories you’d like to share there, Angela? Anything else that comes to mind?

Angela:  25:26 

I’m just looking at my notes here. I’ve worked with a lady who she had births and trauma. That led into postnatal depression. She wasn’t able to bond with her baby. She never felt like she could sit down on the floor and play with the child. If she did, it was kind of going through the motions and there wasn’t any connection there. She only came to me later on. The child is about eight now, but it’s never been that connection. She’s never been able to sit and play and connect with a child. So, we used MBIR and we used the past procedure and worked with her inner child, which, you know, when we went into that, she was never played with as a child.

And so, we worked through that and used the techniques and she went away. And then, about three weeks later, she came back to me. She said, “I just sat down and played with my daughter.” I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t have to get myself ready or plan what I was going to do to try and make it super interesting so that I could get that connection. I just did it and it was so easy to just sit down on the floor and play and realize how much pressure I’ve been putting on myself beforehand. So, it brought that connection back between mother and daughter.

And then, actually, that made me sit back and realize how useful this could be for new mothers. Because when you come home with a baby, and you’ve not had an experience of having a baby before, and you’re expected to be all this to the child and look after it and protect it, it’s so overwhelming, especially if you’ve had birth trauma. And you know, especially when your husband has to go back to work two weeks later and you’ve got all this to deal with. I really do think it could have a huge impact with new mothers.

Tania:  27:49 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I definitely say that with that, you know when real changes occurred because she didn’t have to think about doing that. Did she know?

Angela:  28:03 

No.

Tania:  28:03 

Something is changed within her and she was just different. She didn’t have to try and push past an emotion or make herself do anything. She just naturally found herself doing it.

Angela:  28:17 

Yeah.

Tania:  28:19 

That’s when you know you’ve changed something deep inside of yourself. That is a very different experience. You’re not having to try and make yourself be different. You are different. And I think I like that so much. But I go with you on that point so much that the ability to redefine to change your relationship and especially if you haven’t bonded with your child, for whatever reason. It is never really too late to begin to make a shift in that.

Angela:  28:50 

No, it isn’t. It isn’t. That’s seen time and time again with MBIR really. Whatever the problem is, wherever it started, however big it seems, I’ve always been able to shift it, whether it’s been with the original blueprint of MBIR or whether we need to go deeper and use the parts procedure with MBIR. You can always shift it. I’ve never not seen it work. I’ve seen people who said, “I don’t want to go there. There’s nothing wrong with me.” But when people have come to me to be worked with, it’s never failed to make a difference.

Tania:  29:42 

So, Angela, maybe you could tell people about the work that you’re doing now because I know you’re going in some interesting directions in all that you know.

Angela:  29:52 

Yeah. And so, I am going to be self-employed. I don’t know want to work in schools anymore just because the structure of the system is too difficult for me to work in. And what I’m passionate about it is working with people who want to go deeper into understanding themselves and deeper into understanding the energy system and how we develop as children and the stages that we develop. Such as you know, before age seven, we’re developing stability and security within our tribe. And then as we move on, where we’re going into personal relationships, and what we can create, the relationships we can create and the ideas we have. And then, into our own power of knowing who we are, and whether we’re assertive and authentic, whether we learn to hide. I’m really interested in the energy system and training people in these modalities, but actually giving people that in depth look at the self and understanding why and where and how. I think that’s just because I know so many people who are healers, but they haven’t done the, you know, they don’t know really how to do the inner work. They want to but they don’t know where to look and how to look and how it all fits together to the bigger picture. And so yeah, that’s where I’m going now, training and helping people to understand.

Tania:  31:47 

And so if anyone wanted to find you, where’s the best place to find you, Angela on the internet?

Angela:  31:54 

My website is www.AngelaConnolly.co.uk And I’m on Facebook as Angela Connelly as well. So, yeah.

Tania:  32:08 

Thank you for that. And thank you for joining me here. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking about the work that you’ve done and how you helped so many people. So, thank you.

Angela:  32:19 

Thank you. Lovely to chat with you.

Tania:  32:19 

Thank you