Codependency Recovery:

Wounded Souls
Dancing in The Light

Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner

Child Healing
(aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance)

By Robert Burney
Author of
Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls

Joy to You & Me Enterprises

Although my book makes reference to Alcoholics Anonymous, the principles and Twelve Step
program of A.A., this does not mean that A.A. has reviewed or approved the contents of this
writing, nor that A.A. agrees with the views expressed herein. A.A. is a program of recovery
from alcoholism only - use of this material in connection with programs and activities which are
patterned after A.A., but address other problems, or in any other non-A.A. context, does not
imply otherwise.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote in my book from: Bradshaw On
Homecoming "Reclaiming and Championing you Inner Child", a PBS series by John Bradshaw.
Reprinted in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by permission of John Bradshaw
2412 South Boulevard, Houston Tx 77098.
Some of these articles was originally published online on the Inner Child/Codependency
Recovery topic page of the Suite101.com Directory - although bits and pieces of the articles have
been part of articles and web pages published previously.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2011 by Robert Burney
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908389
Cover Photo of Darien Fuller by Bryce Arledge
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
ISBN: 1463740921
ISBN-13: 978-1463740924
Originally Published in July 2011 as an eBook through Amazon Kindle
Print on Demand Paperback Edition Published in July 2011 through CreateSpace
by Joy to You & Me Enterprises
Published in January of 2016 an eBook through Kobo
by Joy to You & Me Enterprises
PO Box 98
Fallbrook, California 92088
 This book is dedicated to Susan Hinesley and Darien Fuller ~ the two beautiful beings who
helped me open my heart to Love.

Also to Daniel Richardson for pushing and prodding me to start a website in 1998
and to Karen Lehrke whose generous gift helped me to get settled in Cambria in
September 2000 so I could have a place to do so much writing.
 Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Inner Child Healing
Chapter 2 - The Condition of Codependency
Chapter 3 - How to begin Inner Child Healing
Chapter 4 - Inner Child Healing ~ Why do it?
Chapter 5 - Learning to Love our self
Chapter 6 - Detachment
Chapter 7 - Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery Part 1
Chapter 8 - Loving the Wounded Child Within
Chapter 9 - Emotional Healing ~ Feeling the Feelings
Chapter 10 - Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy
Chapter 11 - Emotional Defenses
Chapter 12 - Inner Child Healing ~ Stopping the War Within
Chapter 13 - Serenity and Expectations - intimately interrelated
Chapter 14 - Emotional Honesty
Chapter 15 - Internal Boundaries
Chapter 16 - More on Internal Boundaries
Chapter 17 - Inner Child Healing formula
Chapter 18 - Inner Child Healing Paradigm
Chapter 19 - Internal Census
Chapter 20 - Building Relationships Within
Chapter 21 - Setting internal boundaries
Chapter 22 - Some Inner Children that need Boundaries
Chapter 23 - Sanctuary Trauma ~ memories and emotional honesty
Chapter 24 - Choosing a therapist
Chapter 25 - Emotional Incest
Chapter 26 - Emotional Release/Deep Grieving Techniques
Chapter 27 - Grieving - examples of how the process works
Chapter 28 - Spirituality
Chapter 29 - True Self Worth
Chapter 30 - Reprogramming our ego defenses
Chapter 31 - Positive Affirmations
Chapter 32 - Polarized Thinking
Chapter 33 - Recovery from Codependency
Chapter 34 - Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery Part 2
Chapter 35 - Co-Creation: Owning your Power to Manifest Love
 Author's Foreword
"Truth, in my understanding, is not an intellectual concept. I believe that Truth is an
emotional-energy, vibrational communication to my consciousness, to my soul/spirit - my being,
from my Soul. Truth is an emotion, something that I feel within.
It is that feeling within when someone says, or writes, or sings, something in just the right
words so that I suddenly feel a deeper understanding. It is that “AHA” feeling. The feeling of a
light bulb going on in my head. That “Oh, I get it!” feeling. The intuitive feeling when
something just feels right . . . or wrong. It’s that gut feeling, the feeling in my heart. It is the
feeling of something resonating within me. The feeling of remembering something that I had
forgotten - but do not remember ever knowing." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

In my life, and especially in my recovery which began on January 3rd 1984, I have had
moments of insight - intuitive messages - that in my memory are like fuzzy snap shots of where I
was at the moment of the insight or message. The earliest one which I remember occurred when
I was a teenager. It must have been when I was a sophomore or junior in high school because
the message came as I was walking down a street in Souix City Iowa where I went to a dentist
who kept braces on my teeth for 5 years. The message that I got that day - the memory of the
future that came to me - was that I was going to write a book of Truth someday. At the time, I
had no idea where the thought had come from - or any idea of what Truth was - so I dismissed it,
but never forgot it.
Through the years that followed, I would sometimes say that I wanted to be a writer - even
formally stated that was one the reasons I was quitting a job with the Civil Service and moving to
Hollywood California in 1975 - but I didn't do any writing. When I moved to Hollywood, I
started taking acting classes and pursuing an acting career - but would occasionally make a half
hearted attempt to do some writing. I had such a huge resistance to writing that I thought I hated
it.
I didn't actually start forcing myself to write until the fall of 1988. That year, my fifth year in
recovery from alcoholism, I had gone through a 30 day treatment program for codependence.
The healing that I learned to do there - especially the deep grief work - and messages I received
during and at the end of the 30 days and through that summer - led me to believe that I was to be
a messenger for what I was beginning to believe was Truth (with a capital T.) That I was in fact
meant to stand up in public and state my Truth even if the whole world thought I was crazy.
The first project that I started working on was what I called a Mystical, Magical, Adult Fable
about the history of the Universe. I called it The Dance of Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 In
the beginning . It actually started with the phrase "Once upon a time." The writing I did for that
book is available on my website. It is a book that I haven't finished, and that I don't believe I will
ever finish. The purpose of the writing I did for that book was to enlarge my perspective so that
I could better understand the condition of codependence and develop a more Loving relationship
with my self.
In the next couple of years I was focusing on doing my inner child healing / codependency
recovery and intermittently working on this Adult Fairy Tale without ever really knowing what I
was going to do with it. I don't think I ever really considered that it would be published - I just
knew I was seeing things in a larger perspective that was helping me to start overcoming my
programming from childhood that told me that it was sinful and shameful to be human.
Then in the winter and spring of 1991 - as the codependence movement was becoming widely
known in our society - I was asked to speak in some different places about codependence. In
those speaking engagement something kind of magical happened - in that the the work I was
doing on my inner child healing, and the things I was learning in writing the Adult Fable,
suddenly came together. I was quite surprised by this as I thought the writing I was doing was
much too "far out" to share with the general public.
What I realized because of these speaking engagements, was that there was a message coming
through me that I needed to explore further. I set dates for giving a talk in June of 1991 on the
Central Coast of California where I was living at the time. Then after setting the dates I found it
impossible to write that talk. The message that I wanted to share with people was multi leveled
and non linear and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to structure it. As the date for the
first talk approached I became increasingly anxious and desperate to figure out how to convey
this message that I felt I was meant to share with people. Finally in fit of desperation I wrote
almost continually for the last 48 hours before I gave that talk. When I got up to give that talk
that first time it was in longhand on yellow legal pages - and I was terrified of what the reaction
was going to be from the audience.
That talk on June 16th 1991 was the birth of my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded
Souls . The basic structure came during that desperate 48 hours of writing. It evolved and
expanded in the coming years as I kept revising and giving the talk, but when I was able to
publish it in late 1995 it was a direct result of desperately writing to meet a deadline.
So, I had published my "book of Truth" - and though it was definitely my writing, my words,
my perspectives, my book - it has never really felt like something that I decided to sit down and
plan out and write. It wasn't like something I had created out of my self - but instead something
that I had been guided to create out of my Self in my quest to heal my self.
After publishing The Dance , I started writing a monthly column (first for a new age
newspaper in San Luis Obispo California and then later for a recovery Newspaper in Texas and
finally for an online directory.) I still resisted writing and was usually only able to do it because
I had a deadline.
In February 1998 - after being urged, nagged, and pushed by a friend - I started my first crude
website. I then wrote some articles for that site - although most of them were directly the result
of articles I had written on deadlines. In February 1999, I launched Joy2MeU.com and shortly
after that found that the costs of starting the website and the loss of some clients suddenly put me
in a position where I had to give up the place I as living. For 6 months I was living either in my
office, or crashing on friends couches. It was during that time that I started the Joy2MeU
Journal. The Joy2MeU Journal was a subscription area of my site that I started with the intention
of publishing my next books since I didn't have the financing available to do them any other way.
It however turned into something quite different and ended up being a place where I shared
writing about my recovery journey and a person journal in which I shared the process writing of
my growth process - as well as some of my more controversial and far out metaphysical writings.
It was in writing for that Journal in the summer of 1999 that I first wrote a draft of several
chapters of this book: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light . I didn't get very far with writing
this book before I got caught up in other writing projects. What I came to find out is that I didn't
hate writing - what I hated was getting started on writing something new. Once I got started I
would get into what I called a writing frenzy and write for days and weeks on whatever it was
that had sparked the initial writing.
I had done a lot of writing for the Journal and my website through the rest of 99 and the
beginning of 2000. But starting in September of 2000, when a gift from someone who loved my
book allowed me to get moved back to the small town of Cambria where I could live
comfortably in a little garage apartment, the writing really exploded for me. I would start on a
project and be consumed by it for weeks - often rising at 1 or 2 am to write for 10 or 12 hours. I
would start out writing an article on some topic that had been brought to my attention by the
Universe or other people, and it would turn into a 5 part or 9 part or whatever series of articles or
online book.
In September of 2001 my goal was to get back to working on Wounded Souls Dancing in The
Light as the follow up book to The Dance. This was my process level - how to - book about the
inner child healing approach that I developed in my recovery. I was having great resistance - as
usual - to getting back into writing this book, and then on September 11th I woke up to TV
coverage of the World Trade Center collapsing. I immediately understood that the reason for my
resistance right then was that there was something else that needed to be written first. I was off
an running with an online book about the what I saw as a blatant manifestation of the human
condition of codepedency. I had finished writing Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing
Perspective (which I started publishing online on 9/23/01) in early 2002 and shortly after was
off and running on a new online book that I hope to publish later this year (2011) that will be
Codependency Recovery: Dancing in The Light Book 2.
From 1999 through 2005 I wrote millions of words (at least 5,000,000, probably more) that
were published on my website and elsewhere. I continued writing an online column for the
Internet Directory until October 2005. The columns that I wrote - first for newspapers and then
for the directory - were short articles (supposed to be 1000 words but probably averaging more
like 1200 since once I start writing I have a hard time stopping;-) written on a deadline. The
many articles I wrote for my Joy2MeU.com were much longer and mostly the result of a writing
frenzy in which I was compelled to write. All of the things I wrote were perfectly timed to be
part of my healing / recovery process as I was transitioning from writing theoretically to actually
living what I was writing about.
My personal inner child healing has been so successful that I have gone from living in
isolation with a relationship phobia and a terror of intimacy to celebrating the 6th anniversary
(June 15th 2011) of living with someone in an intimate relationship (that became a marriage in
January 2011) that has included the precious gift of being the primary caregiver in raising an
amazing little boy for the past 5 plus years (my wife's grandson who is now 6 1/2.) As a result I
don't have time to write much these days - and haven't for the last 4 to 5 years.
So, once again I am publishing a book that is not the result of sitting down and planning and
writing according to that plan. This book is a compilation of writings from my website. I have
built this book around a 23 articles series that I wrote for that internet directory (although many
of those article were based upon or grew out of articles and web pages published previously on
Joy2MeU.com.) To those 23 articles (some of which I have added to or expanded upon herein) I
have added 8 of my web articles, an excerpt from one of my online books, and a handout I use in
the Intensive Training Workshops that I have been offering since April 2006. The 23 articles
were around 27,000 words - while the additional material added another 35,000 or so words to
this book.
Part of the reason that I was able to write so much for the internet is that it proved to be a
format that really worked for me. I discovered and developed my own style of writing for the
internet that some people don't like much but that I am quite fond of myself. Because I wrote
these articles so that they could be understood by someone who just happened upon any
particular page of my site - there is a lot of repetition of certain phrases or explanations. This is
something else that some people find irritating - but which I feel really works for codependents.
I have said for years that it is not possible to tell a codependent too many times that it wasn't
their fault. Repeating certain things is what it takes to get it to sink in for many of us. The
programming is so insidious and powerful that often we need to read something a number times
before that light bulb goes on - the "Oh I get it" - moment of intuitive understanding.
So, there is some repetition. Some of the articles are quoted in other articles. Every articles
contains at least one quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls (these are all in
italics) - and so some of those quotes are repeated a number of times.
There are so many levels and aspects to this process that - though the chapters are in a certain
order - it is not necessary to read them in that order. It might be better for some people to jump
around to the chapter headings that catch their attention. If for instance, you want to better
understand my definition of spirituality - you might want to read chapter 28 first. You might
want to read chapter 35 about Co-Creation or Chapter 27 about grieving depending on where you
are at in your recovery process today. Almost all of them, as I mentioned, were written to stand
alone - so it is possible to jump around between chapters if your Spirit moves you to do that.
There is no right and wrong when it comes to doing recovery - or to reading this book. The
important thing is to be "doing" recovery - that is, taking action to change your attitudes,
perspectives, and behaviors so that you can stop being trapped in relating to your self, life, and
other people out of the childhood emotional wounds and intellectual programming.
In my writing in this book, I am sharing my experience, strength, and hope. I hope that you
will find it valuable in your recovery.
 Chapter 1
Introduction to Inner Child Healing
"One of the reasons for the human dilemma, for the confusion that humans have felt about the
meaning and purpose of life, is that more than one level of reality comes into play in the
experience of being human. Trying to apply the Truth of one level to the experience of another
has caused humans to become very confused and twisted in our perspective of the human
experience. It is kind of like the difference between playing the one-dimensional chess that we
are familiar with, and the three-dimensional chess played by the characters of Star Trek - they
are two completely different games.
That is the human dilemma - we have been playing the game with the wrong set of rules. With
rules that do not work. With rules that are dysfunctional." - Author's Foreword Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls
This book is about healing. It contains tools, techniques, and insights into the healing process
that work in a powerful, effective way to change the quality of the individuals life experience for
the better. They work because they help the individual to align with the way life really works
instead of expecting it to be something which it is not.
The approach to healing detailed on these pages is one which has evolved in my personal
recovery since January 3, 1984 and in my counseling practice since 1990. I have been guided to
discover and develop an approach to inner child healing that offers a powerful, life-changing
formula for integrating Love, Spiritual Truth, and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into
one's emotional experience of life - a blueprint for individuals to transform their core relationship
with self and life.
My work is firmly grounded on twelve step recovery principles and emotional energy release
/ grief process therapy. I specialize in teaching individuals how to become empowered to have
internal boundaries so they can learn to relax and enjoy life in the moment while healing. It is
the unique approach and application of the concept of internal boundaries, coupled with a Loving
Spiritual belief system, that makes the work so innovative and effective.
My belief is that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience and that the key to
healing (and integrating Spiritual Truth into our emotional experience of life) is fully awakening
to our Spiritual connection through intellectual reprogramming, emotional honesty, grief
processing, and inner child work. It is not necessary to agree with my Spiritual beliefs to apply
the approach I share on these pages to help you transform your experience of life into an easier,
more Loving and enjoyable journey. I consider Spirituality to be a word that describes one's
relationship with life - and anyone, regardless of religious belief or lack of it (who is not
completely closed minded), can benefit from doing this work.
The wounding that needs to be healed is the result of being raised in a shame-based,
emotionally dishonest, Spiritually hostile (based upon belief in separation rather than connection)
environment by parents who were raised in a shame-based, emotionally dishonest, Spiritually
hostile environments. The disease which afflicts us is a generational disease that is the human
condition as we have inherited it. Our parents did not know how to be emotionally healthy or
how to truly Love themselves. So there is no way that we could have learned those things from
them.
We formed our core relationship with ourselves in early childhood and then built our
relationship with ourselves on that foundation. We have lived life reacting to the wounds that we
suffered - and the programming we integrated - in early childhood. Living life in reaction to old
wounds and old tapes is dysfunctional - it does not work to help us find some happiness and
fulfillment in life.
The approach that is detailed on these pages does work. It works to help the individual being
learn to relax and enjoy life in the moment. It works because it entails healing the wounds from
the inside out - it is focused on changing our core relationship with ourselves. Once an
individual starts loving, honoring, and respecting her/him self more on a core level, everything
on the outside changes. External manifestation such as setting boundaries, seeing life and other
people more clearly, letting go of trying to control and the worrying that accompanies those
attempts, stopping the victimization, etc., start becoming more automatic and intuitive.
"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.
And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and
release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around."
There are a multitude of teachers, books, churches, etc., these days that are telling us that we
need to learn to love themselves - but no one really tells us how to do that. Learn to Love your
self. Easy to say, hard to do. Love is like faith, in that both are pretty meaningless as intellectual
concepts. Love is a verb. Verbs are about action. Learning how to be more Loving in how we
treat our self is the challenge.
The approach to healing detailed in this book is a formula that can help people learn to be
more Loving to them self. We learned how to relate to self, to life, and to other people in early
childhood from people who were wounded in their childhoods. We have been reacting to the
intellectual programming and emotional wounds of our childhood ever since then. In order to
change our relationship with self and life, it is necessary to change the subconscious and
conscious programming that is causing our relationship with self and life to be dysfunctional. In
order to start having some peace within us, it is necessary to be healing our emotional wounds
and to stop our minds from being our own worst enemy.
The approach to inner child / emotional healing shared herein is the missing piece - the
missing perspective - of the puzzle of life that so many people have been seeking. It is a formula
for integrating intellectual knowledge and spiritual Truth into one's emotional relationship with
life. It is the key to learning how to be more Loving to your self - and to turning life into an
adventure to be experienced instead of an ordeal of suffering to be endured.
It is possible to feel the feelings without being the victim of them or victimizing other's with
them. It is possible to change the way you think so that your mind is no longer your worst
enemy. It is possible to become empowered to have choices in life at the same time you are
letting go of trying to be in control. Life can be an exciting, enjoyable adventure if you stop
reacting to it out of your childhood emotional wounds and attitudes.
The tools and techniques, insights and beliefs, set out in this book work. They work to
support the idea that each and every one of us is Lovable and worthy. They work to help change
life from an unbearable ordeal to a often enjoyable adventure. Try it - you might find it works
for you also.
 Chapter 2
The Condition of Codependency
"The word changed and evolved further after the start of the modern Codependence
movement in Arizona in the mid-eighties. Co-Dependents Anonymous had its first meeting in
October of 1986, and books on Codependence as a disease in and of itself started appearing at
about the same time. These Codependence books were the next generation evolved from the
books on the Adult Child Syndrome of the early eighties."
"The point that I am making is that our understanding of Codependence has evolved to
realizing that this is not just about some dysfunctional families, our very role models, our
prototypes, are dysfunctional. Our traditional cultural concepts of what a man is, of what a
woman is, are twisted, distorted, almost comically bloated stereotypes of what masculine and
feminine really are."
"We are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional by our role models, both parental and societal.
We are taught to repress and distort our emotional process. We are trained to be emotionally
dishonest when we are children." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
So often when I am working with someone, helping them to understand their codependency,
they will say, "Why didn't I learn this sooner. I feel so stupid that I have have wasted so many
years in denial about how much my childhood experiences were running my life."
What I need to remind them of, is that the information we have now wasn't available when
they were growing up. It was in only the late 70s and early 80s that researchers were able to
identify the Adult Child Syndrome, that family dynamics researchers were starting to speak of
the concept of dysfunctional families. Before Betty Ford had the courage to go public with her
recovery from alcoholism in the late 70s, there was very little information widely available about
alcoholism. Phil Donahue started bringing controversial topics out of the closet in the 70s, and
was followed in the 80s by Oprah Winfrey. These were the first times that such subjects as child
abuse and incest were openly discussed in American society. Denial, keeping secrets, has been
the traditional norm in both families and society.
Children now are being taught in school and through the media, that it is good to have
boundaries (just say no) and to talk about their feelings. There are books and classes now in
healthy parenting. This is a major leap forward for society. It was not long ago, that the
philosophy of child raising was based upon a "this is right and this is wrong - and you better do
right or else."
Unfortunately it still is for many families. And even more unfortunately, most of the kids that
are being given healthier messages are still not getting healthy role modeling. Role modeling is
just as important - if not more important - in the developmental process for children than direct
messages. "Do as I say, and not as I do," does not work when it comes to parenting.
The reality of human development is that we form the foundation dynamics of our
relationships with self, with life, and with other people in early childhood. Our relationship
patterns are pretty embedded by the time we are 4 or 5 years old.
Since there no integration of the human developmental process into society - no real training
of how to be healthy adults or real ceremonies / initiation rites to mark vital milestones /
passages in development, such as puberty (junior high school as is it experienced in society is not
a celebration of adolescence) - and no culturally approved grieving to take the emotional charge
away from wounds caused by childhood trauma, we are stuck with those early childhood
patterns.
 We are trained in childhood to be emotionally and intellectually dishonest. Through both
direct messages and watching our role models. We learned that it was very important to keep up
appearances - to wear a mask. We watched out parents say nasty, judgmental things about a
person when they weren't around and then be nice to them in person. We got told that it was not
okay to speak our truth. There was an old song I always thought described how I saw people
interacting, that went something to the effect "The games people play now, every night and every
day now, never saying what they mean - never meaning what they say."
We were trained to be dishonest. We also got taught to be emotionally dishonest. We got
told not to feel our feelings with messages like, don't cry, don't be afraid - at the same time we
saw how our parents lived life out of fear. We got messages that it was not okay to be too happy
when our exuberance was embarrassing to our parents. Many of us grew up in environments
where it was not okay to be curious, or adventurous, or playful. It was not okay to be a child.
In any society where:
emotional dishonesty is not just the standard but the goal (keep up appearances, don’t
show vulnerability);
as children we learned that we had power over other people’s feelings (you make me
angry, you hurt my feelings, etc.);
being emotional is considered negative (falling apart, loosing it, coming unglued, etc.);
gender stereotypes set twisted, unhealthy models for acceptable emotional behavior (real
men don’t cry or get scared, it is not ladylike to get angry);
parents without healthy self esteem see their children as extensions of self that can be
either assets or deficits in their own quest for self worth;
families are isolated from any true reality of community or tribal support;
shame, manipulation, verbal and emotional abuse are considered standard tools for
behavior modification in a loving relationship;
long embedded societal attitudes support the belief that it is shameful to be human
(make mistakes, not be perfect, to be selfish, etc.);
any human being is denigrated and held to be less worthy for any inherent characteristic
(gender, race, looks, etc.);
results in a very emotionally unhealthy society.
We were set up to be codependent. We were trained and programmed in childhood to be
dishonest with ourselves and others. We were taught false, dysfunctional concepts of success,
romance, love, life. We could not have lived our lives differently because there was no one to
teach us how to be healthy. We were doing the best we knew how with the tools, beliefs, and
definitions we had - just as our parents were doing the best they knew how.
We have new tools now. We have information and knowledge that was not available until
recently. We can change the way we live our lives. It is important to stop shaming ourselves for
living life the way we were programmed to live, in order to start learning how to live in a way
that is more functional - in a way that works to help us have some peace and happiness in our
lives. The only way to be free of the past is to start seeing it more clearly - without shame and
judgment - so that we can take advantage of this wonderful time of healing that has begun.
Codependency has been the human condition. We now have the knowledge and power to
change our relationship with ourselves. That is how we can change the human condition.
 Chapter 3
How to Begin Inner Child Healing
"Recovery involves bringing to consciousness those beliefs and attitudes in our subconscious
that are causing our dysfunctional reactions so that we can reprogram our ego defenses to allow
us to live a healthy, fulfilling life instead of just surviving. So that we can own our power to
make choices for ourselves about our beliefs and values instead of unconsciously reacting to the
old tapes. Recovery is consciousness raising. It is en-light-en-ment - bringing the dysfunctional
attitudes and beliefs out of the darkness of our subconscious into the Light of consciousness.
On an emotional level the dance of Recovery is owning and honoring the emotional wounds
so that we can release the grief energy - the pain, rage, terror, and shame that is driving us.
That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was! We did nothing to be ashamed of - we were
just little kids. Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed, and
their parents before them, etc., etc. This is shame about being human that has been passed down
from generation to generation.
There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and
scrambled minds." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Inner child work is in one way detective work. We have a mystery to solve. Why have I been
attracted to the the type of people that I have been in relationship with in my life? Why do I
react in certain ways in certain situations? Where did my behavior patterns come from? Why do
I sometimes feel so: helpless; lonely; desperate; scared; angry; suicidal; etc.
Just starting to ask these types of questions, is the first step in the healing process. It is
healthy to start wondering about the cause and effect dynamics in our life.
In our codependence, we reacted to life out of a black and white, right and wrong, belief
paradigm that taught us that is was shameful and bad to be wrong, to make mistakes, to be
imperfect - to be human. We formed our core relationship with our self and with life in early
childhood based on the messages we got, the emotional trauma we suffered, and the role
modeling of the adults around us. As we grew up, we built our relationship with self, other
people, and life on the foundation we formed in early childhood.
When we were 5, we were already reacting to life out of the emotional trauma of earlier ages.
We adapted defenses to try to protect ourselves and to get our survival needs met. The defenses
adapted at 5 due to the trauma suffered at earlier ages led to further trauma when we were 7 that
then caused us to adjust our defenses, that led to wounding at 9, etc., etc., etc.
Toxic shame is the belief that there is something inherently wrong with who we are, with our
being. Guilt is "I made a mistake, I did something wrong." Toxic shame is: "I am a mistake.
There is something wrong with me."
It is very important to start awakening to the Truth that there is nothing inherently wrong with
our being - it is our relationship with our self and with life that is dysfunctional. And that
relationship was formed in early childhood.
The way that one begins inner child healing is simply to become aware.
To become aware that the governing principle in life is cause and effect.
To become aware that our relationship with our self is dysfunctional.
To become aware that we have the power to change our relationship with our self.
To become aware that we were programmed with false beliefs about the nature and
purpose of life in early childhood - and that we can change that programming.
To become aware that we have emotional wounds from childhood that it is possible to get
 in touch with and heal enough to stop them from dictating how we are living our life today.
That is the purpose of inner child healing - to stop letting our experiences of the past dictate
how we respond to life today. It cannot be done without revisiting our childhood.
We need to become aware, to raise our consciousness. To create a new level of consciousness
for ourselves that allows us to observe ourselves.
It is vitally important to start observing ourselves - our reactions, our feelings, our thoughts -
from a detached witness place that is not shaming.
We all have an inner critic, a critical parent voice, that beats us up with shame, judgment, and
fear. The critical parent voice developed to try to control our emotions and our behaviors
because we got the message there was something wrong with us and that our survival would be
threatened if we did, said, or felt the "wrong" things.
It is vital to start learning how to not give power to that critical shaming voice. We need to
start observing ourselves with compassion. This is almost impossible at the beginning of the
inner child healing process - having compassion for our self, being Loving to our self, is the
hardest thing for us to do.
So, we need to start observing ourselves from at least a more neutral perspective. Become a
scientific observer, a detective - the Sherlock Holmes of your own inner process as it were.
We need to start being that detective, observing ourselves and asking ourselves where that
reaction / thought / feeling is coming from. Why am I feeling this way? What does this remind
me of from my past? How old do I feel right now? How old did I act when that happened?
One of the amazing things about this process, is that as one starts to become more aware of
our own reactions, we also start to become more aware of others. We start seeing when the
people in our lives are reacting like a little kid, or adolescent, or teenager, or whatever. The
more we become aware of their reactions the easier it becomes to stop taking their behavior
personally - which then makes it easier to detach from our own reactions and observe ourselves.
It is an amazing, miraculous process, that can help us to change our relationship with our self,
with other people, and with life. Becoming more aware, becoming conscious of a new way of
looking at ourselves and life is the beginning of a process of learning to forgive and Love our
self.
A detective always looks at cause and effect. By becoming a detective, solving the mystery
of why we have lived our lives as we have, we can start to free ourselves from our past. By
doing the inner child healing, we can start to learn how to really be alive instead of just surviving
and enduring.
 Chapter 4
Inner Child Healing ~ Why do it?
"We are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional by our role models, both parental and societal.
We are taught to repress and distort our own emotional process. We are trained to be
emotionally dishonest when we are children.
This emotional repression and dishonesty causes society to be emotionally dysfunctional.
Additionally, urban based civilization has completely disregarded natural laws and natural
cycles such as the human developmental process. There is no integration into our culture of the
natural human developmental process.
As just one blatant example of this, consider how most so called primitive or aboriginal
societies react to the onset of puberty. When a girl starts menstruating, ceremonies are held to
celebrate her womanhood - to honor her coming into her power, to honor her miraculous gift of
being able to conceive. Boys go through training and initiation rites to help them make the
transition from boyhood to manhood. Look at what we have in our society: junior high school -
a bunch of scared, insecure kids who torture each other out of their confusion and fear, and join
gangs to try to find an identity.
This lack of integration of the natural human growth process causes trauma. At each stage of
the developmental process we were traumatized because of the emotionally repressive,
Spiritually hostile environment into which we were born. We went into the next stage incomplete
and then were retraumatized, were wounded again." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded
Souls
For all of the so called progress of our modern societies, we still are far behind most
aboriginal cultures in terms of respect for individual rights and dignity in some kind of balance
with the good of the whole. Nowhere is this more evident in terms of our relationship to our
children.
Modern civilizations - both Eastern and Western - are no more than a generation or two
removed from the belief that children were property. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the
belief that women were property. The idea that children have rights, individuality, and dignity is
relatively new in modern society. The predominant and underlying belief, as it has been
manifested in the treatment of children, has been that children are extensions of, and tools to be
used by, their parents.
A very telling insight into the basic beliefs underlying Western attitudes towards children is
shared by inner child pioneer Alice Miller in her book The Drama of The Gifted Child. She
shares how the 19th Century German Philosophers who laid the groundwork for modern
psychology, emphasized the importance of stamping out a child's "exuberance." In other words,
a child's spirit must be crushed in order to control them.
Children are to be seen and not heard. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
It is only in very recent history, that our society has even recognized child abuse as a crime
instead of an inherent right of the parent. The concept of healthy parenting as a skill to be
learned is very new in society.
Any society that does not respect and honor individual human dignity, is going to be a society
that does not meet the essential needs of it's members. Patriarchal societies, that demean and
degrade women and children, are dysfunctional in their essence.
We form our core relationship with our self and with life - and of course with other people - in
early childhood in reaction to the messages we get from the way we are treated and the role
modeling of the other people in our lives. We then have no training or initiation ceremonies, no
culturally approved grieving process, to help us let go of the old programming and learn a
different relationship with our self and life. So, we build upon the foundation laid in early
childhood.
As adults, we react to the programming of our childhood. To contend that our childhood
emotional wounds have not affected our adult lives is ridiculous. To think that our early
programming has not influenced the way we have lived is to be in denial to an extreme.
Because societies standards for what constitutes success are dysfunctional, many people can
be pointed out who "have risen above" their past to be a success. It is those people, who are
supposedly successes, that are running the world. How good a job do you think they are doing?
The dysfunctional belief systems underlying civilization are what give us war and poverty,
billionaires and homelessness.
My book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, evolved out of a talk that I first did
in 1991. In the talk, I stated that I would like to one day make up a bumper sticker that said
"Work for World Peace, Heal Your Inner Child." I did have these bumper stickers printed when
I published my book. It is, I believe, an essential Truth. We will never have world peace, or a
civilized society which is based upon respect and dignity - to say nothing of Love - unless we
can heal our relationships with ourselves enough to learn to Love and respect our self.
We cannot Love our neighbor as our self, as long as we are judging and comparing our self to
them in order to feel good about our self. We cannot have a society that meets the essential
emotional and spiritual needs of it's members as long as we are reacting to life in alignment with
rules of interaction that we learned in junior high school.
We are all connected - not separate. We all have worth and deserved to be treated with
dignity and respect - instead of earning societies version of worth by stepping on and over our
fellow humans, to say nothing of destroying the planet we live on.
It is through healing our inner child wounds that we can learn to respect and Love our self so
that we can know how to treat others with respect and Love. It is through healing our inner
children that we can save our planet and evolve into a society that does meet the essential needs
of it's members.
Inner child healing is not some fad or pop psychology. Inner child healing is the only way to
empower ourselves to stop living life in reaction to the past. We have been ignoring history and
repeating it for centuries. If we are going to have a chance to reverse the self destructive patterns
of human kind, it is going to come from individuals healing self. By healing our inner child
wounds, we can change the world.
Work for World Peace, Heal your inner child.
 Chapter 5
Learning to Love our self
"Codependence is an emotional and behavioral defense system which was adopted by our
egos in order to meet our need to survive as a child. Because we had no tools for
reprogramming our egos and healing our emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving,
training and initiation rites, healthy role models, etc.), the effect is that as an adult we keep
reacting to the programming of our childhood and do not get our needs met - our emotional,
mental, Spiritual, or physical needs. Codependence allows us to survive physically but causes us
to feel empty and dead inside. Codependence is a defense system that causes us to wound
ourselves." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Codependence is a dysfunctional defense system that developed in reaction to feeling
unlovable and unworthy - because our parents were wounded codependents who didn't know
how to love themselves. We grew up in environments that were emotionally dishonest,
Spiritually hostile, and shame based. Our relationship with ourselves (and all the different parts
of our self: emotions, gender, spirit, etc.) got twisted and distorted in order to survive in our
particular dysfunctional environment.
We got to an age where we were supposed to be an adult and we started acting like we knew
what we were doing. We went around pretending to be adult at the same time we were reacting
to the programming that we got growing up. We tried to do everything "right" or rebelled and
went against what we had been taught was "right." Either way we weren't living our life through
choice, we were living it in reaction.
In order to start being loving to ourselves we need to change our relationship with our self -
and with all the wounded parts of our self. The way which I have found works the best in
starting to love ourselves is through having internal boundaries.
Learning to have internal boundaries is a dynamic process that involves three distinctly
different, but intimately interconnected, spheres of work. The purpose of the work is to change
our ego-programming - to change our relationship with ourselves by changing our
emotional/behavioral defense system into something that works to open us up to receive Love,
instead of sabotaging ourselves because of our deep belief that we don’t deserve love.
(I need to make the point here that Codependence and recovery are both multi-leveled, multi-
dimensional phenomena. What we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on different
levels. In regard to our relationship with ourselves this involves two major dimensions: the
horizontal and the vertical. In this context the horizontal is about being human and relating to
other humans and our environment. The vertical is Spiritual, about our relationship to a Higher
Power, to the Universal Source. If we cannot conceive of a God/Goddess Force that Loves us
then it makes it virtually impossible to be Loving to ourselves. Changing our relationship with
ourselves on the horizontal level is both a necessary element in, and possible because we are
working on, integrating Spiritual Truth into our inner process.)
These three spheres are:
1. Detachment
2. Inner Child Healing
3. Grieving
Because Codependence is a reactive phenomena it is vital to start being able to detach from
our own process in order to have some choice in changing our reactions. It is vital to develop a
detached, objective observer perspective in order to start seeing ourselves more clearly. We need
to start observing our selves from an objective witness perspective instead of from the
perspective of the judge .
We all observe ourselves - have a place of watching ourselves as if from outside, or perched
somewhere inside, observing our own behavior. Because of our childhoods we learned to judge
ourselves from that witness perspective, the "critical parent" voice.
The emotionally dishonest environments we were raised in taught us that it was not ok to feel
our emotions, or that only certain emotions were ok. So we had to learn ways to control our
emotions in order to survive. We adapted the same tools that were used on us - guilt, shame, and
fear (and saw in the role modeling of our parents how they reacted to life from shame and fear.)
This is where the critical parent gets born. It's purpose is to try to keep our emotions and
behavior under some sort of control so that we can get our survival needs met.
So the first boundary that we need to start setting internally is with the
wounded/dysfunctionally programmed part of our own mind. We need to start saying no to the
inner voices that are shaming and judgmental. The disease comes from a black and white, right
and wrong, perspective. It speaks in absolutes: "You always screw up!" "You will never be a
success!" - these are lies. We don't always screw up. We may never be a success according to our
parents or societies dysfunctional definition of success - but that is because our heart and soul do
not resonate with those definitions, so that kind of success would be a betrayal of ourselves. We
need to consciously change our definitions so that we can stop judging ourselves against
someone else’s screwed up value system.
We learned to relate to ourselves (and all the parts of our self - emotions, gender, body,
sexuality, etc.) and life from a critical place of believing that something was wrong with us - and
in fear that we would be punished if we didn't do life "right." Whatever we are doing or not
doing the disease can always find something to beat us up with. I have 10 things on my "to do
list" today, I get 9 of them done, the disease does not want me to give myself credit for what I
have done but instead beats me up for the one I didn't get done. Whenever life gets too good we
get uncomfortable and the disease jumps right in with fear and shame messages. The critical
parent voice keeps us from relaxing and enjoying life, and from loving our self.
We need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind. We can
consciously start viewing ourselves from the "witness" perspective. It is time to fire the judge -
our critical parent - and choose to replace that judge with our Higher Self - who is a Loving
parent. We can then intervene in our own process to protect ourselves from the perpetrator
within - the critical parent/disease voice.
(It is almost impossible to go from critical parent to compassionate loving parent in one step -
so the first step often is to try to observe ourselves from a neutral position or a "scientific
observer" perspective.)
This is what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about. Owning our power to be
a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with ourselves. We can change the way we
think. We can change the way we respond to our own emotions. We need to detach from our
wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us. We are Unconditionally Loved.
The Spirit does not speak to us from judgment and shame .
One of the visualizations that has helped me over the years is an image of a small control
room in my brain. This control room is full of dials and gauges and lights and sirens. In this
control room are a bunch of Keebler-like elves whose job it is to make sure that I don't get too
emotional for my own good. Whenever I feel anything too strongly (including Joy, happiness,
self-love) the lights start flashing and the sirens start wailing and the elves go crazy running
around trying to get things under control. They start pushing some of the old survival buttons:
feeling too happy - drink; feeling too sad- eat sugar; feeling scared - get laid; or whatever.
To me, the process of recovery is about teaching those elves to chill out. Reprogramming my
ego-defenses to knowing that it is ok to feel the feelings. That feeling and releasing the emotions
is not only ok it is what will work best in allowing me to have my needs fulfilled.
We need to change our relationship with ourselves and our own emotions in order to stop
being at war with ourselves. The first step to doing that is to detach from ourselves enough to
start protecting ourselves from the perpetrator that lives within us. By having internal
boundaries we can start to relate to our self in ways that are Loving instead of being our own
worst enemy.
 Chapter 6
Detachment
"We need to start observing ourselves and stop judging ourselves. Any time we judge and
shame ourselves, we are feeding back into the disease, we are jumping back into the
squirrelcage." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
The first requirement in any healthy problem solving situation is awareness that a problem
exists. Until there is awareness that a condition exists which is causing some adverse effect, no
positive, proactive action can be taken to change the situation for the better. (I am referring to
"healthy" problem solving and "positive, proactive" action as opposed to unconscious, negative,
reactive action - such as blaming, scapegoating, focusing on symptoms instead of cause, killing
the messenger, etc.)
This is true in any dynamic involving human beings - personal inter- or intra-action, family,
company, society, etc. The tools and techniques, method and process, laid out in this book are
based upon principles of dynamic human interaction which could be applied to any level of
human interaction - up to and including international. The "problems" in any system involving
human interaction are merely reflections of dysfunction in the internal human process. The
"problems" are the result of some part of the dynamic that is not working - that is dysfunctional -
in furthering the goals, meeting the needs, of the system as a whole. This is true rather the
system involved is an individual human being or a society.
The individual human being is a fully contained system involving multiple interrelationships
within multiple levels. This is easy to see, and understand, when looking at the physical level.
The interrelationship of the organs to each other, to the blood, to the skin, to the nervous system,
etc. - is a dance of grand, and compelling, complexity.
Just as grand, and compelling, is the complexity of the dance of interrelationship between the
mental, emotional, and spiritual components/levels that dynamically interact to form the make up
of the individual being - the persona, personality, consciousness, of the self. The more
awareness is acquired about the different levels of the self, and the interrelationships between
those levels, the easier it becomes to diagnose the dysfunctional interaction dynamics.
As I stated, the first requirement in any healthy problem solving situation is awareness that a
problem exists. It is only through detaching from the unconscious reactive condition of
codependency that we can stop seeing ourselves from the critical parent / judge / prosecuting
attorney perspective we learned in childhood and start to see our self, life, and other people with
more clarity. Detachment is technique that fosters awareness.
Detachment
Detach 1. To unfasten and make separate; disconnect; disunite.
Detachment 1. A detaching; separation.
(New Illustrated Webster's Dictionary)
"The goal of this dance of Recovery is integration and balance. That means celebrating being
a tree while also glorying in being a part of the forest. Recovery is a process of becoming
conscious of our individual wholeness and our ONENESS with all."
The healing process is full of paradox and irony on multiple levels. One of those paradoxes is
that in order to get in touch with our ONENESS with everything, we must first be able to define
our self as separate from others. And in order to become an integrated whole being, we must
first separate and own all of the different parts of our self within. As long as we don't have clear
boundaries between our self and others, we cannot know where we end and someone else starts -
we cannot get clear on what is our stuff and what is theirs. As long as we don't have clear
boundaries within ourselves, we are set up to be the victim of our own thoughts, feelings, and
behavior.
Detachment is a vital technique in starting to see our self and others more clearly.
Most people who have any experience with twelve step programs will associate the term
'detachment' with Al-Anon. In Al-Anon terms detachment means to let go of believing that one
has the power to make an alcoholic drink - or not drink. To stop taking an alcoholics behavior
personally. It means to let go of feeling responsible for another persons feelings and behavior.
Detaching from feeling responsible for the feelings and behavior of other people is one of the
initial stages of any codependency recovery. We learned in childhood that we had the power to
make our parents happy or sad, angry or scared. We experienced painful consequences when our
behavior was not what the adults around us considered acceptable. Some of us came from
families where being a human child was not acceptable behavior. Some of us came from
families afflicted with alcoholism or mental illness, in which case the definition of acceptable
behavior varied wildly from one day to the next. Some of us came from families where as
children we were allowed to have the power and be in control - which is terrifying and abusive to
a child. Some of us came from families where no one in the family had permission to be human.
None of these environments taught us how to relate to self and life in a healthy way.
We grew up getting the message that we were responsible for other people feelings and
behavior. And we were taught to give other people or outside agencies power over how we felt
about ourselves. We learned to do life backwards.
"I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the
external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no
responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I
can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control
something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional. It was very
important for me to start learning how to recognize the boundaries of where I ended and other
people began, and to start realizing that I can have some control over my internal process in
ways that are not shaming and judgmental - that I can stop being the victim of myself.
I spent most of my life being the victim of my own thoughts, my own emotions, my own
behaviors. I was consistently picking untrustworthy people to trust and unavailable people to
love. I could not trust my own emotions because I was incapable of being honest with myself
emotionally - which made me incapable of Truly being honest on any level.
I had to become willing and open and honest enough to start becoming conscious of the
dysfunctional attitudes, the dysfunctional perspectives. I had to become willing to learn
discernment in order to make choices about the changes I needed to make in my perspectives -
especially my perspective on my own emotional process.""
As I talk about in the last chapter, developing a detached objective observer / witness
perspective is vital to changing our perspective of ourselves enough to start seeing ourselves with
some clarity - instead of looking through the shame filter of the disease programming. Both
developing a detached observer perspective and starting to see our self/Self as separate from the
disease, are vital components in learning to practice discernment - the "wisdom to know the
difference" between the things we have the power to change and the things we do not have the
power to change.
"For anyone who is not familiar with the Serenity Prayer, here is the commonly accepted
version of it - followed by my own personal adapted version.
 God,
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
(The Serenity Prayer is generally thought to have been written by Reinhold Niebuhr)
God / Goddess / Great Spirit, please help me to access:
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (life, other people),
the courage and willingness to change the things I can (me, my own attitudes and
behaviors),
and the wisdom and clarity to know the difference.
This is such a powerful, simple, and functional formula for living life that references to it
comes up in my writing quite often." - Discernment - The Wisdom to Know the Difference
in Serenity Prayer
Codependency is a condition that causes us to live the Serenity Prayer backwards. The
Serenity Prayer is, I believe, a mystical formula for how to do life successfully. Recovery is
learning to apply the Serenity Prayer in our lives so that we can learn to live life in a way that
works - in a way that aligns with how life really works. Learning to live the Serenity Prayer in
our life is what will help us learn how to be our own best friend instead of always feeling like a
victim of our self, feeling like our own worst enemy.
I am going to include here a short exercise on detachment that I wrote some years ago for my
Journal.
Detachment Exercise
One way to start developing the observer self, the witness, is to start paying attention to your
own body language.
How are you standing? How are you sitting? What gestures are you making? Are your arms
crossed in a defensive position? Are you making eye contact with the person you are talking to?
The dynamic of interactions, the process of what is happening, is just as important - if not
sometimes more important - than the content of what is being said. To quote the old song:
"Games people play now, every night and every day now, Never saying what they mean, never
meaning what they say." That is how codependence works. We were taught to be dishonest, we
were trained and traumatized into keeping up appearances and hiding what was really going on
inside of us. So was everyone else.
In a group, pay attention to the dynamic. Who is trying to get the attention? Who is hanging
back being invisible? Who interrupts? Who changes the subject when they are uncomfortable?
What is their body language? Who feels a need to be in control?
Starting to really pay attention to the dynamics of interactions is a very important part of
learning to listen. Listening in communications is about much more than just hearing what is
being said. Does what a person is saying match their body language? Is someone talking just to
hear themselves talk? Are they paying any attention to what is going on with me? Does it seem
like they even care if I am listening?
There are people who are always humming or whistling or singing - that is not because they
are happy, it is because they can not stand silence. They can't stand silence because it leaves
them alone with them self - so they talk or whistle or have the television on or have music
playing in order to not be alone in the silence.
I have learned to really cherish silence. One of the ways that I know whether or not someone
is a safe person for me to be emotionally intimate with is if they are comfortable with silence. If
someone is not comfortable with silence it tells me that they have not yet learned to listen fully.
Someone who does not know how to listen is not someone I am going to choose to be
emotionally intimate with.
Silence can really be golden. In the silence of the moment is where it is easiest to tune into
ourselves, and others, emotionally.
Pay attention in the moment. You can tell if someone is listening to you by watching their
eyes. "If they are not listening then why am I talking?" - is a good question to start asking
ourselves.
It is very important to start paying attention and listening to ourselves. Early in my recovery,
I discovered that a lot of the time I was telling stories. Stories that were part of my self image,
part of the way I wanted to portray myself. They were stories that had grown over the years, that
I had embellished to make more interesting - and they didn't have much to do with who I was
now. They were part of my codependent defense system.
Once I started observing myself, I could start becoming aware in the moment, could start
Truly being present for the first time in my life.
I would suddenly become aware of the fact that I was telling an old story and the other
person wasn't really listening - so I would stop myself.
I would become aware that I wasn't really listening to what the other person was saying - I
was just waiting for them to pause long enough for me to jump in with my story.
I would actually catch myself in a 12 step meeting speaking to a room of 150 people and
stop and say "No, you know what, that is bull shit. That is not what is really happening.
What is really happening is I am scared," or whatever.
The more we get aware of ourselves the more we can start getting honest with ourselves. The
principle that is the foundation of recovery, that is necessary for personal growth and healing of
our codependence, is self honesty. We need to start getting honest with ourselves - to start
pealing away the layers of denial that we had to adapt to survive.
The challenge is to have compassion for ourselves. The disease will try to get us to judge
ourselves for the awareness we are gaining. The more we can develop a little detachment, a
witness self that can have some compassion, the more we can start getting to know who we
really are - with Love, instead of allowing the critical parent/disease voice to shame and beat us
up for our self discovery.
Think of the witness as a scientific observer studying the behavior of a fascinating species.
Observe yourself and others from a place of impartial neutrality - "Oh, isn't that interesting the
way that person started to attack me when I said that." With a little detachment we can start to
have choices about how to respond instead of reacting. When we react by going on the defensive
and taking other peoples behavior personally than we are off and running in the soap opera -
playing out our old roles, repeating our patterns.
That will happen often as we learn to observe ourselves - it is important to have compassion
for ourselves in retrospect. To look back on something that just happened and say "Well, I
certainly reacted there. What was the dynamic that took place?" And do a little detective work.
That's when we start realizing things like: when the person wagged their finger at me it felt like
being lectured by Dad; the tone of voice the person was using was the same kind of
condescending tone Mom used to use; and such things as that. That is the gold. Those are the
keys to changing our behaviors - figuring our what is triggering our reactions. It is good news to
get in touch with these things - not something to judge and shame ourselves for.
Being in the observer also helps us to start watching our own thoughts. Start paying attention
to your thought patterns. Watch for any "should"s, "have to"s, "ought to"s, - for any black and
white perspective: "always", "never" - these are sure signs the disease is talking to us. And of
course, any name calling - stupid, loser, fool, idiot, etc., - is not coming from the Spirit, it is
coming from the critical parent.
Someone once told me that I had 7 seconds to take back a negative thought or statement
before it went out into the Universe. Whether there is any Metaphysical Truth in that or not, it
was very useful for me to help me start paying attention to what I was saying and thinking.
Instead of having a negative reactive thought - and then judging myself for the thought, I started
saying "Cancel! Cancel!" I started trying to catch those thoughts and statements and change
them from negative to positive. I would catch myself calling myself stupid and change it to silly.
(I couldn't go from calling myself stupid to calling myself a Magnificent Spiritual Being in one
jump - it took little steps to change the programming.)
Start acting as if you have 7 seconds to recall negative thoughts or statements and see if it
doesn't help you start being more self aware, more detached. Becoming detached is vitally
important in increasing self awareness. Self awareness is necessary for self honesty. Self
honesty is the foundation that recovery is based upon.
Start paying attention to your thoughts, your body language, your communication, your
defensive reactions - and start doing it from at least a neutral observer place so that you can start
taking the shame and judgment out of your internal process by not giving power to the disease,
by telling the critical parent voice to shut up.
That is the way to start being Loving to our self.
 Chapter 7
Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery Part 1
"This dance of Codependence is a dance of dysfunctional relationships - of relationships that
do not work to meet our needs. That does not mean just romantic relationships, or family
relationships, or even human relationships in general.
The fact that dysfunction exists in our romantic, family, and human relationships
is a symptom of the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with life - with being
human. It is a symptom of the dysfunction which exists in our relationships with
ourselves as human beings.
And the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with ourselves is a symptom of Spiritual
dis-ease, of not being in balance and harmony with the universe, of feeling disconnected from
our Spiritual source.
That is why it is so important to enlarge our perspective. To look beyond the romantic
relationship in which we are having problems. To look beyond the dysfunction that exists in our
relationships with other people.
The more we enlarge our perspective, the closer we get to the cause instead of just dealing
with the symptoms. For example, the more we look at the dysfunction in our relationship with
ourselves as human beings the more we can understand the dysfunction in our romantic
relationships.
As was stated earlier, our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life. This is true
for all types of relationships. Our perspective of God dictates our relationship with God. Our
perspective of what a man or a woman is, dictates our relationship with ourselves as men or
women, and with other men and women. Our perspective of our emotions dictates our
relationship with our own emotional process.
Changing our perspectives is absolutely vital to the growth process. And the process of
enlarging our perspective can sometimes convert that which seems to be very complex and
totally beyond our understanding into something that is simple and understandable." -
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
There are two realizations that are the foundation of codependency recovery; 1. recognizing
that we have a dysfunctional relationship with self, life, and other people which was caused by
our childhood experiences; and 2. realizing that we have the power to change our relationship
with self, life, and other people into relationships that will work better to help us find some
happiness, inner peace, and Joy in our life journey.
In order to start changing our relationship with ourselves, we need to start focusing some
conscious attention on our relationship with self - and start taking some action to change our
perspective of our self.
The assignments on this page are intended to help people jump start their recovery through
starting to experience what a relief it is to start making Spirituality a priority in our life - and to
start focusing on the core issues instead of being caught up in reacting out of our codependent
defenses and judging our self for those reactions.
Spiritual integration is the magic ingredient that can make aligning with recovery and
changing our patterns so much easier.
"(I need to make the point here that Codependence and recovery are both multi-leveled,
multi-dimensional phenomena. What we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on
different levels. In regard to our relationship with ourselves this involves two major
 dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. In this context the horizontal is about being
human and relating to other humans and our environment. The vertical is Spiritual, about
our relationship to a Higher Power, to the Universal Source. If we cannot conceive of a
God/Goddess Force that loves us then it makes it virtually impossible to be loving to
ourselves. So a Spiritual Awakening is absolutely vital to the process in my opinion.
Changing our relationship with ourselves on the horizontal level is both a necessary
element in, and possible because we are working on, integrating Spiritual Truth into our
inner process.)" - Article Learning to Love our self by Robert Burney (Indented quotes are
from articles on Joy2MeU.com)
The first two sections of this page are focused on areas that it is vitally important to start
focusing some conscious attention and direct action upon - in order to help our Self start
changing our perspective and relationship with self, life, and other people. Those two areas are
Positive Affirmations and inner child healing work.
The positive affirmations are a major tool in recovery and invaluable in helping individuals to
start combating the toxic shame at the core of their relationship with self - start opening up to
Love through changing the dysfunctional programming adapted by the little child who felt
defective and unlovable because his/her parents were wounded and didn't know how to love
themselves. The positive affirmations are vital in helping us to start getting more clearly
connected to our Spiritual Self - as we learn to stop allowing our damaged and dysfunctionally
programmed ego self run our lives.
"The Twelve Step Recovery process is so successful because it provides a formula for
integrating different levels. It is by recognizing that we are powerless to control our life
experiences out of ego-self that we can access the power out of True Self, Spiritual Self. By
surrendering the illusion of ego control we can reconnect with our Higher Selves. Selfishness
out of ego-self is destroying the planet. Selfishness out of Spiritual Self is what will save the
planet.
It is because there is more than one level of reality that life is paradoxical in nature. What is
True and positive on one level - selfishness out of Spiritual Self, can be negative on another level
- selfishness out of ego-self. What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, God calls a butterfly."
It is vital to start being willing to focus on the inner child work because the core of our
wounding - the foundation for our relationship with self - was laid in early childhood. Our adult
patterns are symptoms / effects our wounding - the cause of our dysfunctional relationships with
self, life, and other people goes back to our childhood. We have been living our life in reaction
to the defense system that resulted from our ego being conditioned to relate to life from shame,
fear, and scarcity.
"Codependence is an emotional and behavioral defense system which was adopted by our
egos in order to meet our need to survive as a child. Because we had no tools for
reprogramming our egos and healing our emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving,
training and initiation rites, healthy role models, etc.), the effect is that as an adult we keep
reacting to the programming of our childhood and do not get our needs met - our emotional,
mental, Spiritual, or physical needs. Codependence allows us to survive physically but causes us
to feel empty and dead inside. Codependence is a defense system that causes us to wound
ourselves."
These two areas of healing require the willingness to take some direct action - by actually
doing the positive affirmations and being willing to start focusing some conscious attention on
our childhood wounding. This involves not only thinking about, but writing and talking about
our childhood experiences. Part of owning and healing our self is to start taking some action to
focus some conscious attention to the inner child places (emotional wounds / buttons /
unresolved grief energy) that still exists within us - to start paying some attention to the wounded
children within and learning to have some compassion for our own wounds instead of judging
ourselves for them.
"We are all carrying around repressed pain, terror, shame, and rage energy from our
childhoods, whether it was twenty years ago or fifty years ago. We have this grief energy within
us even if we came from a relatively healthy family, because this society is emotionally dishonest
and dysfunctional.
When someone "pushes your buttons," he/she is activating that stored, pressurized grief
energy. She/he is gouging the old wounds, and all of the newer wounds that are piled on top of
those original wounds by our repeating behavior patterns."
This article is on my website and is also a handout I had printed for my Intensive Training
Day workshops. The third section of this page as it was originally written was the short exercise
I had written several years ago for my Journal on detachment which I included in the last
chapter. The fourth section was about the importance of seeing the disease as separate from our
self - it is now now Chapter 34 in this book.
Positive Affirmations
Here is a permanent affirmation for you to continue to say:
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love.
Say it anytime, anyplace, to yourself or out loud every time you think of it. If you say this
affirmation 20 times a day it will be wonderful and start changing your life for the better. If you
say it 100 times a day, it will be magical and start rapidly bring change. Truly! It will show
your willingness to grow and open up to accessing Love and Joy and Truth and Light - and each
time you say it will be an action towards opening your inner intuitive channel to the clarity you
are seeking.
Here are some affirmations you can choose from to add to your permanent one, to say in
concert with your permanent one, when you are ready to do that.
I am Unconditionally Loved in this very moment - I always have been, I always will be.
I am perfectly where I am supposed to be on my Spiritual Path and I am being guided Home.
I am a radiant expression of the Goddess energy/Great Spirit/Christ within.
I am always in the right place at the right time, successfully engaged in the right activity.
I am radiantly beautiful and vibrantly healthy and Joyously alive.
I AM a magnificent Spiritual being having a Joyous and exciting human adventure!
Here are some more positive affirmations. Sometimes it helps to start with the ones that just
affirm that it is okay to be human - if you don't feel ready to do the most powerful ones. The
most powerful ones are the ones that affirm our inherent worth as Spiritual Beings. It would be
great if you could pick a set of affirmations and read them at least 3 times a day out loud. It
would be more wonderful if you could do that a dozen times. It is great to learn some simple
ones and repeat them to your self throughout the day.
I am a capable person.
I am a competent person.
I am an intelligent person.
I am a worthwhile person.
I can dare to take a risk.
I can dare to see what I see.
 I can dare to think what I think.
I can dare to question anything.
I can dare to feel what I feel. I have a right to exist.
I have a right to come to my own conclusions.
I have a right to make mistakes.
I have a right to be wrong.
I can say what I feel.
I can ask for what I want.
I am free to be me.
I do not need to prove myself.
I am entitled to good. I choose to be happy.
I trust and follow my inner guidance.
I am an unlimited being.
I picture abundance for myself and others.
I am Happy Joyous and Free.
I have within myself the answers to all my needs.
I am a beautiful person.
I send Love to my fears. My fears are the places within me that await my Love.
Showing the Universe willingness to take action - using your will power to say the
affirmations no matter how much ego resistance comes up - is working the third step and
aligning yourself with the Divine Plan of Loving Higher Power. Consciously choosing to do the
positive affirmations is an act of love for your self.
I am a success to the degree that I feel warm and loving to myself.
Comparison of myself with another is meaningless.
I am whole and balanced within myself.
I always have everything I need.
I am enough.
The Light within me is creating miracles in my body mind and relationships here and now.
God wants me to be happy, healthy, Loved, and successful!
Abundance is my natural state of being. I accept it now!
I Love myself and naturally attract Loving relationships into my life.
I am the co-creator of my life, I am fully involved in co-creating my life in an exciting,
Joyous, and harmonious way.
I am now celebrating life, having fun and enjoying myself.
I am glad I was born and I Love being alive.
I am a radiant expression of God / Goddess.
I am now celebrating my life, having fun and enjoying myself.
I am always deeply relaxed and centered, balanced in every way.
I don't have to worry about what I say or what I do, because you who sent me will direct
me.
My mind and body are now in balance and harmony and manifest divine perfection.
I accept responsibilities in my life happily and enthusiastically.
I am the master of my being and an active co-creator of my life.
The entire Universe Loves me, serves me, nurtures me and wants me to win.
My debts represent my & others beliefs in my future earning ability.
The most important thing to my loved ones' happiness is that I be happy first.
 I am a Magnificent Spiritual Being having a Joyous and exciting human adventure.
Making a tape recording of affirmations in your own voice and playing them to yourself can
be very powerful. Be sure to include saying "I Love you" to yourself.
Which reminds me, every time you look in the mirror, look yourself in the eye and say, "I
Love you ______."
"We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to experience feelings and
touch and Love. The goal of the healing process is not to reach someplace where we are above
all the human experiences and feelings. We are here to feel these feelings.
When we become willing to feel the pain, then we become capable of feeling the Joy. The Joy
of doing this healing is incredible! Our job is to heal and enJoy. Our job is to be. We are here
to be human beings, not human doings.
Our job is to follow the Joy to the Truth. Our job is to feel in the moment.
As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The
more we heal, the more responsibility we have - that is, ability to respond. The ability to
respond in the moment.
By honoring and releasing the sadness and the pain and the anger we can get to the Joy and
the Love and the Peace. By stopping the war within we can create world peace. Not today.
Probably not in our lifetimes. It will take generations (unless the "hundredth monkey effect"
kicks in) but the process has begun!"
Inner Child Work
It is important to start giving your inner child some attention. This is for ___ (whatever name
you identify as yourself in childhood)
To start off with, in relationship to your inner child, I would like you to try to say the
following - or something similar - as often as you think about it.
You were a beautiful, special little girl (boy), a precious innocent little girl (boy). It is not
okay that you did not feel wanted. It is not okay that you were treated in a way that made
you feel bad (defective, unlovable, evil, whatever). I am so sorry that you felt so bad and
thought it was your fault. I am now willing to learn to be Loving you, to have compassion
for you - to own you and rescue you from that critical parent voice. (Which also means we
start being more loving and compassionate for our self.)
Second assignment with your inner child. Try the right hand (dominant - so left if left
handed), left hand (non dominant so right if left handed) writing sometime. Write an amends
letter with your dominant hand to your inner children telling them how sorry you are: that they
were treated the way they were; that they felt the things they felt and experienced the traumas
they did; that you haven't known how to love them; to hear them; to protect them from the
critical parent voice - and then use your non dominant hand to answer. I have found it good to
ask if anyone inside will talk to you after you write the amends letter - and then if the answer is
yes, ask how old that part of you is. Then you can actually start a conversation with your inner
child - and learn things that are vital to your recovery and healing. It is best to ask simple
questions because usually the non dominant hand writing is hard to read - it is a child after all.
This right hand / left hand writing can produce some really mind boggling results at times.
Left hand - right hand writing. The dominant hand (right for most people - left
for some) is used as the adult while the non-dominant hand is used for the
child. Write a letter with your dominant hand to your inner children. Tell
them that you are sorry for the pain they experienced in childhood. Tell them
 you are sorry for the ways in which you have abandoned and abused them in
your adult life. Tell them you are now trying to learn healthier ways to
interact with them and that you need their help to figure out what to do. This
writing should be a stream of consciousness type of thing. Just start writing
and let what ever needs to come out be expressed on paper. After you have
written an amends letter to the wounded parts of you telling those inner
children that you Love them and that it was not their fault that they didn't feel
Lovable or worthy - then ask them if anyone within you is willing to talk to
you.
Use your non-dominant hand to answer. If the answer is yes, someone is
willing to talk - ask how old that child is. There is usually one or two ages of
the child within that are more vocal, more willing to communicate than other
ages. That child, by the way, and any inner children will go by the name that
you were called at that age - i.e. if you had a nickname, or derivative such as
Robby. See if you can get a dialogue going with that child.
Sometimes this process won't seem work the first few times you try it - keep
trying. What is important is to start being willing to listen to the wounded
parts of our self. It is imperative to start building a better relationship with our
self - which means all of the different parts of our self.
This next assignment has no deadline and is not quite as simple. It can to be done when the
Spirit moves you - in one sitting, or a little at a time, whatever works. I believe it would be very
good for you to write a fairy tale about a Beautiful Spiritual Being who is given a very important
assignment to aid in the healing of the planet so human beings could learn to be more Loving to
each other. It would start off, "Once upon a time . . ." and tell the story of how this Being of
Light accepted an assignment to go into human body and endure a painful life as a Princess
(Prince) that was not recognized in her (his) home and in her (his) life for many, many years. A
Princess (Prince) who endures great emotional / physical / mental pain and torment in her
lifetime all the time having forgotten who she (he) really was and why she (he) had come into
body on this planet at this time. There would come a point in this life of suffering and endurance
that she (he) would start to wake up to her (his) True Self - where she (he) would get enough of a
memory to realize that if she (he) ever wanted to find out who she (he) Truly is, then she (he)
needed to take drastic action and make a courageous leap into the unknown. That point would
come ??????.
If you can do this fairy tale of your life - writing about how this Princess (Prince) suffered, the
traumatic and painful things that happened to her (him), her (his) life journey - up until ____
(turning point where recovery began), that it will set the stage for you to see yourself more
clearly then ever. In telling the story from ___ (the turning point) on (And it came to pass . . .?)
you will see your life more clearly, you will write things that will help you to understand and see
more clearly, than ever before. I think if you are willing to do this, you may be able to discover
some idea of what is in front of you. It could bring some major breakthroughs.
And I do mean "do" this - like the positive affirmations it is very important to be willing to
take the action. In terms of our childhood memories, we will need to be willing to think about,
focus some conscious attention on, our childhood to bring the wounding out of the darkness into
the Light. But thinking about them is just a preliminary shift in focus - we need to be willing to
take action, to do the recovery writing. A fairy tale is just one option. It is important to write
about our childhood experiences, or talk out loud about them, in order to get in touch with the
feelings - thinking about them doesn't get the emotional energy flowing. We have spent most of
our life trying to not remember and not feel the feelings - it takes some action on our part to start
opening up to the grief and rage that we have suppressed. It is a matter of sitting down and
starting writing and seeing where it takes you. While writing go into details of any memories
that come up - i.e. what you were wearing, any smell or color or music you remember, etc., as
small details are often emotional triggers. Like when I write, things will come up that will
surprise you, ambush you, amaze you. It is a really magical process that involves being willing
to start "doing" it - and then following it to where it leads you.
"It is when we start understanding the cause and effect relationship between what happened
to the child that we were, and the effect it had on the adult we became, that we can Truly start to
forgive ourselves. It is only when we start understanding on an emotional level, on a gut level,
that we were powerless to do anything any differently than we did that we can Truly start to Love
ourselves.
The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt
responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were
done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this
transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and
say, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just a little kid."
"To be able to say "I Love you" to the child/children within us, and to the person who we are
today, and really mean it on an emotional level, is one of the goals of this process.
Until we can forgive ourselves and Love ourselves we cannot Truly Love and forgive any
other human beings - including our parents who were only doing the best they knew how. They,
too, were powerless to do anything any different - they were just reacting to their wounds.
It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.
And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and
release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around."
 Chapter 8
Loving the Wounded Child Within
"The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt
responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were
done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this
transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and
say, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just a little kid.""
"As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are giving power to the disease. We are
feeding the monster that is devouring us. We need to take responsibility without taking the
blame. We need to own and honor the feelings without being a victim of them. We need to rescue
and nurture and Love our inner children - and STOP them from controlling our lives. STOP
them from driving the bus! Children are not supposed to drive, they are not supposed to be in
control. And they are not supposed to be abused and abandoned. We have been doing it
backwards. We abandoned and abused our inner children. Locked them in a dark place within
us. And at the same time let the children drive the bus - let the children's wounds dictate our
lives." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
When we were 3 or 4 we couldn’t look around us and say, "Well, Dad's a drunk and Mom is
real depressed and scared - that is why it feels so awful here. I think I’ll go get my own
apartment."
Our parents were our higher powers. We were not capable of understanding that they might
have problems that had nothing to do with us. So it felt like it was our fault.
We formed our relationship with ourselves and life in early childhood. We learned about love
from people who were not capable of loving in a healthy way because of their unhealed
childhood wounds. Our core/earliest relationship with our self was formed from the feeling that
something is wrong and it must be me. At the core of our being is a little kid who believes that
he/she is unworthy and unlovable. That was the foundation that we built our concept of "self" on.
Children are master manipulators. That is their job - to survive in whatever way works. So we
adapted defense systems to protect our broken hearts and wounded spirits. The 4 year old learned
to throw tantrums, or be real quiet, or help clean the house, or protect the younger siblings, or be
cute and funny, etc. Then we got to be 7 or 8 and started being able to understand cause and
effect and use reason and logic and we changed our defense systems to fit the circumstances.
Then we reach puberty and didn’t have a clue what was happening to us, and no healthy adults to
help us understand, so we adapted our defense systems to protect our vulnerability. And then we
were teenagers and our job was to start becoming independent and prepare ourselves to be adults
so we changed our defense systems once again.
It is not only dysfunctional, it is ridiculous to maintain that what happened in our childhood
did not affect our adult life. We have layer upon layer of denial, emotional dishonesty, buried
trauma, unfulfilled needs, etc., etc. Our hearts were broken, our spirit's wounded, our minds
programmed dysfunctionally. The choices we have made as adults were made in reaction to our
childhood wounds/programming - our lives have been dictated by our wounded inner children.
(History, politics, "success" or lack of "success," in our dysfunctional society/civilizations can
always be made clearer by looking at the childhoods of the individuals involved. History has
been, and is being, made by immature, scared, angry, hurt individuals who were/are reacting to
their childhood wounds and programming - reacting to the little child inside who feels unworthy
and unlovable. )
 It is very important to realize that we are not an integrated whole being - to ourselves. Our self
concept is fractured into a multitude of pieces. In some instances we feel powerful and strong, in
others weak and helpless - that is because different parts of us are reacting to different stimuli
(different "buttons" are being pushed.) The parts of us that feel weak, helpless, needy, etc. are not
bad or wrong - what is being felt is perfect for the reality that was experienced by the part of
ourselves that is reacting ( perfect for then - but it has very little to do with what is happening in
the now). It is very important to start having compassion for that wounded part of ourselves.
It is by owning our wounds that we can start taking the power away from the wounded part of
us. When we suppress the feelings, feel ashamed about our reactions, do not own that part of our
being, then we give it power. It is the feelings that we are hiding from that dictate our behavior,
that fuel obsession and compulsion.
Codependence is a disease of extremes.
Those of us who were horrified and deeply wounded by a perpetrator in childhood - and were
never going to be like that parent - adapted a more passive defense system to avoid confrontation
and "hurting others." The more passive type of codependent defense system leads to a dominant
pattern of being the victim.
Those of us who were disgusted by, and ashamed of, the victim parent in childhood and
vowed never to be like that role model, adapted a more aggressive defense system. So we go
charging through life being the bull in the china shop - being the perpetrator who blames other
people for not allowing us to be in control. The perpetrator that feels like a victim of other people
not doing things "right" - which is what forces us to bulldoze our way through life.
And, of course, some of us go first one way and then the other. (We all have our own personal
spectrum of extremes that we swing between - sometimes being the victim, sometimes being the
perpetrator. Being a passive victim is perpetrating on those around us.)
The only way we can be whole is to own all of the parts of ourselves . By owning all the
parts we can then have choices about how we respond to life. By denying, hiding, and
suppressing parts of ourselves we doom ourselves to live life in reaction.
It is impossible to Truly love the adult that we are without owning the child that we were. In
order to do that we need to detach from our inner process (and stop the disease from abusing us)
so that we can have some objectivity and discernment that will allow us to have compassion for
our own childhood wounds. Then we need to grieve those wounds and own our right to be angry
about what happened to us in childhood - so that we can Truly know in our gut that it wasn't our
fault - we were just innocent little kids.
 Chapter 9
Emotional Healing ~ Feeling the Feelings
"We, each and every one of us, has an inner channel to Truth, an inner channel to the Great
Spirit. But that inner channel is blocked up with repressed emotional energy, and with twisted,
distorted attitudes and false beliefs.
We can intellectually throw out false beliefs. We can intellectually remember and embrace
the Truth of ONENESS and Light and Love. But we cannot integrate Spiritual Truths into our
day-to-day human existence, in a way which allows us to substantially change the dysfunctional
behavior patterns that we had to adopt to survive, until we deal with our emotional wounds.
Until we deal with the subconscious emotional programming from our childhoods.
We cannot learn to Love without honoring our Rage!
We cannot allow ourselves to be Truly Intimate with ourselves or anyone else without owning
our Grief.
We cannot clearly reconnect with the Light unless we are willing to own and honor our
experience of the Darkness.
We cannot fully feel the Joy unless we are willing to feel the Sadness.
We need to do our emotional healing, to heal our wounded souls, in order to reconnect with
our Souls on the highest vibrational levels. In order to reconnect with the God-Force that is
Love and Light, Joy and Truth." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Emotions are energy that is manifested in our bodies. They exist primarily below the neck.
They are not thoughts (although attitudes set up our emotional reactions.) In order to do the
emotional healing it is vital to start paying attention to where energy is manifesting in our bodies.
Where is there tension, tightness? Could that "indigestion" really be some feelings? Are those
"butterflies" in my stomach telling me something emotionally?
When I am working with someone and they start having some feelings coming up, the first
thing I have to tell them is to keep breathing. Most of us have learned a variety of ways to
control our emotions and one of them is to stop breathing and close our throats. That is because
grief in the form of sadness accumulates in our upper chest and breathing into it helps some of it
to escape - so we learned to stop breathing at those moments when we start getting emotional,
when our voice starts breaking.
Western civilization has for many years been way out of balance towards the left brain way of
thinking - concrete, rational, what you see is all there is (this was in reaction to earlier times of
being out of balance the other way, towards superstition and ignorance.) Because emotional
energy can not be seen or measured or weighed ("The x-ray shows you've got 5 pounds of grief
in there.") emotions were discounted and devalued. This has started to change somewhat in
recent years but most of us grew up in a society that taught us that being too emotional was a bad
thing that we should avoid. (Certain cultures / subcultures give more permission for emotions
but those are usually out of balance to the other extreme of allowing the emotions to rule - the
goal is balance: between mental and emotional, between intuitive and rational.)
Emotions are a vital part of our being for several reasons.
1. Because it is energy and energy cannot just disappear. The emotional energy generated
by the circumstances of our childhood and early life does not go away just because we
were forced to deny it. It is still trapped in our body - in a pressurized, explosive state, as a
result of being suppressed. If we don't learn how to release it in a healthy way it will
explode outward or implode back in on us. Eventually it will transform into some other
 form - such as cancer.
2. As long as we have pockets of pressurized emotional energy that we have to avoid
dealing with - those emotional wounds will run our lives. We use food, cigarettes, alcohol
and drugs, relationships, work, religion, exercise, meditation, television, etc., to help us
keep suppressing that energy. To help us keep ourselves focused on something else,
anything else, besides the emotional wounds that terrify us. The emotional wounds are
what cause obsession and compulsion, are what the "critical parent" voice works so hard to
keep us from dealing with.
3. Our emotions tell us who we are - our Soul communicates with us through emotional
energy vibrations. Truth is an emotional energy vibrational communication from our Soul
on the Spiritual Plane to our being/spirit/soul on this physical plane - it is something that
we feel in our heart/our gut, something that resonates within us.
Our problem has been that because of our unhealed childhood wounds it has been very
difficult to tell the difference between an intuitive emotional Truth and the emotional
truth that comes from our childhood wounds. When one of our buttons is pushed and we
react out of the insecure, scared little kid inside of us (or the angry/rage filled kid, or the
powerless/helpless kid, etc.) then we are reacting to what our emotional truth was when we
were 5 or 9 or 14 - not to what is happening now. Since we have been doing that all of our
lives, we learned not to trust our emotional reactions (and got the message not to trust them
in a variety of ways both when we were kids and as adults.)
4. We are attracted to people that feel familiar on an energetic level - which means (until
we start clearing our emotional process) people that emotionally / vibrationally feel like
our parents did when we were very little kids. At a certain point in my process I realized
that if I met a woman who felt like my soul mate, that the chances were pretty huge that
she was one more unavailable woman that fit my pattern of being attracted to someone
who would reinforce the message that I wasn't good enough, that I was unlovable. Until
we start releasing the hurt, sadness, rage, shame, terror - the emotional grief energy - from
our childhoods we will keep having dysfunctional relationships.
I became willing to do the emotional healing in the summer of 1987 when I set myself up to
be abandoned on my birthday one more time. I called a counselor that I had been told was good
with the emotional work. It turned our that he was in the middle of moving to Hawaii and wasn't
doing counseling anymore. But he said I could come over and talk to him as he packed.
I don't remember anything that he said to me that day - what I do remember is that as I sat in
his house watching him pack I had a feeling, and a visual image, that I had just opened Pandora's
Box - the monsters were loose now and I would never be able shut that box again.
Doing the grief work is absolutely terrifying. The word I came up with to describe how I felt
was terrif***ingfying. It felt like if I ever really owned the pain, I would end up crying in a
rubber room for the rest of my life. That if I ever really owned the rage, I would just go up and
down the street shooting people. That is not what happened. The Spirit guided me through the
process and gave me the resources I needed to release great quantities of that pent up,
pressurized emotional energy. To release enough to start learning who I really am, to start seeing
my path more clearly, and to start forgiving myself and learning about love.
I still need to do the grieving/energy release work from time to time. There is still a hole in
my soul - a seemingly bottomless abyss of wish-to-die-pain, shame, and unbearable suffering.
But it is a much smaller hole and I don't have to visit it very often.
The wounds don't go away. They have less power to dictate my life as I heal. I needed to
own that wounded part of me in order to start getting to know, and have compassion for, me. I
also needed to learn to have a balance because we can't live in those feelings. We need to own
them and honor them in order to own and honor ourselves - but then we need to learn to have
internal boundaries that will allow us to find some balance in our life, allow us to to trust the
process and our Higher Power.
We are on a Spiritual journey - and the Force is with us. It will help and guide us as we face
the terror of owning how painful our human experience has been. The more we are able to feel
and release the feelings / emotional energy, the more clearly we can tune into the emotional
energy that is Truth - and Love, Light, Joy, Beauty - coming from The Source Energy.
Emotions are messy. Many people want to get Spiritual without dealing with the emotions.
That is a normal human reaction. It is dysfunctional however. Our emotions are a vital part of
our being. It is crucial to honor and respect our emotions in order to discover our True Self. In
denying the feelings, we are denying a part of self. In denying our childhood emotional
experiences, we are abandoning and betraying that child. That wounded child within us, is the
portal to our soul, the key to reconnecting with Spiritual Self.
 Chapter 10
Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy
"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.
And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and
release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around." Codependence: The Dance
of Wounded Souls
I am not sure at exactly what point in my recovery that it took place - but it was probably
around 2 and a half years. It was years later before I would understand its' huge significance in
my life. At the time it was just a blessed relief.
I went to a meeting at my home group in Studio City. I was feeling a little crazy. Wound too
tight and ready to explode. It was a familiar feeling. It was a feeling that I had drowned in
alcohol or taken the edge off of with marijuana in the old days. But I couldn't do that anymore
so I went to a meeting.
My friends name was Steve. He hadn't been my friend for very long although I had known
him for years. He had been my agent years earlier and I had disliked him intensely. I was in the
process of getting to know him, and like him, now that we were both in recovery.
He saw how up tight I was and asked me to go outside with him. He asked me one simple
question: "How old do you feel?" "Eight," I said, and then I exploded. I cried in a way I didn't
remember ever crying before - great heaving sobs wracked my body as I told him what happened
when I was eight.
I had grown up on a farm in the Midwest. The summer that I turned eight I had my first 4-H
calf. 4-H was to us rural kids kind of like boy scouts was to city kids - a club where farm kids
had projects to learn things. I got a calf who weighed about 400 pounds and fed him all spring
and summer until he weighed over a thousand pounds. I tamed him and taught him to allow me
to lead him around on a halter so I could show him at the county fair. After the county fair there
was another chance to show him at a town nearby and then sell him. Local business people
would buy the calves for more than they were worth to give us kids incentive and teach us how
to make money.
By the time I was eight, I was completely emotionally isolated and alone. I grew up in a
pretty typical American family. My father had been trained to be John Wayne - anger was the
only emotion he ever expressed - and my mother had been trained to be a self-sacrificing martyr.
Since my mother could get no emotional support from my father - she had very low self-esteem
and no boundaries - she used her children to validate and define her. She emotionally incested
me by using me emotionally - causing me to feel responsible for her emotions, and feel ashamed
that I couldn't protect her from my father's verbal and emotional abuse. The shame and pain of
my father's seeming inability to love me coupled with my mother loving me too much at the
same time that she allowed herself and me to be abused by fathers anger and perfectionism -
caused me to shut down to my mothers love and close down emotionally.
And then into the life of this little boy who was in such pain, and so isolated, came a shorthorn
calf which he named Shorty. Shorty was the closest thing to a personal pet that I have ever had.
On the farm, there were always dogs and cats and other animals - but they weren't mine alone. I
developed an emotionally intimate relationship with that calf. I loved Shorty. He was so tame
that I could sit on his back or crawl under his belly. I spent uncounted hours with that calf. I
really loved him.
I took him to the county fair and got a Blue Ribbon. Then a few weeks later it was time for
the show and sale. I got another Blue Ribbon. When it came time to sell him, I had to lead him
into the sale ring while the auctioneer sang his mysterious selling chant. It was over in a moment
and I led Shorty out of the ring to a pen where all the sold calves were put. I took off his halter
and let him go. Somehow I knew that my father expected me not to cry, and that my mother
expected me to cry. By that time, I was very clear from the role-modeling of my father that a
man did not cry - ever. And I had so much suppressed rage at my mother for not protecting me
from my fathers raging that I was passive-aggressively doing things the opposite of what I
thought she wanted. So, I slipped his halter off, patted him on the shoulder, and closed the gate -
consigning my best friend to the pen of calves that was going to the packing house to be
slaughtered. No tears for this eight year old, no sirree, I knew how to be a man.
That poor little boy. It wasn't until almost 30 years later, leaning up against the side of the
meeting room, that I got the chance to cry for that little boy. With great heaving sobs, tears
pouring down my cheeks, and snot running out my nose, I had my first experience with deep
grief work. I did not know anything about the process at the time - I just knew that somehow
that wounded little boy was still alive inside of me. I also did not know at the time that part of
my life's work was going to be helping other people to reclaim the wounded little boys and girls
inside of them.
Now I know that emotions are energy which if not released in a healthy grieving process gets
stuck in the body. The only way for me to start healing my wounds is to go back to that little
boy and cry the tears or own the rage that he had no permission to own back then.
I also know that there are layers of grief from the emotional trauma I experienced. There is
not only trauma about what happened back then - there is also grief about the effect those
experiences had on me later in life. I get to cry once again for that little boy as I write this. I
have been sobbing for that little boy and the emotional trauma he experienced - but I am also
sobbing for the man that I became.
I learned in childhood, and carried into adulthood, the belief that I am not lovable. It felt like I
was not lovable to my mother and father. It felt like the God I was taught about didn't love me -
because I was a sinful human. It felt like anyone who loved me would eventually be
disappointed, would learn the truth of my shameful being. I spent most of my life alone because
I felt less lonely alone. When I was around people I would feel my need to connect with them -
and feel my incredible loneliness for human relationships - but I did not know how to connect in
a healthy way. I have had a great terror of the pain of abandonment and betrayal - but even more
than that, the feeling that I could not be trusted because I am not good enough to love and be
loved. At the core of my being, at the foundation of my relationship with myself, I feel
unworthy and unlovable.
And now I know that the little boy, that I was, felt like he betrayed and abandoned the calf
that he loved. Proof of his unworthiness. And not only did he betray his best friend - he did it
for money. Another piece of the puzzle of why money has been such a big issues in my life. In
recovery I had learned that because of the power my father and society gave to money I had
spent much of my life saying that money wasn't important to me at the same time that I was
always focused on it because I never had enough. I have definitely had a dysfunctional
relationship with money in my life and 8 year old Robby gave me a glimpse at another facet of
that relationship.
Robby has also helped me to understand another piece of my fear of intimacy issues. I have
been going through a transformation one more time in my recovery. Each time that I need to
grow some more - need to surrender some more of who I thought I was in order to become who I
am - I get to peel another layer of the onion. Each time this happens I get to reach a deeper level
of honesty and see things clearer than I ever have before. Each time, I also get to release some of
the emotional energy through crying and raging.
Through clearer eyes, and with deeper emotional honesty, I get to look at all of my major
issues again to heal them some more. I used to think that I could deal with an issue and be done
with it - but now I know that is not the way the healing process works. So recently I have gotten
the opportunity to revisit my issues of abandonment and betrayal, of deprivation and discounting.
My issues with my mother and father, with my gender and sexuality, with money and success.
My issues with the God I was taught about and the God-Force that I choose to believe in. My
patterns of self-abusive behavior that are driven by my emotional wounds - and the attempts that
I make to forgive myself for behavior that I have been powerless over. And they all lead me
back to the core issue. I am not worthy. I am not good enough. Something is wrong with me.
At the core of my relationship is the little boy who feels unworthy and unlovable. And my
relationship with myself was built on that foundation. The original wounding caused me to adapt
attitudes and behavior patterns which caused me to be further traumatized and wounded - which
caused me to adapt different attitudes and behavior patterns which caused me to be further
traumatized and wounded in different ways. Layer upon layer the wounds were laid -
multifaceted, incredibly complex and convoluted is the disease of Codependence. Truly
insidious, baffling and powerful.
Through revisiting the eight year old who I was I get to understand on a new level why I have
always been attracted to unavailable people - because the pain of feeling abandoned and betrayed
is the lesser of two evils. The worst possible thing, to my shame-based inner children, is to have
revealed how unworthy and unlovable I am - so unworthy that I abandoned and betrayed my best
friend, Shorty the shorthorn calf that I loved and who seemed to love me back. It is no wonder
that at my core I am terrified of loving someone who is capable of loving me back.
By owning and honoring the feelings of the child who I was, I can do some more work on
letting him know that it wasn't his fault and that he deserves forgiveness. That he deserves to be
Loved.
So today, I am grieving once more for the eight year old who was trapped, and for the man he
became. I am grieving because if I don't own that child and his feelings - then the man will
never get past his terror of allowing himself to be loved. By owning and cherishing that child, I
am healing the broken heart of both the child and the man - and giving that man the opportunity
to one day trust himself enough to love someone as much as he loved Shorty.
Thank you Steve G. - wherever you are.
 Chapter 11
Emotional Defenses
"Attempting to suppress emotions is dysfunctional; it does not work. Emotions are energy:
E-motion = energy in motion. It is supposed to be in motion, it was meant to flow.
Emotions have a purpose, a very good reason to be - even those emotions that feel
uncomfortable. Fear is a warning, anger is for protection, tears are for cleansing and releasing.
These are not negative emotional responses! We were taught to react negatively to them. It is
our reaction that is dysfunctional and negative, not the emotion.
Emotional honesty is absolutely vital to the health of the being. Denying, distorting, and
blocking our emotions in reaction to false beliefs and dishonest attitudes causes emotional and
mental disease. This emotional and mental disease causes physical, biological imbalance which
produces physical disease." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Growing up in emotionally dishonest societies with wounded parents forced us to learn ways
to distance ourselves from our feelings. In this article I am going to talk about three common
defensive strategies we learn to protect ourselves and help us deny our emotions.
1. Speaking in the third person. One of the defenses many of us have against feeling our
feelings is to speak of ourselves in the third person. "You just kind of feel hurt when that
happens" is not a personal statement and does not carry the power of speaking in the first person.
"I felt hurt when that happened" is personal, is owning the feeling. Listen to yourself so that you
can become more aware of this defense and start changing it. Listen to others - both in person
and on TV - refer to self in the third person and you will gain some insight into how they are
wounded. You will probably be surprised at how often you hear this defense in the course of a
day as you become more conscious.
To say, "I feel angry" or "I feel sad" is owning the feelings. It is emotional honesty and helps
us to get in touch with the emotional energy that exists in our bodies. Referring to our self as
"you" is a form of emotional dishonesty.
2. Story telling. This is a very common method of avoiding our feelings. Some people tell
entertaining stories to avoid feelings. They may respond to a feeling statement by saying
something like 'I remember back in `85 when I. . .' Their stories might be very entertaining but
they have no personal immediate emotional content.
Some people tell stories about other people. They will respond to an emotional moment by
telling an emotional story about some friend, acquaintance, or even a person they read about.
They may exhibit some emotion in telling the story but it is emotion for the other person, not for
self. They keep a distance from their emotions by attributing the emotional energy they are
touching on to being about someone other than self.
Then there is the stereotypical Codependent of the joke: when a Codependent dies someone
else's life passes before their eyes. If this type of Codependent is in a relationship, everything
they say will be about the other person. Direct questions about self will be answered with stories
about the significant other. This is a completely unconscious result of the sad fact that they have
no real concept of self as an individual entity.
Perhaps the most common story telling diversion is to get very involved in the details of the
story 'she said. . . . . then I said. . . . then she did. . . . .' The details are ultimately insignificant
in relationship to the emotions involved but because we do not know how to handle the emotions
we get caught up in the details. Often we are relating the details in order to show the listener
how we were wronged in the interaction. Often we focus on how others are "wrong" in reaction
to the situation as a way of avoiding our feelings.
If someone is telling you a story and you find your mind wandering and boredom setting in -
it is because they are not being emotionally honest. Often the person will be coming from a
victim/self pity perspective and may even be crying while telling the story - but the crying they
are doing is not emotionally honest, it is part of a role they are playing and probably have been
playing for years. Expressing feelings in a martyr's role created by the false self is very different
from expressing grief in relationship to self. The martyr who is blaming is being dishonest both
emotionally and intellectually.
3. Avoiding using primary feeling words. There are only a handful of primary feelings that
all humans feel. There is some dispute about just how many are primary but for our purpose
here I am going to use seven. Those are: angry/mad, sad, hurt, afraid/scared, lonely, ashamed,
and happy/glad. It is important to start using the primary names of these feelings in order to own
them and to stop distancing ourselves from the feelings.
To say "I am anxious" or "concerned" or "apprehensive" is not the same as saying "I feel
afraid." Fear is at the root of all of those expressions but we don't have to be so in touch with our
fear if we use a word that distances us from the fear. Expressions like "confused," "irritated,"
"upset," "tense," "disturbed," "melancholy," "blue," "good," or "bad" are not primary feeling
words.
We were trained to be emotionally dishonest in childhood. In order to start peeling the layers
of denial it is vital to get aware of our own emotional defenses. In order to start getting
emotionally honest with ourselves - let alone with anyone else - it is vital to start recognizing our
own emotional defenses. The little tricks of language and focus that we learned to help us
distance ourselves from feelings that we did not know how to deal with.
Becoming willing to get conscious of our own defenses is a vital step to getting in touch with
our own feelings. Learning to be emotionally honest with our self is an important part of a
recovery/healing path.
 Chapter 12
Inner Child Healing ~ Stopping the War Within
The dysfunctional dance of Codependence is caused by being at
"
war with ourselves - being at war within.
We are at war with ourselves because we are judging and shaming ourselves for being
human. We are at war with ourselves because we are carrying around suppressed grief energy
that we are terrified of feeling. We are at war within because we are "damming" our own
emotional process - because we were forced to become emotionally dishonest as children and
had to learn ways to block and distort our emotional energy.
We cannot learn to Love ourselves and be at peace within until we stop judging and shaming
ourselves for being human and stop fighting our own emotional process, until we stop waging
war on ourselves." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Our relationship with self is dysfunctional (i.e. it does not work to help us feel happy and
whole, have inner peace and enjoy life) because we have so much internal conflict. We have a
multitude of dysfunctional relationships within us, a large dysfunctional family inside of us -
which is the cause of our dysfunctional relationships externally. The two primary dysfunctional
relationships we need to focus on in inner child work are the relationships with our own mind
and our own emotions.
(Intimately interrelated with this inner work is changing our relationship with life itself.
Finding a relationship with life, with being human, that works to enhance our potential to be
happy and to feel worthy of Love, is what I refer to as spirituality. Having a spiritual belief
system that supports the possibility that we are Lovable and worthy is possible because of, and
facilitates, the healing work in relationship to our other relationships - both internally and
externally.)
There is a part of our mind that judges and shames us because it got programmed very badly.
Our ego programming in early childhood - because of the messages we got directly and from the
role modeling of the adults in our lives, plus the lessons we interpreted from the emotional
trauma we suffered - caused us to learn to relate to life from a place of fear and shame, lack and
scarcity. We learned to try to control our behaviors and emotions using the same tools that were
used by our parents - fear, guilt, and shame. Thus was born the critical parent voice in our mind
that judges and shame us, that beats us up and sabotages our ability to relax and enjoy life.
Our attitudes, definitions, and beliefs - both conscious and subconscious - set up our
expectations and perspectives. Those expectations and perspectives are what dictate our
relationships with everything. We give away power over our own emotions through the
expectations and perspectives of life that we empower. If, for instance, I am allowing myself to
buy into the belief that everyone "should" drive the way I want them to - then I will have a
dysfunctional relationship with driving. I will give other drivers the power to make me angry
because they are not driving "right" according to my definition of what "right" is - thus is road
rage born.
It is not only dysfunctional, it is insane to expect everyone else to behave in the manner that
we think they "should." By having expectations that are insane, that do not align with the
realities of life, we are giving other people the power to dictate our emotional reactions to life.
This sets us up to feel like a victim - of other people not doing it "right," of life not being what it
"should" be.
 It is vital to start taking responsibility for the ways in which we set ourselves up, that we give
power away, in order to stop living life as a victim. Personal empowerment involves seeing life
as it is and making the best of it - instead of being the victim, wishing it was different. This
starts with our relationship with ourselves. If we expect ourselves to be perfect - to never make
mistakes, to never be scared and confused, etc. - we are then set up to be the victim of our own
humanity. If we expect other people to always be nice and kind in a world full of wounded souls
- then we are set up to be the victim of other people. If we think that falling in love is going to
lead us to happily-ever-after - then we are set up to be a victim in romantic relationships.
The most pervasive way we were programmed in childhood to be a victim, is in our
relationship with our self. In order to stop setting ourselves up to be a victim - both of others
because we have insane perspectives, and of ourselves because we have unrealistic expectations -
it is vital to become more conscious of our own internal process. Then we can learn to stop
giving power to concepts and beliefs we learned in childhood about the nature and purpose of
life. We can learn to start being Loving in relationship to our own emotional wounds instead of
judgmental and shaming.
It is through starting to become more conscious of how we were programmed to have a
dysfunctional relationship with self in childhood, that we can start clearing up our relationship
with our self. When we start to change the insane expectations and unrealistic perspectives of
life that are causing us to give away power over our emotions - then we can start seeing our own
emotions more clearly.
Emotions are not thoughts. Emotional reactions to life are generated by the intellectual
paradigm - the beliefs, attitudes, and definitions - that we are empowering. Until we start to
become aware of how our old tapes are controlling our emotional relationship with ourselves and
with life, then we are powerless to change our behavior patterns. We need to start getting
conscious of reality that we can change our intellectual programming. Through making a
conscious effort to change our intellectual paradigm, we can change our relationship with life
and with self into one that is more aligned with Love than with fear.
We can then start to heal our emotional wounds from the past by doing the grief and
forgiveness work that is so necessary to change our internal relationship. It is changing our
mental programming and healing our emotional wounds through releasing the grief energy from
the past, that will allow to have a more functional, healthier, and more Loving relationship with
ourselves.
The tool that is so valuable in this process, that is so valuable in stopping the internal conflict
so that we can find some inner peace and start Loving ourselves, is to learn to have internal
boundaries. I will talk about internal boundaries in a later chapter - but first I will include a
couple chapters focused on the importance of getting honest with ourselves intellectually and
emotionally.
 Chapter 13
Serenity and Expectations - intimately interrelated
" We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change
the way we intellectually view life in order to stop being the victim of
the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious of, our attitudes,
definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for
us and what does not work. We can then start making choices about
whether our intellectual view of life is serving us - or if it is setting us
up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which
it is not." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Self-honesty is the foundation of the Twelve Step Recovery program - the principle underling
the first step. There are many different levels of honesty, including "cash register" honesty,
emotional honesty, being honest in interactions with others, etc. All levels of honesty are
important in various ways but early in my recovery process I learned a great deal about being
honest with myself from Dr. Paul's chapter in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous - "Doctor,
Alcoholic, Addict." That level of honesty had to do with being honest with myself about my
expectations.
There is an old joke about the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic. The psychotic
truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5. The neurotic knows that it is 4 but can't stand it. That was the way I
lived most of my life, I could see how life was but I couldn't stand it. I was always feeling like a
victim because people and life were not acting in the way I believed they "should" act.
I expected life to be different than it is. I thought if I was good and did it "right" then I would
reach 'happily ever after.' I believed that if I was nice to people they would be nice to me.
Because I grew up in a society where people were taught that other people could control their
feelings, and vise versa, I had spent most of my life trying to control the feelings of others and
blaming them for my feelings.
By having expectations I was giving power away. In order to become empowered I had to
own that I had choices about how I viewed life, about my expectations. I realized that no one can
make me feel hurt or angry - that it is my expectations that cause me to generate feelings of hurt
or anger. In other words, the reason I feel hurt or anger is because other people, life, or God are
not doing what I want them, expect them, to do.
I had to learn to be honest with myself about my expectations - so I could let go of the ones
that were insane (like, everyone is going to drive the way I want them to), and own my choices -
so I could take responsibility for how I was setting myself up to be a victim in order to change
my patterns. Accept the things I cannot change - change the things I can.
When I first started realizing how much my expectations were dictating my emotional
reactions to life, I tried not to have any expectations. I soon came to realize that it was impossible
to live in society and not have expectations. If I have electricity in my home I am going to expect
the lights to come on - and if they don't, I am going to have feelings about it. If I own that having
electricity is a choice I make, then I realize that I am not being the victim of the electric company
I am just experiencing a life event. And life events occur for me to learn from - not to punish
me.
 The more I owned that I was making choices that caused me to give away some power over
my feelings and that those feelings were ultimately my responsibility - the less I reacted out of a
victim place - the more serenity I had about events that occurred. To believe that unpleasant stuff
should never happen to me was a truly insane, dysfunctional notion. The reality of life is that
'stuff' happens.
Of course, getting to the place where I could accept life on life's terms was only possible
because I was working on letting go of the belief that it was happening to me because I was
unworthy and bad - which I learned growing up in a shame-based society. It was essential for me
to stop blaming myself and feeling ashamed of being human so that I could stop blaming others
and always feeling like a victim. In other words, it was necessary to start seeing life as a Spiritual
growth process that I couldn't control in order to get out of the blame them or blame me cycle.
I found that there were layers of expectations I had to look at. I wanted to feel that I could be a
righteous victim if someone told me they were going to do something and didn't. But then I had
to own that I was the one who chose to believe them. I had to also realize that falling in love was
a choice and not a trap that I accidentally stepped into. Loving is a choice that I make and the
consequences of that choice are my responsibility not the other persons. As long as I kept buying
into the belief that I was being victimized by the person I loved there was no chance of having a
healthy relationship.
The most insidious level of expectations for me had to do with my expectations of myself.
The "critical parent" voice in my head has always berated me for not being perfect, for being
human. My expectations, the "shoulds," my disease piled on me were a way in which I
victimized myself. I was always judging, shaming and beating myself up because as a little child
I got the message that something was wrong with me.
There is nothing wrong with me - or you. It is our relationship with ourselves and life that is
dysfunctional. We are Spiritual beings who came into body in an emotionally dishonest,
Spiritually hostile environment where everyone was trying to do human according to false belief
systems. We were taught to expect life to be something that it isn't. It isn't our fault that things
are so screwed up - it is however our responsibility to change the things we can within ourself.
That is why it is so important to do the inner child work so we can learn to have internal
boundaries.
God/Go ddess/Great Spirit, help me to access:
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change (life, other people),
The courage and willingness to change the things I can (me, my own attitudes and
behaviors),
And the wisdom and clarity to know the difference.
(my adapted version of Serenity Prayer)
Serenity is not Freedom from the Storm - it is Peace Amidst the Storm . (unknown)
 Chapter 14
Emotional honesty
" We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change
the way we intellectually view life in order to stop being the victim of
the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious of, our attitudes,
definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for
us and what does not work. We can then start making choices about
whether our intellectual view of life is serving us - or if it is setting us
up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which
it is not." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
In the course of writing a chapter for an online book some years ago, I realized that though I
talked a lot about the importance of emotional honesty in my writing, I probably had not given a
lot of down to earth, easily understood examples of what the term means to me. I wrote the
following for that online book as an example of one of the ways in which I learned about
emotional honesty - and am adding this excerpt from that online book to this book.
It was focusing on the dynamic of expectations that was the key for me in starting to get
emotionally honest with myself. Starting to understand the cause and effect relationship between
my emotional reactions and my expectations was essential for me to start understanding why my
relationship with life was so dysfunctional. I, of course, in my codependency, had swung
between the extremes of feeling, and believing, that it was all my fault because of my shameful
defective being - and being angry and resentful at other people, the system, something or
someone external to my being.
The twelve step recovery application of the disease model in the treatment of alcoholism - the
concept that I had been powerless over my past behaviors because I had a disease - helped me to
take enough shame out of my perspective of myself to start seeing my life with a little bit of
objectivity. The spiritual approach of the twelve step program - that there is a Power greater than
myself that is on my side, The Force is with me - helped me to shift my intellectual paradigm
enough to start to see life as something other than a test I could fail by doing it "wrong." The
definition of insanity that I heard in my first days of recovery - doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results - caused me to start focusing on cause and effect.
It was the concept of powerlessness that led me to start becoming empowered to take
responsibility for my life. Instead of viewing life through a perspective that was black and white
- either I had to be perfect or I was shameful - I was able to start to see what my part had been in
how painful and miserable my life experience had been. How I had some responsibility - how I
was creating cause in my life that had negative consequences - but that it did not mean that there
was something inherently wrong with me. I started seeing that my relationship with life was
dysfunctional, was not working, and that I could take some action to change that relationship.
Insane Expectations - Road Rage
The specific area that opened me up to a new perspective on my insanity, was starting to
understand what my part was in the road rage I was experiencing driving on the streets and
freeways of Los Angeles. Looking at the cause and effect relationship between my expectations
and the rage I was feeling at all the stupid blankety blank drivers in Southern California greatly
accelerated my process of becoming emotionally honest with myself - and opening up my mind
to a Spiritual Awakening, a paradigm shift in consciousness. (In that online book I use a longer
quote from the article below - but since I included that article as an earlier chapter of this book, I
will just use a short reference here.)
"I had to learn to be honest with myself about my expectations - so I could let go of the
ones that were insane (like, everyone is going to drive the way I want them to), and own
my choices - so I could take responsibility for how I was setting myself up to be a victim in
order to change my patterns. Accept the things I cannot change - change the things I can."
- Serenity and Expectations - intimately interrelated
Expecting other drivers to drive the way I think they "should" is absolutely, incredibly insane.
Talk about egotistical and arrogant. I, being an excellent driver myself (how many people do
you know that don't think they are excellent drivers?), knew how people should drive - I was
right and anyone who didn't drive the way I thought they "should" was wrong. I felt extremely,
righteously justified in ranting and raving and cussing out other drivers - sometimes cutting them
off and giving them the finger, while wishing I had a laser mounted on the roof of my car so that
I could just vaporize them. Luckily, this was in the days before people started shooting each
other on the Freeways, or I may not have ever made it into recovery. Actually, this was
something I continued to do into my first few years of recovery.
Detaching enough to look with some objectivity at how I was relating to driving a car in L.
A., allowed me to awaken to how insane it was to allow my emotions to be dictated by such a
ridiculous expectation. Then I was also able to look at my emotional reactions and get in touch
with how dishonest I was being emotionally in relationship to other drivers.
What I came to understand about my emotional experience of driving, was that one of two
things was happening. One was, that other drivers were scaring me. The way they were driving
- either too slow or too fast, cutting me off, swerving back and forth between lanes, etc. - was
causing an actual fear of survival reaction. That kind of primal human emotional response that is
generated by a sudden loud noise or any perception of a threat of physical harm.
When something scared me, and I reacted to the fear with anger - that was emotionally
dishonest. (Getting angry when we are scared is a human survival mechanism - one that has
caused a lot of violence in the history of humanity.) I wasn't owning my true feelings. In
reaction to the jolt of fear energy that shot through me, I became the angry, self righteous victim
of the other drivers "idiocy." The reality that this happened almost every time I drove on the
freeway, just proved to me how many idiots there were out there - because I was relating to the
experience from a victim perspective. It was impossible for me to have any serenity because I
was giving other drivers the power to throw me into anger - which often triggered the suppressed
rage I was carrying at how unfair, unjust, and painful life was.
Once I started to look at what my part was in those emotional reactions, at how I was setting
myself up with my expectations, then I could start to take responsibility for changing that which
I have the power to change. I learned to accept the thing I cannot change - other drivers - and
change the thing I can, my attitude towards other drivers. It was when I realized that this anger
was emotionally dishonest, and what my part in empowering that emotional reaction was, that I
was able to start taking back the power over my feelings that I was giving to those "idiots."
After that, when something another driver did scared me, I would own the fear. I would say
out loud, "That scared me." Then I would say a prayer for the other driver. I would ask that the
other driver be helped to become happy, joyous, and free (knowing that the process of them
opening up to that possibility would involve having their denial ripped away so they were not so
unconscious - a prayer both Spiritually aligned and humanly selfish ;-) - and would offer up the
incident as an amends for one of the thousands of times I had done something while driving that
scared other drivers.
(During my years pursuing an acting career in Hollywood - the role of suffering artist being
perfect for both my alcoholism / addiction and my codependent martyrdom - I lived out the
romantic vision of the struggling actor by making my living by waiting tables and parking cars
and driving a taxi. Driving a cab for several years - often stoned - really built up the number of
driving amends I owe. Seeing those incidents as Karmic - what goes around comes around - also
played a part in helping me to stop buying into the belief I was being unfairly victimized on the
freeway.)
The second thing that I realized was happening, had to do with fear also. This was the fear
that caused me to try to control life. That fear caused me to be very self obsessed. I was getting
angry because those people were getting in my way. The immature, self centered perspective of
life which was dictating my relationship with life, caused me to think and act as if I was the only
person who was important. I reacted out of an ego selfishness that told me these idiots should
get out of my way because I had places to go and things to do that were much more important
than anything they were doing.
This ego driven, self centered fear was directly related - both as cause and effect - to my
unconsciousness, my inability to be present in the moment. I was always caught up in the past or
the future, and related to driving in traffic as a great inconvenience that was slowing me down.
(Which, also, sometimes led to me driving too fast and cutting between lanes.)
The society I grew up in taught me that reaching the destination was what I should focus
upon, was the thing that was vitally important. I was always striving to reach the destination
where I would be fixed, where I would be respected and loved. When I reached that destination
(college degree, fame and fortune, the right relationship, the Academy Award, etc.) then I would
live "happily ever after."
I was forever in pursuit - either of the illusive "happily ever after," or for something to distract
me from, or kill the pain of, feeling defective because I had not already reached the destination. I
was always bouncing between the extremes: trying to figure out how to control my life, how to
do the "right" things, to get "there" - or working on going unconscious (with alcohol, drugs,
obsession, rumination, food, whatever) to escape the pain of being "here." Being "here," being
present in the moment in my own skin, was too painful because I had a dysfunctional
relationship with my own emotions - and was carrying a ton of suppressed grief energy.
And it was so painful emotionally because the subconscious intellectual paradigm that was
dictating my relationship with self and life, was insane, delusional, and dysfunctional. I could
never relax and enjoy life (without some chemical help, either from a substance or from an
illusion/fantasy about love or success that would affect my brain chemistry) because wherever
my life was at that point - according to the critical parent voice in my head - was not good
enough and was my fault, or their fault. I was always feeling like a victim.
I needed to start letting go of that destination programming and start learning how to be in the
moment. To actually be present and conscious while driving my car. (What a concept!) To start
relating to driving as being a perfect part of my journey, a classroom - a wonderful arena for
Spiritual growth.
When the rush hour traffic was disrupting my plans of getting someplace by a certain time, I
would practice my Spiritual program. I would take some deep breaths to get into, and conscious
of, my body. Then I would thank the Universe for this wonderful opportunity to practice
patience and acceptance. I would take some steps to let go of the urgency I felt - the inner child's
fear of doing it "wrong," the feeling that the world would come to an end if things did not go the
way I had planned them. I would remind myself that life was a journey, and that this moment
was a perfect part of that journey. I would talk to my inner children and tell them it was okay -
that if I was going to be late, that was a perfect part of God's plan. I would let go of my picture
of how I thought things have to unfold for me to be okay. I would affirm that I am
Unconditionally Loved and am being guided on my journey.
I would look around me, to see if there was something the Goddess wanted me to see - and
that perhaps, was the reason I was stuck in traffic. I would remind myself that it was possible
that this delay was really a wonderful gift. That perhaps because I was being delayed: I would
not be in a traffic accident later that day: or the timing would be perfect for me to run into
someone I needed to see, that without the delay I would have missed; or something to that
effect.
I would remind myself that I am not in control of life, I am not writing the script, so:
I need to surrender the illusion that I am in control;
remember that I have a Loving Higher Power who is in control;
and be willing to accept reality as it was being presented to me, and take whatever action I
could to make the best of the situation - to align with God's will so I could flow with the
Universal plan. (Work steps 1, 2, & 3.)
That action may just be to relax, be in the moment, and do some prayer and meditation (talk
and listen to The Great Spirit - which can certainly include expressing my irritation for the
delay.) The action may be to figure out an alternate route, get off the freeway at the next
opportunity and take surface streets - but not with that feeling of life and death urgency, rather
with sense of adventure. "This is an interesting twist, let's see how this unfolds."
I started to learn to take responsibility for my feelings - to own the things I have some control
over. Learning how to be emotionally honest with myself allowed me to start becoming
empowered to take responsibility for my life and stop empowering insane expectations. By
focusing on letting go of the belief in victimization that was caused by my attitudes and
perspectives - the mental level of my being - I could greatly decrease the feelings of
victimization, the amount of emotional energy that was being generated on an emotional level. I
still had some feelings of being victimized, but I could be nurturing and Loving in relationship to
those feelings - and set some Loving boundaries with my inner children who were reacting out of
the immediate gratification urgency of a child. (I am just going to die if I don't get what I want!)
I learned to develop an observer self - a mature, recovering adult with a Spiritual perspective -
that could tell the critical parent voice to shut up with all the shame and fear messages, and
assure my inner children that everything was going to be okay because there is a Higher Power
in charge of my life.
(This an excerpt from my online book Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the
Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life - which is book 3 of the Wounded Souls
Trilogy which I will be publishing one of these days. It is now available in an online subsription
area of my site called Dancing in Light.)
 Chapter 15
Internal Boundaries
"It was vitally important for me to learn how to have internal boundaries so that I
could lovingly parent (which, of course, includes setting boundaries for) my inner
children, tell the critical parent/disease voice to shut up, and start accessing the
emotional energy of Truth, Beauty, Joy, Light, and Love. It was by learning internal
boundaries that I could begin to achieve some integration and balance in my life,
and transform my experience of life into an adventure that is enjoyable and exciting
most of the time." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
The first time I am conscious of hearing the term "internal boundaries" was in a Co-
Dependents Anonymous meeting sometime in 1990 or 91. It resonated with me at the time as
being an important term. It wasn’t until a few years later that I really started focusing on the
concept and how it could be applied to recovery from childhood wounding.
Now, as I look back, I can see that internal boundaries were the key from the beginning.
Internal boundaries could also be described as self-discipline or taking responsibility or growing
up. They are what is necessary for any real growth to occur. It is necessary for an alcoholic to
start having internal boundaries in order to stop drinking - for anyone to stop any addictive,
compulsive, or obsessive behavior.
In order to start changing our behavior it is necessary to have an internal boundary with the
child in us who wants immediate gratification/immediate relief from the feelings. In order to
change what we are doing so we can change what we are getting - it is necessary to start having
some internal boundaries with ourselves.
Terms like self-discipline or responsibility carried for me the shame and guilt of the
dysfunctional society I grew up in - whereas internal boundaries was a much cleaner term, and a
much more accurately focused term. I came to focus on internal boundaries in my private
therapy practice and in my personal recovery - and found application of the concept to be
powerful and effective in starting to help myself and others become more integrated and
balanced.
The key, in terms of the concept of internal boundaries as I use it and apply it, is to set those
boundaries from a loving place instead of from a shaming and judgmental place. We all learned
to try to control our behavior and feelings with shame, guilt, and fear because those were the
tools used in our society. The critical parent voice is the part of us that is attempting to have
internal boundaries through shame, criticism, and fear of consequences.
To set internal boundaries from shame and fear is dysfunctional in the long term. When we
try to control our behavior out of shame and fear it doesn't work because we end up rebelling
against that attempted control. We rebel by acting out in the self abusive ways that we are
shaming ourselves for in the first place. Thus the codependent cycle of shame, blame, and self
abuse is fed by the very shame and fear messages that we are using to try to stop it.
The reason we rebel is because when we are shaming and abusing ourselves we are betraying
ourselves - and on some deep level we know that is not right. The rebel in us fights against this
self abuse - but at the same time because we are reacting out of dysfunctional programming, the
rebel within has become allied with the very addictions and dysfunctional behavior we are trying
to stop with the shame. On the highest level the rebel within is trying to get us to be True to our
True Self - but because of our dysfunctional programming, it identifies the ways we learned to
protect and nurture ourselves, the ways we learned to go unconscious to the pain, as our ally
instead of as self abusive behaviors.
Part of the task in recovery, is to learn to realign our defense system with healing and Love
instead of with self destruction. We need to retrain the rebel to fight the good fight on behalf of
what is healthy and aligned with growth - instead of aligned with unconsciousness.
This is part of the process of learning to be our own best friend, our own protector, our own
Loving parent. By learning how to have internal boundaries we can fight the good fight in a way
that serves us instead of hurts us.
When we get into recovery, we are given access to a new tool box. A tool box full of tools
that work in our best interest. A big part of making progress in recovery is transitioning from
using our old tool box - the tools we learned growing to cope with the pain and go unconscious -
to learning how to use the new tools.
This of course, is possible because we are becoming more conscious of our inner process. We
are observing ourselves enough to start understanding our patterns and triggers. As we raise our
consciousness and and become aware of our reactions, we can begin to consciously start setting
internal boundaries out of Love rather than fear and shame.
Those boundaries include: a boundary within the mental to help us tell the critical parent
voice to shut up and start owning our power to reprogram our intellectual paradigm and change
our perspective on our self and life; a boundary between the mental and emotional so that we
can learn to feel and release the feelings while not buying into the false beliefs; a boundary
within the emotional so that we can start discerning with more clarity which emotional reactions
are coming from the wounded parts of us - and which are intuitive messages from our Spirit; and
boundaries that help us separate being from behavior, so that we can start affirming our worth as
beings while recognizing that we can change any behavior that is dysfunctional, any behavior
patterns that do not work to help us be happy and enjoy life.
 Chapter 16
More on Internal Boundaries
The last chapter is the article that I wrote for the series of articles on inner child healing. This
chapter is a combination of a webpage that I posted when I first put up my website in 1998, and a
rough draft I wrote for my journal when I was first attempting to write this book. It describes the
same dynamics for setting internal boundaries that I have been talking about - but says it in some
different ways, from some different angles. I am including it here because I think there is value
in it.
Internal boundaries are the key to Spiritual Integration & Emotional Balance
Loving internal boundaries can allow us to achieve some integration and balance in our
relationships and our life experience.
"I needed to learn how to set boundaries within, both emotionally and mentally by integrating
Spiritual Truth into my process. Because "I feel feel like a failure" does not mean that is the
Truth. The Spiritual Truth is that "failure" is an opportunity for growth. I can set a boundary
with my emotions by not buying into the illusion that what I am feeling is who I am. I can set a
boundary intellectually by telling that part of my mind that is judging and shaming me to shut up,
because that is my disease lying to me. I can feel and release the emotional pain energy at the
same time I am telling myself the Truth by not buying into the shame and judgment."
We need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind.
We can consciously start viewing ourselves from the "witness" perspective.
We all do this anyway but we learned to watch our selves from a place of judgment and shame.
It is time to fire the judge - our critical parent - and choose to replace that judge with our Higher
Self - who is a Loving parent.
We can then intervene in our own process to help us be more Loving to self
What follows is an brief description of the four main relationships internally that are in need
of boundaries. These are levels of our being/dimensions of the self in which the concept of
internal boundaries needs to be applied in order to change our relationship with ourselves into
one that is more Loving.
Following that is a brief description of the benefits derived from focusing on having internal
boundaries in our relationship with these levels of our being.
Within the Mental
Within the mental level of our being it is vital to start having a boundary between the part of
our mind that is reacting to the childhood wounds and programming - the critical parent/disease
voice - and the part of our mind that is telling us our intuitive Truth.
"One of the difficulties in this healing process is that even after we start to awaken to being
butterflies, a part of our mind keeps telling us that we are low, crawling, disgusting creatures.
Taking the power away from that part of us is the key to the healing process. A key to
stopping the war inside. We need to take the shame and judgment out of the process on a
personal level. It is vitally important to stop listening and giving power to that critical place
within us that tells us that we are bad and wrong and shameful.
That "critical parent" voice in our head is the disease lying to us. Any shaming, judgmental
voice inside of us is the disease talking to us - and it is always lying. This disease of
Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides. The voices of the disease that
are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn
right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough,
that we are not doing it right.
We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the
old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self - what some people call "the small quiet
voice."
We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us
and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice. As long as we are judging and shaming
ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating
the life out of us. Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself - it is self-perpetuating.
This healing is a long gradual process - the goal is progress, not perfection. What we are
learning about is unconditional Love. Unconditional Love means no judgment, no shame."
It is also vital to start changing the dysfunctional, false, black & white beliefs, attitudes, and
definitions that are dictating our emotional reactions to life. Our attitudes, beliefs, and
definitions determine our perspective and expectations which in turn dictate our emotional
relationship with everything - with ourselves, with life, with other people. It is very important to
start taking the power away from those false beliefs in order to start changing our relationship
with self and life.
"Perspective is a key to Recovery. I had to change and enlarge my perspectives of myself and
my own emotions, of other people, of God and of this life business. Our perspective of life
dictates our relationship with life. We have a dysfunctional relationship with life because we
were taught to have a dysfunctional perspective of this life business, dysfunctional definitions of
who we are and why we are here.
It is kind of like the old joke about three blind men describing an elephant by touch. Each one
of them is telling his own Truth, they just have a lousy perspective. Codependence is all about
having a lousy relationship with life, with being human, because we have a lousy perspective on
life as a human."
This is what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about!
Owning our power to be a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with ourselves
.
We can change the way we think.
We need to detach from our wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us.
Between Mental and Emotional
Thoughts are not feelings and feelings are not thoughts - it is vital to start relating to our
thoughts and our feelings separately. There are feelings attached to thoughts and thoughts
attached to feelings but they are two separate parts of our being. They are intimately
interconnected of course, but it is very important that we be able to start seeing clearly the
difference between them. Part of the dysfunction is due to enmeshment between the mental and
emotional levels of our being. Having a clear understanding of the difference between thoughts
and emotions is vital in order to practice discernment and own our power to make choices about
how we want to respond to life instead of unconsciously reacting our of the old wounds and old
tapes.
The disease has power when we believe the critical parent voice.
When we are feeling something "negative" and buying into the negative messages is when we go
into the downward spiral - when we crash and burn, go into despair and depression.
(Emotions have a purpose, they are not negative or positive in and of themselves. It is our
reaction to them, our relationship to them, that gives them value - ie, sadness is very positive
when we are honoring our emotions by grieving - even if it doesn't feel that way.)
 "If I am feeling like a "failure" and giving power to the "critical parent" voice within that is
telling me that I am a failure - then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming
myself for being me. In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own
perpetrator - and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious
(food, alcohol, sex, etc.) Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering
and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse.
By learning to set a boundary with and between our emotional truth, what we feel, and our
mental perspective, what we believe - in alignment with the Spiritual Truth we have integrated
into the process - we can honor and release the feelings without buying into the false beliefs."
The child in us has a reason to feel like a "failure."
Because our parents weren't capable of Loving themselves or of emotional honesty - we felt like
there was something wrong with us.
We felt responsible for the deprivation or abuse or abandonment that we experienced.
"The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt
responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were
done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this
transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and
say, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just a little kid.""
Within the Emotional
In order to start responding to life honestly in the moment from an mature adult perspective it
is very important to start separating out the emotional reactions of the child from the emotional
messages from our intuition. The reason that we have internal conflict is because we have
different parts of our beings reacting in very different ways. The romantic within does not want
to set boundaries in an intimate relationship for fear of making the other person angry enough to
abandon us - at the same time that other parts of us (the rebel perhaps or the angry child) wants
to push the person away so that we don't get hurt. It is very important to start understanding
where these conflicting messages are coming from so that we can make choices about which
parts of us we want to be in charge of our life.
"The next time something does not go the way you wanted it to, or just when you are feeling
low, ask yourself how old you are feeling. What you might find is that you are feeling like a bad
little girl, a bad little boy, and that you must have done something wrong because it feels like you
are being punished.
Just because it feels like you are being punished does not mean that is the Truth. Feelings are
real - they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body - but they are not necessarily
fact.
What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with
either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital "T" - especially when we our
reacting out of an age of our inner child.
If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen,
then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are
not being in the now.
When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or
distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted.
When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may
have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in
the moment."
 Between Being and Behavior
Toxic shame is what cripples us emotionally and causes us to be our own worst enemy. It is
vital to stop giving the shame we feel the power to dominate our relationship with ourselves.
The more we can start integrating the belief that we are Spiritual Beings having a human
experience into our relationship with ourselves the easier it becomes to start accepting our human
limitations.
As long as we are expecting ourselves to be superhuman, to be perfect, we are set up to fail.
As long as we unconsciously or consciously give power to the toxic shame we feel deep within
we will never succeed in learning to Love our self. It is very important to start seeing our being
as having Divine worth and our behavior as being the result of our humanness and our wounds in
order to forgive and Love ourselves.
[When I use the term "judge," I am talking about making judgments about our own or other
people's beings based on behavior. In other words, I did something bad therefore I am a bad
person; I made a mistake therefore I am a mistake. That is what toxic shame is all about:
feeling that something is wrong with our being, that we are somehow defective because we have
human drives, human weaknesses, human imperfections.
There may be behavior in which we have engaged that we feel ashamed of but that does not
make us shameful beings We may need to make judgments about whether our behavior is
healthy and appropriate but that does not mean that we have to judge our essential self, our
being, because of the behavior. Our behavior has been dictated by our disease, by our
childhood wounds; it does not mean that we are bad or defective as beings. It means that we are
human, it means that we are wounded.
It is important to start setting a boundary between being and behavior. All humans have
equal Divine value as beings - no matter what our behavior. Our behavior is learned (and/or
reactive to physical or physiological conditions). Behavior, and the attitudes that dictate
behavior, are adopted defenses designed to allow us to survive in the Spiritually hostile,
emotionally repressive, dysfunctional environments into which we were born.]
We need to have internal Boundaries with and between the emotional and mental
components of our being so that we can:
- feel our feelings without being the victim of them or victimizing others with them;
- achieve some balance between feeling and thinking, intuitive and rational;
- know which feelings are telling us the Truth and which are reactions to old wounds so that we
can discern between emotional honesty and indulgence.
Boundaries:
- with the disease/critical parent voice so that we can stop giving power to the judgment and
shame on a personal level & stop letting our own mind be our worst enemy;
- between being and behavior so that we can take responsibility without blaming ourselves;
- with our inner children to allow us to Lovingly parent and set boundaries for the wounded
children within which allows us to own the magical, spontaneous, creative, Spiritual child inside.
Boundaries which:
- allow us call on the Power Within any time, any place, that we need it;
- allow us Integrate the Truth of an Unconditionally Loving God-Force/Goddess Energy/Great
Spirit into our experience of the process so that instead of just knowing Spiritual Truth
intellectually we can start feeling it emotionally;
- allow us to relax and enjoy life more.
"It was vitally important for me to learn how to have internal boundaries so that I could
lovingly parent (which, of course, includes setting boundaries for) my inner children, tell the
critical parent/disease voice to shut up, and start accessing the emotional energy of Truth,
Beauty, Joy, Light, and Love. It was by learning internal boundaries that I could begin to
achieve some integration and balance in my life, and transform my experience of life into an
adventure that is enjoyable and exciting most of the time."
 Chapter 17
Inner Child Healing Formula
At this point in this inner child healing book, I am going to share a handout that I use for my
Intensive Training Workshop of the basic outline for the formula for inner child healing that I
teach people because it feels like it would be helpful at this point.
A. Development of detached, objective, observer / witness perspective
1. Learn to start being more present in the moment and see ourselves more clearly and
compassionately
2. Start setting Internal Boundaries.
a. Within the mental
b. Between the mental and emotional
c. Within the emotional components of our being
Boundaries Within the mental
The negative programming of the critical parent voice is so powerful and entrenched that we
cannot really rid ourselves of it. Unfortunately, it is not like software that we can delete and
replace with new software - Love 4.0. It is wired into the hardware / our default programming.
So, what we need to do is tape over the old tapes. Positive affirmations are the single most
powerful tool that I have found for doing this. We need to do positive affirmations to reprogram
our subconscious intellectual paradigm. The times we need to do them the most are the times
when we least feel any belief in them. Once we start learning how to develop a detached
observer perspective so that we can start setting internal boundaries, then positive affirmations
are a very powerful tool in helping us change our ego programming.
1. Start setting boundaries with the Critical Parent Voice / dysfunctionally programmed part
of our mind.

2. Start changing the negative, fear and shame based ego programming (that has been
dictating our relationship with self and life) to more positive programming with positive
affirmations.

3. Start recognizing the four most prominent types of messages coming from the critical
parent voice so that we can stop giving them so much power
a. Shame messages
b. Fear messages
c. Black and White thinking (either / or, right or wrong, success or failure, always or never,
etc.)
d. Messages of "have to", "should", "must", "ought to", etc.
Boundary between mental and emotional
The boundary between mental and emotional allows us to start relating to thoughts and
feelings as two different types of energy. This is necessary in order to start having a choice
where we focus our mind at the same time we are being compassionate for our own emotional
wounds and starting to recognize which feelings are telling us the Truth, and which ones are
causing us to impose our emotional reality from childhood onto what is happening today - so that
we can stop allowing the emotional wounds from the past to define our reality for us.
Some people use positive affirmations and Spiritual Truth as a way of denying the feelings -
that is not healthy or healing. By focusing on stopping giving power to the critical parent voice,
we create a safe space to relate to the feelings.
1. Start having a choice where we focus our mind (to stop allowing the critical parent voice
to interpret our feelings and define our reality for us) at the same time we are learning to
have compassion for our emotional wounds.
2. Start having the capacity to choose to focus on the part of the glass that is full instead of
the part that is empty - at the same time we do not deny, or judge and shame ourselves for,
the part that is empty. This gives us the choice to have some power over the quality of our
life experience, at the same time we are honoring our feelings and learning discernment
internally.
Boundaries within the emotional
The boundaries within the emotional allow us to start recognizing the reactions from old
wounds / emotional buttons / inner child places within us - so that we can start understanding
more clearly the cause of our behavior patterns and issues. By learning to be a little detached
from our reactions we can start to focus on healing the emotional wounds and taking power away
from those buttons. We do this by building relationships with the different wounds / inner
children so that we can learn to have compassion for, and forgive our self for, the things that
happened in childhood that were not our fault. As we build a more compassionate relationships
with those wounded parts of our self, we can also start setting Loving boundaries so that the
desperately needy, lonely, deprived / angry parts of us don't cause us to behave in ways that
sabotage our life and relationships. A very important part of taking power away from those
childhood wounds is also learning to release the grief and anger energy that we are carrying that
is causing those buttons to have so much power.
1. Detached perspective to start recognizing - and learning how to have some power over -
reactions from the past.
2. Detective work in tracking down the causes of emotional wounds.
3. Building relationships with different ages of inner child - so that we can start having
compassion for our own wounds and start setting Loving boundaries with inner children.
4. Grief and anger work to start relieving pressure / taking power away from emotional
buttons / wounds.
Below is a quote from my August 2006 Update Newsletter in which I am talking about this
Intensive Training seminar.
"As I tell people all the time, there is nothing wrong with who we are - we are Spiritual
Beings having a human experience - it is our relationship with our self, with life, with being
human and relating to other humans, that got so messed up in our childhood. We have the
power to change our relationship with self and life - which changes how we relate to others.
That is what this work is all about - becoming empowered to become positive co-creators in
our own lives so that we can transform our life adventure into an exciting adventure instead
of a pain-filled, fear-driven, heart-breaking, endurance contest. Learning how to be our own
best friend instead of always feeling like we are our own worst enemy, feeling like the
victim of our own thoughts and feelings. There is a lot of information involved - highly
concentrated - because there are multiple levels, facets, and dimensions involved in our
relationship with self, life, and everything in life. But once we make a shift in perspective,
that information starts falling in place in a logical, rational way - the pieces of the puzzle
become more visible because we are viewing the whole experience of life, and our
relationship with self, in a larger context. . . . . When we stop viewing life from the
emotional perspective of a wounded child, from the perspective of the dysfunctional
programming our ego adapted to help us survive - then we can get more clearly in touch
with our Spiritual Self. And what I teach people is a practical, powerful, effective formula
for opening up to remembering, and accessing, intuitive Truth." - Joy2MeU August 2006
Update Newsletter
 Chapter 18
Inner Child Healing Paradigm
"As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are giving power to the disease. We are
feeding the monster that is devouring us.
We need to take responsibility without taking the blame. We need to own and honor the
feelings without being a victim of them.
We need to rescue and nurture and Love our inner children - and STOP them from
controlling our lives. STOP them from driving the bus! Children are not supposed to drive, they
are not supposed to be in control.
And they are not supposed to be abused and abandoned. We have been doing it backwards.
We abandoned and abused our inner children. Locked them in a dark place within us. And at the
same time let the children drive the bus - let the children's wounds dictate our lives." -
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
The above passage from my book is one that I really like. It says a great deal in just a few
words. It speaks to the balance that is the goal of the healing process. Take responsibility for
my side of the street without blaming - me or anyone else. Feel my feelings without letting
them run my life. Learn to have Love and compassion for the child that I was, at the same time
I take control of my inner process in a Loving way by not continuing to give power over how I
live today to my past emotional wounds.
In order to become empowered and stop being the victim of our self it is very important to
recognize the different parts of ourselves so that we can set boundaries out of the adult that has
knowledge, skills, and resources, the adult that is on a Spiritual/healing path. We can access our
Higher Self to be a Loving Parent to the wounded parts of our self. We have a Healer Within us.
An Inner Mentor/Teacher/Wise Wizard that can guide us if we have the ears to hear - the
consciousness to become aware. That Adult within us can set a boundary with the Critical
Parent to stop the shame and judgment and can then Lovingly set boundaries with whatever part
of us is reacting so that we can find some balance in the now - not overreact or under react out of
out fear of overreacting.
We all have a whole family (seems like a community sometimes) of wounded components
that make up our being. Having a lot of conflicting feelings within is not a sign that we are crazy
- it is a sign that we have different parts of us that want different things/are reacting to different
impulses. The more we get aware of those parts of us the more we can stop being an
unconscious victim of those conflicting feelings.
And what is very important - and the biggest difference between the techniques that I have
developed and teach from so many others - is to build a Loving ongoing relationship with those
wounded parts of us. Inner child healing is not something that we do and then move on with our
lives. Our wounded inner children are going to be with us for the rest of our lives. The wounds
are not going to go away - they have progressively less power as we heal - but they do not go
away. So it is important for us to recognize what part of us is reacting so that we can respond to
that wounded part of our self in a Loving, patient, and mature way when one of our buttons is
pushed/wounds is gouged.
This work is about becoming an integrated, whole, mature, adult person in action, in the way
we live our lives and respond to life events and other people. The only way we can be whole is
to own all of the parts of ourselves. By owning all the parts we can then have choices about how
we respond to life. By denying, hiding, and suppressing parts of ourselves we doom ourselves to
live life in reaction.
The technique that I have found so valuable in this healing process is to relate to the different
wounded parts of our self as different ages of the inner child. These different ages of the child
may be literally tied to an event that happened at that age - i.e. when I was 7 I tried to commit
suicide. Or the age of the child might be a symbolic designator for a pattern of abuse/deprivation
that occurred throughout our childhood - i.e. the 9 year old within me feels completely
emotionally isolated and desperately needy/lonely, a condition which was true for most of my
childhood and not tied to any specific incident (that I know of) that happened when I was 9.
We can get in touch with the feelings of an age of our inner child without having any specific
memories to explain those feelings. We can get in touch with feelings that are preverbal from
early childhood - or even feelings from the womb. For many of us our wounding began in the
womb, where we incubated in our mother’s fear and shame or became addicted to adrenaline
because of what our mothers were experiencing.
As long as we are reacting unconsciously out of a mass of unresolved grief and rage, it is
nearly impossible to have any clarity about our inner process. It is vitally important to start
separating out the different wounded parts of us, so that we can start healing the individual
wounds/issues. That is the way we start to take power away from those wounds.
The inner child healing paradigm is a structure that facilitates healing. We all had our
relationships with ourselves fractured into pieces as we were growing up. It is very important to
start bringing some peace to our inner process by owning those different wounded parts of us.
Those different wounded parts of us - which involve both repressed emotional energy and
frozen splinters of ego - are what I refer to as our inner children.
In the next few chapters, I will be talking about getting in touch with and building a
relationship with, the different wounded parts of us. We need to shine light into the darkness in
order to stop giving power to the past. The inner child healing paradigm is the most powerful
technique that I have ever encountered for facilitating the healing of our emotional wounds.
 Chapter 19
Internal Census
"We have a feeling place (stored emotional energy), and an
arrested ego-state within us for an age that relates to each of those
developmental stages. Sometimes we react out of our three-year-old,
sometimes out of our fifteen-year-old, sometimes out of the seven-
year-old that we were.
If you are in a relationship, check it out the next time you have a fight: Maybe you are both
coming out of your twelve-year-olds. If you are a parent, maybe the reason you have a problem
sometimes is because you are reacting to your six-year-old child out of the six-year-old child
within you. If you have a problem with romantic relationships maybe it is because your fifteen-
year-old is picking your mates for you.
The next time something does not go the way you wanted it to, or just when you are feeling
low, ask yourself how old you are feeling. What you might find is that you are feeling like a bad
little girl, a bad little boy, and that you must have done something wrong because it feels like you
are being punished." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Often in this book, I speak about the importance of becoming aware, of raising our level of
consciousness. It is vitally important to start observing our own internal process in order to start
becoming aware of when we are reacting.
Once we get aware that we are reacting, then we can start figuring out where our reactions are
coming from - do an internal census as it were. Anytime we have a strong emotional reaction to
something or someone - when a button is pushed and there is a lot of energy attached, a lot of
intensity - that means there are unresolved emotional wounds from the past involved.
It is the inner child who feels panic or terror or rage or hopelessness or desperate loneliness,
not the adult. The more we can get aware of our "buttons", our emotional wounds, the more we
can have some Loving control over them instead of judging and shaming ourselves for our
reactions.
When we have a strong reaction to outer stimuli - other people or life events - it is important
to learn to separate the inner child’s reaction from our adult reaction. I usually figure that about
80% of a strong reaction is about old unresolved issues and only 20% about what is actually
happening now. Until we start separating now from the past, we are incapable of responding to
what is happening now in an age appropriate manner. It is impossible to be present in the now
and respond honestly to what is happening if we are not conscious of how much inner child
reaction is involved.
As I described earlier - we need to start being a detective, observing ourselves and asking
ourselves: Where is that reaction / thought / feeling coming from? Why am I feeling this way?
What does this remind me of from my past? How old do I feel right now? How old did I act
when that happened?
We need to ask ourselves and then listen for an intuitive answer. When we get that answer
then we can track down why the child was feeling that way. What was happening when I was __
? (whatever age pops to mind.) What house were we living in? What grade was I in school?
Was that before a certain event happened or after?
It is very important to get in touch with the different ages of the child within because the
emotions of the toddler are very different from the feelings of the teenager. A five year olds
anger is a different kind of energy from a twelve year olds. When the primary button that is
being pushed is the twelve year olds, it is important for us to recognize that so we can deal with
it appropriately.
I believe that we have at least one age of the inner child that relates to each developmental
stage. We also have archetypal aspects of our personality. The archetypal facets - such as the
rebel or the maiden, etc. - can be very tied into a specific age or relate strongly to several ages.
For instance, we all have a romantic within. I have found that there are usually at least two ages
that are tied to the romantic. A young child - around 5 or 6 - who is magical thinking, who
believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and in happily-ever-after. Then there is a teenage
romantic part of us who wants to find our mate, live out our fairy tale.
The romantic within is a wonderful, magical part of us - the idealistic, dreamer, lover, creative
part of us that is a wonderful asset when kept in balance - and can lead to disastrous
consequences when allowed to be in control of choices. In our unconsciousness, many of us
swung between the extremes of letting the romantic within be in control of our choices - in
which case we cast the wrong person in the part of our Prince or Princess and then because we
wanted the fairy tale so badly we denied any evidence to the contrary and ended up heartbroken -
and reacting to our heartbreak by slamming the romantic into an inner dungeon and believing we
will never find love.
It is important to get in touch with our inner romantic so that we can have Loving boundaries
that do not allow the romantic to lead us into dysfunctional relationships with unavailable
people, at the same time we do not have to disown or deny this part of us.
I will sometimes refer to those inner child place (as well as the archetypal aspects of our
psyche) as personas. They are not actual personalities. People who suffer from multiple
personality disorder/defense are beings who were pushed farther than the rest of us. The
wounding process involves the same basic dynamic - in fact, I learned a lot about my own inner
process by studying cases of multiple personality - but multiples were broken in harsher ways
(usually in an intentional and/or ritual abuse manner that amounted to torture.)
In the next few chapters I will give some examples of how to get in touch with our inner
children - and how to start building Loving relationships with those parts of our self.
 Chapter 20
Building Relationships Within
"The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt
responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were
done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this
transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and
say, 'It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just a little kid.'" -
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
It is impossible to Truly love the adult that we are without owning the child that we were. In
order to do that we need to detach from our inner process (and stop the disease from abusing us)
so that we can have some objectivity and discernment that will allow us to have compassion for
our own childhood wounds. Then we need to grieve those wounds and own our right to be angry
about what happened to us in childhood - so that we can Truly know in our gut that it wasn't our
fault, we were just innocent little kids .
By searching out, getting acquainted with, owning the feelings of, and building a relationship
with, these different emotional wounds/ages of the inner child, we can start being a loving parent
to ourselves instead of an abusive one. We can have boundaries with ourselves that allow us to:
take responsibility for being a co-creator of our life (grow up); protect our inner children from
the perpetrator within/critical parent (be loving to ourselves); stop letting our childhood wounds
control our life (take loving action for ourselves); and own the Truth of who we really are
(Spiritual Beings) so that we can open up to receive the Love and Joy we deserve.
As we start discovering our emotional wounds, we can start building a relationship with those
wounded parts of us. What I have seen work in a very powerfully transformational way, is to
actually talk to the children within us. It sounds kind of crazy - but it works.
I wrote a column 5 years ago called Union Within (in 1996.) In it I describe this process
briefly:
"The despairing seven year old is always close by, waiting in the wings, and when life
seems too hard, when I am exhausted or lonely or discouraged - when impending doom or
financial tragedy seem to be imminent - then I hear from him. Sometimes the first words I
hear in the morning are his voice within me saying 'I just want to die.'
The feeling of wanting to die, of not wanting to be here, is the most overwhelming, most
familiar feeling in my emotional inner landscape. Until I started doing my inner child
healing I believed that who I really was at the deepest, truest part of my being, was that
person who wanted to die. I thought that was the true 'me'. Now I know that is just a
small part of me. When that feeling comes over me now I can say to that seven year old, 'I
am really sorry you feel that way Robbie. You had very good reason to feel that way. But
that was a long time ago and things are different now. I am here to protect you now and I
Love you very much. We are happy to be alive now and we are going to feel Joy today, so
you can relax and this adult will deal with life.'"
I mention this as an example of the kinds of things that I learned to say to my inner child - but
also to make the point that I haven't heard the voice saying 'I want to die' in quite a few years
now. That was an almost daily voice in my life - and it represented a belief that I would never
have peace in my life until death. That was an ingrained part of my perspective on life that
greatly influenced my relationship with life. Through doing the inner child work, I have
eliminated that negative belief from my programming. That is a miracle. I believe that it is
actually possible to change the neural pathways in our brain through positive affirmations and
self talk.
I had to make a real effort for many years to gradually take the power away from that
programming - and then eliminate it all together. I did not know that I would be able to
eliminate it. I just kept working on taking the power away from that wounded part of me that
tried to commit suicide when I was seven.
One of the ways that I took power away from that message, was to focus attention on not
letting the old tape run. I would try to catch the thought before it was complete. As I mentioned
in the article, the thought would come as I was waking up in the morning. As I was coming to
consciousness, that wounded part of me would react to the burden of realizing that I was going to
be alive another day, with the plaintive groan of 'I just want to die.'
Because of the effort I was putting into my recovery, I developed a recovery voice that was
poised to pounce on any negative thoughts or spoken words as soon as I became aware of them.
As I was waking up in the morning, the want to die thought would start surfacing and the
recovery voice would spring into action inserting 'live' into the sentence to replace ‘die.’
The last time I ever heard from that seven year old's voice, the recovery voice in me actually
burst into song. The old tape started in 'I just want to . .' - and the recovery voice came in singing
'Live a little, love a little, . .' followed by a bunch of ‘do, dahs’ because I didn’t know any more
of the words of the song. It is not unusual in the last few years for that recovery voice of mine to
start out the morning with a song. (I must admit, I was a bit taken back when it started out one
morning with 'I feel pretty, Oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and wise.' - kind of disconcerting
that one. ;-)
This inner child healing does work. It takes effort and focus and years of recovery sometimes
- but it does work!
 Chapter 21
Setting internal boundaries
"It was vitally important for me to learn how to have internal boundaries so that I could
lovingly parent (which, of course, includes setting boundaries for) my inner children, tell the
critical parent/disease voice to shut up, and start accessing the emotional energy of Truth,
Beauty, Joy, Light, and Love.” - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
I have had many people ask me what I mean when I refer to setting boundaries for my inner
children. People who have asked for examples, for how it looks on a practical level to set a
boundary with an inner child.
In 1998 or 99, when I first had a crude web site of 30 or so pages of content explaining my
beliefs and my perspective on both the disease and the recovery process, I would get e-mails
from people asking me for further explanations. I started getting so many e-mails that answering
them was taking too much time and energy. I knew that I had to take some action to take care of
myself and to set some boundaries about where I expended my time and energy.
One day while I was working on a reply to a person who had written saying that it would
really help to have an concrete and explicit example of how to set a boundary with an inner
child, an interesting thing happened that is a perfect illustration of how my process works - and
how I apply 12 step principles in my process.
I was trying to figure out a simple, easy way to explain the process, and my writing just was
not flowing. So I gave up.
Actually what I did was work my program. I have found that when I am feeling blocked,
when I catch myself trying to force the process when it is not flowing, that I need to let go. I
needed to let go of my belief that I had to answer that question right there and then. I needed to
accept that it was not flowing and be willing to let go of what I wanted to happen so that I could
be open to seeing what the Universe had in store for me.
So, I closed my word processing document, took a deep breath and asked for guidance. This
has been a very valuable tool for me in my process. I let go of my expectations, my agenda, take
a deep breath to get myself into my body in the moment. Once I am present in the now - instead
of caught up in trying to control how my day is unfolding - then I will get a message from the
Universe about what my Higher Power’s plan is for the next thing for me to do.
In this case, I noticed a book and tape set that I had packaged ready to ship off to England.
So, I decided to take a walk to the post office to mail the package and check my mail. As I was
walking to the post office I was observing what was going on around me and within me - just
being in the moment observing.
I got an idea during that walk to start posting question and answer pages on my site. Then I
could address the questions in a way that would be helpful to more than just the person who had
asked - thus utilizing my time and energy in a more efficient manner.
As the idea appeared and took shape in my mind, a perfect example of setting some internal
boundaries took place in my inner process. I got the answer to the dilemma about how to take
care of myself in relationship to e-mail questions - and internally then had to set some boundaries
in relationship to the idea. (This process is so fascinating and magical sometimes, I really Love it
- most of the time.)
So, I am walking to the post office exploring the idea of this new type of web page and the
following interaction took place within me (in my inner reality these are fleeting thoughts rather
than a formal conversation.)
 ego/critical parent: "Your giving away all of this information for free and meanwhile you
can't even pay your rent. That’s really stupid"
Magical thinking inner child (who believes in fairy tales): "Oh, but we're going to be
rewarded. All kinds of good things are going to happen - including getting a lot of money."
Adult on Spiritual Path: "Now, settle down you two. In the first place, it is very important
and wonderful to give away what I have been given - that is how to keep the energy flowing -
and that is what works, it is what I need to do for me/us. And I am going to do it because it feels
good, it feels right - like the next thing in front of me to do. We'll worry about the rent when it is
time to pay the rent - for today, for this moment, we will do what feels right for today. And I
need to tell you that our reward may just be to feel good about what we're doing - and if that is
all there is, that is still a wonderful gift. On top of that we are getting positive feedback from all
over - and that is a great bonus. There may never be a lot of money, but that is not important.
There is enough money for today. And we are very blessed to have something to do today that
is fulfilling and makes us happy."
So I set a boundary with the critical parent by not buying into the criticism, I set a boundary
with my inner child by not building up expectations of some kind of reward, and I work my
recovery program by focusing on the half of the glass that is full (my needs that have been met)
and being grateful for the gifts I have been given, instead of allowing the disease to focus on fear
and scarcity, on the half that is empty (my wants that have not been met.)
The purpose of doing the inner child healing work is to improve the quality of my life today -
not to reach a destination or reward. Today, I have choices about how I respond to my internal
process. Today, I can let go of the future and the past for this moment, which gives me the
freedom to be happy and joyous in the moment for quite a few of the moments of my day.
 Chapter 22
Some Inner Children that need Boundaries
"The next time something does not go the way you wanted it to, or just when you are feeling
low, ask yourself how old you are feeling. What you might find is that you are feeling like a bad
little girl, a bad little boy, and that you must have done something wrong because it feels like you
are being punished.
Just because it feels like you are being punished does not mean that is the Truth. Feelings are
real - they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body - but they are not necessarily fact.
What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with
either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital "T" - especially when we our
reacting out of an age of our inner child.
If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen,
then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are
not being in the now.
When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or
distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted.
When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may
have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in
the moment.
In order to start be-ing in the moment in a healthy, age-appropriate way it is necessary to
heal our "inner child." The inner child we need to heal is actually our "inner children" who
have been running our lives because we have been unconsciously reacting to life out of the
emotional wounds and attitudes, the old tapes, of our childhoods." - Codependence: The Dance
of Wounded Souls
Below is a list, and short description, of some of the normal wounded inner parts of self that it
is very helpful to get aware of, cultivate a Loving relationship with, and learn how to set
boundaries for - we all have some aspect of most all of these within us.
King/Queen Baby
The part of us that wants instant gratification - "I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT
NOW!" (often closely allied/associated with the addict, the rebel, and/or the angry teenager.)
As a young child we had no discernment or realistic perspective (the part of the brain that
governs these things does not develop until around 7 - the "Age of Reason"). A small child has
no concept of time (go for a long ride with a 5 or 6 year old and count how many times the little
person asks "Are we there yet?") or of consequences in any type of logical way, and will eat lots
of candy over and over again. A small child can be beaten (physically and/or emotionally)
enough to make them react out of fear of taking action but that is not the same as logically
thinking if I eat a lot of candy I will get sick - they are not capable of having this type of
intellectual perspective on delayed gratification. (Just like a puppy can be abused to the point it
cowers in fear, so too do many of us have a cowering little child inside of us whose spirit was
broken with the "rod" to make us behave.)
This part of us that desires instant gratification is often the component of our being that we let
take charge when we have been doing the Codependent 3 step of Shame, Suffering and Self-
Abuse (Victim, Perpetrator, Rescuer internal cycle.) That is when we are judging and shaming
our self (being our own perpetrator by giving power to the Critical Parent/disease voice) until we
feel very victimized and are suffering so much that we rescue ourselves by nurturing ourselves
out of the old instant gratification ways we learned to go unconscious (alcohol, food, sex,
fantasy, etc.)
It is important to remember that young children are completely in the moment and feel things
very BIG - it feels like life and death to that little kid to get the candy or the toy or whatever. But
10 minutes later the child can be very happy doing something different - rather they got the toy
or not. The energy behind/power of/"big"ness of the feeling does not equal the importance of it
in the reality of our adult life this moment, today - but if we are not able to be objective about our
feelings we cannot discern that this is a child's feeling, and we react to it as if it were our reality.
Serious Child
Almost the opposite extreme from the indulgent King/Queen Baby is the young child
component in the person who never got to be a child - who had to be an adult from early age (I
have had clients who were cleaning the house and cooking the family breakfast as early as 4
years old - mind boggling!) Very serious, over responsible, controlling, with a very black and
white/right and wrong perspective of life - this child has no idea how to relax and enjoy life -
fun, playful, and frivolous are foreign concepts and shameful notions.
This is a child who has to be taught how to play, and talked through letting go of the
seriousness. The cowering, very wounded (inside emotionally - on the outside they usually look
great, very good at keeping up appearances) child, who got the message that he/she is only
worthy and lovable by taking care of everyone else, has a very hard time relaxing.
The type of message she/he needs to hear from the adult within would go something like this:
"It's Ok honey. You don't have to be working or producing all of the time. It is important for
you to play also. You are Unconditionally Loved no matter what you are doing. I Love you and
am here to take care of the adult stuff. You are a kid - it is your job is to play and have fun. I am
very proud of you for all you have done but now is the time to 'be' not 'do.' Just feel the sunshine
on your face and breathe. Run and yell and swing on the swings. You are beautiful and perfect
just as you are, and I Love you very much."
A good thing for this child to do is skip. I find it is very hard to be serious and skip at the
same time. Being silly is very good for us. One of the closing prayers for my inner child
healing/grief groups is to do the "Hokey Pokey" - which is a silly dance that many American
children learned when little. (I don't know if they do the Hokey Pokey in other parts of the world
- maybe some of you can let me know. The point is to do something silly and pointless that
helps us to not take ourselves so seriously.)
Many of us swing from indulging in instant gratification to mercilessly beating ourselves up
out of the right and wrong belief system. Most all of us have some aspect of the serious child
wound because of being raised in societies that define success and worth by doing and achieving.
It may not be evident in our lives because many of us reacted to this programming by going to
the opposite extreme of seeming to be irresponsible and a "failure" in society's/our parent's eyes.
The reason we reacted in that way was because we didn't think we were good enough to
achieve/live up to the expectations. At some point in my late teens I decided that I could never
be "perfect" in the way I was supposed to be - so I might as well go to the other extreme.
"We may never be a success according to our parents or societies dysfunctional definition
of success - but that is because our heart and soul do not resonate with those definitions, so
that kind of success would be a betrayal of ourselves. We need to consciously change our
definitions so that we can stop judging ourselves against someone else's screwed up value
system." - Learning to Love our self
The core issue to be worked on with this part of us (all of the parts of us for that matter) that
was wounded by a society that is based on dysfunctional belief system that says we have to earn
love, respect, and worth by producing/being human doings - is opening to receive. We all have a
part of us that doesn't feel worthy to receive. Our worth is not dependent upon anything that we
do or how we look or how much money we have, etc. - we have worth because we are Spiritual
Beings having a human experience - we are part of the ONENESS that is the God-
Force/Goddess Energy/Great Spirit - We are children of The Holy Mother Source Energy. This
is where Positive affirmations about our inherent worth and value are very important.
The Rebel
Wonderful, strong part of us that has helped us to survive - and needs to be honored and
praised for that - but can get us in trouble because he/she wants to rebel against any advice or
direction including good/healthy feedback, and can be very stubborn. Often is the source of "I'll
show you, I'll get me" behavior.
It is very important to learn to set boundaries with the rebel within in order to learn how to
surrender/let go/accept the Divine Plan for our lives. The faster that I have been able to learn to
let go of my will/my picture of how things "should be" - and surrender to accepting the
Universe's plan the more I get to follow the carrots/the messages and avoid the stick.
"The way I think of it is that my Higher Power works with the carrot and stick approach: like
a mule driver trying to get a mule moving, he can either dangle a carrot in front of the mule and
get the mule moving after the carrot, or he can take a stick and beat him until he gets moving.
It is a lot easier on me to follow the carrots that my Higher Power dangles in front of me than
to force the Universe to use a stick to get me moving. Either way I am going to get to where the
Universe wants me - but the carrot method is a lot easier on me.
The more that I do my healing, the clearer I get on receiving the messages - the more I get to
follow the carrots instead of experiencing the stick. The dance of Recovery is a process of
starting to Love ourselves enough to start changing life into an easier, more enjoyable
experience."
On the other extreme are people with a fear of owning their own anger who shut down to the
rebel within and then have a very difficult time setting boundaries so they end up being a
doormat. These people need to own and empower the rebel within to help them stand up for
themselves. This, of course, is tied in with believing that we are worthy of protection - which
means we need to have compassion for that child that we were and stop blaming everything on
ourselves/being the victim of our childhood wounds.
Romantic
Idealistic, dreamer, lover, creative part of us that is a wonderful asset when kept in balance -
can lead to disastrous consequences when allowed to be in control of choices. Not good on
taking responsible action would rather day dream about fairy tales and fantasies than deal with
reality/grow up.
We often swing between:
Letting the romantic be in control - in which case the romantic wants the fairy tale so badly
that he/she inevitably ignores all the red flags and warning signals that tell us very clearly
that this is not the "right" person to cast in the part of the prince or princess;
and
Shutting down completely to this part of us because of the broken hearts we have
experienced - throwing the romantic within into a dark dungeon inside and locking the door
for years at a time. This often causes to become cynical, lose are ability to dream, give so
much power to the fear of making of a "mistake" that we can lose the ability to risk opening
 up to the Joy of being Alive in the moment.
It is very important to find some balance with this part of ourselves in order to have any
chance of success in a Romantic Relationship. The romantic is a wonderful part of us that can
help our Spirits to dance and sing and soar. If we do not trust ourselves to be able to set
boundaries for the romantic part of ourselves we can often sabotage relationships by being
controlling and/or running away out of our fear of being hurt.
Deprived, wounded, lonely child
Desperately needy, clingy, wants to be rescued and taken care of, doesn't want to set
boundaries for fear of being abandoned - very important to own, nurture, and Love this part of
ourselves because relating to this part of our self out of either extreme can be disastrous.
Allowing this desperate neediness to come out in our adult relationships can drive someone
away pretty fast - no one outside of us can meet the desperate needs of this child. We can love
this part out of the Loving compassionate adult in us and keep those needs from surfacing at
inappropriate times by owning how wounded this part of us is and taking steps to validate and
nurture this inner child.
Not owning that part of us can be just as damaging - being terrified of letting ourselves feel
the woundedness and neediness of this part of our self can cause us to shut down our ability to be
vulnerable and open to emotional intimacy. If we cannot own how deprived we were
emotionally as children and instead try to keep this part of us shut away we cannot Truly open
our heart and be vulnerable as an adult. People who tend to be counterdependent and can't stand
being around needy people are terrified of the needy part of themselves - and because of that will
keep picking emotionally unavailable people to be in relationship with, or will run away if
someone is emotionally available because it will feel like neediness to them.
When this emotional deprivation is associated with a teenager within us it can cause us to act
out sexually to try to get this emotional neediness met. The fact that we have in the past acted
out sexually in ways that we are ashamed of - or found ourselves very needy, vulnerable, and
powerless to suppress the emotional neediness in sexually intimate relationships - can cause us to
shut down to our sensuality and sexuality out of fear the loss of control we experienced in the
past.
Child with a broken spirit
Emotional place within us that feels like an bottomless abyss of pain and suffering. The place
within us where we just want to die. Has never felt lovable or worthy, full of shame and pain.
Very often the driving force behind addictions, eating disorders, obsessive/compulsive
behaviors in reaction to terror of relaxing - because stopping long enough to be present in own
skin causes the abyss to open up. The "they shoot horses don't they" suffering victim within.
This part of us really needs Love from the adult in us.
"Recovery from Codependence is a process of owning all of the fractured parts of our
selves so that we can find some wholeness - so that we can bring about an integrated and
balanced union, a marriage if you will, of all the parts of our internal self. . . . .
The feeling of wanting to die, of not wanting to be here, is the most overwhelming, most
familiar feeling in my emotional inner landscape. Until I started doing my inner child
healing I believed that who I really was at the deepest, truest part of my being, was that
person who wanted to die. I thought that was the true 'me'. Now I know that is just a
small part of me. When that feeling comes over me now I can say to that seven year old, "I
am really sorry you feel that way Robbie. You had very good reason to feel that way. But
that was a long time ago and things are different now. I am here to protect you now and I
 Love you very much. We are happy to be alive now and we are going to feel Joy today, so
you can relax and this adult will deal with life."" - Union Within
Bad little kid
The child who has ego-strength on the outside but very little real self-esteem so sets self up to
be criticized. Quite often seen in men who may be successful in business world but don't feel
deserving so set up their mates to be nagging, scolding mother trying to get them to straighten
up. These men have a lot of anger at their mothers that they have never been able to own but
think that they love women - they have very little capacity to receive love and have to sabotage it
when they do. Can feel very justified in leaving long term marriage for "trophy wife" because
they have set wife up to be such a "nag."
Magical Thinking Child
The magical thinking child believes in fairy tales and is often closely allied with the romantic
within. This child can also give power to magical thinking in negative terms - such as, I am
really happy but if I tell anyone I am happy it will be taken away. Or as I talk about in my article
The story of Joy to You & Me - I thought on some level that if I washed my car it would break
down. This is not the thinking of an adult - yet many adults, if they would look underneath some
of their reactions and attitudes, would find the magical thinking child behind them.
The following is an example of setting a boundary with the magical thinking child. This
example came up last year when I was answering an e-mail from someone who wanted to know
"how to" set boundaries with inner children - that is, what it looks like, the ABC's of the process.
(The middle part of this excerpt was in the last chapter - but there is additional information in
this excerpt that I think is helpful.)
"There are several facets to setting boundaries with our inner children. One is that we need
to gently explain to the magical thinking child within that Fairy Tales do not come true -
that is we are not going to get to happily ever-after in this lifetime on this plane. We may
meet our prince or princess - but they are going to be wounded souls who need to work on
their issues also. . . . . .
I just took a break from writing this to go to the post office to mail a book and tape set to
England - and as I was walking to the post office a perfect example of what I am talking
about occurred within me. (This is the kind of miracles that I get on a daily basis - "the ask
and ye shall receive" kind - I am thinking of the best way to answer and by paying
attention I was given an example.)
As I was writing this response to your questions, I got a hit/idea/inspiration that I should
post a web page with the questions that I get by e-mail and answers I send back. As you
mention, it can really help sometimes to be concrete and explicit. So, as I am walking to
the post office I am thinking about doing such a web page and the following interaction
takes place within me (in my inner reality these are fleeting thoughts rather than a formal
conversation.)
ego/critical parent: 'Your giving away all of this information for free and meanwhile you
can't even pay your rent. That is pretty stupid.'
Romantic (believes in fairy tales) inner child: 'Oh, but we're going to be rewarded. All
kinds of good things are going to happen - including getting a lot of money.'
Adult on Spiritual Path: 'Now, settle down you two. In the first place, it is very important
and wonderful to give away what I have been given - that is how to keep the energy
flowing - and that is what works, it is what I need to do for me/us. And I am going to do it
because it feels good, it feels right - like the next thing in front of me to do. We'll worry
 about the rent when it is time to pay the rent - for today, for this moment, we will do what
feels right for today. And I need to tell you, that our reward may just be to feel good about
what we're doing - and if that is all there is, that is still a wonderful gift. On top of that we
are getting positive feedback from all over - and that is a great bonus. There may never be
a lot of money but that is not important. There is enough money for today. And we are
very blessed to have something to do today that is fulfilling and makes us happy.'
So, I set a boundary with the critical parent by not buying into the criticism, I set a
boundary with my inner child by not building up expectations of some kind of reward, and
I remind myself to focus on the half of the glass that is full (my needs that have been met)
and be grateful for the gifts I have been given - not the half that is empty (my wants that
have not been met.)
I have peace and serenity when I can accept reality as it is and focus on what action I can
take to change what needs to be changed. That means I need to accept that I can be happy
and fulfilled even if I never have any money, never get any more of my books published,
never have another romantic relationship, etc. I need to let go of my picture of how I want
things to be and focus on what action I can take today that:
1. feels good/right;
2. that feels like a kind thing to do for myself (could be doing the dishes or cleaning house
- inner children rarely want to do house work - of course if house work is one of your
coping mechanisms then for you doing something frivolous and silly might be in order);
3. that is about planting some seeds (going to the library to get a book, posting a new web
page, checking for local 12 step meetings, sending out some resumes, etc.) that maybe will
help to meet my wants.
The Truth of the reward thing is that I have no way of knowing if I am creating "good"
Karma / cause or settling old debts from the past - so I cannot know what is coming (i.e.
doing something good and positive doesn't mean I am going to get rewarded - it may be a
debt I am settling.) I just know that I believe it is all going to be all right in the end and I
will get to go home when I am through with this often very painful boarding school.
There is always going to be more work, more healing to do - but the magical thinking child
wants to believe in magical fairy tales (we're going to win the lottery) - this does not in any
way preclude believing in magical miracles. We need to know that there are miracles and
magic so we can be open to them (we could win the lottery) but not just sit around
expecting (planning on eating on your lottery winnings tomorrow is not a good strategy)
them to rescue us and takes us to happily ever after. We need to take some action/do our
part/plant the seeds (buy a ticket - just one - and though this can be applied literally to the
lottery I am really using it here figuratively speaking) - we are co-creators here. And even
if we win the lottery it is just going to present us with some more lessons - not bring us
happily ever after." - Question & Answer page 1 from Joy to You & Me Web Site
Reading this over as I was editing it for publication brought a story to mind. It is a story of a
guy who wanted a garden. He went out on his piece of land and started praying for a garden.
Then he went out again the next day and spent the day praying for a garden. And then the next
day. And then the next week, and the next week. After weeks of praying he got very frustrated
and one day he cried out, "God, where is my garden?"
A voice from heaven replied, "My son, you have to plant the seeds." We need to take actions
in the direction we want to go, towards the things we want to create - but we can't control the
outcome. We need to take the actions and keep letting go of buying into thinking we will not be
okay without that outcome, without reaching that destination.
~
This is a list of some general types of inner child "persona" that can be present within us. I
will probably think of a few more next week. They are meant as a general guideline to help you
identify some of the reacting parts of your emotional inner landscape. We all had our
relationships with ourselves fractured into pieces as we were growing up. It is very important to
start bringing some peace to our inner process by owning those inner children, hearing them as
we were not heard.
Two more points come to mind as I am wrapping this up.
1. I used the term persona just now to describe the inner child/archetype places within us -
that feels like a good word to me. They are not actual personalities. People who suffer from
multiple personality disorder are beings who were pushed farther than the rest of us. The
wounding process involves the same basic dynamic - in fact, I learned a lot about my own inner
process by studying cases of multiple personality - but multiples were broken in harsher ways
(usually in an intentional and/or ritual abuse manner that amounted to torture.)
2. It is quite normal for a female to have one or more male inner children and natural
(although much harder for the male to own due to cultural dysfunction) for men to have a little
girl or two within. On top of the emotional dishonesty that men are programmed with, the
homophobic nature of society makes it hard for men to even conceive of such a possibility.
Women, who of course have more permission for emotional honesty and less strident
homophobic programming, also were raised in a society (and with role models) that taught them
that men were better than women. It was pretty natural (up until recently when more empowered
female role models are available) for a girl to wish she were a boy at some point in her
childhood.
Love is the answer. We are learning to Love ourselves. In order to do that it is very
important to own all of the wounded parts of our self so that we can then be a Loving parent to
our self. Being a Loving parent does include being willing to set boundaries for the child. That
is part of a parents job. So too, is Loving, nurturing, and protecting the child. Part of Loving a
child and meeting a child's needs is to set boundaries. Since no one could do that in a healthy
way for us, it is vital to learn to do it for ourselves.
"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.
And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and
release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around."
 Chapter 23
Sanctuary Trauma ~ memories and emotional honesty
"Codependence is a form of Delayed Stress Syndrome.
Instead of blood and death (although some do experience blood and death literally), what
happened to us as children was spiritual death and emotional maiming, mental torture and
physical violation. We were forced to grow up denying the reality of what was happening in our
homes. We were forced to deny our feelings about what we were experiencing and seeing and
sensing. We were forced to deny our selves. . . . .
The war we were born into, the battlefield each of us grew up in, was not in some foreign
country against some identified "enemy" - it was in the "homes" which were supposed to be our
safe haven with our parents whom we Loved and trusted to take care of us. It was not for a year
or two or three - it was for sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years.
We experienced what is called "sanctuary trauma" - our safest place to be was not safe - and
we experienced it on a daily basis for years and years. Some of the greatest damage was done to
us in subtle ways on a daily basis because our sanctuary was a battlefield." - Codependence: The
Dance of Wounded Souls
In a Co-Dependents Anonymous meeting last week, I heard someone share a very telling
insight. A woman at the meeting had run into an old friend from her childhood. In reminiscing
about growing up together, they discovered that each had memories of times together in the
others home - but no memories of being together in their own homes.
It was in our own homes that most of us suffered the most damaging trauma. Rather our
families were overtly dysfunctional because of alcoholism, physical abuse, physical or mental
illness, etc. - or covertly dysfunctional because of parental emotional dishonesty, unreasonable
expectations, unresolved emotional currents, emotional incest, etc. Our parents did not know
how to love themselves or to be emotionally healthy, and as a result they were at war within
themselves - the codependent battle of self judgment and shame, of repressing and denying
(and/or expressing abusively) one’s own emotions - and were doing a dysfunctional dance with
each other and with life.
Our homes, our sanctuaries, were not safe places. Our parents - who were our Higher Powers
- were not healthy, so it was impossible for them to parent us in a healthy way.
It is actually quite normal for most of us to have very few memories inside of our homes with
our family members. We may have memories of being alone in our homes, or memories outside
of the home - but since home was where we suffered the most traumatic emotional wounds (the
disapproval of our gods), it was where we most needed to use denial in order to cope.
It is normal, for most of us when we start doing the inner child work, to have few memories.
We have spent many years purposely not looking back.
There are also some people who have a lot of memories. Some of us have memories that we
look at through rose colored glasses - the good memories of what a happy childhood we had -
while suppressing and denying the painful ones. Some are stuck in looking at the past from a
victim perspective that allows them to abrogate taking any responsibility for their lives.
What is important for any of us, is to get emotionally honest with ourselves about our
childhoods. We need to look back at the past as a way to free ourselves from the past. In order
to do that, it is important to see our past more clearly - and to get in touch with our emotional
wounds.
I did not have very many memories of my childhood when I got into recovery. In doing the
inner child healing, I regained some memories - but I still have relatively few of them. It is not
important to remember a great deal. What is important is to get honest with ourselves on an
emotional level in our relationship with our childhoods.
Often we have memories that have no emotional charge. They are just events or snapshots
that we remember - and we are not conscious of, have never stopped to ask our selves, what we
were feeling at the time.
Once such memory that I started to look at in early recovery, is a graphic example of the
power of denial. In the memory, I was standing in the kitchen with my mother when I was about
8 or so. Her back was to me, and I was standing staring at a butcher knife on the counter. In the
memory I was wondering what it would feel like to stab her with it.
In looking at this memory in early recovery, I dismissed it as alcoholic thinking. It wasn’t
until some 2 and 1/2 years later that I started to look at what emotions may be attached to that
memory. One day it occurred to me that I may have had some anger at my mother.
My mother was perfectly what she had been trained to be: a self sacrificing martyr with no
self worth and no ability to set boundaries. Her definition of love was that one cannot be angry
at someone they love. My father was what he was trained to be: a raging perfectionist who had
no permission to acknowledge any emotion except anger.
So, my mother was the good guy and my father was the bad guy. It was all right for me to be
angry at my father (not to his face of course) - but absolutely not ok to be angry at my mother.
What I eventually discovered was that I had a great deal of rage towards my mother. More
rage towards my mother - because I had to deny it since she was the one who seemed the most
loving - than towards my father who it had always been ok for me to own anger towards.
I have found this to be a common dynamic: that most people have more anger suppressed
against the good parent (the one that was less abusive), than toward the more overtly abusive
parent.
Until I got emotionally honest with myself in relationship to my feelings about my mother, it
was impossible for me to have any kind of an honest relationship with any woman. There are
many men who say they love women and trust them more than men - because their mother was
the “good” parent - who are actually carrying a great deal of rage at women because of the rage
they haven't owned against their mothers.
Getting emotionally honest with ourselves in relationship to our childhoods is absolutely vital
in order to be able to start having healthier relationships today.
 Chapter 24
Choosing a therapist
"It is also a vital part of the process to learn discernment. To learn to ask for help and
guidance from people who are trustworthy, that means people who will not betray, abandon,
shame, and abuse you. That means friends who will not abuse and betray you. That means
counselors and therapists who will not judge and shame you and project their issues onto you. . .
. . . Someone who has not done her/his own emotionally healing grief work cannot guide you
through yours. Or as John Bradshaw put it in his excellent PBS series on reclaiming the inner
child, "No one can lead you somewhere that they haven't been."" - Codependence: The Dance of
Wounded Souls
In his PBS series on healing the inner child, John Bradshaw talked about how important it is
to choose counselors and therapists who have done their own emotional healing. He stated that
he had been in recovery for 10 years and counseling for that period of time before he started
doing the emotional healing. Prior to starting that process if someone he was working with
started to get emotional, he would immediately take steps to pull them out of the emotions back
onto an intellectual level.
One of the most important things to check out when you are interviewing a new
counselor/therapist - is whether they have done any emotional healing. If they have not done any
grief and anger work - actual emotional release work involving the deep grieving of sobs and
snot running out the nose, and anger work, beating on cushions while they shout out their rage -
then they will not want you to get emotional. Doing the deep emotional work can be terrifying -
and unless the person who is facilitating your work has been through it themselves, they will be
scared by your emotions. They will try to get you back into an intellectual framework - and
many of them will tell you that you need to go on medication.
Too often, when we start counseling or therapy, we feel it is somehow shameful, or weak,
because of our cultural programming - and come kind of hat in hand, as it were. We come to the
professional from a place of hoping they won't tell us we are the sickest person they have ever
met, and there is nothing they can do for us - or at least that was what I was sure was going to
happen.
It is important to remember that the person going to the therapist is the employer. You are the
one doing the job interview with the power to decide who gets the job. You are the one that is
going to be paying for services and you have a right to ask any questions you need to - including
what healing they have done personally. Because someone has degrees, credentials, and is
licensed does not mean they have done any healing on a personal level . In an emotionally
dysfunctional society, the standards used to judge qualifications are based on the dysfunctional,
emotionally dishonest standards of the society.
My first experience of going to a licensed therapist in my recovery from codependence, was a
very telling one. I went to a therapist that was recommended by a friend. I told her that I wanted
to deal with emotional enmeshment issues with my mother. (In the next article in this series I
will talk about emotional incest - something that I was calling emotional enmeshment at that
point in my recovery.) The third session I had with this person, she delightedly told me that she
wanted to line me up with a blind date. A blind date with someone who worked for her husband,
who had his office in their home as she did. Duh! The therapist I am seeing to sort out
emotional enmeshment issues wants to line me up on a blind date - absolutely inappropriate and
very codependent, thinking a relationship would fix me - with someone who works for her
husband in the same building we are in - talk about enmeshing and incestuous.
She could not understand why I was upset. I left that day, and went home to process what had
just happened. In processing through the issue, it was obvious to me how inappropriate and
unhealthy this therapist was. So, I called her up that evening and fired her. I was very proud of
myself because I did not buy into the guilt trips she laid on me as she tried to convince me that I
was the one with the problem and that there was nothing wrong with her suggestion.
There is no one as good as a therapist at turning issues back on you so that it seems to be all
your problem. Therapists can be very difficult people to have personal relationships with -
unless they are working an honest recovery program, and sometimes even then. And if they are
not involved in a personal recovery program, it is inevitable they will project their issues and
judgments onto their patients. Even therapists who are seeing another therapist for supervision,
can only be as healthy as the belief systems which he/she and the supervising therapist are
empowering. And if those belief systems do not include an understanding of the importance of
emotional healing, they will not be able to help someone do the emotional healing.
Another experience came shortly after I had started in a therapist position at an outpatient
chemical dependence program in Van Nuys California in 1987. One evening in a Family Group
I was talking about how grateful I was to be in recovery and I teared up from joy - I didn't cry,
just teared up. The next week the Clinical Director - my supervising therapist - came marching
into our office and proceeded to lecture me about getting emotional in front of the clients. This
psychiatrist, who was on anti-depressants because he was suicidal over a relationship breakup,
warned me to never let it happen again. (I was not far enough along in my recovery at that point
to confront him but I do remember thinking to myself - "Then who is supposed to be the role
models?")
Often the more credentials someone has, the more tendency they have to wear blinders. To
see things only within the traditional paradigm - which labels and pigeon holes individuals - and
more often than not, discounts emotions while worshiping chemicals.
Allow your Spirit guide you - not your shame. Talk to a person, meet with them, and see how
you feel about them. Do they feel like someone you can trust? Does what they have to say
resonate? Do you feel like they are really hearing you? Are they empowering a belief system
that is black and white, right and wrong? (If they are, they will judge you.) Do they talk to you -
or down to you?
It is your choice. You are the one holding the audition. Going to see a counselor or therapist
can be a very important and invaluable experience - but it is important to remember that
choosing a therapist is not a commitment to them, it is a commitment to you.
 Chapter 25
Emotional Incest
" Consider a scenario where mother is crying in her bedroom and
her three year old toddles into the room. To the child it looks as if
mom is dying. The child is terrified and says, "I love you mommy!"
Mom looks at her child. Her eyes fill with love, and her face breaks
into a smile. She says, 'Oh honey, I love you so much. You are my
wonderful little boy/girl. Come here and give mommy a hug. You
make mommy feel so good.'
A touching scene? No. Emotional abuse! The child has just received the message that he/she
has the power to save mommy's life. That the child has power over, and therefore responsibility
for, mommy's feelings. This is emotional abuse, and sets up an emotionally incestuous
relationship in which the child feels responsible for the parent's emotional needs.
A healthy parent would explain to the child that it is all right for mommy to cry, that it is
healthy and good for people to cry when they feel sad or hurt. An emotionally healthy parent
would "role model" for the child that it is okay to have the full range of emotions, all the feelings
- sadness and hurt, anger and fear, Joy and happiness, etc." - Codependence: The Dance of
Wounded Souls
I witnessed a scene a few years back that was graphic proof that the best thing any of us can
for our loved ones is to focus on our own healing. At a CoDA meeting one day a little four-year
old boy, who had been going to twelve step meetings with his mother for two years, was sitting
on a man's lap only six feet away from where his mother was sharing and crying. He didn't even
bother to look up when his mother started crying. The man, who was more concerned than the
little boy, said to him, "Your mommy's crying because she feels sad." The little boy looked up,
glanced over at his mother and said, "Yea, she's getting better," and went back to playing. He
knew that it was okay for mom to cry and that it was not his job to fix her. That little boy, at four
years old, already had healthier boundaries than most adults - because his mother was in
recovery working on getting healthier herself.
There are several facets of that scene that are remarkable because of their rarity in our society.
One was that the adult had a safe place to share and express her feelings. The second was much
rarer, a child with some semblance of healthy boundaries between self and parent.
One of the most pervasive, traumatic, and damaging dynamics that occurs in families in this
dysfunctional, emotionally dishonest society is emotional incest. It is rampant in our society but
there is still very little written or discussed about it.
Emotional incest occurs when a child feels responsible for a parents emotional well-being.
This happens because the parents do not know how to have healthy boundaries. It can occur with
one or both parents, same sex or opposite sex. It occurs because the parents are emotionally
dishonest with themselves and cannot get their emotional needs met by their spouse or other
adults. Some people in the field refer to this dynamic as a parent making the child their
"surrogate spouse."
This type of abuse can happen in a variety of ways. On one end of the spectrum the parent
emotionally "dumps" on the child. This occurs when a parent talks about adult issues and
feelings to a child as if they were a peer. Sometimes both parents will dump on a child in a way
that puts the child in the middle of disagreements between the parents - with each complaining
about the other.
On the other end of the spectrum is the family where no one talks about their feelings. In this
case, though no one is talking about feelings, there are still emotional undercurrents present in
the family which the child senses and feels some responsibility for - even if they haven't got a
clue as to what the tension, anger, fear, or hurt are all about. The child feels responsible for it
because they suffer the consequences - rather it is through outbursts from the parents or being
shut out emotionally by the parents.
Often a parent who has a passive, traditionally codependent defense system will be married to
a parent that has an aggressive, counterdependent defense system. (As I say in my book,
traditionally in this society men were taught be John Wayne and women to be self sacrificing -
but that is a generality, it is entirely possible that your mother was the John Wayne aggressive
type while your father was the passive one.)
What happens in this dynamic - a very common one - is that the passive parent allows the
aggressive one to abuse him/her and the children in some way (verbal, emotional, mental, and/or
physical.) And then that parent turns around and makes excuses to the children for allowing that
behavior. A child that grows up hearing abuse being excused with rationalization and
justification, is going to become an adult that will swing between the extremes of tolerating an
abusive relationship or avoiding relationships altogether.
I came from a traditionally dysfunctional family, in that my father was the emotionally
unavailable angry person while my mother was the martyr with no boundaries. I so hated how
my father behaved that I became a martyr like my mother. I was a martyr because I did not
speak my Truth or set boundaries, avoided confrontations, tried to please the other person to
keep her liking me.
In my first relationship in my codependence recovery, I realized that for me, setting
boundaries in a romantic relationship felt to my inner child like I was being abusive. The very
thing I had sworn to myself I would never be - like my father. I had to constantly be alert to that
child’s feelings and let that wounded part of me know that it was not only OK to set boundaries
and say no - but that it was not Loving to do otherwise.
I discovered that there was a 4 or 5 year old age of my inner child who felt overwhelming
shame that I could not protect my mother from my father. I thought that was my job. To make
my mother happy.
I thought that I was not worthy of Love because I had been unable to do my job. So, in my
adult life I was attracted to emotionally unavailable women who were verbally abusive. To my
disease, it was better to be in relationship with someone like my father, than to fail to do my job
in a relationship with someone who was available emotionally.
I had a relationship phobia that for the most part kept me from getting into relationships
because I felt I was defective in my ability to be responsible for another person happiness.
Until we do some healing of our childhood wounds, it is impossible to really understand our
adult patterns. If we have never experienced ourselves as independent emotional beings separate
from our parents, we can not truly be present for a relationship in our adult lives.
Emotional incest is a violation and invasion of our emotional boundaries. It is not sexual
abuse, nor is it sexual in nature - although sexual incest is often accompanied by emotional
incest. It can however cause great damage to our relationship with our own gender and
sexuality. Emotional incest, along with religions that teach that sexuality is shameful and
societal beliefs that one gender is superior to the other, fall into a category that I call sexuality
abuse - because they directly impact our relationship with our own sexuality and gender.
Our parents were our role models. We learned how to be emotional beings from their
behavior and attitudes. We learned what a man is, what a woman is, from their example. We
cannot undo that programming without being willing to heal those emotional wounds. We
cannot know who we truly are without separating ourselves on the emotional energetic level
from our parents.
 Chapter 26
Emotional Release/Deep Grieving Techniques
"We are all carrying around repressed pain, terror, shame, and rage energy from our
childhoods, whether it was twenty years ago or fifty years ago. We have this grief energy within
us even if we came from a relatively healthy family, because this society is emotionally dishonest
and dysfunctional.
When someone "pushes your buttons," he/she is activating that stored, pressurized grief
energy. She/he is gouging the old wounds, and all of the newer wounds that are piled on top of
those original wounds by our repeating behavior patterns.
We are terrified of this pressurized pain, terror, shame, and rage energy - of "having our
buttons pushed" - because we have experienced it in the past as instances where we have
explosively overreacted in ways that caused us to later feel ashamed and crazy, or as implosive
reactions that have thrown us into that deep dark pit of emotional despair within. . . .
We carry this set of buttons, this baggage, with us until we release that stored, pressurized
grief energy in a healthy grieving process. This society's answer to behavior caused by
unresolved grief is to shame you, label you, lock you up, and/or give you drugs. We do not have
to play that game anymore. We have new tools now, and we have rediscovered the healing
power of the natural grieving process." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
In an earlier chapter in this series, I made mention of breathing as a technique to help access
feelings.
"When I am working with someone and they start having some feelings coming up, the
first thing I have to tell them is to keep breathing. Most of us have learned a variety of
ways to control our emotions and one of them is to stop breathing and close our throats.
That is because grief in the form of sadness accumulates in our upper chest and breathing
into it helps some of it to escape - so we learned to stop breathing at those moments when
we start getting emotional, when our voice starts breaking." - Chapter 9 - Emotional
Healing ~ Feeling the Feelings
Belatedly I realized that I haven't shared about the importance of the breathing as yet. I have
been so caught up in the philosophy of doing the work, that I neglected one of the most vital
techniques for actually releasing the grief. Oh well, better late than never.
Grief is energy that needs to be released through crying and raging. In order to own our self,
it is vitally important to feel our pain, sadness, and rage. If we are blocking these "negative"
feelings from flowing - then we also limiting our ability to feel the Joy, Love, and happiness.
It is very important to own our feelings about what happened to us - and extremely important
to own our right to be angry about how their behavior affected us - in order to start forgiving
ourselves and learning how to have a healthy, Loving relationship with our self.
Part of grief work is simply owning/feeling the sadness and the anger. We need to feel the
grief about what happened to us as children and then we also need to own the grief over what
effect it has had on us as an adult. Grieving is a very different experience from being depressed.
While we are grieving we can still appreciate a beautiful sunset or be happy to see a friend or be
grateful to be sad. Depression is being in a dark tunnel where there are no beautiful sunsets.
The deep grieving work is energy work. Once we can get out of our heads and start paying
attention to what is happening in our body then we can start releasing the emotional energy.
When we get to a place where the emotions are coming up - when the voice starts breaking - the
first thing I have to tell people is to keep breathing. We automatically stop breathing and close
our throats when the feelings get close to the surface.
At the point where the voice starts breaking and the eyes start tearing, the technique is to
locate where the energy is concentrated in the body. It can be any place from head to feet - much
of the time it is in our back because that is where we carry stuff we don't want to look at, or in
the area of the solar plexus (anger or fear) or heart chakra (pain, broken heart) or chest (sadness).
It can be very revealing what side of the body it is on (right - masculine, left - feminine) or what
chakra it is near.
I tell people to scan their bodies for tension or tightness and then to breathe directly into the
place we have identified. Visualize breathing white light directly into that part of the body. That
starts breaking up the energy and little balls of energy start getting released. These balls of
energy are sobs. This is a terrifying place to be for the ego because it feels out of control - it is a
wonderful place to be from a healing perspective. Empowering the healing is going with the
flow - inhale the white Light, exhale the sobs. Sobs, tears, snot from the nose, are all forms of
energy being released. You can be in the witness watching yourself - owning and releasing the
emotional energy that has been trapped in your body - and control the process at the same time
you are in the pain. (It is very important to give our self permission to feel and honor our grief.
If we are crying or angry and then shame our self for those feelings, we are not healing the
wounds no matter how much crying we do.)
Developing the observer level of consciousness makes it possible to exert some control over
the process by choosing to align self with the energy flow, surrendering to the flow, instead of
shutting it down as the terrified ego wants to do. It is possible to learn how to facilitate your own
grief processing.
The anger work is also an energy flow process. I like to use a plastic baseball bat that I take in
both hands and lift straight back over my head. The bat (tennis racket, bataka, pillow, whatever)
is lifted over the head as you inhale and then as you hit the pillow you exhale / expel the energy -
in shout, a grunt, a "f___ you", a scream, whatever words come to you. Inhale, exhale - open
your throat to say whatever needs to be said. Own your voice. Own the child's voice.
Sometimes the child in us will shout "I hate you, I hate you." That doesn't mean we necessarily
hate the person - it means we hate how their behavior hurt us.
It is vitally important for us to own our right to be angry about what happened to us or about
the ways we were deprived. If we do not own our right to be angry about what happened in
childhood it greatly impairs our ability to set boundaries as an adult.
Every time we go into the deep grieving place and release some of the energy through crying
and raging (sometimes we need to rage to get to the tears or vise versa) we take a little power
away from that particular wound. The next time we touch on that wound it won't be quite as
powerful or terrifying.
It is terrifying to face healing the emotional wounds. It takes great courage and faith to do the
grief work And it is what will change our relationship with our self at it's core. Working from
the outside-in (i.e. learning how to have boundaries, be assertive, etc.) it will take a very long
time to change our behavior in our most intimate relationships. Working from the inside-out by
owning and healing our relationship with ourselves at a causal level - our childhood - will
eventually result in us intuitively owning our right to speak up and have boundaries without even
having to think about it.
It is our pain. It is our anger. If we don't own it, then we are not owning our self.
 Chapter 27
Grieving - examples of how the process works
"This grieving is not an intellectual process. Changing our false and dysfunctional attitudes
is vital to the process; enlarging our intellectual perspective is absolutely necessary to the
process, but doing these things does not release the energy - it does not heal the wounds.
Learning what healthy behavior is will allow us to be healthier in the relationships that do not
mean much to us; intellectually knowing Spiritual Truth will allow us to be more Loving some of
the time; but in the relationships that mean the most to us, with the people we care the most
about, when our "buttons are pushed" we will watch ourselves saying things we don't want to say
and reacting in ways that we don't want to react - because we are powerless to change the
behavior patterns without dealing with the emotional wounds.
We cannot integrate Spiritual Truth or intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into our
experience of life in a substantial way without honoring and respecting the emotions. We cannot
consistently incorporate healthy behavior into day to day life without being emotionally honest
with ourselves. We cannot get rid of our shame and overcome our fear of emotional intimacy
without going through the feelings." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Grieving is a natural part of the human healing process. In Chapter 1 of my online book about
the terrorist attack of 9/11 - Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing Perspective (that I started
publishing online on 9/23/01) - I urged people to wail and scream and sob, to release the energy
that was being generated by this traumatic event. Trauma is a shock to the system. Any type of
trauma suffered by a human being - trauma to our physical bodies, witnessing a traumatic event,
experiencing a loss (death of a loved one, house burning down, end of a relationship, etc.), etc. -
causes emotional energy to be generated in reaction to that trauma. Denying and suppressing
that energy does not make it go away.
" Feel your feelings and release them. Give yourself permission
to let it all out. Wail and scream and sob. Try not to let the
messages of an emotionally dysfunctional society, or the
discomfort of emotionally repressed people around you, keep
you from owning the grief to the fullest. They want you to pull
it together and get yourself under control so they will be
comfortable. Let it out! Release it! Do not shame yourself for
it, or apologize - it is marvelously healing to grieve. Owning our
grief is part of being True to self. In an emotionally honest
society Dan Rather would have been crying and sobbing on his
own program - serving as a role model for others - instead of
keeping up appearances and stuffing his grief until some of it
leaked out on the David Letterman Show." - Attack on America:
A Spiritual Healing Perspective Chapter 1
In that article I also did a little yelling about the importance of owing our grief.
 "If I see one more person on television starting to get emotional and then choke it down
and apologize, I AM GOING TO SCREAM!
Please feel your feelings. Let those sobs out. We are supposed to feel. It is healthy to
grieve. Breathe right into those feelings. Sobs are little balls of emotional energy being
released. If you breathe into the feelings it breaks up the grief and the little energy balls of
emotions can rise up and be released from your being. That is good. Keep taking deep
breaths. Get into a rhythm. Inhale, sob sob sob cry cry cry as you exhale, inhale, sob sob
sob cry cry cry - that is good. That is healthy. Do not shame yourself for feeling. Do not
apologize for your feelings. It means your human. It means you care. Sobs, tears, snot
from the nose are all ways of releasing energy and cleansing chemicals out of our body.
Grief is not a pretty sight - but it is a beautifully healing and a Loving thing to do for
yourself. That emotional energy does not go away just because we stop breathing and
choke it back down. It does not disappear. The more you can release, the faster you can
move through it. Watch the History Channel some time when they interview vets from
World War II or something like that. People who have never really grieved will get
emotional and choke it back down 40 - 50 years later, because they never released it. It
didn't go away, they have been repressing it and denying it all those years. Release it now.
It is healthy. It is the Loving thing to do for yourself." Amen." - Attack on America: A
Spiritual Healing Perspective Chapter 1
In this quote, I refer to the breath techniques for releasing grief that I talk about on the last
chapter of this book. In this chapter, I am going to share some example of how the grief process
works.
Life events such as the September 11th terrorist attack on New York City and Washington D.
C. are very traumatic. It is important to own our feelings about life events, rather it is a horrific
event such as the terrorist attack or if it is some other kind of traumatic loss - such as a
relationship break up, or loss of a job, or whatever.
What makes owning our feelings about traumatic events in the present so difficult is that we
have unresolved grief from the past. Because society is emotionally dishonest and we were
trained to be emotionally dishonest, we are all carrying grief from our past. That grief energy is
trapped within us in a pressurized explosive state that causes us to feel terrified of tapping into it.
"The way to stop reacting out of our inner children is to release the stored emotional energy
from our childhoods by doing the grief work that will heal our wounds. The only effective, long
term way to clear our emotional process - to clear the inner channel to Truth which exists in all
of us - is to grieve the wounds which we suffered as children. The most important single tool, the
tool which is vital to changing behavior patterns and attitudes in this healing transformation, is
the grief process. The process of grieving.
We are all carrying around repressed pain, terror, shame, and rage energy from our
childhoods, whether it was twenty years ago or fifty years ago. We have this grief energy within
us even if we came from a relatively healthy family, because this society is emotionally dishonest
and dysfunctional."
When an event in the now triggers our old grief issues it makes it very difficult to understand
our own emotions unless we are relating to ourselves from a healing framework. If we are in
recovery from childhood wounds, then we can sort out our internal turmoil - then we can have
discernment about which part of what we are feeling is about what is happening now, and which
part of it is grief from the past that has been triggered.
It is important to understand our emotional process - and what
grief entails - to see ourselves more clearly so that we can choose to
respond in a healthy way instead of letting our emotional wounds be
in control of our life by just reacting. Then we do not have to stuff
our feelings or apologize for them because we are able to see
ourselves more clearly and respond in healthier, more appropriate
ways.
Grieving is a great relief
Grieving is a great relief. Releasing repressed, pressurized emotional energy that we have
been denying and avoiding for years is the path to freedom from the past so that we can see the
present with more clarity. Getting emotionally honest with ourselves is the key to clearing our
inner channel to Truth. It is necessary for us to be willing to heal our emotional wounds in order
open up to Love - to tune into the higher vibrational energy of Love and Joy.
As with everything else in life, there are different levels of grieving - and different stages of
grief.
The deep grieving of sobbing and crying and snot clogging up our nose, is an incredibly
powerful part of the healing process - that can bring wondrous relief, and physical exhaustion in
it's aftermath. Normally after a session of deep grieving a person will feel lighter - sometimes
immediately, sometimes the next day - because some energy they have been carrying has been
released.
The explosive release of this deep grief when done in a healing framework - that is when we
accept and own it as opposed to shaming ourselves and apologizing for it - is a very powerful
part of the healing process. It is terrifying to our ego because it feels like a complete loss of
control. Our ego programming is to stop it, to stuff it.
When our deep grief issues are triggered and we are at the point where our voice starts
breaking, we automatically shut down - we close our throat and stop breathing, or go to very
shallow breathing. This is the point where it is so important to learn to breathe directly into the
energy so that we can start releasing it. When we take deep breaths into the grief energy, it starts
breaking up and little balls of energy are released. That is what sobs are - little balls of energy.
The more we have integrated a Loving Spiritual belief system into our relationship with life
and with our own emotions, the easier it becomes to align with healing through grieving instead
of aligning with the false beliefs that it is weak to cry, that it is shameful to "lose control."
Illusion of Control
"The original wound, which I will discuss a little later, had the effect of creating a Spiritually
hostile condition on this planet. That Spiritually hostile condition then became a cause with
many consequences.
One of the most devastating of these consequences, or effects, was that human beings began
to express emotions in destructive ways. Because the channel between Spiritual Self and human
self was disrupted by planetary condition, the human ego began to develop the belief that it was
separate from other humans and from the Source. This belief in separation made violence
possible.
The violence, caused by the false belief, meant that humans could no longer enjoy a free-
flowing emotional process. As a consequence, emotionally-repressive environments evolved in
the social systems on this planet. Human beings were forced to adopt defense systems that
included the belief that emotions were negative and had to be suppressed and controlled. This
was necessary in order for human beings to live together in communities that would insure the
survival of the human race.
It is not necessary any longer! And it is dysfunctional.
The act of suppressing emotions was always dysfunctional in its effect on the emotional,
mental, and Spiritual health of the individual being. It was only functional in terms of physical
survival of the species.
We now have clearer access to Spiritual healing energy and guidance which allows us to
become aligned with Truth so that emotions will not be expressed in destructive ways. We have
the tools, knowledge, and guidance to allow emotional healing to take place, to allow the
individual to enjoy the flow of healthy emotional process."
The reality of the dynamics of emotional energy is that the more we try to control and deny it
based upon an intellectual paradigm that is reversed to Love, the more likely it is to manifest at
the worst times and in the most destructive manner.
Emotions are a vital part of our being. To suppress emotions is dysfunctional - it does not
work. Any time we are trying to maintain emotional control out of our damaged ego
programming - that is based upon separation, shame about being human, and fear - we are doing
damage to our being. With any closed system, rather it be the engine of your car or your own
being, neglecting and denying the importance of one aspect of the internal dynamic will cause
damage - kind like what will happen when you run your car without oil. The system will break
down.
"Emotional honesty is absolutely vital to the health of the being. Denying, distorting, and
blocking our emotions in reaction to false beliefs and dishonest attitudes causes emotional and
mental disease. This emotional and mental disease causes physical, biological imbalance which
produces physical disease."
Emotional energy cannot just disappear, it can transform but it can't disappear. One of the
causes of violence in the human experience is the human survival mechanism that allows human
beings to transform the energy of fear or pain into anger.
"One of the basic survival mechanism of human beings in the hostile environment that was
manifested on this planet . . . . . . . was the ability to turn the lower vibrational emotional
energies of fear, sadness, hurt, shame, etc., into anger. . . . . . . . anger is a higher vibrational
emotional energy and therefore carries more energy mass. In other words, anger feels
strong and powerful, while sadness, fear, etc., do not. In order to survive, human beings
had the capacity to turn fear into anger to fight off threats to safety.
[This ability is functional in terms of survival but dysfunctional in terms of emotional
balance and human interaction. It is one of the residues of survival programming - an
important tool when reacting to the sudden presence of a saber-toothed tiger - that causes
males (and some females) who are emotionally crippled because of societal dysfunction
and emotional dishonesty, to act out violently.)" - Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing
Perspective Chapter 4
This transformation of the excruciating pain of our broken hearts and wounded souls - and the
fear of more wounding - into anger is more prevalent with men because men have traditionally
been taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion for a real man. So, it is more often men
who "go postal" and act out in anger in a variety of manifestations from road rage to domestic
violence.
"Repressed emotions explode outward in violence and war, in carnage and rape. We are
raping the planet we live on, we are raping ourselves. Any emotional explosion outward in an
act of violence is an act of violence against Self."
Women, who have traditionally been taught that anger is not acceptable, tend to turn anger
back in on themselves. This is of course a generalization - and one that is changing as the
societal role models for masculine and feminine change.
"In this society, in a general sense, the men have been traditionally taught to be primarily
aggressive, the "John Wayne" syndrome, while women have been taught to be self-sacrificing
and passive. But that is a generalization; it is entirely possible that you came from a home
where your mother was John Wayne and your father was the self-sacrificing martyr."
Codependency is an emotional defense system which was adapted by our damaged egos to try
to maintain emotional control. The ego fights ferociously to maintain control because it got the
message that our survival depended upon that illusion of control. It is an illusion because in the
long term that defense system is self destructive - and actually is the greater threat to our
survival. Our codependent defense system will kill us eventually unless we start changing that
ego programming and learn how to release the emotional energy in a healthy way.
Though a certain percentage of the population does at some point reach a point of critical
mass and manifest that repressed emotional energy in an external explosion - most of us turn it
back on ourselves.
"Repressed emotions implode, explode inward to cause the system to become dysfunctional.
In the individual being this manifests as disease - emotional, mental, and physical disease. In
larger systems, in families, in societies, that dysfunction manifests as child abuse and incest, as
crime and poverty, homelessness and pollution."
Depression and anxiety disorders, environmental illness and post traumatic stress disorder,
self mutilation and obesity, cancer and Alzheimer's Disease, are some of the effects of our
dysfunctional attempts to control emotions.
It is possible to have some control over our emotions that is functional - that does work in
terms of the health of our being. That control does not entail suppressing and denying the
emotions - damming the energy. It involves honoring and respecting the emotional component
of our being.
By changing our relationship with our own emotions through changing the attitudes,
definitions, and beliefs - the intellectual paradigm that we are allowing to define our life
experience - to one that is aligned with Love and ONENESS rather than separation and fear, we
can start to achieve some emotional honesty and balance.
The first step in changing our relationship with our emotions, is to recognize and admit that
we are not in control of this life business. We are powerless to control life out of our ego -
because it is not possible for us to control life period. We can have some control over some
aspects of our life by owning our power as the co-creator of our human experience, but we are
not in control of life - we are not writing the script here.
We need to let go of the illusion that it is possible to control life and open up to - remember -
that there is a Higher Power, a Universal Source Energy, that is in control. Recognizing our
powerlessness and surrendering the illusion of control allows us to align with the Higher Power
so that we an start to learn to have some Loving control over our emotions. That Loving control
over our emotions will allow us to release the energy in a healing growth framework that will
take the power away from the repressed emotional energy from our past in a gradual, healthy
grieving process.
The more we align ourselves attitudinally with Spiritual Self instead of ego self, the more we
can open up to releasing this energy as a good thing, as a healing, Loving thing to do for
ourselves. The more willing we become to surrender to allowing the emotional energy to flow,
the easier it becomes to own this grief that is ours, to own our self and our emotional wounds.
We are not in control - there is a Loving Higher Power who is in control.
The feeling of being out of control is terrifying to our egos. It is our ego programming and it's
efforts to control that are killing us - spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. By
learning to let go of our illusion of control we can start to open up to Love - and start having
faith that the Force is with us and will not give us more than we can handle.
We also have a built in safety valve. Our nose gets plugged up and we have to stop to blow
our nose. We can cry and sob until a certain point and then we have to blow our noses. We can
then cry and sob some more - but it is never going to get too out of control just because of our
physical reality.
The effect is that this deep grieving comes out in short bursts. Each time we do some deep
grieving about a specific issue, we are releasing some of the pent up energy. The next time we
touch on that issue, it will have less power than the time before. Eventually, we will heal that
specific wound enough so that there is not enough repressed energy left to produce sobs.
A Parents Nightmare
As an example of how this process works, I had the opportunity some years ago to work with
a woman in her seventies who was living her life in a very controlled and isolated manner. She
had a whole lifetime of grief issues she was suppressing, but there was one issue - as it often the
case - that was the key to unlocking the rest of the issues.
This woman, some twenty years earlier, had experienced an incredibly traumatic life event.
Her daughter had been murdered by a serial killer. She had been awakened at 3 or 4 in the
morning with the worst kind of phone call a parent can imagine.
When I began working with her, she could not - and would not - even talk about this issue
because it was too painful for her. As we worked through other grief issues from her childhood
and early life, we gradually moved closer to focusing on this specific issue.
Once we did start to open up this wound, she experienced wrenching grief in reliving that
event. But in any one session of that grief group she was in, the actual deep grieving part of the
process - the sobbing and crying and snot running out of the nose portion - only lasted a short
time. Typically, the deepest sobbing and crying may last 5 to 10 minutes - to be followed by a
series of aftershocks like an earthquake, gradually getting less intense as we process through the
feelings.
We are never given more than we can handle - though it can certainly feel like it. Opening up
to those wounds does not cause us - as I felt would happen to me - to be locked in a rubber room
the rest of our life crying.
Of course, in an emotionally dishonest society, it can cause people who have not done their
grief work to want desperately to get you under control - with drugs usually, and possibly with
institutionalization. That is one of the reasons it is so helpful to have a counselor / therapist /
healer to facilitate the work that has worked through their own issues so that the explosive
release of the deep grief does not terrify them into shaming you, or giving the message that you
are doing something wrong.
"Someone who has not done her/his own emotionally healing grief work cannot guide you
through yours. Or as John Bradshaw put it in his excellent PBS series on reclaiming the inner
child, "No one can lead you somewhere that they haven't been.""
The deep grieving can sometimes be almost like an exorcism in the release of the pent up
energy, and can lead into areas such as past lives - so it is important to have someone who is
open minded and not afraid of the grief to help you through your process. It is very scary stuff -
but the process is unfolding perfectly and your Higher Power will provide the help you need at
the time you need it. (This does not necessarily mean at the time you think you need it - part of
the process is trusting our Higher Selves, our intuition to guide us - and being willing to do our
part in the process, which includes taking action to align with recovery and being willing to
plunge into the unknown.)
This woman went through perhaps half a dozen sessions of the really deep intense grieving,
each time taking a little more power away from the issue - releasing a little more of the pent up
energy.
The grieving included owning her anger at her daughter for abandoning her. (Grief is about
us, about our loss - it is not really about the other person, or how the other person died.) And
owning her anger at God for allowing such things to happen. It also included letting go of the
guilt that she was carrying because her of codependence. With any issue we blame ourselves
because of our childhood wounding, because of the toxic shame from childhood that
programmed us to feel like "bad" things happen us because something is wrong with us. It was
because she had done some healing of that toxic shame that she was able to start dealing with
this issue. She had started to change the subconscious programming from childhood that had
given her the message that if her life was anything other than "happily ever after" it was
somehow her fault. That in turn, allowed her to let go of the false beliefs and unhealthy guilt that
told her she should have, or could have, done something to prevent her daughters death.
What eventually started happening was that the woman could remember good things about
her daughter. Because she was no longer denying and avoiding the grief, she was able to start
owning how much she loved her daughter in a healthy way with clearer vision. She started to
allow herself to own the good memories that were the gift of having shared a relationship with
the Soul that had inhabited her daughters body vehicle.
The memory was still painful, and will probably bring tears to her eyes and a catch in her
throat almost every time thoughts of her daughter rise in her consciousness. Our wounds don't
go away. We don't heal an issue and never feel pain around it again. What we do is release the
grief so that we are not avoiding and denying part of our reality because of our terror of the pent
up energy. By being willing to do the grief work we get to reclaim our life experiences in a more
Loving, healing, and forgiving framework - change our relationship with life events because we
are not allowing the grief to dictate and define our lives any more.
When I said at the beginning of my online book that Dan Rather could have been a role model
for others by allowing himself to own his grief - actually sobbing and crying - I was talking
about a few moments of emotional honesty, not hours of it. Allowing ourselves to own the grief
does not cause us to lose control - it causes us to feel like we are losing control for a few
moments.
By learning to allow ourselves to release that pent up pressurized energy in a healing context,
we can be empowered to stop letting the past dictate our lives today.
Subconscious Programming
"The next time something does not go the way you wanted it to, or just when you are feeling
low, ask yourself how old you are feeling. What you might find is that you are feeling like a bad
little girl, a bad little boy, and that you must have done something wrong because it feels like you
are being punished.
Just because it feels like you are being punished does not mean that is the Truth. Feelings are
real - they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body - but they are not necessarily fact.
 What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with
either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital "T" - especially when we our
reacting out of an age of our inner child.
If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen,
then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are
not being in the now.
When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or
distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted."
Another benefit of releasing the suppressed energy, of doing the deep grieving, is that often it
is only in during the grieving that we get in touch with subconscious programming that is
dictating some aspect of our relationship with life. Attitudes we adapted in childhood -
sometimes promises we made to ourselves - are included in that subconscious programming, and
can have great power which we cannot overcome until we get in touch with them.
In the first long term relationship (long term for me being 2 years - my record until the one I
am in now, which is going on 6 years because of the healing I have done) I got into in recovery, I
realized that setting a boundary in an intimate relationship felt to me like I was being a
perpetrator. My role models in childhood presented me with two options for behavior in a
romantic relationship - a self sacrificing martyr with no boundaries, and a raging verbally
abusive perpetrator. I hated the pain caused by the perpetrator, so I became a martyr who did not
know how to set boundaries. Setting boundaries for me, with my significant other, felt like I was
being abusive.
It was only when I got aware of this programming that I could start changing it. A great
example of how this works is the brief case study that I shared in my series on the True Nature of
Love.
"We cannot get clearly in touch with the subconscious programming without doing the
grief work. The subconscious intellectual programming is tied to the emotional wounds
we suffered and many years of suppressing those feelings has also buried the attitudes,
definitions, and beliefs that are connected to those emotional wounds. It is possible to get
intellectually aware of some of them through such tools as hypnosis, or having a therapist
or psychic or energy healer tell us they are there - but we cannot really understand how
much power they carry without feeling the emotional context - and cannot change them
without reducing the emotional charge / releasing the emotional energy tied to them.
Knowing they are there will not make them go away.
A good example of how this works is a man that I worked with some years ago. He came
to me in emotional agony because his wife was leaving him. He was adamant that he did
not want a divorce and kept saying how much he loved his wife and how he could not
stand to lose his family (he had a daughter about 4.) I told him the first day he came in that
the pain he was suffering did not really have that much to do with his wife and present
situation - but was rooted in some attitude from his childhood. But that did not mean
anything to him on a practical level, on a level of being able to let go of the attitude that
was causing him so much pain. It was only while doing his childhood grief work that he
got in touch with the pain of his parents divorce when he was 10 years old. In the midst of
doing that grief work the memory of promising himself that he would never get a divorce,
and cause his child the kind of pain he was experiencing, surfaced. Once he had gotten in
touch with, and released, the emotional charge connected to the idea of divorce, he was
able to look at his present situation more clearly. Then he could see that the marriage had
 never been a good one - that he had sacrificed himself and his own needs from the
beginning to comply with his dream / concept of what a marriage should be. He could then
see that staying in the marriage was not serving him or his daughter. Once he got past the
promise he made to himself in childhood, he was able to let go of his wife and start
building a solid relationship with his daughter based on the reality of today instead of the
grief of the past.
It was the idea / concept of his wife, of marriage, that he had been unable to let go of - not
the actual person. By changing his intellectual concept / belief, he was able to get clear on
what the reality of the situation was and sever the emotional energy chains / cords that
bound him to the situation and to his wife. He was then able to let go of giving away
power over his self-esteem (part of his self-esteem was based on keeping his promise to
himself) to a situation / person that he could not control. He gained the wisdom / clarity to
discern the difference between what he had some power to change and what he needed to
accept. He could not change his wife's determination to get a divorce but he could change
his attitude toward that divorce - once he changed the subconscious emotional
programming connected to the concept.
It is letting go of the dream, the idea / concept, of the relationship that causes the most grief
in every relationship break up that I have ever worked with." - The True Nature of Love -
part 4, Energetic Clarity
Feeling Sad
There is also a shallower level of grieving, that is just about owning our sadness.
"It was on Christmas Day in 1987 that I got clear on something that I hadn't really realized
before in relationship to my emotional process.
I was consciously grieving by that time - by which I mean that I was owning my sadness.
One of the ways that I had controlled and contained my emotions was to analyze them. It
had not been ok for me to feel feelings until I understood where they were coming from,
what they were attached to - so I kept the feelings at bay by intellectualizing about them. I
would analyze and rationalize, and then when I had figured out that I indeed had a good
enough reason to feel something, I would allow myself a few moments of feeling - maybe
do some writing about it - and then think I was done with it. My issues were like boxes of
old news that I looked through briefly and then put on the shelf thinking I had dealt with
them sufficiently. The later part of 1987 was when the boxes started falling off the shelf
and smacking me upside the head.
By Christmas of 87 I had gotten far enough along in my process to just allow myself to feel
sad. I no longer bought into the fallacy that I had to know specifically what I was sad
about. I would say to myself; "I feel sad. I have plenty of reason to feel sad. It is OK to
feel sad."
I was doing what I had never known how to do before - just being with the feelings. I had
always done something to try to escape the feelings, it was a very important step for me to
just allow myself to feel them - to own them and know that they were mine and I had, not
only a right, but an obligation to just feel them.
I was doing the shallower level of grieving at that point. It wasn't the deep grieving with
crying and sobbing - it was just about feeling sad and allowing myself to feel that sadness.
On Christmas Day that year, I went to various AA meetings and to some open houses -
both at people's homes and AA club houses. What I realized as I went through the day was
that I was feeling more than one feeling at the same time. The feeling of sadness was there
 throughout the day, kind of an emotional blanket over the day. But when I saw people I
cared about I was happy. I had many moments that day when I felt gratitude.
I really got clear on the reality that I could feel more than one feeling at once - a startling
revelation at that point. It had been a long hard struggle just to get in touch with feelings
as energy in my body, now I realized that I could feel several different types of these
emotional energies at once. I could feel sad and grateful and happy all at the same time.
I had for some time been working on changing my perspective on my feelings. Telling
myself that feeling the feelings was the goal and that I was grateful that I was capable of
feeling miserable. By working on changing my attitudes towards my feelings I had started
changing my relationship with them. I had begun to embrace my feelings instead of
resisting and repressing them.
It was of course, easier to embrace the shallower level of grief than it was the deeply
buried pain and rage that was soon to start surfacing - but it was definite progress. When I
had first gotten sober, I had noticed a saying on some bumper stickers or wall hanging or
someplace. That saying was "The pain is mandatory, the suffering is optional." What I
was really beginning to realize at this point in my process was that the suffering came
about because of resistance to feeling the pain - and anger and fear. By changing my
attitudes, I was changing my perspective and giving myself permission to feel the feelings.
I was starting to allow them to flow instead of putting all my energy into damming them,
suppressing them. That is where the suffering really comes from - denying my own
emotional reality.
So, I was feeling the grief and doing some of what I thought of then as crying. At that
time, crying to me meant tearing up. When I teared up and my voice cracked with emotion
I considered that crying. Although I had done some deep grieving earlier in my recovery
(the chapter Grief, Love, and Fear of Intimacy) I wasn't at that time thinking of doing that
kind of CRYING as a goal of the process. I was still trying to avoid going into the depths
of my feelings.
I think the main issue that I was grieving about as 87 ended and 88 began was being alone.
I had felt so alone as a child - and because of my wounds, I had spent most of my adult
life alone." - Joy2MeU Journal - My Spiritual Path: 30 Days in the Desert - Falling Apart
and Breaking Through II
Many people when they first start to feel the grief, will say they are feeling depressed. What
we call things has power - and it is important to start owning that we are involved in a healthy
grieving process instead of the victim of depression.
Depression and grieving are two very different dynamics. Depression is an emotional state
caused by anger that has been turned in on ourselves because of mental attitudes empowering the
false belief that it is shameful to be an imperfect human. Owning our feelings by doing the grief
work - especially the anger and rage portion of the grieving - is the way out of depression.
Changing our relationship with life into one which defines life as a growth process with a
Spiritual purpose rather than a test we can fail because we are flawed and imperfect, is a very
large step towards starting to emerge from depression.
Just being able to say to ourselves (not necessarily to other people unless they are safe people
to share with) "I am sad. I have good reasons to be sad. It is not only okay to be sad, it is
healthy and part of owning my self to grieve for how painful my life experience has been."
Owning our feelings is the only way to own our self. Owning and healing our self is the
gateway to reconnecting with our Spiritual Self so that we can starting owning the Unconditional
Love that is available to us. So that we can change our relationship with self into one that is
based upon Love instead of shame about being human.
"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are.
And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and
release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around."
 Chapter 28
Spirituality
“Perspective is a key to Recovery. I had to change and enlarge my perspectives of myself and
my own emotions, of other people, of God and of this life business. Our perspective of life
dictates our relationship with life. We have a dysfunctional relationship with life because we
were taught to have a dysfunctional perspective of this life business, dysfunctional definitions of
who we are and why we are here.
It is kind of like the old joke about three blind men describing an elephant by touch. Each one
of them is telling his own Truth, they just have a lousy perspective. Codependence is all about
having a lousy relationship with life, with being human, because we have a lousy perspective on
life as a human.
The only way that I was able to make significant progress in the process of stopping self-
judgment and getting rid of the toxic shame was to become conscious of the larger perspective.
When I started to believe that maybe a Higher Power, a Universal Force, existed which was
Truly All-Powerful and Unconditionally Loving then life started to become a lot easier and more
enjoyable. Then I could start to see that the “accidents” and “coincidences” are really
miracles. That the “mistakes” are really opportunities for growth." - Codependence: The Dance
of Wounded Souls
The approach to inner child healing work I am sharing in this Book, is one that I was lead to
discover in my quest to find a way to live life that worked for me. A way of living life that made
it possible for me to transform my experience of life from one in which I was miserable and
wanted to die on almost a daily basis, to one that allows me the freedom to be happy and Joyous
in the moment for most of the moments of most every day.
The tools, techniques, and perspectives for inner child healing that I share here, on my web
site, and in my first book, provide a framework which makes it possible to stop allowing our
childhood experiences to dictate how we live our lives today.
This healing paradigm is one that can be utilized by anyone - regardless of their religious or
spiritual beliefs, or lack of same. All that is required is enough open mindedness to be willing to
look at some alternative perspectives and consider some different ways of relating to life and
self. Discernment - being able to pick the baby out of the bath water - is a key. All religions,
spiritual belief systems, theoretical concepts for explaining the meaning and purpose of life,
contain some Truth. All of them also contain distortions, misinterpretations, and mistaken
beliefs.
I state in my book, that I believe that many aboriginal cultures were far more functional in
terms of the Spiritual, mental, and emotional health of the individual members of their societies,
than any of the so called civilized societies on this planet have been. The thought that occurred
to me as I was writing this article, is that maybe there is also a correlation in regard to a society
having a written language. In tribal societies with an oral tradition, stories were told - parables -
that passed on the values of the society. Histories that are written down in words are subject to
the interpretations and translations of individuals who had their own agendas. Words became set
in stone - and often the spirit of the message was lost, distorted, and manipulated. Interesting
thought but not what this article is about.
As I mentioned in an earlier article in this series, changing our relationship with life, with
being human, is intimately interrelated with this inner work. Finding a relationship with life,
with being human, that works to enhance our potential to be happy and to feel worthy of Love, is
what I refer to as spirituality. Having a spiritual belief system that supports the possibility that
inherently we are Lovable and worthy, is an invaluable aid in facilitating the healing work in
relationship to our other relationships - both internally and externally.
My conscious recovery from codependence started when I became willing to look at the cause
and effect relationship between my childhood and my adult life. More specifically, it involved a
paradigm shift which allowed me to stop empowering the shame based religious beliefs I was
raised with, and start empowering myself to own that I had choices.
As I have stated earlier, our perspectives and expectations dictate our relationships and our
emotional experience of life. Perspectives and expectations are set up by the intellectual
paradigm we are empowering - the attitudes, beliefs, and definitions that we are allowing to
define life for us. Becoming aware that my relationship with life was being dictated by beliefs
from my childhood that were not what I believed as an adult, was the shock that forced me into
codependence recovery.
By starting to become aware that I had choices about what beliefs I was empowering, I was
able to change my relationship with life and vastly improve the quality of my life experience.
I have chosen to develop a relationship with a concept of Spirituality that works very well for
me. It works to make my life easier and more enjoyable today. It works to help me: relax and
let go of some of my fears; let go of shame and self judgment; to be in the moment today and
have the freedom to be happy and find Joy in being alive - no matter what the outside conditions
in my life may be today.
My relationship with my concept of Spirituality today, is one that both brings me inner peace
and empowers me to take responsibility for being a conscious co-creator of my life. My
philosophy in regard to Spirituality is summed up pretty well in this quote from the Spiritual
Pages index page of my Joy2MeU site.
A Higher Power of My Own Understanding
The Spiritual belief system detailed in my writing can be incorporated into any open-
minded individual's personal beliefs. It is a belief system that allows for the possibility
that maybe there is an Unconditionally Loving Higher Power - a God-Force, Goddess
Energy, Great Spirit, whatever it is called - which is powerful enough to insure that
everything is unfolding perfectly from a Cosmic Perspective. That everything happens for
a reason - there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mistakes.
It would be possible for someone to use the tools and techniques contained herein - for
inner child healing and setting internal boundaries - to change some of their
codependent/reactive behavior patterns and work on healing their childhood emotional
wounds without a Spiritual belief system underlying the work. It would be possible, but in
my view would be kind of silly. Spirituality is all about relationships. One's relationship
to self, to others, to the environment, to life in general. A Spiritual belief system is simply
a container for holding all of our other relationships. Why not have one that is large
enough to hold it all.
In my personal recovery, I found that I needed a Spiritual container large enough to allow
for the possibility that I was not a flawed, shameful being. I searched until I found some
logical, rational means to explain life in a way that would allow me to start letting go of the
shame I was carrying and start learning how to be Loving to myself.
For me it became a simple choice: either there is a higher purpose to this life experience or
there is not. If there is not, then I don't want to play. So, I chose to believe that there is a
Spiritual purpose and meaning to life. And choosing to believe in a Loving Higher Power
 has transformed my life from an ordeal to be endured to an adventure that is exciting and
Joyous much of the time.
The bottom line for me is that it works for me, it is functional, for me to believe that there
is Spiritual purpose and meaning to life. It works to make my life experience happier
today.
Spirituality is a word I use to describe my relationship to life. I was raised with beliefs that
were based on fear, shame, and separation. In my recovery, I have chosen to empower a belief
system that is based on Love - and my connection to everyone and everything. It works very
well for me, in terms of improving the quality of my life experience today.
 Chapter 29
True Self Worth
“As long as we look outside of Self - with a capital S - to find out who we are, to define
ourselves and give us self-worth, we are setting ourselves up to be victims.
We were taught to look outside of ourselves - to people, places, and things; to money,
property, and prestige - for fulfillment and happiness. It does not work, it is dysfunctional. We
cannot fill the hole within with anything outside of Self.
You can get all the money, property, and prestige in the world, have everyone in the world
adore you, but if you are not at peace within, if you don’t Love and accept yourself, none of it
will work to make you Truly happy.
When we look outside for self-definition and self-worth, we are giving power away and setting
ourselves up to be victims. We are trained to be victims. We are taught to give our power
away.”
"As was stated earlier, Codependence could more accurately be called outer or external
dependence. Outside influences (people, places, and things; money, property, and prestige) or
external manifestations (looks, talent, intelligence) can not fill the hole within. They can distract
us and make us feel better temporarily but they cannot address the core issue - they cannot fulfill
us Spiritually. They can give us ego-strength but they cannot give us self-worth." -
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
On the question and answer pages of my original web site someone asked me for my opinion
about an article on the internet where a marriage counselor contends that the codependency
movement is ruining marriages. What he wrote was so codependent that it was a perfect
example of codependency.
He stated that self esteem is based on what we do. He actually stated in this article, “If I can't
do anything, I'm certain I'd have no reason to have self-esteem.” (My reply to this article is at
http://Joy2MeU.com/codependency_marriage.html )
This is a great example of the dysfunction of codependence. Anyone who feels they have to
be productive to feel good about themselves, is set up to feel like a victim when they aren't
productive. If this guy were to get sick, or when he gets old, he has no reason to feel good about
himself. When someone determines their self worth by what they do, they are being
codependent.
I have found it important and helpful in my work to draw a clear boundary between what I
call ego strength and self worth. Ego strength is obtained externally. We were taught in this
society - as in any codependent culture - to look outside to define ourselves and give us a feeling
of worth. We have worth if we are better than others. We are validated in comparison to others,
for being: smarter than, richer than, prettier than, more talented than, having better grades than,
etc., etc. This empowers the illusion of separation and feeds the fear of not being good enough.
Everyone in a codependent society has to have someone to look down upon in order to feel good
about themselves.
Ego strength is not a bad thing, just as being productive or pretty or smart are not bad things.
It is just dysfunctional if we base our self worth on these external sources. All external
manifestations are potentially temporary. If we base our relationship with our own worth on
temporary conditions we are setting ourselves up to be a victim of change, of aging, of being
human. That makes such a dynamic dysfunctional in the long run.
My Spiritual belief system is based upon the belief that we are connected to everyone and
everything. I believe that we are all extensions of the Great Spirit, children of God, created as a
reflection of The Goddess. I believe - and as I point out in my book, it has now been
scientifically proven by quantum physics - that we are all ONE energy. That we are all
connected to each other, to our planet, to everything in our environment, on higher vibrational
levels. The highest vibrational energy exists in a state of eternal bliss and perfect harmony -
always has, always will. That highest vibration level - which I call LOVE - is our True home.
We are extensions, manifestations, of what I call the Holy Mother Source Energy - experiencing
an illusion of reality that exists at lower vibrational frequencies. We are here in human body
going to boarding school, and are evolving back to consciousness of our True Self - are going to
get to go home.
As I said in my last article, it is certainly not necessary for you to agree with my Spiritual
beliefs in order to apply the inner child healing paradigm I share in these articles. It is however,
very important to choose a belief for yourself that allows for the possibility that maybe, just
maybe, you are inherently Lovable and worthy. It is an invaluable aid in starting to remove the
toxic shame about being human from our relationship with self and life.
We learned to relate to ourselves, to life, to other people, in early childhood from people who
were wounded in their childhoods. Toxic shame about being human - being imperfect, making
mistakes, being emotional, being sexual, being female, etc. - has been passed down from
generation to generation.
Toxic shame is the enemy. It is an enemy that we do not defeat by fighting - although it is
vitally important to develop an internal defense attorney to set boundaries with the critical parent
/ disease voice within so that we can change our ego programming.
The way we defeat this enemy is with Love. By learning to be more loving to our self and
accepting of our humanity, we can start to access our True nature and purpose, our True Self.
In my belief, who we really are is: Spiritual Beings having a human experience. It is a belief
that serves me. It helps me to be more Loving to myself and have healthier relationships with
others. It is a source of real Self worth that is not temporary or based on external sources. We
were taught to make other people, success, external sources our Higher Powers that determine if
we have worth. We were taught to worship false gods - to be too attached to the illusion.
Recovery is a process of recognizing that we are powerless out of ego-self to control life -
while at the same time learning to access all the power in the Universe through our connection to
Spiritual Self. Doing the inner child healing work is the way to clear our inner channel so that
we can tune into the higher vibrational emotional energy of Love. Love is the answer. Love is
the key to True self worth.
 Chapter 30
Reprogramming our ego defenses
"Recovery involves bringing to consciousness those beliefs and attitudes in our subconscious
that are causing our dysfunctional reactions so that we can reprogram our ego defenses to allow
us to live a healthy, fulfilling life instead of just surviving. So that we can own our power to
make choices for ourselves about our beliefs and values instead of unconsciously reacting to the
old tapes. Recovery is consciousness raising. It is en-light-en-ment - bringing the dysfunctional
attitudes and beliefs out of the darkness of our subconscious into the Light of consciousness."
"We need to let go of the illusion that we can control this life business. We cannot. We never
could! It was an illusion. And we need to let go of the false beliefs that tell us that we are bad
and shameful. We cannot become whole as long as we believe that any part of us is bad or
shameful.
That includes the ego - that bloated out-of-balance dragon within. . . . . . . now is the time to
get things into balance - the time to bring ego-self into alignment and balance with Spiritual Self.
That is the transformation which is known as "the death of the ego.". . . . . . . The death of the
ego is not an event - it is a process. It is not an act of violence - it is an act of Love. A process of
learning to Love.
We are bringing ego-self into alignment with Spiritual Truth. We are reconnecting with our
Spiritual nature and Spiritual purpose so that we can find some fulfillment and happiness in
life." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Our experience of reality, of life, is determined by the interpretations of our mind - by the
intellectual paradigm which we are using to define / determine / translate / explain our reality.
The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally create our perspectives
and expectations - which in turn dictates our relationships and our emotional reactions.
In order to have healthier relationships - with self, with our inner children / emotional
wounds, with other people, with concepts like romance and success, etc. - it is very important to
become conscious of, and be willing to change, the intellectual paradigm we are empowering
both consciously and subconsciously. Our subconscious intellectual paradigm was adapted by
our ego in early childhood in response to our emotional experience of being a child.
The ego is the part of us that is charged with responsibility for our survival. The ego is the
seat of the disease of codependence.
Being born into an emotionally dishonest, fear and shame based, Spiritually hostile
environments (based on separation rather than connection), caused us to be emotionally
traumatized in childhood. In response to that emotional trauma our egos adapted some very
dysfunctional programming. (Functional in terms of survival, but dysfunctional in terms of
helping us to be happy and at peace within.)
For some of us, the wounding started in the womb where we: incubated in our mother's fear
and shame; or got addicted to adrenaline because of the emotional volatility of our mother's life;
or could feel our mother's waiting for us to arrive to give meaning and purpose to her life; or
felt how unwelcome we were because she had already had too many children and was feeling
overwhelmed; etc.
We exited the warm nurturing cocoon of our incubator into a cold, harsh world. A world run
by Higher Powers (parents and any body else bigger than us - siblings, grandparents, hospital or
orphanage personnel) who were wounded in their childhood. Gods who were not emotionally
healthy, and did not know how to Love themselves. Our egos were traumatized - and adapted
programming to try to protect us from the pain of emotional trauma that felt life threatening.
The people we Loved the most - our Higher Powers - hurt us the most. Our emotional
intimacy issues were caused by, our fear of intimacy is a direct result of, our early childhood
experiences. Our lives have been lived in reaction to the intellectual paradigms our egos adapted
to deal with emotional trauma.
The part of a child's brain that is logical and rational, that understands abstract concepts (like
time or death), that can have any kind of an objective perspective on self or life, does not develop
until about the age of 7 (the age of reason.) As little children we were completely ego-centric
and magical thinking. We did not have the capacity to understand that our Higher Powers were
not perfect. We watched their role modeling, experienced their behavior as personal, and felt the
emotional currents of our environments - worry, frustration, resentment, fear, anger, pain, shame,
etc. - and were emotionally traumatized.
Our ego adapted itself to the environment it was experiencing. It developed emotional and
behavioral defense systems in reaction to the emotional pain we experienced growing up with
parents who were wounded codependents.
If you have ever wondered why it is so much easier to feel Spiritual in relationship to nature
or animals, here is your answer. It was people who wounded us in childhood. It is people who
our egos developed defense systems to protect us from.
I have told people for years, that the only reason to do inner child healing work is if we are
going to interact with other people. If one is going to live in isolation on a mountain top
meditating, it will be fairly easy to feel Spiritually connected. It is relating to other human
beings that is messy.
In order to start being able to have healthier relationships with ourselves - and therefore with
other people - we need to start changing that ego programming.
The way we do that, is to first become aware of it, and aware that we have the power to
change it. Then we start learning how to change it and counter the reactions from our ego
programming so we can build healthier relationships within our self. We actually learn to use
our will power to fight against the default programming of our ego - to change that default
programming.
The programming is so powerful and entrenched that we cannot really rid ourselves of it.
Unfortunately, it is not like software that we can delete and replace with new software - Love
4.0. It is wired into the hardware.
So, what we need to do is tape over the old tapes. Positive affirmations are the single most
powerful tool that I have found for doing this. We need to do positive affirmations to reprogram
our subconscious intellectual paradigm. We need to do them because we don't believe them.
The times we need to do them the most are the times when we least feel any belief in them. If
we believed them, we wouldn't need to say them.
 Chapter 31
Positive Affirmations
"A "state of Grace" is the condition of being Loved unconditionally
by our Creator without having to earn that Love. We are Loved
unconditionally by the Great Spirit. What we need to do is to learn
to accept that state of Grace.
The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not
Lovable." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Positive Affirmations are one of the single most powerful and vital tools in the Recovery
process. Codependence is a condition caused by growing up in a shame-based, emotionally
dishonest society which teaches us false beliefs about the nature and purpose of life. We are
Spiritual Beings having a human experience, not shameful, sinful human creatures who have to
earn Spiritual salvation.
I am a Magnificent Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!
Our attitudes create our perspectives which in turn dictate our relationships. In order to
change our relationship with life, and with ourselves, we need to change our attitudes and belief
systems about the nature and purpose of life.
God wants me to be happy, healthy, Loved, and successful!
The Light within me is creating miracles in my life here and now.
Abundance is my natural state of being. I accept it now!
All of my experiences are opportunities to gain more power, clarity, and vision.
Positive affirmations are so vital in Recovery because we all have a critical parent voice
inside that judges and shames us; that negatively affirms us hundreds of times a day. It takes a
lot of reprogramming to start accepting that we are Lovable and unconditionally Loved.
The entire Universe Loves me, serves me, nurtures me, and wants me to win.
I am a radiant expression of the Goddess energy/Great Spirit/Christ within.
I am always in the right place at the right time, successfully engaged in the right activity.
I am radiantly beautiful and vibrantly healthy and Joyously alive.
What we focus on is what we create. In order to change what we are creating we must choose
to change the way we think and work on letting go of the subconscious beliefs we learned in
childhood.
I am the co-creator of my life, I am fully involved in co-creating my life in an exciting,
Joyous, and harmonious way.
I am now celebrating life, having fun and enjoying myself.
I am glad I was born and I Love being alive.
I Love myself and naturally attract Loving relationships into my life.
I send Love to my fears. My fears are the places within me that await my Love.
Large, rich, opulent, lavish, financial surprises are now manifesting in my life and I am
grateful!
Affirmations work! They work miraculously because they help us align with the Universal
Truth of an Unconditionally Loving God-Force.
~
This is an article that I originally published in 1995 in the Information Press of San Luis
Obispo California. The positive affirmations come from a variety of sources - some are original,
some unknown. Many come directly from, while others are inspired by, the work of Shakti
Gawain - whom I recommend very highly. She and Louise Hay are the two most important
teachers of the power of positive affirmations that I have experienced.
I also wanted to share an excerpt from a Newsletter that I wrote for my original web site in
1998. It demonstrates the power that Positive Affirmations have had in transforming my
experience of life.
"Working on the positive affirmations page was also a perfect part of my process as usual.
While I was doing it I got a perfect example of how wonderful and powerful positive
affirmations are - and how dramatically they have changed the quality of my life.
My car broke down.
It was a wonderful opportunity to be reminded of how much work I have done over the
years in integrating my Spiritual belief system into my emotional responses to life. When
some seeming tragedy occurs, like my car breaking down, my very first reaction is
gratitude that it happened when and where it did instead of when and where it could have.
I used to react to life events (like car break downs) and other people's behavior out of my
childhood programming that told me that if something "bad" happened it was because I
was bad. I had gotten the message in childhood (in a variety of ways) that there was
something wrong with me, that I was unworthy and unlovable, and that God was going to
punish me for it. So life events felt like punishment.
Due to all the work that I have done in changing my subconscious programming (including
at several different times making recordings of positive affirmations and messages of Love
in my own voice to myself that I would play as I was going to sleep at night) my first
reaction to life events now, and for the last 4 or 5 years, has been acceptance followed by
gratitude because whatever it was could have happened at a worse time and place than it
did.
It is amazing to me to see my capacity to let go of things that used to drive me crazy with
worry and feel like punishment. The key for me has definitely been integrating the belief
that everything is unfolding perfectly into my emotional process - it makes life so much
easier.
Of course, that does not mean to ignore the feelings. Unfortunately, a lot of people use
tools like affirmations, meditation, gratitude lists, etc. as another way of denying the
feelings. These tools are meant to be used to balance the feelings not negate them. After
my initial reaction of gratitude, then I let my adult take charge in terms of doing the
footwork - finding a mechanic, calling a friend, calling a tow truck. As the car was being
towed and I was following with my friend, then I relaxed into the feelings and let myself
cry with the pain of how hard life can feel sometimes. And when I say cry, I mean cry -
with heaving sobs. I can access those feelings and release them because of the energy /
breath techniques that I have learned on the way.
Just using the affirmations to keep from feeling my feelings would be out of balance, just
staying in the adult to keep from feeling my feelings would be out of balance, just feeling
the feelings and letting myself feel like a victim is also out of balance - we need to be able
to use all of the tools and own all of the parts of ourselves.
What we are working toward is to find balance. That means using tools like the positive
affirmations to integrate a supportive Spiritual belief system into our inner process, as well
as using them to balance the feelings that come up. It does not matter what happens in my
life - I start immediately to tell my self and my inner children that it is all perfect somehow,
that everything is going to work out in the long run - that way I can keep from buying into
the shame and doom messages that are coming from the disease so that I can maintain
some emotional balance.
 Chapter 32
Polarized Thinking
"One of the core characteristics of this disease of Codependence is intellectual polarization -
black and white thinking. Rigid extremes - good or bad, right or wrong, love it or leave it, one
or ten. Codependence does not allow any gray area - only black and white extremes.
Life is not black and white. Life involves the interplay of black and white. In other words, the
gray area is where life takes place. A big part of the healing process is learning the numbers
two through nine - recognizing that life is not black and white.
Life is not some kind of test, that if we fail, we will be punished. We are not human creatures
who are being punished by an avenging god. We are not trapped in some kind of tragic place
out of which we have to earn our way by doing the "right" things.
We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to learn. We are here to go
through this process that is life. We are here to feel these feelings." - Codependence: The Dance
of Wounded Souls
In one of the first sentences of Chapter 3, Inner Child Healing - How to begin, I made the
point that codependence involves reacting to life from a polarized belief system - black and white
thinking.
"In our codependence, we reacted to life out of a black and white, right and wrong, belief
paradigm that taught us that is was shameful and bad to be wrong, to make mistakes, to be
imperfect - to be human."
In the writing that I have been doing lately (which has turned into an online book that I am
publishing on my web site as I write it) I have been writing a lot about how important it is to stop
giving power to polarized thinking. It was intellectual polarization, right and wrong thinking,
that actually caused the toxic shame that is our core emotional wound. The little boy or girl
within us who feels defective, feels unworthy and unlovable, because we got the message it was
shameful to be human.
We then adapted an emotional defense system to try to protect us from the unbearable pain
and shame of feeling like our being, our essential self, is unlovable. That defense system, which
is codependency, was based upon the same polarized thinking that caused the core wounding - so
we reacted to our emotional wounds by going to polarized extremes: Blame them or blame me,
overreact or underreact. Our emotional spectrum swung wildly from one extreme to the other
because we did not know how to have balance, did not how to play safely in the gray area that is
the reality of life.
It is vital to start learning to stop the extreme reactions, so that we can be gentler and more
Loving to ourselves. The more we stop buying into polarized thinking the less our own mind is
our worst enemy.
It is because we are trying to control life that we get caught up in obsessive thinking - trying
to figure out what is right and what is wrong. We are scared of making choices because we are
afraid of the consequences of making the "wrong" choice. We get all caught up in mental
gymnastics trying to figure out what is the "right" thing to do. We procrastinate and resist and
avoid responsibility, because we are scared of doing something "wrong."
We have good reason to be afraid because of our experiences from the past. We were
wounded in childhood because our wounded parents were reacting out of the shame based, black
and white belief system that they experienced in childhood. Our churches and schools taught us
that it was shameful to be bad - and many of us were taught the Spiritually abusive concept that
doing it "wrong" could cause us to go to hell.
A really good reason for a little kid to be terrified.
And our codependent defenses set us up to keep repeating behavior patterns - making "wrong"
choices - that set us up to feel like we were being punished. We learned to call ourselves stupid,
and loser, and failure, because of our inability to respond to life in a healthy balanced way. We
were stuck reacting out of the polarized thinking that doesn't allow any choices - until we got
into recovery and started learning that there were other choices, better ways to live.
Writing an online book about the terrorist attack of 9/11 has caused me to decide to include a
chapter in this inner child healing series on how to stop buying into this very destructive
polarized thinking. And it also resulted in me sending out a plea - which I am going to repeat
here - to the many spiritual teachers and New Age practitioners, healers, and writers who are
giving out polarized shame based messages.
After the terrorist attack of September 11th, an email message attributed to Marianne
Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch, James Twyman, James Redfield and Doreen Virtue
circulated on the internet and included these statements:
"There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first comes from love,
the second from fear."
"To us the reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic human lessons. We have
not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not understood the most basic
spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to God, and because we have not,
we watch ourselves do ungodly things. The message we hear from all sources of truth is
clear: We are all one. That is a message the human race has largely ignored. Forgetting
this truth is the only cause of hatred and war, and the way to remember is simple: Love,
this and every moment."
Saying there are only two possible responses is polarized thinking, and gives the impression
that it is shameful to feel fear. I hate that some really wonderful, en-Light-ened people are
giving out this kind of message.
Their belief systems are not large enough to allow for a God-Force that is so powerful that
everything is happening for a reason. The very concepts of Love and ONENESS they are
teaching are negated by blaming the human condition on human beings - which diminishes and
insults the concept of an ALL-Powerful Unconditionally Loving Universal Source, and
empowers the illusion of separation.
A statement that Love and fear are the only two choices is polarized and indicates a lack of
discernment. Yes, we are trying to change our mental programming to be aligned with Love
instead of with fear. That is at the heart of this process. But aligning ourselves with Love
intellectually does not mean we will not sometimes feel the emotional energy of fear in our
bodies.
Love is the only Truth on higher vibrational levels. Here in human body, fear is something
we cannot avoid sometimes feeling. We want to stop allowing fear to define us - but to imply
that we cannot be aligned with Love and still feel some fear is a shaming message.
PLEASE STOP giving out these Spiritually abusive, polarized, shaming messages! It is a
disservice to the people who look to you for some wisdom. PLEASE STOP IT!
 Chapter 33
Recovery from codependency
"It is through healing our inner child, our inner children, by grieving the wounds that we
suffered, that we can change our behavior patterns and clear our emotional process. We can
release the grief with its pent-up rage, shame, terror, and pain from those feeling places which
exist within us.
That does not mean that the wound will ever be completely healed. There will always be a
tender spot, a painful place within us due to the experiences that we have had. What it does mean
is that we can take the power away from those wounds. By bringing them out of the darkness into
the Light, by releasing the energy, we can heal them enough so that they do not have the power
to dictate how we live our lives today. We can heal them enough to change the quality of our
lives dramatically. We can heal them enough to Truly be happy, Joyous and free in the moment
most of the time." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Codependency recovery / inner child healing is a way of life. It is a way to live life that
works. It works to help an individual gain some freedom from the past. It is a path for living
that facilitates developing a centered ground space within where inner peace exists. That creates
the space for a person to be present in the moment and be happy to be alive - to connect with Joy
- some of the time.
It is not something we do and then get on with our lives. It is something we do in order to
Truly be alive.
Life is a process - a journey. By being willing to do the inner child healing we can learn to be
present for the journey - and to have the capacity to actually relax and enjoy it at times.
One of the very valuable things that I have learned in my recovery is echoed in something that
I often say to people when I first start to work with them. Most of my counseling work is done
by phone these days, and often I will end of the first session by saying, "Everything that happens
in your life from now on, is part of this process."
We are here to do this healing. We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience - and we
are in body at this very special time in history to do this healing work.
The inner child healing work is part of our Spiritual evolutionary journey. Doing this work
requires consciousness raising - en-light-en-ment. We need to become conscious of our own
inner process - by developing the detached observer / witness / detective / defense attorney /
compassionate parent level of consciousness. The more conscious we become, the easier it is to
see how powerful our reactive programming has been. By becoming conscious of it, we can
change it.
By being willing to get more conscious we can start to reprogram our ego programming by
using positive affirmations and self talk, by developing a Spiritual belief system that allows us to
start being compassionate and Loving to ourselves.
By becoming willing to face the terror of healing the emotional wounds we can learned to
release the dammed, repressed grief energy within us so that it is no longer defining us and
dictating our experience of life.
Doing the healing work, making recovery a way of life, allows us to make choices to define
our reality from a place of faith and acceptance instead of victimization, fear, and shame. It
allows us to start having healthier relationships with our self and with others.
Becoming conscious and paying attention to the guidance from our intuition / Spirit, will help
us learn to stop reacting to life and start having choices about how we respond to life.
 Responsibility - the ability to respond. We can take responsibility for our lives - and own our
power as a co-creator of our life.
As long as we are reacting to life unconsciously out of our childhood emotional wounds and
programming it is impossible for us to grow up. Recovery is about growing up - as I said in
Chapter 18:
"This work is about becoming an integrated, whole, mature, adult person in action, in the
way we live our lives and respond to life events and other people. The only way we can be
whole is to own all of the parts of ourselves. By owning all the parts we can then have
choices about how we respond to life. By denying, hiding, and suppressing parts of
ourselves we doom ourselves to live life in reaction."
Becoming an integrated, whole, mature adult does not come easily. It takes commitment. It
takes action and effort on our part. We need to be willing to do our part in the process. We need
to be willing to learn to be honest with ourselves intellectually and emotionally. We need to be
willing to do the grief work. We need to be willing to be conscious - and to live consciously.
We can't do it perfectly. We will make gradual progress. We will resist and procrastinate and
make excuses - because we are human. One of the trickiest things about his process is to stop
judging ourselves for being human at the same time we doing whatever it takes to align with
healing and transformation.
It is hard work. It is ongoing - it will keep changing and shifting and getting different, but it
will continue for the rest of your life.
The rewards are awesome however!
I am going to end this Chapter with a couple of short quotes from near the end of my book
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
"We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to experience feelings and
touch and Love. The goal of the healing process is not to reach someplace where we are above
all the human experiences and feelings. We are here to feel these feelings.
When we become willing to feel the pain, then we become capable of feeling the Joy. The Joy
of doing this healing is incredible! Our job is to heal and enJoy. Our job is to be. We are here to
be human beings, not human doings.
Our job is to follow the Joy to the Truth. Our job is to feel in the moment.
As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The
more we heal, the more responsibility we have - that is, ability to respond. The ability to respond
in the moment."
"This is a process, a process we are going to be involved in for the rest of this lifetime. We
will never do it perfectly from a human perspective. But the more we are willing to choose to
view life as a growth process, and to feel and remember the Truth within us, the more we will
become conscious of the Truth that we are perfectly where we are supposed to be on our
Spiritual Path - and that we are being guided Home.
There is Truth all around us. And the Truth is setting us free.
Through healing the inner child, we access Truth and Love. And the little child shall lead
them."
That little child is within you. That little child deserves Love. That little child is you.
 Chapter 34
Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery Part 2
(The first part of this web article is the "assignments" I shared in Chapter 7 - after I had included
the section on Detachment in Chapter 6. This is the description from the original web article of
the last part of that article which is now Chapter 34 in this book.)
And I am adding one more area to this page. Both the development of the detached witness
perspective and this area are mostly conceptual - involving a shift in perspective - but both also
require taking some action to raise our consciousness and open our minds, to explore new
concepts / perspectives / paradigms / contexts in which to view our self and life. This second
conceptual arena that it is vital to focus some attention on in order to change our relationship
with our self and get more in alignment with our Self, is learning to separate our self/Self from
the disease in our perspective / relationship with ourselves.
Both developing a detached observer perspective and starting to see our self/Self as separate
from the disease, are vital components in learning to practice discernment - the "wisdom to know
the difference" between the things we have the power to change and the things we do not have
the power to change.
Drawing a boundary between the Disease and self/Self
At the core of the dis-ease of codependency, at the foundation of our relationship with self, is
what I call toxic shame. In my definition, the difference between guilt and shame is that guilt is
about behavior (I did something wrong, I made a mistake, etc.) while shame is about our being
(something is wrong with me, I am a mistake.) It is the feeling deep down inside of us that we
are somehow defective, that we are somehow unlovable and unworthy because our parents were
wounded codependents.
"That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was! We did nothing to be ashamed of - we
were just little kids. Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed,
and their parents before them, etc., etc. This is shame about being human that has been passed
down from generation to generation.
There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and
scrambled minds.
Because of our broken hearts, our emotional wounds, and our scrambled minds, our
subconscious programming, what the disease of Codependence causes us to do is abandon
ourselves. It causes the abandonment of self, the abandonment of our own inner child - and that
inner child is the gateway to our channel to the Higher Self.
The one who betrayed us and abandoned and abused us the most was ourselves. That is how
the emotional defense system that is Codependence works. The battle cry of Codependence is
"I'll show you - I'll get me.""
There is nothing wrong with who we are - we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience
- it is our relationship with self that got screwed up in childhood. It is our dysfunctional
relationship with self and life that causes us to be our own worst enemy - that causes us to
sabotage good things in our lives and create negative self fulfilling prophecies.
In our recovery, we are working to change our relationship with self into one that is based
upon Love instead of shame. In order to do that it is necessary to make paradigm shifts, change
the perspectives from which we are looking at ourselves.
"We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change the way we intellectually
view life in order to stop being the victim of the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious of,
our attitudes, definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for us and what
does not work. We can then start making choices about whether our intellectual view of life is
serving us - or if it is setting us up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something
which it is not."
As long as we are reacting out of the old tapes and childhood wounds, we are powerless to
change our behavior because we keep reacting between black and white extremes: overreact or
underreact; blame them or blame me; be in a lousy relationship or be alone. As long as we are
looking at ourselves through the dark glasses clouded with shame and judgment that is the
disease programming, we are not seeing ourselves clearly. In recovery we are cleaning our
glasses - changing our perspectives.
"We do not know how to be Loving to ourselves because we were raised in societies that
taught us it was shameful to be human - shameful to make mistakes, to be emotional, to be
sexual, to be something other than "perfect." Feeling that there is something inherently
wrong with who we are as beings is the toxic shame that is the enemy within. . . . . .
. . . . . . It is important to start seeing the reality of the cause and effect dynamic that
governs life so that we can start changing the behavior patterns that we adapted to cope
with life. Until we are open to seeing the cause and effect between our childhood and our
adult patterns, we will continue to give power to the belief that there is something wrong
with us individually. That toxic shame feeling that tells us it is our fault that life hasn't
worked the way we thought it was going to, is the main enemy here. It is very important to
develop a relationship with life that allows for the belief that it is not shameful to be human
- and that who we are is not bad or wrong." - The Recovery Process for inner child healing
- spiritual integration
Developing a detached observer perspective allows us to start to see ourselves with some
objectivity so that we can recognize the cause and effect dynamics in our life. We can start to
recognize that we are creating negative consequences for ourselves - staying in relationships or
jobs that are abusive, picking unavailable people to love and/or running away from someone who
is available and does Love us, doing the same things over and over again while expecting
different results - not because we are defective but because of our childhood wounding and
programming. That allows us to start developing some compassion for ourselves - and also to
start taking responsibility for the choices we are making that are setting us up to repeat the
patterns and sabotage our self.
As long as we are shaming and blaming our self, we are giving aid and support to the enemy.
Who we are is not the enemy - it is how we learned to relate to our self that is the enemy within.
We are not defective - we are wounded. In order to start Loving our self, to start relating to our
self in more kind and Loving ways, it is vital to stop identifying our self with the disease. Our
mind gives us negative, fear and shame based messages because of our disease programming, not
because that is just how our mind works individually. Our behavior has been a result of
codependent reactions that are part of our ego defense system, but that does not make us
shameful beings.
We can start to set a boundary in our perspective between being and behavior. That is, we
can start recognizing that everyone is perfect in their being, in their Spiritual Essence / True Self
- and that everyone has some screwed up behaviors because of our wounding. Through
developing a boundary in our perspective of being and behavior, we can start honoring and
Loving our being while recognizing and taking action to start changing dysfunctional behavior
patterns and reactive codependent defenses.
 The way we start accessing Love is through connecting with our True Self / Spiritual Self.
That allows us to start to have some compassion for our human self - and to start discerning the
difference between being an imperfect wounded human being (what we are) and feeling like a
defective, shameful, unlovable failure (what our disease tells us we are.)
By starting to recognize that it is not shameful or bad to be human, by starting to tune into our
Spiritual Self which is the part of us that Knows we are connected to everyone and everything
and that Love is the ultimate Truth, we can start to set / see a boundary between our self/Self and
the disease of codependency. Reconnecting with the Spiritual meaning and purpose of life helps
us to start tuning into Spiritual Self - our intuitive inner channel to Higher Self / Higher Power /
God / Goddess / Great Spirit / Universal Force. That helps us to start having some compassion
for our human self so that we can start separating our concept of self from the disease
programming - from the demon / critical parent / disease voice / enemy within.
At this point in my web article I used some graphics to make a point about the kinds of
messages that come from the disease - but since I don't have copyright permission to use them in
this book, I will just describe them here.
I used pictures of Darth Vadar and Jabba the Hut labeled: critical parent / disease voice /
enemy within / demon / monster within / perpetrator within - with these types of messages
coming out of them.
IMPENDING DOOM! Financial tragedy! Hopelessness! Despair!
Don't risk or you will fail! Don't love or you will get your heart broken! Don't trust or you
will be betrayed! Don't believe you deserve because you won't get! Don't hope or you will
be disappointed!
Always! Never! Should!!!! Ought to! HAVE TO!
NOT - good / thin / smart / healthy / rich / pretty / successful / whatever - ENOUGH!
Stupid! Idiot! FAILURE! Loser! Fool!
And then I had a graphic of Yoda with the title "A Way to The Force" that had the messages:
Know that you are Unconditionally Loved!
Have compassion for your self. Love yourself by saying no to the critical parent.
You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience.
"That "critical parent" voice in our head is the disease lying to us. Any shaming, judgmental
voice inside of us is the disease talking to us - and it is always lying. This disease of
Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides. The voices of the disease that
are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn
right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough,
that we are not doing it right.
We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the
old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self - what some people call "the small quiet
voice."
We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us
and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice. As long as we are judging and shaming
ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating
the life out of us. Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself - it is self-perpetuating."
The critical parent / disease voice / gatekeeper / monster /perpetrator / demon / enemy within
is the result of ego programming that causes us to view ourselves and life from a shame based
negative perspective. As long as we are interpreting life / defining self / translating our
emotional reactions out of the intellectual paradigm that we were conditioned / programmed /
brainwashed with in childhood, we are set up to feel like a victim - doomed to keep allowing our
disease to dictate and define our lives for us.
"Our experiential reality is determined by the interpretations of our mind - by the
intellectual paradigm which we are using to define / determine / translate / explain our
reality. The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally dictate our
emotional reactions. Attitudes, definitions, and beliefs determine perspective and
expectation - which in turn dictates our relationships. Our relationships to our self, to life,
to other people, to The God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit. Our relationships to
our own emotions, bodies, gender, etc., are dictated by the attitudes, definitions, and
beliefs that we are holding mentally / intellectually. And we acquired those mental
constructs / ideas / concepts in early childhood from the emotional experiences, intellectual
teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us. If we have not done our emotional
healing so that we can get in touch with our subconscious intellectual programming then
we are still reacting to that early childhood programming / intellectual paradigm even
though we may not be aware of it consciously." - The True Nature of Love-part 4,
Energetic Clarity
We have a dis-ease / reactive condition caused - as I say in this quote - by "the emotional
experiences, intellectual teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us" in early
childhood. The dynamics of the disease are the same for all of us - and are very predictable. Out
of the disease we always react to extremes - and we do things that hurt our self.
We do not have to keep being the victim of our childhood wounding and programming. As I
have stated, it is so important and vital to start seeing that "we have a dysfunctional relationship
with self which was caused by our childhood experiences - and that we have the power to change
that relationship into one that works better."
"Human beings have the capacity to grow. Any time someone says anything to the effect:
"That is just how it is." "That is just how I am." "I can't help myself." etc., they are making
a victim statement . . . . . As I point out so often in my writing, our attitudes, definitions
and beliefs - the intellectual paradigm we are empowering (consciously or subconsciously)
- determines our perspectives and expectations which in turn dictate our emotional
reactions and relationships.
We do not have to be the victim of our childhood programming." - Old tapes / traditional
beliefs and gender roles for men and women
It order to stop living life as a victim it is vital to start seeing our disease as separate from our
self. To start recognizing that there are multiple parts to our being. We have a Spiritual / Higher
/ True Self that we can tune into. We have a human self that was wounded - and continues to be
rewounded as long as we are reacting to life out of the dysfunctional programming. We have a
disease / reactive condition that is a very powerful form of Delayed Stress Syndrome.
"Codependency is a conditioned reflex. It is a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(Codependence as Delayed Stress Syndrome) It is an effect of brainwashing, a result of
behavior modification. Codependency is condition, or dis-ease, that is caused by
environmental conditions and conditioning rather than a phenomena which is genetic or
innate to human nature. (Disease = a disturbance in a natural process, an abnormal
condition which disturbs normal organic structural integrity / process.)" - Codependency
Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship
with Life Chapter 5: Codependency = conditioned reactive programming
It is a powerful, insidious, self perpetuating, self defeating cycle of thinking and behavior that
we are powerless over until we start learning how to stop it from dictating and defining our lives.
A big step in starting to own the power to change the quality of our life experience, change our
relationship with self, is to start drawing a boundary / seeing a separation between who we are
and the disease / reactive condition of codependency that is a result of our childhood
experiences.
It is very helpful to stop saying things like: "I am judging myself." or "I sabotaged myself."
When I say, "I am judging myself" - I automatically judge and shame myself for judging myself.
Instead it is better to say, "The critical parent voice is judging me." "The disease caused me to
sabotage myself."
Here is a long excerpt from one of my articles in the Serenity Prayer series that addresses how
important it is to start recognizing - and taking action to change - the dysfunctional ego
programming from our childhood.
"The "critical parent" voice in our head is a manifestation of our damaged ego
programming. The ego is the part of our being whose responsibility it is to help us survive.
Because of the emotional trauma we suffered due to the reality that our parents were
wounded in their childhoods - and the dysfunctional programming of the emotionally
dishonest, Spiritual hostile cultures we grew up in - our egos got programmed very badly.
Our egos got programmed to relate to life from a perspective of fear and shame, lack and
scarcity.
The critical parent voice developed to try to control our own emotions and behavior so that
we could survive in the dysfunctional environments we were born into. In that
development, it adapted the same tools that were used on us: fear, shame, and guilt. In
recovery, we are working on reprogramming that critical voice to stop reacting out of fear
based upon shame so that we can start learning how to be more Loving to ourselves - and
how to relate to life and other people in a way that is more functional in terms of allowing
us to get our needs met and enjoy life.
It is vital in recovery to start learning how to tell that critical voice to "shut up!" It has
been the play by play announcer that has been defining our lives for us. It is time to start
learning how to have a more Loving, objective, and nurturing play by play announcer
inside our own heads.
Like the emotionally wounded inner child places within us, the critical parent voice is just
a part of us. We can start learning how to have some control over that part of us. We can
start learning how to be discerning about what is going on in our minds so that we can see
ourselves and life with more clarity and Truth.
When I say, in the quote from my book above, that the disease is always lying - I do not
mean that there isn't some truth in what it is saying. However, because it is programmed to
relate to life from a black and white / right and wrong perspective, and to believe that being
human (making mistakes, not being perfect) is shameful, what it does often is take a grain
of truth and blow it way out of proportion. The reality that the inner child places within us
are reacting out of life and death urgency causes the critical voice to magnify, twist and
distort that grain of truth into a shaming, blaming, all encompassing indictment of our self.
The pain of being shamefully "wrong" / defective then causes us to want to blame it all on
something / someone else because the only choices in a black and white perspective are to
blame them or blame me. To blame me throws me into that deep dark pit of pain and
despair within where I feel inherently unlovable and unworthy.
In order to stop being the victim of our self and our wounding it is vital to start setting
 boundaries with that critical parent voice - to start learning how to stop the inner child
abuse that is part of the disease dynamic. Recognizing that it is not telling us the whole
truth, that it is the result of faulty programming and polarized perspective, is the first step
to starting to see that the critical parent voice is not an inherent part of our being. It is not
an integral component of who we are - it is a part of us that was created by programming
and wounding, it is a part of us that we can have some control over, that we can change.
Then we can start practicing some discernment and use the magnificent tool that is our
mind to start reprogramming the part of our mind that has been our own worst enemy.
Then we can start counteracting all the negative messages with positive messages.
Positive affirmations are a very important tool in this process. The reality of our
codependency is that we are programmed to negatively affirm ourselves hundreds of times
a day - and that is on a good day, on a "bad" one we can get into the thousands. We need
to stop empowering the negative programming and start choosing to introduce positive
programming into our own internal process. This is one of the ways that we start relating
to our self in a more Loving way.
It is vital to start recognizing that any fear or shame based messages, any black and white
messages, any "should"s, "have to"s, "must"s - are coming from the critical parent voice.
We can learn to start countering the shame based messages with Love based affirmations,
the fear based messages with faith based messages, the "should"s and "have to"s by
affirming that we do have choices, that we do have access to wisdom.
In learning to access that wisdom - the "small quiet voice", the voice of our Spirit / True
Self that never speaks with shame and judgment - we can start our own internal
environmental clean up program. We can learn to stop the toxic waste that is spewing out
the critical parent voice from polluting our own internal landscape.
We have choices. We have access to the power and wisdom of the Spirit. We can learn to
be more Loving to our self by developing an internal defense attorney, an internal "knight
in shining armor," to defend and rescue our self and our inner children from the
programming of our childhood." - Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice
We have been our own worst enemies because of our wounding and programming - but we
are not the enemy. The enemy is the disease, and it is within us. It is very important to stop
blaming ourselves and start learning how to have some discernment so we can start having the
wisdom to tell the difference between messages coming from the disease - i.e. negative
programming / critical parent disease voice - and messages coming from our intuition / Spirit,
from our own heart and soul. As we start to have some discernment mentally we can stop
interpreting our emotional reactions as being bad or wrong or shameful so that we can start
changing our relationship with our own emotions, with our own emotional wounds.
We do have the power to change our relationship with our self. By being willing to start
taking action: to align with Spiritual Self (positive affirmations); to change our relationship with
our self by being willing to start focusing some attention on our childhood wounds; to start
consciously attempting to develop a detached observer perspective; and to start seeing our
disease as separate from our self/Self; we can start to learn how to get past our ego defenses and
start having the capacity to open our hearts to our self so that we can learn to Love in a healthy
way.
Learning to open up to Love is why we are here going through this adventure. In order to
open up to receive Love from others and to give it in a healthy way, we need to be willing to take
Loving action for our self to stop empowering the disease and start aligning with the Truth of
Love.
"We need to change our relationship with ourselves and our own emotions in order to stop
being at war with ourselves. The first step to doing that is to detach from ourselves enough
to start protecting ourselves from the perpetrator that lives within us." - Learning to Love
our self
The core of the work is to stop shaming and judging our self and start being Loving to our self
- to stop the internal conflict and start developing some inner peace. It is the hardest thing for us
to do because of our programming - but it can be done. If you are willing to take some of the
actions contained in these assignments, you will be Loving yourself by doing something Loving
for your self.
The positive affirmations are an invaluable, ongoing tool in recovery. The inner child work is
the key to opening up to learning to have some compassion for our self, learning to Love our self
- as I say in the quote from my book - that inner child is the gateway to our channel to the
Higher Self , to connecting with our own heart and soul. Being willing to develop the detached
observer perspective and start seeing our disease as just a part of us that we can take some
control over, are keys to being able to do the emotional healing and change our dysfunctional
relationship patterns.
"As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are giving power to the disease. We
are feeding the monster that is devouring us.
We need to take responsibility without taking the blame. We need to own and honor the
feelings without being a victim of them.
We need to rescue and nurture and Love our inner children - and STOP them from
controlling our lives. STOP them from driving the bus! Children are not supposed to drive, they
are not supposed to be in control.
And they are not supposed to be abused and abandoned. We have been doing it backwards.
We abandoned and abused our inner children. Locked them in a dark place within us. And at
the same time let the children drive the bus - let the children's wounds dictate our lives.
We were powerless out of ego-self to do anything any different than we did it. We are
powerless out of ego-self to heal this disease. Through Spiritual Self, through our Spiritual
Connection, we have access to all the power in the Universe.
We need to have the willingness: willingness to get to a new level of self-honesty; willingness
to start listening to the Loving inner voice instead of the shaming ones; willingness to face the
terror of healing the emotional wounds."
Have the willingness to say the Positive Affirmation over and over again as a way of shutting
up the shaming and blaming inner messages:
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
The more you are willing to start taking Loving action for yourself, the easier it will be to start
separating your disease from your self/Self. That will make it easier to face the terror of healing
the emotional wounds - of being willing to take the journey within through the black hole of your
grief. That is how we open our hearts to Love - to Loving our self and allowing others to Love
us.
"A "state of Grace" is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without
having to earn that Love. We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit. What we need to
do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.
 The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not
Lovable. And we cannot do that without going through the black hole. The black hole that we
need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief. The journey within -
through our feelings - is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable.
It is through willingness and acceptance, through surrender, trust, and faith, that we can
begin to own the state of Grace which is our True condition."
 Chapter 35
Co-Creation: Owning your Power to Manifest Love
"As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The
more we heal, the more responsibility we have - that is, ability to respond. The ability to
respond in the moment."
"By doing our emotional healing, by changing the dysfunctional attitudes, we can start being
responsible in our lives - that is, we can begin to have the ability to respond to life honestly in
the moment.
Until we heal our wounds, until we become honest and clear in our emotional process, we are
not able to be discerning. We are not capable of responding to life in the now - we are only able
to react out of old grief, out of old tapes." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
The single most important step in this inner healing work is detachment. It is developing a
detached level of consciousness - and observer / witness perspective - that allows us to start
practicing discernment in relationship to both our inner and outer process. This facilitates the
process of learning how to have internal boundaries so that we can start having the wisdom and
clarity to integrate a Loving Spiritual belief system and intellectual knowledge of healthy
behavior into our emotional relationship with life. Then we are able to start achieving some
emotional balance, and start owning our power to be a positive conscious co-creator of our life
experience - a Loving, mature, empowered force in our own lives, instead of an unconscious co-
creator out of the negative, self abusive, self sabotaging reactions that are caused by our
emotional wounds and the codependent behavior patterns adapted in childhood.
By developing detachment we can start practicing discernment - having the wisdom to know
the difference between the things we cannot change and the things which we can - which will
allow us to develop internal boundaries so that we can stop being the victim of our wounds and
dysfunctional intellectual programming. Developing some detachment from our own internal
process is necessary so we can stop reacting and learn to respond in the moment in a healthy,
mature manner - as an empowered, Spiritually enlightened adult, instead of a frightened,
wounded child.
"As long as we keep reacting out of black and white polarized thinking, we are powerless
to change our patterns. Recognizing we were powerless out of ego self to do anything but
react, creates the space to allow us to start changing our relationship with ourselves and
stop being our own worst enemy. Recognizing our powerlessness to control life out of
ego, helps us to begin to take power away from the feeling of toxic shame and start
forgiving ourselves. Awakening to the futility, the inherent dysfunction, of allowing our
early childhood ego programming to define us and run our lives - and our powerlessness to
change that until we became conscious that it needed to, and could, be changed - begins the
process of learning to Love ourselves, and creates the space to start being open to relaxing
and enjoying life. By learning to stop empowering polarized reaction to the toxic shame,
we can start being honest enough with ourselves to own our responsibility in how our lives
have unfolded so that we can make amends to our self and others - and that allows us to
start changing our behavior and relationship patterns substantially and significantly." -
Attack on America - A Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 5
Awakening to Higher Consciousness
On January 3, 2011 I celebrated 27 years of being clean and sober. I have been clean and
sober for longer than I drank and used for some years now. An amazing miracle that has
unfolded one day at a time. Some of those days were excruciatingly painful - full of
hopelessness and despair. In early recovery, I didn't make it through those days sober because I
wanted to be sober - or because I wanted to be alive. I made it through one day at a time because
I was terrified of returning to, and getting stuck in, the hell I had been living in for the last 4 or 5
years of my drinking.
There is an old AA saying that: Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't open up the gates of heaven
and let us in - it opens up the gates of hell and lets us out. When I got released from my
alcoholic hell, what I found myself experiencing was life. The very thing I had been drinking to
cope with!
What I realize now, is that I was released from alcoholic hell and found myself in
codependent hell. My relationship with my self and with life condemned me to codependent hell
- and alcohol and drugs had given me a vacation of sorts from dealing with the fact that I did not
have a clue of how to live life in a functional way.
I am very, very grateful now that I am a recovering alcoholic. If I had not found alcohol and
drugs, I would have killed myself in one way or another in my late teens or early twenties. My
17 plus year drinking career kept me alive long enough to be present when planetary conditions
changed so that the New Age of Healing and Joy could dawn in human consciousness. Long
enough to have available to me, the tools and knowledge to be able to heal my wounded soul and
learn to live life in a way that works. Long enough that first Adult Children of Alcoholics, and
then Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings, were available to help me in my healing process.
"The dysfunctional dance of Codependence is caused by being at war with ourselves - being
at war within.
We are at war with ourselves because we are judging and shaming ourselves for being
human. We are at war with ourselves because we are carrying around suppressed grief energy
that we are terrified of feeling. We are at war within because we are "damming" our own
emotional process - because we were forced to become emotionally dishonest as children and
had to learn ways to block and distort our emotional energy.
We cannot learn to Love ourselves and be at peace within until we stop judging and shaming
ourselves for being human and stop fighting our own emotional process, until we stop waging
war on ourselves."
Detachment and Delayed Gratification
I can see now, that the reason I was able to stay sober was because of two concepts that are
invaluable to any healing or growth. The first one made the second possible. It is the first of
these concepts that is the single most important step in the inner healing process - the one that I
stress so much to anyone I am working with on how to change and improve the quality of their
lives.
That concept is detachment.
Codependence is a compulsively reactive condition. I had gone through life like a pin ball -
bouncing / reacting from one point to the next, from one person to the next. It was never my
fault. Someone, or something else, was always to blame for how messed up my life was - for
how awful I felt inside. I focused on blame and resentment because the only alternative that I
knew was to blame myself. I was at war inside of myself - and because I was taught to look
outside for definition and worth by the society I grew up in, I tried to assign the blame externally
for that internal war.
At the core of codependency is shame about being human. This shame was caused by a
polarized, black and white intellectual paradigm that empowered the perspective that the only
alternatives for evaluating worth, for determining value, are right and wrong. Human beings are
incapable of being perfect based upon a perspective in which the only alternatives are right and
wrong.
Codependency is a dysfunctional relationship with life, with being human. It is the dance I
learned to do as a little kid. It is a dance whose music is generated from fear and shame, to a
rhythm dictated by black and white thinking. It is a dance characterized by movement between
extremes - blame them or blame me, overreact or underreact, less than or better than, success or
failure, win or lose, etc., - which makes balance impossible. There is no middle ground in a
dance that can only be done right or wrong. There can be no inner peace.
Since I was continually attempting to do life perfect (or rebelling by going to the opposite
extreme) according to false beliefs about the nature and purpose of being human, I could never
have any inner peace. I judged my self and my life experience, both consciously and
unconsciously, out of a dysfunctional polarized belief system - so that it was not possible to stop
being at war within. At the core of my being I felt like I was a defective monster, some kind of
shameful, unlovable loser - and I tried to deflect some of that pain by blaming others.
No wonder I drank. Alcohol - and later drugs of various kinds - saved my life.
The first thing I had to do to get sober was to detach enough from my personal reality - from
my hellish emotional pain and shame, from the intellectual garbage generated by my twisted
codependent thinking - to become conscious of the reality that alcohol was not working for me
anymore. I had to get conscious enough to be able to realize that it had been many years since
alcohol had given me the relief and good feelings that it had when I started drinking.
With any addictive, mind / mood altering substance / behavior, the very thing that brought
some relief from the internal war and mental anguish - the substance or behavior that gives us
feelings of being high, of rising above our lives of quiet desperation, of feeling good - becomes
something that we feel is necessary just to feel normal. Then eventually, normal becomes very
low indeed.
I had to detach from myself enough to look at my life from a perspective that allowed me to
see that maybe my behavior had something to do with why I was so miserable - but that is was
not because I was a shameful being. The twelve step concept of powerlessness - the idea that
alcoholism was a disease rather than a weakness of character - allowed me to detach and view
my behavior, my drinking and using, with enough objectivity to start seeing reality with more
clarity.
Once I surrendered to the reality that alcohol was hurting me rather than helping me, then I
could make some effort to start living life differently. It was necessary for me to get a detached,
objective look at myself in order for me to get honest enough with myself to decide that it might
be better for me to get sober. I did not stop drinking because I wanted to stop drinking. I
stopped drinking because alcohol and drugs were not working for me any more. When I was
able to look at reality with some detachment, I could see that what I thought was the solution had
actually become the most pressing problem.
The second concept that was so valuable in staying sober and starting to change my life, was
the concept of delayed gratification. When I first started recovery, I thought that living life one
day at a time was a revolutionary concept for me. But looking back now, I can see that living
life one day at a time is what I had been doing all my life. The difference was that I had been
living out of instant gratification.
As I describe in my web article The codependent three step - A Dance of Shame, Suffering, &
Self-Abuse, codependency is a vicious, compulsive, self-abusive dynamic - an prison that we are
trapped in as long as we are reacting. In my codependent dance I was the victim of myself, I was
my own perpetrator, and I rescued myself in ways that were ultimately self abusive. The shame
and pain I was feeling was causing me to feel like a victim, the critical parent voice in my head
was beating me up for being a stupid loser, and I was rescuing myself with drugs and alcohol.
In early recovery, I learned to think the next drink through to the consequences before picking
it up. In other words, think about how I would feel about myself tomorrow if I take a drink
today. And be conscious enough to tell myself the truth that I didn't want just one drink - I
wanted oblivion, unconsciousness.
So, I started living life one day at a time from a detached place of consciousness that was
aware of cause and effect - and understood that not indulging in instant gratification today would
help me to not hate myself so much tomorrow.
Detachment allowed me to start aligning myself with the way life really works - cause and
effect - and choosing delayed gratification one day at a time. It has resulted in over 27 years of
sobriety as I am preparing to publish this in 2011.
Developing a friendly, compassionate observer self
"One of the difficulties in this healing process is that even after we start to awaken to being
butterflies, a part of our mind keeps telling us that we are low, crawling, disgusting creatures.
Taking the power away from that part of us is the key to the healing process. A key to
stopping the war inside. We need to take the shame and judgment out of the process on a
personal level. It is vitally important to stop listening and giving power to that critical place
within us that tells us that we are bad and wrong and shameful.
That "critical parent" voice in our head is the disease lying to us. Any shaming, judgmental
voice inside of us is the disease talking to us - and it is always lying. This disease of
Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides. The voices of the disease that
are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn
right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough,
that we are not doing it right.
We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the
old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self - what some people call "the small quiet
voice."
We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us
and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice. As long as we are judging and shaming
ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating
the life out of us. Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself - it is self-perpetuating.
This healing is a long gradual process - the goal is progress, not perfection. What we are
learning about is unconditional Love. Unconditional Love means no judgment, no shame."
We all observe ourselves, but we do it from the perspective of the critical judge. It is our
critical parent voice that provides the witness perspective in our lives. It is our own worst
enemy, judging us and shaming us - calling us stupid or loser or fool. We all have experienced
our critical parent voice beating ourselves up for being human by using whatever pet abusive
names are part of our personal abusive relationship with self. To that critical observer self,
nothing we do is ever good enough - except when we are reacting to the opposite extreme and
telling ourselves how much better we are than others because they are mean or stupid or losers.
The critical parent voice is rooted in the subconscious intellectual paradigm that is defining
and dictating our life experience. It is the play by play commentator that is providing running
commentary on how well we are playing the game of life - and it is judging our performance
based upon false beliefs about the nature and purpose of life, based upon a black and white
perspective that dooms us to be the victim of being imperfect humans. It dictates how we react
to life and then judges us for those reactions.
It is very important to start learning how to take power away from that critical parent voice so
that we can start developing a witness perspective with a compassionate level of consciousness.
So that we can start learning how to be our own best friend - instead of our own worst enemy.
The first step to developing this level of consciousness is to know that it is possible to develop
it. Once we start to realize that we can have a detached observer perspective that is not judging
us, then we can start raising our consciousness to be more aligned with Love than with fear and
shame.
It takes awhile for us to get to a place where we can be compassionate with ourselves. In the
beginning, we want to try to at least be able to observe ourselves from a neutral perspective - or
even better from the perspective of a scientific observer. We can start to watch ourselves as if
we were an alien species we are studying so that we can see ourselves and say, "Oh isn't that
interesting. Now why did I react that way." Instead of "How can I be so stupid."
Once we start to learn to be detached in a way that is not shaming, then we can start being the
detective of our inner process - we can start tracking down the cause and effect relationship
between our behaviors and our childhood programming.
We can also then start using that observer self as an inner defense attorney who can start to
defend us from the critical parent voice. We already have a judge and prosecutor inside - we
desperately need an inner defense attorney who can start setting boundaries with the critical
parent voice.
A vital part of the healing process is having enough detachment to start relating to the critical
parent programming - and the emotional wounds / inner child places within - as parts of us rather
as our self. Achieving some separation within in our perspective of our own inner process is
vital to setting boundaries within - and learning how to stop being the victim of ourselves.
This inner child healing / codependency recovery work is a process of transforming our
relationship with ourselves into a more Loving and empowered relationship by starting to take
some control over our inner process. We can learn how to develop the mature empowered adult
within us - and let that part of us run our lives instead of our emotional wounds and
dysfunctional intellectual programming.
We all have that adult within us already - we just need to own it. Until we can detach from
our inner process enough to start seeing all the different parts of us, we cannot really understand
all the conflict within. The only way to start achieving some inner peace is to develop a friendly,
compassionate adult within who is on a Spiritual path and can make choices in our life from a
place of Love instead of fear and shame.
Detachment is necessary for anyone to start changing their behavior patterns. The more we
get conscious of the power of detaching and the choices it offers to us, the more powerfully we
can align with the healing / Spiritual awakening process. I had to practice detachment in order to
get, and stay, sober. It was necessary to detach from my own process before I could start seeing
reality with more clarity. But I did not realize that was what I was doing. Once I started to
realize how the process works, and how valuable a technique detachment is, then I could really
start to be proactive in intervening in my own internal process and changing my internal
programming. Then I could really be consciously involved in the process of changing my
relationship with myself into one in which I could choose to be a co-creator in my life out of
Love instead of reacting unconsciously out of my self hatred.
 Awakening to a level of consciousness where I could start to take responsibility in, and for,
my life from a perspective that was aligned with the dynamics of how life really works, allowed
me to start learning how to be my own friend instead of my worst enemy. It allowed me to
realize that the part of me that was shaming and judging me was just a part of me - it is not who I
am. The emotional wounds that I was so afraid of were just parts of me also - I was able to learn
how to stop letting the feelings of the little kid define and dictate my life, at the same time I was
building a nurturing relationship with those parts of me. I could then learn to stop the part of me
that was abusing me from making me feel like a victim, and start rescuing myself in ways that
worked - in ways that were aligned with delayed gratification and Love.
Detachment was the key to creating the space in my consciousness to start the process of
taking power away from the shame and judgment - to stop living life based on fear. As long as I
was just reacting out of unconsciousness, I was powerless to change my behaviors. Detaching
from my internal process enough to be more conscious of cause and effect created the space for
me to start owning the power to make choices and take responsibility for the way I was living my
life.
We can develop a recovery control center (as I have taken to calling it lately) that is making
choices about our attitudes and behaviors from an enlightened perspective that is aligned with
intuition instead of fear based impulsive reaction. We can develop a Loving, compassionate
relationship with ourselves by having enough detachment to learn discernment. We can then
own our power to be co-creators in our lives who can align ourselves with transforming our
dance of life from one of dancing in the darkness feeling separate from the Creative Source, to
one in which we are dancing in the Light of Love.
Creating the space to manifest Love
"I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the
external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no
responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I
can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control
something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional."
What is so valuable, what I believe is unique, about the approach to inner child healing that I
have been guided to develop and refine, is that it provides a formula for integrating Spiritual
Truth and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into one's emotional relationship with life.
It does not matter how much Spiritual Truth, how many mystical experiences of oneness, how
in tune with Love, you can feel in certain moments - if you cannot integrate it into your life in a
way which changes your emotional experience of life on a moment to moment, day to day basis.
You can go to therapy for many years, read all the Spiritual and self help books, go to
workshops and seminars and lectures - compile encyclopedic intellectual knowledge of what
healthy behavior is - and still be reacting to old wounds in the relationships that mean the most to
you.
The missing ingredient for so many people who have been seeking for many years, is how to
integrate what you know into how you feel about your experience life. That is what I teach
people - because it is what I have spent many years learning. It is what I am still learning.
The telephone counseling that I have been doing since the spring of 2000 has led me to refine
and fine tune my understanding of the dynamics of the healing process work. I resisted
suggestions to do telephone counseling for quite awhile because I was concerned about how
effective it would be. When working with someone in person, I can observe body language and
look into their eyes. It is much easier to help a person get into their feelings, do their grief work,
when working in person.
The very fact that I wasn't in the presence of the person has turned out to be perfect - it
actually forced me into a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of the process. Working
with people on the telephone led me to focus on how to help the person change their relationship
with themselves and life in the quickest, most effective way.
I realized that I did not need to know a lot of details about the persons story. I will get just
enough information from them to be able to identify the primary themes and issues in their lives
- and the dynamics in childhood that spawned these issues. That allows me to explain the
dynamics to them in a way they can understand and relate to from their personal experience.
The dynamics of codependence are universal and predictable - because all human beings
share the same emotions and emotional process. The internal dynamics of the interrelationship
between the mental and emotional levels of our beings is something I understand intimately.
Each of us is unique and different in the details of our lives, in the flavor of codependency we
adapted - but we all have the same basic internal dynamic.
I wrote the final draft of my book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, in 1995.
Everything I say about the disease and the recovery process in that book is perfectly aligned
with what I know today. It is a Truly amazing book that I am very grateful to have been guided
to write.
"The terrorist attack on September 11th, was a blatant and straightforward manifestation of
the dynamics of codependence that I explained in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded
Souls. The subtitle of that book is A Cosmic Perspective of Codependence and the Human
Condition. That book is a work of mystical Spirituality. I believe it is a Divinely inspired
message to remind all wounded souls of the Truth of Love and ONENESS. As I
mentioned in my last Update, I am just now starting to live at the level of consciousness
that I was guided to access while writing The Dance of Wounded Souls.
"One of the things that I am realizing in the processing that was set off by this latest
breakthrough in my process, is that I seem to just now be reaching - on a personal level
- the level of consciousness that my book was written out of. It has been over 10 years
now, since I wrote the core of what was to become Codependence: The Dance of
Wounded Souls - over a period of 48 frenzied hours of writing, to be able to give a talk
that I had scheduled months before.
The book of course evolved from that first time when I gave my talk - here in Cambria -
reading from scribbles on yellow legal paper. The core of the book however poured out
of me during those two days from a level of consciousness that was much higher than
the one I was experiencing in my day to day life at that time." - Joy to You & Me and
Joy2MeU Update - August -2001
The official publication date of The Dance of Wounded Souls was January 1996, but I
actually received the books from the printer on November 30, 1995. The book is perfect.
There are maybe two or three places in the book that I might change a word or phrase, but
other than that, it is perfect - which is not something I could have done by myself. I was
guided to write that book. I was led to access the information. I was able to be open to
remembering Truth and being used as an instrument to share the message." - Attack on
America - A Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 6
Just reading my book will help most people to change their relationship with life for the better
because it will cause a paradigm shift in consciousness. I understood the disease and the
recovery process then - the telephone counseling has led me to refine and fine tune my ability to
communicate the dynamics of the process to others.
In my own recovery process I was led intuitively, and through working the twelve steps, to
develop the detachment that allowed me to learn how to start practicing discernment and to
develop internal boundaries to facilitate my healing and growth. I wasn't consciously aware of
how important the concept of detachment specifically had been in my healing at the time I wrote
the book - and don't even mention the word in my book. I do describe the process and the
importance of developing the observer perspective.
"We need to start observing ourselves and stop judging ourselves. Any time we judge and
shame ourselves, we are feeding back into the disease, we are jumping back into the squirrel
cage."
What I see clearly now, is that detachment was the first step in my recovery - and is the key to
consciousness raising. As long as we are reacting out of a polarized belief system to the feeling
of toxic shame in our core relationship with ourselves, we are powerless to be co-creators of our
lives in anything but a negative way. It is only by detaching from our inner process enough to
start seeing reality from a new healthier perspective, that we can start to gain some freedom from
our old wounds and old tapes.
Observing ourselves without shame and judgment allows us to see reality with more clarity.
It creates the space that allows us to own our power to make choices. It creates the space for us
to start to understand our own internal conflict so that we can choose to start paying attention to
the "small quiet voice" of our Spirit, of our intuition, instead of giving power to the loud abusive
messages coming from our wounded ego programming. It is the key to starting to stop the war
within and create some inner peace.
Developing a level of consciousness in which we are self aware, and turning that space into a
proactive force in changing our relationship with self and life, is the key to learning to relax and
enJoy life in the moment some of the time. The percentage of the time we are be-ing and
enjoying life will increase gradually as we transform our relationship with self and life.
Probably even more important than the ability to relax and enjoy life, is developing the
observer consciousness that helps us to start developing some compassion for ourselves when we
are not enjoying life. It helps us to allow - and align with - the emotional healing so that we can
release the repressed grief energy we are carrying. It helps us to stop judging and shaming
ourselves when we feel "bad." That in turn means we spend less time in negative feeling
emotional spaces - and move back into positive feeling emotional spaces sooner. It allows us to
open up to receive so that we don't sabotage feeling good.
Detachment allows us to start taking some Loving control of our own internal process. It
allows us to start taking control over, and responsibility for, our thoughts and our feelings to the
extent that is possible. It allows us to create a space in our lives to start learning how to be
Loving to ourselves instead of feeling like a victim of self and life.
Detachment - learning to observe our selves so that we can become more conscious - is an act
of Love.
"Our job is to pay attention to the best of our ability, to be conscious enough to pick up on
the messages the Universe is sending our way, and to take action in the direction we feel is
necessary. We need to suit up and show up for life today, and do what is in front of us - at
the same time a part of us is observing how intricately and perfectly the process is
unfolding.
God I Love this process!! It is so incredibly elaborate. A fascinating unfolding of an
intricate mosaic. I can be an actor in the play - and at the same time, be the audience
 watching the story unfold. The audience part of my consciousness used to be booing and
hissing, throwing tomatoes and yelling what a stupid loser I was. Now my audience is
compassionate, understanding, and supportive - and even gives me a standing ovation once
in a while." - Newsletter Part 2 May 23, 2001 Update
additional level of consciousness
I realized after posting this page that I wasn't sure if I had been clear that I was not talking
about detachment as a way to avoid feeling the feelings. I am referring to developing an
additional level of consciousness where we can be watching ourselves at the same time we are
feeling the feelings. A level of consciousness from the adult on a Spiritual path, the recovery
control center, that can help us align with the grieving process and release the emotional energy.
We can be the recovering adult who is observing from a nurturing and Loving place at the same
time we are experiencing the feelings of the 5 year old, or 9 year old, or 23 year old, or whatever.
We can be in the feelings and observing ourselves grieving at the same time.
This level of consciousness is from a higher perspective. It is an additional level of
consciousness that we cultivate and develop by more clearly tuning in to, concentrating our
attention on, our intuition - the "small quiet voice" - and consciously choosing to give power to
the Spiritual Truth we resonate with instead of our emotional truth and mental programming
from childhood. By cultivating this detached perspective - detached from our ego experience of
being human - we can observe both the mental and emotional levels of our being from a more
discerning perspective. It facilitates changing the intellectual programming and taking some of
the terror out of healing the emotional wounds. It allows us to set internal boundaries within,
and between, the mental and emotional levels of our being.
When I speak of a detached observer perspective, I am not talking about the kind of
observation that is taught in some spiritual meditation practices. Many people use that type of
observation as a way to avoid feeling the feelings. That type of detachment from emotions is
what some people experience on anti-depressants. Some people use chanting and meditation as
anti-depressants. Chanting and meditation can be invaluable tools but applied in an imbalanced
manner can, like positive affirmations, be used as tools to deny feelings.
Just observing the feelings does not heal them; does not fundamentally change our
relationship patterns; does not make our fear of intimacy go away. We need to feel, experience,
and release the emotional energy in order to heal the wounds and take power away from them.
We need to feel the feelings but learn how not to be the victim of them / of our reactions. I
am talking about a detached observer consciousness that gives us the power to choose how to
respond when one of our grief / rage buttons has been pushed. An emotional wound can be
triggered and we can make a conscious choice that it is not safe to feel and release those feelings
in that moment. Then, we have a choice about how we are going to respond in the now, and later
we can do the grief work when it is safe and appropriate to do it.
We do not avoid feeling the feelings. We gain some power over when and where we feel the
feelings. Detachment, as it applies to the inner child healing process in my approach, is a
technique that fosters empowerment and response-ability, not emotional denial. Detachment is a
dynamic technique, a method of consciously relating to our internal process, that is an integral
and invaluable step in consciousness raising / enlightenment / awakening / recovery / healing /
empowerment.
 Joy to You & Me Enterprises
Robert Burney formed Joy to You & Me Enterprises in order to facilitate the dissemination of
what he believes is a vitally important and very Joyous message. Codependence: The Dance of
Wounded Souls was the first project for this company in 1995. Until July 2011, when he used
Amazon.com's CreateSpace to publish this his second book Codependency Recovery:
Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace
through Inner Child Healing , the financing had not been available to publish any additional
books. Robert has however, published a wealth of information on recovery, healing, and spiritual
topics on the internet. On his publicly available web site, Joy2MeU.com, he shares millions of
words in articles, newsletters, and online books in which he discusses all facets of both the
wounding and recovery process. In addition, he has 2 password protected web sites - the
Joy2MeU Journal & Dancing in Light - in which he has published drafts of several future books
and autobiographical information about the history of his recovery, emotional healing, and
Spiritual growth process, as well as a personal journal about his recovery process over a period
of five years. Since April 2006 he has been offering periodic day long Intensive Training
workshops to train people in the Formula for inner healing and Spiritual Integration that he
discovered and developed. He also has been doing telephone counseling since early 2000 and
that has proven to be very effective in helping people apply his inner child healing approach in
their lives.
In September of 2012, he once again used Amazon's Create Space to publish his third book
Romantic Relationships ~ The Greatest Arena for Spiritual & Emotional Growth
Codependent Dysfunctional Relationship Dynamics & Healthy Relationship Behavior .
In January of 2016 he is publishing this book as an eBook available for Kobo ereaders.
Copies of Joy to You & Me publications and news of Robert Burney can be obtained by
contacting:
Joy to You & Me Enterprises
PO Box 98
Fallbrook CA 92088
Joy2MeU@silcom.com
http://Joy2MeU.com
http://www.facebook.com/robert.burney