Co-dependence: "The Dance of Wounded Souls"
by Robert Burney MA
Spiritual Teacher, co-dependence counselor,
grief therapist, author...
Joy To You And Me Reprinted by Permission. Robert Burney Enterprises.
"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."
"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."
"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 is old stuff
involved.
It is the inner child who feels panic or terror or rage or
hopelessness, not the adult."
"The one who betrayed us and abandoned and
abused us the most was ourselves. That is how the emotional defense
system that is Co-dependence works.
The battle cry of Co-dependence is "I'll show
you—I'll get me."
Inner Child Healing Techniques
"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 being 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."
It is vitally important to start paying attention to our
inner children.
It is does not work, it is dysfunctional, to deny that our
childhood wounds have affected our lives.
Our emotional wounds have been dictating our lives and keeping us
from Loving ourselves.
We have been an abusive parent to ourselves.
"Because of our broken hearts, our
emotional wounds, and our scrambled minds, our subconscious
programming, what the disease of Co-dependence 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 Co-dependence works.
The battle cry of Co-dependence is "I'll
show you—I'll get me."
We have an age of the wounded inner child that relates to
each stage of the development process. It is very important to start
getting in touch with these parts of ourselves and building a Loving
relationship with each of them.
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 is old stuff
involved.
It is the inner child who feels panic or terror or rage or
hopelessness, not the adult.
We need to ask ourselves "How old am I feeling right now?" and
then listen for an intuitive answer. When we get that answer then we
can track down why the child was feeling that way.
It is not that important to know the details of why the child is
feeling that way - it is important to honor that the child's
feelings are valid. Sometimes we recover some memory and sometimes
we don't—the details are not that important, honoring the feelings
is important. Trying to fill in the details isn't necessary and can
lead to false memories.
"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 counselors and
therapists who will not judge and shame you and project their
issues onto you.
(I believe that the cases of "false
memories" that are getting a lot of publicity these days are in
reality cases of emotional incest - which is rampant in our
society and can be devastating to a person's relationship with
his/her own sexuality—that are being misunderstood and
misdiagnosed as sexual abuse by therapists who have not done their
own emotional healing and project their own issues of emotional
incest and/or sexual abuse onto their patients).
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."
When one of our "buttons" is pushed—when an old wound is
gouged—it is very important to honor the child's feelings without
buying into the illusion that it matches the adults
reality.
"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."
The following paragraphs are excerpts from one of my
columns. It is entitled "Union Within" and explains some of the
dynamics of the inner child parenting process.
"Recovery from Co-dependence 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 most vital component of this process in my
experience is the healing and integration of the inner children.
In this column I am going to be talking about some of my inner
children in order to try to communicate the importance of this
integration process. . .
"The seven year old within me is the most prominent
and emotionally vocal of my inner children. . . .
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 immanent - 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.". . . .
"The integration process involves consciously cultivating a
healthy, Loving relationship with all of my inner children so that
I can Love them, validate their feelings, and assure them that
everything is different now and everything is going to be all
right. When the feelings from the child come over me it feels like
my whole being, like my absolute reality—it isn't, it is just a
small part of me reacting out of the wounds from the past. I know
that now because of my recovery, and I can lovingly parent and set
boundaries for those inner children so they are not dictating how
I live my life. By owning and honoring all of the parts of me I
now have a chance to have some balance and union within."
(Column "Union Within" by Robert
Burney)
We need to be the Loving parent who can hear the child's voice
within us.
We need to learn to be nurturing and Loving to the wounded parts
of us.
We can do that by actually working on developing a relationship
with those wounded parts of us. The first step is to open a dialog.
I believe that it is important to actually talk to the children
inside of us.
To open communications in any way we can through talking to those
parts of ourselves in a Loving way (which means also to stop calling
ourselves names like stupid - when we do that we are abusing our
inner children), right hand/left hand writing, painting and drawing,
music, making collages, taking the child to the toy store, etc.
At first the child will probably not trust you—for many very
good reasons. Eventually we can start building trust. If we will
treat ourselves with one tenth as much compassion as we would an
abused puppy who came into our care—we would be Loving ourselves
much more that we have been.
"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."
It is very important to nurture ourselves out of the Loving
adult in ourselves - the one who understands delayed
gratification.
It is the wounded child in us that wants instant gratification.
We need to set boundaries for the wounded part of us that wants
to go unconscious or indulge in things which are abusive in the long
run.
"The pain of being unworthy and shameful was so great
that I had to learn ways to go unconscious and disconnect from my
feelings. The ways in which I learned to protect myself from that
pain and nurture myself when I was hurting so badly were with
things like drugs and alcohol, food and cigarettes, relationships
and work, obsession and rumination.
The way it works in practice is like this: I am feeling fat; I
judge myself for being fat; I shame myself for being fat; I beat
myself for being fat; then I am hurting so badly that I have to
relieve some of the pain; so to nurture myself I eat a pizza; then
I judge myself for eating the pizza, etc. etc.
To the disease, this is a functional cycle. The shame begets
the self-abuse which begets the shame which serves the purpose of
the disease which is to keep us separate so the we don't set
ourselves up to fail by believing that we are worthy and
lovable."
(Column "A Dance of Suffering, Shame, and
Self-abuse"by Robert Burney)
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