Inner Child Healing = a path to freedom, serenity, and empowerment - an index of web pages

"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."

"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.""

"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 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."

(Quotations in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney)

Welcome to a page of Joy2MeU The Web Site of Spiritual Teacher, codependence counselor, grief therapist, author, Robert Burney and Joy to You & Me Enterprises. Go to Home Page   Site index page Robert is the author of the Joyously inspirational book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls For ordering info click here Announcing:  Joy to You & Me Enterprises is offering a series of Intensive Training Days with Spiritual Teacher, inner child healing pioneer Robert Burney.  Learn his innovative Spiritual Integration Formula for Inner Healing.  For the locations and dates of upcoming appearances go to Day of Intensive Training.

Inner Child Healing - a path to freedom, serenity, and empowerment Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance thru Internal Boundaries The approach to healing detailed on these web pages is one which has evolved in my personal recovery over the past 18 years and in my therapy practice over the past 12 years.  I have been guided to 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 make 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 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 web pages - and in my book - 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 environment by parents who were raised in a shame-based, emotionally dishonest, Spiritually hostile environment.  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 honest 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 lived life reacting to the wounds that we suffered in early childhood - and the defenses our egos adapted because of those emotional wounds and the dysfunctional intellectual programming we were subjected to growing up in dysfunctional cultures with wounded codependents as our role models.  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 web 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 automatic and intuitive.  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. ~ Robert Burney May 2002 July 2011 Joy to You & Me Enterprises announces the publication of: 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) This is a process level - how to - book about the inner child healing approach discovered by Robert in his recovery.  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. July 2011- Available in eBook format: Amazon Kindle Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light and Barnes & Noble Nook January 2016 - Now available as eBook for Kobo ereader March 2015 - Now available as an audiobook on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

Joy2MeU pages that explain Robert's innovative, life-changing paradigm for emotional healing, Spiritual integration, & personal empowerment thru internal boundaries, inner child healing & grief processing

*Inner child healing - How to begin - Inner child healing work begins with becoming more conscious of the cause and effect relationship between our childhood and adult lives. "We need to become aware, to raise our consciousness.  To create a new level of consciousness for ourselves that allows us to observe ourselves."

*Inner child healing - Why do it? - Healing the child within is the key to planetary healing, not some fad or pop psychology. "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."

x Learning to Love our self - Inner Child Healing / Codependence Recovery - The first of a three part series of articles about Robert's inner child healing paradigm.  This one deals with the importance of detachment. "We need to detach from our wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us."

x Loving the Wounded Child Within  -  The second article of the series - about the importance of healing the inner child wounds which are keeping us from Loving our selves.  "It is not only dysfunctional, it is ridiculous to maintain that what happened in our childhood did not affect our adult life."

x Feeling the Feelings  -  The final article of the three part series on inner child healing, focusing on the emotional work.  "Doing the grief work is absolutely terrifying.  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."

Co-Creation: Owning your Power to Manifest Love - Written as part of Chapter 10 of Attack on America: A Spiritual, Healing Perspective, this article is focused on detachment as a key to consciousness raising.  "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."

x Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy  -  A column about Robert's first experience of deep grief work. "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."

Fear of Intimacy - the wounded heart of codependency - An article about how fear of intimacy is caused by early childhood trauma.  "We have a fear of intimacy because we have a fear of abandonment, betrayal, and rejection.  We have a these fears because we were wounded in early childhood - we experienced feeling emotionally abandoned, rejected, and betrayed by our parents because they were wounded."

**Reprogramming our dysfunctional ego defenses - Codependence / codependency is an emotional and behavioral defense system adapted by our ego's in childhood to help us survive.  "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."

**Internal Boundaries - the key to emotional balance - The concept of developing internal boundaries is an invaluable and empowering perspective on the healing / recovery process.  "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."

# Co-creation, empowerment, and self-Love through Conscious Internal Boundaries  -  One of the original web pages - focused on internal boundaries. "Loving internal boundaries can allow us to achieve some integration and balance in our relationships and our life experience."

**Inner Child Healing Paradigm -  The inner child healing paradigm is a perspective of our own inner process that facilitates owning all the parts of our self so that we can stop allowing the past to dictate and define our life experience.   "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."

**Inner Awareness - Internal Census  -  It is vital to become aware of our own inner process so we can start stopping the war within caused by different parts of us reacting in conflicting ways.  "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."

# Union Within - healing the inner child -  A column about finding union within through inner child healing. "The feeling of wanting to die, of not wanting to be here, is the most overwhelming, most familiar feeling in my emotional inner landscape."

*Union Within - 5 years later -  An follow up article to Union Within, written 5 years later. "Through doing the inner child work, I have eliminated that negative belief from my programming.  That is a miracle."

# Inner Child Healing Techniques   -  An original web page focused on insights, tools, and techniques for inner child healing. "It is the inner child who feels panic or terror or rage or hopelessness, not the adult."

*Setting Boundaries with inner children - Setting boundaries with our inner children - the wounded inner child places within us - is vital in changing our behavior patterns, stopping self sabotage, and finding some balance in our lives.  "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."

The Inner Children that need Boundaries  -  Some different manifestations of emotional wounds as inner child parts of our being. "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."

*Sanctuary Trauma ~ memories and emotional honesty - Children experience sanctuary trauma growing up in dysfunctional families - and it is important in recovery to get emotionally honest about our memories.  "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."

**Common Emotional Defenses - An article that was a compressed version of two earlier columns describing some of the common ways people learn to distance themselves from their feelings.  "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."

# Positive Affirmations  -  A column by Spiritual teacher about how Positive affirmations are vital tool in the process of learning to love our self, awakening Spiritually, and recovering from codependency.  "I send Love to my fears.  My fears are the places within me that await my Love."

# More on Positive Affirmations  -  Positive Affirmations are used to counter the negative affirmations coming from the critical parent / disease voice.  With guest appearances by Darth Vadar, Jabba the Hut, and Yoda.  "If we Truly believed the positive affirmations we would not have to say them.  When we most need to say them is when we least believe them - when we are feeling the worst."

**Recovery from Codependency / Inner Child Healing  -  An article that was written as a conclusion and summation of the inner child series on Suite 101. "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."

# The Grief Process - Insights, tools, and techniques for grief processing. One of the original pages on the web site with quotes about the grief process. "In order to do the inner child work we need to be willing to do the grief work."

Grieving - examples of how the grief process works.  Written as part of Chapter 8 of Attack on America: A Spiritual, Healing Perspective.   "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."

The Recovery Process for inner child healing series - finding emotional Balance 

Part 1 - Sharing experience, strength, and hope, taking action - In the first article of this series, Robert talks about why he shares his recovery process and about the difference between the important recovery tool of forcing ourselves to take action and the dysfunctional behavior of trying to force an outcome. "A very important part of my process of finding some balance in my life - of learning how to see myself and how I relate to others and life more clearly - was to get clear that everything in my process relates back to me and my growth process.   I had to get past my codependent belief that I was doing something for you - or you were doing something to me."

Part 2 - spiritual integration - This article is both part 2 of this series and a follow up to Spirituality for Agnostics and Atheists.  It defines spirituality as a word that describes a relationship with life.  "My own personal Spiritual belief system is one form of spirituality.  It is certainly not the only one."

Part 3 - through the fear - It is important to change our relationship with our own emotions - especially fear.  "I get really angry when I hear some old timer in an AA meeting say, "Fear is the absence of faith."  That is bull.  If we did not have fear, we would not need faith."

Part 4 - a dance of balance - A number of quotes from different web articles about how to achieve some emotional balance.  "I am hoping that these excerpts about my process and how I apply the tools and techniques in my life can help some of you see more clearly how you can apply them in yours."

Part 5  - The Process of Processing - An article about how important internal boundaries are to finding some emotional balance in the recovery process.  "Once we start having boundaries within the mental, and between the mental and emotional, then we can also start having boundaries within the emotional level of our being.  We can start determining the roots of our patterns, the causes of our emotional wounds."

Part 6 - Processing 2 - This page contains quotes that I think may add some extra levels of perspective to this series of articles.  "When people ask me how to discern the really gray areas - like: Is this setting boundaries or being controlling?  Is this caring or codependent?  Is this a geographic or am I following Divine guidance? - what I tell them is to use the short version of the Serenity Prayer."

Miscelaneous

Inner Child Healing: Choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment- an article with insight and opinions about finding help with the inner child healing process. "There is no one as good as a therapist at turning issues back on you so that it seems to be all your problem."

New article July 2004: Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery - A page that grew out of a relationship experience I learned a lot of lessons from in 2004. "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."

In April 2007 I added an article from the Suite 101 inner child series to a preexisting page: Self-Worth - ego strength verses True self worth

In September 2009 I added an article from the Suite 101 inner child series (that is no longer available on that site) to this site: Emotional Incest Issues

Home Site Index Inner child healing - How to begin Inner child healing - Why do it?

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