Robert Burney, author of Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls, is a "Counselor for Wounded Souls" - a Spiritual
teacher, codependency counselor, and grief therapist. He has developed
an innovative, powerful approach to emotional / inner child healing that
helped him to integrate intellectual knowledge and Spiritual Truth into his
emotional relationship with life in a way that allowed him to change his
experience of life from a hell of emotional suffering to an adventure that
is exciting and enjoyable most of the time.
Robert is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict
who has been clean and sober since January 3, 1984. He
dates his codependency recovery from June 3,
1986, when he made a conscious commitment to do whatever was
necessary to heal his emotional wounds and change the subconscious
programming that was dictating his relationship with self, life, and
other people. He credits the ancient Spiritual principles, that
are the foundation of the twelve step recovery process, with first saving
his life, and then with helping him to develop an inner peace and faith
that allows him to relax and be present to experience moments of Joy
in almost every day of his life - a way of living that helps him to feel
happy to be alive. On the internet, and in his book, he shares
his experience, strength and hope as part of his ongoing healing and
recovery process - because that is how the ancient wisdom of the twelve
step principles work.
"I share my Truth and myself, as a Joyous expression
of my Spiritual Being, because it is what I need to do for me.
Giving and receiving is what keeps the healing energy flowing for
me. I have learned that through giving of what I have received
I am healing me.
This is my way of standing up for my Truth, and
of honoring "All My Relations," which is a Native American term
that refers to the Great Spirit whose essence is present in everyone
and everything. We are all related to everyone and everything.
I do this in honor and service to my belief that
the ultimate, eternal, blessed Truth is that we are all ONE.
That we are all perfect parts of the ONENESS of ALL THAT IS - which
is the Universal Creative God-Force.
I share as an expression of Love, as an act of
Karmic settlement, and with hope that sharing the Joy that I
have found in my Truth will remind you of the Truth which exists
within you. Of the Truth of who you Truly are, and why you are
here."
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
by Robert Burney
Personal History
His background is interesting and
eclectic. He was raised on a farm in Nebraska. His
childhood from all outside appearances was an idyllic, middle class,
"Norman Rockwell", all-American upbringing with both parents present
and no overt dysfunction. He participated in 4-H and little league
baseball and in sports, theater, and student government in high school.
He became very interested in politics through the influence of his
grandfather who was a long-time Lieutenant Governor and, due to the
death of his predecessor, for several months Governor of Nebraska.
The first outward sign that Robert's path was veering from the norm came
as a freshman at Creighton University in Omaha when he was one of the founders
of Creighton Students for Human Relations, one of the University's first
Civil Rights organizations. In that freshman year, he became very
involved in theater and through the influence of a dynamic French teacher
made plans to study at The Sorbonne in Paris his sophomore year.
Those plans did not work out and because of that disappointment and
disillusionment with the University's response to his participation
in marches, protests, and attempts to reform student government, he transferred
to the University of Nebraska for his sophomore year.
There he continued his activism for
a while, even serving as a delegate to the state Democratic convention,
but after the trauma of 1968 with assassinations, riots, and the
election of Richard Nixon, he withdrew from activism and spent his
remaining college days mostly drinking and partying. He was
in Air Force ROTC because of a strong desire to fly (which he later
realized was about his spiritual quest and not about airplanes) and
because of the draft. Although he was opposed to the war in Viet
Nam, his low number in the draft lottery convinced him to join the
Air Force rather that be drafted into the army. Robert was commissioned
as an Air force officer on the same day he received his Bachelor of
Arts degree in Political Science.
He entered Air Force pilots training
and was flying solo in jet aircraft before being medically eliminated
because of allergies. He was then assigned to an Intelligence
wing where he held one of the highest security clearances available.
After receiving an early discharge because of the de-escalation in
Viet Nam, he entered graduate school. He got involved with the
American Indian Movement in the spring of 1973 during their occupation
of the village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. He left graduate
school and went to South Dakota to fly an air drop of supplies but the
siege ended a few days after his arrival. He remained actively
involved with AIM for the rest of that year and had an extensive FBI
file compiled on him for his active participation in revolutionary activities
against the government. During this time more than a dozen of the
people he was closely involved with were killed or went to prison.
It was only through divine intervention on several occasions that he
survived to return to graduate school.
He completed his Masters Degree and
was then hired by the U. S. Civil Service as a Race Relations
Orientations Specialist at Edwards Air Force Base in California
(a little cosmic irony here.) Robert enjoyed great success
communicating with and fostering change in the attitudes and belief
systems of the base personnel he was teaching but left that position
in frustration over bureaucratic interference from Base authorities who
thought him too radical. A brief sojourn in England rekindled his
love of theater and he moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career.
Over the course of more than a decade
pursuing an acting career, he got very few parts of any consequence
but was able to play out fully the role of the "suffering artist",
a perfect expression for his own particular brand of Codependence
which also gave ample opportunity for him to fully pursue personal
research in the area of substance abuse. He played the role
to the hilt in all areas of his life including earning a living
in the starving actor type of jobs: parking cars, driving cabs, and
waiting tables. Acting provided an invaluable emotional outlet
to explore and express feelings that would otherwise have been unacceptable
according to his childhood training and experiences. The personal
research of substance abuse almost killed him.
Robert was introduced to Twelve Step
programs through an intervention by his family on a trip home for the
holidays. He started his Twelve Step Recovery in January of 1984
and remained in Nebraska for nine months. During this time he worked
first in the family care section of the treatment program which he had
gone through and then at a state mental hospital where he started to again
utilize his training and skills in communication and counseling.
He returned to Hollywood in the fall of 1984 convinced that his new found
Spiritual path would facilitate his quest for an Oscar nomination.
When that did not materialize in short order, he fled to South Lake Tahoe
and went to work in the poker room at a casino. The Universe however
had other plans for him and ended his career at the casino so that he could
go to work for the Alcoholism Council of the Sierra Nevadas. It
was there that he started to realize and deal with how Codependent he was
in his relationships with others.
When funding for his position ended,
Robert returned to Southern California and gave acting one last
try. It was only a short time however before he went to work
in a Chemical Dependence Treatment program in Pasadena. His
work as first a counselor and then a therapist there and at a subsequent
treatment program facilitated and accelerated his personal recovery
process. In the spring of 1988, he had a major emotional breakthrough
in his recovery and gave himself the gift of entering a thirty day
treatment program for Codependence. Sierra Tucson Treatment Center
in Arizona was one of the first to pioneer treatment of Codependence
and it was there that he learned a great deal about the grieving process
and absorbed techniques and knowledge upon which he would later expand.
He also realized what a Codependent
relationship he had with the romance of Hollywood and upon completion
of the program promptly moved. After brief stays in Tucson
and Sedona Arizona, he lived in Taos, New Mexico, for a year until
his Spiritual path led him to Cambria, California. (The story of that trip can be found here.) It was in Cambria
that he began a private practice specializing in Codependence Recovery
and inner child healing. During almost two years on the coast
he became involved in a relationship - a tribute to the healing he had
done to overcome his terror of intimacy. He and his new "family"
(significant other and her daughter) moved back to Taos. That relationship
ended after two years. Robert remained in Taos refining his practice
for several more years before making a successful trip to California
in the winter of 1995 to raise funds to publish his first book. (The story of that Leap of
faith trip here.) He returned to Cambria to set up his
publishing company, Joy to You & Me Enterprises, in the fall of 1995.
I am no longer doing the inner child healing
groups - simply because of the way my path has unfolded in recent
years.
After moving back to Cambria in the fall of 1995
and publishing my book, things did not unfold as I had envisioned
them. A perfect part of my Spiritual and emotional growth
process - but a quite challenging time full of opportunities for
growth. Something I mention in my January 2002 Update and Newsletters:
"I raised the money to publish the book myself, and have never
had the kind of money it would take to promote it on any large
scale. I, in fact, got myself in pretty severe financial circumstances
with the attempts I did make to market it."
Joy2MeU January 2002 Update
Cambria is a small isolated community on the Central
Coast of California about halfway between Los Angeles and San
Francisco - the first town south of Big Sur. I really Love
living here - but like a lot of smaller places that offer a higher
quality of life it can be quite a hard place to make a living.
I had first started to do the inner child healing groups in 1990 here
in the local area. The early 90s were a time when codependency
was becoming a very popular movement - and Co-Dependents Anonymous
was growing rapidly. In 1992, I moved back to Taos New Mexico,
where I had lived previously, because the person I was in a relationship
with wanted to move there. As it turned out, she left the relationship
and moved back to California after a year - and I was in Taos until
1995 when I was able to raise the money to publish my book because
of the "leap of faith" trip I refer to above.
By the time I moved back to the Central Coast in the fall of 1995, the
codependency movement was declining rapidly (something I talk
about on a page linked to my Finding CoDA Meetings page - an excerpt from
my personal journal The decline
of Co-Dependents Anonymous in the late 1990s) - and I was having
a harder time getting very many people to commit to doing the inner
child healing groups. When the sale of my books fell off after
the first year for lack of advertising money and/or chain store outlets,
I made a choice to move to Santa Barbara in early 1997 because I had
received significant response to my book from people in that area and
Los Angeles. I had an office in Santa Barbara from February
1997 until February 2000.
I was commuting back to the Central Coast to do some groups during that
time - and also doing some groups in the San Fernando Valley
and West Los Angeles besides the ones I was doing in Santa Barbara.
It was during my time in Santa Barbara that I first discovered the
internet. A friend kept pushing me to get my own web site - something
that I finally did when I launched my first crude web site on silcom.com
in February of 1998.
Santa Barbara proved to be like Taos, in that word of mouth about my
groups spread and I always had people who wanted to participate.
Unlike the Central Coast which is made up of a bunch of small isolated
communities, both Santa Barbara and Taos proved to be places that
such word of mouth - along with giving my talk occasionally - brought
me enough clients to keep groups going and pay the rent. The
Central Coast has always been a challenging place for me to coordinate
the logistics of organizing groups - and really requires that I have
an office that is centrally located in the county (meaning about 35
miles from Cambria) to have a private practice in this area.
I was not happy with living in Santa Barbara however. It is a
beautiful place, but I had spent over a dozen years in Los Angeles pursuing
an acting career - and had gotten so I really disliked being in cities.
Santa Barbara was not only too big for what I preferred by that time, but
also too Southern California glitzy for my taste (I had over dosed on Hollywood.)
I didn't have the finances to move back to Cambria but did move
to a town 20 miles south of Cambria called Morro Bay in the fall
of 1998 - where I lived in a rented room with some practicing alcoholic
roommates. Though I loved living within walking distance of
a beach where I could take walks at midnight in the full moon, the
roommate situation became intolerable and I gave notice that I was
going to move in early 1999 - at about the same time I was investing
in starting Joy2MeU.com with a merchant account to sell my books.
I still had my office in Santa Barbara, and had rented an office here
on the Central Coast also. Suddenly due to the unexpected relocation
out of the area by several clients which caused several groups to end,
along with some car trouble, I found my income greatly decreased and ended
up homeless.
"As I talk about on my investment opportunity page, which I
quote in the final chapter of my book, I have learned to let
go of thinking I know where my path is heading. I do not
put energy any more into thinking that Oprah is going to call, or
wondering when I am going to be able to pay off my debts, or get a
car that allows me to make a trip out of town without being scared it
will break down. I have learned some great and mighty lessons - about
living in faith on a moment to moment basis - by driving cars that offered
the potential of imminent break down.
My healing path has taught me to keep letting go of the future and
just do the next thing in front of me one day at a time.
I am very grateful at the end of every month that enough money has
manifested to pay the rent. And I am willing to accept
being homeless again if that is the path my Higher Power lays in front
of me.
I spent 6 months in 1999 being homeless. Not on the street homeless
- I had an office for my computer - but crashing on someone's
couch kind of homeless. The lessons in acceptance and patience
and letting go that I learned during that time were sacred gifts.
The level of faith that it forced me to access and practice, the depth
to which I was forced to integrate my Spiritual belief system into my
relationship with life, was a manifestation of Love from my Higher Power
that I am now - and have been - reaping great benefits from.
Don't get me wrong, I do not want to be homeless again - or keep driving
a car on it's last legs. But I am willing to accept the
reality of my path as it is presented to me and make the best of
it."
Joy2MeU January 2002 Update Newsletter 1
I actually had two office for some weeks, but no
home. Since it was easier for me to get groups going, I retreated
to Santa Barbara - giving up my office on the Central Coast.
For the next six months I was crashing on friend's couches or in
my office.
It was a time of incredible growth for me as I mentioned in the quote
from my Update Newsletter above. A very hard time emotionally
that provided a great deal of fertilizer for my growth process.
I ended up being able to move back to Morro Bay in a perfect example
of how the Universe sometimes works in mysterious ways.
A friend of mine experienced two life blows in a short period of
time - his wife left him and his partner in a stucco contracting business
went to jail. Thus he needed both a roommate and some help
in his business - and I moved back in September of 1999. I kept
commuting to Santa Barbara to do groups (in an office I rented one
day a week after giving up that office I had rented for 3 years in early
2000) while on other days I was working as a hod carrier - a very dirty,
arduous task carrying buckets of cement.
In March of 2000, I started to do telephone counseling - something that
some people who resonated with my web site had been urging me
to do for some time.
"Anyway, when I started offering the phone counseling in March
of 2000, I wasn't at all sure how effective the phone sessions
were going to be. . . . . . .
The phone counseling has proven very effective for the people who are
at a place in their process where they are willing to apply the tools and
techniques that I share with them. Of the people who have been open
to changing their perspectives, and willing to do at least a little of the
work, most have changed their relationship with self and life profoundly
within a matter of 6 to 8 weeks. My goal in working with
people is to empower them to be in-dependent. To teach people
how to have internal boundaries so that they can separate the messages
coming from the old tapes and old wounds from the messages of intuitive
Truth from their Spirit - so that they can start learning how to
relax and trust their Spirit to guide them."
Joy2MeU Update Newsletter
August 2001
The phone counseling has indeed proven to be very
successful for most people who have tried it - and successful in
bringing in some extra income for me. When the Universe provided
the funds for me to be able to move back to Cambria in September of 2000,
I was busy enough with the phone counseling that it made no sense to
create extra overhead by renting an office for groups and investing all
the time, energy, and money it would take to generate enough clients
to pay for the extra expense.
In the small groups, my focus was on facilitating grief work as a step
in the process of helping people change their relationship with
life and self. The techniques that I teach people in the phone
counseling to help them change their relationship with life also
allows them to change their relationship with their own emotions so
that they can learn how to facilitate their own grief work.
The telephone counseling has proven to be an excellent way in which
to teach people how to apply my approach to their inner child healing and
codependency recovery in a way that aligns with how each individual's personal
process is unfolding One of the gifts I have had in my counseling
work since I started it in recovery, is the ability to meet a person wherever
they are at in their process and help them to open up to the next level of
growth for them.
"There were two interrelated things that I had to get clear
about when I started working as a therapist: One is that
I am powerless over other people - over the pace of their progress,
over whether they hear what I am saying to them, over where their path
leads. I watched a good friend die of Alcoholism (which is in
a column in the Alcoholism section) and saw how clearly he helped other
alcoholics stay sober because he couldn't - he did more to keep more
people sober than many of the sober people I know. I can't know
what someone else's' path is - therefore I can't tell them what is right
and wrong. What I can do is help them see themselves clearer (especially
as to understanding how their childhood experiences have dictated their
lives), see their choices and the possible consequences clearer, and know
that we are Spiritual Beings going to boarding school not taking a test
we can fail.
Which brings me to the second thing, which I believe is a Spiritual
Truth - I teach best what I need most to learn. I teach
people how to Love themselves because I am trying to learn how to
Love myself. I learned to always listen to what I was saying
because, though I have no control whether anyone else hears me, I
do have the power to choose to hear myself - and there is always something
in what I am saying that applies to me and my process in that moment.
. . . . I am in process just as my clients are - just as we all
are. There is no hierarchy as far as I am concerned - just one
wounded person / Magnificent Spiritual Being sharing what has worked
for me with another wounded person / Magnificent Spiritual Being.
I am doing what I need to do for myself, to heal myself - it doesn't
have to do with anyone else - that it helps other people is just a
bonus (and an opportunity to settle Karma)."
Joy to You & Me Newsletter I - July 1,1998 quoted in Choosing
a therapist or counselor with discernment
It has always been a challenge in workshops or groups
to discern what levels and facets of the process to focus upon -
because people can be at very different stages of recovery, quite different
levels of consciousness. The telephone counseling has proven
a wonderful venue for being able to help individuals to see where they
are at on their own personal path with some clarity and compassion -
from people who are just starting recovery to people who have been on
a healing, spiritual path for many years.
I have now worked with people who have grown up on every *continent
on the planet, people of every race, of different sexual preferences,
from a multitude of cultural backgrounds. Human internal emotional
dynamics are the same for all human beings - the external details
just provide different flavors of codependency, different facets
to the wounding. As long as a person is not completely closed
minded out of their black and white programming that there is only
one "right" way to heal, one "true" path to God - they can benefit
from the approach to healing that I share with them. The people
that I have worked with represent a wide variety of beliefs, including:
Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, agnostic, Pagan, Wiccan, Native American,
and Jewish - as well as Christians of almost all varieties. There
is a saying that I like: religion is for people who are scared of
hell, spirituality is for people who have been there. Anyone
who is sick and tired of living in a hell of emotionally suffering -
and is open to seeing life from a larger perspective - can change the quality
of their life by doing this work.
I have no idea what the future holds in terms of rather I will one day
be too busy to do the phone counseling, or personally answer
all the e-mails I get - I hope not. So far the turnover as
people learn to do the dance of life to different music [a reference
to Chapter 13 of my current online book in progress Changing the Music: Love instead of fear
and shame (link below) - as is the reference to the celebrity
variety of codependency in the next paragraph] has kept the number
of people seeking counseling at any one time manageable and doable.
I am busy enough with the phone counseling however, that doing groups
in person now would not be an efficient use of my time and energy - or
financially worth the investment. Things are changing somewhat
right now because it is now possible for people in Europe and the Far
east (including Australia and New Zealand) to get telephone rates on calling
cards for under 10 cents a minute - so my overseas phone clients are growing.
(And it is now possible to call anywhere in
the world on Skype.)
At this time I am not even sure I would go on Oprah's show if she did
call. I certainly do not plan on ever buying into the virulent
variety of codependency that can come with being a celebrity in
this culture - though I would like the word of mouth about the book
and web site to spread. I do hope that one of these days I
will have the resources to be able to offer some kind of healing retreats
to people who want to learn the process - and hopefully some kind of
training to other healers in how to facilitate my approach to the inner
child healing. As usual, More Will Be Revealed. ;-)
*Correction: I have not worked with anyone who grew up on
Antarctica.
