Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light

Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life

Chapter 11: Codependent Counselors / Therapists / Healers

"Any counselor / therapist / spiritual teacher / healer who has not done the inner child healing and codependency recovery work both emotionally and intellectually, is going to be limited in their ability to help other people.  They will be able to help people up to the point they have been willing to go in their own personal healing - but after that point, the impact they have on the people they are working with may become negative."

Our mental health system not only does not promote healing - it actually blocks the process. The mental health system in this country is designed to get your behavior and emotions under control so that you can fit back into the dysfunctional system.

"Although psychotherapy can be much more helpful in the healing process than psychoanalysis ever was, it is often still deficient in the area of the emotional healing - because so many therapists and counselors out there haven't done their own grief work."

"The dynamics of the wounding process that creates codependency involves layer upon layer of wounding.  The amount of grief and pain that we are carrying is enormous.  If all of our denial and rationalization were stripped away at once, it would kill us.  Those levels of denial are peeled away gradually in recovery.  This is not a process of feeling some grief about something that happened and then being done with that issue.  Recovery is an unfolding journey. . . . .

Recovery is an ongoing growth process - a transformational journey.  Healing our issues is an continuing process of uncovering, discovering, and recovering.  Any therapist or counselor who is not willing to actively be in recovery, who thinks they are finished with their emotional healing work, is being tricked by their codependency into complacency and stagnation."

"Anyone - counselor, therapist, sponsor, parent, friend, whatever - whose perspective is based upon a black and white / right and wrong belief system, will project judgment and shame onto the people they interact with / work with / give advice to / counsel.  Because they believe they know what is right and what is wrong, they will see their purpose as getting you to do things "right."  If they are successful at manipulating / bullying / shaming / "guiding" you to do things their way, they will take ego credit and see it as proof of their worth.  If you do not do it their way, they will blame, shame, and be abusive to you.

This is simply a manifestation of how codependency works."

On this page is the eleventh chapter of an online book by codependency therapist/Spiritual teacher.
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Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls
Joyously inspirational Spiritual book - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Included on this page are quotes from both Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls and from other copyrighted work by Robert Burney.  Online pages quoted within this chapter will be linked so that they open in a separate browser window - with the exception of any web articles referenced which are quite long, or for some other reason not conducive to internal linking.  Links will be provided at the bottom of this page to any such web pages.


This is Chapter 11 of a book being published online as it is written.  To find out more about the genesis of this work you can go to Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light  Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life: Author's Foreword

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light

Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life

Chapter 11: Codependent Counselors / Therapists / Healers

By Robert Burney

In this chapter I am going to discuss how counselors and therapist, healers and spiritual teachers, people in the helping professions who (for the vast majority) have the best of intentions, are set up by their codependency to be limited in their ability to help others heal, and in some cases, to be abusive and shaming in their work with clients.

As I talked about in the last chapter, dysfunctional families are the norm.  Counselors / therapists / healers who grew up in dysfunctional families in dysfunctional cultures, are codependent.  The reason that people get into the helping professions is - on some very basic levels - because of their codependency.  On other levels, it is because they do care, because they have a strong heart connection.  . . . . . 

. . . . . People study psychology to try to understand self.  We become therapists or counselors or healers because we need the healing.  Anyone who isn't honest with themselves about this level of motivation is set up to be an unhealthy healer.

Any counselor / therapist / spiritual teacher / healer who has not done the inner child healing and codependency recovery work both emotionally and intellectually, is going to be limited in their ability to help other people.  They will be able to help people up to the point they have been willing to go in their own personal healing - but after that point, the impact they have on the people they are working with may become negative.

Emotionally Dysfunctional Cultures

It is vital to start realizing how dysfunctional the traditional medical and mental health perspectives of emotions have been in civilized society.  The training and education of those doctors and psychologists and other professionals you have seen, has been limited by the perspectives of emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional cultural beliefs.

Society is emotionally dysfunctional and dishonest.  That means the systems within the society are limited by the intellectual paradigm, the beliefs, upon which that society is founded.

There is imbalance in all aspects of our society. There are inherent conflicts of interest in the dynamics of our systems.

We live in a society where the medical system profits from disease and does not have any incentive - does not make any profit - for promoting health.

Imagine if you will a system where the healer gets paid every month that you are healthy and does not get paid if you are sick.  Do you think doctors would be more open to herbs and acupuncture, holistic healing and nutrition, and other kinds of alternative healing methods?  Of course the economy would collapse because the drug and insurance companies would go bankrupt.

There is something backwards about a medical system that needs to cut you open and/or give you drugs to perpetuate itself.

(Text in this color is used for quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

More money is spent every year by drug companies in the United States to market and advertise their drugs than is spent in each year in all of the medical schools to educate Doctors.  Something is severely out of balance with this picture. . . . . . 

. . . . . Any medical or mental health professional who has not done their personal emotional healing and codependency recovery work, will not have a clear and healthy perspective in relationship to the emotions and behavior of the people they work with.

This page is no longer available on the regular web site.  To view this page, it is now necessary to pay a fee for access to the Dancing in Light section of Joy2MeU.com  On this page are quotes from, and section headings of, the original article.  The page with information on how to subscribe is Dancing in Light.

Emotionally Challenged Counselors and Therapists

Grief work vital as part of integration process

Emotional Vampires & Black and White Thinking

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Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light
Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life
Go to Chapter 12: Codependency in New Age Movement - Published online January 16, 2003

September 2005 - Chapters 3 through 15 of this work are now exclusively available in the Dancing in Light pay to view component of Joy2MeU.com


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