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."

Quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney

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.

I have now been in recovery over 25 years and counseling and teaching people about inner child work for over 19 years as we launch this new website on May 25, 2009. ~ Robert Burney