It is in relationship to learning how to set internal boundaries that the process of processing is so important. Processing involves observing our own internal dynamic. Observing our thoughts and feelings. It is very important to raise our consciousness, to become more conscious, of our own process.

When we start observing our internal process then we can start discerning between the different levels involved - we can start separating out the codependent, dysfunctional messages from the information that useful and informative. Then we can start setting internal boundaries within the mental, between the mental and emotional, and within the emotional levels of our being.

Within the mental we can start discerning and separating the shaming messages that are coming from the disease / critical parent voice from our own wisdom, knowledge and intelligence. Once we start realizing how much we are allowing the critical parent voice to abuse us, and to dictate our perspective of self and life through a filter of shame, blame, and fear - then we can start taking the power away from those messages. The more we take the power away from the shame and fear the disease is focusing on, the more we can honor our own wisdom, knowledge and intelligence.

By learning to set a boundary between emotional and mental, we can stop reacting to life based on the false belief that what we feel is who we are - that what we feel defines our reality.

(All quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

Once we start the process of learning how to stop allowing the critical parent voice to abuse our wounded inner children, then it becomes easier to start separating out our different wounds - the different ages of the wounded child within. When we start recognizing our inner children - asking ourselves how old we feel - then we can start to heal those wounds. Then we can start to be Loving and nurturing to our inner children instead of shaming and abusive.

We need to discern between different ages of the child, between different emotional wounds, in order to see our own inner process more clearly. 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. We can start getting in touch with the 5 year old who feels so much shame; with the 14 year old who is rebelling by self destructing; with the romantic within who wants to believe in fairy tales; etc.

If we are feeling a lot of emotional pain over our last relationship, and only looking at that relationship as the cause of that pain, then we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Our emotional wounds have been repeated over and over in our life. Our main issues of abandonment and betrayal, of deprivation and loss, of loneliness and insecurity, etc., all stem from our childhood. They did not just magically appear in our adult life. They are part of a cause and effect dynamic. And the closer we can get to cause, the more powerful the healing becomes.

So, there are levels and layers within the emotional to separate out and see more clearly. It is also vital to start discerning between the emotional truth that is coming from our old wounds and the emotional energy that is Truth.

One of the reasons that we have repeating behavior patterns is because we have not been capable of discerning between intuitive Truth and impulses arising out of our emotional wounds. It is very important to start learning how to tell the difference between an intuitive message from our spirit and a message that is being generated by the lonely inner child who wants to prove him/herself worthy by earning the love of an unavailable man/father, woman/mother. One of the things that I came to realize in my recovery was that if I met someone who felt like my soul mate, it was much, much more likely to be about an old wound than to be intuitive Truth.

Our intuition is right on. It has always been right on. We did not trust it because of the reflections and messages we got as children. It is real important to start discerning what is intuition and what is an old impulse in order to start trusting ourselves and the process - in order to start relaxing and enjoying life.

The purpose of the inner child healing process, the codependency recovery process, is to learn how to change our relationships into healthier, more fulfilling, and happier experiences. The goal is to learn how to stop empowering the past so that we can relax and enJoy life today. The goal is to learn to be Loving and kind to our self so that we can manifest Love into the world.

In order to do these things it is vital to start eliminating the toxic shame that has been dictating the human experience. As we learn to eliminate that shame from our internal process, we can stop projecting it onto other wounded souls.

As we learn to own our inherent worth as beings by eliminating the shame from our internal process, then we can start seeing the inherent Divine worth in the being of others - even as we do whatever is necessary to protect ourselves from their wounded dysfunctional behavior if that is necessary. Allowing someone to abuse us in the name of love is the opposite of Love - is a denial of Self. Judging and shaming ourselves for behavior that we adapted to cope with our emotional wounds is definitely not Loving.

By learning how to have internal boundaries we can change the quality of our relationships. Our relationship with self/Self. Our relationship with life. Our relationship with people, places, and things.

Becoming more conscious, so that we can learn to have internal boundaries is not a linear process. It involves multiple levels, multiple perspectives. It involves seeing, and taking action, on multiple levels, in a number of different spheres of our dynamic internal process - sometimes focused on a single area, ultimately (at least some of the time) with awareness of multiple levels simultaneously.

I am going to conclude this article and series (except for another page with quotes) with a mention of the major areas/levels that need to be addressed. This is not a linear process! There is no right or wrong way to do the process. There is no diagram that can tell you how your Path is going to unfold. Each person has their own path to follow. We all are going to end up in the same place - but how we get there is unique to each of us. We do have the same basic human emotional dynamic. We have much more in common then we have ever had differences. So, the feelings, and the wounds, are basically the same for all of us. The magnificent complexity of our internal process is part of a human dynamic that we are all here to experience.

When I first got into recovery, someone said to me "All you have to change is everything." Boy, was that the Truth. I did need, and continue to need, to change my relationships with everything. All of my relationships were based on intellectual programming and emotional experiences from my early childhood. Attitudes, beliefs, and definitions determine expectations and perspective. My expectations and perspective dictate my relationships.

In order to start changing the quality of my relationships, I need to own that I had choices about what attitudes, beliefs, and definitions I was empowering. The intellectual paradigm that is dictating my relationships is what determines how I relate to: self; life; the concept of a God-Force; my emotions; my body; my gender; etc., etc. So they also, of course, dictate how I relate to people, places and things.

I had to become aware of my own thoughts and thought process in order to start changing it. I had to become aware of how much the critical parent voice was determining the quality of my life experience. I had to become conscious of the reality that I was negatively affirming myself hundreds of times a day. That I was allowing fear and shame, belief in scarcity, lack, and separation, to dictate my relationship with myself and life.

I needed to fire the judge that was always watching me ready to put a negative spin on anything in my life. I realized that I had the power to take steps to replace that judge with a Loving observer. An observer that could give me the detachment to start discovering that those messages were based on warped distortions, insane expectations, and obscene, soul wounding lies.

In terms of the process of processing, this is an ongoing process. I don't actually get to fire the judge and exile him from my inner kingdom - what I can do is gradually disempower that judge. I do that by changing the attitudes, beliefs, and definitions that are creating the insane expectations and dysfunctional perspectives. I do that by choosing to introduce different programming - taking action to change my intellectual paradigm. (One tool in that reprogramming is using positive affirmations to replace the negative ones.) I do that by owning that I have a choice about where I focus my mind - and a choice about what beliefs I empower. One level of beliefs that it is very important to own that we have the power to change, is our beliefs in relationship to the nature and purpose of life. We do have the right to empower in our life a Higher Power of our own understanding - we do not have to be the victim of anyone else's concept.

Choosing to empower a spiritual belief system that supports the belief that we are Lovable and precious beings is a very valuable part of the process in my opinion. Much of the mental and emotional work can be done without buying into the belief system that I believe to be Truth - but it is much easier when your spiritual belief system is large enough to take the shame out of the equation.

Owning that we have the power to take some control of our own mental processes is vital to changing our relationship with ourselves. We do not have to be the victim of the wounded, dysfunctionally programmed part of our own mind. We can change the way we think into one that is gentler and more Loving. Again, this is a process that unfolds over time - not a destination to be reached.

Emotionally, it is vital to change our relationship with our own emotions into one that works to help us open up to Love - instead of battling our emotions as the enemy. We need to embrace our feelings so that we can release the repressed grief and rage - at the same time we start learning how to have some Loving control over our own emotional process. Our wounded inner child is often like a dog that was abused as a puppy - either cringing in fear or snarling out of reaction. It is a long gradual process to learn how to Lovingly parent those wounded children within us - we cannot do it without owning our childhood experiences and releasing the repressed emotional energy that has been dictating our relationships. Often the dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs we are empowering are subconscious ones from our childhood that we may have rejected consciously in adulthood - but which are still dictating our reactions emotionally. These subconscious beliefs may only come to light when we do our grief work. It is very critical to be willing to do the grief work.

Emotional balance is not a destination. It is a constantly changing dance. In doing our reprogramming intellectually, and our emotional and Spiritual healing - we are changing the music of our dance. We are choosing to have the opportunity to dance with Love and Joy, to dance in Light and Truth - instead of in darkness and disharmony. In order to have the capacity to dance with Love and Joy, we must first be willing to dance with our anger and fear, with the pain and sadness. Through owning our wounded inner children, we get to uncover and release the spontaneous, playful, Joyous Spiritual child within that is the one who will lead us home to LOVE.

Balance in dancing is about having a feeling for equilibrium, moving in harmony, adjusting, balancing, rebalancing. Likewise our inner dance of finding balance is an ongoing process - ever changing, fluctuating, oscillating in tune with the vibrational rhythms. Once we learn to have a sense of balance, a feeling for emotional clarity, then we are able to adjust and rebalance more quickly when some external (life event, other people's behavior) or internal (wounded child reaction, old tape kicking in) stimuli throws us out of balance.

In this process, it is necessary to be continually rebalancing our relationship with our self.

We will not find balance in all areas, on all levels at the same time. The goal is to be at balance in as many areas as possible as much of the time as possible - and to accept wherever we are at as a perfect part of the dance. We focus on an area of relationship (with some part/level of our being, and/or some outward manifestation of that issue/area) and find some balance in that area - and then it is time to focus on another area. And then another and another. By that time, it is time to come back and find a new level of balance in the first area - because we are constantly changing and growing.

We may work on healing our relationship to our same sex parent - which also involves healing our relationship to our own gender, sexuality, emotions, etc., and how we relate to others of our gender and the opposite gender - and that may lead us into focusing on our relationship with money which was distorted by that parents relationship with money. This leads us into looking at the blocks we have within us to receiving abundance in money and all other levels - which leads us into our fear of intimacy issues - which leads us back to our relationship with our parent. Etc. Etc.

Each issue branches off into many other related issues, into all the different emotional and intellectual levels of each of those issues. As we peel away the levels of denial in relationship to each issue, as we get emotionally honest with ourselves on a deeper level with that issue - it opens up more levels, more grief, more denial to peel away. And we find ourselves back looking at the original issues with a new perspective.

In this process, it is not just necessary to uncover and let go of the dysfunctional attitudes and false beliefs of childhood. We need to be willing to see, and let go of, our attitudes of 6 months ago, of 6 weeks ago, of 3 days ago. Because we are growing and changing, our perspective keeps changing. That means our relationships keep changing.

Part of finding emotional balance involves accepting ourselves wherever we are at in the moment. I can have a place where I feel very balanced emotionally, Spiritually, intellectually - but still have some obvious imbalance in my relationship with my physical body. That is OK. That is part of the ongoing healing process. I also have places in time when I feel no balance or clarity about anything. That is OK too. We are works in progress - in process. By not judging myself, and not buying into the belief that there is some destination I have to reach before it is OK to Love myself, then I can have some moments of balance today.

There is no destination to be reached. We will be growing and learning, uncovering and discovering, peeling away denial and releasing emotional energy, for the rest of our lifetime. On subtler levels, with less pain and discomfort as we heal - but it an ongoing process nevertheless.

It sure is a good thing that we aren't in control of this process. It is a good thing that we don't have to figure it out. We will be guided. We are being lead through the process. Our job is to pay attention and learn how to manifest as much Love as possible into our dance in the moment.

In order to do that, it is vital to start taking the shame out of the process. In one sense, the dance of recovery works like a pendulum swinging. The more we are in reaction out of shame, out of the right and wrong paradigm of the disease, the more extreme our swings are in both directions. We react (to an emotional button being pushed), and then we react to our reaction (with shame and judgment.) The less we judge and shame ourselves, the less extreme our swings become.

The more we do our emotional healing so that we are not taking life and other people so seriously and personally, the less power we give to old reactions. The more we take the power away from the old tapes and old wounds, the less extreme our swings become. The more gentle our swings, the easier it is to maintain some equilibrium - some semblance of balance. Gentle swings is what we are looking for and that can only come by being gentle with ourselves.

By getting in touch with, and building an ongoing relationship with the different inner child places within us, we are able to recognize and respond more quickly when we get triggered. When we get triggered multiple old wounds can be triggered at the same time. The reopening of old wounds triggers old defenses to kick in so that the lonely, needy child reacts out of a deeply painful place which triggers the older child who had to get tough, to react with disdain and hatred for the needy part of self. The internal battle is off and running.

The internal battle is what we are working to stop. This is where we need to manifest Love for those wounded places within us. Having compassion for our self, and forgiving our self on an emotional level for our powerlessness as children, is the hardest thing for us to learn.

Complex and complicated is this dance of recovery. Multiple interrelated issues branching off into multiple intertwined levels. Some feelings that need to be trusted, some that cannot be trusted. A part of our mind that is the enemy, most of our mind a magnificent resource that we have hardly begun to tap. Twisting and convoluted is our inner journey. Often confusing and baffling, scary and frustrating. So easy to feel the victim of a somehow defective self.

We are not defective. There is nothing shameful about being human. It is not only OK to be confused and scared - it is a normal, natural part of the human experience that it is very important to accept as a perfect part of the process. The less we judge and shame ourselves, the more quickly we get to move out of the painful places. The more we align with how the healing process really works, the more control we have of our own inner process.

We do not have to figure it out - we just need to learn to pay attention in a conscious way. We need to be willing to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves so that we can have a more balanced relationship with our own emotional process. We need to learn to discern between the things we cannot control and the things we can have some control over, so that we can start learning how to relax and enjoy the growth process we are experiencing.

Recovery is not self help - or at least not only self help. We need to do our part of the process and let go of trying to do our Higher Power's part. We are not alone. We are being guided. We are being led to new horizons. Our paths are unfolding perfectly.

One of the great gifts of aligning with a Spiritual growth process, is that we get to discover who we are in Truth. As we learn to change our relationship with self and with life into one which allows us the possibility of opening up to Unconditional Love - we learn that we already exist in that State of Grace.

As we learn to remove the distortions, false beliefs and lies from our intellectual paradigm, as we clear our emotional process of the twisted, polluted residue of judgment and shame, then we start to see ourselves more clearly. Then we start to see our Self. As we strip away the masks we learned to wear, remove the garbage and lies from our perspective of self - then we get to see the wonderful Truth.

We are exactly who we always wanted to be.

Codependence involves feeling trapped; feeling victimized; feeling like we don't have any choices.

On a very core level, codependence is about buying into the belief that we are trapped. Trapped in relationships, in being abused by a parent, in jobs, in a geographic area, in having someone else's belief system define us, etc. Feeling trapped is a function of believing that we do not have any choices. That is never the Truth. We always have a choice as I talk about on my page about Empowerment and Victimization.

The most insidious and powerful level of victimization that codependents have to overcome in recovery is the level of feeling victimized by our self - by who we think we are, our false image of ourselves. We have a core relationship with ourselves in which we feel that there is something inherently wrong with our being - that we are unlovable and unworthy, somehow shameful. (See inner child healing section.) Because of that, we learned to try to do things "right" in order to overcome our defective self and earn the love of others - or we went to the other extreme, and tried to convince our self that we didn't need others. These are the two extremes of the disease of codependency - classic codependent behavior and counterdependent behavior. (See Codependent Relationships Dynamics part 3 - Codependent & Counterdependent Behavior)

Anytime we say something to the effect of "I can't help it, that is just how I am" or "That is the way I have always been" or "That is just me." or that type of statement, we are being the victim of the false self image we built up to protect ourselves. We are empowering our codependence. "I can't" is almost never a true statement. The true statement is "I choose not to."

But we can not make choices until we realize that we have the right to make choices. Growing up in environments that taught us that life was about right and wrong, was black and white, caused us to be afraid of making choices for fear of doing it "wrong." We were powerless to make choices as long as we thought the only choice was between right and wrong - because as long as we believed that we were in reaction to old tapes.

We grew up in societies that were emotionally dishonest. In societies that taught us to do things "right' in order to feel valued and loved. In societies that taught us that life was about destinations and that when we got "there" we would feel fulfilled and happy.

It is not about getting "there" - not about destination. It is about learning and growing on our journey - it is about making enough progress to have the capacity to enjoy "here" as much of the time as possible. Balance is a shifting, changing, constantly fluctuating dance that we are learning to relax into - it cannot be forced, it cannot be restricted by some arbitrary and rigid beliefs about right and wrong. It is about each of us following our own path, our own Truth, in learning to align with the Truth that is Love.

Life, and recovery, are multi-leveled dynamics. There are multiple levels within the horizontal level. There are multiple layers to our wounding. Part of the reason it is so important to start to learn how to have internal boundaries is so that we can start seeing the different levels - start sifting through the layers. As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes then we have no choices - and our perspective is all messed up.

It is vitally important to start sifting through the layers in order to see life as it really is - and to learn how to be honest with ourselves. We have lived our adult lives in reactions to our childhood wounds and programming. Our patterns in relationships (all relationships - with other people, with money, with work, with our own bodies, etc.) are symptoms of our childhood wounding. As long as we are focusing on the experiences of our adult life without looking for how it is connected to our childhood, we are not seeing reality clearly. As long as you are looking at your last relationship from the perspective of blaming your self or the other person for your problems, you are not being honest with your self - you are reacting from old black and white perspectives.

In order to change our experience of life we need to heal the causes - not keep focusing on the symptoms. In order to do that it is vital to start practicing discernment - start practicing picking the baby out of the bath water instead of swinging between reactive extremes.

Clarity comes from changing our perspectives so that we can see the different levels involved in the life dynamic and not buy into the black and white perspective of the disease. The disease of codependence, as I define it, is centered in the ego - which was damaged, traumatized, and programmed very dysfunctionally in early childhood.

In recovery we are reprogramming our ego-defenses to help us open up to the Truth of who we really are instead of buying into the lie that we are defective, shameful beings. We are changing our tool box for dealing with life from one that is full of dysfunctional, self-destructive tools to tools that actually work to help us get free of the old programming and open up to having moments of Joy and happiness in our life experience.

Changing our relationship with Fear

The number one tool of the ego is fear. Anytime we feel fear, there are multiple levels involved - multiple perspectives from which that fear is originating. And, like all the other emotions we experience, fear has a purpose and needs to be honored as a gift. Emotions do not have value in and of themselves - they just are. What give emotions a positive or negative value is how we react to them. Most of us learned to have negative reactions to emotions because our perspective of our own emotions was all messed up in childhood. (Due to the messages and role modeling of the adults around us.)

Fear is an important tool in living. It is there to protect us, to help us avoid situations and people who will do us harm. It is our relationship to fear that is dysfunctional because of our childhood experiences.

There is a level of fear that is unavoidable in being humn - that is fear of the unknown.

Fear of the unknown is a natural, normal part of being human. It has a purpose - and deserves to be honored as something which serves us. But, like our relationship with all the aspects of our being, our relationship with that fear is dysfunctional.

The damaged ego responds to it's programming by generating fear of the things we learned to fear as a child: making mistakes; doing it wrong; being emotional; speaking our Truth; taking risks; being alone; not being alone; whatever. We then empower the fear by focusing on it, magnifying it, and generally giving it the power to define us and our life - or by denying it, which also gives it power because in denying our fear we are denying our self and reality. Going to either extreme results in the inability to see the situation clearly.

Because our ego was programmed to react to life from fear, negativity, scarcity, and lack (again due to emotional trauma we experienced, and the messages and role modeling of the adults around us) the disease focuses on and magnifies fear - and then it scrambles around trying to find something to cover up and repress the very fear it is generating. The disease blows the fear way out of proportion and then leads us to addictive and/or compulsive behavior as a way of stuffing the fear.

This is the essence of the dysfunction. We live our life reacting to fear, and the shame, that the disease empowers and then "helps" us avoid by causing us to focus on something outside of ourselves as the cause and/or the cure for the core place within us where we feel empty - where we feel unlovable and unworthy.

We are afraid of our own emotions - of all the repressed feelings and unresolved grief that we are carrying. We learned to be afraid of our own anger and pain and fear. We feel afraid of our fear of our own emotions. It is this fear once (or twice) removed that is paralyzing. That is, the fear of our own fear is our greatest block to healing. We are afraid of our own pain and anger - and then we are afraid of our fear of our own pain and anger.

In order to start finding some balance in recovery, it is important to learn how to take power away from the fear. In order to do that, it is very important to clear up our relationship with fear. And to look at all the different levels involved in our reaction.

The first step is to stop judging ourselves for our fear (or anger, or pain, or lonliness, etc.) - or denying to ourselves that we even have fear.

We need to take the shame and judgment out of our internal process. That is why a spiritual belief system is so important - so that we can start seeing ourselves more clearly, start seeing realistically instead of through the shame filter of the disease.

Once we have started integrating a Spiritual belief into our process - or a spiritual philosophy that allows us to start looking clearly at cause and effect - then we can start to be detached enough from our own process to see it more clearly.

In order to start finding some balance in recovery, it is important to learn how to take power away from the fear. In order to do that, it is very important to look at all the different levels involved in our reaction so that we can start to clear up our relationship with own fear.

Anytime we have a strong reaction to someone or something, it means there is old stuff involved - old wounds, unresolved grief. One of the first steps to taking the power away from the fear is to detach from the feeling a little and take an honest look at reality. It may feel terrifying, may feel life threatening - but is that the truth?

There is a tool that comes out of Transactional Analysis that can be very helpful in taking some power away from fear. It is called a fear slide. The way it works is that you write down what your fear is - say, I am afraid I will be alone on Valentine's Day, or I am afraid he won't be my friend any more, or I am afraid I won't get the job, etc. Then on the next line you write the answer to this question: "If that happens, then what?" Then I will feel hurt, or whatever. On the next line you write the answer to that same question, "then what?" And you keep doing this down the page. Eventually, you will come to: "I will die." or "I will cease to exist."

I am afraid _______

If that happens, then what?

If that happens, then what?

If that happens, then what?

If that happens, then what?

Then you go back to the original fear, and ask yourself, "Will I die if I am alone on Valentine's Day? The answer is, of course, no you won't die.

As mentioned the ego is focused on survival. That translates into avoidance of pain. In order to help us avoid what it perceives as survival threatening pain the ego generates fear and then magnifies it - turning it into a huge monster. It is very helpful to force ourselves to take a realistic look at the monster in order to stop giving our emotional reactions all the power.

In our disease, the fear of being alone on Valentine's Day feels life threatening. It feels like a big monster. If we give power to that fear, what happens is we get so uncomfortable living with the fear that we try to find some way to repress it. The ways we find are usually self destructive - alcohol, drugs, food, whatever.

If we can take a realistic and honest look at the monster, and say to ourselves, "No, I won't die if I am alone on Valentines. But I will be sad." Bingo! The reason we are afraid is because we have a lot of unresolved grief over lonely holidays, pain over failed relationships, etc., - all going back to the core wound of the little child who felt alone and unlovable.

If we can start to be emotionally honest with ourselves, by owning our grief, it will help us to take power away from the fear.

Learning to be emotionally honest with ourselves, is a whole other aspect of the processing dynamic that I am not going to talk about in this article - I will get into that in another article in this series and there are other articles on my web site about that. What I will say about it, is that it is very important to do some of our processing verbally or through writing. We do not get in touch with our feelings through thinking. It is when we start talking about or writing about what is going on internally that we start actually feeling and releasing the emotional energy.

There are certain other things that can help us to get in touch with emotional energy - including through various types of art, drawing, painting, collage, etc.; movement and music; body work; etc. - but the primary processing tools are writing or talking.

In the update announcement that sparked this article, I was processing through some levels of fear in order to become clearer on where the fear was coming from. I was having resistance to finishing an article, and since I knew that resistance comes primarily from fear, I was processing.

First I looked at the reason that my head was telling me I was procrastinating. Fear about stating a controversial Truth in public. Almost as soon as I wrote that, I knew that was not the main level. I have been speaking and writing my controversial take on Truth for many years now and that one does not have any real power anymore.

I then went on to a different level, that of fear of saying things in a way that a reader could use to beat themselves up with. Ultimately I am powerless over how someone reacts, but it is something that I give some power to because I want to communicate as clearly and cleanly as possible. By touching on that level of fear, I could put some effort into clear communication and then let go of the outcome. By focusing on a level and then surrendering to my ultimate powerlessness over others, I can take a little of the fear that is out of balance out of the equation.

The next level I touched on was that of the "out-of-control" feeling that I get with my writing. This is jumping off the diving board kind of fear that is just inherent in the process for me. That there is a basis to feeling not in control of my writing process is proven by the reality that writing about my fear in that update has lead to at least five other articles so far. I was afraid of where the writing was going because I had a picture of what was supposed to be written next - of what my priorities were for my writing time and energy. By acknowledging that certain things cause me to feel afraid because they feel out-of-control, I can take a little more fear out of the process.

Through writing about that fear, I could get in touch with what attitudes of mine were magnifying the fear. That is, how my picture of where I needed to focus my time and energy was causing me to resist going where the writing was taking me. I am responsible for how my perspective, my attitudes, set me up to have emotional responses. When I am not open to events unfolding in way different than I had planned, then I am setting myself up for feelings.

When I think that things have to go a certain way for me to be OK, then I am setting myself up to be a victim when they do not unfold the way I think they need to unfold. I am making a choice to see life in a certain way. That choice, that attitude, then sets me up to be afraid if things go differently than I want them to go. I am responsible for that fear. I am creating that fear out of the intellectual paradigm, the expectations, that I am choosing to empower.

If I have a picture, an expectation, of how I want life to look today and you do something that messes up that picture, my codependent reaction is to get angry at you and blame you for messing up my day. This is doubly dishonest. First of all, I am getting angry in response to my fear that I will not be OK if things do not work out as I had planned. That is emotionally dishonest. Secondly, I am blaming you for the feelings that are being caused by my attitudes, my expectations. That is codependency.

In regard to the situation I have been talking about, there was no other person involved - so I was getting angry at, and blaming, my self. I was having a hard time finishing the article I was writing. I had a self imposed deadline for finishing that article that was part of my agenda for how I saw the immediate future unfolding. I felt that I needed to finish that article so that I could send out my update announcement so that I could get on to whatever the next important thing I thought I needed to get done. I was trying to control my life by forcing an outcome.

I was trying to control my life because I was afraid that I wouldn't get the things done that I thought I needed to get done to take care of myself, to meet my needs. I was afraid of the unknown future, so I had designed my own agenda, and then was getting angry and frustrated that I could not meet my own agenda.

Because I was judging myself and impatient with myself, the rebel within me was rebelling through procrastinating. I was then judging myself for my procrastination - and then turning around and shaming myself for judging myself for my procrastination. (I stopped judging and shaming myself in gross ways years ago - i.e. I don't call myself names like stupid or loser or whatever - but the disease dynamic still kicks in on much subtler levels. As we make progress in treating ourselves better in recovery, the disease gets more subtle and cunning. This recent judgment/shame upheaval would be like a 3.0 earthquake vs what used to be a 9.0 earthquake.)

This is the disease of codependence working in it's most insidious, malevolent, treacherous, and powerful expression.

And it all goes back to being afraid that if I do it wrong I will not survive the shame and pain of being imperfect. It all goes back to a little child who was terrified of his own father and could not count on his mother to defend him from his father. The little child whose higher powers were wounded and were reacting to life out of their fear and shame.

That fear is not rational. It is not logical. It is not conscious. It is an emotional reaction caused by early childhood trauma.

If I am alone on Valentine's Day I will die. If I do not get this article finished on time I will not survive.

These fears are not stupid, they are not ridiculous. They are the result of the emotional experience of a little child. That child deserves, and needs, compassion - not judgment and shame. When we judge ourselves we are abusing that little child inside of us. When we are impatient with ourselves, we are dragging that child behind us as we run to get "there" - to the outcome, the destination that will make us OK.

I heard Claudia Black in a workshop many years ago, talking about going for a walk on the beach with a 4 year old child. She asked something to the effect of, "What pace do you walk at, the child's pace - or do you drag the child along behind you at your pace?"

We have spent our lives either dragging the child along, or running away from the child within us. Working real hard on getting "there" - and/or doing whatever we could to go unconscious to our own feelings. We locked the child up in a dark place within us, at the same time we let the child's emotional wounds run our life. We were powerless to do life any differently until we got into recovery. Just as our parents were powerless to do life any differently because of the wounded children within them.

In early recovery I learned to catch myself every time I heard myself calling myself stupid. I would change it to silly. I couldn't go from calling myself stupid to calling myself a blessed child of the Goddess in one step. So, I substituted silly in order to be less abusive to myself. In order to start decreasing the shame and judgment I was laying on myself and the innocent child within me.

It was not stupid, or wrong, that I fell into the judging-resisting-shaming running around the hamster cage cycle of the disease dynamic. It was a little silly - and entirely human. It was a natural, normal part of being a recovering codependent. It was a perfect part of the process of learning/teaching, remembering/reminding.

I was afraid. Fear is part of this human adventure we are experiencing. It is through changing our relationship with our own fear that we transform being human from an ordeal to an adventure

Fear is an innate, genetically ingrained, emotional impulse in human beings. It is a programmed response to survival instincts. Fear is an emotion that can serve us. It is a necessary tool for survival in a hostile environment.

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. Faith is what gives us the courage to walk through our fears.

It is important to accept fear as part of our reality. It is important to clear up our relationship with our fear. The disease of codependence, our damaged ego, is programmed to react to life out of fear of what caused us pain in our childhood. Our ego is fighting for survival based on programming from early childhood - that is what is dysfunctional.

It is important to learn new tools to counteract the powerful programming of the disease / condition of codependency. It is important to change our relationship with our own fear by changing our perspective of our fear.

Denying our fear is dysfunctional. Relating to our fear as if it only comes from one place - is only about one thing - is dishonest. There are multiple levels to our fears. A few of those levels may be right on - most of them are dysfunctional. There are some levels that are about False Evidence Appearing Real - to use a 12 step acronym - based on assumptions, mind reading, and fortune telling, our fantasies/nightmares that we project onto others and life. Some of the levels are reactions to our childhood wounds: 'if I am alone I will die;' 'if I take the risk of loving someone and they don't love me back, I will die;' 'if I don't have security, I will die;' etc.

Not looking at our fears keeps us in the dark and gives them power. It is only by bringing them out of the darkness into the light that we can take the power away from them.

Once we bring them into the light of consciousness, then we can filter, sift through, get clearer on what is causing them. We can discern what part of the fears are being caused by our own attitudes - so that we can own the responsibility, and make choices to change our intellectual paradigm into something that will work better. We can get in touch with the inner child wounds that are being triggered so that we can have some compassion for those wounds and set whatever Loving boundaries we need to set. We can get conscious of the outcome we are trying to control so that we can take some action to let go of that outcome.

By taking the action of processing through our reaction, we can get in touch with what other actions we can take to lessen and let go of our fears.

So, by writing about my procrastination, I was able to see the causes of that procrastination more clearly. In processing through the resistance I was having, I could get clear that what I thought was the reason for the procrastination (controversial Truth) really was not the reason at all. I could see that there were several layers of reasons - and that the bottom line was that I was creating much of the resistance because I did not want to let go of my preconceived idea of the outcome.

I diminished some of the fear by speaking it out loud (in this case, writing it.) And I got in touch with how my attitudes were adding to the fear. Then I could take some action to let go of the attitudes that were amplifying the resistance. I could do some work to surrender my way of doing things so that I could stop creating emotional resistance by trying to control the outcome.

Acknowledging fear, actually speaking my fears out loud or writing about them, often diminishes them. I can own the fear and then accept it and move through it.

And the ironic thing, the silly part of it, was that the real - right on - reason for my resistance was not even in the areas I was looking at directly. The real reason for my resistance was that the article I was writing was not working in the structure I was trying to force it into. What would have been the best thing to do, would have been to walk away from that article completely for a period of days so I could come back to it with a fresh perspective.

It turned out that I surrendered the "wrong" thing. I surrendered to just publishing the article to meet my deadline, instead of shifting my paradigm to a completely new perspective - such as going ahead with that update without that article. But it wasn't the wrong thing at all, because the way the whole thing unfolded was perfect to set me up to write this series of articles about the inner child healing process. Thus the Universe has forced me to write about emotional honesty and balance, about internal boundaries and clarity, in a little bit different way than I had previously. It is different because I am growing and learning, my perspective is shifting and changing.

The adventure of recovery keeps getting different. The dance of balance is continuously changing, shifting, expanding. One of the most important things we can do for ourselves, is to not take it all so seriously, not take ourselves so seriously. Don't worry be silly, is a motto my Higher Self communicated to me many years ago. Instead of worrying about doing it right, instead of empowering our fear of consequences, instead of trying to force outcomes - it is much better to lighten up (dark to Light, heavy to light) because that helps us see with more clarity.

The inner child healing process is a journey from dark to Light, from serious to silly.

As long as we are denying our fear, it has power to drive us to compulsive or addictive behavior. If we are not seeing the multiple levels of our fear clearly, then we are not being honest with ourselves. The only way to take power away from the fear is to own it, honor it, and take action to dissolve the levels of it that are codependent. When we are seeing our fear more clearly, we can see that a lot of it is pretty silly.

Fear is not bad or wrong. It is not the absence of love, as some spiritual teachers and authors would tell you. (Except in the metaphysical sense that the illusion is caused by an absence of/separation from LOVE.) It is integral part of being human. It is because we are afraid that we need to learn to Love ourselves. The more we learn to Love our self the less power the fear will have to define our reality. The more recovery tools we have, the sooner we will catch ourselves when we get caught up in the disease dynamics. The less we are reacting to life out of black and white, right and wrong; the less we are judging and shaming ourself; the less fear we experience. We can learn to feel Love and compassion for our inner child wounds - instead of fear, instead of shame and judgment.

Your fears are the places within you that await your Love. Your fears are the teachers that will help you uncover your wounds. Uncover, discover, recover. Progress, not perfection. It is through the fear that we find our way home to Love.

I write a great deal about the importance of being open to looking at anything and everything from alternative perspectives in my latest article Spirituality for Agnostics and Atheists. Prior to writing that article, I would have explained integration pretty much as I do below in a quote from my web page Learning to Love our self - Inner Child Healing / Codependence Recovery.

"(I need to make the point here that Codependence and recovery are both multi-leveled, multi-dimensional phenomena. What we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on different levels. In regard to our relationship with ourselves this involves two major dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. In this context the horizontal is about being human and relating to other humans and our environment. The vertical is Spiritual, about our relationship to a Higher Power, to the Universal Source. If we cannot conceive of a God/Goddess Force that Loves us then it makes it virtually impossible to be Loving to ourselves. So a Spiritual Awakening is absolutely vital to the process in my opinion. Changing our relationship with ourselves on the horizontal level is both a necessary element in, and possible because we are working on, integrating Spiritual Truth into our inner process.)"

When I talk about Spiritual Awakening, I am talking about my Spiritual Belief system and what I believe to be Spiritual Truth. I talk about my beliefs in my book and throughout this web site. They can be pretty well summed up in the following two short quotes from my book.

The core healing of the dis-ease / condition of codependence, in my opinion, is stopping the shame and judgment internally - in our own inner relationship with ourselves. We do not know how to be Loving to ourselves because we were raised in societies that taught us it was shameful to be human - shameful to make mistakes, to be emotional, to be sexual, to be something other than "perfect." Feeling that there is something inherently wrong with who we are as beings is the toxic shame that is the enemy within.

Society then teaches us to look to outside or external circumstances / sources to overcome this feeling of unworthiness. Those exterior sources (money, property, prestige, etc.) can only distract us from toxic shame, can only help us to build up a strong ego that hides the inferiority complex beneath - they cannot help us to feel Truly serene and happy because any outside source can be lost, any external circumstance can change.

Obviously, my beliefs about Spirituality address this toxic shame in a very effective and efficient manner. If who we really are, is Spiritual Beings having a human experience - then it becomes relatively easy to take that toxic shame out of the equation, then our inherent worth is not tied to material manifestations.

My own personal Spiritual belief system is one form of spirituality. It is certainly not the only one. Mine works for me very well in helping me to have a relationship with life that allows me to be happier today. It is not necessary for you to accept my belief system in order for you to use the tools, techniques, and perspectives that I have developed for emotional healing / codependence recovery / inner child integration.

For the purposes of this discussion of spiritual integration, I would now define what I refer to as a Spiritual Awakening in the quote above, as: being open to a larger perspective - awakening from being trapped in a limiting perspective. In this regard, spiritual would be a qualifier, an adjective, that describes the quality of one's relationship with life.

This adjective, spiritual, would be (in my definition) a word describing an expanded level of consciousness. A level of consciousness, of awareness, that is expansive and inclusive and facilitates personal growth - as opposed to limited, exclusive, rigid, and inhibiting growth, development, and alternative view points.

By this definition, any religion that claims to be the chosen one, that excludes alternative perspectives or certain people, is not spiritual.

[And I want to add here that capitalizing my Spiritual belief system and not capitalizing a general spiritual belief system, is not in any way intended to indicate one is necessarily more important, valuable, or worthwhile than the other. I capitalize certain words in my writing - Spiritual, Love, Truth, Joy, etc. - as a tool that helps me to differentiate between the vertical and horizontal dimensions that I refer to above. Love capitalized, for instance, is to me the Transcendent emotional energy of Love that one can tuned into when in touch with one's connection to everything - while the type of love on a horizontal level that we learned growing up in dysfunctional societies, is more often than not associated with some kind of possession and an excuse for addictive (with the other person as our drug of choice) and/or dysfunctional behavior (shaming, abusive, controlling behavior in the name of love.) It is certainly pleasurable to feel joy in relationship to good things happening in one's life - while Joy comes from within and can be tuned into in the moment (in relationship to a beautiful sunset, a baby, taking time to smell the flowers, etc.) no matter what is happening in one's horizontal experience.]

The objective, the function, of developing a spiritual relationship with life is to explore ways of living that work better than the ones which have resulted from the limiting belief systems that have so impacted the course of human history. Unless your life is happy, fulfilling, and working just as you want it to, then it is important to look for alternate ways to do life. A different set of rules to play by. It is important to become aware that it is possible to stop being a victim of life not being what we want it to be, in order to start changing our relationship with life into one that works better for us each individually.

In order to stop reacting to life from a victim perspective and start waking up to our own power to change the quality of our life it is necessary to be open to larger definitions of the meaning and purpose of life than the ones we were taught growing up. If we are reacting to life based on the black and white perspective of a rigid belief system - or in reaction to that black and white perspective - then we are not open to expanding our perspective. Then we are stuck in being the victim and we cannot see reality clearly.

It is important to start seeing the reality of the cause and effect dynamic that governs life so that we can start changing the behavior patterns that we adapted to cope with life. Until we are open to seeing the cause and effect between our childhoods and our adult patterns, we will continue to give power to the belief that there is something wrong with us individually. That toxic shame feeling that tells us it is our fault that life hasn't worked the way we thought it was going to, is the main enemy here. It is very important to develop a relationship with life that allows for the belief that it is not shameful to be human - and that who we are is not bad or wrong.

The shame and sin is, of course, a facet of the Western Civilization form of this dysfunctional condition. The Eastern is somewhat different (I talk about some of those facets in my article about Buddhism) but is also out of balance and dysfunctional - and also gives the message that being human is something less than a gift to be enjoyed.

I use the term dysfunctional here in the sense that the individual being does not feel honored, respected, and connected to the whole in a way that promotes happiness and fulfillment. It is very helpful to have a spiritual belief system that allows for the possibility that some kind of Cosmic order exists - that there is in fact, some meaning and purpose for human life. A belief system that affords the individual being dignity and respect and promotes the possibility that there is a connection between the individual and the whole that makes some sense.

Codependence is, on one level, a defense system wherein we take ego credit if things in our life go the way we want them to - and if they do not, we blame somebody or something. Because we were taught that doing life right would lead to happily-ever-after, we think that something is wrong with us because we don't feel fulfilled and happy. So, we blame others - or the system, or fate, or whatever - to help ourselves try to overcome the deep seated feeling that there is something wrong with us. Codependence is a defense system that developed in reaction to a basic belief that being human was shameful or negative in some way.

Integration of some type of spiritual belief system that allows for the possibility that maybe we are not sinful and shameful - that maybe life is not about sin and punishment, but rather is about cause and effect - is a major step in changing our relationship with life. It is important to understand the cause and effect in our own lives - to start seeing how the patterns in our adult lives have been caused by our childhood experiences. It is important to start looking at our lives from the perspective of understanding cause and effect instead of assessing blame.

When we start wearing a new pair of glasses that allows us to see cause and effect instead of viewing life through a filter of shame and blame, we move into a growth paradigm in our relationship with life. We start to shift out of a victim place into a place of being empowered as a co-creator in our life. Once we start looking at the cause and effect dynamics in our life, then we can start striving for some balance. One of the paradigm busting concepts that was introduced to me in early recovery was a simple statement about cause and effect: "If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep getting what you have been getting."

We start recovery as soon as we realize that there is something to recover from - and that we can take some action to change, that we can be part of the solution instead of just being a victim of the problem. Integrating a spiritual belief system that helps us take the shame out of being human, enables us to start being able to see more clearly that we have some responsibility - that our behavior and attitudes have been causal - in how our lives have unfolded. We can then start finding some balance in the middle ground between blaming others and blaming ourselves. We can start taking responsibility for our part in what has happened - our side of the street - and holding others responsible for their part in things.

Once we start owning our responsibility, and understanding the cause and effect, then we can began changing our experience of life. Then we can start to find some balance in our relationships: with ourselves; with life; with other people.

So, spiritual integration in this sense, is our relationship with the whole of the horizontal dance of life. It is very helpful to have a sense of spirituality, a relationship with the dance of life, that helps us to start being able to find some balance in our life. The reason to find some balance in our life is to take away the power from the past and make it possible to make living more enjoyable today and in the future. The whole point of healing and recovery is to help make it possible for our lives to be more serene, fulfilling, and happy, today - instead of living life out of the false belief systems we learned as children.

There is a saying that I really like, that religion is for people who are scared of hell and spirituality is for people who have been there. We have all lived in the hell that is the feeling we are somehow shameful, unworthy, and unlovable, the hell that living life according to a dysfunctional belief system can create. Recovery is about changing our perspective with life into one that works to help us be happy to be alive today for as many of the moments of the day as that is possible. It is not possible to do that when we are feeling victimized because we are giving outside or external circumstances / sources - or dysfunctional beliefs - the power to dictate how we feel about ourselves. (One form of hell is being old and rich, approaching death feeling empty and alone.)

So, when I speak of spiritual integration - if you do not resonate with my Spiritual belief system - then think of it as your relationship with life. If you can be open to having a relationship with life that is expansive and inclusive and facilitates personal growth, if you can look at life in terms of cause and effect not to assess blame but rather to change what you have been doing in order to change what you have been getting, then you are practicing spiritual integration.

Owning your power to choose a perspective of life that is expansive and inclusive will facilitate changing your relationship with life. To see life as a growth process with lessons that are worth learning, to see experiencing the journey as being more important than the destination, is to have a perspective of life that greatly enhances your chances of enjoying being alive today. This to me is spirituality in it's simplest and most essential form.

maybe, just maybe

In addition to that, I would propose that you might find it beneficial to start being open to the possibility that maybe, just maybe:

there is a benevolent meaning and purpose to life;

we are all connected to each other and to our environment;

we have worth as individuals just because we exist;

it is ok to enjoy life.

I am proposing that there is nothing wrong with who we are - that the dysfunction comes in our relationship with ourselves and with life that we learned in childhood, from people who learned it in their childhood, from people who, etc., etc. I am asking you to be open to considering a different perspective for the purpose of improving the quality of your life on a day to day basis. This is what I mean by having a spiritual relationship with life. With these possibilities integrated into your relationship with yourself and life it makes it much easier to start finding some emotional balance in the horizontal dance of relationships that is life.