I don’t have to know that today. I don’t have to decide that today. I can let it go for today

“I didn’t have to live in fear and make myself crazy about something that didn’t happen”

October 29, 2013 at 1:31pm (I originally wrote this as a note on Facebook)

Yesterday I got the results of a biopsy and it was negative – great news! What was also really great is that in the 10 days between the time the biopsy was taken and when I got the results, I didn’t have to live in fear and make myself crazy about something that didn’t happen. That is because of my recovery and having had the blessing of learning how to set internal boundaries emotionally and mentally so I can keep letting go of the outcome, of things I can’t control. In the past, waiting for an outcome that was important to me – like the results of this biopsy – would have been excruciating. I am so grateful for my recovery. For having learned how to have the ability to let go of my fear in the moment and say to myself that is about the future, I don’t need to know that today.

My disease wants to project horror movies into the future of impending doom, financial tragedy, being along forever. Because of my recovery I don’t have to get all emotionally caught up in things that haven’t happened yet, in outcomes in the future which may never happen. I am very grateful that I have the tools and knowledge to not allow my childhood wounding and programming to dictate the quality of my life today.

“When I was about two years in recovery there was a time when I was talking to my sponsor on the phone. I had just lost my job, the car had broken down, and I had to move out of my apartment in two weeks. Talk about tragedy and impending doom! I was laying in bed feeling very sorry for myself and very terrified about how painful it was going to be when I became homeless. After listening to me for a while my sponsor asked me, “What’s up above you?” It was a stupid question and I told him so. I was pissed that he wasn’t giving me the sympathy I deserved – but he insisted that I answer. So I finally said, “Well, the ceiling.” And he said, “Oh, so your not homeless tonight are you?”” – Gratitude – a Vital Tool in the Recovery Process

“One of the things I say often, is that I realized I had spent most of my life before recovery worrying about decisions I never had to make – because when it became time to make the decision it was obvious what to do. The situation had changed or new information had come in – and the days and weeks (and sometimes months) I had spent worrying about that decision were a waste of time and energy. One of the greatest recovery tools I have learned is just to be able to say, “I don’t have to decide that today” or “I don’t have to know that today” – and let go of the outcome I am worried about for today.” – Joy2MeU Update Newsletter April 2009

“They say that God made the world round so we can’t see too far over the horizon. The details about how those events over the horizon are going to work out are not my business today. If I am putting all my energy into figuring out how I am going to cross the mountain way off in the distance, then I am liable to step into a hole that is directly in front of me on my path today. (Could cause me to hurt my leg 😉 I need to keep an eye on the horizon so that I can make any adjustments to my heading that I need to make – but most of my attention and energy needs to be focused on what is in front of me to do and experience in my life today. I want to be present for my life today and be able to enjoy the scenery that is part of the texture of my journey today. In my codependency, my fear and shame driven relationship with life caused me to be incapable of being present in the moment because I was focused on the future or the past. One of the gifts of my recovery is the ability to be here today, to be available for moments of happiness and Joy no matter how many frightening unknowns are looming on the horizon – no matter how impossible it looks to me for me to ever get there.

I haven’t reached a point in my journey from which it is possible to see the details of how this transition is going to unfold. My part as a co-creator in this life experience means that I am responsible for planting seeds and gathering information and doing the footwork to prepare myself for those events on and over the horizon – but the details will not become clear until I have reached the point in my journey when I need to see them clearly. One of the greatest stress reducers in my recovery was the insight that it wasn’t doing me any good to worry about decisions that it was not yet time to make – that worry was in fact a symptom that I was in my disease trying to figure out how to control life because of my fear, and it created more fear. A very dysfunctional dynamic – that is the essence of the condition of codependency – which prevented me from ever really living life, until recovery.

“Worry – which is negative fantasizing – is a reaction to fear of the unknown which creates more fear, which creates more worry, which creates more fear, etc. This fear is not a normal human fear of the unknown. It is codependent fear: a distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated species of fear caused by the poisonous combination of a false belief that being human is shameful with a polarized (black and white, right and wrong) perspective of life. This self perpetuating, self destructive type of obsessive thinking feeds not only on fear, but on shaming ourselves for feeling the fear.

The disease of codependency is a dysfunctional emotional defense system adapted by our egos to help us survive. The polarized perspective of life we were programmed with in early childhood, causes us to be afraid of making a mistake, of doing life “wrong.” At the core of our being, we feel unlovable and unworthy – because our parents felt unlovable and unworthy – and we spend great amounts of energy trying to keep our shameful defectiveness a secret. We feel that, if we were perfect like we “should” be, we would not feel fear and confusion, and would have reached “happily ever after” by now. So, we shame ourselves for feeling fear, which adds gasoline to the inferno of fear that is driving us. The shame and fear that drive obsession becomes so painful and ‘crazy making’ that at some point we have to find some way to shut down our minds for a little while – drugs or alcohol or food or sleep or television, etc.

It is a very dysfunctional, and sad, way to relate to life. The fear we are empowering is about the future – the shame is about the past. We are not capable of being in the now and enjoying life because we are caught up in trauma melodramas about things which have not yet happened – or wallowing in orgies of self recrimination about the past, which can not be changed. Codependents do not really live life – we endure, we survive, we persevere.” – Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 1

I am not writing the script, am not in control of this human experience, so I need to do what I am led to do when I am led to do it – with faith that a Loving plan is unfolding. Worry is negative fantasy. Fear of the future does not serve me on my path today – takes away my ability to be here now. The fear will come up certainly – just as it did when I wrote the paragraph above – but that is normal and human. I can use my recovery tools to let go of that fear of the unknown – and have boundaries with the critical parent voice in my head which wants me to project a fantasy of impending doom, a horror movie in my mind, that will cause me to create artificial fear in my life today. As I talked about in my article on Acceptance (Serenity – Accepting the things we cannot change), I learned that 90% of the stress in my life before codependency recovery was my responsibility, something I had some control over – and I do not have to create that kind of stress in my life any more, thanks to recovery and my faith in the Great Spirit.” – Joy2MeU Update Newsletter November 2002

“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 human – that is fear of the unknown.

“This human experience is a process that involves inherent conflict between the continuously changing nature of life and the human ego’s need to survive. In order to insure survival (which is the ego’s appointed task) the human ego needs to define things. What is food? What is friend or enemy? Who am I and how do I relate to them? What can hurt me and what brings me pleasure? It also learned that it is healthy to have a fear of the unknown (it was important to check an unknown cave for saber toothed tigers before strolling into it.) As a result, the ego fears change and craves security and stability. But because life is constantly changing, security and stability can only be temporary.” – Loving and Nurturing self on your Spiritual Path

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.” – The Recovery Process for inner child healing – through the fear

“Learning to apply the Serenity Prayer has helped me to stop creating so much artificial stress in my life because I wasn’t accepting reality as it was being presented to me.  About 90% of the stress I used to experience in my life was artificially created – was created by my attitudes and expectations.  As I say in that journal entry:

“So, I accept whatever it is that I perceive as deprivation today – and make the best of today.  That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t generate stress for me.  But the stress is like the 3. earthquake as compared to the 8. earthquake that my perspective of life used to generate for me.”” – Serenity – Accepting the things we cannot change

1/19/17 – I added this last quote while publishing this on my blog today.  I have been neglecting this blog – apologies to all my followers.  The main reason is that I have been posting quotes and links on Facebook almost every day – and that is much easier than publishing these blog entries.  I will try to post more of these in the coming weeks but if you want to get an almost daily dose of my writing, sent me a Friend request on Facebook.

The key to codependency recovery is the inner child healing work I describe on my site.  A key element of that work includes learning to set internal boundaries. It is learning to set internal boundaries that can help us stop living in fear of the future or regret about the past – and be more present to experience today.

The formula that I pioneered for inner healing – which includes learning to set the internal boundaries – is something that I teach people through telephone counseling   (It is now possible to get phone cards for very cheap rates from many places in the world – and also to use Skype for free from anywhere.)  I talk about how the phone counseling can work to really change a persons life for the better in a short period of time on this page which includes somespecial combination offers.

Reading my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls (links to all of my books in both hard copy, ebook, and audiobook format are on that page – or you can get Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon) really help people take their understanding to a whole new level. Understanding codependency is vital in helping us to forgive our self for the dysfunctional ways we have lived our lives – it is not our fault we are codependent.

In the last few years I have also published two more books that can be very helpful. Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing and Romantic Relationships ~ The Greatest Arena for Spiritual & Emotional Growth. I have special offers for either or both of these books (or for all three of my books) on this page.

I also offer periodic day long workshops to teach people how to apply my inner child healing formula.  (There is now a downloadable MP3 recording available of my Life Changing workshop  – and I have a page with special offers for both the workshop recording and an MP3 download of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. )

Codependency causes us to feel like the victim of our own thoughts and feelings, and like our own worst enemy – recovery helps us to start learning how to be our own best friend. Getting into codependency recovery is an act of love for self.

Obsession and Obsessive Thinking Part 1 – Robert Burney

“We were taught to approach life from a perspective of fear, survival, lack and scarcity. . . . . . We were taught that life is about destinations, and that when we get to point x – be it marriage or college degree or fame and fortune or whatever – we will live happily ever after.

That is not the way life works.  You know that now, and probably threw out that fairy tale ending stuff intellectually a long time ago.  But on some emotional level we keep looking for it because that is what the children in us were taught.  We keep living life as if it is a dress rehearsal for “when our ship comes in.”  For when we really start to live.  For when we get that relationship, or accomplishment, or money that will make us okay, that will fix us.

We do not need fixing.  We are not broken.  Our sense of self, our self perception, was shattered and fractured and broken into pieces, not our True Self.” 

“Life is not some kind of test, that if we fail, we will be punished.  We are not human creatures who are being punished by an avenging god.  We are not trapped in some kind of tragic place out of which we have to earn our way by doing the “right” things.

We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.  We are here to learn.  We are here to go through this process that is life.  We are here to feel these feelings.

Doing our emotional healing allows us to feel clear about what is in front of us instead of torturing ourselves by obsessively thinking, trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong.” – All quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Obsessive thinking is an emotional defense that, like all of the various manifestations of codependency, is dysfunctional.  Being in our heads – thinking, fantasizing, ruminating – is a defense we adapted in childhood to help us disassociate from the emotional pain we were experiencing.  It is dysfunctional because it keeps us focused on the future or the past – we miss out on being alive today.  It is dysfunctional because our attempts to escape unpleasant feelings causes us to generate more unpleasant feelings.

Worry – which is negative fantasizing – is a reaction to fear of the unknown which creates more fear, which creates more worry, which creates more fear, etc.  This fear is not a normal human fear of the unknown.  It is codependent fear:  a distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated species of fear caused by the poisonous combination of a false belief that being human is shameful with a polarized (black and white, right and wrong) perspective of life.  This self perpetuating, self destructive type of obsessive thinking feeds not only on fear, but on shaming ourselves for feeling the fear.

The disease of codependency is a dysfunctional emotional defense system adapted by our egos to help us survive. The polarized perspective of life we were programmed with in early childhood, causes us to be afraid of making a mistake, of doing life “wrong.”  At the core of our being,we feel unlovable and unworthy – because our parents felt unlovable and unworthy – and we spend great amounts of energy trying to keep our shameful defectiveness a secret.  We feel that, if we were perfect like we “should” be, we would not feel fear and confusion, and would have reached “happily ever after” by now.  So, we shame ourselves for feeling fear, which adds gasoline to the inferno of fear that is driving us.  The shame and fear that drive obsession becomes so painful and ‘crazy making’ that at some point we have to find some way to shut down our minds for a little while – drugs or alcohol or food or sleep or television, etc.

It is a very dysfunctional, and sad, way to relate to life.  The fear we are empowering is about the future – the shame is about the past.  We are not capable of being in the now and enjoying life because we are caught up in trauma melodramas about things which have not yet happened – or wallowing in orgies of self recrimination about the past, which can not be changed.  Codependents do not really live life – we endure, we survive, we persevere.

Obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior is caused by, and fed by, fear and shame.  The feeling that the world will come to an end if ____ doesn’t happen, or that it has come to an end because ____ happened, is a feeling coming from the wounded inner child.  It is the result of early childhood emotional trauma – and the subconscious programming adapted by our egos to help us survive at a time when we were helpless and powerless.

An adult is not helpless and powerless.  We are, however, powerless to know that, as long as we are unconsciously reacting to repressed emotional energy and subconscious programming.  It is impossible to see our self or life clearly when we are caught up in trauma dramas (internally and externally) that feel life threatening.  In our codependency, we are in denial of our emotions at the same time we are allowing the feelings of the wounded child within to define and dictate our lives.

Getting into recovery from codependency, starting to learn how to do the inner child work, will help a person take power away from the fear and shame that drives the disease – that causes the obsessive thinking.  Learning to be compassionate in our relationship with our self – by not shaming ourselves for being wounded human beings – will help us to take power away from the obsessive thinking.  Starting to choose to believe that there is a benevolent Force in the Universe, a Loving Higher Power, will facilitate taking power away from the fear of the unknown.

Love is the answer to obsession – but not the love of another person.  Learning to be Loving to our self – and remembering that there is a Loving Higher Power, is the best way I have ever found to stop obsessive thinking.

Some notes of clarification from Robert Burney: (These notes were part of the article when it was originally published.)

I learned a lot about the wounding process of codependency by studying cases of people with multiple personality disorder.  Anyone raised in an emotionally dishonest, dysfunctional culture had their relationship with themselves – their psyche – shattered and fractured into multiple disjointed segments in childhood.  People with multiple personality / Dissociative Identity Disorder were pushed farther than the rest of us.  The recovery process for the normal form of codependency and the more extreme multiple personality variety both require reclaiming and integrating these different parts of self into a functional internal structure that allows us to put a mature adult in charge of our internal dynamics instead of the wounded inner children or the critical parent / disease programming.

In relationship to obsessive thinking, the manifestation of codependency that is the extreme, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD, which involves such things as: washing hands repeatedly;  or returning to the apartment multiple times to make sure the stove is turned off;  etc.) will probably require medication to bring the disorder under control enough to be able to focus on recovery.  Like other conditions/diseases that are fueled by the reactive condition of codependency, and that involve a genetic predisposition and/or compulsively self destructive behavior (alcoholism, some eating disorders, extreme forms of relationship or sexual addiction, etc.), it is sometimes necessary to bring the symptoms under control before the cause can be addressed – but addressing the cause is vital in making possible significant, long term changes in the symptomatic behavioral disorders.

Traditional Western medical science has ignored and discounted the spiritual and emotional components of being.  The traditional medical perspective in relationship to any physically or psychologically manifested dis-ease is limited by a left brain (concrete, rational) intellectual paradigm which is entirely focused on that which can be seen, measured, quantified.  Therefore, any spiritual, emotional, and mental dis-ease is seen as resulting from biochemical, physiological, physical conditions.  Doctors (which includes psychiatrists of course) – and other traditional medical and mental health professionals – were trained to identify mental and emotional problems as biological and to see the solution as chemical.

There are certainly neurobiological aspects to any behavioral manifestation, but it is not possible for a scientific perspective which requires empirical proof to truly ascertain the cause of any condition – because emotional and spiritual components of a human’s being can not be quantified.  In other words, brain chemistry is definitely out of balance in relationship to any physical disorder or mental condition – including OCD, Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, etc.  That imbalance in brain chemistry definitely has an impact on emotions – but it is not possible to say absolutely which is the cause and which is the effect.  The chicken and egg conundrum.  In other words, did the emotional trauma and the fear and shame based relationship to life cause the chemical imbalance in the brain – or did the chemical imbalance come first.  Traditional Western medicine is not holistic – it does not treat the whole being, it treats symptoms.  Medication is necessary for some people.  It is an invaluable temporary help for others.  It is not the whole answer.  The great majority of doctors are limited by their training, the intellectual paradigm which determines their perspective, to believing that they do know the answers.

In my belief and experience, a person’s relationship to any dis-ease can be improved by the adaptation and integration of a Loving Spiritual belief system.

It is vital to change our relationship with our own emotions in order to take power away from the distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated variety of fear that drives obsession so that we can stop the compulsive behavior that is driven by repressed emotional energy.  And the underlying reason that fear is given so much power is the shame about being human that is at the foundation of our relationship with self.

Taking power away from the shame so that we can take power away from the fear is greatly facilitated by becoming involved in a twelve step Spiritual recovery program in order to develop some kind of benevolent spiritual relationship with life.

Here is a quote from an article on my web site about spirituality.

“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.” – The Recovery Process for inner child healing – spiritual integration

So, basically what I am saying, is that codependency (which includes an addictive, toxic, abusive concept of love) is the problem and Love is the solution.  Any belief system that empowers separation, fear and shame is codependent in my definition – not spiritual.  There is a saying I like: “Religion is for people who are scared of hell, Spirituality is for people who have been there.”  It is possible to be spiritual without being religious, and possible to connect spiritually within a religion – but some religion as it is practiced is not at all spiritual.

Recovery is a process of learning to stop living in the hell that the illusion of separation – which empowers fear and shame – created, and start living life based upon remembering that we are connected to everyone and everything in Love.

Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 2

Robert Burney is a pioneer in codependency recovery / inner child healing movement whose first book Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls has been called “one of the truly transformational works of our time.”  His website joy2meu.com offers over 200 pages of free original content and he shares the transformational formula he discovered for inner healing through telephone / Skype counseling with people around the world

It is possible to get personally autographed copies of his books from his website Joy2MeU   or You can get Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon;  Books or eBooks from Barnes & Noble;  or eBooks thru Kobo.  Here is a page with special offers for his books.