Letting Go of the Fight: Finding Inner Peace When Others See It Differently

Have you ever found yourself trying to convince someone to see things the way you do—only to feel frustrated, unheard, or misunderstood? In this episode of Recover Your Soul, we're exploring the power of letting go of the fight and stepping into inner peace when others see the same situation differently.

Soul Recovery teaches us that we are powerless over how others think, feel, and process their experiences. We don’t need to be validated by others to trust our own truth. When we release the need to be “on the same page,” we create space for healing, compassion, and self-acceptance. And just as we honor our own experience, we can extend that same compassion to others—allowing them to have their own truth, even when it differs from ours.

I’ll share personal experiences and Soul Recovery tools to help you:

• Stop seeking validation from those who may never see it your way.
• Release attachment to the pain stories that keep you stuck.
• Embrace the freedom of allowing others their own perceptions.
• Have compassion for their perspective, even when it’s different from yours.
• Find empowerment in shifting your own perception.

Join Rev. Rachel for an upcoming Soul Recovery workshop or retreat—an opportunity to deepen your healing, release old patterns, and reconnect with your true self. Learn more and register at https://www.recoveryoursoul.net/inperson

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Chapters

• 0:00 Perception and Compassion in Healing
• 15:23 Walking the Path of Healing
• 30:45 Healing Through Acceptance and Compassion

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

And in many relationships there is so much pain and difficulty in this fight that we have to try to all be on the same page to see the real way that it felt or the real way that it was. Is it the way in which they see it? And actually, that when we begin to let go of the need to all be on the same page, we can validate our own feelings. We can stop needing other people to see what we saw or felt, what we felt, and we can begin to have compassion that they may have felt or seen something that was different than us. We begin to allow each person to fully engage in their own process of healing. We let go of control. We recognize we're powerless over how they see it. We step into our power by choosing how we want to see it, letting go of the pain memories, letting go of the pain stories and allowing people to be in their process wherever they may be, turning the attention back to ourself and choosing our own soul recovery as our focus. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:20

My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life. From my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction, I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover your Soul. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you for being part of this amazing community, whether you're new or whether you've been here for a while. This space that we are holding together around learning how to let go of what feels really out of control around us and to step into our own empowerment, our own healing, our own wellness, to choose a spiritual path to lead a happy and healthy life. This is where we're standing together Incredible sisterhood, brotherhood of all of us holding space for each other and knowing that there's nothing wrong with us, that we are whole, that we are just remembering and we're learning skills and tools of how to process what feels really overwhelming and is indeed complex out in the world and in our own families and in our own lives. And I hope that I'm giving you tools through this podcast, the nine step soul recovery process and through my experiences, to give you the strength to just be with what is and for us to stop fighting it and to start actually being present in our bodies and in our lives and in our minds in a spiritually fit, emotional way that allows us to handle what is indeed very complex and strange out there.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:15

Today's episode is around perception, and you've heard me say over and over and over that it is as we choose to see it and when we become more aware of how empowering this statement is, that if we choose to see ourselves as having terrible lives and everything's awful, it is as you choose to see it. That is what you are experiencing and as we choose to see it, that there's complexity and there's addiction and there's dysfunction and there's heartache, but that we are strong and powerful and we have what we need to get through it. It is as we choose to see it. When we choose to see the people in our lives as sick and broken they are, that to us and to, in reflection, back to us, that's how they tend to feel about themselves. That's how they tend to feel about themselves. When we recognize the people around us are whole but might be going through difficult times, then we are seeing them as whole going through a difficult time. But today's episode is around the very complex energies and feelings and memories that we all have and this need and desire that we have for us to try to be on the same page around it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:29

And it's come up for me recently in a couple different situations with Rich that I wanted to talk about, because again, it's this opportunity for me to use the soul recovery process and tools of how to look at. How am I choosing to see it? What are the beliefs and patterns that show up for me by my being triggered and activated? Where can I switch? How I take care of myself first and foremost, so that I let go of the woundedness, the blame, the battlefield, the emotional battlefield? Where am I stepping into my defense mechanisms to try to protect myself? How can I see more clearly what actually is happening here and stop falling into old codependent behaviors and patterns?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:20

And what's happened in my life is that the more that I do this work, the more compassion that I have for my own experience. But in addition to that, I have a lot more compassion for where everybody else is in their experience, and I continue to be unlayering this part of me that thinks that I'm supposed to fix or I'm supposed to show or I'm supposed to give light onto somebody else's situation in my family, about why they see it a certain way or maybe they didn't feel it the way that it should have been felt or if I can fix it, then they will feel better. These tendencies for us to want to save everybody around us are so ingrained in us, and the more that we let go of judgment and have self-compassion for ourselves and how we got here, the easier it is to release and let go. So I had a couple interactions with Rich recently that really brought this to light and I wanted to share them with you because it's giving me so much more information about me, which is the only place I have control anyway, which is what I am choosing to see. But what I'm recognizing that I'm still uncovering is this part of me that wants us to see it the same, or that I want to be validated for why I made the decisions that I made or why I felt the way that I felt. And also, I still find it very hard to be in the presence of somebody who is still feeling their own raw, complex, unhealed emotions, and how much I want to jump in and make it be different.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:10

Two things happened recently, two conversations. One was us having our morning coffee, like we often do, where, after I finished my prayer and meditation time in between or before somewhere in it, I realized it's important for me to be making conscious decision to be in connection with Rich, and I can get really caught up in wanting to make sure that I'm having all of my spiritual time in the morning, but really that's really when he's freshest, when he's in the most open space, when the day hasn't taken him over, and that's when some of our most powerful conversations happen. So I try to make a concerted effort to create that space for us to connect at least a couple times a week. So I can't remember how we got to the part of the conversation, but he's been sharing more and more about what's happening within him and how he's processing and how he's seeing things, and the more that I just am quiet and allow him to have the space to share those emotions and feelings, the more he's actually sharing with me. And very mindful to button my lip and not try to coach, not try to fix, not try to save. I'm doing a much better job of just being a good listener and then being aware of when there is appropriate times to share and not share.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:42

Okay, so this was in a moment of listening. Moment of listening. He was sharing very openly and vulnerably about how it felt for him when I left around 11 years ago and that that experience continues to bubble up and have fear for him, and I was curious. In that conversation I asked because of some of the other things that he had said is there pain around the extenuating circumstances and the dysfunction and the complexities that were happening in our family that gave me what I felt like was no other choice to leave? Or was it the actual action of me leaving? And his immediate response was it was you leaving and the fact that you have thought about or wanted to leave I don't even know how many times since then it's the fact that you would leave me. Now he's brought this up again and again and again and again. So I think that you've heard, if you've been listening to the podcast, that this is a really powerful, if you've been listening to the podcast, that this is a really powerful, painful place for him. What I want to point out is that when he is talking about this.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:51

In this situation, I was incredibly aware of the fact that he did not hear the part where I said I felt that I had no other choice, based on what was happening in our family at the time, other than to make that decision, and so I could recognize that I wasn't feeling heard in that moment and that my general tendency would be to try to make him see where I'm coming from. Right, but what I could feel was that this was an opportunity for him to have some experience of safety around him, really just sharing with me something that's really painful to him. That was a wound that I have participated in creating in his world. Now I did ask, when I asked that question, about the leaving or the dysfunction of our life. At that time, he had a response that said I don't think it was all that bad and I just thought that we were going through hard times and everybody makes it through hard times and you just get past it. It's the fact that you would leave me right.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:01

The good news is in our conversations and the brain that I'm creating within myself, the mechanisms in my neurons that I'm retraining through neuroplasticity, and the soul recovery tools that I'm using was that I could feel the importance of the brain not battling and allowing him to see it as it was for him, and in that, what I am really hoping that I'm giving you some example of it I'm going to give you another one here in a second is that I didn't dismiss how it felt for me, as he is sharing his side and his pain and what's really going on for him Underneath. I'm attending to myself and I know that for me it was so painful and so difficult and so traumatic at the time and there was so much going on that that decision that I made to leave was the only and the right decision for me. But I don't need to fight him about what that is. I don't need to fight with him about who felt more pain or who was wronged or who was right. In soul recovery we're taking the spiritual tools that say there is no judgment, there is no right or wrong. This isn't about somebody winning and somebody losing. This is about us each being able to have our own experience.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:29

Now, what I can tell you in my relationship with my husband is that there is more opening for me to be able to witness how he felt and to give him space for that. It is not reciprocated in the same level yet, and this is a big piece of our journey that we can only know for ourselves what is right for us. If I'm needing him to reciprocate for me and to say, rachel, tell me more about how you felt in that situation, then I'm putting all of my power on him again to give to me something that I think I need or want. The validation that we can have about how we felt and how it was for us is within ourselves. No one can diminish how it felt for us. I don't have to fight for it. It was right for me. But what I saw in this situation that I also really want to share in this episode is we all see it as we choose to see it. He sees it a very specific way. That was his experience through his mind, through his past experiences that he had in our marriage and growing up as a child. His defense mechanisms, his view of the world is the only way that he can see it, as I can only see it through mine. But the more that we're fighting against the other person to show what it was for us, the less we're being present for what it was for the other person, and the more we're giving them the power to validate for us how it was for us, we're leaving curiosity and going into control.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:22

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website recover your soulnet to learn more about the nine step soul recovery process. I hope that you'll join us the first Monday of every month for the free soul recovery support group on zoom, where we've learned more about soul recovery and connect with each other. If you'd like to work directly with me to move through the nine step soul recovery process, I'm here for you, but you can also choose to work the steps on your own, with individual modules intended to support you to work at your own pace and on your own time. And if you want even more soul recovery, join us for the Recover your Soul bonus podcast for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, where I interview amazing people sharing soul recovery tips for us and also do spiritual book studies. You can also find Daily Inspiration on Facebook and Instagram and join our private Facebook community. Visit the website for more information, links and registration for everything. Back to the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:23

Soul Recovery is all about compassion, curiosity, grace, forgiveness. I don't have to push my agenda, and what's interesting is that, as I do this work of not attaching and clinging to these moments that we have, what I recognize is I still have that feeling underneath that I feel really, really just like shooken to the core about how much discomfort I have around two things. One is me being able to have my own feelings. That's one of the first and foremost ones. That's one of the first and foremost ones. I have an underneath belief that says what you need, what you want, how you feel, is way more important than what I need, what I want, how I feel, and that your needs, your wants, your feelings come first. I'm always last. I'm going to give you what you need. If there's anything left, I'll take it for myself. That is a belief that I have been working on. The other was that they can be uncomfortable and they can think and feel what they need and that, whatever their perception is, I'm powerless over whatever. That is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:35

Going back to step two and soul recovery. I'm powerless over how he sees it, how he felt about it. I do not need to defend myself, and in that I actually could feel the part of his soul that continues to have fear that I will leave. Now I will tell you, as I have said in the past, I did not do the thing that part of my codependent people pleasing nature wants to do and my codependent people-pleasing nature wants to do, which is to say, honey, that happened in the past. I'm never going to leave. I hope that you feel a solidity of our relationship right now and all is well. I didn't say any of those things because this feeling that he is going through, this experience he is going through, is his to work out for himself. I validated his feelings. I said I can totally see how painful that was for you and I didn't jump into defending and it passed. I can't promise him that I will never leave. I will not promise him that I will never leave because I am choosing to be in this relationship today, and today is the only day that there is. Do I want to be in here long term? Absolutely, but I will continue to choose myself and I do not need to defend how I feel. But I also do not need to make him see where I'm coming from, because then I'm battling, then we're in attack and this part of defensiveness that you can only attack back and forth. There's no other option. Someone has to drop the attack.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:18

The other situation actually just happened and if you've listened to the podcast before, you know the story that when I was pregnant with Bodie, who is now 26 years old and in very rough conditions, it was a very intense part of our life. I was home by myself with the kids for about three years, except for him coming home on the weekends. He would come home in the summer and work for a month or two where he could make a little bit more money in his building career locally. It was a very intense time. It has a lot of energy around it and a lot of work has been done to allow that to just float away. You know that I've worked really hard on my emotions around it. I've spent time processing what is healthy for me to process and Rich and my mom have been reestablishing their relationship because at the end of the project, after he had dedicated three years of his life, my stepdad, who had been having some memory issues his Alzheimer's hit like a rock.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:40

And right at the end of this project, which is supposed to be the beginning of a larger project. This was supposed to be the little house and then there was going to be a big house ended up costing a lot more money than it was supposed to for a variety of reasons. But there was this dinner that ended up with this huge blow up where my mom screamed at Rich and said that he had failed. And it was one of those ruptures that can happen in a family. We've all had them. We've all had those moments where the levy just breaks and it's not actually about what the fight is about. This is the hardest thing sometimes, about how our minds work, which is the Course in Miracles says. We're rarely upset for the reason we think that this particular fight where my mom screamed to him you failed wasn't about that. But he created a whole level of story around what she was saying that had to do with all of his expectations and his wounds and his needs and and what was going on for him. And my mom was actually in response to the fact that there was a bunch of financial hardship that was happening at that moment and that her husband who she had thought was going to be her rock that she was going to have for the rest of her life, it turns out is very sick and the whole thing felt overwhelming and there's this huge rupture. No one is saying what they really are truly thinking in their heart, it's just all ego and fear and it creates this huge rupture. And it was a big, big deal. It was a huge deal and so much complexity happened out of this particular situation.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:34

What's fascinating about this situation was it actually wasn't me, that was in the argument. I participated in watching it, but no one was at me. But I've held space around these two people that are my two main people my mother and my husband and how they felt and each of their stories and that part of me that is the mediator, the peacemaker between the two and that I could see all of the sides and I've had to dance around each of their pain and their woundedness for 25 years. And they've been working it out ever since my mom's house burned down. There has been a connection between the two of them and they've done projects together and they've made amends right.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:22

So I feel, like this very sticky, hard, complex experiences and past memories that the energy had dissipated from it, the rock if you've heard me talk about the rocks that we carry, the responsibilities, the pains the rock had been set down and I haven't thought about it in forever, right? So for some reason, rich picks up the rock and this conversation conversation comes up and he is activated immediately and he's talking about how my mom said you know the fight and how my mom said that he had failed. And all of a sudden, this rock that had been put down for so long was huge. And all of a sudden, this rock that had been put down for so long was huge and I watched myself that I wanted to pick it up, that I wanted to pick it up because there's so much pain in it and it reminded me of this conversation that I wanted to have with you around. It is as we choose to see it, and this part of me that wanted to get involved in how he is choosing to see it, and the part of me that wants to say to him Rich, this is over and this was about other things.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:46

And I started. I actually started. I said I watched myself do the thing. Where you want to, you want to give them that perspective, you want to give them the information that this was such a big explosion that was about so much more. But he didn't want that and immediately I was so grateful that I'm using the tools of soul recovery just to be like not my rock, not my rock If he needs to pick up this rock and he needs to hold it and he needs to carry it. This is not mine, but I felt so much energy around this activation of something that had been such a big deal in our life. I mean, if you listen to the podcast from before that really talk about the cabin and it was a really complex part of the story. I went, I did what I teach you to do. I took a beat, I paused. I didn't try to fix it for him, I just noticed the space. I validated that this is a big deal to him and the good news is that, because our lives are the way that they are, there wasn't time to talk about it. It really needed to just be let go, which, luckily, spirit gave us the time to do that.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:09

And then I went and journaled on my own about how much I want to fix his discomfort. I want to fix his discomfort. I don't want him to still be hurting from this. I want him to see my mom's perspective and how much more was going on for her that didn't have anything to do with this and that sometimes we just blow up and we say things that nobody means in those moments. But we choose whether we're going to hold on and attach to that. We could choose how we're going to see it and in that writing I had the clarity that was I get to choose how I'm going to see this. I am going to choose. It's the only power that I have. I am going to choose how I am going to see this and I'm going to see this as another opportunity for healing for my husband, if he so chooses to do something with that rock.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:03

I'm powerless over what he thinks. I'm powerless over how he still is replaying this story. I'm powerless over the healing that he's doing for himself. I'm powerless over how he sees it, and we do not have to see it the same. We do not have to see it the same, and we do not have to see it the same. We do not have to see it the same. I can let go of this need and want for us to all be on the same page and see it from the same perspective.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:26

There were many people in that situation. Everyone has their own experience of what it was for them and my only responsibility is for me to attend to how it was for me and it was really hard for me at the time. But I've done the work on myself to be able to release that and I do not have to make us all get along. This is one of my my character defects. One of my beliefs is like it's my job to make sure we all get along. Man, if Rich wants to pick this up again, that is his. Clearly there is more work for him to do. It will show him something if he is willing to see it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:13

I'm going to see it for me and what I see is this really intense part of me that, whether he's saying the pain that I felt from you leaving me, the pain that I felt from your mother saying that I failed in some way, those are real pains. Can I have enough compassion to allow him to really feel those feelings? And then, with compassion, it means you hand it to them and you say I see you, I recognize that this is a big emotion, that these are big things for you, and I hand them back to you for you to take care of as you so choose. I am actually going to look from my perspective and I'm going to allow it to all hold space. It can all be true at the same time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:05

It was hard for me too, in my own ways, and again I come back to that truth, which is that oftentimes those people in our lives that we love so much, we want to process all these things that we're feeling and thinking and that are transforming for us, and the healing that's happening. We want to have these conversations with them, but more than often they're too wrapped up and it's too close, it's too entwined, it's too enmeshed for them to be able to step back and to have the distance to see how it was for everybody else. What I'm really praying and hoping is that Rich can have enough space to have compassion and see it from other people's perceptions, but that may or may not happen in the way that I would like for it to be. It will happen in the way that it happens for him, and the more that I actually back off, the more I'm giving him the responsibility to make that choice for himself in his own way. As soon as I let this go, as soon as I realized that both of those rocks were his rocks, the freedom that I felt, and then I do this work, to choose how I'm going to see it, to not see him as what my brain wants, to twist around to see the faults and the reasons why he can't. That is me choosing to see him in a certain way.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 30:46

It doesn't mean that I diminish how I feel or I dismiss that there are some very factual ways that we see the world that are very different. But are they deal breakers? Are they hills to stand on? Are they battles that I'm going to wage? No, and the fascinating thing I know I use the word fascinating a lot, but it really is fascinating to me is that generally, when we just let these things blow through, they just kind of blow through. Let these things blow through, they just kind of blow through, we're the ones that gather them up and say don't forget about that rock. The truth is, he may pick up that rock and hold it for a minute and then I don't know that he's set it down, because the likelihood is that he's not going to share that kind of thing with me anyway. But it is very likely that he has these big emotions and that then it just turns into something else. He moves somewhere else, the more that I think my job is to point out and fix and change the more that I'm getting lost on a road that isn't mine to walk.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:55

In the first place, I need to let him have his own experience and I need to be okay that how we each experienced it, how we each see it, how we feel about it, will always be different than how it is for the other person, and that there's space for all of it. There's space for all of it, and I had more ability, if we're talking about the cabin, more ability to actually see the cabin, not just from the part that I held onto for so long that it was such a terrible experience. I was alone. Rich was an alcoholic, you know. It was so many complex emotions and interactions. I actually now see it for the creative energy, for the wild experience it was for him, for the beauty of what was created, for how much opportunity that he had to envision and create something along with my mom. I want him actually to remember how much good there was in it for him, and I think mostly he does too right, because when we're in pain we tend to pick up the pain rock and look at it from that perception, but we can let those blow ups that happened in that one moment and that are happening in the moment when we're activated. We can just let them ride. You don't have to attach, you don't have to figure it all out, you don't have to understand every little thing.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 33:28

Attend to yourself, ask yourself questions. What do I need? Where can I let this go? What is mine here? How do I feel about it? What can I see about myself and how I'm choosing to see it? Can I see compassion and love for everybody involved? Can I take off all the judgment, good and bad, and open to a power greater than myself that is providing light, providing an ability to be present with the complex nature of us as human beings, that all of these memories, no matter how sticky and complex the emotions are, that are stored in the past. I get to choose if I'm going to engage in that and if somebody else is engaging in it, I get to choose to not engage and I can let them feel, however they felt about it, that that isn't an either or a win or a lose. It is an and and and open accept. So I feel so much more relief than I did in that moment when he picked up that rock and started talking about it, and I'm so grateful for that, because that's what soul recovery offers us. Is that? It's not that life isn't going to show up. It's not that we're not going to have those moments. It's not that we're not going to get activated. It's that we have tools now to be able to handle it in a different way and to allow them to handle it in the way that they so choose.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 35:03

You're here for soul recovery. You're learning this technology, you're learning this language, you're learning these spiritual practices, along with whatever else. You're gathering up because your spirit is talking to you uniquely you to heal you. You don't heal you. Source love. Higher power washes through you and together, together, there is a healing, you know. I say together we can do the work that will recover your soul. Together is us as a community. The together is you and me. The together is us and spirit and source. We are never alone and all of these experiences that we have are so important, but we can stop being in suffering and attaching to the pain stories that we've told ourselves about everything and be open to curiosity, releasing the need to control, admitting we're powerless over how anyone else experienced it, letting go of the need to be validated by anyone else for how it was for us and choosing to see it from love and light.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 36:18

Okay, until next time. Namaste, thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process. Just a reminder that every Friday is the Recover your Soul bonus podcast. This podcast is for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, and not only do you get an incredible interview or book study that comes with being part of that community, but your subscribing helps support this podcast and the Recover your Soul community. If you want to listen to those bonus episodes but can't subscribe right now, do know that you can be a free Patreon member and have access for limited time to new episodes. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet or check out the show links below for coupons and information for upcoming events. I thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I thank you for giving it five stars, and the reviews that are left bring tears to my eyes. I am honored to be part of your life. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.