Learning from Life’s Challenges: A Soul Recovery Guide to Overcoming Codependence

Life is filled with challenges, but what if instead of resisting them, we embraced them as opportunities for growth and transformation? In this episode, we explore the deep connection between life’s complexities and our personal healing, especially for those of us recovering from codependence, control addiction, and the need to fix everything around us. I share my own journey of realizing that avoiding difficulty only made life more complicated, and how shifting my mindset has brought me strength, peace, and a deeper spiritual connection. Through the lens of Soul Recovery, we’ll uncover how to stop resisting, lean into our experiences with courage, and trust that even the hardest moments are guiding us toward healing. Whether you’re navigating personal challenges or supporting a loved one on their path, this episode offers insights, inspiration, and practical tools to help you reclaim your inner power and find contentment, no matter what life brings. 

Join me IN PERSON on April 13th in Sacramento California for an all day retreat to deepen your Soul Recovery Process. Learn more on the website! 

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

• 1:55 Resisting Life's Difficulties
• 14:06 Community and Connection
• 1:05:49 The AA Third Step Prayer
• 1:23:32 Our Soul's Challenge
• 1:40:14 Finding Strength in Challenge
• 1:55:21 Join the Recovery Your Soul Community

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:02

I spent a good part of my life trying to keep things from being difficult. As a matter of fact, I was so obsessed with trying to keep things from being hard and difficult that I made them even more difficult and complicated through my codependence, through my control addiction, and ultimately became an addict as well. It was this part of me that didn't want it to be hard. It didn't want it to be difficult. Well, life is complicated. Life is filled with challenges. What if we switched our mindset and started to recognize that those challenges actually are a place where we can lean into the strength of who we are and that we can overcome anything? What if we stopped being in resistance and started seeing the strength of who we are and stopped trying to control it and stepped into our authentic way of being? That is, learning and growing and shifting in these challenges. That's what we're going to talk about in the episode today. Enjoy. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:08

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.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:45

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast and community. I'm Rev Rachel and, as always, I'm so honored and blessed to be here in your ear today, in whatever form that is Maybe I'm on a walk with you or run, or in the car or while you're getting ready in the morning. I feel you out there and what I love about being in this community is that we are all together out there. And what I love about being in this community is that we are all together and when we sit on the once a month soul recovery support group over zoom and you see how many people are coming together just to support each other and work on our soul recovery, it's this reminder that this community is so much more than each of us listening alone, and for me, it's really helped me through some of the dark times that I've gone through, and lately I've been thinking a lot about challenge and I've been thinking about how life can feel really complex and overwhelming, and for me I always thought that I was trying to get to a place where there wouldn't be any challenge or any difficulty or any hardship, and I recognize that that's not possible. It's taken me 55 years of my life to truly see that it isn't about getting to some place where we don't have to deal with anything hard. It's about having the strength and the skill set and the tenacity and the ability to be present in what's hard in ways that give us strength and peace and contentment through those difficult times. Because if I look back at history, there isn't any places where it wasn't hard. It's just been different levels of hard, it's been different kinds of hard.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:22

And I have to be totally honest and say that I did it again. Where I did this thing, where I have an expectation and a desire for something to be the thing that's going to fix or change or make something smoother or better, and then, when it doesn't happen, I have this disappointment isn't really the right word. It's more like this falling of my heart and a reminder that I can sit with discomfort, that this desire that I have for there to never be discomfort is unrealistic and it's okay Ultimately, one of the things that I hope that you get out of soul, recovery is wherever you are, and what's happening in your life and how you feel about it is all part of your process. So this is coming around because the last episodes have been around the birth of my grandson in California. He came on the 23rd of February and I was out in California with Alex and his girlfriend for the birth, and I'm not going to go into all of those things, but what I recognize is that, even with all this work that I'm doing on healing my codependency and really coming into my own and choosing a spiritual path for a happy and healthy life and leaning into spirituality and knowing that all is well and trusting and being in this place, I think that it is just human nature to want things to be the solution that's going to make everything smooth and okay. And yet here's my, here's my awareness and my part of myself that's having these visualizations, and I hope that you get the stories the way that that they work for me, because I need storyline, I need to have a visual of kind of what is going on within me and then that helps me to process what's complex, all these complex feelings and complex emotions, having come from a family that didn't have any conflict, that my mom was very even keel to the point where it impaired me from being able to recognize that you can have big emotions and that everything's going to be okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:32

Well, many of you came from a place where there was so much big emotion that you were wanting for that same thing, that same safety underneath. But whichever way we came from, whether it was flat or overextended, we're all looking for how to bring peace. How can I be more contented? How can everything feel safe? How can I literally be okay? That's what our nervous system is constantly trying to give us. How can I be okay? And yet we are here in the earth school situation, in our own curriculum of life, with all of our own wild ride to learn and to grow and to expand.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:14

And as much as I know that and as much as my heart knows that, and as much as I'll even say everything that I have been through, every part of my own addiction, every part of my own intense, codependent behaviors, every part of me that that was in such despair for so long can recognize that there was value in what those experiences were for me, and I've grown so much as a human being and as a spiritual being from them. Some part of me wishes it didn't have to be so hard. Some part of me wishes that it could just come from something that was easy and nice. I'm starting to have this awareness that that's actually an underneath belief system, just like I've been teaching you in the soul recovery process about really looking underneath and asking yourself curiosity, asking yourself with gentleness, asking yourself with compassion. What is that piece that's underneath?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:12

And what's underneath is the part of me that feels like if everything is smooth and easy, if everything out there is okay, then I can be okay. Well, you've heard me say this a million times I'm learning how to be okay even when they're be okay. Well, you've heard me say this a million times I'm learning how to be okay even when they're not okay, and 90% of the time I'm doing that successfully, which is pretty amazing, because it used to be 90% of the time I wasn't okay. But there's still this part that's unlayering, that is holding on tightly to this belief system that says I don't even want the challenge, I don't even want to have to bump up against anything hard. I just want to stay small. Well, staying small is actually an aspect of our ego. It's an aspect of our fight or flight mechanism that is working to keep us safe, and this part is actually sometimes keeping us from stepping out into our bigness.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:10

Now, one of the reasons why this came up for me was the birth of Rocky was beautiful and hard, and it was beautiful and hard for my son and his girlfriend and I recognized that there had been this little part of me or maybe bigger part of me, if I'm totally honest that hoped that having a child would be a step in the path that would really influence my son's healing. He has so much woundedness, he has a lot of things that he needs to work on, and I'm working on not being responsible for his stuff, but I love him. He's my kid and I'm always trying to encourage you to look at this process of how do we show up for our family members who are in their own situation and to not try to fix or change or see them as broken. I don't see my son as broken. I don't see him as not being able to have a life that feels good to him. What I see is that it's complex and that his emotions and the things that he's been through and how his brain works are his situation, his journey, his earth school to handle. But it isn't easy to watch sometimes because you can see him be really really beautiful and excited and happy and then you can see him be really scared and in that year he has behavior situations that have been rooted in from old, old, old ways of being right and I still have a part of me that just wishes I could fix that for him, that I can make that better for him. Well, as I step more fully into my soul recovery, more fully into my own healing, I recognize that his healing is is what I want, not just for him but for me, because I want it to soothe me. Then if he's okay, then I can be okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:08

But then I'm watching myself in my own life and I recognized that I love challenge shows, I love competition, challenge shows. I struggle a lot with watching television that is violent is the more I get into my soul recovery journey. I can't watch high dramas. I have a really hard time watching violence. I have a really hard time watching shows where people are really in the mire of like being really mean and horrible to each other and I just can't tolerate it as much anymore because my heart just has changed and the way that I feel about every single person on the planet has changed. The way that I feel about myself has changed, and so I tend to lean towards shows that like Survivor where right now we're watching these ones about adventure in New Zealand and Alaska.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:03

I like the show alone. I like Project Runway. I'm watching a pottery show where they're making pottery and have a competition around pottery. I watch these shows that are around competition but they're really around challenge and I've been really intrigued by this lately because I recognize that we make a conscious decision in our lives to attend sports, to be in situations where we're in competition with other people, and that competition sometimes can bring out like the grittiest, most tenacious, most, like incredibly rich and thick and powerful and strong aspects of ourselves as we're bumped up against these really difficult challenges. I know Alex, when he came out of rehab he did one of those mud runs where you're crawling underneath the barbed wire and you're swinging across the ropes and you come out and you're totally muddy. But you did it right. And then I watch these shows, especially these shows where people are really physically pushing themselves to the limit. They're getting very little sleep, they're hardly giving anything to eat. They're pushing themselves physically and they go through all of this intensity and almost to the breaking point. But then they have success and they success and they make it. Or maybe they didn't make it or maybe they had to pull out, but they still have these beautiful things to say about what they learned about themselves, what they learned about another person, how it really pushed them and showed them how strong they are and how much more that they can be in their life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:40

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website. 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: 14:41

And then I looked at our life and my life and my son's life and your lives, and I had this overwhelming sense of just deep compassion for all of us. That says we are constantly in our own challenge show. Our movie has an aspect of challenge to it that we are resistant to. And what if we stopped being resistant? What if we stopped pushing against it and saying I wish it couldn't be like this. I don't want it to be like that. That's our suffering. Our suffering is saying if it could just be different. But what if we switched our mindset and recognize that, instead of it being a difficulty, that it's actually an opportunity for us to witness the capacity in which that we can hold, and that we see it as a challenge, that we can make it through these challenges and these competitions, instead of it being a competition against somebody, that somebody has to win against ourselves, to see the best in ourself, to push ourselves to think broader, to do more, to believe that we are more, to see that we can make it through difficult times, that when we're down and out and it's the bottom, it feels like it's the bottom, that it's the opportunity for us to stand in our grit and truly step up. Now, one of these pieces for myself is to recognize that I put all my energy on wanting my family members to do that, or wanting my friends to do that, or wanting my clients to see it this way, or wanting the world to show up in a different way, when the opportunity is for us to recognize the only thing we're responsible for is us, for us and how we are seeing our lives. And it reminds me of the third step prayer in AA that I do as part of the ritual in the fourth step of soul recovery, which is open to co-creating with a higher power of your understanding, and I've talked about this in some other episodes, because I feel like this third step prayer has so many aspects to it that are so beautiful and so powerful on a metaphysical standpoint. And again the prayer is God, I offer myself to you to build with me and do with me as you will. You know that for soul recovery, that has a lot of power in it. First it's I'm offer myself to you, I'm coming willingly.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:06

In spirituality they say that we have free will, that we are not in a situation where everything's preordained for us. You know, it's just fate. Don't even worry about it. Whatever's going to happen is already been laid out. That is not what spirituality says. What spirituality says that there is a flow of the universe and of the way things are. But you, every single day, you choose whether you are in co-creation and you have free will for it to be whatever it is for you. But when you step into a spiritual life, into spirit or higher power, universe being whatever that is for you, you're coming and you're saying I recognize that my free will has part of this, but I want to build with you, I want to do this together. I want to recognize that it is not just me. It's not just me, so I come of my own free will, so that we can build together, so I can have my full expansion of self. And I believe strongly and the spiritual teachings that I listen to and are are inspired by, say, the will of God or whatever you call that higher power is not for you to be subservient and small. It's for you to actually recognize how incredible you are, how incredible you are and how much more you can do than you even give yourself credit for. And when you start to look at God, I offer myself to you to build with me and do with me as you will. You're saying I come freely, I'm ready to listen, I'm ready to do this together so that I can be this full expression of self.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:40

And then the second line is remove me of the bondage of self, and then the second line is remove me of the bondage of self. This is so powerful, because this is all those beliefs that we're not enough, that we can't do it. There's something wrong with us that we're broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You may have woundedness, you may have parts of your life that have been traumatic and difficult, but this challenge that you are in, this challenge of life, that this incredible, precious opportunity to have this wild ride, experience, is something that you get to determine how it's going to be for you and how you choose to see it. Your life is what you think and feel and believe. It is the reality of you on the inside is what will be reflected on the outside. So when we get relieved from the bondage of self, we're asking the universe, we're asking spirit, we're asking our own higher selves to take away all that noise that's in our mind, that is trying to convince us that we're not enough so we can be this full expression. And then that brings me to the last line, which is take away my difficulties. The victory over them can bear witness to those that I can help with your power and your love and your way of life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:57

Now this line for me the first time I got sober, and for probably a good five years, and I would say this line, what I wanted it to mean was make everything easy for me. I don't want any hardship, I don't want any challenge, I just want everything to go smoothly. I just want there to be a road that is perfectly flat and everything is given to me, because that would be easy for me. No one changes and easy. Nothing expansive happens without some level of challenge. We do not watch shows where they say, okay, well, you just get to have a beautiful day and there's going to be nothing to do and you don't have to have any strategic planning or you don't have to push yourself and, as a matter of fact, you can have all the time in the world that you want to make whatever it is that they're supposed to make, and there's no challenge. We don't grow without challenge.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:06

But the line says take away my difficulties, take away the belief and resistance that I have in my own mind that believes that it is difficult. What if it's just a challenge? What if you could see that that says allow me to have strength in my challenges so that that could show others, that could bear witness to others of living a spiritual life? Being fully, fully integrated in a healthy self means that you can handle whatever's happening without all of the baggage, without all the woundedness, without all the blame and the suffering that you wish it was different. Oh, if it was only different. It was only different.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:49

Well, I'm looking at a new member of the family and I'm looking at a child who I love so much, who has been the reason that I showed up to Al-Anon. But it turns out it wasn't for him, it was for me, because this is his opportunity to have challenge in life and that my desire for it to be easier for him, for him to not have to struggle, is unfair. He is entitled to his every experience and his every choice, as I am, and my desire for him to be something different and not have it as hard is actually more for me. That's the codependent nature. It's actually more for me that some part of me says I'll be safer, I'll be okay, I'll be safer, I'll be okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:40

But when I look at this incredible human being who is my son and I think about everything that we've been through in the last 28 years and I recognize somebody who's in his own earth school experience and I release him completely with unconditional love to have the life in which he chooses, to have the mental capacity or the love or the joy, or the happiness or the pain. What if I recognize that this is his challenge experience and I stopped trying to get in the way of his challenge, and this is what I've done with Rich too. I recognize that he and I have just I hope you enjoyed last week's episode, because it was really wonderful to sit down with him and have that conversation of us really talking about the changes that we've had in our marriage. But we had so many years of us having these conversations where, when he was talking about the grit and the challenge in his life, I just wanted to fix it and make it better. I just wanted to show him a way to see it so that it didn't hurt him so much. Well, I'm negating his challenge. I'm negating the thing that he has to go through to grow and to learn, and I'm actually believing that I know better about what that learning should look like.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:01

So, the more that I come into my own and I say okay, rachel, what is your life challenge? What are you stepping into so that you can be your fullest self? Well, I've got a lot of my own stuff to deal with. Why am I spending all my time and energy on everybody else's stuff when there's plenty of stuff for me to work on on my own? I have my own childhood belief systems to uncover. I have my own karma.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:30

If you believe in karma, you know that I'm a foundational. Buddhist is my first religion that I grew up with. I have my own karma. I have my own soul's purpose. I believe in our souls coming back again and again and, as I always say, I want you to have your own spirituality. So take what works for you and leave the rest. And I'm sharing with you my belief systems, but you don't have to take on mine. I believe that our souls are here in this particular body, in this particular experience, to grow and to learn and to have a higher consciousness and to remember that we are so, so loved and so brought here to be these extraordinary beings.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:14

And yet there's so much fear. It's the fear that has the resistance, it's the fear that says I can't handle this challenge. Well, I think I'd love to watch, especially the adventure challenge shows so much, because you see people hit against a wall where they're terrified, they're hanging from a rope and they've got, you know, this big backpack on that. They have been on this long adventure. They've hardly eaten, they've hardly slept, and now you know they've got to get to the top before they get the time runs out or else they, you know, lose the chance to. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and watching somebody else push through that extreme fear and and all of the resistance they have and how they probably just want to give up, but they have grit. I'm so inspired by that and I'm always just amazed at how, when people come out the other side, there's just so much just beauty that's radiating out of them of how they see that they could handle it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:15

And I want us to recognize that our soul recovery journey is around us, seeing how much more capacity that we have to be in our life as it is, and to recognize that each one of these situations that we've been through joyous, painful are all part of our own challenge. But when we start to co-create with spirit and you start to recognize that your life is what you think and feel and believe it is, and you stop trying to control everybody else, you step more fully into the part of you that is the power of who you are to be in your life, and to notice that every thought that you have has power, that when you think that your life is terrible, you're gonna get more terrible. You're setting up what the challenge is for you. And when I thought that my family was crap and a horrendous, painful family and even though there was so much love all the time, my nagging part of me was like if it could just be different, if it could just be different, if it could just be different, it could just be different. Well, now it's the same family. Same family, same husband, same kids. Some are more sober, some are less sober.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:35

I'm sober, I'm in my challenge, I'm determining what my challenge is on some level, and then sometimes life gives me a challenge and instead of resisting and being pissed and wishing it was something else and why can't it be like this and why can't it be easy I'm leaning in in a way that says, ah, what am I, what am I going to do here? How, how can I show up with my greatest tools, how can I show up in my best soul, recovered self, that that can handle whatever it is, and be present and ask questions and attend to myself and notice really deeply how I feel, speak with compassion and honesty and clarity, notice when I should talk, when I should keep it in and really allow myself to be completely immersed in the challenge, and then when I should talk, when I should keep it in and really allow myself to be completely immersed in the challenge, and then, when I get through the challenge, to be proud of myself that I did it, that I'm working it, I'm actually working those steps, I'm having success, and that feels good. And so I encourage you to shift how you're looking at your life and notice that these challenges are not difficulties. And it's okay if you're going through something that is really, really hard, because you have more capacity to go through it with strength, with diligence, with a connection to something greater still, to feel. The community of the soul recovery community around you, surround yourself with your friends and those that are trusted, that can see this higher aspect of yourself, that don't fall into the pity party, that can lift you up. Those are the best teammates. And you see, in those challenge shows, where people have really good teammates and they have ones that can't really let the other people really thrive. We're here in this community to help each other thrive. How can you stand in the challenges of your life with a new way of seeing? How can you be the full expression of who you are and lean into that third step, prayer in AA, because it's saying you are connecting to something greater still that is always there for you. This is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. What is spirituality to you? To a happy and healthy life? What is spirituality to you? The more that I recognize that I am surrounded by all of my team of spiritual beings around me, or spirit or God or whatever you want to call it. I have more wisdom that comes in more intuition that comes in more ability to be okay, more intuition that comes in more ability to be okay even when the people in the world around me isn't okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:26

If you want help with this, if you're curious about the nine steps, if you want to deepen this journey for yourself, continue to listen to the podcast. There's so much great stuff in the podcast. If you want more help, you can work with me directly and do coaching sessions and work the nine step process with me directly, or you can do the steps on your own on the website. I have the first four steps up. I'm working on the rest of the steps and it's really a beautiful way for you to connect more deeply with yourself, to use this nine step soul recovery process to work through all of those old belief systems so that you are standing in your life with your greatest skill sets, that you're not coming from woundedness or from lack, that you're really standing in the strength of who you are and you are not resisting challenge, but you are ready to take the challenge head on and see how you can learn and grow from it and know that you have a team behind you, a team of spiritual beings, of friends and family, who are have your back, because you have your back, because you believe in yourself. That's the most important part.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 32:39

And, lastly, I just want to thank you for being part of this community. You are what makes all this happen. So, by being here every week and by the coaching, and even by giving five stars or reviews, through whatever platform, you're listening to this, sharing it with friends and family, we're sharing soul recovery with the world, and the fact that I can do this full time is an absolute honor. It's an honor and I hope that you are also taking advantage of the Friday bonus episode, either as a subscriber or even just listening to that episode each Friday for free on Patreon. I really want to support you in your soul recovery because I believe in you. I believe in you and I see you and you can indeed handle any challenge that is coming into your life with incredible strength, because you are so much greater than you give yourself credit for. Until next time, namaste. Thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 33:43

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 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.