When Helping Hurts: Choosing Not to Enable with Soul Recovery and Al-Anon Wisdom

I’m so happy to share this special episode with you—a full-length sneak peek into the Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast. 

I’ve been recording these bonus episodes since 2022, and there are now over 200 episodes available for Apple Podcasts subscribers and  Patreon Members. These deeper teachings, book studies, impactful interviews, and heartfelt reflections have been such a meaningful part of my own Soul Recovery journey, and I know they’ve touched many of you as well. 

In this episode, I read from the Al-Anon book In All Our Affairs and talk about the fine line between helping and enabling—something so many of us struggle with. Through the lens of Soul Recovery, I share how detaching with love and turning our attention inward can bring profound healing. This episode is usually available to subscribers only, but I’m offering it here so you can get a sense of the kind of content we explore together. If it resonates, I hope you’ll consider becoming a subscriber to go even deeper on your Soul Recovery journey.

Ready to take your Soul Recovery journey deeper?

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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 Introducing the Bonus Podcast
• 6:05 Detachment & Responsibility in Al-Anon
• 13:37 Journaling Through Difficult Emotions
• 18:56 Catastrophizing vs. Choosing Love
• 25:10 Support vs. Enabling
• 29:58 Co-Creating With Your Higher Power

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

Today's episode is a sneak peek into the Recover your Soul bonus podcast, which is available for Apple podcast subscribers and Patreon members, and since I started in 2022, it's been an incredible place to deepen your soul recovery process and help support soul recovery. Over the last couple years, I've had some amazing interviews and done spiritual book studies, but, per the request of the community, we're now taking a look at Al-Anon literature through the lens of soul recovery. So if that appeals to you, I invite you to jump onto Apple Podcasts or become a Patreon member. Free Patreon members can have access to those episodes for free for the first week, because it's important to me that you have access to every episode. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:42

Today's episode is a reflection of soul recovery, reading from Al-Anon. We're reading In All Our Affairs, making Crisis Work For you. I'm the section on reflections on responsibility and detachment choosing not to enable. It can be hard to decipher between enabling and supporting, and it can also be easy to see the people in our lives as being broken, but in soul recovery, we're learning that we're choosing love and not fear. We're choosing to see the good in them and to support them, but not to enable them, not to encourage their brokenness, but also not to discount their journey. They are on their own journey and we are on ours. How can we detach with love? Enjoy the episode hours. How can we detach with love? Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:25

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Rev 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: 2:05

Welcome to the Recovery Soul Bonus Podcast. I'm Rev Rachel and I am just so excited to be here today because, in the way that spirit works, which I think is so beautiful and profound, I'm still rolling around in my mind the parts of me that are working so hard to be my soul recovered self and the parts of me that still fall into old patterns, old fears, really old fears, and I was journaling this morning and really reflecting and using the tools to work with my current situation with my son, alex, and I also knew that it was a podcast recording day and that we're using the Al-Anon concepts, as requested by the community, to really do this reflection between Al-Anon and soul recovery. And so I pulled out the book In All Our Affairs Making Crisis Work for you by Al-Anon Family Groups and I flipped it open to, of course, the detachment section. Of course, spirit gave me the detachment section and so, beautifully, the reading is exactly right on for what's going on in my life right now and it's such a beautiful opportunity for us to share the soul recovery concepts and tools as supported by Al-Anon. And again, I am not Al-Anon, I am inspired by Al-Anon. It has been incredibly, incredibly impactful for me. But I'm not speaking for I'm using it as a way to take these concepts and the movement to the soul recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:37

So I'm always encouraging you to continue to attend Al-Anon if that's what you're doing in your life and if you've never gone and this somewhere, you're listening to this because you found soul recovery in another way and you're thinking, hmm, those rooms might be really nice. I encourage you to go check it out, to go do that. It's not an either, or it's a. What sparks you, what fills you up, what is your soul recovery journey, what is your healing journey? And the more that you lean into your spiritual center, the more you lean into that knowing and the still small voice that is whispering in your ear, the more clarity you have for what is right for you. None of us quote unquote should or have to be doing anything. The more that we're led intuitively to what our soul is calling, the more that we're actually getting the words and the information and the guidance. That is our personal, our personal journey, our personal quote unquote prescription from the source, from universe, for our highest good, for our soul's awakening.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:37

I opened up to page 76. And it's the section on reflection on responsibility and detachment, and I think what I'm going to do over the next episodes, that we're doing the Al-Anon every other week. I'm just going to keep reading from this, because we know that detachment is so essential in the soul recovery process. It is our freedom of forgiveness, of letting go, of lovingly, lovingly handing somebody over their life and taking our power back. So I love that this is the reading for today and I just in all of our fairs, if you don't have this one. It's individual little clips of different people's stories. So it's kind of like how in the big book and also in Al-Anon's main blue book, that they have the content in the front and then they have stories in the back, but the stories are multiple pages and tend to be longer. These are just a couple paragraphs that are reflected in each person's sharing and their experience. So I think it's really cool because they're nice and short. But when I opened this up and I read it, I said oh yes, oh yes, spirit is here for me, guiding me all along the way, so we'll talk about it, okay. So it says choosing not to enable.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:54

The other day my husband and I were faced our alcoholic son to tell him that we could no longer enable him to continue as he was. He had lost another job, his wife was taking their new baby to her parents' home in another state, and yet he was not any closer to reaching for help. This time he would have to help himself. Probably the hardest thing I've ever done was to turn away from this young person to whom I gave life, to see the sad, lost look in his beautiful eyes and the sag of his broad shoulders, to stand by and watch him walk away with that slow, shuffling gait was like tearing out a part of me. We realized that the help we were giving him was actually only giving him the means to continue his addiction. I said Thy will be done, god, even though I knew in my heart I did not necessarily want his will done. I wanted my son back, healthy and strong.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:54

Al-anon's first step reminds me that, regardless of what I want or don't want, I'm powerless over my son. If I must turn loose to hold him, if is a direct response to what's going on in my life right now. And it's that, that reality, that truth that when you're connected in a spiritual way of trusting that something higher, something greater still, is indeed holding you, that when you ask, you shall receive. When you ask for guidance, it will come. And for those of you who are here on the bonus podcast, you're here because you are dedicated to your soul recovery. You're supporting this extra podcast and in it you're saying I want more, I want more answers, I want more connection, because this resonates with you. And that is a sign of the same sort of thing. It's like when you open up the app and you look for something or you listen to the latest podcast. I hope that it is speaking to you in the same way that I feel like I'm getting supported by spirit that speaks to me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:11

What's really crazy about this particular reading is it's talking about a son who just had a baby. If you've been listening to my story so far of what's been happening in my personal life on the regular podcast, I've been sharing that Alex and his girlfriend had a baby just over three weeks ago now and it's been a little bit of a rocky ride, which is interesting. His name is Rocky. It hasn't been as straightforward or as simple or as fantasy as I had set it up to be, and the reason why is because I still have a son who is working on his own stuff. I have a son who is in his own journey about whether he's going to choose to heal or not, and it's not about the alcohol and the drugs, it's about his own heart and it's about his way of being in the world and whether he's going to choose to love himself enough, whether he's going to choose to see himself from wholeness instead of from a broken place.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:11

This morning, when I was sitting in my meditation and I journal every day and it's just such a beautiful practice and it has a couple different layers to it. The first layer is if I have something that's heavy on my heart, if I can get it down on paper, it slows my mind down enough to actually have clarity of what am I feeling. We generally don't give ourselves space to really feel what we feel. We're often as codependents and as people pleasers and as people who have been in a dysfunctional situation, we're so consumed with what other people's feelings are we actually don't know what our feelings are. So by journaling and being in this place where I'm actually recognizing what do I feel, it helps me to be able to understand and navigate what those feelings are trying to show me, because we have feelings on purpose.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:01

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website RecoverYourSoulnet 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 learn 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.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:58

Back to the episode, and so I was journaling about this concern that I have for Alex, and you know the truth is I haven't had a lot of interaction, besides some FaceTimes and some pictures and a couple texts and some phone calls, since I left California right after Rocky was born and it was pretty intense. Right after he was born, they had a very, very difficult delivery. They were a week in the hospital. They're not getting any sleep. It's a complete change in everything. I mean. I remember being completely wrecked when I had my baby and it was just a complete shift in life and I didn't have all the trauma that they had and I wanted this life so much Like I was a little bit one step further in terms of the way that it had come about and how much I wanted it, whereas for them they discovered that they were pregnant and then they really wanted it right Not that they didn't want it, they really got, really invested and they were so cute in their pregnancy and they had the reveals and the baby showers.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:05

And you know, you kind of go into this place where you have a fantasy about what it's going to be like and then the shock really of what it actually means is different and if you don't have the tools, then it can put you in a place where you fall back into old patterns and old behaviors. And that's what I witnessed in my son and I can catch myself wanting to see him as broken. I catch myself going back to those old places when he was a drug addict, or when we had kicked him out of the house and he was living in his car, or when he didn't have a job, or when I had put him into rehab you know, residential rehab for five months when he was 16 or 17 years old. All of that came back and it was interesting how it was almost like a post-traumatic stress of the part of me that really wants him to pop up into this next place, and she mentions that in this reading.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:03

She said I don't want God's will, I want my will. I have a vision, I have a way, I have a fantasy, I have a preference, I have an expectation of what I want it to look like. Well, you know why I want it to look like that, and I've said this in the main podcast as well. I want it to look like that because it'll be easier on me. It'll absolutely be easier on me because I want certainty, I want safety, I want to be able to have the stories that you have other people tell about oh, my son had a baby and they're doing so good and they're doing this and they're doing that. You know, mostly they are doing that, but there is this underlying belly of it that's kind of complicated and hard and it has a lot of layers to it. So if I go back and I'm attached to his brokenness, I'm attached to the part of him that can't do it, then I'm actually feeding into fear and worry.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:59

So in my journaling, in that first part of the journaling, I allow myself to state what is and to talk about what's going on in my life, not from a victim place, but for a curiosity of what is actually happening. What is actually happening? Can I write slow enough and with enough mindfulness to actually attend to what is actually happening? And in that you can find that everything is actually neutral. Things just happen, things just are, and it's our perception, our attachment to our story, our beliefs, our projections that attach to what it feels like to us. And that's where the power lies, because nobody makes us feel any particular way. We feel that way and those feelings are valid, but when we realize that our power comes, because we can do something about it, from ourselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:59

I am powerless over my son. I am powerless over his addiction. I'm powerless over how he chooses to show up in his life. I'm powerless about how he feels about himself, but I can remind him about how beautiful he is, I can remind him how strong he is, not from a controlling place, not from that place that wants to make him be a certain way for some place where we are choosing love over fear in our own life. So, as I was journaling and allowing myself to have clarity about what are my fears and I was able to say as I just said, I was like oh my gosh. This so reminds me of my absolute fear that he's going to move into some place that goes back to where it was before, because he's come so, so, so, so so far. And that's my fear, that's mine. It's actually not like that at all.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:01

And then I realized I was actually in a level of catastrophizing. I was in a level of moving forward and projecting out into the future all the potential things, which include what it says right here, that maybe the shit will hit the fan and something horrendous will happen, total catastrophizing, and they won't be together and she'll take the baby and something else will happen. Oh, I've had those thoughts, I have absolutely had those thoughts. And then I think is that true? Is that even remotely what's happening? And even if it was what's happening, the fighting, what is, is only causing us suffering because we're wishing it was something else. We're in absolute misery. That does not work. That does not work in any form, ever for anyone, because we're not actually in this moment for what it is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:56

And then I had the beauty that comes from soul recovery, that comes from working these nine steps in soul recovery. That came from working these nine steps in soul recovery. That came from the incredible gift that I got from Al-Anon in the beginning, which is to remember that thy will be done, that God's will is going to be done here, spirit source universe, and not from a punishment. I believe so strongly that source energy love is not a punishing energy. It just is our choice and our free will of what we're going to pick. We all get to pick, we all get to choose whatever it is that we want in our lives and he gets to choose.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:36

And this piece where you are letting go and letting God let go, let go and let them let go and trust that they're learning, that they're growing right, that there's some possibility for them, that the more that I'm enabling, the more that I'm telling him that he can't. How is he supposed to know that he can if I give him the message all the time that you can't, let me do it for you because you can't? So I immediately switched to my journaling, to what I have control of and that's me, and I started writing about how we all have choice and I am going to choose to see him as whole and I'm going to choose to vision things being beautiful and easy for them and I'm going to choose how I am going to be in my own mind about what is happening in their life, and this part of me that is can get stuck and fall back into fear is mine. Whatever happens is and he's not actually falling into the depths that I am catastrophizing and putting out there, as could be it's not even remotely like that, and when I show up again in Sacramento in April, I'll get more information about what is. But this work that I'm doing right now about recognizing that the enabling is so much deeper than just giving somebody money. It's so much deeper than finding their rehab for them or offering the books or doing the things. It's about this belief that we have that they can't, instead of giving them the strength to know that they can and they actually have permission to completely fall apart if that's part of their journey, without an expectation at the end that the falling apart means that they will find their way. We don't know if they'll find their way.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:33

And she talks about how much she loves this child that she gave birth to, to see him disappointed, and how hard that is, and that is the most difficult part. When we're looking at our own children or people that we love and we're walking away and saying you get to be in your choice, I'm not going to have the consequences of your choices anymore. I can't save you from your consequences. And that's the beauty of detachment with love that you're not judging. Soul Recovery's foundation is on no judgment and, interestingly enough, as I've said before, the judgment isn't just not judging the bad, it's also not getting attached to the judgment of the good. That, oh good. Now they're doing this, oh good.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:28

I have a strong belief that our souls are here to to have this wild journey, this wild ride, this wild experience. And if we can just rise above the circumstances in our lives, just enough to have compassion and grace and forgiveness and tenderness of the situation and see the complexity of what it is to be a human being, it allows us to release the part of us that wants to control and fix and make. But it doesn't mean that I don't engage in their life. It doesn't mean that I'm not part of their support team, because we all need support. But support is very different than enabling. Support means when his girlfriend asks me about raising babies or what it was like, or even sometimes I'll say, hey, I had an idea of a suggestion, but please just know you don't have to listen to everything that I say. I want you to really make your discernment for yourself and she'll come back and say I'm up for the advice. I need it right now and it's the attachment to the enabling that I'm doing this for you versus supporting you. Here's some information that I have and now you choose. Now you do what's right for you, knowing that I support you, regardless of what you pick one way or the other.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:54

My hope and prayer was that Alex would be in this hospital and look at this newborn baby and, when he was sharing with me, that he didn't want to raise his son in the same kind of alcoholic home that he grew up in. My hope is that he would quit drinking and that it would be the thing that not only propelled him to not drink but propelled him to maybe do some healing, some soul recovery, and I think that that is going to be the case, that he will find his way. But it's not going to look at all like what I think it should look like, and it may or may not include using drugs or alcohol as part of his solution. It's been his solution for a really long time, for his own discomfort and it's the solution that we taught him. So it's not fair for me to think that at 28 years old, that he's supposed to be where I am at 55 years old. But if I give him the grace and I stand in this place that says I'm going to choose love over fear, I'm going to choose love over fear. I'm going to choose how I'm going to be in it. I'm going to choose how I'm going to see it. I'm going to choose how I talk to him. I'm going to choose how I vision their lives, how I vision my son, their lives, how I vision my son.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:23

And then I started writing about what a strong human being he is and how much he's been through and how he's found his way and and how much success he's had in his life. It shifted almost immediately. It shifted from this place where I was, back in the, when he lived in his car, when he was at the worst of his addiction. I get to pick which one of those views of him I'm going to interact with when I'm having those conversations with him and it doesn't mean that I don't sometimes want to, you know, poke out. I sent him a suggestion for a book, for example to listen to that had been suggested to me, and then I went and listened to the audible sample of it and immediately could tell that it was like, not a good fit. It wasn't even a book that I. The way that the person read and the content about what they were talking about beginning didn't appeal even to me and I knew it wouldn't appeal to him. To the sample, I can tell that it may or may not be something that you'd be interested in, and I'm not trying to push these books on you. I just want to give you the support to remind yourself that there's all kinds of great information out there podcasts, audibles and I think you'd really find them helpful.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:34

Right, that feels very different than me constantly sending him stuff, and it doesn't mean that I don't watch myself wanting to send him stuff. That's the enabling on some level. That is the. I think I know better. This will be the fix. This is how you're going to do it, and he needs to want it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:56

I didn't get sober until I was ready and I didn't get soul recovered until I had had enough pain that I wasn't willing to have this level of pain in my life anymore. And you're here because of the same thing. Thing in you hit a marker, a place where you could have enough leverage in your own life to say this is enough. I will not. I will not choose to be miserable. I will not choose to be in pain. I will not choose to be harmed by other people's actions. I'm going to learn how to detach with love. I'm going to learn how to take my power back, and that was my journey that I had.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:41

So where am I not letting him have that journey for himself? And I do not know what that's going to look like, but I'm not going to roll around in my catastrophizing and choose fear and worry, and choose fear and worry. I am going to stand on the platform that says I know that he is whole, stand on the platform that says I know that he is whole and I choose love and light in everything that I do and that I see, and I'm going to attend to my feelings and I'm going to recognize that spirit's will is not a punishment. It's a co-creation that my son has on his own soul's journey, with his higher power of his understanding, and I can't possibly know what that is, but I can love him enough, so unconditionally, that he gets to choose what that looks like, and that is freedom. That is freedom. Let go and let source, let go and let source.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:40

So, as I do these practices, the ability for me to be in feelings and discomfort that used to just completely throw me off, put me into a spiral of control, put me into a place where I just felt like I couldn't breathe. I have more and more ability to just be with what is from that neutral space that says this is an actual thing, that is happening, and I get to decide how I'm going to respond to it. I get to decide how I'm going to interact with it and I am not responsible for them. I am powerless over their reactions, their responses, their choices, and in that I can be happy and healthy. I choose a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. So we will continue to read from this book, because I think this is going to be really good, and notice that when you ask, you receive.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:41

So if you're asking for guidance, if you're asking for a solution, when we really check in with ourselves and allow the universe to bring it to us, it might come in a song, it might come in. Sometimes. I'll open a book and just see what it provides for me, or I'll open up YouTube and it'll bring me a video that's really helpful for me. Or I'll ask a friend to go have coffee and get some support up and listen to those guidances, those messages that are coming through, because you are not alone. You are supported and held by something even greater Still. You are in co-creation with your own connection to your higher power and it is holding you, and that's what reminds me that it's holding my son too. I can stop trying to be the one to fix and enable him to do what I think I see fit, but I can let him go to something greater still. I'm not letting him go to nothing. I'm letting him go to the universe. That I believe is love, and I am to choose love over fear. I choose love and I choose light. Choose love over fear. I choose love and I choose light.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 30:05

If you need help with any of this, go to the website. Book a session with me. Let's work on it together. The nine step soul recovery process. Or do the nine step modules, the individual modules on the website. This process is about you healing you and finding your own freedom. We can indeed detach with love and choose love over fear.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 30:25

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.