From Rock Bottom To Recovery EP 82

Rachel Harrison is my guest today. She is an inspirational coach and the host of Recover Your Soul podcast. She has a super powerful process that she calls Soul Recovery. Rachel has overcome alcoholism and she's going to talk about her experience. 

While I can't know exactly what it's like, because I have not experienced it. I do know many, that have, and to come out on the other side I just think it's just such a powerful thing to do in your life. And I commend anyone who is currently in the process of overcoming your alcoholism working through it, or even considering it. Keep going. 

You are not alone in that either and Rachel's here to help us through a little bit and help us understand. Rachel Harrison coming up. 

[00:02:00] Shanenn Bryant: Welcome back to another episode of Top Self. I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant. I am super pumped about my guest today. Her name is Rachel Harrison. So much to talk to you about. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:13] Rachel Harrison: Thank you, Shanenn. I'm excited to be on your podcast. I've loved having you on mine, so I feel like we're already friends and connected.

[00:02:21] Shanenn Bryant: Yes, absolutely. You say your sole recovery date is February 2018. First, explain what that is and then I want to talk about that.

[00:02:34] Rachel Harrison: Yeah, so I was an addict. I was an alcoholic, and I had quit drinking in the past and had other recoveries, but I hadn't done the work that's inside. I had stopped doing the behavior, but I hadn't actually gone in and done what I now call soul recovery. Most of us have behaviors or do things that are really trying to cover our pain and when you quit the behavior if you don't go underneath then you'll just find something else to take that up.

[00:03:10] Rachel Harrison: So, when I finally stopped drinking in February of 2018, I went in deep into AA, into Al Anon, into spirituality and something happened for me that changed everything. And I just saw my life in an entirely different way and started sharing it. through a podcast called Recover Your Soul, having no idea what it was going to transform into, and I call it soul recovery because it doesn't matter if you actually have like a quote, unquote addiction that is seen by the rest of the world. It's really about finding yourself. We're all ultimately, you know, just mired in this self-doubt and fear and insecurity and trying to have the world fill us up some way and So I'm so grateful that for me I fell into it through being really at my rock bottom in my addiction, but I have found myself through what I call soul recovery.

[00:04:12] Shanenn Bryant: I love, love, love that you call it that and that you include that in it. So first I want to say congratulations on your soul recovery, you know, stopping the addiction and really looking inward and recovering your soul. So, congratulations on that. That is not easy.

[00:04:34] Rachel Harrison: No, it was not easy.

[00:04:35] Shanenn Bryant: No. But then you calling it Soul Recovery because do you think that that's what contributed to, you know, you made a couple of attempts when you're just trying to stop the alcoholism, right?  Do you think that that's what made you relapse or kind of the part of why you kept going back?

[00:04:54] Rachel Harrison: Yeah, I think that people have different aspects of addiction that needs to be looked at in a lot of different ways. It turns out now that I have done this work on myself that my co dependence My complexity of being in the world, my discomfort in the people around me and trying to manage my addict intense husband, who I love dearly, but man is he a lot, and my two children. and the life that we had was so overwhelming that I ended up falling into alcohol as a way to soothe myself. Now my husband has the quote unquote gene, so he has the piece where when he drank, his body just wants more. I had the piece that said when I drank, it numbed the part of me that was hurting.

[00:05:49] Rachel Harrison: And so, what I realized in my recovery this time was my codependence was so intense and I didn't even know it. I just thought I was being helpful. I thought that I was trying to fix my family. I thought I was trying to save the world. And in it, I was a complete disaster. And so, this addiction for me, had so many different layers. So, I think that for all of us, there's science, there's the way our brains work, there's so many levels that you can't just say black and white, it's this or that.

[00:06:24] Rachel Harrison: But ultimately, in the end, now that I've become a metaphysical minister in the process of all of this, I have more and more awareness that regardless of what the paper looks like on the outside of the package. Underneath is us, and our heart, and our soul, and our experience, and our life that we get to choose to be and see and experience as we choose. But it often takes hitting a wall of some kind to be able to realize that we need to turn the attention to ourselves. Explore our inner work and have soul recovery.

[00:07:11] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Well, and I assume, you know, you're describing like I'm taking care of everyone else, and I feel like that that's the right thing. That's what I was supposed to be doing, which only furthers, like, my focus is on everyone else. And so, of course, I'm not going to notice how either bad this is getting or how destructive this is for me or how far down now I am because I'm not focused on myself.

[00:07:36] Rachel Harrison: hmm.

[00:07:37] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Mm hmm.

[00:07:38] Rachel Harrison: Absolutely, and it's okay that we get lost I think part of it is to really give ourselves a bunch of grace and compassion around the fact that I don't know a single person that doesn't get lost on the trail. That we had these desires of what we thought our marriage was going to look like, what we thought that our family was going to look like. Most of us came from some sort of family that had dysfunction or was, you know, quote unquote broken or had such level of perfection required to be okay in your family that Of course we didn't have modeling for a way to be, you know what I mean? Like, I look, and I go, okay, I had divorced parents, my husband had divorced parents, like, how do we know how to be married?

[00:08:23] Rachel Harrison: You know, like, we didn't know how to be married, so we just made it up and fell down a lot through it. And the more you realize like, oh, there's no perfect, there's no fine. We're all just trying to figure it out. And can we give ourselves. some space to, to learn and to grow and to, you know, try harder. 

[00:08:46] Shanenn Bryant: Oh yeah and two, just like everyone's addiction is different and trying to you know, say, how is this marriage supposed to go? Everyone's marriage can look different. And what's acceptable in one relationship is not acceptable in another relationship. And so, it really just depends on those two people.

[00:09:03] Shanenn Bryant: And you're also bringing two people together that have their own. stuff. So, they're viewing things through the lens. I'm sure as an alcoholic you viewed things differently than as someone who is sober today. Looking at those same things do you see a difference when you're looking at those things?

[00:09:24] Rachel Harrison: Gosh. I, you know, Shanenn, one of the things that I think is so interesting and I say on my podcast all the time is I don't know if my husband is actually different. I think he's different, but I'm so different that I see him very different.

[00:09:40] Rachel Harrison: And there were all these years in there where I just was caught up in how confused I was, kind of how lost I was. We had a situation where when I was pregnant with my second child, he went and built a house up in the mountains actually for my, for my mother, right? So it was like this incredible dream that he had that he was an architect, and he could design this house and then they built it off of a generator and lived in tents.

[00:10:13] Rachel Harrison: I mean, it was this whole thing, right? So here he is, he's living his dream. And I'm left alone with two babies, and I freaked out and I didn't realize I was building up this resentment. I just covered myself with, um, distraction, with trying to make everything perfect, with trying to keep it all together. But ultimately what was happening inside was I felt abandoned by my husband, and he wasn't trying to abandon us. He was up there like roughing it. And in the midst of all of that, the dysfunction starts. And I think that one of the things that I recognize in my, my learning now is, I didn't have the separation between the behaviors and what was uncomfortable for me or painful for me and the human being that's behind it that is having their own experience. I wasn't separating out these aspects of him. All I could see was the him that was doing the stuff that was painful for me. 

[00:11:30] Rachel Harrison: And, and so, I look at, I'll come, I'll come back to that, but when I look at like that situation of how much pain we had for, for a long time, Shanenn, like 10, 10 solid years of pretty difficult

[00:11:43] Shanenn Bryant: I understand that. We, we, I had it about the same over jealousy with mine, so I get that. Yeah.

[00:11:49] Rachel Harrison: solid 10 years, and I was jealous of a project, right? I wasn't jealous of a human being. I was jealous of his work. I was jealous of his passion for something else, his time, his energy. So, when I started doing this work on myself, I let go of trying to control him, trying to make him be what I thought I wanted, and I started turning the attention to myself, and I started healing myself, and looking at situations like being left with kids.

[00:12:21] Rachel Harrison: And instead of just shoving it down, I really grieved the family that I thought that I wanted. And I, I gave myself compassion for how hard that was.

[00:12:33] Rachel Harrison: And not from a victim place that says, poor me, woes me, but more of like a, oh, I've never actually said out loud to myself how painful that was. I just sucked it up.

[00:12:47] Shanenn Bryant: Mmm. 

[00:12:47] Rachel Harrison: And so, when I can just give that attention to myself, that piece of me can relax. And then the, the grievance that I had for Rich started to lessen. And then I could actually see his side a little bit and really see what a passionate project it was for him, how proud he was, how he was trying to make ends meet for our family in a way that filled him up. And I was able to really let go of a lot of the pain that I had been holding on to. And from that, then I can be in a place where I'm different. And so again, I am not sure that he's all that different.

[00:13:34] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah.

[00:13:34] Rachel Harrison: I'm different.

[00:13:36] Shanenn Bryant: Because when you stop coming from the wounded place, because all you're going to see is like, how is this hurting me? This is affecting me. But when you stop coming from that wounded place, then you can see things that maybe sometimes like, oh, this is, this is great for him because of this.

[00:13:56] Shanenn Bryant: He's not intentionally trying to hurt me, but that's, that's how we feel when we're coming from that wounded place. Sort of like everyone's out to get me and the world is out to get me and I'm super hyper focused on the things that are, that are hurting me and having that, like, as you said, that resentment.

[00:14:15] Rachel Harrison: I think it's, it's this very fine line of balance. And this is part of soul recovery for me is we can also spiritually bypass our feelings and jump right up to the, well, I've just got to see where everybody's at. And I just need to just see the positive. No, then you're just shoving it all down even deeper into the vault.

[00:14:37] Rachel Harrison: It's, it's about learning how to see it with clarity. With a clean lens that gives yourself compassion for your feelings, gives them awareness for their feelings, and then if we're powerless over everything outside of ourselves, then we come back to ourselves and we say, how can I attend to me? How can I have more, um, ability to ask for what I need?

[00:15:03] Rachel Harrison: I didn't know how to ask for what I need, so I just

You know? and demanding of what I thought that I needed. Well, who wants to respond to that?

[00:15:13] Shanenn Bryant: Right. Let me use a strategy that I know works, whether it's a good one or not. I know it works. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I can still relate to, I mean, it's different because this is you and your husband, but I can relate to what you were talking about of kind of grieving what you thought your family would look like.

[00:15:32] Shanenn Bryant: And I did that with my dad, there was a final point where I had to go, okay, I'm never going to have the relationship like that, you know, father daughter relationship with him that you dream of having. That's not going to happen. it can look different. I can have a different type of relationship with him, and I have to give myself the okay to say, well, yeah, it's okay that you're sad about that.

[00:16:03] Shanenn Bryant: It's, that's. That's expected that you would be sad that you're not going to have that relationship. And that's okay to be sad about that.

[00:16:10] Rachel Harrison: It's so fascinating. We need to feel the feelings, but we're so afraid of actually feeling the feelings that we build an entire mansion protecting the feeling that actually will pass through us quickly. And that actually creates resentment and grievance and pain and suffering.

[00:16:30] Rachel Harrison: And that the mansion that we've built around the fear of feeling the feelings is really what gives us all of our pain, instead of just having sadness for not having the relationship with somebody that a father or a sibling or a friend or a spouse to feel it.

[00:16:52] Shanenn Bryant: You, and maybe you gave an example of this, just even in that story, but talk a little bit more about like letting that feeling pass through you or that it will pass through you versus all these tactics that we do.

[00:17:04] Rachel Harrison: So what I realized for myself when I started doing some, some deep work, and I think it's a very fine line between going back and looking at your childhood and digging up every single trauma that you ever had can really re traumatize you, but we generally have a handful of core wounds, and those core wounds determine the belief system in which we navigate life. And we're looking for, constantly, we're looking for, um, backup of those beliefs. So, when I was three years old, I got in big trouble. And I'd never been in trouble before. And now that I've gone back and, and dissected this memory, what I realize is that it didn't feel safe to, um, to express what I needed. And when I can look at it now, I can see the whole picture. But at three years old, you don't have the capacity to, to understand that even a little bit. So, I started building my mansion of how to not feel these feelings, because as a little kid, you do not have the capacity to truly feel them. So being in trouble for me really means that I'm exposed in how I'm feeling.

[00:18:26] Rachel Harrison: I don't want to put myself out there. I don't want to ask for what I need. So as Rich was off building this house up in the mountains, if I had just sat in it and allowed myself to just cry to be angry, it probably would have washed through me, and I could have worked it out. But what I did was I denied my feelings. And then I continued to create this mansion of protection around the feelings, and those were so much more destructive. So now what I realize is, maybe I need a sad movie. Maybe I can't even access the feelings. Maybe they're so pushed down to be afraid of actually feeling them because they were created at three years old, and then they were modeled all the way up. Sometimes I just really want to cry it out and I'm afraid to cry it out so then I get a sad movie and sure enough like the floodgates open and instead of feeling sorry for myself or angry like I think that I was in my mansion protecting myself I just allow it

[00:19:46] Rachel Harrison: and it's so fascinating when you actually say I want to feel what this feels like. It dissipates almost immediately, almost immediately. And then when you, when you are in this process of, of awareness of your feelings, you can actually Give yourself permission to say, this is safe. This is okay. This is a place where I can let out some of the feelings that are trapped in my body and other places.

[00:20:16] Rachel Harrison: That's why people shake when they're upset. because you have so much emotion built up within your body that you're holding so tight to. So crying is an essential way to release those energies. And it's okay to really feel the feelings. And then you realize, oh, I don't want to let myself feel the feelings. And then you start questioning, what else am I hiding in there? What am I afraid of? Why am I afraid to actually feel? And again, you're looking at the mansion. Can I change the mansion from a mansion of pain to a mansion of openness and freedom and compassion and kindness to myself.

[00:20:59] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Uh, so good. Um, and that might be, I know, because you've got these steps to Soul Recovery. I know you have a retreat coming up and I want you to talk about that here in just a second, but is that then really how you start to let go of this control?

[00:21:18] Rachel Harrison: Yes.

[00:21:19] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. 

[00:21:20] Rachel Harrison: I got so much out of looking at the 12 steps, the nine steps to soul recovery, have a foundation off of the 12 steps. But what I realized is that there's so much 

[00:21:33] Shanenn Bryant: I'm sorry, wait, you're talking about the 12 steps, 

[00:21:35] Rachel Harrison: in AA or Al Anon, right? Thank you for clarifying.

[00:21:39] Rachel Harrison: So, it's one of those things you're like, God I wish everybody in the world could do those steps, right? And when I started looking at what is this journey that I've been on and how do I take these Concepts and open them up. I, I think there's so much value in some programs and they have to be limited. They have to, because if you start to bring in too much, it distorts the original process. So, I have so much respect for AA and Al Anon. Could not have had the life that I have. But there was this moment where I had had, you know, sort of the backup of going to meetings. I didn't drink today. I, I didn't control my family today. And then more started happening within me that I wanted to expand more into. And soul recovery is taking a much more compassionate, larger stance of how can you attend to yourself in a way that truly releases and forgives the past.

[00:22:43] Rachel Harrison: And the past can continue to be like rocks of pain and suffering that we're just dragging with us constantly. And so, I created the nine steps that have a flavor, but very different. And it's really around letting go of control and healing the past and forgiveness, not forgiveness from the Christian. I forgive you. I, but really, I'm still pissed. True forgiveness, which means I see it, I feel it. I let it go.

[00:23:21] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Yeah, because it doesn't always mean forgiving the person and sometimes I think we get confused by that at times or if there's a person involved or like what, who is it that I'm taking this out on or who is it that I feel like is responsible for this when I'm still working through things of that's not, you know, that forgiveness is, is not necessarily about them.  It can be, you know

[00:23:45] Rachel Harrison: Well, and forgiveness does not mean that you're saying something that happened was okay or

[00:23:52] Rachel Harrison: not. Okay. What it really is, it's about going back to the mansion around your pain. It's really about saying, how am I holding onto this grievance? How am I holding onto this for me? 

[00:24:04] Rachel Harrison: Am I drinking the poison of pain and bitterness? People do terrible things. And your audience is a tender audience who has often had people who have really been destructive and deceptive to them. And this is never about saying that somebody's behaviors can be diminished.

[00:24:29] Rachel Harrison: You know that you're just like, well, I'm just going to toss that off. Never. But when you decide that you can see that you're powerless over somebody else, and you're going to stop having their behaviors, determine whether you're okay, then you can look at forgiveness from the soul recovery perspective, which is the energy around it changes. The energy changes and that heals you. It has nothing to do with them being absolved. They can, they will deal with it in their own right.

[00:25:05] Shanenn Bryant: Absolutely. Well, where can people reach you if they want, to find out more about future retreats that you're having?

[00:25:15] Rachel Harrison: Thank you. So, I have the podcast, which is Recover Your Soul. It's on all platforms.

[00:25:20] Shanenn Bryant: Oh yeah. By the way, thank you for bringing that up. It's so good. You have to go, go subscribe to the podcast. It's really great.

[00:25:28] Rachel Harrison: THank you. And um, I do spiritual coaching as well, which is working people, bringing people, working 'em through those steps. And my website is www.recoveryoursoul.net.

[00:25:39] Shanenn Bryant: Great. Well, Rachel Harrison, thank you so much for being on Top Self and sharing a bit of your story and ways that we can start to, work on our own journey here. So, thank you so much.

[00:25:54] Rachel Harrison: Thank you for having me. I am so honored to be here. And the work that you're doing, Shanenn, is so profound because however people walk through these doors. when we can see that it's around our expansion and I love, love, love what you offer your community as well around healing and growth and just being able to truly heal from really difficult life experiences.

[00:26:21] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. And again, congratulations on your soul recovery.

[00:26:28] Rachel Harrison: Thank you.

[00:26:29] Shanenn Bryant: If alcoholism or any addiction is something you struggle with, please hop over to Rachel's website or download the podcast book. One of her retreats, it'll all be linked in the show notes, but it's such important work that she's doing. And important work that you're doing for yourself until next time, take care and remember, you're not alone.

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