Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: For me, what I really see this movement as is a movement around us taking our power back to choose our own spiritual journey and not be affected by the people in our lives who might be suffering from addiction, who might have mental health issues, who might, you know, not be healthy. And we've spent all of our time trying to help them and fix them. And this is really about us healing ourselves, because if we are healed, we have more energy to heal others.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Welcome to supernormalize, the podcast, where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ Barnaby, in the liminalist space to explore less charted realms of existence and to unravel the mysteries of life. Experience each episode I'm blessed with the opportunity to talk to regular people from across the world where they openly share their understanding and wisdom in service to others. If you're looking to upgrade your life, you've come to the right place. Be sure to like and subscribe, and I'll bring you great transforming conversations each week. My treasured viewers and listeners. If you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge you'd love to share, reach out to me at supernormalizedroton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual, what it really is completely normal.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: In this episode of supernormalize, we have Reverend Rachel Harrison. Reverend Rachel Harrison is a wonderful woman who has been on a journey of recovery and is a testament to resilience and spiritual awakening. She's been through the recovery process herself by, well, first of all, becoming addicted to alcohol at a young age and struggling with that, and then discovering that she had her own tools at hand from a part of her path from when she was growing up, and that was a unity church and with Buddhism and other methods and means like the course of miracles, to actually help her along the way, she found a way that actually helped to connect her deeply to recovery processes that she shares on the episode and also those processes and how they help people. So if you're having somebody in your family that's struggling with recovery, or you are struggling with recovery yourself and wish to know more, this episode is for you. And it's a great talk all round with spirituality and recovery. So enjoy the show.
Welcome to supernormalized Reverend Rachel. Reverend Rachel, you've been through a lot and survived, obviously, and turned that into a way of helping other people because you were compelled to. Welcome to the show.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Thanks CJ. I'm really excited to be here and share with your audience. I was listening to some of your episodes, and they've been some great people with so much wonderful information. I'm excited to share, too.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: Oh, thanks. Thanks for listening. I appreciate that. And I'm glad that people are enjoying the show. I actually get a lot of nice feedback, and one of the things that compels me to this show because this is my service to others. So I managed to get their stories out there and also share some of my stories. That's nice.
So you've had quite a journey to recovery and have stumbled along the way, but you got there. Do you want to tell us about your story? Who was Reverend Rachel or Rachel before all of this?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for asking, CJ. You know, it's really interesting. I'm in the process of writing a book, and my co author and I decided I should do a memoir first and then do the nine steps of soul recovery in a second book. And one of the things that we talked about is she said, well, your addiction story. I want to tell your addiction story. And what it became really clear that it's not addiction to. I drank. I used alcohol in an unhealthy way, but I think it's really fascinating how we all are heroes in our own story, you know? And so for me, what I want to share is not the concentration on alcohol itself, but the concentration on what was it that was hurting? What was the piece that felt like that was the only solution at the time. And it's everybody's story around how complex it is growing up, what our discomforts are when we're younger. And I grew up as a hippie in New Mexico, in the United States. And my parents were early beatniks, and, you know, I rolled joints as a little kid and passed them around at parties. And my dad was a musician. I mean, really wild out there hippie lifestyle.
And it was really beautiful on some level. And on another level, it didn't prepare me for how hard the world is, how much bullying there is, how intense people are with each other, the amount of discord that there are between human beings. And so when I left this fairly peaceful buddhist upbringing and went out into the world as young as elementary school, I was shocked and blown away at how hard it was to be a friend, how hard it was to be liked, how hard it was to be accepted. And I think we all have that story. I don't think I'm unique in that story. And so as soon as I got really out in the world in college and trying to really fit in, I became a deep codependent and people pleaser and was just doing everything that I could to chameleon, try to figure out where I fit in. And because your podcast is super normalized, I'm actually going to go somewhere that I don't necessarily go on my podcast because I don't go out there that far. But what I see now is not only was I dealing with the standard complexity of being a human being, but I think I was dealing with the complexity of a soul that I don't think that I've. I don't think earth has been where I've been a lot. And so being a human being was really hard for me. And so I really struggled with how to be a human being. And I discovered alcohol in college as a way to be in my body, and that just proliferated out into the solution. Right. We all have a solution of how we fit in. And eventually it got to a place where I was drinking alcoholically. I was pretty shut down. I married someone who drank just like me. We had a life that was really around alcohol as our function, my codependency, my people pleasing. It was just. It was the mess that we all get into. We all have a mess. Our pain body, our pain experience.
And seven. Almost seven years ago, I, thank God, had an awakening that just said, this isn't who I am. This is not who I am. This is not how I want to live my life. You're here for something else. You've got to do something. And I stopped drinking. But it wasn't the stopping drinking. It was the decision to do what I call soul recovery, which is to really go in and explore my inner self and all the metaphysics that I've been raised in, in my whole life as a Buddhist and going to a unity church and actually live the principles and actually do the work and actually heal the stuff. So, you know, I look back at this, you know, what is my recovery story? I think it's. I think it's just the incredible twisty road that we all go through. And mine just happened to be drinking.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: I can relate to that.
As I was growing up, too.
I did experiment with alcohol a bit at the start, but then I got into marijuana, and that became my way of actually self medicating against the world. And this little thing that would pop in my head all the time that would say, you're getting out of it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I am getting out of it. But what was I getting out of? I was getting out of all of the tension I experienced in trying to be someone that I wasn't.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Right?
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's very brave for you to actually go ahead with your understanding of where you are and how you were in the world and to want to actually even go and touch and look at your shadow like that and to go through it and find your way through.
So you started to work on yourself. How did that sort of take form? I mean, you did say you started to live the tenants of the buddhist sort of religion for yourself. How did that play out?
[00:09:58] Speaker A: The first thing that I did was I went into the rooms of AA. So my, at that point, I was addicted to alcohol, so I needed to use the container that's in the twelve step rooms to show up someplace every day and say, I didn't drink today, you know, congratulations, you've got this. And the twelve steps really are a spiritual program. And what was fascinating is that if you could look at things in a more metaphysical perspective, it was like everything that I had ever known. I mean, my mother found Buddhism when I was a baby, and she still is an active, practicing Tibetan Buddhist. And so I had it around me everywhere, but it's like I was blind to see. And so when I went and I started doing the twelve steps, I recognized immediately that I could take those twelve steps and I could open it bigger to these buddhist concepts. Life is suffering. I grew up with that first noble truth, life is suffering. And I took it as a badge instead of knowing the other three noble truths and was like, that's it. It's going to be shitty. Life is suffering. Don't worry about it. You don't get to have any fun. No wonder you're in a bad marriage. No wonder you're unhappy. No wonder your life is miserable, because life is suffering.
And then when I started doing the twelve steps and started actually paying better attention, you're like, oh, there's other parts of this noble truths, right? The other one is life is suffering from our attachment, attachment to wanting it to be different, attachment to clinging to something that doesn't exist. And I started realizing, oh, I've, I've been doing that. I've been trying to be in control.
And then the third noble truth, being that there is a different way that you can open your mind and choose to live and be in a different way. Oh, I want to do that. How do you do that? You do that through the eight fold path. Well, that's just finding some sort of spirituality that works for you. I'm going to start with the twelve steps. I'm going to do these twelve steps. And the twelve steps says having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps. And if you turn to yourself, regardless of what the path is, spirit will give you the answers that you're supposed to learn. You know, it's not hidden from any of us. And so I took that foundation, and then I went to Al Anon, and Al Anon was really where the big learning was for me because it turned out drinking was just a teeny, tiny bit of my problem. My problem was, how do I deal with people? The same thing as when I was growing up and this potential larger soul issue, which is that my soul is very confused with how hard it is to be a human. It still is. It finds it really painful to be in this world that's so hard, you know, but I'm here on purpose, and I believe strongly that I was brought here on purpose at this time to be part of the consciousness raising of the planet and to have that incredibly dark experience that I had of a difficult marriage, of raising kids that are also addicts of my own addiction, of my own heartache. And then to come out the other side saved my marriage. Still married 32 years later, totally sober. Love being sober. My kids sober. Cannot believe that my kids are in their twenties and they're sober. It is a miracle upon miracle. I mean, we came out the other side and we're all doing this work, not because I'm controlling them, which is what I used to try to do, but because I'm modeling it in my own life to be different, and I'm living. Ram Dass said, take the curriculum. You know, do Earth school. Don't try to avoid earth school. Be in earth school. So at some point, I just decided I'm going to do this earth school thing. I'm going to see how far I can get.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Wow. Wow. So did you find that because you were upgrading yourself, that just flowed out into every area of your life and to your family?
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Every area of my life. And I was not a reverend at that point. You know, I mean, when I got sober, I was an office manager at a home care agency, thinking that I was on some path I want. I thought I wanted to be the director. I wanted to be somebody, you know, I wanted to be somebody and be in charge. And, and that just completely blew up. It's so fascinating in our lives when we think that we're holding so tightly to this identity of who we are, and it just blew up. And then I just allowed the universe to bring me what was next. And then this job to this job, and ended up getting a job at the church that I had attended for 20 years, a unity church, which is a metaphysical church. And in that space, I started just sharing on my podcast called recover your soul. My experience, I had no idea what I was doing or what I was building or what I was creating. I just, I had to talk about what was happening with me. And it started to pick up other women in particular, who are over the age of 40 and 54, over the age of 40, who have been through it, who have addicts in their lives, who want to be better, who want to not be codependents, who want to not be people pleasers. And that grew into something. And then I went and got my ordination as a metaphysical minister. And I just, I just started to say, if I'm here and spirit's in charge, why don't I let it be in charge? What am I doing? You know, trying to force everything. And here I am, you know, four years later from that job and to the podcast and have a whole community, a soul recovery community, and coaching and writing books and just, you know, living a spiritual life 24/7 wow, sounds like.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: You'Re on your path, definitely at this stage.
So can you share more about your concept of soul recovery and how it differs from traditional approaches?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So when I first started the soul recovery, I had no idea. The words came to me, recover your soul.
And it was this concept that it doesn't matter if you have an addiction or not. This isn't necessarily about addiction. It's really about the woundedness that we feel that we perceive that we have, and that when we recover this, we come back to ourselves, we remember who we are, we're here to, our souls are here to remember our wholeness, always. There's nothing wrong with any of us. We are not broken, we are not defective, we are whole, but we get lost in being a human being. And so it was very clear immediately when that was given to me, recover your soul.
And that this concept of soul recovery isn't unique to twelve step. It isn't unique to addiction, it isn't unique to anything. It's really all of these modalities that we're all doing that are around us coming back to ourself. So when I first started talking about it, I kind of took the twelve steps and I softened it. Right. Twelve steps was originally made for hardcore alcoholic men. And there was something really beautiful about doing the twelve steps, where you admit that you're powerless, you admit there's a higher power you turn to the higher power. You take a look at yourself in your inventory, see what your defects of character are. You recognize how you've harmed people in your life. You make amends to those people, and then you turn to a life of prayer and meditation, and you live a new way. And having had a spiritual awakening, so I smushed those into a new format. Well, as time went by, that disintegrated and a new path was revealed to me that was really around the more concepts around Buddhism, more metaphysics, more of trauma release, more awareness that our perception, more course in miracles. I'm really big into the course of miracles, more around this concept that the first step now in soul recovery is ready for awakening, which is to recognize that our suffering. So this is very buddhist. Our suffering is caused by our current beliefs, perceptions, stories, patterns. If we're running on an old operating system that came from when we were much younger, when it was created, there's no way the programs in our life and our relationships are going to run well. You have to understand that those don't serve you any longer. And then you need a gentle path to be able to move through releasing those. And I'm a huge fan of internal family systems and looking at the parts of yourself. So using psychology and spirituality, but not laying in trauma, I think there's a real harm that can be done when we want to go back and like revisit, revisit, revisit, revisit the trauma. Not necessary. It's over. But we do need to go and just touch on. Oh, that's a belief that I have.
Of course I have this belief from this experience in my life. For me, conflict was a no right, like the way that I grew up. No conflict.
Conflict was terrifying because nobody did it right. And then if it did do it, it was so intense and so horrible that it meant that you wouldn't be loved. So I created a belief that said, whatever it takes, don't have conflict. What did that create? It created a people pleaser. Codependent. I'll do. Your needs are better than more important than my needs. So how are you supposed to go and switch that? We have to look at it. You don't have to roll around in it, but you look at it and you see it so that you can have source work with you. And soul recovery is really about a spiritual life, taking responsibility for your interactions, your perception.
And then I started to realize how sticky my fingers had been in everybody's lives, in my family, because I was trying to protect this old wound, you know? And so soul recovery gives you the tools to see it and have compassion and forgive yourself and let go of judgment of yourself and everybody involved. And then you move through the soul recovery process to get to a place where you're resetting your perception and you're completely releasing the past, and you're opening fully to, who are you here to be? Who's your soul here to be? And what are you here to do?
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Okay. It sounds like you actually encourage a connection to the higher self and the processes that are involved in that to assist people to become more aligned with their true nature.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's the number one piece. Soul recovery is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life, spirituality being the foremost part of that.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Can you elaborate on the importance of connecting with one's higher power and how you get people to do that?
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah. You know what I think is really beautiful about the way that I grew up?
I didn't get a whole bunch of religious trauma, which I'm grateful for. I did have an experience. My mom went to India when I was eight. And having been raised in this. This. This was another one of those experiences where you go out in the world and you're like, what is this? How. Why are people like this? So I was eight. My mom went to India for three months. This is 1978. So no phones, no texting. No. You know, she sent one telegram that whole time that I was gone.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: Oh, God.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: And I spent a month with my dad, and I spent a month with my dad's mother, who was.
She was fundamental Christian. I think she might have been Baptiste. And then another month with my. My mother's mother. Well, in my month with my father's mother, she.
She was scared for me. You know, she loved me. And for her very fundamental, traditional religion was her belief system, her perception. And so when I showed up, she indoctrinated me. She cut off my red, scraggly prayer cords that I'd worn for years. She did Bible study. And in the end, she had me stand in front of the church and give my soul to Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, which I knew for sure I did not mean. But I was a good girl, and I did whatever she said, and I left there thinking, this God stuff is bullshit. I mean, as a kid, I was just like, this is crap, right? And so from the time I was eight until I was 22 years old, I rejected anything that had to do with God.
Anything.
And then I met a man who was a Christian.
He liked to party like I did. And he was really cute. So I looked past the fact that he was, he was a Christian and he was curious about Buddhism. And that made me curious about Christianity. And so in our life together, that's how we found unity, which allowed him to have his belief system and allowed me to have my belief system. And in unity, which is a metaphysical, new thought spiritual environment, no one is telling you what God is.
You're being invited to have that relationship yourself. And so as a spiritual teacher, now that's my invitation too. I can't possibly know more than my own feelings that I have, but I want to be a way shower for others to be curious and open of what that is for them and leave all the dogma, all the religion, all the shame. I work with so many people that have a lot of religious trauma and help them to be able to see that those two are beliefs that were given to them in a younger self that are causing them suffering because we are all being invited to step into a higher consciousness that is outside of religion. So I'm always teaching spirituality, but I'm very cautious of not trying to tell anybody what that is. But through prayer and meditation, through the way that I share on the podcast of how it's affecting my life, how, you know, just constantly inviting people to tune into themselves and to hear that still small voice, to notice those moments in nature when you feel whole and to build that relationship and begin to have your own curated relationship that you choose. So for me, spirituality is very unique and independent. And it's incredibly important. I think it is the answer to wholeness. And each one of us uniquely gets to experience it. We're all part of the one, right? So whatever that is for you, there's no right or wrong way.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people have experienced religion from the wrong angles. I would say if you've been forced into it and or been traumatized by it, then, you know, you do actually eventually do find a way of coming to faith. And that's important, I think, in that connectedness that we all need to have in our lives and to feel as well. Ive got to ask you though, what role does self compassion play in overcoming addiction and personal struggles?
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Gosh, I think it plays like the biggest role. I think self forgiveness and not forgiveness from the perspective of religion that says even in twelve step theres this aspect of shame thats still in it. Ive done wrong. And so im going to repent for my wrongness and make amends. And I think that true healing comes when we really just recognize how human we all are, how fallible we all are. And it's part of the process. And so forgiveness, for me, is really founded in the course of miracles, which offers the concept of recognizing the value of every single thing that we experienced. There is lessen in every single thing that we experience.
And each person that we interact with is also a wounded brother or sister and doesn't recognize their wholeness and is coming from all their old belief systems and perceptions. So when we sort of take detach and take the energy off of who's right and who's wrong in soul recovery, I'm always saying there's no judgment for anybody. It's really about how you feel. How do you feel?
How are you going to process what's going on in yourself? And through that, we start to recognize how hard we have been on ourselves every step of the way. Just so much judgment and so much fear, and so self compassion. Um, self forgiveness. Generally, people are looking outside, but you've got to come inside first and really be tender to yourself and find your own deep awareness of how beautiful and perfect we all are with all of our flaws, you know? And from that forgiveness, from that self compassion, then there's a little more space for me to look at my husband, you know, who was my nemesis for ten years, and then.
And then he was my teacher, you know, to really recognize that he was giving me all these opportunities to learn. And now we're in this space where I have so much more compassion for him and how he was in those years of his addiction and his disappointment in our family. Because I've worked on my disappointment and my addiction and how I showed up. And if you can't forgive yourself first, there's no space to really have that compassion for someone else, to truly forgive them from the course of miracles perspective, which is to dissipate the energy completely and recognize it all is actually part of the process. And there's nothing to forgive.
It's acceptance.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. For sure.
I was doing some processing myself a little while back there, and a part of that was looking into people that I had wronged. And in doing that, I thought, well, it's best to approach these people and talk to them about it. And when I did, all of them said, no, that's not what I experienced. That was your version of what was happening.
So sometimes, you know, the experiences we have aren't exactly what true for everyone, and it's good to recognize that. I was gonna ask you, though, you.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Know, CJ, that is so huge, because we want to have the conversations with the other people. Right? We want to dialogue with the other people. Here's really what I was thinking. Here's how I recognize. And they're in their movie, right? They're seeing it from their script to their movie, and we want to insert ourselves into their movie, with our movie. And we want them to see our movie. Well, some people can. Most people can't.
So I process 99% of my healing myself through journaling, through working with a trusted person, through my connection to source, like, really listening to what my soul is to learn in that experience. And then instead of having the conversation with someone, I show up in that relationship in a new way.
And there have been times when it's important for me to say, I really recognize that when I. This is with, you know, with my husband in particular, when I discounted what you had to say, that that was hard for you, and I'm sorry, and that helps, but I don't have to talk him around all the other stuff that's around it unless he instigates that conversation, because then I'm actually inviting him to share his movie with me.
And that has really healed how I interact with people, because then we're not trying to control. Right. Soul recovery's big thing is around control. We don't even realize we're trying to control everybody, but we are, and we're trying to do it because we're trying to be helpful. We're trying to help. Are we trying to, you know, do for them or make it be different? But the more that we release, the more we actually can see everyone's movies and be on our script of our own movie and heal our stuff through those interactions. But it doesn't look the way that I think we traditionally want it to look.
[00:32:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about journaling as a part of your process there.
What do what. What do you. What do you recommend as a journaling process for somebody that has no idea?
[00:32:30] Speaker A: So I have journals here in my studio I have my other background on. But there's journals in here that I spent ten years journaling. Complaints, complaining, complaining, complaining. I just wrote down every misery and every horrible thing that I could think of, my husband, and the people in my lives that were pissing me off, and that is not helpful.
It is important if you are repeating negative thoughts to have a place to write them down, because it will slow down your thinking, and it will help you to get them down. But if we think journaling is just a place to complain in the law of attraction. You are getting what you are receiving, so you get what you think about whether you like it or not. So in the soul recovery process, the process is that you're having conversations within your journal with your higher self.
And it's a. It's a space to begin to dissect, ask questions, clarify the places in your life where you are interested in understanding and growing and learning more. So, for me, my suggestion for people in journaling is if you're pissed or you've got something heavy going on, give yourself a time limit that says, I'm just going to get this out. Go ahead and be the victim. Go ahead and write down all the stuff you're upset about. But I'm only going to do it for one page. I'm only going to do this for three minutes or five minutes, because otherwise you're going to get in that wheel of misery of poor me.
I'm right here and they're wrong here.
But once you get that on the paper, the first question is, help me see this differently.
Help me understand why this is hurting me. Help me understand what feelings I'm having that are here to show me something.
Help me. You know, I'm asking spirit for these answers.
We, the angels and guides in our lives, cannot help us unless we ask.
So when we ask, they can come into our free will space. So the page somehow is this place where we can let go of this thing in our mind that is so consumed with. With doubt, with our judge, that's all over us, right? And so when I ask those questions and then I just release and I just say, I'm just going to write whatever comes. I'm not going to. I'm not going to punctuate, I'm not going to spell correctly, I'm not going to have pretty handwriting. Over the years, I have found that these books, these journals become the conversation with my subconscious, with my higher self, with my higher power, with my guides. And the more that I do it, I'm opening to larger channels that we all have access to.
I love. I see. I've seen Abraham Hicks in person a couple times, Esther Hicks. And I was listening to one of her YouTube things and someone said, what's going to happen when you go away? How will we hear Abraham? And she said, abraham is available to all of us. Wisdom is available to every one of us. None of us are without access to it. And to me, I believe journaling is a place where you can connect more deeply to that part of yourself that is connected to something greater still.
[00:36:14] Speaker C: Nice. Nice.
What are some common misconceptions about recovery that you've encountered?
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Okay, so the first thing that comes to mind is that people get very caught up in the funk, the dysfunction. Like the drinker, right. The drink, the drug, the behavior. I think one of the misconceptions is if people will just quit that, then everything will get better. And the truth is, it is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the solution that started as a solution to the wounded nature of our being. And most of these things have addictive qualities. If it's a drug or alcohol or something like that.
Alcohol is addictive. Even if you're like me. And I don't have the genetics for addiction, my husband does.
I don't have the genetics for it, but it becomes addictive. But the alcohol wasn't the problem. What was problem was my soul recovery that needed to happen. And so I think when we meet, have people in our lives, and we meet with them, and we're like, don't. Just don't drink. Just don't drink, or just don't do the drugs, or just don't shop, or just don't have the behavior. Just don't watch porn, just don't. Whatever it is, we're actually bypassing what's really going on underneath them. And we're validating for them their disease. We're validating for them that there's something wrong with them. And most people use because they think there's something wrong with them. So the more that we have curiosity of what's underneath and see the wholeness of the people in our lives, regardless of really. I mean, I have people I work with whose kids are on the street, you know, I mean, really desperate situations.
And to be able to work with those parents to give them a space to see their children who are massively addicted and homeless, and for them to know that there is the light within that soul who is having this experience and that they can hold love for that light and they can release and allow them to have the experience is freedom. So those people are allowing the people that they love to have whatever this experience they need to have is.
But they've stopped obsessing on the drink or the drug, and they've started to just connect with and contact the soul and have compassion for that soul and then coming back to the self. Compassion. There's a lot of need for compassion for yourself.
If you have family members, children in particular, who are struggling. We, as parents, believe that we should have done something different, that it's our fault. And then there's a lot of need for self forgiveness around that.
But we're powerless over their addiction. We're powerless over the choices that they make. So to me, I mean, it has so many layers, but it always comes back to, we each are responsible for our own healing, our own perceptions, our own values, our own beliefs, our own way of being in the world, regardless of what's happened to us. And our souls are here on purpose to include these very difficult situations in our lives to teach us who we are. You know, our souls actually want to have these complex experiences to learn.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been said by some religions that we're all aspects of God experiencing itself, and it has to go through every possible permutation of every possible experience in all possible times before it comes to a final conclusion, whatever that would be.
How do you incorporate positive psychology into your coaching sessions?
[00:40:27] Speaker A: You know, I think that the thing about psychology that's so interesting, when I got my psychology degree back in 35 years ago, or whatever it was, I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I was always curious about the mind. And what I think is really interesting is if we think about, I'm 54 years old, and when I was young, when I was first born, nobody talked about meditation, no one talked about mindfulness. This was not even in the perception at all. And if you go back not that far and you look at the actual psychology of how we treated people and how we determined how people's minds were, it was archaic. I mean, 100 years ago, how people were treating people with mental health issues was. Was so unkind. Right? So we are behind in the science. And my belief is that the consciousness is being raised on purpose in a very heightened fashion, because it's important that we get it right. And so positive psychology is this concept that it's like we can take the laws of spirituality. They are real. They're not bullshit.
Your life is what you think and feel and believe it is. But that's not what was taught in psychology. When I went to school for psychology, it was Pavlov's theory, and it was the rats.
It was so not about your mind creates your reality.
So positive psychology is this offering to really look at how our brains work, how our neurons work, how they sheath together.
What's the track that you run? If you are always thinking negative thoughts? How is your neurons going to leave that track? And you have to use positive psychology, which is the belief that there is good, that there is something more to think about. There's positive thoughts to have, that being happy is important.
And so it switches from this belief that there's something wrong with us, and we're trying to figure out what's wrong with us to the belief that there's nothing wrong with us and we're all here to live, joy. So that's positive psychology in my mindset.
[00:43:08] Speaker C: Nice. Can you tell us about your podcast and the purpose of it?
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, CJ, you're a podcaster, and you said before we started recording that you do this for service, that this is a way to give back to the world. And I think when I first started the podcast, it really came out of sharing at meetings and having people say, rach, there's just something about the way that you tell your story that means something that is really helping me. And so I just started my podcast on my phone. I just was recording it on my phone. I wasn't editing anything, and I was just sharing this experience that I was having that was incredibly profound from the start, because when you make a decision, when you make a decision to choose yourself in a spiritual path and begin to really look at yourself, it's like the fog that's been in front of your eyes for so long clears. And so this experience was so profound, I just started talking about it. And then in the 8th episode of my first year, I had been really conscious of not talking about AA or Al Anon because of the twelve traditions that say that you shouldn't promote it, you shouldn't make money from it. And. And I knew that I was doing something. I didn't know what it was, but I talked about Al Anon for the first time in. In its entirety. And I talked about the seven detachments. There's this bookmark that has the seven detachments of someone who's an addict.
You won't suffer because of their addiction. You won't help them get up and pay bills and do as you see fit or create a crisis or prevent a crisis. Like, and my son was in crisis. My son was a drug addict. My son was dropping out of high school. Like, it was really bad.
And so I just started sharing about that. And my podcast went from 30 people who were my friends that were listening to the show because they were being nice to me, to hundreds of people listened to that episode. And what I realized is that I had to be of service. I had to not be afraid to talk about recovery. Al Anon, aa. I had to not be afraid to really, from my deepest soul, really share my stories, because they're not my stories, they're everybody's stories. And so the podcast has really grown and progressed and is its own thing. That is not me. And it's created a community that I'm so grateful for.
It's in the top 1% in the United States. Unbelievably honored. And, and it's. And people say that they've been going to these rooms or they've been looking for recovery for like 30 years. They've been going. And there's something in the way that I'm sharing Buddhism and course of miracles and twelve step and Christianity and all these things and some pretty far out there energy stuff, you know, and bringing it in and it's giving them the AHA's that they need to be interested in their spiritual life, you know?
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Yeah, cool.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: And so I could. I'm just over the moon with how, how it's all gone and, and it's really for the people, it's really for the community.
[00:46:50] Speaker C: Awesome. Well, power to you. That's really good.
So we've come to the end of the podcast and I wanted to ask you if you could supply us with some links or details to find you and maybe listen to your podcast too.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. So recoveryoursoul.net is my website and that's sort of my hub for everything. You can find the podcast there. I do remote coaching, everything I do is on Zoom. I have a once a month free support group that is the first Monday of every month in 06:00 United States mountain time, which I don't know what that is in Australia, but totally open to everybody. And it's this place where the community really comes together.
And for me, what I really see this movement as is a movement around us taking our power back to choose our own spiritual journey and not be affected by the people in our lives who might be suffering from addiction, who might have mental health issues, who might, you know, not be healthy. And we've spent all of our time trying to help them and fix them. And this is really about us healing ourselves, because if we are healed, we have more energy to heal others and we give them permission to heal themselves. So I really am passionate about just growing this concept of soul recovery in all formats that we're all doing it. You know, they were all teachers of light. And then the podcast is on everything. Recover your soul. It's on Spotify and Apple and Alexa and, you know, YouTube and all the things.
[00:48:35] Speaker C: Brilliant, brilliant.
Thank you very much Reverend Rachel Harrison, for coming on the show and sharing your understanding and experience of recovery and how you'd like to help others with that as well. I really appreciate your time.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Thank you. And I want to thank you, CJ, because we're all doing it. This is a raising our consciousness, having these conversations. I think each one of these communities is so valuable, and I just am so grateful for what you're doing as well.
[00:49:03] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. All right, I'll just say goodbye to the listeners.
All power to Rachel with her work and her understanding of recovery. It's good to see that people are finding new ways to assist themselves and assist others in doing so. And her authenticity and understanding of the process of recovery came through in that episode. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please reach out to Rachel at her website, which I will provide in the show notes. And if you're on YouTube, please like and subscribe as I went down there to be able to do that. And if you're on a podcast app, please, if you value this episode, please give me a five stars and say something nice. That'd be very cool because other people can hear these episodes. And if you know somebody that needs to hear this, then please share it today. That'd be really, really cool. And again, thank you so much for listening. Until next episode, it's bye for now.
