Navigating Separate Recovery Journeys: Can Love Survive When You Heal at Different Speeds?

Individual Sou Recovery work can create temporary disconnection in relationships as both partners evolve at different rates and in different ways. The 9-Step Soul Recovery Process offers a path to navigate these challenges by focusing first on healing ourselves rather than trying to change our partners.

Check out Part 2 on the Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast for FREE and paid Patreon Members and Apple Podcast subscribers. These subscriptions support this podcast and YOUR Soul Recovery for less than a cup of coffee a month! 
• Working separate recovery programs can make couples feel like they're drifting apart
• Relationship counseling often fixates on fixing problems rather than promoting personal growth
• Most relationship difficulties stem from projecting our unhealed wounds onto our partners
• True healing happens when we stop blaming others and examine our own reactions
• Recovery transforms us completely—like caterpillars becoming butterflies
• As we shed old identities, we must create new ways of relating to each other
• No relationship can fill the emptiness within that only spiritual connection can satisfy
• Relationship provides one of the most profound opportunities for spiritual growth
• Safety (emotional and physical) is a prerequisite for deep relationship healing work

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 or guests. 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 Relationships in Recovery: A Listener's Question
• 5:44 The Therapy Experience: Looking Outward
• 11:02 Focusing on Others vs. Self-Reflection
• 17:09 Starting Fresh: Shedding Old Skins
• 22:42 Dating Again: Creating New Connection
• 28:11 Episode Wrap and Bonus Content Preview

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

How do you let go of control and move into a spiritual world when it seems like your relationship is falling apart? Maybe you're both on the road to recovery but you're working separate programs and you're not feeling connected. Today I'm going to talk about that as a response to a comment on Spotify. Recovery is this concept around how we can do our own work and be able to then step into our relationships with new eyes and new perception. In some ways, we're starting over. There's going to be a part B, a part two to this episode for Apple podcast subscribers and free and paid Patreon members to discuss more about how we can look at who's right and using the nine-step soul recovery process to let go of that part of us that wants to blame. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:55

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing, positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recovery Soul Podcasting Community. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for choosing in on this soul recovery path with me, a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. We are making a conscious decision to learn more about ourselves, to see that there's a lot of difficulty and complexity and stickiness, as I call it, happening around the world and in our relationships and in our families, and we spend a lot of time looking around on the outside and being discontent, being unhappy, being unfulfilled. And now we're recognizing, through the step one in soul recovery, which is we're ready for awakening, we're recognizing that there is something within us that could be transformed to make a decision to heal and learn more about ourselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:29

And today's episode is around relationship and it's based on another comment on Spotify, which I love getting comments from you, and if you ever have a topic that you want to learn more about, just email me at RecoverYourSoulNet at gmailcom. I would love to hear what you want to hear about, but I read all your comments, either on YouTube or on Spotify, any place that you can give a comment, and it was in response to the episode that we had that was Alan on through the lens of soul recovery, when the bottom is the beginning, surrender and the freedom to let go. And the listener, community member, said I hear a lot of things about letting go and letting God take control of the driver's seat. I don't understand that aspect when it comes to things about my marriage, as we work our programs separately and work on our marriage together, it seems impossible to find a place to be together and focus on us. It just seems as though our marriage is falling apart, even when neither of us want that to happen. So thank you, community member, for sharing that, because I feel like this is a really great question for so many reasons, and I'm also inspired by it because I was having a conversation with a friend recently who's going through some difficulties in her own relationship and it just really reminded me so deeply of this element that we have in relationship that I experienced for years and years and years and years around how the other person needs to change and what's going on with them and the things that they're doing that aren't fulfilling us and how that's reflecting back to us and how dissatisfied and how sort of really unmanageable our life feels or how we just wish that it could be better. And I think that oftentimes and I've heard me say this before and again as always, take what you need and leave the rest. This is my interpretation of the entire world through my lens, right? So if you don't resonate with some of it, it's okay. I'm not trying to make you believe what I believe. I'm showing you through the lens that has changed me, and I want it to be a place for you to contemplate your own belief systems, your own experience.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:48

When Rich and I used to go to therapy back in the day and we often went we went to a couple different people. We went to a therapist that is, the famous therapist that told us at the very beginning of our relationship that our issue was alcoholism and alcohol, and we didn't want to see that, and so we turned on our heel and never went back. We also worked with our minister for years and years and years, who had been such a great resource for us. He's not a trained therapist and he has his own system, but he really just held space for us and had some mirroring back and forth for us. Some of the most profound work that he did with us actually was some concepts around gestalt therapy where we really looked at different aspects of our personality style and he had us sit in different chairs and each time you moved a location you really embodied what that aspect of you that was coming up. And that's where I could really see that Rich's quote unquote judge was the part of him I continue to not like and didn't like for all those years. That was the hardest part for me and I was able to really recognize the part of me that had a very frightened little girl that didn't know how to be in the room without that little girl being in the room. Anytime there was chaos. That was some of the greatest work that we ever did. It was very reflective and we could see really intensely our own parts of ourselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:17

But oftentimes we just met with him and it was a place where for an hour I complained. I just complained. I didn't like the things that were going on with Rich, and you know what? I'm just going to say it rightfully so, rightfully so we were both drinking. He was especially heavy in his addiction. He was very, very critical of our children, especially Alex. He had a parenting style that did not align with my values and had a lot of intensity, a lot of words that were unkind, and that was true, because that's what was given to him. Part of soul recovery is recognizing what are the patterns, beliefs, stories that are underneath, that are our only way of thinking that things were. So. He was parenting in the same parenting style that he'd been parented. I didn't like it. I didn't like a lot of sort of these situations that were happening and yet I wasn't turning the attention to me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:17

I was spending a lot of time on just pointing out all the stuff about him that I did not enjoy or like or agree upon or think was the right way to do it. And I think this is the part that is so interesting in terms of the counseling or the way that we do this thing, where we get together as couples and we're like here's how you're not meeting my needs, and it's important to know how someone's not meeting your needs. That's not the. The point is not to say that's not valid. The point is that we spend so much time and energy on how that person isn't meeting your needs that you're actually not reflecting on yourself about what is going on underneath. This is what the nine steps whole recovery process offers. And as I was sitting with my friend the other day and I wasn't, of course I was coaching, I can't help but coach. But I was trying not to coach. I was trying not to be Rev Rachel too much and just be present for a friend and she's not on the spiritual journey, she's not doing any of this stuff, it's not in her wheelhouse yet. Maybe it'll be in her wheelhouse at some point. She was just in the part of being really sad about what was going on in her relationship and that's a valid place to be.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:36

And what I love about this comment from the community member on Spotify is they're recognizing that they're each doing their own work in their own programs. And when you begin to awaken, when you begin to have a part of you that wants to heal and the other person wants to heal, it can look very different. And you've heard me say this before. Rich's journey is very different than mine, continues to be very different than mine, and I'm grateful that he's willing to do spiritual work because the only way I will stay in this marriage. If he decides, it's not about drinking thank God he's still sober, but that isn't the issue for me. The issue is a decision and a willingness and openness to continue to do spiritual and mindset work and personal development and to be awakening within yourself and to coming more and more fully into your embodied self.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:44

That is not what my focus was when we were sitting in those counseling sessions, supposedly trying to have something moving forward, we had another counselor, who was another minister, that we did spiritual counseling with. Again, there was not the kind, it was not the kind of coaching that I do. You come to work with me with coaching and you do a lot of talking, but we, we shift things immediately. There is so much opportunity to really dig in and move what's within you instead of just letting it circle and we circled in this. Who was right, who was at fault, who was doing the thing, that was wrong, that was bad and what. I think that the profound opportunity, especially in what's happening right now, in the shift of consciousness and this really awakening on a larger scale to our souls, journeys.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:40

A couple episodes I talked more about the soul. What are we here to do? What are we here to learn? There is so much attention on the relationship being the solution, being the goal, the destination, that we have to fix this relationship so that it is ideal on all sides, and maybe I am off base in this and I sometimes I really wonder are there actually couples that have some sort of ideal? I mean, if you look on Instagram, there certainly are. If you watch movies and you watch rom-coms, there certainly are. I'm curious about whether that's actually true.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:29

I think that most relationships, even the best and most healthy relationships, you have to be in a space where each soul, each person, is reflecting on their awakening journey, their opportunity to continually be interested and invested in their own soul's growth. What are you here to learn? What can you do to really understand what is underneath that needs to be unresolved or healed or forgiven within yourself, that we're putting all this attention on the other person to fill that for us. And so when we go to counseling, it's often so immersed in the fixing the relationship and what I always offer.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:23

When people come to me for couples coaching which I do have on the website as an opportunity to come to me and do soul recovery as a couple, it is not about saving the marriage or the relationship. It's not about deciding whether it's going to work or not work, because ultimately, if that's the only focus. You're missing the part which is who are we independently, how can we reflect for each other and how can we be? And this is really hard. I totally get that. This is really hard because I've had, I've been on all the sides and right now I'm I'm able to see it from this new perception, which I'm always inviting you to see.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:05

From this new perception, our opportunity to be in connection with another soul, another human being, is some of the most profound connection that you can ever have on so many levels, on the deep love level, to have someone get you and be there for you and support you and be your friend and be your confidant and be your lover. Those aspects are the beautiful opportunity to be in an intimate, safe, caring relationship and we're all striving for that and we're all striving for that. And it also has this opportunity for us to have heartache and pain and question our own value and wonder, like, what is going on inside. But we spend a lot of time putting that on the other person and then, when they're just doing their work as their soul, bumping up against their own belief systems, their own limiting beliefs, their maybe even karma from other lifetimes we don't know we feel like we're the ones that are getting the short end of the stick with them, because we're consumed with the other person, filling the hole in our heart that's really to be filled with our own wholeness, with our own well-being, with our own connection to spirit. And what I encourage people when they work with me is let's walk side by side. This is what this comment was. How do you walk side by side in your own healing and connect and work on what that union is together?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:49

And the guidance that's really coming through that I think is really interesting is oftentimes it's about almost starting from scratch. I have a client whose husband came back from rehab and there was questions about whether to stay together or not, whether she wanted to be divorced or stay in, and they're really starting from scratch and I think that you have to give yourself grace that, no matter how long you've been in a relationship, every day is a new day. And as we're working on ourselves, it's almost like. And as we're working on ourselves, it's almost like oh, the image that's coming to me is it's almost like we're shedding skins old skins to be reborn, to be renewed, to have. You know, we've grown and so we don't fit in that old skin and as we're shedding that skin and we're stepping into a new way of being, or even a butterfly, is even a better example, because you're literally changing from one caterpillar all the way into a butterfly. You are completely changing, so you can't relate to each other in what it was before.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:03

That's the only way that I'm still married to Rich. The only way Because, as we've heard each other's call to become more ourselves and be to be more seen and witnessed for exactly who we are, it means that we actually accept and see each other's shadow side. So I'm being brought back to sitting in my living room with Rev Scott and witnessing Rich's judge and literally viscerally hating that aspect of him, hating that aspect of him. It scared me, I didn't like it, I couldn't relate to it and I had to work really hard for years and years and years to not see Rich as the judge. I had to work really hard to remind myself that that is an aspect of him that is one of his defenders, one of his protectors. And if you're curious about protectors, I encourage you to go back and listen to the protectors episode, because we all have aspects of ourselves that we use in reaction that come from those old limiting beliefs, those old stories and the ways that we've been in the world that often have this defensive, reactive mechanism. And riches was the judge. And it's not bad.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:27

These are aspects of us that are shadow. They're part of who makes us who we are and if we live constantly in the shadow, there's a heaviness and a darkness and there's fear. This really is an experience as a soul to overcome the fear and to recognize the wholeness of who you are and to give each other grace and, at the same time, to begin to be able to see things more clearly in the, the neutrality of it, the what is of it. So that if you're in a relationship with somebody and you're healing side by side and you're coming in today with new skin or a new aspect of yourself, you're doing the work on yourself to heal the parts of you that want to be in reaction, that want to be in fear, that are clingy, that are needy and are wanting for that other person to fill you up in some way so that, as you both are working, you can come together in a way that is new and creating a new environment.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:35

So one of the suggestions I made to the client that her husband just came out of treatment recently was what if you just started dating, even though you're living in the same house? Start to date, start to relearn who you are in this new way of being, because if I was relating to Rich in my old reactivity, in my old codependent, fearful place and super controlly, controlly, controlly and he was coming from his judge defended, intense reaction to me, none of that's going to go well. So, every day, the gratitude that I have in our relationship is we are putting our work focused on ourselves first. That's our number one, and then that allows us to come in to our union with each other with more compassion, more grace, more willingness to have forgiveness, more willingness to be there for the other person without the neediness, there for the other person without the neediness.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:43

And I think that you know, ultimately, what I want this, this episode, to really remind you, is relationship is one of the greatest and most complicated spiritual tools of all of it. I think I've said it before that they they often say in spirituality, the monks who go sit in the cave. They've got it easy. Those of us who are in the midst of it, in the complexities of our marriages and with our kids and with the people around us. We're doing the big spiritual work and if you can open your heart enough to let go of grievance, to let go of resentment, to stop blaming, to stop spending so much time on what the other person isn't doing, that you don't like, versus who am I underneath and why does this hurt me and what is this reminding me of, then you can have more clarity around whether this relationship is aligned or not, and not that someone's right or wrong it's really. Sometimes it just comes to a place where you say, okay, I love this person so much, but neither one of us can totally be ourselves, as we should be in the presence of each other. Or you say, man, if I let go of all these expectations that I have of the other person and I start working on me so that I can show up as my best self, so that I'm a most healed, loving, compassionate self, then I'll be curious and open to see how they respond back and in general, you get what you send out.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:32

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: 22:29

Back to the episode Give freely, receive abundantly. Works for everything Giving of your time, giving of your love, giving of your compassion, giving of your money. Give freely and receive abundantly. But expectations and fear can often really cut us off from seeing clearly, because it's all a protection mechanism within us, somewhere that is a reaction to our pain us somewhere that is a reaction to our pain. So I don't actually know if I answered the question that they were responding to in that, aside from the fact that there needs to be grace, there needs to be grace on all sides. And you know I've said before that if you're not safe, if you're not physically or emotionally safe, it's pretty hard to do this deep spiritual work and to really allow a relationship to have its transformation. And that's that's one avenue to really understand. But on the other level, if you're with somebody and you are physically, emotionally safe, it's just complicated and sticky and hard it could be.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:53

Potentially it could be the most beautiful opportunity to learn the most about yourself and who you are as a soul and how you can step more fully and deeply into your most healed, authentic self, and then to open your eyes and be curious about the other and their experience and then from that you're able to make a decision about whether the relationship is healthy and good for everyone. But there's no such thing as perfect and there's no such thing as somebody else filling you up unless you have filled yourself up first. First and foremost, soul recovery is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. But more than that, soul recovery is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. But more than that soul recovery is an opportunity for us to understand more deeply our own soul's experience and journey, to release and let go of the limiting beliefs that keep us stuck and in reaction, that keep us in fear, that keep us from stepping into our authentic self, connecting to the spiritual life, the higher power of your understanding, and allowing that to be your number one focus, so that your heart can truly be healed and that you can be in relationships with the people in your life without controlling, without trying to make it be any particular way, and in that there's peace and freedom and contentment and clarity.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:35

I want to finish this episode, but I'm really continuing to think about continuing to think about part of what I think this is is around who's right and it's making me want to do a part two of this episode that I will do in the bonus episode on Friday on Patreon and Apple podcast subscribers and, as I promised, when I do these two parters, I really want to pull in the nine steps all recovery process and how you can use that in your own life to work through this. So, if you are interested in continuing this conversation and learning more around relieving that part of yourself that gets attached to having been harmed or wounded, or who's right in a situation. I encourage you to go check out this part two of the podcast. If you are a subscriber on Apple podcasts, that'll be available to you. Same with Patreon. And just a reminder that you can be a free Patreon member free, free, free and have access to all new episodes the first week that they are there, and for a cup of coffee a month you can have access to over 200 bonus podcasts, which have a lot of amazing interviews, book studies, al-anon through the lens of soul recovery, spiritual book studies so many great things. So I hope that you go check out this part too.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:16

Okay, until next time namaste credible 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.