Season 7 Begins: Releasing the Inner Critic and Choosing Self-Compassion in 2026

Season 7 Begins: Releasing the Inner Critic and Choosing Self-Compassion in 2026

As Season 7 of the Recover Your Soul Podcast begins, I invite you into a deeper conversation about healing self-judgment and choosing a more compassionate relationship with yourself.

The spiritual path to a happy and healthy life is not linear. For many of us, the journey into healing begins through codependency, people pleasing, over-functioning, and self-abandonment. We learn early on to take care of others, to stay small, and to silence our own needs in order to feel safe or loved. Over time, this creates an inner critic that speaks harshly in the name of protection.

In this episode, I reflect on how the Recover Your Soul Process invites us to gently uncover these patterns, understand where they came from, and release what no longer serves us. As we step into 2026 and a new season, we are being called to move beyond awareness and into embodiment, living from our wholeness rather than our wounds.

I also share my own experience of how self-compassion, honesty, and spiritual practice allow real healing to occur by choosing kindness and truth instead of self-judgment.

In this episode, we explore:

• How codependency and people pleasing lead to self-abandonment
• The role of the inner critic as a learned protector
• Using the Recover Your Soul Process to release old patterns
• Choosing self-compassion as a spiritual practice
• Stepping into a new cycle of healing and a

Start your journey with the FREE Recover Your Soul™ 9-Step Mini-Workbook- A gentle spiritual path to healing, letting go, and awakening.

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 Welcome And Season Seven Vision
• 2:10 Wholeness Over Fixing Ourselves
• 5:30 The Quickening Of Inner Change
• 9:45 New Year Energies And Numerology
• 13:40 Body Image Trigger In Costa Rica
• 18:00 Speaking Truth Without Defensiveness
• 21:49 From Self-Criticism To Self-Compassion
• 24:39 Shedding Old Skins, Moving Forward
• 27:39 Community Offerings And How To Join
• 30:49 Closing Blessing And Listener Invites

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

The spiritual path to a happy and healthy life is not a straight line. And as a matter of fact, to be courageous enough, to look at yourself with honesty, to be able to look at the parts of you that speak so harshly to yourself and to look at where those come from and why we use those as protectors. In this next year, 2026 and season seven of the Recover Your Soul podcast, we're being invited even more deeply to uncover and release and let go of what doesn't serve us and step more fully into our whole authentic healed self. Today I talk about this new year that's coming and also some reflections from my trip and how we can be so critical of ourselves, but those are opportunities to move forward, release what doesn't serve us, and choose loving kindness instead. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover Your Soul podcast and community, 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, people pleasing, and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and the recovery soul process 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 interchange and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to season seven of the Recover Your Soul Podcast. I'm Rev Rachel, and I am just so grateful to be here with you today. If you've been with me for a while, I am so honored to continue to be part of the process of your spiritual awakening, of your healing, of recovering your soul. And if you're new to us, welcome to this incredible community, loving, safe, open. We're here learning how to be okay, even when the people and the world around us isn't okay by using spiritual tools and principles. This isn't anything about religion. This isn't anything about dogma. This is a space of using the concepts that you are whole. You are already whole, remembering this wholeness, remembering your true soul's purpose, coming back to your higher self, coming back to everything that you have within you in the recovering. This is what the recovering is: recovering all those pieces of your soul and bringing them back into your embodiment so that you can be with what's very complex. Most of us have pretty difficult situations happening in our personal lives. Maybe we have people who are struggling with addiction. Maybe we have people in our lives who are just in the complexity of the human condition, and it's really hard for us. Most of us that are here are empaths. We feel people's feelings so deeply. We're caregivers, we're peacemakers, we're the people that people count on to bring them some sort of solace or to have all the answers. And for so long, we've been overfunctioning and we've been losing ourselves in codependency and people-pleasing as a way to take care of everyone. We've been given some sort of role in our lives that we're here to take care of everyone. And there comes a breaking point. There comes this place where enough is enough, and we recognize that we aren't responsible for everyone else's well-being, that we must take responsibility for ourselves, for our own well-being. And as we do that, it's amazing how our healing actually elicits change and reflects out into the world around us that when we think that we're taking care of everybody else, we're actually not taking care of ourselves. But when we take care of ourselves, the people and relationships around us evolve and shift. And we're not responsible for them. It's such an interesting, fine line around doing it for us as a whole, doing it for ourselves. But in that doing it for ourselves, we are doing it for us. But we're shifting how we show up with that. And as we step into season seven of the Recovery Soul Podcast, which just blows my mind that it's 2026 and I started this podcast in 2020. I had just been early in my sobriety from addiction to alcohol. I was in my early awakening, and I just wanted to share the profound shifts and changes that were happening in my own life on this way, this platform of us to do it together, because I've always felt like there's some important element of us being in community and being willing to share vulnerably, being willing to open our hearts, being willing to say, you know what, I'm not okay. And that I need to connect with others. I need to be able to share what's really going on with me. And that was what ended up happening in this particular podcast, where I started by talking on the voice memo on my phone and just uploading very raw episodes. And some people, I love that some people go all the way back to season one of the Recovery Soul Podcast 2020 and listen from the very beginning because you'll feel and see the evolution of my own process, of my own awakening, of my own healing, and my continued growth and awareness that isn't trying to fix something because there's nothing wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with us. We are not broken, but we get lost, we get in the storm, we get cloudy in our vision, we get overwhelmed and overburdened by the situations and the people in our lives and what's going on with them, and we we lose track of ourselves. And what I love about this spiritual journey and what I've discovered in Recover Your Soul that created the nine-step recover your soul process is it's never about rejecting any part of ourself. It's actually about coming more online with every aspect of ourselves, including some of our quirky, strange, maybe um shadowy parts that we've been hiding or trying to cover, or they're really places where we have fear, but we don't know what those feelings are, or even those memories that have created the situations that we are um protecting, right? The protections that we use. And this incredible gift that we've been given in our life to embody ourselves as who we are here in this lifetime, which, you know, sometimes even up till today, there's these moments where I get really heavy in being alive. It can be very painful and complicated to be in our skins. But our souls came here on purpose to have this experience. And we're here as our individual identities, but we're also part of the collective of the whole, that part of the spiritual awakening is understanding that we are actually not separate from the oneness of source. We have this belief that we're separate from. That's what the ego self does. But really, we're having this individual experience that is part of the whole. And when we begin to shift and have gratitude for this wild ride instead of being resistant to it, something begins to change and we start to open to our experience in a way that releases our resistance. And in releasing our resistance, we release our suffering. One of the things I wanted to talk about in this episode, there's so much that continues to come to and through me that I want to share with you. And I'm so grateful because, you know, over 550 episodes in, I'm still talking, still, still sharing, still have lots to share. And one of the things that I think is so impactful and important is that we're on this process that is quickening. Time is shifting and changing as we begin to awaken as a collective. What used to take, what they say is what used to take years, now can transform in months or weeks or even a couple days. I mean, if you look back into your life and you think even a month ago or a year ago, how you felt about yourself, what you knew, what you believed, what your perceptions were, and how much those are shifting and changing. And it's only becoming that much more. And we're becoming more and more aware of sort of this larger concepts around energy and spirituality and the astronomy and all of these ancient mystical teachings that existed for so, so, so, so, so long and then got kind of crammed into the box in our desire to try to figure it all out through science and through religion. And now we're breaking that open again and we're opening up to knowing that everything that you need is already within you. That we've been gathering all this information. We've been learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. And over the last couple of years, there's been this breaking open that it's time to not just gather the information, it's time to live from the principles. And in the living from the principles, we have more access to a greater knowledge that is this information that's been available forever for eons and the mystical ways of seeing things. And so one of the things I want to talk about today is this is a new year. We are in the first week of a new year. And we use these years as markers. You know, time really doesn't, it time doesn't care if it's January or December or March or June. But we as people that embody the earth, we use the cycles of the seasons to help us distinguish time, to watch ourselves grow, to know when to turn within, when to harvest, when to plant the seeds, when to, when to rise, when to get, you know, all those things when we're really attuned to ourselves as part of something even greater still, we are open to the subtle energies. And those subtle energies give us information. And so as we step into this year of 2026, we are stepping into a profound new space as a collective and as individuals. Most of you who have been with me for a while, you have been on this journey of really discovering and looking at those patterns, beliefs, and stories that are step three in the recovery soul process. What are the patterns, beliefs, and stories that our inner subconscious, that we got from our upbringing, that we got from society, the supposed to's, the who we're supposed to be, our roles that take care of everybody's. And we've brought them to the surface and been able to look at them in a way, and again, a very loving, compassionate way, where you're looking at yourself and you're saying, Oh, that's why I do that. Of course I do. Or, oh, that continues to show up in my life over and over and over again. And I don't like it. It doesn't feel good, but I keep, you know, banging up against this thing, and I'm ready to quit hitting my head against the wall in this continued situation. I'm ready to do something different. And that's actually been what the shift was in the collective as well. Last year was a nine in numerology, nine's completion, nine's endings. Nine is the, let me look at my little notes here. Nine was the letting go of what doesn't serve us, right? So nine was this part of us really seeing that we've we've gathered up the information that we need to be able to see it. You can't release it if you don't know what you're holding, right? You can't release and let go of something that you can't, that you don't know what it is. What is the burden? If you may feel burdened, but if you don't know what the burden is, you can't do anything about it. So nine was really this time of us coming into our own and beginning to really see what doesn't serve us. What are these patterns? What are these beliefs and what are these stories? And then we move into a one. One energetically is new cycles, it's our conscious creation, it's fresh identity, it's fresh ideas, it's opening up to new possibility. And one of the things that I love about spirituality is if you are in this present moment right here, right now, it's always new. And Eckhart Tolle so famously over 20 years ago, when he wrote The Power of Now, brought us as a society in the mainstream to think more about the concept that Buddhism has been teaching forever, which is this moment is the only moment that exists. We spend so much of our time in the past fretting over what happened, or feeling the pain of what happened, or being upset with what happened, or wishing it had been different. That's a huge one, right? A lot of regret in the past. And then we spend a lot of time trying to force the future, trying to figure it all out, trying to make it all line out perfectly. And in all of that, we miss this precious now moment. And in the now moment, there's always the opportunity to start again. That we can actually release and let go of whatever happened in the past, because it's only how we choose to interact with it, how we choose to see it. What we choose is our perception around anything that came before in how we deal with it right now. And the more that we become aware of that, the more we actually step into our own power and our recognition that the life that we live is the life that we choose to see. Now, it doesn't mean that there isn't crazy, hard, difficult, strange, complex, challenging things happening all around you, because there are. Here we are, these souls on purpose, having this wild experience. And for so long I was so resistant to that. I didn't want it to be complicated. I didn't want it to be hard. And the more that I pushed against it being like that, the harder and more complicated it got. And it got pretty hard and pretty complicated. And I think, you know, again and again, I think one of the reasons why I drank was because I just didn't know how to feel my feelings. I didn't like what my life was like. I didn't like how I felt in my skin. And drinking removed those, those discomforts for just a minute. It was a solution, and addiction is a beast, and alcohol is an addictive substance. And so then it becomes more than the psyche that's trying to be numb or hide, and it becomes an addiction that your body craves, and that's such a difficult spiral to be in. But there's this moment that we can always choose, whether we have an addiction to people or to alcohol or to TV or to checking out, that we can choose to check in and be in this present moment right here, right now. And as we move into this new year, we are asking ourselves, who am I going to choose to be from this new level of awareness that you've been working on? Who am I going to choose to be? What action steps am I going to take? If this is the opportunity for a new beginning in 2026, what does that look like? What does that look like? How can I show up in my life releasing what doesn't serve me? I just got back from three weeks in Costa Rica with my husband. And for the most part, it was a fabulous trip on so, so, so, so many levels. But there was a lot of inner work that happened for me on this trip. One of the things that happened when we showed up that was so interesting, so, so, so interesting, was I've been working so hard on loving myself and loving who I am in my body and loving my aging and knowing exactly who I am and feeling comfortable in my skin. Well, you feel that way until you gotta go be in a swimsuit around a bunch of 20 and 30-year-olds who are surfers and completely fit and in perfect shape. I was affronted almost immediately with an inner critic that was unkind, harsh, ugly, and very old, old, old, old systems within me that went all the way back to being a little girl and being uh sexualized really early in terms of um, oh my gosh, my dad like had playboys around when I was a little girl. And as a hippie child, uh, we used to go to hot springs and you know, I saw a lot of naked people at a very early age and um definitely sexually as an early, nothing ever happened to me, but I I think I knew and understood more than I probably should have at an early age. And part of what I got attention for was being really pretty and being um thin and all the the things that that we do to people, you know, when we see people, we we comment them on being beautiful children or, you know, whatever those things are. So that piece of me that I've been working on for my entire life that was that was anorexic in high school, that um has had body images in my marriage from the beginning. Uh if you've heard me tell the story about Rich and I very early on in our relationship in a therapy appointment with him saying that he was afraid I would get fat someday. And I don't even know where that came from, but it it hit me really hard. And to this day, he's like, that's not at all what I was trying to say. I was just trying to really be honest about, you know, what I preferred, and I didn't mean that like that. And I I believe that that's true, but it it hit a button in me that I had out for him to push. And so often that's what happens in relationships. So anyway, here we are in Costa Rica. I am just about to turn 56 years old. I do not exercise a bit. I am voluptuous, you know, like I am soft, I am overweight, I am, I'm exactly who I am. And and I am good with that here. But then you go in the tropics where you're not wearing very many clothes, and it just hit really hard. And the first two days, I witnessed myself, oh, it's gonna make me cry. Say things to myself that were so unkind. And I was so grateful for the recovery soul process because I could witness the part of me that had brought up all of this wounded. And all these expectations and all of this pain for, you know, 55 years. And what's really interesting is, you know, up until I had children, I I had one of those bodies that I was looking at on the beach. I've never been totally into fitness, so I didn't have the total fitness piece of it. But I also recognize that the choice that I've made in my life to not choose fitness or exercise as a regular part of my life is really what I was, what I was feeling. That all of the woundedness, I have access to the piece of me that has learned how to use these tools. It's learned through the recovery soul process how to look at those parts and to say, ooh, there's a younger person there that feels like I'm supposed to quote unquote look a certain way to be accepted or for my husband to love me, or, you know, whatever, whatever the things are. But what I really realized, if I was really honest, which I was in journaling and being present with myself and just really allowing myself to feel the feelings instead of trampling them down or being defensive or, you know, whatever my past experiences were, I let myself feel the feelings and then I asked myself deeper questions. What's really going on here? And on some level, I am sad and upset with myself for the choices that I've made for these years that have been in resistance to taking care of myself physically, because it's almost like that was that was a a protection that I had about wanting to be loved regardless of what my body looked like. And even being able to admit that or to say that out loud, that this is something that's coming up that I'm grappling with with myself was so interesting because it was the nine, it was the completion, it was these like this is the piece of me of what people think about me, my fear of judgment, my fear of being unloved, which is really the foundational underneath fear of everything, was coming up in such a big way. And Rich and I ended up having some pretty complex and difficult conversations those first two days because it was so up for me, I was feeling really edgy and I was feeling like he was judging me. But the truth was he wasn't. I was projecting his judgment, you know, like I was making assumptions that he was seeing all these women and wishing that I was something different. Like it was, it was crazy making, to be honest. But instead of keeping it to myself, or instead of hurting myself, or continuing to say the things that I was saying inside my own head in that painful place, I asked him questions and we ended up having conversations, including bringing up that comment that he made in therapy. And one of the big things that is a big theme for 2026 from that's been coming to me as well as other spiritual teachers that I listen to is this is the year of our truth. It's the year of our voice, it's the year of us in this year of the one, which is also a year of the horse, is the new one that's coming, which is like strength and power and um movement forward. It's us sharing our voice and our truth. But we're learning in spirituality that sharing your truth does not mean that you are forcing your view on anyone else. It means that you share what you think and what you feel and what's going on for you without needing approval or um or even acceptance or uh even them to believe or think what you're saying is real or true or agreeing with it. That's the word I'm looking for, agreeing with it. This year of the voice, this movement forward, this year of a one, this place that we're in, what was so amazing was that Rich and I were having this kind of intense conversation, and it went into what our relationship has been physically over our last, you know, 33, almost 34 years together, what our expectations had been, how I had felt about myself, how he had seen me, how I had wanted him to see me, what what he thinks. What I realized in that moment, and as things started to get kind of crunchy, I did something different than I'd never done before. Well, I've been working on doing with him, that I practiced more of, was instead of being defensive, I got really curious about his truth instead of me demanding my truth or have him see me, right? Because I could tell that he was feeling fearful in this conversation about speaking his truth. And we used to do, I'm just telling my truth in the way that we would kind of vomit all over each other with, well, here's what this is my truth, right? But that's not what it's about. It's really about sharing vulnerably. And in the end, the stuff that was old and constricted and crunchy on both of our sides was able to be revealed and healed and released. And it was almost instantaneous how my need to just share what was going on with me in a way that was different and healthy and open and kind and really um compassionate to everybody involved. And I was kind to myself. And I switched almost immediately how I felt in my skin. It was fascinating because it was almost like when I looked in the mirror from that painful place, I could only see ugly. And then as soon as I switched, I looked in the mirror and I could see my soul. I could see the truth of who I was in this body that I inhabit that is exactly who she is, right? I definitely prefer to be in full hair and makeup and clothes because I've always been that way. It feels better to me. So I feel especially exposed when you're someplace like in the tropics where you can't wear makeup because you'll just sweat it off. And um, you know, I didn't bring any hair products or a curler or anything. I totally should have, but I just, you know, kept my hair back in a bun the whole time or a ponytail. But that's not how I prefer to be, not because I'm trying to cover anything up, but because this is how I feel more comfortable in my skin. But as the weeks went by, I actually became very comfortable in my skin in this more natural way because it was the work I was doing on me. It was the work I was doing on me. And in that, I could feel this is the piece of the healing that we do within ourselves. The more comfortable I became with myself, the more I felt loved and comfortable with Rich. And he's just over there doing his own thing, you know, and he's got his own issues about aging and what his body does and, you know, all the things. But it was wild how, as we both were commenting, we've never, I mean, literally, I'm here, I've been on this planet a long time, been to a lot of places, been to Hawaii, been to California. I've never seen so many young, fit human beings, male and female, in my entire life as I did in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. I mean, every single man, every single woman, young, fit, beautiful surfboard underhand. I I've never seen so much gorgeous fitness. Well, you know, I'm a middle-aged woman. And I actually began to really shift and heal. And I could feel that it was a deep forever healing, not just a temporary healing, but it was like a final, it was the completion. It was a nine, it was the letting it go. Now, does that mean that it's totally gone? No, of course not. When we do this work, it doesn't mean that you never will have any of these beliefs or conditions come up. These are the things that we're working on this time in our bodies and our souls. But it lessens the energy every single time. And the honesty with myself and the honesty with my partner and my willingness to not be defensive, or my willingness to stay out of my pain self, the part of me that's present in my higher self, and the part of me that's present in my human self to witness and observe all of that and to come into full self-love, that was the most healing part of it. And when Rich and I were listening to Lee Harris's one of the spiritual teachers that I follow, and he had a solstice live solstice YouTube, and he was talking about the themes for the year, and he was saying, you know, what are you going to let go of? And Rich and I each said out loud what we were going to let go of. And I said, I really feel like I'm ready to let go of what I think people think about me, caring so much about what people think about me and my fear of rejection. And that really doesn't just include my friends or the public. It really includes my husband and it includes me. My fear of rejection of myself and my fear of what I think Rich thinks about me. Because ultimately we end up creating what we're afraid of. If we ask the universe to, you know, you get what you think, so be careful what you think. As the weeks went by and we got more and more comfortable and more and more relaxed. It was fascinating how those first like three days were pretty crunchy in a lot of different ways as you're sort of unraveling. And then the last, you know, two and a half weeks were just really smooth and beautiful because I was doing really deep spiritual work on myself and letting go of so much and just being in the moment, in the moment, in the moment. And then it was the coming home and the getting ready to come home again, where we kind of pick up, pick up our baggage again. We start to think about, you know, getting back into the world. It's so much easier, sort of when you're on vacation. But vacation is just an opportunity for us to see ourselves more fully or to be more present in our bodies or to relax and let go of some of the daily grind that we're in and to see it from a new perspective. As I close up this and we step into this new year, I really want you to think about how last year was the year of the snake. The snake is the shedding the skin. It's the letting go of what doesn't serve you, but the snake is shedding the skin to grow and move forward. That shedding is not a complete dissolution of who you are. It's the shedding that old and stepping into a fresh new. And then it happens again and again and again. And we're stepping into the year of the horse where we've got power, we've got strength, movement forward. Who are we going to be in this space? This process of being a soul in this human body is intended to be a little bit complicated and have a challenge. Suffering is part of it, but we get to choose how we're going to be in our skins and if we're going to take on this challenge in Earth School as a soul to learn and to grow and expand and awaken. And 2026 is going to be a big year for us individually and as a collective. I'm so excited to continue to move forward with this. And I'm creating some new programs that will open us up into community so that we can continue to grow as a community. We have the once-a-month free Recover Your Soul Support group on the first Monday of every month. And that's on Zoom, and you can register on the website. I'm starting the new Recover Your Soul Circles, which are going to be group coaching sessions. And there's different sessions for different categories, right? So if you're someone who has an adult child and you want to come into group and really learn and grow and use Recover Your Soul in group for others who have adult children that you're learning how to detach with love with, then there's a group for that. And then I have a group for people who have been on retreat with me or worked the steps with me or did an in-person workshop so that we can integrate and continue to work together. And then another group is going to be around people who have spouses or families who might be in addiction or you're dealing with how to lovingly detach from them and how to use Recover Your Soul. Because when we're in community, we learn from each other, we get strength from each other. We're not doing this alone. So you can find those groups in the Recover Your Soul website. They're right now in the coaching plans section and on the front page as well. I just am so excited for us to continue to come together in community because we are indeed doing this together. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul. Until next time, Namaste. Thank you so much for spending this time with me and being part of the Recover Your Soul community. If today's episode spoke to you and you'd like to connect with the community even more, I invite you to join us on the first Monday of every month for the free online support group on Zoom. It's from 6 to 7 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, where I share a little bit more on the Recovery Soul journey and then we break into small groups. You can register at recoveryoursoul.net, and if you've registered in the past, be on the lookout in your promotions folder for the reminder email and link. I'd also love to invite you to listen to the Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast every Friday, either as an Apple Podcast subscriber or as a Patreon member. On Patreon, you can become a free member and have access to new episodes for the first week, or you can support this community with the tier that you choose. You can also follow me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and join the private Facebook group for more connection with this amazing community. I hope you'll visit the website recoveryoul.net and you can sign up for emails so that you can be up to date with everything that's going on and maybe even join me for a retreat someday. Lastly, I thank you for sharing this podcast and community with anyone that you think might enjoy or learn from it. I also thank you for giving me five stars on any platform that you listen to and writing a review so that others can find the Recover Your Soul community too. Until next time, Namaste.