Choosing Your Reality: Codependency, Spiritual Awakening, and Aligning With Who You Are Becoming

What if the life you are experiencing is shaped by the thoughts you think, the beliefs you hold, and the patterns you continue to repeat?

In this episode of Recover Your Soul, Rev Rachel explores how codependency, people-pleasing, fear, and the need to control others can keep us stuck in painful cycles—and how spiritual awakening begins when we turn inward.

Healing starts when we stop waiting for others to change and begin asking: Who am I becoming?

This episode is an invitation to release old survival patterns, reconnect with your true self, and choose a new reality rooted in peace, authenticity, and love.

In This Episode:

•  How codependency shapes your reality 
•  Letting go of control and people-pleasing 
•  Spiritual awakening as a shift in perception 
•  Releasing old beliefs and identities 
•  Aligning with your authentic self 
•  Creating a life rooted in peace 

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.

Transcript

Choosing Who You’re Becoming

Step Seven And New Perception

The Great Awakening And Sovereignty

Pain Body And The Hero’s Lens

Retreat Breakthroughs And Letting Go

Choosing Reality In Hard Moments

Outgrowing Friends And Old Patterns

Called Out In Group Share

Sharing Versus Processing Epiphany

Acceptance And Closing Invitation

Rev Rachel Harrison 0:28

Today we're talking about aligning with who we are becoming. Letting go of codependency and people-pleasing behaviors often means that we have to set aside ways that we have been that no longer fit. They no longer serve us. And when we step into a new way of seeing and we align with our new perception and our thought, actions, and even how we feel, things will begin to shift and change in our lives. Does that mean that it'll be perfect? Absolutely not. Does it mean that everybody around us is going to be on board? No, they won't. But we are becoming more and more clear all the time that we can no longer abandon ourselves and that we must and will choose who we are becoming because that's who we are here to be. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover Your Soul podcasting 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 recover your 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 the Recover Your Soul Podcast. It's Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for being with me here today. Today I want to talk about aligning with a new perception. It's step seven of the Recover Your Soul nine-step process to healing and awakening. And I've spent a lot of time in a lot of the other episodes talking about the earlier steps, the steps where we're really figuring out, we're really looking at our patterns, beliefs, and stories. We're learning how to let go of control. We're connecting to a higher power. We've let go of the patterns and beliefs and stories that don't work for us anymore. We've stepped into a new self. And now we're at step seven, which is aligning with a new perception. And I want to talk about this for a couple different reasons. And before I start, I'm going to just read the step so that it will make sense, is what I'm talking about. Step seven in Recover Your Soul says align with a new perception. Shift your perception. And I'm using the word perception very, very carefully. So really think of perception versus perspective. Think about perception. Align with a new, healthier perception of yourself and the world around you. Choose your reality. Consciously shape your experience by aligning thought, word, and action with your awakened perception and your higher self. So I want to talk about this for a couple different reasons. One is I had a bonus podcast recently that talked about an experience that I had that gave me some insight around the difference between processing and sharing. And I'm going to bring that into this conversation. But I also want to talk about this because there's something happening that's bigger than just us doing this work here. I really can feel the great awakening starting to shift how people are showing up. And there's this big call right now that is happening with a lot of spiritual teachers that I listen to that's getting similar messages to what I receive that's around this massive shift from our old people-pleasing self-abandonment, not having a voice, um, looking at everything kind of from this life is happening to me. I don't have any control over all of this, not having sovereignty over yourself, and really kind of being stuck in the mire of the complexity of the world. And we're moving into a new perception. The great awakening is a raising of our consciousness. And it doesn't mean that we're not here because we are definitely here. There is stuff going on. Just turn on the news, just walk outside your front door, just talk to a family member or a friend, and you will for sure see that there is difficult and complicated things happening. And I never want to dismiss that that's what's happening. But when we align with a new perception, when we have done this big work that we've been doing in the recovery soul process and in your soul's hero's journey, which is just a natural evolution. I'm not the one that came up with the evolution. The evolution is. I just have a terminology that works for me based on the process that I have been doing in my own life for the last eight years in particular. We're moving from a way of seeing that is kind of this low vibration, this dense energy that that gets really caught up in everybody else's stuff. It's a pain body. And I love how Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body. If you've never heard of the concept of pain body, do a search on Eckhart Tolle, the pain body. And he describes this, it's almost like a hungry ghost. When we are in those places where we are so um caught up in the pain and the victimness, we actually can lose the ability to have the sight that we need for our healing to be able to see it from this other vantage point, from this other lens, from a new perception that understands that every single thing that you've experienced, every single thing, every hardship, every difficult conversation, every time that you felt like life wasn't being fair to you, there is something for you to learn in those experiences if you look at them from a hero's journey. And it doesn't mean that what is happening doesn't hurt because feelings are one of the most essential pieces of our experience to be able to learn. And I'm not talking about psychology when I'm talking about recover your soul. I'm talking about souls, I'm talking about a larger capacity to see your experience here from an even bigger vantage point that says, what if, what if I came here on purpose, into this experience, on purpose to forget and then to remember that I'm not separate from, but one with all that is, and that everything that we do is part of this wild ride of earth school. What about that? What if that's possible? If that's too far out for you, just step in just a little bit and say, what if in my lifetime, what if in this experience that I'm having, there is more to see. There is a different way to be in it. And what I think is so beautiful about the work that we're doing is it's never about doing a spiritual bypass that says, you know, these horrible, difficult things happened. But the people that were in my life that that harmed me, they were just doing the best that they could. That is true. But it's dismissing the experience that you had that was very visceral and very real and created a way that you see it and feel it in your body. This past weekend, I had one of my retreats. I have a couple of retreats every year. I have three in Colorado this year. So I just had my April retreat. Unbelievable, powerful work happened with the women that came to my retreat. I mean, unbelievable shifts in their perception. Being able to see and then leave these very painful, very difficult systems that had been created to protect them out of legitimate, very difficult, painful wounded experiences in their childhood. And we continue to have those experiences into our marriages and raising our kids and being in the world. And then at some point, you have step one of recover your soul. You have a moment of awakening where you say, What if I could be different in my own body? What if I could be different in my own experience? What if I could see this in a different way? What if I could change something within myself? What if my operating system doesn't line up to who I am? Is there something I can do different? And the answer is yes. You get to stop letting the world dictate for you who you're going to be, and you start to decide for yourself who you're going to embody in your soul's journey. And that's a powerful moment. So these women went through such powerful, powerful experiences. I mean, so much can happen in the two days that we're together. I'm always just amazed and blown away by the work that they do. But a huge piece of it is about releasing and letting go and then being willing and ready to actually walk out into the world from this new way of being. And being in a new way of being sometimes is not what everybody around you wants you to be. They're used to you being who you've been. But there's more and more information coming in that says until we can heal and release and let go who we've been, the expectations of who we're supposed to be, we cannot move forward into who we are becoming. And we are being drawn to who we are becoming in the Great Awakening. We are being drawn as a collective to say, this people pleasing, this codependent behaviors, this everybody else's needs come before mine, not working anymore for anybody because it's actually keeps everybody down. We think that we're supposed to be there for them, but the more that we're there for them, them, them, them, them, the less they're there for themselves and the less that we're here for ourselves. So I think it's really interesting that we're in this time right now where everything is crumbling. Everything's crumbling. If you shift that just a little bit and you witness what's happening, and yes, there are very complicated things happening in people's lives financially, emotionally, physically, yes, they are happening. I never want to say that they're not happening. But if we step into a hero's journey and we start to recognize that if we keep coming from the way that it was, we're just repeating those unhealthy systems and patterns of what it was. And I can't get over how, just in my lifetime, in the 56 years I've been here on this planet, how much has changed in what was acceptable in terms of how people talk to each other, how men treated and talked to women, what women's rights were, um, you know, gay marriages and the rights of people. It has been such a huge shift in such a short period of time. And it keeps kind of muddling around and sliding back and coming forward and sliding back and coming forward because breaking patterns is not easy. Living in a new perception is not easy. You can let go of those living beliefs and stories to the first level of them, but they're in there deep. They're in there deep. And then we are given opportunity, if you see it as opportunity, to be in our lives and to be in the world and to have these experiences where you get to bump up against it again, to heal at a deeper level, to see it on another level, to understand yourself, to love yourself, to have compassion for how easy it is to fall back into those patterns again. And that's what this step is all about. It's about really aligning with the new perception, with yourself and the world around you, choosing your reality. Now, for a lot of people, they're like, I'm not choosing my reality. It's happening, it's happening around me. I have no choice around that. In spirituality, what we're saying is that you do. You have more choice and more capacity to decide than you give yourself credit for. Because everything is as you choose to see it and how you choose to be in it in each moment of your experience. And you see situations where one person can have the exact same life-altering experience, and the other person has the exact same one: car accident, loss of a of a job, loss of a relationship. For one person, it just spirals them down into the depths of depression. And what happens in the reality that they create, they see more and more and more of what doesn't work for them, how bad it is, how life isn't fair to them, because they are they are resonating with and choosing to continue to see, see, see, see, see those things. When you align with a new perception, you're aligning and stepping into your most authentic whole self that has the capacity to be with and deal with difficult things, to create completely anew, to step completely fully into a broader space within yourself and within the world around you to see the unlimited potential, which isn't about that old ego, unlimited potential of a million dollars and the perfect relationship. It's about the unlimited potential that you have to experience your life fully, deeply, and completely in all of its complexity, which includes heartbreak, which includes joy, which includes loss. It includes all of it. But we become more and more clear about how we want to walk in our world, which is why this particular step is being aligned thought, word, and action in your awakened perception and your higher self. I did an episode uh on the bonus podcast that I one of my long-term listeners um was so great. She messaged me and she said, Ooh, one of your best. So I might have to put that on as an extra on the main podcast. It was a situation that I had in a women's group recently. And I've been in this women's group for a couple of years, and it is um a beautiful circle of women. I have been cultivating relationships that are more aligned to my higher perception of myself. And I'm still learning because we continue to grow. Many of you share with me that it is hard when you start to wake up because you're still around a lot of people that aren't awake yet. And there is this um in-between space that gets very complicated, where you still have a lot of the friends that are part of the old perception. And then you are trying to draw to you the friends that are more aligned with who you are becoming. And I often say that the number one thing that I want us to be doing with ourselves is to be our own best friend, to love ourselves so much that we have clarity of where we want to spend our energy and our time, and to be able to be in some of those situations that were complicated and hard in the past, and to not need or want from them in the way that we used to. So you can just watch them. I was saying to someone the other day, in those situations, almost like you're pretending like you're watching a Netflix show. So instead of feeling like you have to be a character in it and you have to participate, just watch it, just be an observer, just be a witness and have curiosity of their experiences, but you quit needing the reflection and maybe the energy exchange that you used to have with them. And you just offer compassion and love and you have more and more clarity about what works for you and what doesn't. And some of those relationships fall away. So I had um gathered into this women's group because one of my really good friends runs it. And just being around her makes me happy. So I just want to be around her. I had this experience where I was really nervous about the book coming out, and it was hitting a bunch of my beliefs. And again, we're doing this work. It's not like the beliefs completely fall away, they just become less and less potent. So I still have a fear of rejection. It's one of my main fears is a fear of rejection and a fear of getting in trouble. And so I ended up going first in this group, which is the group switches in size. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small. And this time I was around six women. And I went first and I told a story that was a very appropriate story to tell. And it started something in me that started a process within me of working through something that had been really big deal in my life. And if you've read the book, um, you'll know what a big deal it was. But my husband went for three years for most of the time and built a house for my mother two hours away from me when I had little babies and toddlers. And so he'd come home on the weekends. But basically, for three years, he wasn't around and I felt very abandoned. And so I was sharing this story, but it became a processing moment and I slipped into my pain body, which is why I wanted to mention the power of the pain body, because sometimes we forget to align with our new perception. And that's okay. Because there are moments when you're gonna wake up and there's moments you're gonna fall asleep. There's moments where you're gonna be in your higher perception and moments where you really need to be in the pain. And I slipped into the pain body and I ended up going too long on my share. And I got called out for it in a pretty intense way by one of the women. This moment, which would have like really broken me in the past, had this profound effect on me. And one of the most important effects that it had upon me was I no longer want to tell that story like that anymore. I don't know why I slid so far down into the pain body of riches alcoholism and all the hardship and being alone and being left. I just I became a victim. And as much as it hurt to have this woman call me out, and she could have done it nicer, but sometimes nice doesn't work, right? It shook something in me. It shook me that this is not in alignment with who I want to be and how I want to walk. That you can tell the stories in your life, you can feel the feelings in your life, but there was an old victim energy that I had fallen into that did not align with the reality in which I want to choose to be in. And it was incredibly powerful and profound. And I think it happened on purpose at that moment, as the book was coming out, to shake me into remembering that it is my responsibility, mine, to live from my higher perception of self. And so I went home and I'm so grateful for the recover your soul process because instead of being pissed at myself or blaming them or going into a whole spiral, I got out my journal. I always tell you, bring out that journal. I took out the journal and I started talking to my higher self and I started asking questions. And what I got out of it was something that was brand new, brand new. And it was there's a difference between sharing and processing. I don't think I ever really grasped this concept in the way that it came out of this experience. It turns out, if I reflect upon myself, you all are my friends. We've been doing this podcast and listening to this podcast for a while. I'm a processor. I am a processor. And all of a sudden, I had this flash of insight as to why there's been this bump in a lot of the relationships that I've had. And so that is part of in the other episodes. So I'm gonna leave some of that for that to um to listen to on the bonus podcast, or I'll put it on the main one as an extra. I had an awareness within myself that healed 56 years from this woman calling me out in an aggressive way. And this is aligning with the new perception that instead of falling apart, you have a moment that could have been like just gut wrenching. And the strength of us to stand in our higher self and to ask how can I understand more about myself from this? What was going on? Because there are Places that we can share, and there are places where we can process, and there are places where we need to be quiet. I had such an epiphany around that as the first thing, and the main thing was I cannot tolerate to not be in my highest alignment most of the time. And I want to be that person. Does it mean that there aren't things to process, that there aren't wounds that happen, there are that I won't go in and have interactions with my husband or my kids or my friends that are painful? Of course, it doesn't mean that. And it actually means that I can be in those experiences even more deeply from this authentic, vulnerable place. What I could see is that I had I had misread this group. This was a sharing group. This was a you got five minutes share something. For years I had been misreading it. And isn't that interesting? Because I was so wanting of connection with like-minded people that I had been a little bit blind to what I was presenting as and doing in that environment. And I had such a uh a capacity to um see without judgment of anybody in it, including myself, including them. Is it the right group for me? No, it's not the right group for me. Yay! That's the new perception, too. That's aligning with your new perception, is having clarity about where you need to be, what feels good to you. Where do you watch like it's a movie? Where do you step out and you don't come back again? We can no longer abandon ourselves. We are in a time where everything is shifting. And as everything crumbles around us, what feels like a heavy crumble, what if we change it and we and we take responsibility for the reality in which we all want to be. If you're here, if you're listening to this episode, if you've been on the podcast with me for a while, you walked in because of somebody else's difficulties. You walked in because of Al-Anon. You walked in because you've got someone in your life who's struggling, you walked in because you have kids in your life who are struggling, you're married to someone who's struggling, you're struggling. You walked in because this is the human experience. And what did you find? You found your soul. You found this essence of who you are and who you are here to be. And that you can step onto a spiritual path, a spiritual journey, a way of being that allows all of that acceptance is our theme this year. Acceptance is a path to peace. Means that you can be in all these situations, and there's a holding, a capacity to be with all of it and not have to fix it, not have to change it, but to choose how you're going to see it, to choose the reality in which you experience. I am so grateful that we are in this time. And if you go all the way into the super woo, it's planetary alignments, it's the energies that are coming. The sun is going nuts right now with all these solar flares and all this energy. People are channeling all kinds of amazing messages. It's more and more and more and more. You can go as far out there as you want to go. You don't have to go far out to get the benefit of being in your body in a more safe and healed and whole way. Because this moment, this experience, this where you are right now, this is the number one place to be. And in that, you can choose to live in alignment with your wholeness, with your authenticity, with your incredible beauty. And you can release and let go of all the sticky old systems that no longer fit. And that's the beauty of this work. We are here to process with each other. That's what recover your soul is. You are safe to process here. And that's what I want us to do in our groups. That's what I want people to do in the workshops that I offer. I want you to be processing you do the steps. You are safe to process here. And I'm safe to process here. Align with a new perception, perception to see from a higher lens, from your higher self. Until next time, namaste. If something that you just heard resonated with you, I want you to know there's a whole community waiting for you. The recover your soul process is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life, and there's many ways to walk it together. Start with the free mini workbook at recoveryoursoul.net. It's a beautiful first step. You can join us for the free monthly support group on the first Monday of every month. And if you're ready to go deeper and work the nine steps, you can join the self-study collective or a soul circle or come to one of our in-person retreats or workshops. And if you want to work with me personally one-on-one, coaching is available. You can also find bonus episodes every Friday on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, and I'm on YouTube with new videos that are posted weekly. And grab your copy of the new Recover Your Soul Spiritual Memoir. It is a spiritual journey of healing from addiction, codependency, and people pleasing available on Amazon, and it's our journey of healing through this process. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all of it is recover your soul. Just remember you're not alone in this. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.