Depression and the Recover Your Soul Process: Finding Hope, Healing, and Self-CompassionDepression and the Recover Your Soul Process: Finding Hope, Healing, and Self-Compassion
Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life
Rev Rachel Harrison talks about her long history with depression, addiction and anxiety, sharing how medication, spiritual practice and self-compassion have shaped her Recover Your Soul process. She reflects on depression as both a protective state and an invitation to deeper healing, emphasising hope, choice and gentle honesty with oneself.
27:51•25 May 2026
Depression, Soul Work and Sobriety: Rev Rachel on Finding Hope in the Dark
Episode Overview
- Depression is framed as a complex mix of chemistry, emotions, stories and spiritual experience, not simply sadness.
- Medication can provide a vital lift to stabilise brain chemistry so deeper emotional and spiritual work becomes possible.
- Self-compassion, honesty and acceptance of all feelings are central to the Recover Your Soul process.
- Step one of Recover Your Soul focuses on awareness and the belief that change is possible, even from a very dark place.
- Choosing not to define yourself permanently as “sick” or “broken” opens space for wellness, while still honouring current struggles.
“You are here, and you get this lifetime as this person. It hurts, but you’re here to do work on yourself, to be part of this, to be present.”
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery? This conversation shines a light on one of the toughest ones: depression. Rev Rachel Harrison shares how depression, anxiety, alcoholism and control addiction showed up in her own life, and how the Recover Your Soul process helped her shift from “game over” thinking to a gentler, more hopeful relationship with herself.
Speaking frankly and with plenty of humour and honesty, Rachel makes it clear she isn’t a medical professional and stresses the importance of discernment and professional support where needed. She talks about years of antidepressants, saying medication “can go in and reset or elevate those chemicals so that you can lift up enough to be able to look around,” while also reminding you that chemistry alone doesn’t heal old stories, grief or self-judgement.
You’ll hear vivid stories from her “she shed” art studio, using alcohol to escape family chaos, and that moment of raw honesty where she thought, “I just want the pain to go away,” only to hear an inner voice gently remind her, “you are here… you get this lifetime as this person.” From there, she connects depression with spiritual themes of protection, old beliefs, and the brain’s attempts to keep us safe—sometimes by pulling us into darkness.
Rachel walks through step one of Recover Your Soul, “the moment of awareness ready for awakening”, and how choosing self-compassion, boundaries and a higher power of your own understanding can slowly ease the heaviness. She also highlights that loving someone in their darkness doesn’t mean taking their darkness on as your own.
If you’re feeling weighed down, questioning medication, or simply wanting a kinder way to relate to your own mind, this gentle, honest conversation might give you that tiny “sliver” of hope she keeps pointing to. Could this be the nudge that helps you start treating yourself with the same compassion you offer everyone else?
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