What If You Are Not Here To Fix Anyone: Listening from the Heart Soul PracticeWhat If You Are Not Here To Fix Anyone: Listening from the Heart Soul Practice
Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life
Rev. Rachel Harrison reflects on listening as a soul practice for recovering people pleasers and codependents. She shares real-life examples of learning to hold space without fixing, offering a gentler way to relate to others and to yourself.
18:55•2 Nov 2026
What If You Don’t Have to Fix Anyone? The Soul Practice of Heartfelt Listening
Episode Overview
- Listening from the heart means releasing the need to fix, solve or soothe while someone is still speaking.
- Holding space involves offering non-judgemental presence without pushing for a specific outcome.
- Simple agreements like stating you’re not looking for a solution can prevent others from stepping into fixing mode.
- Quiet, attentive listening often creates deeper safety and vulnerability than rapid-fire advice or reassurance.
- Turning the same listening practice inward can help you hear intuition and reduce anxiety driven by constant mental chatter.
“What if you can just listen? What if you don't have to fix it?”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This bonus episode from **Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life** focuses on one deceptively simple practice: listening from the heart. Rev. Rachel Harrison, sharing from her own recovery from alcoholism, codependency, people pleasing and control addiction, talks about how easy it is to slip into fixing mode while someone’s still speaking.
As she puts it, many recovering people pleasers "have some belief that we are responsible for how people feel" and end up planning solutions rather than truly hearing the person in front of them. Across the episode, Rachel unpacks what it means to "hold space" without judgement or agenda. For her, this means opening an energetic space where you’re not pushing for a particular outcome, even when someone you love is struggling with mental health or addiction.
She admits this isn’t easy, especially when painful situations trigger the urge to soothe, advise, or correct. Rachel shares honest examples from her own life, including feedback that she "talks a lot" and tends to jump in when something resonates. These moments push her to ask: am I actually listening, or just waiting for my turn to speak?
She reflects on small group interactions, her relationship with her partner Rich, and how simple phrases like "are you complete?" or "I’m not looking for a solution" can shift conversations into safer, more connected territory. The episode also turns inward, asking whether you give yourself the same quiet, spacious listening you offer others. Instead of spinning in drama, stories and constant "fix-it" thinking, Rachel invites you to listen to intuition, heart, and soul — sometimes through pure silence.
If you’ve ever felt crushed by the pressure to fix everyone around you, this heart-centred practice might be a relief. What would change if your main job wasn’t to solve, but simply to listen?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.