Podcasts about codependence

What does it mean to be spiritually awake? I don't believe it means that life suddenly becomes easy or that we stop having painful, complicated, very human experiences. Life is still going to be lifey. For me, awakening is becoming more aware of what is happening inside of me and remembering that I have a choice in how I experience what is happening around me.In this episode, I share a very real situation with my son that gave me an opportunity to practice the Recover Your Soul Process right in the middle of something scary and emotional. Rather than simply talking about the nine steps, I walk through them as I was actually experiencing this situation. What was I feeling? What was I trying to control? What was underneath my reaction? And how could I choose to see it differently?This is what Recover Your Soul has become for me. Not fixing ourselves or getting to a place where nothing ever hurts, but becoming aware of our patterns, beliefs, and stories and learning that we can choose again.In this episode, we explore:• What spiritual awakening looks like in everyday life • Working the Recover Your Soul 9-Step Process through a real-life experience • Releasing control and changing our perception • Recognizing old patterns when they show up • Moving from reaction into awareness and choice • Finding peace without needing everything around us to be peacefulIf you've found Recover Your Soul through Al-Anon, codependency, addiction, people pleasing, or the struggle to let go of control, I hope this conversation gives you a glimpse of where the work can take us.I'm still learning and practicing this right alongside you. Sometimes the moments we never would have chosen become the moments that show us how much we've changed.Take what you need and leave the rest.I'm so grateful you're here.Namaste, Rev. Rachel

In this episode of Acta Non Verba, Marcus Aurelius Anderson talks with Stefanos Sifandos, an author and transformational advisor. They discuss closing the gap between outer success and inner freedom. Stefanos shares his own journey through childhood bullying, addiction, and self-worth struggles. He explains how self-forgiveness, radical honesty, and genuine relational connection create lasting transformation. The conversation also covers fatherhood, marriage, control, resilience, and living in one's truth. Episode Highlights: 0:55 Marcus introduces Stefanos Sifandos and his 25 years working with Olympians, CEOs, and top performers. 10:06 Stefanos explains that self-forgiveness comes from being met with compassion and non-judgment. 22:12 They discuss truth-telling as a remedy for disconnection in relationships. 38:06 Stefanos opens up about the profound love he feels as a father. Stefanos Sifandos is an author and transformational advisor. He has spent 25 years working with Olympians, world champions, CEOs, and leaders at the top of their fields. His work focuses on closing the gap between outer success and inner freedom. He uses behavioral science, trauma resolution, and spiritual truth to guide his clients. His new book, Tuned In and Turned On, is available now at tunedinandturnedonbook.com. Learn more about the gift of Adversity and my mission to help my fellow humans create a better world by heading to www.marcusaureliusanderson.com. There you can take action by joining my ANV inner circle to get exclusive content and information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

White Oak Baptist Church of Stratford, CT is a loving, Christ-centered Church engaging our community in a powerful way. To learn more about our church and how you can connect, please visit http://www.whiteoakbc.org

EMOTIONALLY DRUNK ON YOU A Deeper Investigation Into Whether Insecure Attachment and Codependence Turn Love Into an Emotional Substance We Use to Escape Ourselves With Special Guest Dr. Allen Berger SYNOPSIS A lover can enter your bloodstream without ever touching your body. One text settles the panic. One unanswered call restarts it. A warm tone restores your worth. A distant look sends your identity into free fall. No chemical entered the system, yet the entire internal climate changed. What, then, have you been consuming? Human beings rarely describe romantic attachment as intoxication. Culture gives it prettier names. Passion. Loyalty. Devotion. Chemistry. Ride-or-die love. Yet beneath some of these celebrated experiences lives a dangerous emotional arrangement: another person has become responsible for producing the inner condition you cannot yet produce, tolerate, or sustain for yourself. Their attention becomes medicine. Their approval becomes evidence that you matter. Their availability becomes protection against abandonment. Their need for you becomes proof that you deserve to exist. Their obedience becomes peace. Once love carries this burden, relationship stops functioning as an encounter between two free human beings. It becomes a private emotional economy in which one person must keep paying so the other person does not collapse. Attachment theory helps explain how early bonds can shape the adult nervous system's expectations of closeness, separation, safety, and loss. Codependence adds another layer. A person may manage, rescue, fix, please, monitor, sacrifice, or overfunction in order to maintain access to emotional security. The behavior can look loving from the outside while fear quietly writes the contract. The anxious partner may call control “connection.” The avoidant partner may call emotional disappearance “freedom.” The rescuer may call indispensability “service.” The self-erasing partner may call surrender “commitment.” Every strategy attempts to solve the same unbearable problem: how can I keep another person from awakening feelings I do not know how to live with? Dr. Allen Berger's concept of emotional sobriety attacks this arrangement at its foundation. His work challenges the hidden belief that personal peace depends upon people, places, and circumstances behaving according to our private rules. “I am okay if you call.” “I am okay if you stay.” “I am okay if you understand.” “I am okay if you choose me.” These conditions turn another person's freedom into a threat. Could emotional sobriety begin when “I am okay if” finally loses authority? This does not require emotional coldness, radical isolation, or the fantasy that mature adults need nobody. Human beings require connection. The deeper question concerns governance. Who governs your inner life when someone disappoints you? Who controls your identity when affection gets withdrawn? Who becomes responsible for calming the fear that existed before the relationship began? Clinical maturity may involve learning to experience jealousy without surveillance, loneliness without self-erasure, uncertainty without interrogation, disappointment without retaliation, and grief without turning loss into proof of personal worthlessness. Philosophically, emotional sobriety confronts our understanding of love itself. Can love remain love when it demands psychological captivity? Can intimacy survive without control? Can commitment retain meaning when fear serves as the lock? A partner who cannot leave has not necessarily chosen you. A partner who must constantly regulate you has little room left to meet you. Culturally, many communities teach people to endure emotional dependence as evidence of loyalty. Men may learn to hide dependency behind authority, possession, silence, or rage. Women may receive praise for transforming self-neglect into service. Family systems can reward the person who carries everyone while quietly punishing the same person for developing a self. Under these conditions, codependence can wear the clothing of morality. Metaphysically, the topic reaches even further. What happens when consciousness seeks completion through possession? Can another person ever provide permanent shelter from an interior world you refuse to inhabit? Perhaps every attempt to make someone else the source of your emotional stability places sacred responsibility in human hands that cannot carry it. Tonight's investigation enters the space between love and dependency, support and self-abandonment, care and control, attachment and intoxication. Are you loving your partner? Or are you drinking them? And when the emotional supply runs low, who do you become?

Have you ever noticed that it's easier to give love than to receive it?As recovering people pleasers and codependents, many of us learned to care for everyone else first. We became experts at giving our time, our energy, our love, and our attention, but when it comes to receiving those same gifts, we often hesitate.Why?In this episode, I share a very personal story about buying a new car and how something that seemed so ordinary uncovered a much deeper invitation to healing. What surfaced wasn't really about the car at all. It was about an old belief that had quietly followed me through much of my life—that other people deserved more than I did.As I became curious about those feelings, I realized that learning to receive has been one of the greatest spiritual lessons of my own Soul Recovery journey.Healing isn't about getting more.It's about releasing the beliefs, patterns, and stories that tell us we aren't enough.When we begin to receive the same love, compassion, and kindness that we so freely offer everyone else, we open ourselves to a life rooted in abundance instead of lack, trust instead of fear, and wholeness instead of striving.If you've ever struggled to believe you deserve love, support, joy, or simply something beautiful for yourself, I hope this conversation reminds you that you have never needed to earn your worth.You already are enough.A New Weekly RhythmBeginning July 2026, you'll receive a new episode every Monday between the 2 Recover Your Soul Podcasts.One week you'll hear a full Recover Your Soul Podcast episode, and the next week you'll receive a Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast, where I share spiritual tools, practices, guided meditations, and inspiring interviews to support you on your healing journey.Thank you for being part of this beautiful community. Whether you're just beginning your healing journey or you've been walking this path with me for years, I'm honored that we're recovering our souls together.Until next time… Namaste.

A New Rhythm for Recover Your SoulAfter over six years of sharing two new podcast episodes every week, Recover Your Soul is beginning a new weekly rhythm.Going forward, you'll still receive a new Recover Your Soul episode every Monday—alternating each week between the main Recover Your Soul Podcast and the Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast.Here's how it works:

Join the 9-Step Recover Your Soul CollectiveEvery once in a while, I revisit a Bonus Podcast episode that feels especially relevant to where we are on our soul journey, and this is one of those conversations.A longtime listener recently reached out to tell me this was one of the most impactful episodes I've shared. As I listened to it again, I realized how beautifully it connects with so many of the conversations we've been having lately about authenticity, healthy boundaries, self-awareness, and choosing peace over old protective patterns.One of the greatest gifts of healing is learning to be authentic. To be vulnerable. To speak our truth.But authenticity doesn't mean sharing everything with everyone.There is a profound difference between processing and sharing, and understanding that difference can transform our relationships, our healing, and the way we connect with others.In this deeply personal episode, I share an experience where I found myself processing a painful story in a space that wasn't meant to hold that level of healing work. What felt embarrassing and uncomfortable at the time became a powerful gift on my own Soul Recovery journey.I realized that sometimes our deepest healing doesn't happen by telling our story over and over. Sometimes it happens by finding the right container to process it, allowing ourselves to move through it with compassion, fully release it, and then sharing the wisdom that remains.Healthy boundaries aren't only about saying "no."They're also about honoring ourselves enough to know what belongs in a safe healing space and what belongs in everyday conversation.As we recover our souls, we begin to recognize that authenticity and discernment can exist together. We don't have to choose between being real and protecting our peace. We can honor both.In This Episode:

Letting Go of Being Right: How to Take Your Power Back and Choose Inner PeaceAs recovering people pleasers and codependents, many of us learned that if we could just explain ourselves better, convince someone of our point of view, or get them to see things our way, everything would finally feel okay.The problem is that living this way keeps us on an emotional battlefield.We become exhausted trying to manage, control, fix, defend, and prove. We fight for approval. We fight to be understood. We fight to be right. And underneath all of that fighting is often something much more tender: a desire to feel safe, valued, heard, and enough.In this episode, I share a very personal story from my own marriage that reminded me how quickly old patterns can surface, even after years of healing. What started as an innocent comment from my husband unexpectedly activated a deep fear inside me, creating an opportunity to witness an old protective system that still occasionally shows up.The beautiful thing about this work is that awareness changes everything.As we heal, we begin to recognize that letting go of being right does not mean giving up our voice. It doesn't mean abandoning our needs, our boundaries, or our truth. Instead, it means releasing the belief that our peace depends on someone else agreeing with us.When we stop fighting every battle, we discover something powerful: we can stand in our truth without needing to control anyone else's.When we release the need to prove, convince, defend, and manage, we create space for something much deeper: compassion, connection, and inner freedom.Your voice matters.Your feelings matter.Your perspective matters.And you don't need anyone else's permission for that to be true.Until next time, namaste.

Have you ever looked back on a season of your life and wished it had been different?Maybe you wish you had known then what you know now. Maybe you wish you had made different choices, shown up differently, or been able to protect the people you love from pain. Perhaps there are memories that still carry regret, remorse, sadness, or a lingering sense that things should have gone another way.In this episode, I share a deeply personal experience that arose as I prepared to send family photo albums and keepsakes to my sons. Looking through pictures from years gone by brought forward an unexpected wave of emotion and a question many of us have asked ourselves:Why did it have to be so hard?As I sat with those feelings, I was reminded that healing isn't about pretending the past didn't happen. It's not about bypassing the pain or convincing ourselves that everything was perfect. Healing is about learning how to hold our memories with compassion, tenderness, and grace.When we continue to replay our past through the lens of judgment, regret, and self-blame, we keep old wounds alive. But when we bring awareness, self-compassion, and spiritual understanding to those experiences, something begins to shift. The past remains the same, but our relationship to it can heal.In this episode, we explore how to honor our feelings without becoming trapped in them, how to release old judgments, and how to view our lives through the lens of a soul's journey rather than a story of mistakes and failures.Because the truth is, you cannot change the past.But you can heal the way you carry it.Send a one way text to Rev Rachel

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3041: Dr. Margaret Rutherford explores how the meaning of codependence has evolved from enabling addiction to losing yourself in a relationship, while also explaining why healthy interdependence is something to value rather than fear. She offers a balanced perspective on trust, boundaries, and mutual support, showing how strong relationships help both people grow instead of holding each other back. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://drmargaretrutherford.com/what-is-healthy-dependence-in-a-relationship/ Quotes to ponder: “Interdependence builds trust.” “Don't be afraid of depending on someone, if it's the right someone.” “Interdependence doesn't mean you lose yourself, or become less of a strong individual. It means life isn't quite so hard, because you've got a partner.” Episode references: Codependent No More: https://www.amazon.com/Codependent-No-More-Controlling-Yourself/dp/1954118155 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While I usually reserve guest interviews for the Recover Your Soul Bonus Podcast, today's conversation is one I felt called to bring to all of you here on the main show.I'm honored to welcome Michael Mirdad, a Spiritual Teacher, Healer, Mystic, and Best-Selling Author. Michael has spent more than four decades helping people heal, awaken, and deepen their connection to God, blending wisdom from Christianity, Buddhism, A Course in Miracles, and recovery in a way that is both profound and deeply practical.In this conversation, he shares a powerful perspective on addiction, recovery, and healing, reminding us that beneath many of our struggles is a longing to reconnect with our true nature and remember the wholeness that has always existed within us.Together we explore addiction as a spiritual issue rather than a moral failing, the relationship between recovery and awakening, the role of compassion and self-forgiveness, and how spiritual connection can help us heal the sense of separation that so many of us carry.Whether you are in recovery yourself, love someone who struggles with addiction, or are simply walking a path of healing and spiritual growth, I believe you'll find wisdom, hope, and encouragement in this conversation.Michael serves as the Spiritual Leader of the Global Center for Christ Consciousness in Sedona, Arizona, where he offers weekly teachings, workshops, retreats, and healing programs dedicated to spiritual awakening and personal transformation. He is the author of numerous best-selling books and the founder of the Daughters of Heaven Conference, a gathering devoted to healing, empowerment, and conscious living.Michael Mirdad & The Global Center for Christ Consciousness: https://michaelmirdad.com/Daughters of Heaven Conference: https://daughtersofheaven.comThe Heart of A Course in Miracles Workshop:https://courses.michaelmirdad.com/courses/the-heart-of-a-course-in-miracles-2026Weekly Sunday Service live on YouTube 11 am: @MichaelMirdadFacebook: Michael MirdadSend a one way text to Rev Rachel