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Sober Vibes Podcast
Welcome to Sober Vibes, where sobriety meets empowerment! Hosted by sober coach, author, and mom Courtney Andersen—who’s been thriving in her alcohol-free life since 8/18/2012—this podcast is your go-to space for real talk, proven strategies, and inspiring stories from women who are redefining what it means to live without alcohol.
Each week, Courtney dives deep into the topics that matter most—from conquering cravings and navigating social settings to rebuilding confidence and finding joy in sobriety. Whether you’re newly sober, in long-term recovery, or simply curious about alcohol-free living, Sober Vibes delivers the support, insights, resources, and encouragement you need.
Join a like-minded community and discover how sobriety can unlock a healthier, happier, and more fulfilling life. Don’t just quit drinking—have fun on this sobriety journey!
Sober Vibes Podcast
Perfectionism, People-Pleasing & Alcohol: Healing the High-Functioning Woman with Raechelle Embrey
Episode 229: Perfectionism, People-Pleasing & Alcohol: Healing the High-Functioning Woman with Raechelle Embrey
In episode 229 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen welcomes Raechelle Embrey to the show, and they chat about why so many women turn to alcohol and how energy work, inner child healing, and setting boundaries can break the cycle. Perfectionism, high achievement, and alcohol often go hand in hand, especially for high-functioning women who appear to have it all together on the outside but feel overwhelmed and disconnected on the inside.
Raechelle shares her personal story of growing up with a mother who had borderline personality disorder and how that experience shaped her perfectionism, people-pleasing, and eventual reliance on alcohol as a way to soften the pressure.
Raechelle Embry is a Business & Wealth Astrologer and Energetic Alchemist for audacious, highly sensitive high-achievers. She is a podcast host and energy coach.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why perfectionists often use alcohol to “soften” and feel less rigid
- How unhealed childhood trauma manifests as people-pleasing and self-abandonment
- The connection between borderline mothers and high-achieving daughters
- What “energetic boundaries” are and why they’re essential for recovery
- Inner child work as a tool for healing energy stored in the body
- How astrology can help identify patterns of self-abandonment
- Why it’s hard for high-achieving women to trust their own perception
- How codependency and control can show up even after quitting alcohol
If you’ve been doing all the work but still feel like something’s missing, this episode offers a new lens on emotional sobriety and healing at the energetic level.
Thank you for listening!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Raechelle:
Ready to thrive in your alcohol-free life? Sober Vibes: A Guide to Thriving in Your First Three Months Without Alcohol is your step-by-step guide to navigating early sobriety with confidence.
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Hey, welcome back to the Sober Vibes podcast. I am your host and sober coach, Courtney Anderson. You are listening to episode 229. Today we are talking about why do high-functioning women reach for alcohol, and I have such an amazing guest. I love this conversation because it was so woo-woo. You are going to love it too.
Courtney Andersen :I have Rochelle Embry on the podcast today and she is an energy coach and she will also tell you what she does, because she really is a jack all trade but a lot of astrology in this talk. She is here to help you ignite your soul activation and spiritual evolution, so she gets into her story as well, and I just really loved this conversation and I hope you love it too. She's also a podcast host, so you can check out her podcast. All of her information will be in the show notes below. As always, reach out to me in my DMs and let me know how this episode helped you today and if you haven't already yet, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. If you are also needing any help in your sober journey, I do have one-on-one coaching available right now, or you can dive into the Sobriety Circle, which is my group coaching. Membership Information is below in the show notes, and I have a fun announcement I will be making in July. I have something amazing coming. I've been working on it behind the scenes, so I know it's going to help you in your sober journey.
Courtney Andersen :All right, Enjoy today's episode. As always, keep on trucking and stay safe out there. Hey, Rachelle, Welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast. Hey, thank you for having me. I'm very excited you are here today and I'm excited for our conversations. What, though, would you call yourself? Are you like an energy coach?
Raechelle Embrey:your own words of what you do. Yeah, so my primary gift, I would say, is just being a psychic channel, although I like this to be very tangible, so sometimes it's like referring to that feels. What does that mean? But I work with energy in the body. I'm able to read and track energy in the body and help people get in touch with their body so that we can recode old energetic imprints. Frequency alchemist, energy worker, psychic channel, business astrologer, astrologer whatever you want to call it.
Courtney Andersen :I love it. I love it, and you are also a podcast host, correct?
Raechelle Embrey:Yes, I am, I do, I host. I have a podcast called the Untamed Soul and I love it. It's such a great channel for me. It's a great outlet.
Courtney Andersen :Isn't it? This is why I like the podcasting, because it's longer form content right, and if you have the gift of gab and you like to talk, this is the perfect platform and place to do it.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, for sure, and it's such a safe place too. A lot of people don't realize that, because it's like becomes you're not having to be in front of a room of people, you're literally just pouring what's on your heart and what you're, the different things that you experience or whatever it is.
Courtney Andersen :It's just a great, yeah, and too, with that, I like how you said, it's a safe space and, too, if you don't just going back to now, what all we have with social media, you don't have to be connected, you don't have to be on all the time when you podcast.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, no, I mean the social media thing is I do it because I feel we do need some presence as an entrepreneur, but it's truly not. I do it to have that presence so that people can go and get a feel for my energy and see what I'm about. But ultimately, I mean the podcast is what I just truly love and jam with.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, that's great. So how did you become a recovering perfectionist? How did that happen in your life?
Raechelle Embrey:Well, I mean, let's just say I feel like I still very much do struggle. I don't know that there's ever like a true, like recovery, right, you know depends on what I'm going through in life. It's something I have to catch myself in and I feel like that is the recovery of it Knowing when I'm getting so stuck in control and trying to have it all be a certain way and life and all the things. But I feel that for me, the really big so I'm 47. And I feel like the biggest hit for me was when I made a cross-country move, truly entirely on intuition, and moved across country and when I got to where I was at I just kind of went into a collapse almost. And there was so much around me happening in my life. I lost a very dear friend who was like a mother to me, of lung cancer. I ended a long-term relationship with a man that was never going. He just didn't have the same values as me. We're actually really good friends now, but we weren't going anywhere. Covid had just ended, so everything was just kind of in this really weird state of flux and when I made the move I just thought I was going to be so liberated from everything. And I got out here and I realized all of that shit was still there. Everything was still there, everything that I was battling with internally, things like low self-esteem, things like not having enough confidence, as much confidence as I would have. As I thought that I did right. I was blindsiding myself in a lot of ways and a lot of people pleasing a lot of people pleasing a lot of just sacrificing my truth for other people, for their well being, and what in that was this like need behind all of it was to be so good, to be so right to, to be seen as somebody that had it all together, to be seen as somebody that was enough, was the good girlfriend, the good business owner, the good boss, the good, everything In that it just it became very apparent.
Raechelle Embrey:I got really actually pretty sick. My body broke out in some weird rash that they had to biopsy and I had some rare shingles disease that was all through my body, okay, and I just couldn't. I couldn't heal it, I couldn't kick it and I've always been a really healthy person. And around that time is when I was starting to drink a lot more. Actually, in that relationship I was drinking a lot more and at first it was like wine and everything like that, and then it became more oh well, let me grab the liquor because that's a quicker hit. I never even drank much liquor, but it was just like this quicker hit to be able to relax.
Raechelle Embrey:And when I couldn't heal what was going on with my body and there were a couple of other issues that were coming up physically and health wise, and I was just like you can't do this anymore. And I think that was really the big kicker. The reality hit for me that I, even though I thought I was you know, if you connect with me I'm pretty chill, pretty laid back, but on the inside I was not- what though?
Courtney Andersen :so what did perfectionism look like for you?
Raechelle Embrey:Oh my gosh, so many things. I mean it looked like anything from. I couldn't. I wouldn't even allow myself to sleep in, and sleeping in for me would be like 6 am, okay. So if I wasn't up by 5.30, I was unproductive. I was already behind. I worked nonstop. I was holding a lot of sessions for a lot of people, so I was doing anywhere in the realm of 20 to 25 sessions with people. I also have another business of animal communication, so between animals and humans, it was just like this on, on, on 25 a day, in a week, in a week.
Courtney Andersen :Okay, that's a lot.
Raechelle Embrey:It's a lot. I don't even know how I did it.
Courtney Andersen :Do you actually look back at that as we're talking about it? Does it exhaust you to think that you used to do that?
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, and in truth I was operating on so much adrenaline, I was in overdrive. I mean, it was just trying to mask the pain that was had happened of life and of trauma and micro traumas and macro traumas, and it also was a lot of. I had a lot of body dysmorphia, okay, and even though I was like a size two and very lean it was, I could never see myself for that shape. And it was this the workout, the exercise, the diet, everything was so strict and rigid and and even then, so I and I, I always just felt like I was never enough and even in all those things, it was like I'm not doing enough, I'm not creating enough, I'm not making enough, I'm not. It was just this very high state of never feeling like I was good enough.
Raechelle Embrey:And to me, that's how the perfectionist in me played out, of always having to make sure everything in my external reality was just so, you know, my hair was done right. I couldn't show up on social media without being like perfectly curated, by the perfectly curated brand, the perfectly curated. If I went to go do a masterclass or a workshop, it had to be, I would freeze, and if it wasn't done, just, I would just basically rerecord, rerecord, rerecord, rerecord and just not really do things like launch my podcast because I was so afraid of not having it Also manifested in a. Really, I think a lot of people don't realize that behind perfectionism, for me it was a lot yes, there's control, which I think we all know that, but there was a lot of fear of rejection If I don't have it just so that I'm going to be abandoned or rejected. And that played out in a lot of toxic patterns and relationships.
Raechelle Embrey:And even after I left the X which I thought, well, I've liberated myself from that and even after I left the ex, which I thought, well, I've liberated myself from that I didn't fall into the people pleasing thing anymore, but I was still attracting men that were bringing out that in me and I had dated this guy. So I have a lot of religious trauma too. And so I dated this guy and we met totally random and it was on a girl's weekend away and we ended up connecting and it was a long distance relationship and we became very close. We had gotten really close and he told me that he was a really very religious Methodist and that's, and I was like totally cool, whatever. But in that he was like I don't think I can support what you do.
Raechelle Embrey:And yeah, so it wasn't. Just I'm religious, it's I can't support what you do. And I'm really struggling with it and I just immediately it made me collapse on the inside because I thought here comes somebody validating I truly believe that the people and the experiences that we attract are a mirror of our internal world, absolutely Always 1000%. And do you know, in that moment I almost was like maybe I won't do this.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, oh, I'm sure I mean I just as I say that cause, I was like yet this is something that I built for 10 years Right and, and ultimately he left me and, being just a very, I think, man of integrity, still he was just could see this collapse happening and where I was self abandoning. And even though I was traumatized by that and the way that he left, I am eternally grateful for that, because there were even things like well, I, if we're, if we stay together, I never want you to have more than two animals. I never.
Courtney Andersen :I fight dogs. It's like never want you to have more than two animals. I never. I have five dogs. It's like the flags were coming up.
Raechelle Embrey:You saw the flags, I saw them, but I was, I was sacrificing myself, I was self-abandoning. And again, that that comes down to this in this dynamic, these things, even though I logically knew they were wrong and I was just like this is crazy to me, but on the inside it was coming out in this way of this person that I had fallen in love with again and not actually so like sacrificing so much of who I was for another person. And I think that's a really sneaky way of perfectionism that we don't realize is, if I do it this way, then I'll be acceptable and he'll love me still and I like it was the biggest blessing to this day I'm so grateful for for him leaving, because that was the real moment. So this was I moved that you're going about a year into this move and that was the moment because when he left, I was devastated over a six month thing and I mean hit the floor, I just completely annihilated, devastated, and I went through about four weeks of this and that is when I realized nobody should ever have this impact on you, ever If you truly loved yourself, right, nobody.
Raechelle Embrey:You might mourn, you might grieve, you might cry, but at the end of the day you would never give yourself, give your power, give your truth, sacrifice these things for any person ever. And that's when I think the real recovery really started to happen.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, Previous to that, did you work on any? You said you had religious trauma. Any trauma from your past did you work on? Or did this all just come out at once, all that energy? Because that trauma that you have not dealt with is energy in your body and it comes out, like you said, with the shingle rash right and all of these other ways that it starts coming out. So did you work on any of that previous to this?
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, absolutely. I mean therapy. I'm no stranger to it. I mean, since I was a teenager, just because of there were things with the body dysmorphia, I had eating disorder and I also went a really long route of drug experimentation and cleaned up from all of that around like 2021. And I did do some medication but ultimately came off of that, and that's when I got into energy. Work is around 20.
Raechelle Embrey:I think I was around 21, 22 years old and worked with a really dear friend who became a mentor around that, and so that's how I started to really understand energy and the body and how to move it, and that that was really a truly a gift of mine and how intuitive I was, which a lot of women don't realize. This, too, is like how that we are. If a lot of women that are in perfectionism, that do reach for alcohol to, we're extremely sensitive to energies, and that means collective energies, that means other people's energies. You walk into a room and for me, alcohol also was a strong, and this I've only realized recently as I've been diving more and more into just releasing, releasing, releasing how much it was a comfort of social, and I thought that's not who I am, but that's how I connected with my father who was an alcoholic. That was the only way it was through alcohol and so I actually didn't even drink for an entire decade at all and I think I had thought I conquered a lot of this in the 3D, logically, mentally, and if you looked at me, everything was going right. But what was happening was after that decade and this is why I love astrology, because you could look back at my astrology and go, yeah, that was coming and and I started to have these.
Raechelle Embrey:I bought a business. I was 27 and bought this business and rehabbed it and did all the things it was a grooming salon, actually and built it to a $350,000 a year grooming salon, which is really hard to do in the grooming industry, and it was very suffering when I bought it and the mirror for me was the employees. So I would get employees and everything would be great, but eventually they would feel they would. It would become this like almost power struggle where they would feel like they knew more than me or they wanted more, and then they would constantly put me down or I mean and some of them got outright abusive, very I mean. If I told you the whole story, you'd be like how would you ever deal with that? But I was just like feeling I felt as though if I didn't have them, I couldn't make this business work. And again, just all these ways of what I gave my power away, not realizing like I'm.
Raechelle Embrey:The business grew because of me, because of what I put into it, my vision, but because I didn't believe in myself. And so I think that's when, even though I'd done a lot of therapy, this is when it became after the grooming salon. This is when it became even more apparent how important astrology, energy work, understanding, not just to me. I thought, well, I didn't have these. Yes, growing up with an alcoholic dad can be very traumatic, and I did grow up with a mother both my parents are deceased with a mother who was borderline and also very hyper, paranoid and suffered from depression, and she was extremely manipulative. So I was the child.
Courtney Andersen :Borderline personality disorder.
Raechelle Embrey:Yes, yeah, I'm familiar. Thank God, did you have the same experience?
Courtney Andersen :Yes.
Raechelle Embrey:Yes.
Courtney Andersen :With a mother? Yes, yeah, and she's still alive today. Both my parents are. But yeah, so I'm picking up what you're laying down. I get it, because, guess, people who come from I have to say that if there's like bipolar borderline, because they're very like one's right underneath each other but you get it. You're in this club because not a lot of people understand what that looks like and how you have to continue to deal with that. That's a lifelong thing that you have to deal with as a child and you then, especially in a situation like you were in both it's like then you become the parent and the child.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, absolutely, You're so right, and I have a Capricorn moon and an astrology. If you have a Capricorn moon, like guaranteed. You were put in situations where you were the adult, very young and you had to grow up extremely young, and this is again like astrology gave me a lot of understanding of all of this and I've worked with astrology for ages, decades but it wasn't really until I started to use it actually helped recode my energy, that it really made the impact.
Raechelle Embrey:And so, understanding these imprints, like the Capricorn moon and and some of this language I'm not going to go too deep into it, but Pluto on my rising and my ascendant I'm sure most people listening are probably familiar with the sun or ascendant or moon sign to a certain degree. But yeah, so there there was these imprints that it just goes beyond your sun, moon and rising, that there's these imprints coded into our chart that are unique to each of us. There is no astrological chart that is exactly the same, even if you're a twin. It's not. There's something in there that is going to be a little bit different. Feedback and regardless outside of astrology, it's like you could take myself and then I have two sisters. Outside of astrology, it's like you could take myself and then I have two sisters and we are all from the same parents, but we all handled our environment entirely different, entirely different.
Raechelle Embrey:So, there's also our genetic hardwiring that is within us. That is just who we are as an individual and I do think astrology does give us big codes to that but, like my younger sister, ended up being a heroin addict for 10 years, going into lots of chaotic, narcissistic, abusive, physically abusive relationships, and it's so interesting to see how we all deal with it. Whereas I was like the high achiever, the performer, because that's the only way I was ever seen, and there was a lot of favoritism, my mother, tan, my younger sister was the golden child and my older sister was five years older and she was very much the golden child. But to my grandparents, to other people in the family, so I really and they both have said to me now you and I don't, I never even thought about it like this, because I just was resilient and I just moved on and I got through stuff. And they both say to me now you really got the hard end and I'm like I don't even want to look at it like that because it's I don't want to see myself as a victim and I do believe I had those things, all of these experiences brought to me because it's I don't think I would.
Raechelle Embrey:I know it's not even. I don't think I know I would not be able to hold the space that I do for people that come into my world, who finally feel seen, who finally feel free to put it all out there and deal with deep imprints of trauma in their body without having to like relive it. But they get to go there and finally just feel freedom in their lives and and ease and I would not be able to hold space for that. I've been in so many coaching containers, I have been in masterminds. I have worked with so many different people into this date. I have been in masterminds. I have worked with so many different people and to this date I have not found one person that could hold that space like that.
Courtney Andersen :Because it's a gift. Like, honestly, when we talk about impasse and what it's a blessing and a curse, right, because it's a lot. It's a lot. A lot of people who listen to this are impasse or highly sensitive. And it's a blessing and a curse, right, because you do. At the end it's okay. You do have to find what works for you to release it and not take it on, but that's years of work and practice to get that right, but you just have the gift. That's all it comes under. I had to say that to a client before. I told her I was like you just got the gift, because I'm always like the sounding board to people. And then I was like because you have the energy and you can't keep fighting it or resisting it, because it just doesn't work like that, because it's part of who you are.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, it is, and it's not everybody. I mean, and people are like don't you get drained by that? I'm like, no, I don't even think about it when I'm done at the end of the day. It's not something that I'm like I don't. I mean, I don't talk about it with my head, I'm just like I go on my life. I think when I get drained by it, it's more of me looking at me Am I enough? Did I do enough? Did I hold enough space? And so much of that I mean truly is is dissipated and gone. But when I go to create something new that's going to come out, there's these different core wounds that are am I enough? Is this going to make an impact?
Raechelle Embrey:The fear of rejection is so strong for me because of being so rejected in such silent ways, growing up and having to mediate the family, and then you mediate and then they call you in and then you're that bad child. It's because you're you don't agree, or you're giving a different perspective, or you're just telling your parents I, you guys, would be better off if you were divorced. This is insane. Why are you doing this? And and I would, I and I was the adult in that way and stuff and I I feel like a lot of people that you know and my younger sister.
Raechelle Embrey:She is finally doing really well. It does come in flows and cycles, yep, and I do feel like she has the same gift and she just never really stopped because her grabbing was the drugs or the chaos. Yeah, the chaos made her feel safe, so she's one that has had to seek out medication and things to help stabilize that, which I'm so glad for because it's made her a totally different person and now she can now work with the energy in her body and start to create a life and understand like creating a life filled with chaos is not the way.
Courtney Andersen :That chaos cycle. Some people just become addicted to that. It's a great break, yeah, Especially too, if that was what you were born in and that was what you were raised in. Feeling quote unquote, normal. That feels terrible because you're constantly waiting for that shoe to drop and sometimes then it's well, then, let me create that shoe dropping.
Raechelle Embrey:Exactly, and it's, and it's when it it's.
Raechelle Embrey:Even, even if you think about the story that I've shared with you, like even on the outside, as I recovered recovered I spent a lot of time about two years after that didn't date really went into, working a lot with my feminine energy and understanding that and understanding how to get out of control, how to speak my truth, how to set healthy boundaries without being so rigid, how to communicate what I'm feeling, what I need, what I want, what I need, what I want, and and really, because so many women are just, they're just so afraid to have a conversation because they feel like that might disappoint whomever they're with.
Raechelle Embrey:And I get really good at that and and even in in those times, I started to realize the more and more that I was refining this within, how much I was still looping in chaos in my mind. Of course, I recall in a relationship where another guy tried to control or then completely abandoned me, because that's the familiar, that's the chaos, that, even though, no, I wasn't out creating this in an abusive relationship or drugs or the toxicity necessarily I was still very much attracting experiences that created this external chaos that I had to now move through.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, so how did you move through that though?
Raechelle Embrey:Oh, my gosh, years, years of recognition, and I think it got easier and easier, and I mean really in my 40s, from the time that I moved here really getting to where I'm at and the move that I made and I would say it was always a lot it got better and better and better to, but to the point where what I call the energetic recode, where it's that's not even a part of my existence though, where it's that's not even a part of my existence though, that that type of man would not even come into my orbit at this point, those type of energies, but there was still subtle things that would play out, subtle energetic recodes that would have to happen in it. And I feel like for me it was the constant recognition of body awareness, of how does this feel in my body, and trusting that and not gaslighting myself, because I've been gaslit all my life. And when you grow up with, like we did with a borderline mother or that, that bipolar who's manipulative, you really the hardest thing to learn is to trust your perception of people. And I get chills as I say that because I have so much grace for that, because it's if you have not lived that, and this is why, being in a lot of coaching containers, like I have been, it's like they would just some would just be like you got to get over this, you got to get on with this, and it's until I understood deeply that trauma is. It's stored in the way that those patterns really played out. And so when I say business mentor, that's actually what I help, not help I guide women to do this for themselves, because it's the freeze that you feel, the fears, the chaos, the reason why money doesn't come in, the reason why things feel the way that they do, is because of that trauma.
Raechelle Embrey:You might have confronted it in the 3D, like I did, like you did, but if you have not totally healed it in your body and cleared it from your body, your energy field is still emanating that frequency and so that's what you're getting is more of that. To mirror that back to you, and I feel like for me, so much of this and for clients, it's yes, I use tools like astrology to bring awareness and really shine a light and illuminate for an individual, for a person. Of this this is really real, this is why you have this and but there's a power to this. There's always, for every shadow. There is like a high frequency pattern that needs to be expressed in that, and so I feel like that's what I started to look at.
Raechelle Embrey:This is not something to fix, as it was more of. As you are seeing this in yourself. It's coming back to this remembrance of who you actually are, and that really helped me break free from it, because I was always looking at it as how do I fix this? How do I fix this? How do I get addicted to it, to the fixing which will just make you want to numb out to alcohol at a whole other level. I got to fix myself and how do you turn this off? And the only way is this isn't like a physical loneliness.
Courtney Andersen :I have people around me and then I had to think back and I was like, oh, this is something I've always felt since I was a child and instead of continuing to push it away because, again, when you start pushing away things that are your makeup right I have found it easier to just accept and this, okay, I will figure out how to live with this. You know what I mean. But then when I figured out about that emotional loneliness it's just what I call it right that it's maybe something that's never going to go away, because I didn't get those needs met when I was a child and of what I grew up in. So I have just learned to accept it and it doesn't come up like it used to, right, because then I just think that's in the process of the healing work. But if it were to come up nowadays, it would just be like, okay, no problem, what do I need right now just to deal with this?
Courtney Andersen :And I think that that's the questions people need to start asking themselves of. Let me not get the quick fix. But what do I need to do to? What do I need? Do I need a hug? Do I need to go to sleep? Do I need to start talking to a therapist at this point, because I've never done therapy. Do I need to start doing some inner child work, like there's answers to it, or do I just need to sit in it and that's okay too?
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, the inner child work was really powerful for me too, but a lot of the ways that people taught it initially to me it didn't really resonate, and so some of the ways that I found that that to be really helpful is it's more of it's almost like going in and bringing her into my life now and when I recognize that that part of me and you're and you're so right, because I feel like there is this heaviness that comes with this life that if you're put into this life like we have and it used to make me sad Is this really it. This is what I have to, but I feel like I'm so grateful for all that I've learned and all that I know and I'm married now, through a lot of my own health, to a beautiful, amazing man. But also it's like he wouldn't, he doesn't understand any of this. He has so much compassion for me and he can hold a lot of space for that and never, I mean he's been so amazing for me, like wit, to be witnessed by somebody who's just like when I'm like in my zones of being super hard on myself or the. It's never enough. And just you know, I am a high achiever, I do, and I'm more high achieving than he is and but he helps me ground it, which is great to be seen by somebody, but it is me feeling you know, and and I, and so for me, like the inner child, work comes into almost seeing her and where this?
Raechelle Embrey:They do this in a lot of the energy work. That's why I call it the recode, the energetic recode, because it's like going into that timeline, to that experience that is, that your body's holding on and it's going to. It's usually multiple experiences, it's not just the one, but it usually starts somewhere in that inner child and then through the experiences as we grow in adulthood and it's it's going in and seeing her and witnessing her, but also seeing that pattern, but giving in that moment, almost like at the being the advocator for her and and that has been tremendously helpful for me. So it's giving you context. So one this example might make a little bit more sense with this so one experience that I had and when I went into my body and dropped in into it to feel like where this energy was coming up and this was helpful for me and releasing alcohol actually.
Raechelle Embrey:So this experience was like where did this start? Why are you craving this all of a sudden at this point in your life like this, because it wasn't always like that and it actually went to a time when I was around five years old and I was on a swing in my backyard a wooden swing and my parents were fighting very bad on the inside and inside the house and my younger sister was in there and my parents were fighting and I just had to stay outside. But when I went inside it was very clear they were fighting because my father was cheating on my mother and what came to me and what I saw after that was actually quite surprising because it was my mom reaching for a wooden spoon and spanking me and this memory coming up of I don't remember much from seven earlier, but I know I wasn't sexually abused and this really reflected back to me. You don't remember it because your mother took out all of that. She projected all of that onto you because my dad started cheating when I was born and in my mom's mind, even though she wasn't consciously projecting that, it was this putting that on me and I never understood that. Six months before she passed away she apologized to me profusely and said I really regret how I was with you the most and I never understood it. And I get chills as I say that because I feel she's probably here, she always is hearing, and we have a great relationship in spirit.
Raechelle Embrey:It took a long time to get there. She's actually a really cool in spirit mom, but that was so eye-opening for me of why, no matter what, and what was coming through was shame I just had shame in my body. I felt like, no matter what I did, it wasn't enough. And there was just all this, this realization of oh my God, and and it, and so in those moments what I start to do is like when she would come in and have the wooden spoons, like I jump in and I'm like no, you are not doing this anymore.
Raechelle Embrey:And it's almost coming into that, that in the energy and the in the visual or whatever in the body, and so really advocating for that child and treating her like she's my own. And what would I do if she was my child child, treating her like she's my own and what would I do if she was my child. And that's been really helpful for me, truly, because it's your body doesn't differentiate once you get into those memories of that not happening or happening Right, and when you're really doing this and you're listening to your body and it's guided by your body, it's, it's going to feel like truth to your body and then from there what I love to do is take that child in and then go through all the timelines where this also manifested itself in my reality, like to the multitudes of women that I have called into my life. I cannot tell you and that was really eye-opening too that experience of like. I cannot tell you and that was really eye-opening too, that experience of like why I have had so many women come into my life who projected so evilly to me I mean evil and I would be celebrated and like the best thing ever. And then we'd get close and a year into it it's just like you're slayed, you are literally the evil person.
Raechelle Embrey:Hello, that started right then. My mother did, and so for me it was really helpful to go in and bring that energy, bring that advocacy into those experiences that are standing out the most in that particular recode and then coming in and showing that child my life now, my fun with my dogs, what I do with dogs and my beautiful husband and the house that we've created and how even his kids live here and that was a big adjustment for me too. They're older, but it was still an adjustment how I have moved through self-abandonment, how I continue to do that and and the clients and the business and the travels and the things that are in, but also like how I've healed these things. I feel like that is so helpful when you can learn to guide yourself through that process or have somebody guide you through that process, because there's so much energy that shifts in that and it's just amazing for me it is it is, and, too, I mean.
Courtney Andersen :What you're saying as well is that this is also too a work in progress. This isn't just one time. It's as you said. It's too like still stuff that comes up, because that kind of stuff is embedded in you and that type of belief system where it takes you, it takes, it's practice. It is practice, for sure. So why do you think, though, with with high functioning women, why they reach for alcohol?
Raechelle Embrey:Oh my gosh. Well for one, everything that we've discussed so far and I said a lot of women.
Raechelle Embrey:They want to feel ease. Yeah, they want to soften, yeah, they want to just feel like. Yeah, they want to soften, yeah, they want to just feel like not so rigid. And I think alcohol for high achieving women in perfectionist and type a it's like they have that drink and they feel like I can just all this isn't weighing on me anymore and a lot of us are truthfully holding energy and space for a lot of people and even if you don't have a business doing, doing what you and I do, it doesn't matter. You're probably still holding a lot of energy in your home for your household, not having strong what I call energetic boundaries, yeah, and so these things just feel heavy, and the way to for me it was like, well, just feel heavy. And the way to for me it was like, well, I have a drink and I feel light and I can laugh and I'm not all uptight and rigid and thought I could have better sex and better that. I just more carefree, more fun.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, really, the reality is it's not it. We have all that ability to do that within ourselves when we actually work with our own unique energy, when we start to realize and feel safe, just being us, without having to put on a suit or a mask or whatever for everybody, and start to just really feel like that letting go and that ease comes in allowing yourself to be fully expressed as you as an individual. The heaviness, the lightness, because I'm a ton of fun, but I thought alcohol would make me more fun or that I wasn't fun. It's like these illusions that we tell ourselves right, because we're so hard on ourselves, and it's like we don't even see ourselves the way that other people see ourselves. And it's my husband's babe, you're so much fun and I don't even think you realize it and I'm like I don't, I think I'm just uptight. That's the, that is the story that I tell myself. So we're, we tell ourselves these stories, we tell ourselves these lies, we tell ourselves these illusions and see ourselves from this like completely delusional way.
Courtney Andersen :That's just not truth. Yes, and a lot of those stories were told to us, right, and that it's not ones that we even created for ourselves. So that's where it's like really fucked up. It's like you're taking on somebody else's story that they told you when you were three. So that is what's crazy. But, yes, for the high functioning women, the high achievers, people pleasers, the perfectionists it's all what you said about. It's all about giving into others before giving to yourself. I am a huge fan of protecting your energy. I say it a lot. You just said energy boundaries, right? So what would that look like?
Raechelle Embrey:Yes, there are practices that you'll hear in the spiritual community like suit yourself up, cloak yourself. Those are all fine and good, but that's not actually getting to the root, so it doesn't. You're just kind of putting on like a tool right inside. Are you like freezing up because your husband just really hurt your feelings and you don't want to say what it is and you bottle it all up. You know what I mean. And then it's in your body and you're bottling it all up because you're so afraid of disappointing him, you're so afraid of hurting him, you're so afraid of him having to be hear what you say, maybe getting mad or whatever, and anticipating this and maybe sometimes they might get upset.
Raechelle Embrey:But if you're in a healthy relationship they probably will be more disappointed in themselves and apologize. And when you learn how to have these conversations in a way that isn't how we were modeled and learned, that is complete chaos and yelling and disturbance. You can literally say in two minutes or less hey, babe, something's just not sitting right with me and I got to tell you this really hurt when that happened and this is a pattern that I'm realizing. When that happens, I don't feel seen or whatever it is, and I know you didn't mean it, but this is kind of something that there's many ways to do it. It depends on the extreme extremity of like how extreme it is.
Courtney Andersen :But what I've seen is a lot of the times these things are very minor but we are making them quite large yes, and then even to freezing up, like that of what you said, or sitting there and then when you don't say anything you are then creating a resentment.
Courtney Andersen :I was just going to say resentment, you were in resentment honestly, and if you would have just said something which is going to be really awkward and uncomfortable in the beginning, when you start speaking up for yourself. And just because you speak up for yourself, it doesn't mean that it's going to then be like you're divorced or friendship ends or you're fired. Well, the firing thing might be a little bit different, but it just comes down to you have to start speaking up for yourself because that resentment is going to eat you alive and then usually then it goes into you drinking to numb out that feeling of your anger, your sadness, all of that. So resentments are the pits.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, it is. And I want to say this because at first, when it does come, when you first start, really there's two things coming through here. But at first, when you first start understanding that you do need to speak up and speak your truth and when I say speak your truth, what I mean by this is like all of the things that you're stuffing down that you're afraid to say, and you recognize it and you know it. And that's when we start to energetically hold somebody else up by worrying about if they're going to be disappointed. That's not our responsibility, that's their responsibility. And I have to really start saying that we are not responsible for other people's emotional wellbeing. I mean, obviously we don't want to be terrorists or anything, but we're not responsible for how they choose to handle themselves in their lives. But we are responsible for ourselves. And so at first it's going to be messy. You're probably going to sound a little ragey, a little.
Raechelle Embrey:I'm not sure what I can say language here but maybe a little cunty a little bitchy and I always tell women that's okay, that's better initially, because you have all this resentment in and you haven't also learned how to have these conversations and so it's better to get it out and I just say, if you're in a relationship with with somebody, let them know. Look, I'm working through this and I'm going to need you to be really patient with me because sometimes it might not be, it's not going to come off the best and I'm very sorry ahead of time. But also I need to work through this because I and it's only going to deepen your relationship and men men actually appreciate a healthy man or healthy masculine, whatever your dynamic is. A healthy masculine is really actually going to appreciate that and appreciate you working through this and hold space for that. While it's messy, it really will. It's how you word it and just the knowing that it is going to be a little messy and you're not going to have it perfect initially.
Raechelle Embrey:But with each conversation that happens like that, you can look back and not oh my God, I was such a bitch. If more, okay, I do feel better. I've got that off my chest, but I didn't really love how I handled it. How could I maybe approach it a little softer next time. And this is, it's a process when this was not modeled to you. This is a process and you're learning as you go and it does get easier to the point where I mean I can't. I don't know.
Raechelle Embrey:We, I can't even remember the last time. Yes, we've had some arguments. We met at 44 and 40 and 52 and he has two kids and then we moved in and when I met my husband, my father was dying of alcoholism. So yeah, I mean we've had a lot that we moved through in a time. So I'm not going to say there was never an intense argument, but I can't remember the last time. Through having grace for each other, through those times of we're going to feel a little messy while we figure out each other's traumas and things like that, know what's going to make him feel safe, what makes me feel safe, how there's just always this reorganization. As you're learning this.
Courtney Andersen :Oh yeah, 100%. And your relationship it changes. It's like an ebb and flow. But that's just awareness and relationships are you said it? When you have not witnessed a healthy relationship, you can't just think that you're going to have a healthy relationship. It's you, you've never been modeled it. So you have to start getting healthy with yourself and then that relationship, if it is there, and have a partner if you have a partner who wants to work on that with you because some people don't want to be healthy and that's not yours to take on, that's their own bag Well, I could talk to you forever and ever.
Courtney Andersen :I could really keep going, but where can people find you?
Raechelle Embrey:So I have the podcast, the untamed soul, which is just a great way just to come in and binge learn a little bit about astrology. I do break it down in really tangible ways. I would say most people that are in my world are not astrologer enthusiasts but they realize how impactful it is and it's more of just like understanding it in very practical ways that can really help you, really really help immediately recode energy in your body. So there's lots of stuff on that. Energetics, all types of.
Raechelle Embrey:I share a lot about collective energies because that is so important to know if you're highly sensitive, because those collective energies, astrologically, whatever's happening, is going to impact you more than what you realize. So that is a great place to get started. And then my website is ray ray radiant vibes. I'm, I'll, I'll link it off links and I am on instagram. I do post regularly, just quick hits and just whatever comes through. And and I do have a beautiful collective called the Quantum Mystic Collective. That is an ongoing, it's more of a membership style but it's an annual option in there and then you can dip your toes in it if you just want to explore and get a feel for it. That is $144 a month and then the annual is actually like a really great value.
Raechelle Embrey:And I do, I hold, I do monthly energetic activation, which is like where we go in and we're really working with the energy in the body and and recoding, clearing out. I share weekly drops, about three to four times a week, on collective energies. Anything like that comes through to me like energetics that you know and this was telling, was telling you. On this, I'll give you a free transmission from self-abandonment to self-trust and coincide it with the Libra full moon. But it doesn't matter, it's still, we're still in that energy and also I think we could always learn about self-abandonment to self-trust. That's a very sneaky way of people pleasing there. That's in that, so I'll share that with your, your, your.
Courtney Andersen :Libra full moons people pleasers.
Raechelle Embrey:Okay, the Libra full moon was. I don't know when this podcast will come out, but Libra, if you have a Libra energy in you, yet you are, I'm a Libra rising, so yeah, hello.
Courtney Andersen :Well, I don't know if I'm a full moon or whatever that. I never knew what I am.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, I mean, I can look it up for you if you want. What is your time of birth? Oh God, I would have to ask my mother.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, find out and I can look it up for you. You would be fascinated at how. But yes, if you are a Libra, the shadow of Libra energy whether you're Libra, rising Libra, moon, saturn and Libra, whatever, I don't know there's all these different layers here in astrology it's very nuanced. The shadow of this is very codependent.
Raechelle Embrey:People pleasing a lot of self-abandonment. You are, like I always say, like Libras are the energy balancers of the collective. Libras are the energy balancers of the collective. So whether you realize it or not or want to own this, it doesn't matter. You are walking into rooms and you're always balancing energies. So it's definitely like in the shadow can get very like where you're totally in self-abandonment, in the higher frequency. You actually are here to find that autonomy and unity you know as a very collaborative energy, but it's in your own autonomy and then coming into that unity and it's through you finding that in yourself that you actually balance energy with ease. It's not hard on your body anymore, it's not physically hard on your body, but Libra energies have been through it over the last two and a half years and you've probably seen, I'm sure, in your experience of how much you've probably even to a deeper level of healing and greater awareness on even some other subtle ways of of a lot of those shadows have played out, but we're we're getting our time. It's, it's happening.
Courtney Andersen :What day? What day were you born?
Raechelle Embrey:For me, I'm an Aquarius. I was born February, yeah, so I'm an Aquarius sun. But we have what's called a rising sign and that is where the sun was at when you were born. On the horizon that changes every hour through the day. So I'm a Libra rising and then we have our moon sign, which is where the moon was at in the sky. Those are called your big three and I'm a Capricorn moon.
Courtney Andersen :Okay, yeah, all what you said for Libras is very real. Codependency I have worked on a lot and currently right now I have to start working on it again because it's come up a little bit of just what's going on in my life. My dad currently has cancer, so I'm like I have to. I got to dig deep. I keep it's something I keep saying with my sister. I'm like I have to. I got to dig deep. I keep it's something I keep saying with my sister. I'm like I got to bust out codependent. No more that book. If you've ever read it, it's wonderful, but yeah, but it's a con. That's the thing Like when it comes to this type of stuff it, it, it will come up and it's just, it's a work. You just have to keep working when it comes up, when it starts showing itself.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, yeah. And it's like with that, with your dad having cancer, like how can you tend to him in those ways? This is such Libra energy. It's like how can I tend? And for women in general it's yes, and maybe many people could be listening and they're not Libras, right. It's like how can I tend to them, knowing that you are a deeply energetic, intuitive woman and can probably sense and know things, and they may choose a very different path of handling things. And we have to surrender and release that control and let people be on their path and let them make those choices. And even if it makes absolutely no sense to us, we have to surrender that and even if it makes absolutely no sense to us, like we have to surrender that Well, and my sister and I are on that path of.
Courtney Andersen :This is his, this is his walk, and that's when, like, how I've been handling this is how I know the amount of work I've done on myself that has helped me in this moment. But there's still that codependency is like a kind of popping up, like a whack-a-mole. It's just like all right, I just got to reread this book and work through that and it's going to be on my end. It will be okay. Because if you go into that, if you go full on, then it's like that kind of shit will make a person sick.
Raechelle Embrey:It will, and just to what you're saying, it's like it's come up. This is another reason why I love understanding astrology, because when you actually know how the planets in the sky so you have your own chart but the planets in the sky are also moving and having conversations with your chart, so there's probably something guaranteed I'm going to say with I already probably know what's happening in your chart is knowing is, yes, these things come, these, this experience coming up, based on a particular and I don't want to overwhelm anybody with this but there's the, where the nodes are in the sky, and so that's probably hitting your chart in a very certain way. Where it's, yes, it would make so much sense that you would have to be in this extra caretaker role right now, and then having to define at this level of your life, right, with all that you have learned, because we don't stop growing. If you stop growing, you're not living, and so there's just deeper levels of growth. So maybe you have healed through so much codependency with the level of what you were at before.
Raechelle Embrey:Well, now you're at a whole new level. You're serving women. You're out here, you're doing this. You opted for a massive initiation. You opted for that by coming. I opted for this. So we are always going to have these initiations of growth at an even deeper level, because we have to move through that in order to understand and learn how to help other people move through the same thing and fast track their process, essentially. But with astrology, it's really fascinating to be able to see how that actually is playing out too, and the way that these planets are probably speaking to your chart and say okay, you've done this at so many layers, but now we're going to do this at an even deeper layer. That's not just the partner, that's not just the friend, it's the father.
Courtney Andersen :Oh yeah, and if you look at it too, it's like how this is? It's like the two people that you come from, who, where? Then you get codependency and why codependency happens, and then it's like on and coming back, it's okay, it is. I mean, this is, this, is you could go, and I know it is on a deeper level of where I'm at with him yeah, did your father drink or where did?
Raechelle Embrey:is that where the alcohol?
Raechelle Embrey:yeah, yeah, I just kind of got that vibe because it it felt and I know we're up on time but it's when my father died of the alcoholism. I thought I was very like, yes, it was horrible to watch somebody die like that, right, but also it's a weird codependency that happened after that where I really didn't drink. But then I went through about six to eight months, as we were transitioning in here, that I was drinking more and we carry energetic imprints of our parents. We carry their energetic caps and those caps, even when they leave this earth, are still here. Those imprints are still here and we still have to alchemize them and neutralize them. So probably you're doing a lot of pre-work in neutralizing I don't know what kind of cancer he has, but it's it's. I think it's great that it's happening for you now because it will ease that.
Courtney Andersen :I'm very grateful that, in that I have worked through my addiction with alcohol, that this is happening now, because I wouldn't have been, it would have been a disaster 12, 15 years ago. Yeah, I'm grateful that it's happening now, where I can handle it in a healthier way.
Raechelle Embrey:Yeah, for sure, so yeah.
Courtney Andersen :All right, well, thank you so much. Like I said, you might have to come back to this show and do another podcast.
Raechelle Embrey:Oh, I will Absolutely. I love this. This is my jam. It's been great to connect with you and talk with you as well. Thanks for having me.
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