The 7 Stages of Soul Recovery: the Reclamation of Your Whole Self

“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.” – Democritus (c. 400 BCE)

Loneliness. Emptiness. Disconnection. Lack of purpose. Loss of meaning in life. 

All of these are signs of what ancient shamanic cultures call “soul loss,” what economic theory calls “late stage capitalism,” what Buddhists call “Dukkha” and Christians “Dark Night of the Soul,” and what modern psychology calls “dissociation,” “depression,” or “existential crisis.”

Have you ever felt as though a part of you is “missing”? As if you don’t know your true self – as if parts of you are broken or lost?

Perhaps you’ve even experienced aspects of you going numb or totally shutting down – even internally “dying” – like I have. Let me explain this more below.

The Disturbing Lesson 

It was 2010 when I first experienced the conscious loss of disconnecting from my Soul. I was listening to a sermon, as I usually did on Sundays, about sin, hell, judgment, and eternal damnation. 

I had been struggling with my fundamentalist childhood faith for a while. But something about this experience – this fearful dogma masquerading as “love” – was tormenting me. Vivid thoughts of death emerged in my mind and I suddenly had the intense, horrific feeling that my soul was dying.

Thankfully, what I later learned is that the Soul cannot die; it can only be obscured by false beliefs, wounding, and toxic habits. But in that moment, I felt as though all light, life, and love were leaving me. I was drowning in the darkness.

In the many years since leaving and processing that disturbing circumstance, I learned that what I had experienced was not just religious and complex post-traumatic childhood trauma, but also a deep level of Soul disconnection, or Soul Loss.

Why Soul Recovery Threatens to Destroy the Dominant “Self-Help” Narrative

Being intent on overcoming this trauma, I dedicated myself to learning the ins and outs of many healing paths. 

What I discovered after many mystical awakening experiences – some lasting for weeks – was that we are never broken. 

It’s our minds, our psyches, that become fragmented and distorted. But it is never our Soul that is broken.

At our core, we are always and forever Whole. Our Soul, in the words of the ancient holy text of the Bhagavad Gita, is “unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval.”

Our task is to recover the Wholeness of our Souls. 

And when you go to the heart of most ancient religions and spiritual paths, you’ll find this truth there waiting for you.

You Were Never Broken, Just Disconnected

But the reality here is that, in this day and age, Soul Recovery is countercultural. It rebels against so much modern “self-help” and “spiritual” claptrap out there that talks about “fixing” ourselves, “earning” enlightenment through endless meditation retreats, or “manifesting” our dreams. 

So many of these paths are based on the assumption that we are broken, inferior, lacking, or that we need to supplicate ourselves to a “higher being” to find peace.

Soul Recovery says that you were never broken. You were just disconnected from yourself due to trauma.

Soul Recovery says that the power has always been in your hands – not the hands of some enlightened “guru,” spiritual teacher, or healer – to reclaim your Wholeness.

No one can give it to you, sell it to you, make you earn it, or take it away from you. Can you see how this threatens the dominant “Self-Help” and neo-spiritual culture out there?

This is why Soul Recovery is the path of lone wolves – those who refuse to follow dominant social narratives, those who reject love and gaslight ideologies. It’s for those who are ready to reclaim their self-sovereignty. This is why I have written about the Soul for 10+ years and continue running this website to this day. The proof is in the puddin’ as they say.

The 7 Stages of Soul Recovery: the Reclamation of Your Whole Self

“There exists within each of us the capacity to heal ourselves.” – M. Caplan

Growth is cyclical. Healing is cyclical. The Soul is cyclical. So while I’m presenting linear “stages” here, please know that we can, and do, go backwards and forwards as new layers of growth reveal themselves. This is normal and healthy.

So how does Soul Recovery work? And where are you on this path?

Here are the seven stages of Soul Recovery. You’ll notice that they are archetypal in nature, following the Hero’s Journey path closely:

Stage 1 – Soul Loss

In stage one, you are in the dark “trenches” of suffering. You feel disconnected, dissociated, numb, and empty inside. This may feel overwhelmingly intense – as in the case of the Dark Night of the Soul or existential crisis – or feel like a quiet but persistent heaviness in the background, as in the case of feeling lost, lacking purpose, low-level anxiety or depression, and so on.

Stage 2 – The Crisis of Awakening

Here, there is a sudden spark of self-awareness. Something triggers the realization that “something is wrong.” This crisis could be experienced externally in a life event, such as the loss of a job, retirement, the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, etc. Or it could be experienced internally in the form of a health scare, mental health relapse, loss of faith, or even a mystical or kundalini awakening experience. These spiritual awakening experiences, while amazing, often fade quickly, and trigger a crisis where you wonder “who am I and what am I doing here?” or “how do I glimpse that beautiful wholeness again?”

Stage 3 – Seeking Reconnection

In this stage, you enter the “seeker” mode. You start to search for answers high and low. Stage 3 is often filled with a lot of experimentation: joining workshops, reading lots of books, seeking healers, studying new modalities, you name it. Unfortunately, in this stage, there is also a strong tendency for addiction (to people, teachings, practices, identities, and drugs) in a desperate measure to try to connect with the wholeness you feel you lack.

Stage 4 – Deeper Inner Work

After the previous stage of intensive learning and seeking, you start realizing that you carry a lot of trauma, pain, and suffering within your mind and body. Jumping around from one teacher to another is exciting and initially helpful. But after a while, you feel tired. Things get stale. You’re exhausted by the chase, and you have the desire to “go deeper.” Cultural historian and priest Thomas Berry called this inscendence – the journey of going inwards. This is where inner work comes into the picture. I divide this work into four foundational pillars:

1. Embodiment – healing the nervous system and connecting to the inner wisdom of your body. 
2. Self-love – practicing self-care + self-compassion (working with the conscious mind).
3. Inner child work – reparenting your younger, wounded self (working with the subconscious).
4. Shadow work – befriending your dark and repressed parts (working with the unconscious).   

Stage 5 –  Active Healing and Recovery

Here, you are actively doing the work. You’re not interested in paying lip service to this inner journey – you’re interested in living it. You want to see results. You want things to change. And from a place of radical self-responsibility, you stop putting your hopes and dreams into believing that a mommy or daddy figure – or some other miracle cure – is going to save you. The saying, “you are the one you’ve been searching for,” comes to mind, as well as the gritty quote, “I stopped waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel and lit that bitch up myself.” You step out of the role of victim and into the role of warrior, survivor, healer, and thriver. 

Stage 6 – Integration and Transformation

After committing to the work in the previous stage, you will soon come to a place where it needs to be tested in the real world. You’ll find yourself coming across situations that trigger and challenge you. Your degree of healing and Soul Recovery will be stress tested over and over again, until one day, you realize that you have overcome those old fears. You have transformed 1%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 70% or more. This is an opportunity to celebrate, to allow yourself to feel joy, and to reflect on how far you’ve come!

Stage 7 – Ensoulment: Reclamation of Your Whole Self

Eventually, you’ll start to feel more whole within yourself. You start feeling more ensouled.

Ensoulment is coming home to yourself, to your Centre, your Soul. It is the essence of Soul- Recovery. 

You don’t need to become more special, awakened, higher vibe, or more ascended to reclaim your wholeness. All that is needed – as you’ll discover through the process of your inner work – is to learn the art of grieving, loving, and letting go: 

To grieve for the love you never received growing up. To grieve the lives you never lived and the dreams you never achieved. To grieve your pain, confusion, and loneliness. 

To love yourself as a compassionate friend or parent would. To befriend all the lost parts within you that were rejected and disowned. To come home to yourself and feel at home in your skin and in your life.

To let go of the stories, beliefs, attachments, limiting inner identities, and dogmas that reinforce Soul Loss. To peel back all the false layers that cover up the bright Light of your Soul. To reclaim your innate Wholeness again.

What “Getting Your Soul Back” Actually Looks Like in Daily Life

“The process of recovery is to awaken self-compassion and reconnect with our natural aliveness and that lost, sacred sense of spirit.” – Tara Brach

Soul Recovery isn’t dramatic, glamorous, or loud. In contrast, it’s quiet, soft, simple, and deep. 

You’ll know that you’ve “got your Soul back” (or more accurately, found a greater degree of access to your Soul) when you feel connected to your heart, to others, the world around you, and life itself.

I’ve clarified this by defining the five dominant qualities of the Soul below. 

Here’s how you know that you’ve accessed your Soul’s energy:

5 W’s of the Soul

• Wise (seeing the big picture, knowing the limits of your knowledge, accessing deeper awareness, making good decisions)
• Wild (connection with nature, self, and others; feeling the interconnectedness of existence; being untamed and free)
• Warm (kindness, compassion, and care directed towards self and others)
• Welcoming (understanding and befriending our scared and wounded inner parts; non-judgmentalism towards others; good humor)
• Whole (a sense of being complete, lovable, and worthy)

How Soul Recovery Looks Externally (PEACE)

We just covered what Soul Recovery feels like inside. But what about in your external life?

The more we access our Inner Light, the more we experience PEACE in our lives – an acronym that stands for the following:

• Playfulness – you’ll experience more joy in your life, more openness to the magic, mystery, and wonder of existence
• Energy – you’ll have access to more vitality, spirit, life-force, or “chi”
• Authenticity – you’ll live, act, and make decisions from an authentic place of inner power
• Centeredness – you’ll be more grounded and anchored in your inner truth
• Empowerment – you’ll feel more connected to your power, purpose, and potential

Examples:

Soul Recovery means befriending yourself when you feel scared or upset, and being the loving friend or parent your inner child always needed growing up.

It looks like seeing through people’s negative exteriors to the pain hidden within them, and finding common ground and humanity.

It’s feeling at home in your body and finding the humor or beauty in your physical quirks and imperfections. 

It’s sitting in nature without the need for distraction or even just watching a bird from your apartment balcony, and feeling the mystery, power, and connection with the wild world. 

It feels like being at peace with yourself, despite what self-help gurus say about needing to “be more” or what self-improvement culture tries to brainwash you into believing about “not being good enough yet.” 

There are thousands of examples. But these are just a few. 

 Come Home to Yourself

The message of Soul Recovery is simple: come home to yourself. 

All the love, the answers, the wholeness you need are within. 

Unlike what modern spirituality and self-help teach, I want to point out a clear fact: You were never broken. You were just disconnected. This is the power of Soul-centered inner work: it helps to transform your pain into a source of power, purpose, and potential for great healing.

So I’ll leave this here. It has taken me a few hours to write this, but I hope it resonates with you. I see a great need in this world for Soul Recovery. We can’t afford to keep living like the walking dead, destroying ourselves, each other, and the planet.

If you’ve reached this far, thank you for reading. If this resonated with you, please comment below and let me know. This is the feedback that brightens my days as a writer and guide. Depending on how many comments I get for this topic, I will explore it much more in-depth in the future, touching on topics like childhood trauma and Soul-Recovery, toxic relationships and Soul-Recovery, and more.

What stage of Soul Recovery are you in? I’d love to hear in the comments!