What’s in your bag?
That question was one that I asked many of my clients as they sorted through the guilt, shame, blame, and regret of the choices they made that brought them to substance abuse treatment. They would drag the invisible bag of judgment, wrongness, abuse, addiction, regret, and fear into every counseling session and pull out a few things that were “safe” but the big stuff was too painful so it stayed in the bag. Each week the bag just seemed to get heavier and heavier.
Of course I had been taught and witnessed first hand that dealing with the issues of addiction and mental health was a long drawn out process of talking, reliving, identifying, unpacking, dissecting and analyzing the childhood traumas, abuse, neglect, experiences, and the feelings, as well as current situations and relationships. This my friends is why so many people avoid counseling. As you read this can you feel your body become tense, tight, and heavy?
At the time, I was unaware that I was taking all of that on from my clients. I began feeling depressed, anxious, and tired. Did I see client’s improve? Yes, but very slowly. I had an awareness that there had to be a different way to help people.
It wasn’t until Access Consciousness® found me and I began having my Bars® run on a regular basis that I was able to see that there was a different possibility. After my first time I had my Bars® run, I noticed that I was happier, and things that would typically trigger an emotional response did not have the emotional charge that they once had. I had spent so many years helping clients dissect the WHY, to come to understand that one Bars session could change these issues with ease.
A few years ago I had a client referred to me by her counselor. She got off of the table after her first Bars session and said “You mean to tell me that this simple process could change what three years of therapy hadn’t? She didn’t have to figure it out, redirect it, make herself wrong for choosing it. She could let go of the Why and feel the lightness of dissipating the drama and trauma with ease.
I continued to experience my own personal changes and began the journey of using my intuition and the tools of Access Consciousness to create a different possibility for people who couldn’t see any other option. I was so excited to find something that was so easy and worked so well, yet it was hard to accept that the Bars® could do this. This meant that the years I spent learning the cycles of addiction, therapies, tools, and skills would challenge everything I believed to be true. I knew there had to be something different. In order for people to move beyond mental health and addiction they have to stop the cycle of judgment. Judgment creates a constant loop of shutting down the bodies ability to receive. When in judgment the body is resisting and reacting to the past and all of the issues that are brought up. The person has to make themselves wrong which creates more judgment. This loop is one of the top reasons why people continue to choose destructive behaviors.
An interesting thing began to happen with my clients who had issues with addiction and mental health once they had a Bars® session. I had a client come to me for depression due to COVID. He discussed his drinking and how the fear of losing his job had contributed to his increase in alcohol use. He had his Bars® run twice in a two week period. When he came for his next session he said to me: “I didn’t want to say anything to you until I knew it wouldn’t come back… After my first Bars® session, the depression was gone”. He said once the Bars session was over he felt relaxed and at peace. He was eventually able to stop drinking with little effort.
There are many other clients who also experienced a significant decline in their pull to engage in their addictive or compulsive behavior after having had their Bars® run a few times.
Every Bars session is different. For me, when I have mine run, sometimes I completely relax and almost sleep, other times I ask my Bars Practitioner to facilitate my session by asking me questions and clearing the energy that comes up. Both of these sessions contribute to me in different ways but it is exactly what I need.
What I have learned in Access is that anyone who chooses to use the tools, any addiction or mental health “issue” can be ended. Bars are actually the very beginning, the foundation to create this powerful change. Like most Access Bars Practitioners I am often asked why the Bars® work so well. I heard one of the founders of Access say this,
“One of the greatest gifts of Bars® is that they teach people how to receive. When you get your Bars® run, you have to lie back and receive – there is absolutely nothing else for you to do!”
~ Dr. Dain Heer
We have a hard time receiving. Do you believe that you have to do everything yourself? This creates isolation and aloneness which creates the belief that there is no one or nothing that will gift to you. We see asking for help as a weakness so we shut off our receiving which is one of the major causes of what gets labeled as mental illness. It’s also something that drives people to choose addiction. Learning how to allow others to gift to you and for you to allow yourself to receive without obligation or expectation, is one of the most amazing processes to change everything.
In therapy we use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT. This process encourages the participant to identify the thought, change it, so that they are able to change the feeling which would allow for a different choice in behavior. So… if you change the thoughts you will change the feeling and then change the behavior. This is it in a nutshell. Well, it requires a lot of work and the majority of my clients judged themselves over and over for not getting it right. Since I began using Access my clients are able to release all of the thoughts, feelings and emotions that don’t belong to them. That’s about 99.999999% of all of the junk that keeps people in an addiction cycle. This my friends is just another incredible benefit of Bars®.
Many people spend years in therapy trying to process and work through anger, sadness, hatred and other awareness’s that they have assumed are theirs! Here’s the thing – we believe what people project on to us. Maybe it’s your mothers judgment of “not enough” or your partners projection that something is wrong with you. Bars® are such a help with this! I’ve had clients who took on depression, anxiety and even addictions from other people, with a couple of Bars® sessions, intuitive questions, clearing the judgments and projections the “issues” were completely cleared up.
Just know that you are not alone and you do not have to battle these demons for years and years.
Is now the time to try something different?