The Presenting Problem
I recently worked with a client who came to me because her anxiety had become increasingly difficult to manage.
What made her anxiety particularly challenging was that it wasn't limited to one situation. She experienced intense claustrophobic feelings while traveling, especially on airplanes. She felt anxious in movie theaters and in cars, where she described the space as seeming to get smaller and smaller around her.
But it had progressed to the point where she could even experience that same feeling while sitting safely on the couch in her own home.
She also had a significant fear of death and of losing the people she loved.
Following the Feeling Back
I decided to use my RESET Technique© to explore the emotional origin of the feeling.
We first went back to a time during college when she remembered experiencing the same or a very similar feeling. Her boyfriend was leaving her, and underneath the anxiety was a powerful feeling of abandonment.
I asked her to stay with that feeling — not to analyze it, but simply to recognize it — and then allowed her mind to take her to an earlier time when she had experienced that same or a similar feeling.
She found herself as a very young child, playing with her toys while her parents were fighting.
Although she was little, there was an underlying fear: What if they separate? What if I am left?
Again, abandonment was present.
I kept that connection in mind, but the session wasn't finished. She told me that the feeling seemed even more familiar, as though it went back further.
A Lifetime That Explained It
As we continued the regression, she reported experiencing what appeared to her to be a past lifetime. She was a teenager driving at night with her boyfriend beside her. It was dark. Then she saw bright white headlights coming toward their car. The other vehicle crashed into them, and in the experience she perceived that both she and her boyfriend died.
Suddenly, several pieces of what she had been experiencing in her present life seemed connected: the intense anxiety in cars, the fear surrounding travel, her fear of death and losing people she loved, and the deeper feeling of abandonment and loss.
Releasing and Rebuilding
Rather than leaving her connected to that experience, we completed the process. She released the lifetime, allowed herself and the young man to move into the light, and we cut the emotional cords connecting her to that experience.
Then we began creating something entirely different. I took her forward in her mind and allowed her to experience herself comfortably riding in a car. Then traveling to an airport. Sitting peacefully on an airplane. Enjoying a movie theater with her family. And finally, sitting comfortably on her own couch at home watching television.
The places that had previously triggered anxiety were now being experienced with a completely different emotional response.
We then brought in the beautiful, unconditional loving light of God and allowed her to feel surrounded, protected, and deeply loved. During the experience of traveling by airplane for business, she felt the presence of Archangel Michael and Jesus beside her.
And Jesus gave her a very simple message: "You are safe. I am always with you."
Her response was remarkable. She described feeling calm and relaxed, with a sense of release and relief she had not experienced before.
What This Session Teaches
This session beautifully demonstrates something I have seen repeatedly in my work: sometimes the presenting problem is only the doorway. Anxiety may be what brings someone into the office, but when we follow the emotional thread rather than simply trying to suppress the symptom, the subconscious may reveal experiences and associations the conscious mind never would have considered.
The experiences that arise in this work are real for the client and are to be honored as such. How they are best explained — as past-life memories, spiritual encounters, or subconscious communications — is not something I need to decide for them. My job is to guide them through the experience with respect and help them release what no longer serves them.
My role is to guide the client safely through what arises, help them release what no longer serves them, and then create a new internal experience of safety, peace, freedom, and connection. That is the power of going beyond the symptom and working with what the client's own mind brings forward.
Practice
Trace one of your own feelings the way Susan traced hers. 1. Choose a recurring feeling of your own. 2. Find it in this past year and stay with it for a moment. 3. Let it take you to a childhood scene, without forcing anything. 4. If something earlier comes, follow it. If nothing comes, stop there — that is fine. 5. Release what you found, then build a new experience: see yourself in the situations that used to trigger it, calm and surrounded by light. 6. Write down where the RESET arc — recognize, follow the thread, release, replace with safety and light — worked and where it felt thin for you. You will meet the same thin spots with clients.