The Courage to Revise:
A High Performer’s Return to Self
By Gayle Barklie
Certified Life Between Lives® Facilitator, USA
Kiawe came to me the way many high performers do: calm voice, sharp mind, impeccable self-control, and a body that never truly unclenched. Late 40s, a senior leader in the tech world, admired for reliability and composure. On paper, Kiawe’s life looked stable, career success, a long-term relationship, and the outward polish of someone who “has it together.”
But in our first long-distance session, Kiawe said it plainly: “I can’t keep living at this pace. I’m doing everything right, and I feel like I’m disappearing inside it.”
They described chronic stress and anxiety that no amount of strategy could fully solve. Sleep was inconsistent. Mornings started with immediate adrenaline. There was a persistent sense of bracing, like impact was always just a moment away. Burnout had moved from a warning sign into a baseline.
The deeper layer was harder to name. Kiawe had questions about identity, how they belonged emotionally in the world, how they belonged in their relationship, and what it meant that parts of their inner life felt ambiguous. They spoke about having presented as trans in an earlier chapter of life. While that history was real, the present felt less clear. “I don’t know what label fits,” they said. “And not knowing makes me feel… unsafe.”
Kiawe’s long-term partner, considerably younger, wanted children. Kiawe loved their partner deeply, yet every conversation about family planning triggered a quiet panic. It was not just about logistics. It was about existential weight. “It’s like one decision will define me forever,” Kiawe said. “And I don’t trust myself to choose.”
We planned a sequence, several long-distance sessions to build stability and clarify themes, followed by an in-person weekend intensive for the Past Life Regression (PLR) and Life Between Lives (LBL) session. The intention was straightforward: restore capacity first, then explore the roots of the pattern and bring back insight that could be lived.
The first three sessions: building safety before depth
Over the first three sessions, Kiawe and I focused on what I call capacity restoration, creating internal room before asking the psyche to open its deeper archives.
We clarified Kiawe’s aims:
- Understand the source of the constant bracing and the imposter feeling
- Resolve identity conflict without forcing a premature label
- Gain clarity around life purpose and what truly matters
- Approach the children conversation from grounded values rather than fear
- Restore capacity, sleep, calm focus, and emotional bandwidth
Kiawe’s language was precise, and their emotions were contained. Yet whenever we touched the themes of visibility, belonging, and choice, the body told the truth, tightness in the throat, shallow breathing, shoulders rising.
I offered a simple frame: “We’re not here to prove anything. We’re here to understand why your system is acting like it’s still in danger, and to help it update.”
Kiawe exhaled like someone hearing permission for the first time. “Yes,” they said quietly. “Update.”
We established anchors, breath pacing, a grounding image, and a clear stop signal. We rehearsed the ability to step back from intensity, observing rather than drowning. By the third session, Kiawe reported a small but meaningful shift: “I slept through the night twice this week. That hasn’t happened in months.”
Then they traveled for the in-person weekend.
The in-person weekend: PLR and the origin of the mask
We began the intensive by re-establishing Kiawe’s internal resources, choice, pacing, and nervous-system stabilization. Then Kiawe moved into regression.
The past life that emerged carried an immediate atmosphere of danger and scarcity. The landscape was war-torn. The prevailing feeling was not just fear, but fear that becomes a philosophy: stay unseen, stay alive.
Kiawe described living in a place where identity expression could invite violence. Their voice, mannerisms, and self-presentation had to be shaped for survival. Hyper-vigilance was constant.
“At any moment,” Kiawe said, “I could be noticed. And if I was noticed, everything would collapse.”
As the regression deepened, a devastating scene emerged: younger siblings dying far too soon, far too brutally, and Kiawe being left behind. The grief was immense, but beneath it was something even more corrosive: survivor guilt.
“I didn’t deserve to live when they didn’t,” Kiawe said. “So I had to earn it.”
That sentence landed like a key. In Kiawe’s present life, over-functioning was framed as ambition and responsibility. In that past life, it was existential bargaining. I must prove I’m allowed to exist.
Then the love story appeared, complicated and impossible. Kiawe described a bond with someone they could not openly love, same-gender attraction and on the “wrong side” of the conflict. Love itself became paired with threat.
“It wasn’t just forbidden,” Kiawe said. “It was dangerous. Loving them could get us both killed.”
We paused to regulate. I reminded Kiawe, “You are here. You are safe. This is memory, not current danger.” Kiawe nodded. Tears moved, but the system did not collapse. Their breathing slowed. For the first time, they stayed present with the truth rather than armoring against it.
The deathbed: the pattern is named
Near the end of the lifetime, Kiawe arrived at a deathbed scene. The tone shifted, less fear, more clarity. The past-life self was exhausted and aware.
“I survived,” Kiawe whispered, “but I didn’t live.”
Then, with a kind of stark honesty: “I made myself small to stay alive. And then I forgot I had choices.”
This was the pivot. The regression was not simply a story. It was a map of how a nervous system learns rules in crisis and then keeps applying them long after the crisis is over. Kiawe’s present-day imposter syndrome suddenly had a lineage:
- Masking was not personality; it was survival training.
- Overachieving was not character; it was existential bargaining.
- Relationship panic was not immaturity; it was love paired with danger.
We ended the PLR by letting that truth land fully in the body, not as an insight to remember, but as a felt shift: the war was over. The mask had done its job. And Kiawe no longer had to live like survival was the price of belonging. With that release in place, the next step did not feel like going deeper. It felt like going home.
The transition into LBL: meeting the Council, the “Soul Team”
Two days later, Kiawe returned to complete the Life Between Lives portion of the work. We began with a brief review of the closing moments of the regression, the deathbed clarity, the release of the old contract, and what their nervous system had finally understood. Then, without effort, Kiawe dropped directly into the between-lives state, as if the pathway had already been cleared and simply reopened.
The space that formed around them was not a place in the ordinary sense. It was more like a field, energy, color, vibration, held together by an unmistakable intelligence. Kiawe became very still. Their breath slowed. Their face softened in a way I had not seen before.
“Oh… wow,” they said, voice quiet with disbelief. “This is real.”
Communication did not arrive as words at first. It arrived as full-bodied knowing, complete impressions landing all at once, beyond analysis, beyond figuring it out. And then Kiawe felt them, a presence gathering, familiar and immense.
“I know them,” Kiawe whispered, and their eyes filled instantly. “I know them.”
What Kiawe called their Wise Council showed up as surrounding, distinct presences, but not separated by physical form. The feeling tone was unmistakable, steady, precise, deeply affectionate. Kiawe described it as being met by a “Soul Team,” the way you are met by those who have seen every version of you and do not flinch.
And then it happened, tears began rolling down Kiawe’s face, quiet, continuous, not dramatic, just undeniable, like their body finally believed what their mind had been trying to earn for years.
“It feels like an embrace,” Kiawe said, voice breaking slightly. “Like I’m being held… without being handled.”
A moment later they exhaled, long and shaking, as if something ancient unclenched.
“I didn’t realize how alone I’ve been,” they said. “This feels… like coming back to myself.”
From there, the exchange became smooth and conversational, except the answers did not feel like advice. They felt like remembrance. Kiawe would ask a question, and the response would come through as clarity that clicked into place in their whole system.
“It’s so calm,” Kiawe said. “It’s like they’re saying, ‘Slow down. You’re safe. You have time.’”
And then, with awe that was almost childlike:
“I can’t believe how much love is here,” Kiawe whispered. “I forgot this exists.”
LBL: disentangling the knot into categories
In the LBL space, urgency dropped away. The guidance that emerged was not one perfect answer. It was organized clarity. Kiawe later called it “dissecting the issues into categories,” and that phrase captured the heart of the healing. What had felt like one fused mass of anxiety, identity uncertainty, relationship pressure, and burnout separated into distinct lanes, each with its own meaning and its own medicine.
1) Nervous system and survival strategy
Kiawe saw the old rule: safety equals concealment and constant competence. And alongside it, the new rule forming: safety equals regulated presence and honest pacing. The Council’s presence did not push. It steadied.
“I’ve been living like I’m still in a war zone,” Kiawe said. “But the war is over.”
Then, softly, as if repeating what they were being shown: “I don’t have to brace to belong.”
2) Identity and ambiguity
Here the guidance was gentle and direct: identity is not a courtroom verdict. Kiawe felt how hard they had been gripping for certainty, as if a label was the price of safety.
“I keep trying to force a label so I can relax,” Kiawe said. “But it’s not like that.”
The knowing came through clearly: relax first. Then identity clarifies over time. Kiawe’s shoulders dropped as if that permission finally reached the part that had been on guard for decades.
3) Relationship and the children question
Kiawe saw how the child discussion had become loaded with threat. It was not, “Do we want a family?” It was, “Will I lose myself forever if I choose wrong?”
“I thought I was afraid of children,” Kiawe admitted. “But I’m afraid of disappearing.”
The Council’s steadiness reframed the issue. It was not a countdown clock. It was a values conversation that required safety first.
4) Grief and survivor guilt
Kiawe recognized the hidden fuel behind burnout: the belief that rest must be earned through suffering.
“It’s like I’ve been paying a debt,” Kiawe said. “But the debt is imaginary.”
The response that landed was simple and piercing: you are not required to punish yourself to prove you deserve to live.
5) Compassion, especially the complicated kind
In the LBL state, Kiawe began to feel compassion for perpetrators and bystanders, not as absolution, but as release. Compassion did not erase accountability. It dissolved captivity.
“I don’t condone what they did,” Kiawe said. “I’m just done letting them live in my body.”
6) Permission to revise, and to move to “the other side”
This became the central medicine: evolution is not betrayal. Kiawe felt the grip of “one choice defines me forever” loosen.
“I’m allowed to change my mind,” Kiawe said. “I’m allowed to grow. I’m allowed to be complex.”
Then the line that stitched it all together:
“I can stand on either side of an idea, feel it fully, and still be a good person.”
For Kiawe, that was revolutionary. It dissolved the rigid, fear-based need to choose the correct identity, the correct life, the correct answer, as if one wrong move would erase their worth. The tears had started with an embrace. They ended with something quieter but just as powerful: permission.
Bringing it back to real life: change in the body, then change in choices
At the close of the weekend, we created an integration plan designed to translate insight into Monday-morning reality.
Kiawe committed to concrete changes:
- Capacity boundaries at work, limiting high-stakes decisions per day, delegating sooner, and setting cleaner stop-times
- A nightly downshift ritual, breath pacing and a short phrase to undo the survival contract: “I don’t have to earn rest.”
- A new internal script for imposter spikes: “This is old war wiring. This is not my current life.”
- A structured conversation format with their partner, exploring readiness, practicality, and meaning alignment, without demanding a verdict on a deadline
- An identity practice based on truth, not performance, tracking “Where did I feel most like me today?” rather than forcing labels
In the follow-up, Kiawe reported something that was not flashy, but was deeply telling: “The panic isn’t running the conversation anymore. I can actually listen. I can stay in my body.”
Then: “I told my partner the truth. I love you, and I’m scared of disappearing. Not scared of you. Not scared of kids. Scared of losing myself. And they didn’t run. They got closer.”
That is what change often looks like when it is real. Not perfection. Not instant certainty. A nervous system that finally believes it has options.
Conclusion: the update
Kiawe came seeking relief from chronic stress and burnout: “I can’t keep living at this pace.” They left with more than coping tools. They left with an updated inner operating system:
- The understanding that over-functioning was a survival strategy, not an identity
- Permission to hold ambiguity without shame
- Restored self-compassion and real choice
- A new way to engage relationship decisions from values rather than threat
- A steadier connection to purpose, not as a single mission, but as a way of being: unmasked, alive, and present
At the end of our integration, Kiawe said it simply:
“I’m not broken. I’m adapted. And I’m allowed to update.” ♥
Gayle Barklie is located in Kula, Hawaii, USA, and sees clients in-person and online worldwide
For more information or to schedule a session