Why Do We Hold On to What We're Ready to Release?

An Akashic Records reading, distance energy healing, and a rather unexpected appearance by Don Draper.

A client's Guides once spent part of an Akashic Records reading telling me he was Don Draper.

Yes. Don Draper from Mad Men.

Not exactly the spiritual reference I was expecting that day. But there he was. Again and again. And I remember thinking, Okay, we're really going with this?

I keep coming back to this client because his sessions gave me two very different things to sit with. In the reading, his Guides pointed toward possibilities he hadn’t imagined for himself. In the energy work, I perceived something that wouldn’t let go, even though he’d asked for it to.

Which left me with a question I still can’t shake: what if some of what we’re trying to release has become so familiar that we don’t recognize we’re holding on to it?

Let me back up.

When the Guides have other ideas

He came to me wanting clarity about his career. He was good at what he did, had plenty of experience, and knew he wanted more. Yet he kept landing in jobs where he wasn’t getting the recognition or the room to advance.

He was considering another position. Familiar work, something he knew he could do, and he hoped it might eventually lead to the role he actually wanted.

But there was another direction he was drawn to: partnerships and business development.

And his Guides were VERY interested in that direction.

At one point I was practically cheering. “Partnership program, go partnership program, go partnership program!” That’s an actual line from the session. So much for maintaining my mysterious psychic composure.

The position he was considering wasn’t necessarily a bad choice. We explored it, and I was receiving that it could offer stability and serve as a stepping stone. But it kept coming through as safe. Familiar. The same kind of work he’d already been doing.

When I connected with partnerships, the energy of the reading shifted. It felt expansive, exciting, like a direction that drew on qualities he hadn’t fully recognized in himself.

There was just one problem. He’d already tried to move into partnerships at his current company and been turned down for lack of required experience. So how, exactly, was he supposed to get there?

Apparently, we’re doing Mad Men now

This is where the Don Draper comparison kept coming through, so insistently that I finally said something like, “I don’t know why they’re drawing this comparison, and I hope you understand the reference, but they’re like, you’re Don Draper.”

His Guides were showing me someone charismatic, intuitive, ridiculously smart, and naturally good at connecting with people. Someone who could walk into a room, build relationships, and get people excited about a vision. And they were showing me that my client was operating below what he was capable of.

I even had to clarify that the words weren’t mine. That’s another thing about channeling: sometimes the Guides use language I wouldn’t choose myself, and sometimes I find their delivery freaking hilarious.

The message wasn’t that he needed expensive suits and whiskey in the office. It was about recognizing qualities he already had.

He was focused on the experience he didn’t have. They were focused on the qualities he did.

Then they gave him homework.

Yes, the Guides assign homework

This happens more often than people might expect, and I’m not exactly the poster child for completing every assignment my own Guides have handed me. I admitted that during the session.

His assignment was to write out the qualities and characteristics he genuinely admired about himself.

Admired.

That word stopped me. Not the qualities that would look impressive on a résumé, not what an employer wanted to see. What he actually admired.

Then his Guides asked him to imagine where he saw his industry going in five to ten years, and to get outrageous with it. Really outrageous. They were linking the two: the qualities he admired in himself and the future he wanted to help create.

As I understood it, those qualities were part of what would get him into the rooms he wanted to be in.

Whether he did the homework was entirely up to him. A reading isn’t about handing your authority over to me or your Guides. You decide what resonates and what you do next.

But I was struck by how much of the session had become about the way he saw himself.

When the energy kept coming back

After the reading, we scheduled distance energy healing. I work with Reiki and Crystalline Soul Healing, and although the experience is quite different from a conversational reading, I don’t see these approaches as disconnected. In a reading, the Guides give me information about patterns, beliefs, and possibilities. In energy work, I’m paying attention to what I perceive within the client’s field.

Sometimes those two raise similar questions. Sometimes they don’t. And sometimes something happens that makes me stop and think, What the hell is going on here?

This was one of those times.

My client had given me permission to work within his energetic field. As I began, I perceived energy moving out through different layers. But it wouldn’t stay out. It was like a magnet. I’d witness energy move out, and almost immediately it was pulled right back in.

Again. And again.

The pattern was unmistakable to me. Something seemed to be resisting the release, which was curious, because he’d consciously agreed to the work. He wanted to feel better. He wanted to move forward.

So why did it seem like something was holding on?

What are you getting from holding on?

When we spoke the next day, I told him what I’d experienced. He didn’t immediately identify with the idea that he was resisting anything.

Fair enough. Who signs up for energy work and thinks, Actually, I’d like to keep all my crap exactly where it is, thank you very much?

But I was curious, so we explored it. What might he be getting from holding on to something familiar?

What purpose might it have served? What would be different if he no longer carried it?

I’m not suggesting people choose their pain, or that every difficult experience exists because someone is secretly attached to it. But sometimes we consciously want something to change without recognizing all the ways we’ve become accustomed to how things are.

As we talked, he began to see there could be some resistance he hadn’t been aware of. We didn’t need to force a conclusion. The conversation itself did the work.

That night, I worked with him again. This time, some of the energy moved out without that magnetic pull bringing it back.

I can’t tell you exactly what changed between those sessions. But it’s the part I think about most.

And then came the message

About a month later, my client reached out. He’d accepted a new job, one that involved the partnerships and professional growth he’d been excited about during our session.

He sent me a timeline of how everything unfolded, from the reading and energy work to landing the role, all within a month, after waiting over a year for any movement in his career.

I was so happy for him.

Then I got to the part that made me laugh. He described the opportunity as a chance to expand into a different version of himself, build partnerships, and grow. And apparently the people around him compared him to Don Draper.

DON DRAPER.

Are you kidding me?

After all the times that reference came through during his reading, there it was in showing up in his life.

He had the experience, he interviewed, he earned the position. I’m not going to take credit for that. But the sequence of events after waiting for so long? Pretty freaking interesting.

What I’m left with

Maybe this is part of why insight alone doesn’t always create change. We can understand something intellectually and still have an entirely different experience of it emotionally, physically, or energetically.

The reading gave us a way to explore what the Guides were communicating. The energy work gave us another way to engage with what presented itself.

Sometimes the pieces connect in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. And sometimes, apparently, Don Draper gets involved.