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Programme

BARE™

BARE is a thirty-session recovery programme for addiction, in four phases: BREAK, ALIGN, RECLAIM and EMPOWER. You map the patterns that drive your addiction, name what you value, build the skills that protect your recovery and compile the Recovery Roadmap you leave with.

BARE is the third programme in the sequence, after Baseline and Therapeutic Autobiography. The first session sets out that addiction is a pattern, not a personality flaw. BREAK (ten sessions) is about understanding and disrupting your patterns: triggers, the habit loop, denial stories, urge surfing, coping tools, HALT, the thought chain and shame. ALIGN (ten sessions) is about direction: what you value and who you want to become. RECLAIM (five sessions) is practical: boundaries, the RAIN technique, resilience and emotional regulation. EMPOWER (five sessions) is about building a future beyond addiction: fulfilment, identity, relapse prevention and a daily recovery practice.

Each phase ends with a session that gathers its work into one document. The Pattern Profile is a one-page map of the patterns that drive your addiction. The Alignment Summary holds your top three values, integrity statement, biggest cost, what you are running toward, future self and micro-commitment practice. The Skills Toolkit puts every skill on one card. In the last session you compile these, with your Relapse Prevention Plan and daily recovery practice, into a Recovery Roadmap: the document you carry with you when you leave the programme.

The path

30 sessions · 4 parts · Therapeutic Autobiography comes first

  1. BREAK

    Phase one is about disrupting destructive patterns. You start with the pattern behind the last time you used, or almost used, then map your triggers (emotional, environmental and social) and trace your habit loop of cue, routine and reward. You write down the story your addiction tells you most often, and the truth underneath it. You learn urge surfing and build a response plan, take stock of how you cope, check yourself against HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired), catch automatic thoughts and separate guilt from shame. Session 10 pulls this into your Pattern Profile, a one-page synthesis of the most important work from each session.

    10 sessions

  2. ALIGN

    Phase two reconnects you with core values and purpose. You choose five core values and set down how the addiction pulled you from each, then count its cost: relationships, opportunities, health, money, trust, time and the self you lost. You write a letter from your future self a year on, map damaged relationships and write a one-sentence integrity statement. You find what you are running toward and keep three small promises, checked each night. In Session 18 you look at how anxiety, depression or trauma can sit alongside addiction, and write about what you faced before it began. If that session shows you might benefit from professional support, tell your clinician. After a forgiveness inventory, you build your Alignment Summary, your second foundation document.

    10 sessions

  3. RECLAIM

    Phase three is about restoring control and self-agency, in five practical sessions. You audit your boundaries, then set out your top five, each with what you need and what you will do if it is crossed. You learn the RAIN technique (Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture), which takes two to five minutes. You build a five-step Bounce-Back Protocol to carry on a card. You map the emotions you avoid or overreact to and learn the STOP method for responding instead of reacting. Session 25 puts every skill on one Skills Toolkit card and tests it against three scenarios. Its homework is your Personal Empowerment Plan.

    5 sessions

  4. EMPOWER

    Phase four turns from recovery to purpose. You rate nine areas of your life and plan a week with at least one fulfilling activity every day. You audit the labels you carry, list evidence of growth, write an identity statement and choose two or three identity anchors: daily practices tied to your values. You write a Relapse Prevention Plan: your support network (at least three people, one available at 2 AM), three things you do every day no matter what, your weekly structure, your high-risk situations and the tool for each, your early warning signs and an emergency protocol. You design morning, midday and evening routines. In the final session you compile your Recovery Roadmap and write one promise to yourself.

    5 sessions

How it works

One session at a time

The thirty sessions run in order, from BREAK to EMPOWER, and later sessions draw on your earlier answers. Your clinician releases them one at a time. Sessions 1 to 29 each end with homework for the days before the next, often a seven-day log. From Session 10 you read your Pattern Profile once a day. From Session 20 you read your Alignment Summary daily as well. Each phase ends with a written reflection. For the first three you complete it before the next phase begins; the last looks back over the whole programme.

Each session opens in your own private area of this site. You read it, then write your answers there, and the clinician who reads your work replies. Nothing is timed.

What is held, and for how long

What you write is private. It is not used to train anything, not sold, and not shared with anyone who does not need to know, and never without your specific consent except where the law requires it, as the Privacy Policy sets out. It is kept for three years after your last contact with the practice, and you can ask for a copy or its deletion at any point.