In this work we develop a viscoelastic bar element that can handle multiple rheological laws with non-linear elastic and non-linear viscous material models. The bar element is built by joining in series an elastic and viscous bar, constraining the middle node position to the bar axis with a reduction method, and statically condensing the internal degrees of freedom. We apply the methodology to the modelling of reversible softening with stiffness recovery both in 2D and 3D, a phenomenology also experimentally observed during stretching cycles on epithelial lung cell monolayers.. It has been observed during embryo development that the cells change