About Memory Consolidation
It seems like memory reconsolidation is becoming a hot topic in trauma healing circles, so I wanted to offer a summary of what memory reconsolidation is and what it means to you.
Memory reconsolidation is a scientific term for a particular set of steps that causes the erasure of emotional learnings. The erasure of emotional learnings is an essential element of developmental trauma healing.
A web search for “memory reconsolidation” will being up a number of articles on this topic. Here is one scientific but user-friendly article on the subject.
What is an emotional learning?
An emotional learning is something that our body deeply believes to be true based on our experiences and what we have been taught. An emotional learning is more ingrained than a cognitive belief. Often a cognitive belief and an emotional belief can be paired, but when the person comes to realize that the belief is false and changes their mind, they may not be able to change their body’s reactions because the emotional learning refuses to change.
I sort emotional learnings into four main categories.
Predictive: If A happens, then B is going to happen.
“If I volunteer to help someone, I will mess up and people will be mad at me.”
“If someone rings the doorbell, they are bringing bad news.”
“If a dog gets close to me, it will bite me.”
Rules for safety: If I want to avoid threat (punishment, harm, criticism, etc) then I need to follow this rule.
“If Mom raises her voice, my best bet is to make myself scarce.”
“If I continually try to soothe my parents, they will fight less and I won’t be as scared.”
“If I take charge and tell everyone else what to do, then I won’t be blindsided.”
Beliefs about myself: I am/deserve __________.
“I am ugly.”
“I am unloveable.”
“I don’t deserve to feel good.”
Beliefs about other people or other groups of people.
“My partner doesn’t care about me.”
“All people of a certain religion are zealots.”
“All rich people are selfish.”
Some emotional learnings are outright false and others are overgeneralizations. Because these beliefs are generally unconscious, we can find ourselves thinking, feeling, and doing things that don’t make sense to us. Bringing emotional learnings to light is an important element of personal growth for everyone.
Here is an example of one of my emotional learnings. When I was young, my mom was overwhelmed with her own trauma history and with having four children under the age of four years old. There was one experience in particular where I was quite upset, I put up a fuss, and my mom scolded and spanked me. It was obviously a critical moment in my development because my mom told me much later that at that time she noticed a clear change in my behavior. I withdrew inward and became much more compliant. The emotional learning I took from that experience was something like, “If I speak up, I will be scolded and hurt.”
What does it mean to erase an emotional learning?
When an emotional learning has been erased, the body no longer has an automatic reaction associated with that person, place or situation. If I had an emotional learning that told me I was ugly, and if I then erased that learning, I would no longer recoil at the sight of my image in a mirror or a photograph. I might even see my face and feel tender or curious.
Emotional learnings can also be referred to as out-of-date beliefs.
Memory reconsolidation creates the conditions under which we can update these out-of-date beliefs and adjust them to match with current reality.
Bringing out of date beliefs to consciousness is not enough
The goal with memory consolidation is to somatically unlearn an out-of-date belief permanently, so the body, mind and self now have a wholly new experience of life in relation to the corresponding person, situation, idea, or stimulus. Because these beliefs exist in the body, automatically and unconsciously impacting our emotions and behaviors, the erasing of the beliefs needs to involve body-felt experience, or felt sense.
Often in trauma healing, out-of-date beliefs are brought into consciousness, then observed for some time with curiosity and compassion. The person becomes aware of the hidden rules or fears and notices the impacts of those beliefs on their emotions and behaviors.
However, becoming aware of our beliefs and what they do to us is usually insufficient to change the beliefs. Cognitive understanding is just the first half of the first step in memory reconsolidation. Let’s take a look at the three steps that are required for memory reconsolidation.
The Three Elements of Memory Reconsolidation
The science of memory reconsolidation explains the three elements that are required for the unlearning of deeply held emotional learnings.
The first element is bringing unconscious learning into conscious awareness.
Let’s look at my example above. My emotional learning was, “When I speak up, I am scolded and I get hurt.”
Working with my facilitator (or on my own), I can report on and explore the pattern that comes with this out-of-date belief. I can see that after I speak in public, I get attacked by embarrassment and fear. Something in me believes that I will be shunned, shamed, or hurt for speaking up. We name the belief, and we slow things down and take time to be with what it feels like for me when this happens. Fear, confusion, closing in on myself. We might also explore the origin story, taking time with what it’s like to remember being with my mom when I was little and she was overwhelmed. There is a quality of shock in just touching into that memory.
The second element is connecting to an experience that contradicts the belief.
Again referring to my example, I could remember a time when I spoke up and people expressed gratitude for my words, no one complained, and there were no social repercussions. I was received, welcomed, and appreciated. Again, we take time to somatically connect to what that contradictory experience was like, noticing what it feels like now to remember and feel that experience. I feel a sense of warmth and openness in my chest. I feel my neck soften and allow my head to drop and be held by the pillow that’s behind me.
The third element is to bring these two elements together, consciously noticing that the old belief has been disproven by this contradictory example.
We would pause and really connect to that experience of being received and then also connect to the fear of being shunned and shamed. “There is a contradiction here. The belief that I am always shunned or shamed after speaking up cannot be accurate, because here is a powerful example of where I was really welcomed and honored after speaking up.”
Going through this sequence of three steps evokes a sort of “does not compute” situation in the brain and body. There is a period of time (typically minutes or hours) that might feel confusing or disorienting. “OK, this is weird. It’s not clear what I should believe or feel here.” Then things settle down and the old belief may have been erased entirely or – perhaps more frequently – adjusted somewhat.
My new belief might sound like this, “I know that sometimes I’ve gotten backlash for speaking up but sometimes I’ve been welcomed and celebrated. I’m going to watch and see if I can learn and discern so I better know what to expect in any particular environment.”
The three steps
As presented by Ecker, here are the steps required to utilize the above elements for memory reconsolidation
Step 1 – gather the ingredients
Identify the emotional learning, the out-of-date belief.
Identify the problematic symptoms that this emotional learning is causing in the person’s life. Identify past painful experiences and behaviors associated with this emotional learning.
Identify a contradictory experience, some experience that proves that the emotional learning is not fully accurate
Step 2 – experience the elements
Connect with each element in turn – the out-of-date belief and its impacts, the contradictory experience and its impacts, and the clarity that the contradictory experience does indeed disprove the out-of-date belief. You may want to repeatedly put the out-of-date belief and the contradictory experience side by side, for the person to really get how the emotional learning has been disproven. You are watching for a shift in the person – the “does not compute” experience that I described above.
Step 3 – check to see if it worked
This might be done in the same session, or you might revisit this in a subsequent meeting. Raise the topic of past painful experiences and behaviors associated with this emotional learning. Notice how the person’s current experience is different than it used to be, that is, if the memory reconsolidation was successful.
How reliable are these three steps?
Certainly, there is no guarantee that walking through these steps will erase emotional learning, changing or removing the out-of-date belief in yourself or your client. Let’s look at some of the factors that can increase the chance of success.
Memory Reconsolidation Preconditions
Memory reconsolidation requires connection, containment, and relative safety.
In the 1990’s I participated in dozens of intensive weekend personal growth retreats. In those retreats I frequently experienced memory reconsolidation, and I witnessed memory reconsolidation in many or most participants. The retreats were carefully designed to create a context of connection and safety, and the space of the retreat was held with awareness and intention. Those times when I was a volunteer training assistant in these spaces, the assisting team would meet prior to the start of the weekend to set the container. We would join in a common intention; we would connect with our hope and vision for what the participants could experience. We might sing or chant or offer prayers, various rituals to create camaraderie and a group energy. This intentionality along with the design of the program evoked a strong sense of safety, connection and containment in the experience of most participants.
Containment in 1:1 work is different than with a group, and containment within the space of a series of 50-60 minute meetings is different than in an intensive weekend. That said, containment is always important. What is your vision or hope for your clients? What do you believe is possible? What are you able to hold while staying present, compassionate, curious, and kind? What is your felt experience of the practical, human, and spiritual or energetic support that exists for you as you are holding the space for your clients? All of those are elements of containment.
Feeling relatively safe and feeling connected are also crucial elements in this work. Safety and connection can emerge in the space of solid containment. Relative safety is important because if a person feels actively unsafe, the body is not receptive to positive change, it’s busy working out how to protect itself. A sense of connection fosters ventral vagal activity in the parasympathetic nervous system which, like safety, creates an inner environment conducive to change.
Memory Reconsolidation requires body-felt experience
Many people who carry unresolved developmental trauma learned to live in their heads and disconnect from their bodies. These folks can be insightful at understanding their beliefs and behaviors, but insight and understanding are not enough to bring about permanent change.
When working with your own personal experience, invite yourself to notice how it feels inside yourself. What’s it like to reflect on or remember the event or experience that comes to mind for you right now?
As a facilitator, if you are not practicing a somatic modality, and your modality doesn’t have this built in, you can still add somatic awareness. Notice when the client is hanging out in cognition and bring in references to the client’s experience in the moment:
“What’s it like for you to share that?”
“How are you doing, what is happening for you right now?”
“What are you sensing or feeling?”
“How is that for you?”
We often need to be gently persistent, as folks can be very skilled at snapping back into their heads in response to any prompt.
Please leave enough time when offering these inquiries. It takes time for the client to feel around and connect to whatever is going on. Don’t be in a hurry to get to the next thing, the next prompt, the next step in the process. When I have a client who is silent for more than a minute, I often gently query, “Are you doing ok?” If they nod, I give them more time. If they say, “Actually my thoughts took over!,” then we move on.
There is another important point to add here. Just because someone is sharing cognitive material, that does not necessarily mean that they are lost in their head and disconnected from their body. Some people can speak at length about insights and yet, if you know where to look or how to feel into their experience, you can tell that they are having potent and even transformative experiences the entire time. It’s still ok to insert, “And just talking about all of this with me, what’s that like? How’s it feeling in there?” Just try to not accuse someone of staying in their head or try to get them out of their head when that’s not actually what’s happening.
How can you know if it’s working?
If you are attending to the pre-conditions and following the steps, how can you tell of you or your client is successfully completing memory consolidation? Step 3 is a decent measure of success. When to refer back to the original painful experiences that were associated with the emotional learning, how is that for the person (or for you)? If the memory reconsolidation was successful, we would expect that something will be clearly different about visiting those memories.
Note though that for some people, even if an emotional memory has been erased, that doesn’t mean that they will feel completely comfortable, alive and at ease revisiting the associated painful experiences. Some people have complex layers and systems of out-of-date beliefs, protections, and habits. The memory that was erased might be one of many that cause suffering in the client’s life (or your life). Let’s talk about this sort of client.
Memory Reconsolidation for C-PTSD and Global High Intensity Activation
For people who have global high nervous systems the process of memory reconsolidation works the same way as for people who overall feel relatively safe and ok in the world. However, here are some things to keep in mind when working with global high clients or if you yourself have a global high system.
For people with complex trauma but not a global high system, the same guidance applies, but the situation is less extreme.
Relational Memory Reconsolidation that occurs over time: It’s ok for you to be you
When working with someone who has a global high nervous system it is critical that you slow down and make time for the person to settle, as much as they are able to settle. This type of person needs time for them to find a relative sense of safety. A global high nervous system always has many moving parts. Don’t be attached to making it through the steps of memory consolidation. Through showing up without judgments or demands and through being truly ok with this person being exactly who and how they are, you are actively supporting an ongoing memory consolidation process.
Global high people have been told by their experience that it is not ok to be who and how they are. (Element 1 if it is articulated). You show up holding the reality that, at least as far as you are concerned, this person can indeed be exactly who and how they are. You will not make demands on them, you will not require them to explain themself repeatedly, you will not be disappointed based on what does or doesn’t happen, you will not run away, you will not go into a shame spiral inside yourself based on what is or isn’t happening.
Often this is made explicit. Sometimes I will initiate that by saying, “Just take your time. There’s nothing you need to do here. It’s truly ok for you to be exactly you.” I have a song I sometimes sing for my clients. Sometimes the client brings it up. I frequently have clients say something like, “I’m having this thought that you are mad at me” or “I’m feeling like you think I’m really stupid.” They vocalize the current expression of the adverse emotional learning. And I can explicitly tell them that I’m not mad and I don’t think they are stupid, if that is the truth. It usually is the truth, but if it isn’t, don’t say it. Say something that is both reassuring and true. I don’t think I can emphasize enough how important it is to not lie to or bullshit a global high person. (Element 2.)
This kind of experience might recur several times in the sessions. And at some point when the time seems right, I or the client might bring that topic to the center of the room. “You have a long history of not being accepted, not being welcomed. Maybe sitting with that, really being with how that has been all this time. (Element 1.) And there have been a bunch of occasions when that has come up and you have asked what I was thinking or feeling, and I was really feeling warm and welcoming toward you. I truly respect you, I really appreciate you. And maybe see if it’s ok to sit with that and to get how that feels, how that is.” (Element 2) “And I invite you to just put those two up against each other – the deep belief that’s been there that you are never welcomed, never accepted, never understood, and then these experiences we’ve had where you checked it out and I was really happy to be here with you just as you are. Just noticing how those two things don’t actually go together. We’re not trying to force anything here, we’re just making space for the somatic exploration of this, so the belief can soften or adjust, but only if it’s time for that to happen.” (Element 3.)
The importance of Relative safety
I have already mentioned that relative safety is required for memory reconsolidation to occur.
Note that particularly with highly complex trauma and global high systems, you may be unable to tell whether a client is feeling safe or not. This can go in either direction. The client might have magnificent skills at presenting, “I’m good, everything is ok,” when there is actually a storm of activity happening under the surface and the client does not feel at all safe. Or the client might present with hyperactivity, distress, and confusion, bouncing from one thing to another and yet they might be feeling a lovely sense of being held by you.
Discerning a client’s level of felt safety is a skill that develops over time, It requires being sensitive to subtle cues that might otherwise slide right past you, words or actions that don’t match the general presentation of the client.
Here is a metaphor intended to illustrate the importance of relative safety in working with clients who have trauma on board. This is not the perfect metaphor but I think it will work.
The metaphor is a young child with a painful splinter in their finger. The process of removing the splinter is straightforward enough. The child sits still, you take the tweezer and grab the end of the splinter, and you gently and carefully pull it out. An absolute requirement here is that the child keeps their hand very still long enough for you to grab the splinter and remove it. If the child cannot keep still, the whole process won’t work. The splinter might break or become more deeply embedded or the child might get poked by the tweezer.
I can imagine three different children with splinters.
The first child really trusts the caregiver. Even though the splinter is quite painful and they feel hurt and scared, they are able to sit still because they know that their caregiver will make sure they are ok.
The second child feels really upset. They are unable to be calm. They are unable to feel safe. They feel hurt and scared and want to crawl out of their skin. However, they have had enough good and ok experiences with their caregiver that they believe they will be helped. So they manage to sit still despite all the distress, activity and chaos that is happening on the inside.
The third child cannot sit still, they will not sit still. The odds of getting the splinter out are much smaller than the odds of the child being further injured. In this case, getting the splinter out is not a possibility. You might take them to the doctor who might successfully reassure them, or who might physically restrain them, or who might medicate them, so that they can be still enough to remove the splinter.
The first child is a person who does not have complex trauma. They have a particular problem they want to solve, a particular emotional belief they want to erase. They have a solid platform of safety, belonging and sense of self.
The second child is a person who has complex trauma and possibly a global high nervous system, but who has come to really know that their facilitator is safe, welcoming and supportive and will not place unnecessary demands on them.
The third child is the person with a global high nervous system or complex trauma who has no reason to trust the facilitator or who may trust the facilitator a bit but who just can’t feel safe enough.
If your client is the third child, your mission is not to try to do some specific piece of memory reconsolidation for their presenting issue. Your mission is to be welcoming, accepting, curious, and respectful, to make space for the person to be exactly who they are, and to have no attachment to outcome. Through doing that consistently and persistently, your client may eventually become the second child, and then you can walk through the steps of memory reconsolidation on a particular topic.
And if your client is the third child and over time they still do not begin to feel truly safe with you, then you might need to take them to the doctor. This might mean doing your own personal work. This might mean referring out the client to someone who has more experience and expertise working with this sort of client. Or, this might mean attending consultations with someone who has more expertise so that you can grow your own skills and awareness and better serve your client.
What does Memory Reconsolidation mean to you as a facilitator?
Do your own work.
The more personal experience you have of encountering out-of-date beliefs in yourself, working with them, and ultimately erasing those emotional learnings, the more comfortable you can potentially feel with your client’s sometimes enormous challenges. When big changes or many changes happen for you, then you can know that change is possible for your client. When you comfortably know change is possible for your client, then they can feel that change is possible.
Don’t stay in cognition! Don’t be shy of the body! Return to experience!
Be aware of the balance between attending to the client’s felt experience in the moment vs commentary and cognitive discussion. Many of us tend to drift toward more words and less toward immediate experience. Words are our friend. Trauma education is our friend. The client understanding what is happening for them is our friend. However, the guts of trauma healing are in the guts, in the body, in the felt sense. Don’t stay too long in words, move back to experience.
Also be aware of your own felt experience. How is it for you sitting with this client right now? Attending your own experience brings two particular benefits to the work. First, if you are present to your comfortable and uncomfortable feelings, that creates more space and permission for the client to connect to their feelings. Second, by sensing in your body, you might get good information about your client. Often we can feel things in ourselves that the client might be feeling below the surface. If I feel something that I think might belong to the client, I may or may not say anything and I may or may not be right about it belonging to the client. But it’s interesting information that might help inform the session.
Make the implicit explicit!
Make the emotional memory explicit
Element one of memory reconsolidation is explicitly noticing and mentioning the unconscious emotional belief and consciously looking at the impacts on the person’s life and experience. If you work with feelings and behaviors but you never make references to “Where did that pattern of emotion and behavior come from?,” you may never get to a deep and lasting shift. In some somatic modalities, we directly ask that question and in others, we start with the current experience, go to the body or the felt sense, and then follow what comes up. We might ask, “This whole thing, does it feel familiar? Have you felt this set of feelings before?” Note that by going to the current felt sense, sometimes the relevant childhood memories just show up without explicitly asking for them.
In looking for the unconscious belief, the emotional learning, we can inquire cognitively, we can inquire through the felt sense in the body, or we can make an offering, maybe something like: “A lot of us learned that it was dangerous to be seen, so we did a great job of being invisible. It kind of looks to me like that might be what’s happening here with you.”
It’s ok to get it wrong if you are offering, exploring, not attached to what you are saying. If you are wrong, often the client will correct you, and in doing so will be moving closer to their inner experience. As always, how and how much you can do this depends on the relative safety and connection that the client is experiencing.
Make the potential contradiction explicit
I often also make the potential contradiction explicit, even if there is not yet any reference point for a contradiction. “So, we know that some people are really visible, and they are totally ok with that. And what your body knows is that you have to be invisible to be safe. So I’m wondering, I’m wondering how might it be possible for your body to be visible and feel safe at the same time? What other way of being safe might be possible? And I don’t expect you to have an answer for this, if you have one, that’s great, and I’m more sort of planting the seed, letting your body know that it’s even a possibility to be visible and safe at the same time. Because until now your body didn’t even know that could be a thing.”
Make the actual contradiction explicit
This can be fun. Sometimes the client says or does something that is opposite to their usual presentation or their presenting problem. When that happens, we like to make that explicit. “Oh my goodness! I hear that you got up on the stage and sang karaoke in front of the whole room. And it was fun. It was good. I’m just gonna say, ‘that doesn’t sound invisible to me!’ “
And again, we can get it wrong. They might say, “Oh, I can be visible with my friends. I just can’t be visible at work or at church or with my family of origin.”
“OK, got it. And I am still so interested in those two very different experiences. In some spaces you can be visible.”
What does Memory Reconsolidation mean to you as a client or as person on a healing journey?
When working with a facilitator
If you are doing regular work with a trauma healing facilitator, then we would like to see two strands of memory reconsolidation happening in that space.
Relational contradictions in the session room
The first strand of memory consolidation when working with a facilitator is the relational work inherent in any healing space. We each have our own flavor of out-of-date relational beliefs. “It’s not ok for me to be me.” “I’m too much for people.” “No one is willing to be honest with me.” and so on. So, one thing that we want to have happen in a healing relationship is that “simply” the way the facilitator shows up, connects, and responds to you contradicts one or more of those out-of-date relational beliefs.
See if you can identify ways your facilitator relates to you that – in a good way – don’t align with what your body expects to happen. Let yourself really notice those things. You might want to explicitly bring them up in the sessions. For example, “I like how you just continue to be relaxed and open when I talk about something intense. I always expect that people will freak out when I talk about stuff.” Note, though, that you don’t have to bring this up, you can quietly notice and enjoy it within yourself. Or you can share the observations and experience with a friend or partner outside of the session room. Whether spoken or not, bringing these contradictions into consciousness and into your somatic awareness is probably the most central element of memory reconsolidation.
Note that if you cannot identify any ways that your facilitator relates that contradict your (unconscious) expectations, that might be a red flag. There are many dimensions to a healing relationship of course. But for many of us, this dimension of the unexpected in relating – surprising acceptance or surprising gentleness or surprising authenticity – is truly a key piece of the picture of transformation. You might want to try to find someone whose relating is – in some way – a refreshing surprise to you.
Memory reconsolidation in general
There are many therapeutic and healing modalities, many approaches to changing the painful patterns in our experience. Some modalities explicitly include the steps of memory reconsolidation, others don’t, and that’s ok. The important question is this: Are things changing for the better overall? Do you find yourself in familiar situations noticing that you are more relaxed or less uncomfortable than you used to be in those same situations? If so, that’s evidence that some memory consolidation has occurred. Some emotional memory that you previously carried has been updated.
“What can I do on my own?”
What can you do on your own? I’m going to start with a caveat. If you tend to feel overburdened and stressed, with a lot of demands on you, don’t take on any practice that feels like another demand. With that out of the way, let’s look at the process of memory reconsolidation and how we can support it or dance with it in our personal lives and in our personal work.
Memory reconsolidation requires becoming aware of an out-of-date belief and noticing how that belief impacts our current experience, affecting our feelings and behaviors. And it requires connecting to how we feel right now as we consider that whole thing.
Memory reconsolidation requires becoming aware of one or more experiences that contradict the out-of-date belief and checking in with what it was like to have those contradictory experiences.
Memory reconsolidation requires putting those together, seeing and feeling that these experiences prove that the out-of-date belief cannot be exactly true the way we have been feeling it.
So – can you identify something your body believes that might not be true? Perhaps look at some feeling or behavior that doesn’t really make sense.
“Sometimes I feel ________ when the situation really doesn’t seem to call for that feeling. It doesn’t make sense.”
or “Sometimes I behave ________ when the situation really doesn’t seem to call for that feeling. It doesn’t make sense.”
Make a note of the feeling or the behavior. Make a note of the situation. Check with your body or your energy or your intuition to see if you can find any clues about what the emotional learning might be, the out-of-date belief. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just hang out with what you are able to find.
Now, with however much information and insight you have, check your body and your memory banks to see if you can recall a situation where it wasn’t like that, where you didn’t feel the feeling or you didn’t do the behavior, even though something about the whole situation was similar.
If you have some sense of what the out-of-date belief is, check to see if the different experience rises to the level of a contradictory experience. If it does, you might say, “This particular experience proves that this old belief can’t be fully true.” And pause and see how that feels. If not, you might say, “I am curious about this whole pattern and curious about why I don’t feel the same in these various situations. I’m going to continue to be a detective. I will observe myself and take notes, seeing what more I can learn about what is going on in me under the surface.”
I have a worksheet that might be helpful in this process. It is not specifically about memory reconsolidation, so not a perfect fit, but it does cover some of this ground.