Transforming emotional triggers with memory reconsolidation
The phenomenology of a self-practice for healing
Memory reconsolidation is amazing. It’s the way our brains naturally update memories including our deepest implicit learnings, or emotional knowings, which are usually at the root of unwanted psychological symptoms. This leads to transformational, permanent change: removing triggers completely, shifting how you see yourself and others, and changing your expectations of the world. When this happens, the change is instant and deeply stable. It is far more effective and sustainable than relying on coping strategies or the slow process of trying to build new neural networks to outcompete trauma beliefs.
Surprisingly, memory reconsolidation is still not that widely known, even among many therapists or in psychology programs. And it should be. Not only is it supported by about 20 years of strong clinical and neuroscientific research, it is likely the key mechanism behind significant shifts in many therapies, from EMDR to IFS to even, at times, CBT.
But as I’ve discovered it doesn’t have to be something limited only to therapy. It is after all just a natural mechanism of the brain, not a therapy in of itself. Learning how to create these shifts when my trauma was already triggered in daily life has changed everything for me. It created very rapid healing in many areas of my life. It has also changed how I relate to being triggered as well. Yes, I still feel significant emotional pain in those moments, it’s horrible. But now, knowing that each trigger is a potential opportunity to heal makes the pain much more bearable. It’s become a very helpful mindset for me.
This way of healing also allowed me to progress much faster than I otherwise would have. Because of dissociation (likely OSDD), many of my trauma memories, feelings and beliefs are often inaccessible. While therapy no doubt could have eventually reach them, building trust between parts and therapists and stabilisation takes time, and for a long time this wasn’t going very well for me. But meanwhile, I was able to work with what was surfacing when I was triggered instead. It became a kind of neuroscience loophole that worked for me regardless what my current experiences were, because as I’ll later describe the beliefs that come up can be disproven by other memories or actions. It doesn’t need the current situation to be the perfect corrective experience.
This natural mechanism in the brain I believe is perhaps part of why trauma repetition compulsion happens. The psyche is not simply looping for no reason, but trying to create a healing window because our minds already have everything it needs to do that internally.
While memory reconciliation can be done in much more controlled ways such as through the techniques that might be used in therapy, there is plenty of information already out there on that topic. So I’m not going to go there. Instead what I want to share is the phenomenology of the process I have instead used. How I do this when I’m triggered and the kind of mindset that this involved. Because I think perhaps this might help other people, or maybe others may even recognise their own intuitive process from the felt sense of what I describe. If that is you then I would love to hear about your process too!
The Key Conditions Needed to Achieve a Memory Reconsolidation:
First up it’s essential to understand the basic conditions required for memory reconsolidation to update implicit beliefs. There are only a few:
The implicit belief is activated emotionally with some conscious awareness.
Within about six hours of activation, you need to encounter or create an experience that disconfirms the implicit belief.
You then need to hold both the belief and the disconfirming experience in mind together, and notice the contradiction, while staying inside your window of tolerance. There needs to be some emotional activation, but not so much that you become completely dysregulated.
When this happens, a memory reconsolidation occurs. Some experts think repetition may be needed. I find that while repetition can help, it is not always necessary. I know I have achieved reconsolidation when I feel a distinct shift: “How strange that I ever believed that.” For me, it is often followed by euphoria, self-transcendence or waves of grief.
It is important to note that sometimes symptoms are driven by more than one implicit belief. Reconsolidations are specific. If you hold the belief that all your emotions hurt others, for example, but only disconfirm anger, you may still need to disconfirm sadness or vulnerability separately. The good news is that implicit beliefs are often black and white, and often very extreme so a single disconfirming experience can sometimes be enough to create meaningful nuance. That can be enough to stop assuming that thing will always happen every time, perhaps only just sometimes and there is so much more freedom in that perspective.
A Phenomenology of Using Emotional Triggers to Do Memory Reconsolidation
The first time I experienced a reconsolidation this way it was not intentional. But I had already had one in a calmer state, so I recognised the feeling and the conditions. I still do not know if I just got lucky or if unconscious transformance made it happen. Either way, it was profound. The shift took me from the most extreme dysregulation I had ever experienced into euphoria. It was not that anything external had changed, but something deep inside had resolved. That was empowering.
After that, I began intentionally cultivating disconfirming experiences from daily life. I would store them mentally so that when triggered, I could access them. At first, this process was slow and difficult. Often, I could not do it at all, because one key condition is staying in your window of tolerance, and I frequently was not. When triggered, the part of me that has the cognitive capacity to do this work would go offline, sometimes for days, until the natural arc of pain slowly abated. But I noticed that when my prefrontal cortex came back online and I was still emotionally raw but no longer overwhelmed, that was a potential window. That was when I could hold onto what had been triggered, connect to the emotional truth of the belief, and compare it to memories that might contradict it. There’s a 6 hour window remember from when a belief has been activated in which it still can be changed.
Over time, my ability to stay regulated during triggers improved. Now Im less likely to lose full access to my thinking parts or for nearly as long anyway. This means shorter periods of pain and more ability to use coping strategies like self-compassion and co-regulation of my trauma parts with other parts, which also keep me regulated. That makes memory reconsolidation more possible and more efficient. To be clear though, I am not always successful. In fact, most attempts do not lead to reconsolidation. Foundational trauma beliefs feel undeniably true, emotionally and sometimes logically. In fact that feeling is a really good sign that something truely is an emotional knowing and not just a symptom of one or what you just think you might believe based on logic. Many times I have known what belief was activated but felt certain that this time it was irrefutable. Often, another belief had to shift first for the new one to even become accessible.
Still, because I have experienced so many profound shifts, I now trust the process. Even when a belief feels immovable, I know that does not mean it is. Things tend to work themselves out in time.
It is also important to clarify what “conscious awareness” of a belief really means. In some models, like coherence therapy, awareness is defined as putting the belief into words so it can be explicitly held and examined. That makes sense in therapy. But in real life, especially when triggered, awareness is rarely verbal. In fact, it is usually not.
When I work with memory reconsolidation in triggered states, the belief is not something I articulate. It is something I am. It shows up as a felt sense, often preverbal. I become or connect with the part of me that holds the belief. I do not stand outside it and describe it. I am inside it, experiencing it as the only truth. The belief shapes how I feel, how I see myself and how I expect others to respond. Sometimes there are no words at all. That makes it powerful, but also exactly what makes it possible to change.
Usually, it is only after the shift happens that I can name the belief clearly. Until then, it lives as a knowing, somatic, intuitive or emotional. They can be known in many ways, which may be especially important for preverbal trauma.
Journaling while triggered has been invaluable. Not only have these helped create shifts, they also leave a record of what I was feeling. This has solved my issue with emotional amnesia. Later, when more regulated, I can revisit these records and sometimes use them to complete a reconsolidation that was not possible in the moment.
Disconfirming Experiences
Most of my disconfirming experiences come from memory. I now consciously note when something good or unexpected happens, particularly in interactions with others. These moments are often prime material and even they don’t turn out to be relevant to an emotional knowing it’s never a bad practice to train your mind to notice more positive and surprising things.
Other ways I have found disconfirming experiences is from taking the perspective of another person or from intentional action I take that breaks some cycle and does things differently. I have also had more unusual experiences. On several occasions, after being triggered or hitting on something deep, I have become overwhelmed with sleepiness or blacked out. During these times, in what felt like dream states, I processed memories and scenarios. I would wake up with the belief shifted. These experiences convinced me that our minds are always trying to heal, even without conscious effort.
Over time, as I have healed, spontaneous reconsolidations have become more common. It feels like the kind of mindset and ways of thinking involved become more automatic and ingrained.
Felt Sense of Memory Reconsolidation, the Aftermath and the Benefits of Metaprocessing
When a memory reconsolidation happens, the feeling is unmistakable. There is usually a sudden moment when the original belief feels absurd or no longer real. After that, there is often euphoria. Sometimes, there is grief. I mourn how much that belief shaped my life and what I missed out on. I also notice a temporary phase that makes it feel like everything has been fixed, though I have learned to let that settle before drawing conclusions.
Another experience I’ll typically have post memory reconsolidation is increased feelings of ‘self-energy’. That’s a concept I’ve borrowed from IFS, and to me it has nothing to do with a single self (which I don’t identify with having), but for me, it feels like an expanded capacity for self-compassion and acceptance and compassion for others. Suddenly I’ll want to tell all the people in my life that I love them more. Sometimes this has even tipped into experiences of self-transcendence where I feel connected to the collective consciousness of all humanity and lose some of my individuation. In one of these more profound experiences, I spent most of the day crying about the meaning of life being experiences of connection and that love and grief were both inextricably linked and exquisitely painfully beautiful. That experience I think went a long way towards healing my attachment wounds.
I think a contributor for pushing me into these more transcendent states and sometimes just for triggering additional memory reconsolidation back to back, is metaprocessing. This is a concept from AEDP therapy where a breakthrough is discussed (or in my instance usually journaled about or talked about with ChatGPT) noting all the things it seems to have changed for me, the implications for things I predict, how it might relate to prior experiences etc. This is a process I was naturally drawn to do long before I heard about it within AEDP therapy. The idea is that by focusing on the shift and associating it with other things, more healing can be found and spirals of transformance. It also just feels good to do, especially after a period of being triggered and so much focus on trauma and negative beliefs. Through an intentional focus on what has shifted it also builds self-trust which I believe helps the to have more optimism about what is possible, the next time something new is triggered.
If you have made it this far, thank you for staying with me. I hope this account of lived healing has offered something useful. Your process may look different to mine, but this capacity lies within all of us. May you trust that possibility when your own next window opens.
Resources for Further Exploration:
If you would like to learn more about memory reconsolidation, these are some of the sources I have found most helpful:
Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change by Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic and Laurel Hulley
Coherence Therapy Practice Manual by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley
Memory Reconsolidation: How to Rewire Our Brain, YouTube series by Dr Tori Olds
Therapist Uncensored Podcast, Episode TU112: The Life-Changing Science of Memory Reconsolidation with guests Bruce Ecker and Tori Olds