Thanks Robert! Glad you found it helpful. I originally created this series with the intention of showing it to 36 participants of a workshop, so the fact that 13k people have watched all four episodes is just fine by me! If you haven't already found experiential-psychotherapies.com, there is more material of mine on the Coherence Therapy page.

yes, emotions are a major focus of EMDR. Memories are worked with because traumatic ones entail a range of distressed emotions- these accumulate to constitute a person's burden of distress, which tends to drive their 'symptoms' and dominate their emotional life. Emotions need to be reactivated in order for EMDR to be effective, and they are one of the main indicators that the process has been effective or not. EMDR shares this with other approaches that utilise memory reconsolidation (MR- a form of neuroplasticity)- the distress needs to be felt as a necessary precondition for MR to be initiated. People know that the process has been effective (in part) by what their emotions are telling them.

That is an important aspect of the concept. It is not only the memory of the past, but the associations and connections that are made at the time and then over time when the memory or those things associated with it are recalled. Other dangers, repeated traumas (complex trauma) or other traumas become "consolidated" into the current experience. The juxtaposing truth is exactly as you describe - that the current truth is different from the "associated memory complex". This happens naturally through ongoing experience and through a deliberate therapy process. There are various therapies that can change the connections - time line; EMDR; coherence; several NLP processes; and even CBT in the appropriate circumstances. Mirroring Hands and other implicit processes are also effective in the appropriate circumstances. There are many more actions that can reconsolidate the memory in a way that changes the effect of recall of the past memory, desensitize triggers that associate, and other things that are more than there is space for here. What you have written about above is all spot on. Memory reconsolidation is simply the name given to the neurological process that facilitates the changes of perception and improvement in ongoing experience. As you say, a film is not traumatizing because the person knows it is not true or a current danger. This is a fascinating discussion and there are more interesting things to cover, but that is the gist for now :)

Thanks for asking! The podcast version of this and other interviews is here: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/experientialpsychotherapy.

Good question. The synaptic connections for the memory become labile on recall. This allows for the current environment to re-consolidate the connection based on the truth or perceived truth of current environment. So the juxtaposing "truth" is about the current environment, not the lability of the memory. It may be that the current environment confirms the existing memory - or even amplifies it with additional disturbance. So, memory reconsolidation is not about troubling memories getting better. Sometimes re-consolidation makes things worse, especially when there is ongoing trauma (complex trauma) or unresolved situations. Grief is another situation where reconsolidation often confirms the sadness and may even amplify it. A positive juxtaposing truth is added through therapies like coherence therapy, but juxtaposing truths are also just the change in the "environment". This can be natural problem resolution. sometimes, just getting older is enough of a change. If you think in the way of systems you are looking to change the initial conditions, or maybe the attractors or some of the organising principles. Juxtaposing truths can come in many ways :)

Yes, many studies have shown that recall (or reactivation) alone does not induce destabilization. Destabilization of the target learning requires a mismatch to what that learning expects, creating a “prediction error” experience. However, different degrees and types of mismatch can do that. What we term a “juxtaposition experience” is a sharp *contradiction* of the target learning’s model of reality, which is a special type of mismatch. Once destabilization occurs, contradiction is then needed for *unlearning* to occur, nullifying the target learning to eliminate its effects entirely (what we term transformational change). The most thorough explanation of all this is in the 2021 article cited below. The 2022 article contains this important clarification: “While destabilized, the target learning may be updated in virtually any way by experiences that deviate from the original learning. The target learning can be strengthened, weakened, or modified in its specific content, or its encoding can be conjoined with the encoding of the memory of a salient new experience…. Thus, by itself the term “memory reconsolidation” denotes not a particular type or degree of change, but rather the fundamental mechanism that destabilizes and then restabilizes (deconsolidates and then reconsolidates) the encoding of a target learning. That deconsolidation/reconsolidation process allows a target learning to be re-encoded and updated but does not in itself cause a target learning to be changed. Change is separately driven by current learning experiences during the reconsolidation window.” Ecker, B. (2021, November 19). Reconsolidation behavioral updating of human emotional memory: A comprehensive review and unified analysis of successes, replication failures, and clinical translation. PsyArXiv. doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/atz3m Ecker, B., & Vaz, A. (2022). Memory reconsolidation and the crisis of mechanism in psychotherapy. New Ideas in Psychology, 66, 100945, 1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2022.100945 (download: bit.ly/3luadsb)

Who was your trainer?

Coherence Therapy could equally be applied to either the behavioral symptom or the experience. The most important first step is "symptom definition" -- getting crystal clear with the client about what the target of change is for this session, whether that be a change in their behavior or a change in how they experience the circumstances of their life. Which of these it needs to be will be different depending on the situation and the person, and this must be co-determined by both the client and therapist. Then we start discovery work (seeking the unconscious compelling reason for maintaining the symptom) from there.

Thank you for doing such powerful work and such an important time. Brainspotting is a wonderful resource for trauma work.