Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation

by Bruce Ecker

As later chapters cover in detail, emotional learning usually consists of much more than stored memory of the “raw data” of what one’s senses were registering and what emotions one was experiencing during an original experience. Also learned—that is, stored in implicit memory—is a constructed mental model of how the world functions, a template or schema that is the individual’s sense-making generalization of the raw data of perception and emotion. This model is created and stored with no awareness of doing so. It does not exist in words, but is no less well-defined or coherent for that. The emotional brain then uses this model or schema for self-protectively anticipating similar experiences in the future and recognizing them instantly when they begin (or seem) to occur. Emotional memory converts the past into an expectation of the future, without our awareness, and that is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because we rely daily on emotional implicit memory to navigate us through all sorts of situations without having to go through the relatively slow, labor-intensive process of figuring out, conceptually and verbally, what to do; we simply know what to do and we know it quickly. It is easy to take for granted the amazing efficiency and speed with which we access and are guided by a truly vast library of implicit knowings. Yet our emotional implicit memory is also a curse because it makes the worst experiences in our past persist as felt emotional realities in t...