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

by Bruce Ecker

Not all presented symptoms are functional, however. Some are revealed in the course of discovery work to be functionless. A functionless symptom is produced because it is an inevitable result or by-product of a functional (but possibly unpresented) symptom—such as loneliness that results from the functional, unpresented symptom of avoiding relationships with people in order to be safe from abandonment, or anxiety that results from the functional, unpresented symptom of never asserting boundaries in order to be safe from a punitive withdrawal of love. Coherence Therapy is a movement into underlying causes, so it always converges to and focuses on the client’s functional symptom even if the presented symptom was a functionless (though still fully coherent) by-product.