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

by Bruce Ecker

Resistance arises sometimes in response to the transformation sequence. Despite well-designed, well-guided juxtaposition experiences, the pro-symptom material can remain in force, as shown in the case of Ted in Chapter 4. This indicates that the process of disconfirmation and dissolution is being blocked by resistance to some reorientation, loss, pain or fear that the client expects, on some level, to result from dissolution of the longstanding pro-symptom model of reality. Dissolution of part of what has seemed to be reality can involve significant emotional adjustments. The dissolution of personal constructs is a top-down process, that is, it is allowed to proceed, or not, depending on whether the emotional results feel tolerable to the client’s emotional brain in all areas, both consciously and unconsciously; the nature of the process is not simply mechanistic or neurological. Any resistance must therefore be sensitively respected and addressed, and in Coherence Therapy this is done by applying Coherence Therapy to the resistance itself: The therapist regards the resistance as a new “symptom” and guides discovery of the underlying coherent need for it by bringing into awareness the specific loss, pain, or fear that is making the dissolution of the pro-symptom schema too daunting to allow. When, as a result of this work, the ramifications of that dissolution do feel tolerable in all areas, the juxtaposition experience is repeated and now dissolution readily occurs. Using...