Unlocking the Emotional Brain: The Power of Memory Reconsolidation in Psychotherapy

In nearly all our sessions, we therapists strive to help our those we treat get free of their unwanted patterns of mood, behavior, thought, or somatization, but the ingrained, non-conscious emotional learnings that typically underlie those patterns are extremely tenacious, and deep, lasting, liberating change is too often an elusive goal. Such learnings are formed throughout life by the emotional brain in response to any experience accompanied by strong emotion. Emotional learnings neurally lock into long-term implicit memory and do not fade with time.

In 2004, researchers identified the brain's well-defined process for unlocking, unlearning, and erasing a learned emotional response down to the synapses maintaining it—a process known as memory reconsolidation. These rigorous and subsequently much-replicated findings corroborate clinical reports of the same process during the previous decade. This presentation will map out this experiential core process, which allows therapists to become consistent in guiding transformational change—permanent elimination of a problematic pattern and effortless persistence of the shift, as distinct from incremental change requiring ongoing regulation and suppression.

The presentation will describe how the same core process occurs in a range of quite different-seeming therapies—such as AEDP, Coherence Therapy, EMDR, EFT, and IPNB—and will show why memory reconsolidation is poised to create four breakthroughs in the psychotherapy field: enhanced effectiveness, a unified understanding of diverse therapies of transformational change, clarification of the role of attachment in therapy, and an advance beyond nonspecific common factors theory in our understanding of the process of change.

This web conference is beginning instructional level and designed to help clinicians:

1. Recognize the main characteristics of emotional learning and the role of emotional learning in symptom production;
2. Define memory reconsolidation, why its discovery represents a fundamental advance in the science of learning and memory, and its significance for psychotherapy;
3. List the steps required for applying memory reconsolidation in psychotherapy;
4. Understand how psychotherapists can determine, for a given person and symptom/problem, whether or not insecure attachment is involved in generating that symptom/problem;
5. Describe how the steps of the therapeutic reconsolidation process serve as a framework for psychotherapy integration;
6. Define specific factors in psychotherapy shown to correlate with successful outcomes more strongly than do the nonspecific common factors.

If you have any questions about this web conference or would like more information, please contact us here.

Event Reviews from Members

This is very exciting information, and I hope this speaker will return. Because of this particular presentation, my work as a therapist has really deepened. It has changed what I believed was really possible in therapy, how I work, and how I understand the work of many other presenters as well. - Eleanor Kay Wilder, LMFT

Continuing Education (CE) Information

1.5 CE credits will be provided by GoodTherapy.org for attending this web conference in its entirety.

GoodTherapy.org is also an Approved Education Provider by NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals (provider #135463). Of the eight counselor skill groups ascribed to by NAADAC, this course is classified within counseling services.

GoodTherapy.org is an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEPTM) and may offer NBCC-approved clock hours for events that meet NBCC requirements.

GoodTherapy.org is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. GoodTherapy.org maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

GoodTherapy.org, SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0395.

To receive CE credit hours for an archived event, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 12 or 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events generally are considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

Registration Information

Premium and Pro Membership with GoodTherapy includes access to this web conference at no additional cost, as well as other member benefits such as a profile listing in GoodTherapy's Therapist Directory. Not yet a member? Sign up for a Premium or Pro Membership, here.

Just want CE credits? Sign up for a monthly or annual CE Subscription with GoodTherapy to get unlimited access to our CE Program, including this event, other live CE web conferences, and hundreds of hours of homestudy courses.

Mental health professionals who are not members can attend this live web conference for $30.95 or access the homestudy recording for $15.50. Sign up here to purchase this CE course and earn a CE certificate.

If the event is canceled by GoodTherapy, registrants who purchased the event will be notified and the charge for the event will be refunded

If you have any questions or would like information regarding disability accommodations, please contact us.

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