Watch Reconsolidation in Action!

In the video below you can watch Steve Andreas working with Laurie, a woman who has suffered from a bee phobia for twenty years after being swarmed and stung repeatedly as a child. In less than ten minutes, following a simple NLP process, the woman goes from being completely reactive to Steve’s hint at a bee by making a gesture and saying, “Imagine one of these guys were flying around” at 0:39 to being completely non-reactive to the same trigger at about 7:37 in the video.

How can this be? It is quite literally, the magic of memory reconsolidation. The Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process (TRP) was identified by Ecker and Hulley while they were reviewing video recordings of client sessions that were “transformational.” The final phase TRP is verification that reconsolidation has actually occurred. There are three criteria for verification.

The first is Emotional Non-Reaction. When presented with the trigger for the problematic symptom, the client does not demonstrate any of the previously expected emotional response or reactivity. That is clearly the case here. The second criterion is Symptom Cessation, meaning that over time the target symptom no longer occurs in the client’s life. Not only does it cease happening, here is a link to a twenty-five year follow up with Laurie talking about here experience and that she still is symptom free! The final criterion is Effortless Permanence. You know that memory reconsolidation has occurred if the change is automatic and does not need any additional effort from the client to maintain the improvement. Again, the follow up video says it all. Laurie never had to put any additional effort into this — her phobia has simply gone away.

In a future blog we will use this video to track the actual Transformation Sequence so you can begin to learn how to use reconsolidation in your own work. Stay tuned for more!

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For more information on memory reconsolidation in therapy see: Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation. New York, NY: Routledge.