Memory Reconsolidation -- an interview with Richard Hill

[Music] hello and welcome I'm Sam Robinson psychotherapist in Austin Texas I'm here today with Richard Hill as a part of a series of interviews with expert practitioners of different forms of experiential Psychotherapy in this series we into interview a wide variety of experiential practitioners so as to compare and contrast the thinking and techniques of different experiential methodologies Richard is a psychotherapist teacher author supervisor and sometimes broadcaster from Sydney Australia he's the clinical science director of the science of psychotherapy.net and the managing editor of the their quarterly magazine he is a science director for the cesic

Psychotherapy College in Salerno Italy and the patron of the Australian Society for clinical hypnosis hypnotherapist sorry he has several books including the practitioner's guide to mirroring hands and the practitioner's guide to the science of psychotherapy in addition to his numerous speaking engagements he'll have a four-part three webinar series with collectively rooted decom starting March 21st with details for that being at the bottom of this video hey Richard great to have you sorry I fluffed up some of that intro but it's fantastic I love it I I I actually I should leave now I'm sounding good

you know before I ruin it with my with with my dialogue and language but uh no it's great to be here and I think the series is very interesting but I think we have to keep doing discussions of of what's going on because this is the point of the science of psychotherapy uh we don't say the science as in the the the reductionism the science says in the true meaning of the word which is the knowledge of and we need to have much greater knowledge of knowledge about uh the broader sense of things and of

which some we specializ in or have a particular predilection to this I think is uh is a part of what we're beginning to learn but what um you know Matt darot and I the sence of psychotherapy call and also our good friend John Arden and a few others the 21st century psychotherapist is actually someone who is um embedded uh and boyed and founded by knowledge and understanding upon which they uh can quite ha hope happily and hopefully abily um improvise which then creates it uh and makes it an experiential framework and I know that your

your your expertise is memory reconsolidation what type of experiential quality needs to happen in order for memory reconsolidation to occur okay so let's get it so let's say I have expertise in in in um memory reconsolidation I think they are are greater experts than me um and uh but I had this wonderful Mentor a guy named Ernest Rossy in in in the States and it's very very handy having a mentor who's a genius because you're constantly challenged and he would say oh you've done well in Neuroscience now it's time for genetics and oh and now

it's time for for psychobiology and oh now it's time for we and we were just starting into Quantum um and uh uh you know we actually try to say something sensible in Quantum uh idea is but um when we're talking about memory Rec consolidation because you can't just know memory Rec consolidation you have to know about a lot of things should you need to know a little bit at least something about neurons you need to know something then actually about the brain it would be very handy in memory reconsolidation if you understood something about the

anthropology of neural development be really great if you had that understanding of uh some understanding of memory it per se then perhaps some of the interesting people that have been doing these things over the time Joseph Leo uh uh Bruce eka some of the grp then Richard Hill and then it would be interesting and suddenly you're starting to build together and put together a story that is comprised of informational elements uh as different from the other way around where the informational elements are the source for the story the story exists first so where did memory

reconsolidation come from it came from Evol development out of beneficial uh uh usefulness for the human species to more successfully survive so no one invented it uh it's been around for a long long time what we've done is we've noticed it and we've gone Alo that's interesting so let's get on that that started very fundamental uh you change your mind memory reconsolidation is the process that occurs when when you have Insight memory consolidation is the process where you are able to realize that you got it wrong and now you get it right memory consolidation is

the thing that allows you to not have to go through the 50 things you've learned about something until you get to the one that is most appropriate suddenly those 49 of them seem to disappear or seem to stop being um uh relevant or not stop being accessed so memory Rec consolidation is the process of reconsolidating reestablishing the memory framework that then becomes the Baseline for the next time you recall it so it's not like you learn something and then you have this experience uh and then you have this experience you go back to that then

you have this experience you go back to that what you do is you have your memory you have this experience that confirms the memory or it changes the memory or the memory and this then becomes recorded as a new or a a a reconsolidated or Consolidated memory and the next experience goes back to this one and this goes the next experience goes back to this one doesn't go back to that one that one back here actually ceases to exist in its neural architecture and the one that exists is this one so the second part just

to quickly put in here so memory reconsolidation is the firming up the alteration the changing of the neural architecture by which we recall or retrieve the information that we need from our memory now some people will say oh but what about this thing Extinction you get so I'm well you're getting ahead of the cart the horse and cart a little bit here because that's a therapeutic process but Extinction is the process where uh you and I'll explain the difference shortly but the where you actually create a new pathway you still change the architecture but instead

of rewiring or using neuroplasticity to recontextualize the memory you actually create a competitive one so what we do is you do have traces of the previous memory and that's in memory Extinction that's where uh uh you create an alternative path so that's that's the two things that are important there and what's the difference and why do we have the difference why do we have these two elements Nature's really clever it says sometimes you stuff things up so I actually have to have some alternative processes some alternative mechanisms just in case you don't do the thing

the most OP able way so I have some secondary backups and in many respects what we call Extinction where we actually uh have a a way of behavior but we create a better way of Behavior Uh is I I would my in my opinion that's a backup system that the much preferred system is the reconsolidation where the way in which this network was wired gets rewired into the new way of thinking so the old way disappears in its nature and context and intensities and the new way becomes the foundational framework and you don't get confused

because the trouble with Extinction is that you have this alternative one it's an alter this is better we see this in phobias where someone can get over the phobia they they get exposure therapy and there they are and then 20 years later they have another trauma and suddenly the the the brain says oh my God bring out all the trauma based uh memory networks and this one goes boom and your phobia comes back and people go where did that come from that was because you didn't reconsolidate it reconsolidate it what you did was you created

a more desirable uh alternative which is what we call Extinction and what's the difference between memory reconsolidation process and the extinction process timing so what happens when you recall a trauma where you recall a memory when you activate the neural networks that are needed in order for you to have that uh experiential uh perception is all those million gabillion thousand trillion synapses and synaptic connections that connect to the experience the past memory your this all those different memory elements they become what's called labile and in a sort of a over sylistic way they literally pull

apart and they become available for plasticity so this is the nature so Extinction is plasticity by new development of a neurop pathway reconsolidation plasticity is where you pull the system apart exactly the same thing happens as last time it comes back to together in exactly the same way you pull it apart something different happens you're older you're wiser a therapist uh you watch a movie something happens in your life the system goes oh no and it reconnects everything in a different it Rec consolidates in a different neural architecture and this is available for somewhere between

2 to 6 hours so I'm talking to you we're having a fabulous therapy session everything's come up we can see these gra things and we're going and we say now here's some homework for you I want you to work on this so tomorrow uh just relax go home and tomorrow uh sometime in the day I want you to do this particular homework 8 hours 12 hours 14 hours later you are now restricted to the process of Extinction of actually creating an alternative pathway whereas actually the time to do it was right then and there now

here's the secondary problem that we have in Psychotherapy is we have a 60 Minute 50 minute hour uh and there's we can go on I'll I'll pause now because I've I think I've given a a clear sort of sense of what it is the differences and that it's a to some degree it's about timing it's about neurobiological availability of a particular process called reconsolidation uh as different from a different timing where we have the neurobiological uh process available called Extinction really really um interesting to have the two distinctions and I guess my first question was

we're not talking about updating the autobiographical memory of of whatever the thing is right it's the it's the implicit mean mean ings knowings and stuff that happened from that experience that we're looking to update as is is in memory reconsolidation very good um which brings us and we we'll have to skirt things a little bit about what's autobiographic or memory uh and what the nature of it but yes what you've got is you've got your uh uh episodic memory so you have memory of the episodes memory of the experience um which we often call but

autobiographical memory is a is a is a broad is a broader thing it it encompasses a number of things we recall uh because we also have our semantic memory and in fact a lot of episodes uh episodic memory over time gets relegated to semantic memory relegated to just bits of information that have become dis disconnected that they disconnect from the the longer story from the the context uh as we do it and that that's a good thing and a bad thing we can't remember we can't be going through every story of Our Lives to figure

out why the the red vase is our favorite vase So eventually it becomes just more automated more more in the nature of semantic uh memory um and so but that autobiographical memory is a collection of relationships between various forms of of of memory of which certainly the narrative memory or episodic memory as it's called also the the semantic memories also then the uh uh the the well there's procedural memory and there's a few others that that we use there's implicit and explicit there's those things that we we hold in we have Amala based memories so

we have our sensorial memories and they all come together to produce a sense of our story and that autobiographical memory is what creates our sense of self and it's our sense of self that then gives us an experiential um uh uh focal point a point where we can experience our experience and it's in that space that we uh we then feel emotions we then make you know decisions we then have Uh something's explicit which which are are very motivational we have something implicit negative thoughts positive thoughts automatic Behavior so there's a whole lot going on

that creates this this autobiography uh that produces our sense of who we are and it's the intensity and relevance and direct connections directness of the connections that creates the pertinence of that so if I have every time I see my red vase um which when I was bought a second one because when I was young it was um destroyed in the fire that ruined that killed my dog uh which is a trauma that I've never recovered from and I buy that vase to remind me of that dog and every time I see that vase I

have these moments of sadness and and these moments of of of of reflection but then I find that I'm actually unable to go to work because I'm so sad because that sadness connects with also the sadness when my grandmother died and uh when my father was really sick and also the time I got injured and suddenly you get this network of associations into our episodic and you know various memories that create uh uh from an autobiographical framework an experiential disaster experiential train W so it's these associations these connections the intensity of them in relation to

the uh to current experience and the way in which we contextualize them in relation to the country the current experience so the thing what memory does is that it can pull because of our our current experience it can pull our past experience into the reality of our current experience even if our current experience is not is not the same I mean I no longer have the dog I no longer have all those things so it is my memory of those things that creates my emotional response so what we're wanting to do is the dog did

pass away the house did burn down my grandfather did have the accident I did all those other things that I've now forgotten that I suggested but all those traumas all those um dissociated or they might be complex the same thing my grandfather died my grandmother died then my father you know it could be these collections of things or my grandfather uh used to beat me with this vas and then I had violence at school then I was bullied so you get complex trauma uh memories building up and they have an intens an intensity and a

connection to the nature of experiences today and variously postraumatic stress disorder is how we describe a lot of those things so what we want to do we can't get rid of the memory of the dog or the grandfather or the things the fire what we can do though is we can alter the nature of the connection the nature of the way in which that connection presents itself in in Modern Life and if I can reconsolidate my memory of those events because what's the problem with them they're in the present if I can reconsolidate that memory

into saying the house burning down was 20 years ago the dog dying was 20 years ago the grandfather passing away was and this is what some people call timeline therapy uh and there's various other ways we do that or uh de-energizing or releasing you from those thoughts there's all kinds of language that people use but fundamentally they're doing all the same thing they're shifting that memory into being something that no longer exists that doesn't it isn't activated today uh and then you can go yes I remember that that was a very difficult event and what

therapy very often does then is it says okay so rather than being damaged and and triggered and injured by that memory what did we learn from it what were the benefits where is it taken us what can we as we solution Focus therapy what do you do next as different from what did you do in the past and uh there are various other ways I I do this with mirring hands we do this with sematic therapist where we do it somatically rather than um cognitively cognitive behavioral therapy uh does it if it manages to get

itself activated in the in the the the 2 to six hour period um and uh and then what we do is we have a reconsolidation where that Association of the the red vase and the memory of the red vase ceases to be one of direct uh impact and it becomes a recollection and it's reconsolidated as a past memory that can no longer hurt me and our system has been doing this for hundreds of thousands if not a million if not more years we just lost track of it over our um over the way in which

our our social brain and our cognitive processes uh can uh and our uh implicit processes can get in and mess up the pro mess up the benefits of what we call post-traumatic growth I love it I that make sense yeah yeah for sure I think my my question that came up was what happens if a client comes in right and they're like I have this red vase I look at it every every day reminds me of all this stuff I know happened 20 years ago I know cognitively I'm not in the I'm not seeing my

house burned down with my dog in it and my grandma's not dead I know that was 20 years ago but the suffering is still the same like if they already have that thread or that whatever to be like I know this is I'm I'm living in memory When I See This V that how does the treatment look for in that case if that makes sense memory reconsolidation is a limited thing it is an organizing principle of human beings that can be incorporated and utilize and wants to be and seeks to find the opportunity to express

itself in almost any therapy you might imagine so when I'm sitting there with the client I'm looking what sort of client are you what sort of person are you because some people are more sematic or in a sematic framework some people are in a cognitive framework some people are in a subcortical uh subconscious I know people use that term uh but a subcortical way so they they're automatic thoughts so the therapist's real skill is going what is the mechanism that this person is going to be most attuned to or most resonant with that I can

utilize to uh assist them in reconsolidating their neural architecture into a way that allows that red vs to exist and be a positive memory and be a pleasing thing I'm glad I'm remembering my dog and the and the um and the burnt things because it's good to remember and that makes me better as a human being I'm more sens oh yes I'm noticing my sensitivity so having you said that let's look at one of these now is it all if I just jump into one if you got a question to jump in there well I

don't know I did want just say a comment about um like you're really talking about there needing to be an experience like some experience which is has the power to reconsolidate this thing not just I'm going to sit here and think oh yeah that was hard but it was 20 years ago I'm all right now it's like a some experience has to happen to Usher the individual into that yeah and this is the thing someone might come in and go ah I'd never thought of it like that and it's just merely a uh an orientation

an attitude that might be enough that might be enough remembering while they're thinking of it while they're talking about it so they're talking about the thing the the system has become laile for some people it is as simple as that this is why we have and and to some extent your question uh I'll just mention sort of briefly we haven't got time to really go into the depths of it but this is why almost everything can work a positive affirmation for somebody else they just it's not that deeply embedded and and and uh uh just

a single thing it's just a something and they've just got this negative attitude and I've written a book called The Winner loser world that on the second shelf uh but um but that's uh uh that can be done just with a simple thought but then you've had people who do the positive affirmations uh they do things nothing they go back works for five minutes but then so they haven't Recons they haven't they haven't reconsolidated into a new frame what they've done is they've just had an alternative idea oh I feel better now but this thing

hasn't stayed they they've been distracted or dissociated or uh given an alternative thought um but for some it might be all that's needed and they go ah yeah and they reconsolidate beautifully so there's a lot to do with uh the nature of of the client uh uh let's look just let's look briefly at two things the sematic type of of reconsolidation and um the coherence therapy the that brucea does so beautifully um and is inherent in CBT but if you often this homework gets done outside of the the the brain plasticity window so therefore it

becomes Extinction rather than reconsolidation um so uh in Bruce's uh uh coherence therapy it's very simple what he does is he actually uses What's called the ju opposing truth so the red vase I see the Red vs all these things come up but actually the truth is uh that the um that was a long time ago that was a past thing what if I actually am not injured by that vase anymore and there may be a succinct way of putting two or three points or it may be just one little phrase of this vas is

now the memory of the richness of my path and past and the depth of my love uh for those people close to me and that I have lost but I have learned how to regain it's a positive affirmation but it's a specific positive truth it's a reframing of Our Truth what we where shifting from the untrue truth of I am still my house is still burning down my dog is still dying my grandfather is still uh blah blah blah blah blah to the one of say those things have happened and they have enriched me or

whatever is the truth uh uh whatever is the most uh pertinent truth and uh Bruce says I mean I'm oversimplifying because there's a lot more that goes on in the in the the P there's still a lot of talk and a lot of Engagement that needs to be developed as we see with things like EMDR and uh DBT and so on and so forth but you just sort of have that card and you put it in this case which're just using this particular one you'd actually put that near the red vas uh or you might

have it in your pocket and uh so you go the red vase and all these things so oh it all comes up so in that moment you become labor that's the time not to get miserable that's the time to get working pull out your card you read this Jos um the jux deposition what is the true truth the the new truth and then within sometimes it can be just once sometimes it takes a little period of time because it's really strongly embedded and you may get rid of a thousand connections on this one and then

another thousand connections on the other one because there might be a million or even half a billion connections that are pulling this into a negative experience pulling this this this trigger of the red VES into a a a um a disturbing dysfunctional experience so you do it until you clear it and this is what they talk about in hypnosis we'll clear that emotional memory I just wish I love the process I get it I just wish the people who were doing it knew what they were doing why they were doing it and how it worked

and whether they need to repeat or not repeat and so this is where understanding memory reconsolidation can help you see why the thing you thought was magical and was going to do it in one go actually takes 10 and that that's not a bad thing that actually is just describing the nature of the of the issue it also might be you might go back and rewrite the card you might go yeah I really understand that now but now I'm starting to think of and something else will emerge once you've once you've got that one out

of the way and another way is a more sematic way and beautifully used to Pat Ogden Peter LaVine do this um describe this lovely is what it is is the memory is stuck in the negativity and what they simply do one of the simple methods and NP has um you know hijacked this and called it theirs everyone keeps calling it their own but anyway um it's different from I I am describing a useful human natural Human Experience um because you can charge more if it's your own than if it's just a natural Human Experience so

what they do is saying in this time frame everything was bad but can we go and solution Focus does this as well can we go back before and this before that experience when everything was okay and the client can go oh yeah and how about we go here and we go to after the experience when everything was okay now let's reconsolidate let's let's review that that experience from from okay to okay that can be a way of doing it now some people can't do that visually sort of imaginatively in there so you actually take them

out and you do it and you you there's a wonderful one of pet thein video he had of a kid that fell out of a uh fell off a balcony and so he had this distress he's only about eight or nine so really this cognitive stuff wasn't there so he built a sort of with cushions and various things uh uh uh sort of a representation of of the fall and he had the kid walk along you're okay there then had him fall off onto cushions and things obviously uh and then get up and mommy and

daddy came over and gave him the big hug so produced it just somatically which then percolated up into his um into his mental perceptions uh mirroring hands the process I I use we we try and uh uh differentiate the elements and this happens in quite a lot of other things we'll say okay let's put all those terrible things over there obviously this is more complex as well over there so what are all the good things and people will spontaneously start saying things oh yeah well yes I lost my dog but I loved my dog and

I love oh yes that love so F and you focus on that um you can get um uh well and then and then there's a few others but that's that's three particular forms of um so the mirroring hands is sort of a an open it's a hypnotic type of event so we're looking at opening up the communication between the implicit and the explicit sematic is opening up the implicit and the explicit through a sematic way and the cognitive one um is uh altering these sematic things and so we get a top down reorientation and reframing

the other ones are more of a bottom up yeah yeah it makes a lot of sense um I'm curious Richard like what are you how do you know a client is in the prime spot for reconsolidation to occur you know are you looking for markers on their expression or are they saying yeah this feels true on a gut level and this is or you know because I'm I'm imagining that some people especially those including myself who come who are pretty good at intellectualizing can have ideas and think and think about trauma and the past and

stuff and but it doesn't really experientially shift because I'm just having thoughts about it does that make sense yep and I think here is the we're we're having drawn you know created the the story and created some of the picture we're now at the Crux of uh of what is so interesting and what you and I were talking about before and Nile were so interested in it is how do we use uh memory Rec consolidation and I hinted at it earlier you don't memory reconsolidation is a natural process what is the therapist doing creating the

opportunity and the appropriate circumstances which is fundamentally what a therapist does on all these natural processes we are there to turn on and the the most effective personal uh capacities of the client so if you're in a state where the client has you've been able to safely recall uh bring the The Experience up and you're not ret traumatizing because ret traumatizing is reconsolidating the trauma with added weight because you've you've so when you recall something and you feel even worse that's what's remembered when I'm say so it used to be uh a 6 out of

10 and after 6 months of therapy it's an 8 out of 10 because they keep but stal the gain is a natural one of our natural processes we can we can objectivize things so we when we safely and each uh therapist will have their own uh their own capacities and things that they predilections but um uh uh just that quick warning in there is don't just sort of say go within bring this let's go back into the memory um please rethink those processes don't go bring that memory out let's put it somewhere safe where we

can look at it safely um once you do that the system becomes labile you're open for reconsolidation you don't have to do anything so when is a client ready for reconsolidation when they have brought themselves back into the into the experience and the more safely they've been brought back into the experience the more protected they are from reexperiencing the experience but the lay the layby the ability of the brain still occurs now that stuff that you were saying about you're pretty perceptive you're looking at the things the the the nuances the changes the variations what

you're looking for there is which is the thing that this client is giving me the indication of that they are most likely to be able to utilize successfully to take advantage of the fact that we have now put ourselves in a labile state so you might be talking to your client saying now let's write down some of those ideas let's let's let's just uh doing a bit of a CBT let's write down some of those beliefs and they sort of well they've already told you then they pick up the pen and they right well they're

telling you this CBT form of process that Aaron back beautifully described that you're Now using a method that I don't like that and you you might say h and and then that what do they do uh you keep talking about things maybe you move into a couple of different types of well how about we form this this really positive thought like the coherence therapy and they go oh yeah that's they they sit forward a little bit or their eyebrows lift a little bit see here we go just quickly eyebrows lift a little bit what are

we doing we're activating the socially engaged nerves of the face which we learned from from poly Vago Theory when we go and read Steve forages you got to know stuff so that your intuition is wiser what uh Ernie and I call sensitive observation which is exactly what you you were just that's just a word for the thing you were saying watching your client and listen to your client now let's just use a little example a case a client of mine who um had these very traumatic experien and over a period of time we found out

there were four but she only remembered them one at a time we we had to resolve each one and then we finally got back and we sort of resolved uh the whole story it was fascinating how she said oh I feel much better about that but I had another one just like it and they were actual near fatal experiences and uh so she was very visual she was very descriptive and uh she would then start using little metaphor images in the way and it was one was to do with a horse riding incident where she

was a uh Jim carnish was jumping over uh the things the horse freaked out they got wrong the horse fell I nearly died for the rest of her life she's super protective of herself of her children comes to help helicopter Mom all this sort of stuff uh and we used two techniques because she be going over saying oh and then it was just like oh and I remember this dream I had once where I was on the seashore and the the waves were coming in but there was a red bubble coming up go okay so

we used a sematic uh thing sometimes what NLP time shifting or various things so I took her we visualized taking her back before the horse jump and then replaying the whole event visually in her head allowing her to say these metaphorce of it and she was going oh yes and I'm jumping oh yeah I remember oh now I can feel my body was twisting and my legs were tightening and strengthening actually I was pushing myself off the horse I knew this was going on and the horse was sort of seemed to be throwing its head

to throw itself away from me and then I pushed and we actually landed and it was it was just like a couple of metaphors come out and she then rolled on the ground and got up and she said wow I'm all all right and we recovered that and when we went through about the third one of these these and one was with she near got shot it was they were really dramatic and she' got to about the third one and she went oh my God I'm not in danger I'm not threatened and constantly um uh

fearful of my life life and fearful of my children I'm blessed that was um Bruce EA's card I'm blessed now she didn't have to write it down and remind herself because it came it took a little while we had to piece through the horse incident we had to piece through and reconsolidate the gun incident because what she did in that she was running she ran saw this doorway ran off to the left sadly her so sad her poor girlfriend kept running forward and the stupid teenagers who were mucking about anyway her girlfriend got shot but

she but she realized oh my God I have this intuitive listen to my intuition trust myself reconsolidated so now these traumatic events remind her of how intuitively blessed she is if she just lets go and stops trying to dominate it now that took a year uh not a weekly therapy she would do some go off for a couple of months come back we do three or four sessions she go off come back um but each time I knew we were in at the opportunity for memory reconsolidation because she was remembering the incident and she was

upregulated I was making it safe by externalizing it and she was making it safe by using metaphors cool to to so as to not ret traumatize and and uh and then just piece by piece we cleared off the billion connections that made it uh uh a posttraumatic disorder and a behavior a dysfunctional behavioral compensation wow it's so wonderful to hear that type of of story sounds like what you're describing like with this client and also with the example of the LaVine client the young boy is there's almost like a empowered reenactment like a sort of

like adding new meanings to these really scary traumatic experiences with like not forcing yourself to just go well actually yeah I'm strong but this real sense of feeling like oh I was really smart to do that actually in this case or like even with the kid it's like he's standing up and his parents are there he's not alone in that falling off the balcony thing you know he's like suddenly connected and I'm wondering if that's the thing if that's what Bruce would call the Jor position of like oh yeah that's right the the J position

leads to and you captured it new meaning new self referential context framework schema uh I'm just throwing in some words that some people might um have in their particular uh uh learning and and and study uh in in systems theory you change the initial conditions you alter the the context of the the attractors and the disruptors you um you shift from a negative feedback loop into a positive feedback loop uh for those that understand systems theory you alter those three things solved how is it solved neurobiologically we reconsolidate into a new architectural framework of associations

intensities and relevance so fundamentally uh what Ernie uh talked about although it's been around Wallace talked about it in the early 20s what we call the fourth stage Creative Cycle is that we start out with information we seek to make that information personally relevant we have some kind of breakthrough that we go that's what the relevan is then we creatively install that and and create elements to to work with that uh that breakthrough then we implement it into our lifestyle into our into our experience that's actually true of everything it's true of the how genes

work and Adams work and universes work but that four stage Creative Cycle so if you have an experience that you think oh my God what this means to me is that everything is terrible and then oh that's because I'm a bad person and there's something wrong with me and I'll never recover I now then go off and create all these um uh uh validations of that new that new belief and then I implement it in my life and I'm post trumatic stress disorder I have that experience I then go yeah and that I you know

you do that oh my gosh you're never going to recover no Recons memory reconsolidation the Nature's already figured this out you can't live like that so it says we can go back and re-experience it reframe the meaning and the personal context have a new realization like my beautiful people one with the horse my gosh I'm not doomed I'm blessed then you recreate a whole bunch of associations and relevance and frames and and future actions and what I'm going to do next and then you consolidate that into the uh your new life and way you go

now that could occur in one session that could occur in 20 that could occur watching a film uh as we saw with the housing it could be the metaphor of a chip packet rolling across the pavement that just gets you on the day extra therapeutic sources as we say and that final thing to remind the therapists that in the the particular the recent more recent work of of common factors that up to 80 to 90% of what happens in therapy is based on the capacities of the client and the extra therapeutic uh opportunities that come

about but what we do in our it seems a little bit but if you think in systems our little bit is the thing that absolutely changes everything you put that tiny drop of color and that completely changes the color of of the whole experience so our job is not to be the amazing um healer our job is to be the totally Cooperative co-creative integrator Observer notice of and contributor to the client's natural capacities my woman doing the metaphors and the images don't do CBT on her it's a waste of time thing but if someone's very

rational and very organized um yeah let's try some CBT or let's try some solution focused let's try some top down processes who is your client what are they doing memory reconsolidation it will do what it does without you it doesn't need you to exist and function we create the opportunity and the appropriate circumstances wonderful I love it um I feel like I've got so many more questions but I'm conscious of our time coming to a close Could you um for people wanting to really understand the nuts and bolts of this can you point people to

resources like people that kind of thing sure uh I mean certainly Bruce's book unlocking the emotional uh brain uh with um with with Robin tisic and Lauren Hurley is is great goes through there then he has his coherence therapy which you may or may not um uh resonate with but that's a terrific one certainly in the uh the the uh Aqua turquoise book The the practitioner's guide of the science of psychotherapy we give some a few descriptions but also a number of other things we talk about memory I mean we're all talking about this that

beautiful thing unlocking the emotional brain what are promotions half the time we don't even know what they are you know where they come from um so we've got Joseph Leo uh look at his work uh well I think I've got it I've got a few papers here um here was one I think 2013 uh with um Christina alberini uh uh and um anyway so read some of these sorts of things and do that you know do your highlighting uh we've got uh this lots and lots of of websites get into get into some of the

biology don't drive yourself nuts but the reason why we reconsolidate is because we become laball and we have a reactivation of gene expression so there are new proteins so it actually rebuilds the structure it vitally rebuilds the structure brain brain plasticity is not some magical sort of things just flopping around it's like plastic it's where we get one structure and we create a new one through gene expression uh Ernest Rossy the psychobiology of gene expression that'll that'll um drive you crazy uh but that that's that's quite useful different techniques I mean mirroring hands and and

and and my one people can come and learn about the win or ler world how the the these mindsets of orientation um uh there's a bunch there's a bunch just just off the top of my head there are a lot of people talking about a lot of things look at therapeutic processes and go they've had an Insight any process where they've had an Insight go okay that's memory reconsolidation happening there where's where where was it where did where did the event come out and where were the mechanisms that enabled them to uh enabled the client

to have that new breakthrough that personal meaning that personal relevance and and the Breakthrough and how can I and do I do that and where do I do that look at your own clients so other words don't apply memory reconsolidation look for when they are in a consolidating frame a labor context that they're safely in the recall of the experience and do it then find the find the appropriate mechanism for that client then now if you're not sure what the client is is most attuned to just do any one of those do do a a

a coherence therapy do a uh a um a a reproduction do do the rewind technique in NLP um now it may or may not be uh completely effective as is with my woman with the four experiences it was different each time we went through each experience but we used the same context we used the same mechanisms but one went a bit this way one went one it was just all imagery we didn't do any um uh experiential re or reexperiencing it was just all she had this um dream and she had this image and that

was the the whole process so yeah be flexible be knowledgeable be so much in reverence of the client's capacities that you wish to be in tune with them I love that I wrote that down before actually when you were um talking about um meeting almost meeting the client with where they're at and not trying to force a particular technique that you're familiar with down their throat like oh this is this is what I'm training and this is what we got to do it's more like oh what's the thing that's going to help this particular client

reconsolidate this memory or this stuff rather than no here's that worksheet this is the thing we got to do which I think is really empowering for the the client to be met in that way well it's very hard to appreciate the fact that every single thing that you've learned at at College at University I've done what have I done three master's degrees I'm now doing a PhD because I'm an idiot because I'm clever but every single thing you've learned when you're sitting there with a client in front of you is about somebody else and just

remember that that none of those things are necessarily specifically about this person who's sitting in front of you but they contribute to your understanding and your capacity to see this person uh more than meeting them see them understand them that was the we were talking before we didn't mention but I was an actor for 20 years when I was acting I didn't meet my character I as best I could found the character within my own resonance with that character within my own capacities and abilities now that won't make you exactly like the client and you're

not doing the client you're not taking on the stuff but you can start to resonate with the client they're already committed to resonating a to you they've come they've walked they've sat down they've paid some money they're ready to resonate with you you need to be ready to resonate with them I love it I think that's a brilliant place to end our time together thank you so much Richard I'm sure there's so much more this is such a nuanced um complex thing despite us all having the capacity to do it um but yeah thank you

so much for your time any any final nuggets of wisdom before we the part I don't know that was pretty nifty I thought that my wife says I'm good at these hand waving things at the end of a of a speech um keep learning keep investigating I mean uh come and see you know my contributions and matths the science of psychotherapy.net uh come and see Richard Hill uh you know. com.au I'm doing a series of um free webinars through the year as I as I try and get the Americans to notice me but through a

group called collectively rooted tocom uh and they're the guys that uh bander and Janina uh Janina I know Janina anyway so I'm sort of in that stable um uh a little less known but hopefully more uh check me out but check other people out Joseph Leo gosh it's his last book the stages of Consciousness four billion years the last two books uh I love Joseph he's just so brilliant the Robert zapolski if you want to get into the behavioral into the the the anthropological um look at the stuff that's that seems hard and don't worry

about the stuff that's hard look for the stuff that resonates with you uh because that guess what it will reconsolidate your your intellectual and your knowledge base and your orientation what a wonderful way to to Loop it back at the end brilliant yeah and we'll put links to like collectively rooted in the scientist Psychotherapy in the in the description but yeah Richard thank you so much for your time um and yeah it's been wonderful thank you beautiful and it's been a great pleasure for me anyway we love nyin and and uh happy to do anything

that that helps his work yeah brilliant thank [Music] you [Music]