Healing Attachment Trauma through Memory Reconsolidation: Examining How Therapy Works (Part 1)
Attachment wounds - formed through early repeated experiences of abuse, neglect, or emotional inconsistency - can leave lasting impacts on how we relate to ourselves and others. These wounds often shape our core sense of self, leading us to feel unlovable or inadequate and expect rejection or betrayal in our current relationships. Over the past few decades, advancements in neuroscience have offered exciting insights into how we might heal these painful wounds. One such possibility for healing is through memory reconsolidation, a neurobiological process that enables the brain to revisit and transform the painful memories associated with attachment trauma. In therapy, memory reconsolidation can help clients to rewire the emotional core of attachment wounds, and experience a transformed sense of self. In this post, we’ll explore how memory reconsolidation works and how it is consistent with Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). This post is the first in a series examining the different mechanisms through which therapy can enact change.
Emotion Schemes: The Heart of EFT and Memory Reconsolidation
Emotion-Focused Therapy is based on the idea that we each develop "emotion schemes"- networks of associated feelings, thoughts, memories, and bodily sensations formed through our lived experiences. These emotion schemes act as mental blueprints for how we respond to different situations, including relationships. For instance, a child who repeatedly experiences verbal or emotional abuse by their caregiver may develop a maladaptive emotion scheme in which she feels insecure and worthless, and believes that important others are likely to criticize or look down upon her. When this child becomes an adult, she might struggle with anxiety or vulnerability due to this maladaptive emotion scheme, fearing criticism, rejection, or abandonment even in supportive relationships.
Memory reconsolidation offers a way to alter these emotion schemes by making maladaptive emotions and the original memories associated with them accessible to change. Scientists used to believe that after the memory of an experience was consolidated, it was permanent and therefore unable to be altered. Additional research examining memory challenged this view and indicated that memories are amenable to change each time they are retrieved (Nader & Hardt, 2009). This suggests that exploring painful attachment memories and their associated emotions in therapy allows for new information to be integrated, leading to healing and transformation.
How Memory Reconsolidation Functions Within EFT
In EFT, therapists aim to help clients access maladaptive emotions (i.e., insecurity, shame, worthlessness) and experience them while simultaneously activating new, more adaptive emotions that contradict the old emotional responses. Here’s how the process works within EFT, step-by-step:
Activating Maladaptive Emotions: EFT begins by helping clients access their core painful emotions. For attachment trauma, this might mean guiding a client to recall a memory of abandonment or rejection and experience the feelings of fear or shame that accompany it. For example, a client might be asked to remember a situation in which they were criticized or dismissed by their parent and made to feel small and inadequate. By directly accessing the memory and the associated maladaptive emotions, they are now available for change.
Evoking Adaptive Emotions: Once the maladaptive emotional response is active, EFT therapists work with clients to access a new, adaptive emotion that directly contradicts the painful one. For example, if a client feels “unlovable,” the therapist may help them access self-compassion, validation, or healthy empowerment. For example, an adult client might imagine comforting their younger self during a memory of lonely abandonment. This contradictory, adaptive emotional response provides the opportunity for the old memory of being alone and abused to be changed and transformed into one in which the lonely child is soothed and comforted.
Integrating the New Emotional Experience: With both the maladaptive (i.e., shame) and adaptive (i.e., self-compassion) emotions activated, the therapist guides the client through experiencing the two emotions together. By repeatedly experiencing a new emotional response towards an old memory, clients create a new emotion scheme and memory that integrates both emotions.
Reinforcing the New Emotional Experience: Over repeated sessions, EFT therapists help clients re-experience the new emotional response until it is fully integrated and consolidated as a new memory. This process enables clients to integrate the new emotional learning into their identity, reshaping their underlying sense of self.
Practical Examples of Memory Reconsolidation in EFT
Let’s look at a few practical examples of how EFT uses memory reconsolidation to help clients heal from attachment trauma:
Accessing Compassion for the Self: Clients often struggle with harsh self-criticism stemming from early experiences of neglect or rejection. An EFT therapist might guide a client to access memories that have fueled self-critical beliefs (e.g., “I am unworthy”) and then evoke feelings of self-compassion in response. As the client holds both the memory of feeling “unworthy” and the experience of self-compassion together, the memory reconsolidation process allows the painful self-criticism to gradually transform, leading to greater self-acceptance.
Challenging Abandonment Fears in Relationships: For clients with attachment trauma, fear of abandonment often underlies unhelpful relationship behaviors, such as withdrawing or clinging. In EFT, clients might be guided to recall memories of being left alone or rejected, activating the fear and shame associated with these memories. The therapist then helps the client access an adaptive emotion, such as the love, appreciation, and security felt in a present-day supportive relationship, contrasting it with the abandonment fear. Holding both emotional states, clients experience a corrective emotional experience that can eventually replace abandonment fear with a greater sense of safety and security.
Rewriting Beliefs About Worthiness: Some clients carry a deep sense of their unworthiness due to childhood trauma. In EFT, a client might explore painful memories where they felt unloved or unvalued and bring in an adaptive emotion, such as tenderness towards their younger self or a sense of empowered anger at an innocent child being mistreated. By re-experiencing the memory with these new emotions, memory reconsolidation allows the client to integrate feelings of compassion and self-assertiveness, gradually replacing the old emotion scheme with a healthier, more affirming one.
The Transformative Power of Therapy Through Memory Reconsolidation
The concept of memory reconsolidation reinforces what many clients experience in therapy: the gradual but profound changes that can happen when painful memories are revisited in a supportive context. For people struggling with attachment trauma, memory reconsolidation offers a powerful possibility to heal old wounds. Rather than simply managing symptoms, this approach targets the root of the pain, helping clients to transform their sense of self. By integrating adaptive emotions into old emotion schemes, clients may find that they respond to familiar triggers with greater emotional flexibility, rather than rigid, fear-based reactions. Over time, this process leads to a more securely attached self—one that feels more open to connection, more resilient in the face of challenges, and more worthy of love.
Conclusion: Memory Reconsolidation in EFT as a Pathway to Healing
For those struggling with attachment trauma, memory reconsolidation is one pathway through which therapy can lead to lasting change. This approach not only explores the pain of the past but actively reshapes it, allowing clients to build a healthier, more adaptive emotional foundation. The interventions offered in EFT are consistent with the process of memory reconsolidation. They provide clients with the opportunity to heal from attachment wounds in a way that recognizes their original unmet needs and strengthens their connections with themselves and others. While we cannot change the events of the past that caused attachment trauma, it is certainly possible to transform their emotional impact.
Stay tuned for future blog posts examining other ways in which therapy can lead to healing! Please reach out if you are ready to begin your healing journey from attachment trauma.
