Tag Archives: emotional trauma

Non-pharmaceutical Fear Erasure?

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Fearful memories can be rewritten.

Fearful memories can be rewritten.

Researchers at New York University have demonstrated scientifically that a specific fearful memory can be rewritten in the brain without the use of drugs – purely behaviorally. Of course, alternative practitioners like hypnotherapists and Rapid Eye Technicians have seen this over and over and are sold on the fact that fearful memories can be rewritten (in NLP it’s called “Reframing”).

Basing their theories on mouse and rat subjects, the researchers, led by Elizabeth Phelps, Ph.D., and Joseph LeDoux, Ph.D., of NYU, grantees of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), have demonstrated their training process on human subjects with positive results. The hope is to replace drug therapies with behavioral ones for anxiety and PTSD specifically – and perhaps others after some trials.

The research shows that there is a critical window of opportunity for change – within 6 hours of the recall of a traumatic memory. Once the “file” is open, specific behavioral techniques can be used to rewrite the memory back into the brain without the fear portion – with long-lasting results. The researchers also found that it was not necessary to recall specifics within a memory – just the emotional elements and the “gist” of the traumatic memory – in order to rewrite it. That’s the phenomenological findings of thousands of Rapid Eye Technicians, who basically tell their clients, “It’s not necessary to relive the events in order to release their energy and reframe [rewrite] those memories…”

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Unrelated Memories Connected by Trauma?

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Sometimes stress can bring disparate memories together.

Sometimes stress can bring disparate memories together.

A study conducted by researchers at the Czech Republic’s Academy of Sciences, the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center, and Rockefeller University reported:

“Our results show that stress can activate memory, even if that memory is unrelated to the stressful experience,” explained André Fenton, the study’s lead author and a professor at New York University’s Center for Neural Science.

“Additional investigations into the effects of stress on memories could shed light on PTSD and other stress-related mood disorders,” added Fenton.

These results show that stress can reactivate unrelated memories, leading the authors to hypothesize that, in humans, traumatic stress might reactivate non-traumatic memories and link them to the traumatic memory, thereby facilitating the pathological effects seen in post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

I sometimes wondered when working with some clients why memories they insisted were related to a traumatic event didn’t seem to me to be related. This study confirms what I experienced then – that some unrelated memories sometimes get joined or connected to memories of traumatic events through stress. The connected memory confusion can be a source of tension and emotional energy for the client – and mystery for the clinician. Fortunately, using hypnosis and Rapid Eye Technology, the connected memories could be relieved of their emotional energy and the client would see fairly quick results – a significant decrease in emotional energy and increase in personal power.

Note to RET Technicians – just do the RET process and don’t worry about the memories (stories). No matter what story the client wants to put with their experience, it’s okay and correct for them. Releasing the emotional energy no matter what its source is the goal.

The study’s other authors are: Karel Ježek of the Czech Republic’s Academy of Sciences; Benjamin Lee and Eduard Kelemen of SUNY Downstate; and Katharine McCarthy and Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University.

One Result of Military Service

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The physical and verbal abuse used by drill instructors is intended to break the spirit - and often does.

The physical and verbal abuse used by drill instructors is intended to break the spirit - and often does.

As a Vietnam and Kuwait era veteran, I can tell you, the military messes with your mind. I saw perfectly agreeable young men enter the military and return just months later much less agreeable (less able to cooperate with others, sense and feel for others, get along with family and friends, etc.).

An article in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science by some pretty smart scientists confirms that military conscripts in the German Army were less agreeable upon exit from service than they were going in, and they were less agreeable than their counterparts who did not endure military service.

Yes, it’s the German army, but my guess is that their army is much the same as the one I endured here in the USA. Some say military Basic Training is like a rite of passage, and maybe so. The intent now as it has been for hundreds of years is to break the spirit so that people can become more responsive to authority. Four or more years of military service, even without combat, is bound to leave its mark on an individual.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being less agreeable. Many people would say that very successful business types are pretty disagreeable – as are many bureaucrats, law enforcement officials, and TSA agents.

Still, I think it’s food for thought. I tend to like agreeable people more than I do disagreeable people. But that’s just me.

(source: Association for Psychological Science. “Does The Military Make The Man Or Does The Man Make The Military?.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 27 Jan. 2012. Web.)

Are Killer Repressed Memories a Myth?

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A percentage of veterans (and by extension, some civilians) who have experienced traumatic events have a built-in coping mechanism that appears to repress traumatic memories in order to make life more satisfying and livable. And the strategy works well for them!

A percentage of veterans (and by extension, some civilians) who have experienced traumatic events have a built-in coping mechanism that appears to repress traumatic memories in order to make life more satisfying and livable. And the strategy works well for them!

“Going back to the days of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrists and mental health experts have suggested that repression of traumatic memories could lead to health problems. Yet we have found little evidence that repression had an adverse health impact on combat veterans exposed to psychological trauma many years later.”

Joseph Boscarino, Ph.D. and Tulane University investigator Charles Figley, Ph.D., have been studying the effects of repressed memories in Vietnam war and other war veterans to help understand the relationship between repressed memories and physical ailment and longevity.

For years I had worked under the belief that horrific traumatic experiences should “come out” to be resolved or relieved of their emotional charge – and that suppressing those memories was tantamount to denial – leading to terrible life consequences. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients, many of whom were veterans. For those who chose to disclose their traumatic emotional baggage, swift release of the psychic energy often produced a noticeable increased sense of well-being and life satisfaction – that lasted.

However, according to Boscarino and Figley, a percentage of veterans (and by extension, some civilians) who have experienced traumatic events have a built-in coping mechanism that appears to repress traumatic memories in order to make life more satisfying and livable. And the strategy works well for them!

In these cases, “Repression is a self-regulator and a method of memory management,” Dr. Figley said. “In other words, ‘keeping your stressful memories inside or it will kill you’ is a myth.”

To both practitioner and veteran, I would say – “If what you are doing is working well for you, no need to ‘rock the boat’ for the sake of therapy.” Like my old pappy used to say, “If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it!”

To that I would add – just because you experienced traumatic events does not necessarily mean you need therapy to “resolve your issue” or that you must have repressed memories that will affect you physically if not properly dealt with – usually by expressing them. Maybe all you need to do is continue to do what you’re doing now. Sometimes the hunt for repressed memories itself is more traumatic than the memories sought after – and can cause more psychological damage than repressing the memories.

However (and this is important) – if someone close to you suggests therapy, take them up on the idea. And if you suddenly find yourself acting out for no reason whatsoever – like losing your temper when your wife tells you she’s going to brew another cup of coffee or sit in a different chair – or maybe you start losing sleep at night due to recurring nightmares – consider therapy to relieve you of some suppressed emotional charge. The investment may just make the difference between “just getting by” emotionally and loving and living your life to the fullest.

Fear Memory Deletion?

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This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.

This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.

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