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Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation 1st Edition
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Psychotherapy that regularly yields liberating, lasting change was, in the last century, a futuristic vision, but it has now become reality, thanks to a convergence of remarkable advances in clinical knowledge and brain science. In Unlocking the Emotional Brain, authors Ecker, Ticic and Hulley equip readers to carry out focused, empathic therapy using the process found by researchers to induce memory reconsolidation, the recently discovered and only known process for actually unlocking emotional memory at the synaptic level. Emotional memory's tenacity is the familiar bane of therapists, and researchers have long believed that emotional memory forms indelible learning. Reconsolidation has overturned these views. It allows new learning to erase, not just suppress, the deep, unconscious, intensely problematic emotional learnings that form during childhood or in later tribulations and generate most of the symptoms that bring people to therapy. Readers will learn methods that precisely eliminate unwanted, ingrained emotional responses―whether moods, behaviors or thought patterns―causing no loss of ordinary narrative memory, while restoring clients' well-being. Numerous case examples show the versatile use of this process in AEDP, Coherence Therapy, EFT, EMDR and IPNB.
- ISBN-100415897173
- ISBN-13978-0415897174
- Edition1st
- PublisherRoutledge
- Publication dateSeptember 24, 2012
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Print length244 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Ecker's, Ticic's, and Hulley's Unlocking the Emotional Brain, like some earlier classics, draws from, adapts, and integrates the very best of the best currently available concepts and techniques into a powerful and accessible psychotherapeutic method. What sets this book apart is how these elements are mixed, matched, and delivered to each individual client. Packaged in a highly engaging read, psychotherapists of all sorts will find many resources which will enhance as well as ease their work."
―Babette Rothschild, MSW, LCSW, author of The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment
"Unlocking the Emotional Brain is one of the most important psychotherapy books of our generation. It brings the recent groundbreaking brain research on memory reconsolidation to the mental health field.... This is the first psychotherapy book to delineate the sequence of experiences the brain requires to heal. This is big, important information that is applicable across many treatment approaches. No matter how good a therapist you already are, reading this book will make you better."
―Ricky Greenwald, PsyD, founder/director, Trauma Institute & Child Trauma Institute, and author of Child Trauma Handbook and EMDR Within a Phase Model of Trauma-Informed Treatment
"Drawing on the latest developments in neuroscience, Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic and Laurel Hulley provide an innovative approach to psychotherapy that is very much of the 21st century. In this book filled with both groundbreaking neuroscience and provocative case examples, they describe how to tap into the reconsolidation process in therapy. If you want to know what's happening that is new in psychotherapy, this is the place to start."
―Jay Lebow, PhD, clinical professor of psychology at Northwestern University and editor of Family Process
"A major contribution to the field and a must read for any therapist interested in the process of transformation and healing. Beautifully written, the authors present an elegant integration of neuroscientific findings and psychotherapy technique, resulting in a step by step method for relieving longstanding symptoms and suffering. Even the most seasoned clinician will be inspired to learn from these masters."
―Patricia Coughlin Della Selva, PhD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UNM School of Medicine and author of Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: Theory and Technique
"Read this book and you will never do therapy in the same way again! These authors show you how to do effective therapy rooted in the science of the mind."
―Jon Carlson, PsyD, EdD, ABPP, distinguished professor at Governors State University and coauthor of Creative Breakthroughs in Therapy
"A refreshing and audacious book that throws open the doors and blows the dust from the corners of clinical practice…. [O]ffering a 'virtually theory-free' methodology…, the authors…add a startlingly effective process to the repertoire of every clinician [and] build powerful alliances across clinical approaches…"
―Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD, author of Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change
"A transtheoretical, effective and efficient approach, nicely grounded in recent neuroscience, for deep, transformational change in pernicious emotional implicit learnings…. This is a significant 'breakthrough' book…. I recommend it most highly!"
―Michael F. Hoyt, PhD, author of Brief Psychotherapies: Principles and Practices
"Imagine the founders of diverse therapy methodologies discussing how they achieve deep, lasting, transformational change and agreeing it's due to one basic process. Building on state-of-the-art neuroscience to identify that core process, the authors develop an approach that is theory-free, nonpathologizing, empathic, experiential, phenomenological, and nonspeculative, and that hones therapy while not cramping the therapist's unique contribution―an integrationist's dream!"
―Hanna Levenson, PhD, author of Brief Dynamic Therapy
"A unique, creative, and insightful book that…fits with recent neuropsychological findings on how the brain can alter and even eliminate old painful memories. This book is on the forefront of books that are using neuropsychological findings to illuminate psychotherapy."
―Arthur C. Bohart, PhD, professor emeritus at California State University and coauthor of How Clients Make Therapy Work
About the Author
Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley are the originators of Coherence Therapy and coauthors of Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How To Be Brief When You Were Trained To Be Deep – and Vice Versa, the Coherence Therapy Practice Manual and Training Guide, and the Manual of Juxtaposition Experiences: How to Create Transformational Change Using Disconfirming Knowledge in Coherence Therapy. Ecker is codirector of the Coherence Psychology Institute, has taught for many years in graduate programs, and has been in private practice near San Francisco since 1986. Hulley is director of education and paradigm development of the Coherence Psychology Institute and co-founder of the Julia Morgan Middle School for Girls in Oakland, California.
Robin Ticic is director of training and development of the Coherence Psychology Institute and is in private practice near Cologne, Germany, specializing in trauma therapy and clinical supervision of trauma therapists. She has served as a psychologist for the Psychotraumatology Institute of the University of Cologne for many years, provides a low-fee counseling service for parents, and is author of the parenting guide How to Connect With Your Child, published in English and German.
Product details
- Publisher : Routledge; 1st edition (September 24, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 244 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0415897173
- ISBN-13 : 978-0415897174
- Item Weight : 13.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #97,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #132 in Medical Counseling
- #234 in Popular Psychology Counseling
- #3,042 in Mental Health (Books)
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As a little background and context, in my 2nd stage in life, I made a career change and am currently a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern nearing completion of my experiential hours required to take the licensing exams. A Masters Degree and 3000+ hours of experience does not qualify me as an expert in psychotherapy though it does give me a lot of face time with people suffering from mild to severe psychological issues. The training and supervision process has also shown me that almost all therapists struggle with how best to help our clients and what specific tools, theoretical modalities or other techniques to use to ease this suffering. Along the way, therapists, including myself, adopt theories that fit with our own philosophical beliefs and life experiences. Personally, I've found myself relating best to the 3rd Wave Cognitive/Behavioral Therapies (ACT, DBT, etc.) though Interpersonal Neurobiology (INPB) and attachment theory have heavily informed the therapeutic path I currently follow. Brief Therapies haven't been my focus, but I've occasionally come across things that feel relevant and helpful.
A few years back, I came across Ecker and Hulley's book, Depth Oriented Brief Psychotherapy, and it fascinated and moved me to consider the most logical notion that psychological "symptoms" are functional. Other paths caught my attention, but I've occasionally come back to this book and was very interested when I saw that Ecker, Hulley, (and Ticic) had a new book coming out. I immediately pre-ordered it. When it arrived last week, I picked it up, started reading it, and had finished it within a few days. Very few psychological theory books get me past a few chapters, but I read "Unlocking the Emotional Brain" as if it were a favorite author's novel that could not be put down.
I can't speak to the science behind "memory reconsolidation," but having uttered the phrase that "we don't get an eraser for our past" more than a few times, I was more than a little excited to read that it might actually be possible to erase and re-write implicit learnings/memory from our past. Attachment related issues are so common in this field, yet most methods of dealing with them are aimed at the therapist/client having an almost "reparenting" experience to provide the secure attachment the client didn't get early in life. "Unlocking the Emotional Brain" provides a very specific, detailed methodology for actually elimiminating those implicit, generally unconscious learnings we pick up from our life experiences from an early age and onward, thus reducing the need for the symptoms that support those learnings. I assumed the book would be a Coherence Therapy manual (and it is to a certain extent), but I was gratified to see it written as a trans-theoretical model of how psychological change actually happens and how a variety of types of therapy achieve this change. I can think of no other book in my library of psychology books that is more clear on the why, what and how of working with clients. I've already started using this new knowledge with clients and it's already produced results where there was stuckness prior.
I believe this book should be read by all levels of therapists, but especially students, interns, and those still struggling to find their theoretical home base from which to ground their therapeutic work... Cannot recommend highly enough.
As if that wasn't enough, Ecker et al offer several other wonderful contributions to the literature. These include: 1) Outlining the essential features of "therapeutic reconsolidation", that is the direct application of the "memory reconsolidation" research to profound psychotherapeutic change; 2) Demonstrating how therapeutic reconsolidation occurs in several transformative psychotherapies, not only in Coherence Therapy (CT), the constructivist-experiential approach developed by Ecker and Hulley, but also AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), EFT (Emotion-Focused Therapy) and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). When so many therapy approaches tout their "brand's" superiority, it is remarkable that these authors are truly committed to integration, that is to discovering what makes deep change possible across distinct schools of therapy; 3) Reviewing the literature on attachment as applies to psychotherapy, and demonstrating how "reparative attachment" (i.e. repairing attachment wounds within the therapy relationship) is one but not the sole means by which attachment injuries can be transformed; and 4) Providing four clinical cases from other practitioners of Coherence Therapy (in addition to several other vignettes interspersed throughout the earlier discussion of clinical theory), rendered in some depth so that readers can further witness the therapeutic reconsolidation process from the perspective of Coherence Therapy.
The authors and their colleagues achieve all of this, using language that is clear, precise to the point of elegant, jargon-free, compelling and at times even inspiring. These authors seek to excite the reader, as well as bring together the usually separate fields of neuroscience and psychotherapy. For this reader, they succeed in ways few books can compare. If Ecker, Ticic and Hulley's new offering doesn't become a groundbreaking classic, it ought to! But don't take my word for it: discover for yourself the many gems that lay within.
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It’s wonderful to hear that even if a belief seems “irrational,” the belief does make its own kind of sense. (E.g. “If I deliberately fail at everything, I can prove to my father what a terrible parent he was, and take revenge on him.”) I find it validating that our stubborn thought patterns serve some logical purpose—they’re not just random idiosyncrasies in your mind.
Despite how simple coherence therapy sounds, I was glad that the book showed us cases where therapeutic progress was slow and difficult. We may indeed take a long time to discover the core negative beliefs, and even longer to unearth the other related core beliefs, as well as to seek out their contradictory evidence.
I liked the distinction between counteractive vs transformative therapies, and the caveats on when counteractive methods would be more appropriate. CBT is deemed counteractive, but it still works for many clients, perhaps because, during the thought challenge process, you can expose yourself to the emotional experiencing of two contradictory beliefs at the same time. CBT isn’t always intellectual and cognitive; there are ways to enhance the emotional power of “cognitive thoughts” too, such as asking the client to visualize a specific incident or person in their life, imagine the sensory details, and make the image as vivid and real as possible.
In fact, I think it would be beneficial to avoid using labels for the different therapeutic modalities, and just focus on what you are actually doing. It seems that a lot of people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the term CBT; but CBT shares similarities with some other modalities. For instance, EFT (emotion-focused therapy), CBT, existential, and narrative therapy all involve questioning our core, maladaptive beliefs, and developing more helpful and empowering beliefs.
There is a significant overlap between EFT and coherence therapy too, where both posit that our emotions are informative and adaptive (though some are overlearned responses), rather than nonsensical and arbitrary. Rational-emotive-behavioral therapy (REBT) also talks about appropriate negative emotions, so REBT doesn’t see all negative feelings as unreasonable either.
Realistically, I believe that most therapists wouldn’t rigidly adhere to any one belief system. One could specialize in CBT, but still agree with things in other modalities that are seen as contradictory to CBT. A CBT therapist could believe that “irrational thoughts” all have a rational basis. For example, a hypothetical person, Xavier, feels like they are a complete failure, which is not factually true, but they feel this way because they just encountered a setback in a domain that they care deeply about; and as Xavier’s self-esteem is tied to their accomplishments in this field, of course they would be miserable and think in a devastating way. Or, a different hypothetical person, Reuben, may also feel like a total failure, because they are surrounded by friends and family who have high-wage, prestigious jobs, and so when Reuben doesn’t get accepted into med school, it’s understandable that they would feel unworthy, due to social comparison, and perhaps because of a belief in their family and peer circle that career prestige and achievement are everything.
Everybody’s story is different, but Reuben and Xavier’s cases are examples of how a person’s belief, though factually untrue, can still make logical sense when you examine its background context. In fact, this situation reminds me of the difference between taking a sentence literally versus taking it metaphorically or hyperbolically. People often make absolute statements, e.g. “No one writes physical letters nowadays,” but of course, on a literal level, some folks still write paper letters to each other. We simply need to listen to the person’s statement as reflecting an emotional truth, rather than some objective fact. For instance, the person could just be expressing sorrow for the “lost art of letter writing.”
It was helpful to read the cases in the book where the therapist turned an intellectual exercise into an emotional, experiential one, such as by asking the client to hone in on what they are feeling in their body, asking them how they are feeling in the moment, encouraging them to vividly imagine an important scene, etc. I do believe that the intellectual and the emotional are not an either-or, all-or-nothing question, though. You could be partially intellectual but also partially emotional in the session. Or, you could be feeling some emotion, but at a lower intensity, where you display more subtle bodily cues. (So instead of crying visibly, a client might look a bit tense around the shoulders, and stare at the floor more often than usual.)
In addition, I don’t agree with some therapists that intellectual insights are completely useless. These cognitive insights may be less powerful than insights gained during more emotional moments, but intellectual/ cognitive discoveries still kick-start a journey of change for the better. (I’m not saying that the authors of this book think intellectual discoveries are completely useless; I was just referring to some therapists I met personally.) I understand that sometimes, we know something rationally and intellectually, but we believe something else emotionally, which can be frustrating. However, I argue that knowing something on a rational level, is still much better than not knowing it at all. The cognitive, rational side can be a brake to restrain us from doing unwise behaviors. And a weak brake is better than no brake.
Another part of the book I loved, was when the authors addressed attachment theory, explaining that not all problematic beliefs stem from attachment insecurities, and that securely attached people could develop unhelpful beliefs too. This is a much more complex, multi-faceted, and believable view of human behavior.
One thing I didn’t like that much about the book, is that it’s written in relatively dense language, where sentences are longer and filled with more academic words than necessary. I get that this book is for therapists rather than for the lay audience, but they could still write in a simpler, more accessible style. Even experts in the field would have an easier time reading the text if the sentences were shorter and the language simpler.
Furthermore, it would be great if the authors wrote “they,” “their,” “them,” instead of “he or she,” “his or her,” “him or her,” since not everyone uses he or she pronouns, and nonbinary people do exist. (I get that this book was published a number of years ago, where social awareness of nonbinary folks and gender neutral pronouns was even more lacking than it is than today. But still, it's frustrating.)
On the other hand, I was glad to see a same-gender romantic relationship in one of the cases. It can be alienating for a gay person (such as myself) to read a therapy book where all romantic relationships in the text are between opposite gender partners. So this inclusion of a non-heterosexual couple was a relief to see.
All in all, a marvelous, inspiring book!
Quite a difficult book to follow, I couldn't finish it. The following psychology books also talks about therapy but written in a way anyone could understand and follow, but this one I couldn't even finish it.
The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT,
Focusing, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

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