Therapist Jam Session: Rewinding and Reworking - Memory re-consolidation comment and demo
Channel: Re-embodying emotional experience
Date: 2023-05-12

Past events that were overwhelming or frightening will often stick with us and keep coming up.  Memory reconsolidation techniques are designed to end the internal oscillations that keep the past reliving itself inside of us, and to help us feel whole again. That said, without understanding the principles behind these techniques, we can easily miss the mark and miss out on getting that sort of result.  In this therapist jam session, therapists Jared Powell and Jenessa Wood use a version of what many people have called the rewind technique to add a bit of structure to an overwhelming event that Jenessa brought to our demonstration.  

This rewind technique will often lead to an instant reduction in the distress. When it doesn't, that doesn't mean that the technique didn't work.  When that happens, the technique is still useful to help the survivor build a virtual launchpad for other forms of work that otherwise may have been more difficult to use.  This was the case her in our demonstration.  Janessa noticed that the stress response didn't noticeably reduce, but her somatic markers had changed.  So with that, we went forward with a type of implicit memory reconsolidation work, using somatic methods and parts work.

The use of the rewind often makes the memory less threatening and prepares people to safely explore underlying needs that previously were too hard to reach.  In this case, we observed a hidden fear starting to emerge, and used another technique to work with it.  Therapy and coaching clients often enjoy deeper connections and behavioral results when doing this sort of work.