Status Updates From Unlocking the Emotional Bra...

Episodic memory captures harm, semantic memory the response to harm. Therapy traces present behaviours, thoughts, and feelings to intense, evocative episodic memories, so that the semantic schema can come into conscious knowledge. "If I act this way, I'll be abandoned, therefore I must act this other way". There is a problem, there is a solution. Intervention only comes after such knowledge is fully integrated.

Am struck by how much this mirrors Elizabeth Howell's dissociation-based phrase treatment. Counteractive methods (emotional/attentional regulation) diminish symptoms, but don't erase them. Trauma work involves reactivating emotional schemas (parts, maladaptions) and introducing contradictions to cause a mismatch between frame and reality. This must be repeated until the schema is rewritten completely.

the entire part 2 is in-depth case studies djskdhsksk let's gooooooo