Removing Trauma Response with Yes/And Healing: Alun Parry and Yael Zivan on PYP 572

When Alun Parry stumbled upon the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation, he read everything he could get his hands on that was relevant to therapy, which wasn't much. With the exception of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, by Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic, and Laurel Hulley, no other therapists had shared their understandings or experiences about using this powerful property of the brain to remove trauma responses.

Without triggering memory reconsolidation, the best that therapy can aim for is trauma management; dealing with symptoms and strengthening competing responses. With memory reconsolidation, on the other hand, there is a pathway to erasing the traumatic content of memories and replacing them with neutral or even empowering interpretations.

So once Alun understood the principles, he began looking for techniques that reliably bring about memory reconsolidation, testing them out in his own clinical practice. As he did so, he achieved results that he would have called nothing short of miraculous before encountering memory reconsolidation.

Looking over the therapeutic landscape, Alan realized that he had come across memory reconsolidation more or less by accident, and the chances that other therapists and helping professionals (like coaches) would similarly stumble upon this still-largely-unknown finding of neuroscience were slim to none.

So he has taken it upon himself to popularize the concept, writing books, making videos, and creating an online community for helpers to learn and master the techniques.

That's how I found Alun: searching the Amazon catalog for books on memory reconsolidation. Then I joined his community, and quickly found several techniques that I immediately incorporated into my coaching, to great effect.

I'm thrilled to present this conversation with Alun, and, as an added bonus, my daughter Yael Zivan, who asks great questions (making this podcasting papa very proud) and offers a bunch of valuable insights of her own. I think she's going to be a regular on the show from now on!

Links

How To Remove Trauma Response: A Memory Reconsolidation Guidebook for Therapists and Coaches, by Alun Parry

FreshTherapists.com - Alun's website

Unlocking the Emotional Brain, by Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic, and Laurel Hulley