By Stacie Later, LCSW
Living with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) can feel like being trapped in a state of existence within survival mode. You may know you’re safe right now, and yet your body still reacts like danger is all around you. Emotional activators can appear out of nowhere. You might feel anxious, angry, numb or like you’re too much, or not enough.

You may have thought “it was so long ago, I should be over this, I must be broken.” The truth is you are not broken. Your brain adapted to pain by learning how to protect you. Every time you went through something difficult, your mind created ways to cope that made sense at the time. These coping strategies can show up later as distressing symptoms. They were your brain’s way of helping you survive and are no longer needed as they were in the past.

Your brain learned to protect you and it’s capable of learning something new by unlearning the old. Learning to enhance our survivability is part of what makes us human. Healing often isn’t about learning to live with the trauma, you’ve likely already been doing that. Instead, it’s learning to live with the ebbs and flows of life outside of trauma. This is where memory reconsolidation enters the picture.

What Is Memory Reconsolidation?

Memory reconsolidation is a natural way the brain updates and holds emotional memories. When you recall a memory, it becomes flexible for a short window of time. During that window, new emotional experiences can change how the memory is stored (Ecker, Ticic, & Hulley, 2024).

You don’t get rid of the memory, instead you change the way your nervous system carries it.

This process is at the heart of many modern trauma focused therapies, which guide the brain toward healing in a safe and supported way.

What Therapies Use This Process?

Many therapy models are designed to support memory reconsolidation. Here are a few we use at Alliance Counseling Utah:

Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS helps you connect with your inner parts, each with its own role and emotion. Some parts work to protect you, others carry old wounds, and at the core, there’s your Core Self. When these parts feel acknowledged and supported, they start to work together instead of being at war with one another. This process creates a sense of harmony, helping you understand and accept yourself and live more wholeheartedly.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is an effective therapy for trauma that uses bilateral stimulation (like eye movements or tapping) while focusing on a distressing memory. This helps the brain reprocess the memory, allowing it to no longer feel overwhelming or stuck in the nervous system. As the memory is processed, emotional intensity decreases, and the brain can integrate the experience in a healthier way. EMDR has become one of the most vastly used modalities and is praised for its ability to create lasting, transformative changes in trauma survivors (Senreich, 2024).

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
AEDP focuses on deep emotional processing in a safe, supportive therapeutic relationship, allowing you to experience feelings like grief, fear, and joy without judgment. It’s not about analyzing past events, instead it is finally feeling what you needed to feel in the moment, with a therapist who receives and honors those emotions with compassion. This deep emotional experience can lead to profound transformation, helping you move through trauma and reconnect with your emotional vitality.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
ART combines guided imagery with eye movements to help reframe distressing memories, allowing them to be stored in the brain in a more peaceful and adaptive way. Unlike traditional talk therapy, you don’t have to discuss painful details; instead, you change how the memory is experienced at a deeper, sensory level. This process can bring immediate relief as your nervous system responds to the new, less distressing version of the memory, often leading to quicker emotional healing.

Critical Memory Integration (CMI)
CMI focuses on the specific moment when a painful core belief like “I’m not enough,” was formed. By activating this memory and introducing new emotional responses, the brain can let go of the old belief. The process moves you from emotional constriction, where the old belief holds you back, to emotional expansion, allowing for new truths and more authentic self-perceptions to emerge. Integrating past experiences with the present to connect with the Core center self.

Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR)
DBR targets trauma stored deep in the brainstem, where instinctual responses to danger or attachment trauma are developed. It gently tracks bodily tension and unconscious movements that arise just before a trauma response is triggered, allowing the therapist to intervene at the earliest stage of the trauma response. By working at this deep level, DBR helps to reorganize shock and attachment trauma in a way that reduces the intensity of trauma reactions, promoting healing at the most fundamental levels of the nervous system (Corrigan, 2023).

Coherence Therapy

Coherence Therapy works by identifying and transforming the deeply held emotional beliefs created by trauma. It goes straight to the root of the issue, uncovering unconscious beliefs that shape how a person experiences and navigates the world. Through this process, individuals gain insight into why they feel the way they do and can rewire their emotional responses to align with a stronger sense of self. By integrating new, more adaptive beliefs, Coherence Therapy offers a path to profound healing and lasting change.

Healing Is Possible

CPTSD can quickly throw you into a loop of feeling trapped and hopeless. Your brain has been working hard to protect you and it’s ready to shift into healing. When emotional memories are brought into awareness and gently transformed, they no longer act as an invisible driving force. What once were automatic distressing reactions start to soften. You become able to choose new responses, creating patterns that are grounded in safety rather than reacting for survival.

At Alliance Counseling Utah, we are a group of therapists that are trained and certified in approaches such as IFS, EMDR, AEDP, ART, CMI, DBR and Coherence Therapy. We honor your pace, your story, and your path. Healing isn’t only possible; it’s something we are privileged to witness each day in our work.

The truth is you’re not “broken” or “too far gone.”

You’re on your way to healing, and it’s an ongoing journey, not a destination.

Reach out today to schedule a consultation. Healing is possible, and you don’t have to do it alone.