Of course, this means that there does need to be some contradictory information available which could be used to disprove the original schema. One might have a schema for which no disconfirmation is available because it is correct, or a schema which might or might not be correct but which is making things worse and cannot easily be disconfirmed.
This view is ignoring the distinction between denotation and connotation, or as I like to think of it, between prediction and evaluation. Our memories don’t just create factual prediction, they are also tagged with evaluations: meaning, feelings, etc.
So, it’s quite possible to reconsolidate different evaluations for the same factual predictions. For example:
UtEB mentions the example of a man, “Tómas”, who had a desire to be understood and validated by someone important in his life. Tómas remarked that a professional therapist who was being paid for his empathy could never fulfill that role. The update contradicting the schema that nobody in his life really understood him, would have to come from someone actually in his life.
The evaluation Tómas is making is itself based in some other memory that can be reconsolidated, so that it is no longer required for somebody else to understand him. The experience of “feeling understood” is not something that actually comes from outside, it is something your brain generates according to learned rules. In this case, Tómas has learned that only certain specific people’s understanding counts or is meaningful… and this learning is just as subject to reconsolidation as anything else!
Another issue that may pop up with the erasure sequence is that there is another schema which predicts that, for whatever reason, running this transformation may produce adverse effects. In that case, one needs to address the objecting schema first, essentially be carrying out the entire process on it before returning to the original steps. (This is similar to the phenomenon in e.g. Internal Family Systems, where objecting parts may show up and have their concerns addressed before work on the original part can proceed.)
Yes, checking for objections is of critical importance, because if you don’t, the thing you think you fixed can come back in a few days or weeks. But this isn’t because there’s an agent that “objects”, it’s just that the thing you were working on is reinforced by another prediction/evaluation.
For example, let’s say that Joe is having trouble promoting himself or his work, because he’s learned never to brag and that bragging is bad. He learned this because his mother always punished him for bragging and said “Pride goeth before a fall”. We do some work and get rid of that immediate response, but don’t check for objections, so we miss the part where the implicit, unspoken part of the interaction was, “If I don’t punish you for bragging, you’ll grow up to be an obnoxious selfish person who nobody will like”.
So, because of that, we’ve removed Joe’s semi-explicit belief that bragging is prideful and will lead to a disastrous “fall”, but not his more-implicit belief that he needs to punish himself for bragging. In the high of having changed the first belief, Joe will go out and start promoting himself, but feeling weirdly bad about it, until he stops again.
IOW, the “objecting” schema isn’t really objecting per se. The schema is rather reinforcing the previous schema, with a need or desire to punish himself for violating it, leading to a return of the old behavior and extinguishing the new behavior we tried to establish.
These reinforcing schema don’t always show up with an obvious objection at the time you’re making a change, and people who are eager to get the change done will often report over-optimistic predictions when they’re doing the reconsolidation part. Sometimes, the “objection” is nothing more than a vague feeling that the new scenario being projected isn’t realistic in some way, or “isn’t quite right”. When that is the case, I always dig deeper immediately to uncover what other predictions are being made.
(Of course, for this specific pattern of “if I don’t punish X in way Y, I/they will become bad type of person Z”, I have a standard format for finding it even before getting to the reconsolidation part, as it’s super-common in issues of self-sabotage, procrastination, perfectionism, etc.)
This view is ignoring the distinction between denotation and connotation, or as I like to think of it, between prediction and evaluation. Our memories don’t just create factual prediction, they are also tagged with evaluations: meaning, feelings, etc.
So, it’s quite possible to reconsolidate different evaluations for the same factual predictions. For example:
The evaluation Tómas is making is itself based in some other memory that can be reconsolidated, so that it is no longer required for somebody else to understand him. The experience of “feeling understood” is not something that actually comes from outside, it is something your brain generates according to learned rules. In this case, Tómas has learned that only certain specific people’s understanding counts or is meaningful… and this learning is just as subject to reconsolidation as anything else!
Yes, checking for objections is of critical importance, because if you don’t, the thing you think you fixed can come back in a few days or weeks. But this isn’t because there’s an agent that “objects”, it’s just that the thing you were working on is reinforced by another prediction/evaluation.
For example, let’s say that Joe is having trouble promoting himself or his work, because he’s learned never to brag and that bragging is bad. He learned this because his mother always punished him for bragging and said “Pride goeth before a fall”. We do some work and get rid of that immediate response, but don’t check for objections, so we miss the part where the implicit, unspoken part of the interaction was, “If I don’t punish you for bragging, you’ll grow up to be an obnoxious selfish person who nobody will like”.
So, because of that, we’ve removed Joe’s semi-explicit belief that bragging is prideful and will lead to a disastrous “fall”, but not his more-implicit belief that he needs to punish himself for bragging. In the high of having changed the first belief, Joe will go out and start promoting himself, but feeling weirdly bad about it, until he stops again.
IOW, the “objecting” schema isn’t really objecting per se. The schema is rather reinforcing the previous schema, with a need or desire to punish himself for violating it, leading to a return of the old behavior and extinguishing the new behavior we tried to establish.
These reinforcing schema don’t always show up with an obvious objection at the time you’re making a change, and people who are eager to get the change done will often report over-optimistic predictions when they’re doing the reconsolidation part. Sometimes, the “objection” is nothing more than a vague feeling that the new scenario being projected isn’t realistic in some way, or “isn’t quite right”. When that is the case, I always dig deeper immediately to uncover what other predictions are being made.
(Of course, for this specific pattern of “if I don’t punish X in way Y, I/they will become bad type of person Z”, I have a standard format for finding it even before getting to the reconsolidation part, as it’s super-common in issues of self-sabotage, procrastination, perfectionism, etc.)