02/05/2021 Alain Brunet and his reconsolidation therapy
- Leelah
- May 3, 2021
- 6 min read
Reconsolidation therapy is a 6-session protocol with taking propranolol tablets to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
It is an experimental therapy set up by Alain Brunet, a Canadian.
The principle: to reprocess the emotional memory and attenuate its reviviscences thanks to pills of propranolol.
Effective on 2/3 of the patients treated.
Unfortunately this can only be used effectively when there is a single traumatic event, and without dissociative amnesia as I understand it.
This treatment has been offered to victims of the recent attacks in France.
Propranolol is usually prescribed for heart problems:
"This drug belongs to the family of beta blockers. These work by blocking the action of adrenaline (and other related hormones) on many organs, including the heart, blood vessels and bronchi."
The principle of Alain Brunet's protocol is simple.
Have the patient write down the event in great detail. Give her propranolol pills. Once the pills are in effect, ask the patient to reread their story. By reading it again, the emotional memory will come back. But propranolol tablets will block the emotional intensity, stopping the production of adrenaline that generates this felt pain. The suffering, the panic, the terror will be less intense.
The patient will therefore re-record the event with diminished emotional memory. Over the 6 sessions of the protocol, emotional memory will return to normal levels. And the patient will finally be able to record the traumatic event experienced in his autobiographical memory as a hard and difficult event in his life but without reliving it in a loop with the intense emotions associated with it. Alain Brunet also explains that there is a "window of time" during which the stamps take effect. It is therefore necessary to take advantage of this "window" to bring back the memory and re-record it at that time.
Here is a report showing how this was set up for the victims of the recent attacks in France:
Here is a site that explains what reconsolidation therapy is:
From what I understand there are 2 kinds of memories at each event.
the memory of the event itself (images, sounds, smells, words, etc.)
the emotional memory associated with this event.
Each time we remember this event, the emotional memory is re-recorded in a way.
For example, a person who has had a serious traffic accident. At the time of the accident, it was raining. If this person develops post-traumatic stress disorder, they may have as a trigger:
Get in the car, drive...
The rain.
Who will bring up the memory in his memory and where this person will "relive it identically".
Let's say one day it rains and she's at home and watching the rain fall through the window, while listening to a song on the radio.
She will have the trigger for the rain that will bring back the memories.
His emotional memory will re-record the traumatic memory of the accident with that of his present.
It will then have a multiplication of triggers:
Get in the car, drive...
The rain.
looking out the window
the piece of music she listened to
be at home...
And she will start to avoid all these triggers unconsciously so as not to relive this event. She will flee the windows, will be unable to get in the car, will have difficulty staying at home, will be in panic when it rains ... and so on ... her daily life will become a minefield and more and more people things will become triggers ...
When this memory comes back, it is not altered, modified during the "re-recording". It is simply, that she will feel panic, a feeling of imminent death, helplessness ... and what will add to her memory is all the potentially "dangerous" situations that it takes to avoid.
His brain will analyze things by saying to himself, in these places, I am in danger, I feel in danger and will do everything to avoid them in order to protect himself and not relive the emotional suffering.
It is for this reason that the longer we wait, the more time the patient loses before being treated, the more his daily life will be impacted.
Each time the memory comes to the surface, more and more of the situations he finds himself in when he recalls the accident will turn into a situation of potential danger.
Alain Brunet's reconsolidation therapy protocol explains this well. In a single traumatic event, emotional memory can be re-recorded by decreasing its intensity.
I think it's great!
I have a lot of triggers. For some I am aware of it. For others, I realize it after the fact. I have amnesias from my present, dissociative parts have been reactivated and I "lost time" because they "took control" of the body and I do not know what I did for 1 hour, 30 minutes or a day ... My life is a real "minefield". Many situations generate in me a feeling of panic, imminent danger of death and feelings of intense suffering due to these unconscious triggers which bring to the surface of my memory the traumatic events that I have experienced.
Could this protocol be adapted for complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder?
It would surely be very complicated! It would be necessary to succeed in making all the dissociative parties collaborate for several months. And "treat" the traumatic events one after the other.
The system of parts as a whole should agree on the memory to be processed and that it is only that which is remembered at the time of processing.
Then, it would be necessary that only the dissociative parts concerned by this memory are present so that this memory of this traumatic event can be re-recorded. That only those who carry the fragments of memories work with the doctor.
With dissociative identity disorder, everything is extremely complex!
In therapy sessions, a lot of things are at stake!
When you drag a lifetime of trauma behind either, it's hard to focus on just one event! And when the traumatic events are committed by the close entourage, there are many other psychological mechanisms in play (bonds of attachments, psychic and social construction, phobias, guilt, shame, anger against oneself, feeling of helplessness and internal criticism ...)!
In addition, due to the dissociation, the memory recording is fragmented. Some of my dissociative parts carry the memory of the beginning of the event, then were not "present" for the rest. I have a part, "Martin" who is there to endure things when the pain gets unbearable. In this case, it is he who takes over. He thus made it possible for my other dissociative parts to be oblivious to the physical suffering that I endured. Then, when it was over, other parties took over. It could be loving parties with my tormentors who sought to ensure that my rapists didn't kill us and "become" "nice" again.
These parties would therefore have to agree to hear Martin's story with all the violence and suffering associated with it ... Martin would have to agree to hear the "loving" parties and accept their actions without theirs. reproach ... it would be necessary that the guilt, the internal reproaches are less present for the collaboration to be possible ...
Or maybe it would be possible by processing a fragment from one part after another?
In this case, it would just be necessary to have the agreement of the parties and to switch to the party that would agree to be a little "relieved" of its suffering. ..
But we always come back to the same problem. .. for this to be possible, we need trained pros, able to instill sufficient confidence in all parties, able to dialogue upstream with the parties for all of this to happen ...
Able to adapt their explanation of the protocol and its merits to all dissociative parties and inspire a climate of trust and security ...
I think it would be possible ... it would take time to process the memories one by one but with a good pro who knows how to dialogue and understands how TDIs work it would potentially be possible ...
It would also be necessary to find how to adapt the protocol to the "small" dissociative parts, with the collaboration of "adult" dissociative parts who would agree to write their memory for her? Adapting it to the parts carrying more "sensory, bodily" suffering perhaps by filming them when they tell it and re-viewing the film when the stamps take effect?
But I think the dissociative parties could potentially agree to collaborate after a few "tests" to see if it works, if the parties who have tried feel better and suffer less, all could agree to collaborate ...
One of my psychiatrists prescribed me these pills a few years ago, having heard of this "miracle drug". It did not have the desired effect on me and I had side effects, palpitations, a lot of restlessness and overactivation ... I ended up asking to stop this treatment because I felt bad.
I think that this protocol must be supervised by nursing staff (blood pressure monitoring, medication taken in the hospital, monitoring of constants, etc.). That goals are set with the parties over the long term, that the protocol is clearly explained and understood.
When I took it, I was not ready. I had just been diagnosed with my complex PTSD and DID. There was no collaboration, dialogue between my parties. And I took the pills at home. There was therefore no "reprocessing" of my memories in a secure environment or separation of the memory to be processed. So I had no re-recording of a given memory ... I had no tracking of my constants ...
Having read the protocol, I see it differently now, and I say to myself that maybe in another context, it would work?
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