What is Timeline Reconsolidation Therapy (TLR)?

As children, we come into this world needing and anticipating certain things. We all need shelter, food, hydration, the ability to breathe and to rest. And on top of these basic physical needs, we have two very important, but not always acknowledged, biological needs. These are the need for connection and the need for authenticity.

That is, to have a loving family that lets us be ourselves.

If we cannot have both, due to factors such as parental absence, family expectations, (e.g. 'you must grow up to be a doctor') parent’s lack of emotional awareness or attunement, or substance abuse for example, a child will always choose connection over authenticity – meaning they will try to please the parent to gain their approval and therefore maintain connection, and they will always blame themselves over blaming their parents. This isn't a conscious decision but a desperate unconscious attempt at maintaining closeness.

If you were subject to neglect, abuse, abandonment, harsh criticism or unmet needs as a child, this lack of healthy connection when younger is very damaging. And because this happens at a time in our lives when you don’t have an adult understanding of what's happening to you, your understanding of that experience can remain stuck at the age you were when you had that experience.

For example, if you were abandoned by your father at age seven, each time you sense abandonment from then on, you might unconsciously react from a seven-year-old's understanding.

On top of that, these events (or series of events) get filed in the parts of the brain that are responsible for storing memory in a different way than a regular, non-upsetting event. 

Normally, memories get recorded by the hippocampus (your brain’s filing cabinet) with a little tag by the amygdala (your brain’s alarm system) to tell it what the emotional tone was (scary, exciting, calm, etc.), which your prefrontal cortex (your decision-making part) then puts into context. Your brain can make meaning of this event and store it in a neutral way.

The result is a coherent story, e.g.  ‘last summer we went to the beach on holiday’

But the brain responds differently when it records a traumatic memory – the amygdala works overtime, flooding the body with stress hormones, the hippocampus stops fully working, so memories get stored as fragments without proper timestamps, and the prefrontal cortex shuts down, so we can’t make sense of it in a logical way.

This results in feeling stuck, because the memory doesn’t have a proper sense of being in the past – leading to triggers, flashbacks, emotional flooding (shame, rage, panic), physical sensations (tight chest, racing heart, stomach pain) and an inability to move on.

When all of this happens to us as children, our developing nervous systems learn to anticipate lack of care, unpredictability and danger – meaning as adults, we are more sensitised and wired to expect threats. Our core beliefs of ‘I’m not safe’ or I don’t deserve love’ or ‘people are dangerous’ stay with us.

This is where Timeline Reconsolidation Therapy (TLR) comes in. 

TLR helps us move on from these traumatic memories and core beliefs, by giving us access to unconscious, forgotten aspects of the memory, shifting it into a different, more helpful type of memory storage (the hippocampus) updating and reframing our understanding of what happened to us to an adult perspective.

This brings a more compassionate insight and understanding (e.g. ‘it wasn’t my fault’) and installs a new, more up to date and empowering emotional imprint and expectation, helping to reduce the distressing charge of the old memory, (e.g. 'I deserve to be cared for, I send myself compassion, I can support myself').

This weakening of old pathways and strengthening of new ones is neuroplasticity in action. Our brains can do this at any point in our lives, given the right input.

The result? No longer being held back by the past, less circulating stress hormones, no need to avoid triggers, an ongoing experience of safety, the ability to choose more helpful emotional responses, hope about the future, and a newfound sense of freedom in the present moment.

This is why Timeline Reconsolidation Therapy is such a big part of Cognitive Hypnotherapy – it can help you release the negative imprint of the past and help you create the joyful future you deserve.