Can we change our history? The Science and the Magic of Memory Reconsolidation
Can we change history?
It sounds strange, doesn’t it? History is history. What’s happened has happened. We can’t go back in time and rewrite events. Surely the past is fixed.
But what if we could change our history, the way we experience it now?
This is where it helps to make an important distinction between history and memory.
History refers to the objective facts of what happened. Memory, on the other hand, is something very different. Memory is our subjective experience of the past — how events were encoded in our nervous system, how they were felt in the body, and how they continue to be re-experienced in the present.
And this is where things get interesting.
Most people think traumatic memories are fixed, as if the brain ‘stores’ them in a box, untouched and unchangeable. But modern neuroscience tells a very different story. Memories, even old and painful ones, are not static. They can change. And Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is one therapeutic method that uses this natural ability of the brain to safely update and soften traumatic memories.
This article explains how memory reconsolidation works, why it’s such a breakthrough for trauma treatment, and how EFT uses the body’s own calming system to help memories lose their emotional charge.
1. A Quick Background: Memories Aren’t Set in Stone
For decades, psychology assumed that once a memory was ‘consolidated’ (stored), it became permanent. That changed in the late 1960s.
In 1968, Misanin and colleagues showed that if you reactivate a fear memory and then apply an intervention, the memory becomes temporarily unstable and open to updating (Misanin et al., 1968). This challenged everything we thought we knew about memory.
Fast forward to 2000, and Karim Nader, working in Joseph LeDoux’s lab, demonstrated the same process on a molecular level: when a previously consolidated fear memory was reactivated, blocking protein synthesis in the amygdala prevented the fear memory from returning (Nader, Schafe & LeDoux, 2000). A huge breakthrough.
This led to the modern concept of memory reconsolidation:
Once a memory is reactivated, there is a ‘window of opportunity’ in which it can be altered before it is stored again.
As Nader later put it, we now recognise memory as dynamic, not fixed; memories continually update through life experiences (Nader, 2015).
In other words: old memories can change.
2. How Therapists Have Been Changing Memory Responses for Years
Even before scientists formally named ‘reconsolidation’, therapists were already using the principle.
Hypnotherapists
Hypnotherapists guide clients into a deeply relaxed state and then help them revisit a troubling memory. Because the body responds to vivid imagery as if it’s real, imagining safety induces a physiological calm. Revisiting the memory in that calm state does two things:
It reactivates the memory
It recodes the bodily response from fear to calm
This mirrors classical conditioning principles in which a response to a stimulus (in this case a memory) is reconditioned, and the idea that the emotional ‘tag’ on a memory can change.
Behaviour Therapists
Take a flower phobia caused by a bee sting. The flower phobia may develop when someone smells a flower and was stung on the nose by a bee at the same time. The organism learns (or is conditioned) to respond to the flower stimulus with fear. The desensitisation techniques used by behavioural therapists e.g. using relaxation techniques plus gradual exposure, the organism learns:
Flower ≠ danger
Flower + relaxed body = safe
This is known as extinction; replacing one conditioned response with another calmer one.
In the reconsolidation of a traumatic memory, this approach works because the memory is being updated at a physical and emotional level.
3. How EFT Uses Memory Reconsolidation (Without needing drugs or formal hypnosis)
Research over the past 20 years has explored medical interventions that modify emotional memories, notably via the beta-blocker propranolol.
Brunet et al. (2008) found that giving propranolol after reactivating traumatic memories reduced the physiological fear response.
Kindt et al. (2009) showed similar effects in healthy volunteers: emotional fear reactions reduced, but factual memory remained intact.
EFT takes the same scientific logic but uses the body’s natural calming system instead of drugs.
This is where the How EFT Works Workshop manual by Nikkie Foster is helpful. Foster explains that tapping on acupressure points sends strong safety signals through the nervous system (including the amygdala and polyvagal pathways) helping the body shift out of Fight/Flight/Freeze and into a calmer physiological state.
So, here’s what happens in EFT:
Step 1 — The client gently recalls the memory
This reactivates the memory in the brain — the first essential step in reconsolidation.
Step 2 — Tapping calms the body
Instead of the usual spike in fear, the tapping:
Soothes the amygdala
Regulates the autonomic and polyvagal systems
Lowers stress hormones
(Church et al., 2012)
Foster (2025) notes that when tapping lowers the body’s alarm signals, the brain receives clear evidence:
“I’m recalling the memory… but I’m safe.”
Step 3 — A mismatch occurs (this is the magic moment)
Memory reconsolidation relies on mismatch experiences (the brain expects one reaction but gets another).
In trauma, the brain expects:
Memory → danger → fear response
But during EFT:
Memory → safety → calm response
This mismatch is what opens the reconsolidation “window”.
Step 4 — The memory rewires
The emotional charge attached to the memory becomes weaker, softer, or disappears entirely. Behavioural psychology would call this reconditioning. EFT practitioners see this all the time:
The memory becomes easier to talk about
The physical tension reduces
The fear response doesn’t “switch on” anymore
The factual memory stays intact, but the emotional pain does not.
4. Why This Matters for Trauma Work
Traditional talk therapy often activates traumatic memories without providing a physiological state change. EFT combines both:
Activation
Safety
Mismatch
Update
This is the exact sequence needed for reconsolidation (Ecker et al., 2012).
Clients commonly report that memories feel ‘further away, ‘less sharp’, or ‘like they’ve shrunk’ or ‘melted’. These descriptions align with what neuroscientists observe when the emotional load of a memory has been successfully altered.
5. In Plain English: What EFT Actually Does to a Traumatic Memory
Here’s the simplest way to put it:
EFT helps the brain re-learn that a traumatic memory is over, not happening now.
By holding the memory in mind while the body is calm, the brain stores it again but with a new emotional tone, one that no longer triggers the body into panic.
This is memory reconsolidation, and it’s one of the most hopeful scientific developments in trauma treatment.
6. Conclusion: Traumatic Memories Can Change. Safely and Gently
The science is clear:
Memories become malleable when reactivated.
The emotional component can be updated.
EFT uses the body’s natural calming pathways to facilitate this.
With skilled guidance, people can revisit painful experiences without becoming overwhelmed, and the brain uses those moments of safety to rewrite its own threat response.
This is why EFT is not just a coping tool. It’s a transformative memory-updating process supported by decades of neuroscience.
So, can we change history?
No. What happened, happened. Facts don’t disappear. The past isn’t rewritten.
But we can change how we experience our history now, in the present.
So perhaps the real question isn’t whether we can change our history.
It’s whether we can change how much it still controls us.
For many people, the answer is yes.
Join us at one of our training events to find out more about how EFT can enhance your existing therapeutic approach to trauma.
References
Brunet, A., Orr, S.P., Tremblay, J., Robertson, K., Nader, K., and Pitman, R.K. (2008) ‘Effect of post-retrieval propranolol on psychophysiologic responding during subsequent script-driven traumatic imagery in post-traumatic stress disorder’, Journal of Psychiatric Research, 42(6), pp. 503-6.
Church, D., Hawk, C., Brooks, A.J., Toukolehto, O., Wren, M., Dinter, I. and Stein, P.K. (2013) ‘Psychological trauma symptom improvement in Veterans using EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques): A randomized controlled trial’, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 201(2), pp. 153–160.
Ecker, B., Ticic, R. and Hulley, L. (2012) Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation. New York: Routledge.
Kindt, M., Soeter, M. and Vervliet, B. (2009) ‘Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses’, Nature Neuroscience 12(3), pp. 256-8.
Misanin, J.R., Miller, R.R. and Lewis, D.J. (1968) ‘Retrograde amnesia produced by electroconvulsive shock after reactivation of a consolidated memory trace’, Science 160(3827), pp. 554-555.
Nader, K., Schafe, G.E. and LeDoux, J.E. (2000) ‘Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval’, Nature, 406(6797), pp. 722–726.
Nader, K. (2015) ‘Reconsolidation and the dynamic nature of memory’, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 7(10), p. a021782.
Foster, N. (2025) How EFT works workshop manual. Available at: https://www.eftplus.co.uk/store/p/how-eft-works-manual
