fwiw I never looked into “memory reconsolidation” when I first heard about it from like years ago bc it sounded technical and I couldn’t imagine what it was
it was only when said memory editing that I was like Oh! That sounds easy lemme try it out
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yeah exactly the same here, it always sounded kinda strange, technical and idk, dangerous?
then I read more about it and realised it was basically what an old therapist was doing with me (different name) and it worked well and felt safe then, so I leaned into it
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Interesting, 'editing' sounds way more dangerous to me and also comes with a side order of 'clueless silicon valley tech guy messing with brain' associations, I guess because of the computer metaphor
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Not sure if I still 100% agree with that term, but I don’t think it’s totally off, matter of degree. Entering high energy states with psychedelics and changing dozens or hundreds of memories I really do think of as closer to editing, and is probably risky. Normal IFS less so
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For me I did the former a few years ago as a kind of booster after like ~1k hours of mediocre meditation. It got me to a good point and then since then my ifs/meditation has gotten way easier/better and now do fine-grained emotional reconsolidating that feels safer and softer
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I also do think you can easily change content in those high-energy states not just emotional tone. Now in meditation I can sort of do either I think maybe kinda (?) but usually choose the tone. I don’t know what’s exactly memory reconsolidating or how the mechanics work
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I’d also totally believe that the brain is a nearly lossless append-only database and by “editing the content” you’re adding a new memory and setting it as primary, even though the source to the old one is still around somewhere. But it certainly feels like editing
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i haven’t been following this conversation carefully but i’ll just report that i continue to find the concept of “memory editing” deeply violating for me personally, which is not commentary on whether anyone besides me ought to use it
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yeah I think & I are functionally making the case that we (& many others) have parts who reject the entire process if framed as "editing", even if there's something good about it, thus for such people a different frame is required for full-fractal buy-in.
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I also flinch at this personally; for me it brings up connotations of doctored footage, media manipulation, brainwashing, generally fascist-tyrant stuff
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