A Neuroscientific Approach to Counselling

Blueprints from the past that surface in our here-and-now experience.

A neuroscientific approach to counselling- what does that even mean? Good question and glad you are wondering!

Blueprints From the Past

In simple terms, our present-day emotions, thoughts, behaviours, and relationships are all impacted by our past environments and relationships in which we were immersed. These experiences then lay the blueprint in our nervous system for how we experience our present life and relationships. As counsellors, we are interested in how your past experiences are showing up in your here-and-now experience, maybe without you even noticing it.

Here is an example to illustrate what we mean. Growing up, Jamie’s father was a tall man with an imposing presence. He was often angry and would snap unexpectedly when Jamie would express sadness or other emotions. Jamie is now 29 years old and often feels a looming sense of dread when speaking with authoritative or tall men, resulting in severe anxiety for Jamie when speaking with his boss at work.

His heart will race and his throat tighten. Jamie presents as unemotional and even detached in his relationships. He expresses little emotion, but when something is strong enough to provoke an emotional response, a wave of anxiety and a sinking feeling in his stomach accompanies the feelings of sadness, shame, or anger. Jamie is seeking counselling for help managing his work-related anxiety and feelings of loneliness. 

In this example, Jamie may be unaware that his present experience of anxiety is related to his experience with his father growing up. While he may not be consciously thinking of his father while speaking with his boss at work, non-verbal feeling memories (implicit) memories of his father are being activated.

In other words, the memory of how he felt with his father is coming up, despite not having a story-based memory to accompany it. These feeling memories show up in his emotions (anxiety) and in his body (heart racing and tightness in his throat). Most of the time Jamie is unaware that this is happening, he just feels bad and hates going to work.

Jamie’s experiences with his father created a blueprint for how he interacts with authority figures and people who remind him of his father. They also formed a blueprint for how he manages his emotions and how he automatically engages with his own experience. As a child, he had to shut down his emotions and disconnect from aspects of his experience to avoid his father’s anger, a pattern that continued into adulthood. 

Feeling Memory vs. Story-Based Memory

In counselling, we are concerned with not only the conscious verbal memory/ story you tell about your experiences. We are also interested in the non-verbal story that your body and nervous system remember. Feeling-based (implicit) memory is filed away in a different part of the brain than story-based memory. Feeling memory and story-based memory be disconnected, which is very common for survivors of trauma. So in other words, you may regularly have feeling-based memories get activated (like anxiety, shame, anger, etc.) without knowing why. 

However, how do you work with feeling-based memories when you don’t have a conscious memory of them? Confusing, right?

This is where some of our approaches to counselling may differ from what you may be used to. In counselling, we may ask you what you are noticing as we speak about something, what you are noticing in your body, to pay attention to the thoughts arising in your mind, if you are noticing any emotions bubble up, or to ‘notice inside’. These are all ways feeling-based memory (implicit memory) may show up and shape your experience in the present moment. 

Since these implicit memories are often detached from a story-based memory, we can continue to feel persistent feelings of anxiety, loneliness, shame, anger, etc. that do not match our present moment circumstances or beliefs. This can be part of the reason that despite reciting scripture and knowing what God thinks of us, our felt experience is incongruent. 

Part of our goal is to help address the feeling-based memory that leaves you feeling anxious, sad, etc. and that is incongruent with your present-moment experiences. We can also do this without you rehashing every painful thing that has ever happened to you. 

We want you to leave feeling better, to address the roadblocks that keep tripping you up, and to break the cycles that leave you feeling stuck. There are some very practical ways that we can do this in counselling together.