Coherence Therapy

The Art & Science of the Therapeutic Breakthrough

Bruce Ecker, LMFT and Sara Bridges, Ph.D.

As therapists, we've all savored those moments when therapy produces a decisive breakthrough for a client—a sudden, deeply felt emotional shift that resolves longstanding symptoms and issues with surprising power. These marvelous moments seem to come both rarely and erratically. But a close study of hundreds of such profound shifts has revealed conditions that can bring them about regularly—even daily—in our practices, radically enhancing the power of therapy, while greatly shortening its duration. In this workshop, we'll focus on the key steps of a therapeutic strategy that can free clients from entrenched negative reactions, old attachment patterns, unconscious core schemas, and emotional wounds. You'll witness these steps in action, learn the principles behind them, and discover experiential techniques that reliably produce transformational shifts. You'll also learn how these clinically identified steps of deep change are mirrored in the recent neurobiological discoveries about the brain's amazing ability to reconsolidate—rewire—the neural circuits of ingrained emotional reactions long believed to be indelible.

Coherence Therapy and the Cessation of Chronic Symptomology:

Clinical and Neuropsychological Processes

Bruce Ecker, LMFT

University of California, Berkeley, Clinical Science Department

Clinical Colloquium Series

November 2007

This talk spells out the close correspondences between Coherence Therapy's model and methods of profound change and the brain's neural mechanism for profound change recently discovered by neuroscientists. Session recordings illustrate a well-defined, built-in process that therapists can foster to make transformational shifts a regular occurence in day-to-day clinical practice. Emphasis in this succinct presentation is somewhat more on the "science" of Coherence Therapy than the "art" of it.

Changes That Last, Changes That Don't:

What Makes The Difference?

Bruce Ecker, LMFT

We've had a rich crop of innovative and presumably more powerful therapies for decades, yet outcome research shows no overall gain in efficacy for the past 70 years. Now a revolutionary finding in neuroscience is showing what it takes to actually unwire--not just counteract or avoid--longstanding emotional reactions such as anxiety, rage, depression, and avoidance behaviors: a synapse-unlocking process called reconsolidation. This workshop  demonstrates an experiential process of therapy, co-developed by the speaker, that follows the newly recognized steps required for reconsolidation--the permanent release from lifelong, core emotional themes and responses. Session recordings illustrate how to find the "emotional truth" underlying seemingly irrational symptoms, how to integrate the neocortex's verbal view of reality with the subcortex's emotional view, and how to prompt the built-in unlocking process for profound change.

How To Ride An Elephant:

Teaming Up With The Brain's Hidden Rules For Change

Bruce Ecker, LMFT

Psychotherapy Networker Symposium

San Francisco, CA , October 2006 

New discoveries about how the brain works have made it even clearer that therapeutic change happens more deeply, reliably, and enduringly when we cooperate with the brain's own rules for change. This workshop spells out those key rules. It demonstrates empathic methods that engage the brain's built-in powers for dispelling symptoms at their roots. You'll learn how to uncover the coherent "emotional truth" underlying seemingly irrational symptoms, and how to create potent experiences that bring the neocortex's verbal view of reality into alignment with the limbic system's emotional view for neural integration. You'll also learn methods for making breakthrough moments in your office translate into lasting change. You'll see how to work with, not against, the amazing capabilities of the brain.

The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy:

Constructivism To The Rescue!

Bruce Ecker, LMFT

Keynote Address

12th Biennial Conference of the Constructivist Psychology Network

University of California, San Marcos, July 2006

The many meta-analyses of psychotherapy efficacy studies to date lead to the clear conclusion that with investigator bias taken into account, all studied therapies as well as placebo therapies have essentially the same, modest level of efficacy. This talk offers a new, paradigm-shifting explanation of the observed cap on efficacy and how it could be surpassed. Constructivism allows fundamentally different questions to be asked about symptom production, change, and clinical effectiveness than are considered by the capped, placebo-matching therapies. One of constructivism’s distinctive concepts has emerged as a potential master key to a new level of therapeutic effectiveness: the concept of coherence, the view that a therapy client’s presenting symptom is a coherent expression of the person’s existing, implicit constructions of self and world, not a “disorder”. This talk explains why the coherence-focused therapy co-developed by the speaker could be expected to break the longstanding effectiveness barrier. This optimistic expectation is based on extensive clinical observations as well as strong support from a major, recent discovery of the brain's capacity for unwiring the synapses of ingrained emotional reactions.

Experiences That Transform

Bruce Ecker, LMFT

Psychotherapy Networker Symposium

Washington, DC, March 2004 

Increasingly, clinicians are realizing that the most real and lasting change results from experiences, not from cognitive insight. How can therapists guide clients consistently and efficiently into transformative experiences, which must be custom tailored? This workshop will present an approach that ushers clients into finding, feeling, and embracing the "emotional truth of the symptom," the deep sense and hidden necessity present within seemingly irrational symptoms. You will learn experiential methods for helping clients gain direct access to the disowned themes, purposes, and parts that actually have control over their anxiety, depression, low self-worth, or attachment problems. Recordings of individual and family work demonstrate the naturalness of the transformative experiences that occur in this coherence-focused, depth oriented brief therapy. [This talk was given when Coherence Therapy was still known as Depth Oriented Brief Therapy.]