Memory and Trauma: We Are More than What We Remember

by Rich Kelley | January 24th, 2024

A Conversation with Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller

Part Two of a three-part interview. Read Parts One and Three.

Thank you for joining me for Part Two of my interview with Daniela Schiller, Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and Director of the Schiller Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience. Today we discuss how current research in neuroscience is confirming many of the working hypotheses of psychotherapy and also the role of narrative in creating memories.

Dale Kushner: There’s been a lot of research about how our brains are wired for narrative.[1] Your research[2] has to do with contextualizing a memory, that when a memory is contextualized that somehow mitigates the traumatic effects. How would you explain that?

Daniela Schiller: Yes. I think it’s important to emphasize that many of the insights I’m talking about are widely known and used in psychotherapy and psychological research. We’ve known for many decades that memories are not accurate, that there can be false memories, that they can be affected. And also that you need to create a narrative. Many therapy forms are about creating a narrative around memories because traumatic memories are fragmented.

In a way, neuroscience research is catching up or even occurring in parallel. When you interpret the neurobiological or neuroscientific findings, you see that, oh, it comes to the same conclusion as the therapists. Neuroscience brings a mechanism, whereas, for psychologists and psychiatrists, the therapy has been developed through trial and error or through hypothesis. It brings structure and constraints. But if there’s a mechanism, together they can kind of constrain each other. Now there’s a mechanism, now we know exactly what to target in a more well-defined treatment. The neuroscience resonates with many observations in psychology. It’s exciting.

DK: Now that you and your team and other researchers understand these mechanisms, what impact will this have on pharmaceuticals? Or in treatment? We hear of people recreating their nightmares in imagery rehearsal therapy.[3] How could this be used?

DS: Let me answer in two steps. In terms of narrative, memories are part of a narrative almost by definition. A memory is something that is embedded in time and space in a certain context, at least episodic memory. And if it’s not, then it’s a fragment of a present moment. To make something into a memory, it has to be part of a narrative because memory is a narrative. The brain is prone to that. The reason is that narrative is something that gives you cause and effect. It allows you to understand and predict, which is precisely what the brain wants to do.

So the connection with narrative is very tight. At the same time, there’s room for flexibility in that narrative because we know that memories are not accurate. We keep changing them, we reconstruct them. So when we do hold onto a narrative, it’s like a hypothesis. It’s a plausible explanation of the event. And that is what is liberating because if you’re stuck in a very harmful, negative narrative, there’s room to think that maybe it’s not the reality. There’s room to modify it and turn it into something more accurate and more conducive.

In terms of pharmaceuticals, it’s an interesting interplay because it depends on the impairment. In some cases, it could be at the neurobiological level, so you need something to, let’s say, enhance the brain’s plasticity or help neurons recover or return to balanced action. For this, you would need some type of invasive, like a drug or brain stimulation.

But at the same time, once the brain is functioning, you need to overlay behavior on it. It’s like having a car that works, but not driving it or driving a car that doesn’t work. If the car works and you don’t learn how to drive, there’s no point, right? It doesn’t really help you that the car works. So, if you can stimulate the brain to put it on a functional level, you then must practice behavior. The combination is very important. For different people, it depends on the situation. Sometimes the neurological is fine and you just need to practice behavior. Behavior itself is like a drug in the sense that it shapes the memory. It can stimulate, can train the memory. Behavior is a product of the brain, but it’s also a trainer, a manipulator of the brain. Behavior is very powerful. There is a lot of room for pure behavioral interference or adjustments that people can make in their daily lives when they understand how the brain works.

DK: That’s fantastically hopeful. What else should we know about what you have learned in your research?

DS: All these insights that come from neuroscience and psychology about memory are changing the way we think about memory. This is potentially important for how people engage with their memories. Because in everyday life we assume that our memories are accurate and they define who we are. This is what meditation is giving you. It’s a way to observe and interact with your thoughts and with your memories such that they don’t define you. You have a relationship with them, and that gives you a great deal of flexibility. On the one hand, it can be disturbing to think that I am not being correct in what I think about myself. But it changes your perspective in the sense that you don’t need to look in the past to understand who you are.

You need to look at the present because whatever you retrieve now reflects who you are now. For example, if you’re in a negative mood, you will retrieve negative memories. This is what will come to mind. It doesn’t mean that this is your entire life. It just means that now this is what you’re experiencing. So, you kind of think about memories differently. It’s not about telling you who you are or not, they give you actual information about the present in a way that helps you predict the future. Each one of us is becoming like an artist in the sense that we feel the memories and interact with them and have more of an intuitive sense of the process. I think it frees us, it gives us much more flexibility in moving forward in our experience of ourselves.

DK: Great. And that aligns with a sort of spiritual perspective. That our capacity, our perceptions, are narrowed by memory and many other things. But our capacity is so much more expansive.

DS: I think the affective world, the world of affect, which is everything from emotion, feelings, and mood, is best understood from the perspective of being an organism. You’re an organism in the world. You interact with the world and your reactions to the world. What we call emotions are concerns that we have for our survival. If we interact with something in the environment, that’s important to our survival or the way we interact with it. It indicates the importance or the relevancy of that object. That could be a mental object or a physical object, but the way we interact with it signifies what it means for us in terms of our survival.

[1] Westover, Jonathan, “The Power of Storytelling: How Our Brains are Wired for Narratives,” Human Capital Innovations, January 11, 2024

[2] O. Perl, O. Duek, K. Kulkarni, C. Gordon, J. H. Krystal, I. Levy, I. Harpax-Rotem, D. Schiller, “Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD,” Nature Neuroscience, 26, 2226-2236 (2023); Published November 30, 2023.

[3] . M. Albanese, M. Liotti, L. Cornacchia, F. Manzini, “Nightmare Rescripting: Using Imagery Techniques to Treat Sleep Disturbances in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder,” Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2022: 13: 866144

This post appeared in a slightly different form on Dale’s blog on Psychology Today. You can find all of Dale’s blog posts for Psychology Today at

If you found this post interesting, you may also want to read “How the Brain Stores Traumatic Memories” (Part One of my interview with Daniela Schiller), “Recognizing and Healing Inherited Trauma,” “The Things We Carry: How Our Ancestors’ Traumas May Influence Who We Are,” and “Diagnosing and Treating PTSD and Complex PTSD: It’s Not About ‘What’s Wrong With You?’”

Keep up with everything Dale is doing by subscribing to her newsletter, Exploring the Unknown in Mind and Heart.

Using Storytelling and Hypnotherapy to Bring About Change

by Rich Kelley | September 23rd, 2023

This is part two of a two-part post. You can read part one here.

Stories give us great pleasure. Whether we are listeners or storytellers, stories help us build strong mental pictures that confer meaning on the daily flood of phenomena and events. We create stories from our experience to make sense of the past, the present, and to imagine the future. The stories we create are individual and yet reflect our culture, our upbringing, our ancestral history, our neurobiology, and more. They help us survive by ordering random information into a linear sequence of cause and effect. We say: This happened and caused that to happen because of this. Driver #1 thinks: “He rammed into me because he was texting and driving too fast.” Driver #2 thinks: “She drove through the stop sign and wasn’t paying attention.” Conflicts in relationships arise when each party believes their story is the only truth.

In part two of my interview with Melinda Bailey, the psychotherapist and educator explains the benefits of using storytelling and hypnotherapy in her couples therapy practice and illustrates how a compassionate and creative counselor can help clients imagine new possibilities within a troubled relationship.

Dale Kushner: What is the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy?

Melinda Bailey: Hypnosis is a state of consciousness and hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis in therapy.

D.K.: What have been the most significant changes in the field of clinical hypnosis since you first trained?

M.B.: When I first trained in hypnosis, there were two separate approaches to hypnosis, referred to as direct and indirect. The storytelling approach of Milton Erickson represents the indirect approach. Direct suggestions take the form of telling the person directly what to do. Today, it is much more common for the hypnosis practitioner to be familiar with both approaches and to utilize the induction and suggestion method tailored to the client.

D.K.: You are also a skilled storyteller and I believe belong to a guild. Do you weave storytelling into your practice or your teaching methods?

M.B.: I do like to weave storytelling into therapy and into teaching. It is sometimes as straightforward as saying, “I know a story about that, would you be open to hearing it?” I still tell students the polar bear story (see part one).

Storytelling induces a light trance state and speaks to the unconscious mind. When presented in stories, ways to think about a problem, possible solutions, or steps to try are about someone else, somewhere else. It is not didactic instruction about what to do or how to think or feel.

Therapeutic storytelling is often a story that parallels some aspect of the client’s life or therapy issue and offers a solution or new way to think about the situation. There are a number of really fine books of therapeutic stories written to address specific clinical issues for children and adults.

When it comes to receptivity to stories, we adults aren’t that different from children. We read books, go to movies, watch television, go to plays, read the newspaper, listen to podcasts, webinars, or lectures. Children’s stories are often just as helpful for adults as for children. I have a special fondness for nature stories, Native American stories, Buddhist stories, and ones I make up myself.

As a child, I lived in the country and had a special tree that was a friend, listener, and protector—it provided the makings of a story about protection, safety, and a place to play. I often tell a story about the deep roots that nourished the tree and kept it firmly planted while its leaves and branches could move with the wind and changing weather and seasons. Some people are natural storytellers and others, like me, can learn the skill by listening to other storytellers, reading, going to classes that teach how to create an effective story and how to tell stories so others listen.

D.K.: Could you offer an example of how an exchange with a couple might go when you are employing storytelling?

M.B.: There is a specific story that I like to tell couples about a vase that is a family treasure. It gets broken, and then the couple decides to put the pieces back together again. The new/old vase is strong, beautiful, and both the same and different in important ways. The couple is different too as they work together to recreate their vase.

D.K.: Do you see story-telling and hypnotherapy as related modalities?

M.B.: Yes, storytelling and hypnotherapy are very much related. Storytelling is often woven into the hypnotic experience. And storytelling by itself can lead to trance.

D.K.: If possible, I’d be grateful for any examples of how that effort, that treatment might work.

M.B.: I think of storytelling as one intervention, not a complete treatment. Hypnosis is an intervention used for a specific purpose in a treatment plan. For example, one might use the ability to take oneself to another time and place and imagine a walk along an ocean beach with the sights, sounds, and smells of the beach to absorb your attention during an uncomfortable medical or dental procedure.

Read part one of this interview with Melinda Bailey, “Treating Some Common Issues in Couples Therapy.”

This post appeared in a slightly different form on Dale’s blog on Psychology Today. You can find all of Dale’s blog posts for Psychology Today at

If you found this post interesting, you may also want to read “Write Your Own Fairy Tale,” “Art and Empathy: Who Gets to Tell Your Story?” and “Fate and Destiny: What Role Do They Play in Your Life?”

Keep up with everything Dale is doing by subscribing to her newsletter.

Treating Some Common Issues in Couples Therapy

by Rich Kelley | August 28th, 2023

An Interview with Psychotherapist and Educator Melinda Bailey

This is part one of a two-part post on couples therapy.

What is it like to be on the other side of therapy, to be the therapist, not the client? The answer is as varied as individual practitioners.

To explore the other side, I decided to interview Dr. Melinda Bailey, a practicing psychotherapist and educator in a Marriage and Family Therapy degree program at a college in Madison, Wisconsin. I thought it would be enlightening to talk to a therapist whose curiosity and creativity about the human psyche had led her to extend her learning beyond her rigorous academic doctoral training.

One of Dr. Bailey’s teachers, Milton Erickson, refined the use of hypnosis as a viable intervention for psychological issues. As more research reveals the complex connections between mental and physical distress—for instance between the brain and the gut—medical psychologists use hypnosis to aid in the treatment of bowel disorders like IBS, migraines, and other physical afflictions. Like hypnosis, the therapeutic use of stories and storytelling engages the mind’s capacity to reflect and reframe habitual patterns of thought and belief and generates a sense of freedom from and mastery over difficult emotional states.

As a writer and student of Jungian psychology, I am particularly interested in Dr. Bailey’s experience using hypnotherapy and storytelling to help clients access deeply buried material otherwise inaccessible to the conscious mind.

Dale Kushner: What would you say are the most common issues that couples bring into counseling?

Dr. Melinda Bailey: Based on my personal experience, I would say that many couples that I see seek therapy for what they describe as communication issues. This means that one or both of them feel that their relationship isn’t as close as it once was. They don’t talk together as much as they used to, or, if they do, the talk is about the logistics of everyday life, not their deeper wishes for life individually and together, not their needs. The warmth and spark have lessened or gone. Other couples feel that communication is the major issue because they have more conflict, argue and fight more often, and have fewer positive, caring, supportive interactions.

From the therapist’s point of view, these presenting issues may be an entry to deeper issues, Do I matter to you? Do you see me? Do you love me? Can I count on you to have my back? Sometimes just working to improve communication skills is enough to restore the ability to speak and be heard, feel safe, and be vulnerable.

In addition to communication issues, there are other specific issues that bring couples to therapy, like an affair, verbal or physical abuse, alcohol or drug use, sexual issues, stresses with children or former spouses, or family of origin. These specific problems, and others, also have specific interventions.

D.K.: Have those issues changed in the years you’ve been practicing/teaching?

M.B.: What has really changed most, in the 40+ years that I have been practicing is the willingness of couples to reach out for help. The stigma around therapy in general, for individuals, couples, and families is lessening. The ways that therapists try to understand the presenting complaints are a lot more complicated now as therapists try to take into account the impact on the couple of our multiple identities of race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, developmental or acquired disability, religion, indigenous group membership, and nationality.

D.K.: Can you describe how you became interested in therapeutic hypnosis and why?

M.B.: I became interested in therapeutic hypnosis early in my professional career. I trained at the University of Wisconsin Psychiatry Dept in Madison when Carl Whitaker was there. I was drawn to the early experiential model of Whitaker and came to believe that change happens with new experiences.

Milton Erickson was also doing exciting things with hypnosis during this time period, and he worked with hypnosis using storytelling and suggestions to initiate change. Erickson created change experiences with hypnosis, which focused on one’s internal world. The common denominator here is change through experience.

In those early days of learning hypnosis, I attended a workshop and after several days of didactic presentations, the workshop ended with a memorable story about the St. Louis Zoo. Over the years I have modified the story to fit my hometown and structured the story around the Vilas Zoo in Madison.

“In the early days of the Vilas Zoo, when it didn’t have much money or resources and was under construction, the first gift the zoo received was a large white polar bear. There wasn’t yet a permanent home for the bear so it was given a temporary home that was several hundred feet long and half that distance wide. The bear, in its new enclosure learned to pace back and forth… back and forth… When the bear’s final home was complete, the zookeeper and all the workers put their heads together to decide how to best introduce the bear to its new home. After much discussion, they decided it would be less disruptive to take down the temporary enclosure at night while the bear slept. One night, they quietly took down the temporary fence, and when the bear woke up the next morning, it began to pace back and forth…back and forth… as it had learned to do. The bear had yet to learn the truth of its situation, which was that it had a lot more room to move around in than it knew, a lot more space to explore, a lot more freedom than it knew about.”

I loved this story. I knew then that therapeutic storytelling was a vehicle to initiate change. I still tell that story to the students that I teach. To learn more about storytelling, I took a workshop in therapeutic storytelling, joined a local storytelling guild, and co-taught a class on storytelling.

The second part, “Using Storytellling and Hypnotherapy in Couples Therapy,” will follow next month.

This post appeared in a slightly different form on Dale’s blog on Psychology Today. You can find all of Dale’s blog posts for Psychology Today at

If you found this post interesting, you may also want to read “Denial: Telling Ourselves Stories That Hide the Truth,” “Self-Sabotage: Which Parts of Ourselves Are We Fighting?” and “How Do We Know We Have Come of Age?”

Keep up with everything Dale is doing by subscribing to her newsletter.