Emotional schemas can be brought to light during a variety of ways, including focusing, internal-family-systems, folding and imagining yourself doing something and seeing what you expect to happen as a result.
Example:
Richard: Now I’m feeling really uncomfortable, but-it’s in a different way.
Therapist: OK, let yourself feel it - this different discomfort. [Pause.] See if any words come along with this uncomfortable feeling.
Richard: [Pause.] Now they hate me.
Therapist: “Now they hate me.” Good. Keep going: See if this really uncomfortable feeling can also tell you why they hate you now.
Richard: [Pause.] Hnh. Wow. It’s because… now I’m… an arrogant asshole… like my father… a totally self-centered, totally insensitive know-it-all.
Therapist: Do you mean that having a feeling of confidence as you speak turns you into an arrogant asshole, like Dad?
Richard: Yeah, exactly. Wow.
Therapist: And how do you feel about being like him in this way?
Richard: It’s horrible! It’s what I’ve always vowed not to be!
The formation of memory traces involves consolidation, when the memory is first laid out in the brain; deconsolidation, when an established memory is “opened” and becomes available for changes; and reconsolidation, when a deconsolidated memory (along with possible changes) is stored and becomes frozen again. The term “reconsolidation” is also used to refer to the general process from deconsolidation to reconsolidation;
UtEB reviews some of the history of memory research. Until 1997, neuroscientists believed that past emotional learning became permanently locked in the brain, so that memories could only consolidate, never de- or reconsolidate. More recent research has indicated that once a memory becomes activated, it is temporarily unlocked, allowing it to be changed or erased.
Starting from 2004, new studies suggested that activation alone is not sufficient to deconsolidate the memory. The memories are used to predict that things will occur in a similar fashion as they did previously. Besides just activation, there has to be a significant mismatch between what one experiences and what the memory suggests is about to happen. The violation of expectation can be qualitative (the predicted outcome not occurring at all) or quantitative (the magnitude of the outcome not being fully predicted). In either case, it is this prediction error which triggers the deconsolidation and subsequent reconsolidation.
This can be generated through honest-sharing
The memory erasure seems to be specific to the interpretation from which the prediction was produced. For example, someone who has had an experience of being disliked may later experience being liked. This may erase the emotional generalization “I am inherently dislikable”, but it will not erase the memory of the person also having been disliked.