AEDP: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
Healing From The Get-Go with Intentional Therapeutic Accompaniment
What is AEDP?
AEDP is an Experiential Dynamic Therapy. Experiential Dynamic Therapies (EDT), such as Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), and Affect Phobia Therapy (APT), are contemporary, evidence-based forms of psychodynamic psychotherapies. Unlike traditional psychodynamic therapies, which often extend for years, and leave the therapist in a stance that is relatively neutral and passive, EDTs allow for shorter therapy durations (often evidenced to work in 40 sessions or less in research... AEDP in 16 sessions), and promote a more active and engaged stance for the therapist (no blank stares or disengagement from the therapist). AEDP and these other EDT approaches are here-and-now focused in session, but make space for understanding how our past relationship experiences influence our current-day functioning in relationships with others and our self.
AEDP is a unique form of these EDTs in that it is a healing-based model that privileges in-session emotional safety and connection to undo unbearable aloneness, simultaneously addressing what is within and between us, Experiential in method, privileges positive emotional experiences as mechanisms of healing and growth, and makes room for what is new and good in all of us. While I have studied other EDTs, I am most trained and supervised in, and at-home with AEDP and have found it most applicable to my practice.
AEDP is a unique form of these EDTs in that it is a healing-based model that privileges in-session emotional safety and connection to undo unbearable aloneness, simultaneously addressing what is within and between us, Experiential in method, privileges positive emotional experiences as mechanisms of healing and growth, and makes room for what is new and good in all of us. While I have studied other EDTs, I am most trained and supervised in, and at-home with AEDP and have found it most applicable to my practice.
What Does It Look Like?
If you were to watch a session where an AEDP approach is being used, the therapist is active, empathetic, validating, and gently directive in the session, and evokes emotional experience from the individual to deepen and distill healing, emotions. AEDP practitioners are trained to be "process consultants," meaning while we always take seriously the content of what our clients bring forward, we are always privileging what happens in the present moment within the individual, and between the individual and others (including the therapist, contemporary relationships, and historical relationships). We aim to understand people from a healthy core of existence, at the seat of human needs and associated emotions, and help make sense of how their internal and interpersonal processes work. As mentioned more below, these approaches are entirely compatible with Emotionally Focused Therapy (the main clinical home for my study and practice).
What Can I Expect In AEDP with you?
My application of these approaches keeps with the spirit of the rest of my work: emotionally safe and supportive, engaged and collaborative, and client-centered. We aim to help our clients understand how our their emotional experience arises and resolves by examining activating events ("triggers") for need-associated emotions ("core emotions"), the emotions that intervene in service of our relational safety ("inhibitory emotions"), the ways we deal with these emotional conflicts ("safety strategies" or "defenses"), and the unintended consequences of these actions despite our intentions. As an attachment-based and emotion-focused approach to therapy, we want to help our clients grow into their "Self at Best," which we believe rests at the core of each individual, waiting for adequate and secure support to fully emerge with softened defenses, a sharpened ability to express and receive clear emotional signals, and ask for and give what relationships (to self and to others) naturally need.
What Makes AEDP Different?
AEDP differ from other psychodynamic approaches in its gentle but intensive focus on emotions and attachment needs, and their organization around some core constructs about emotions and defenses. And similar to other experiential therapies, AEDP differs from cognitive and behavioral therapies in that AEDP privileges "bottom-up/inside-out" experience-based learning, rather than just explicitly "top-down/outside-in" understanding-based learning. Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, developed primarily by Diana Fosha in the 1990s, reformulated the ISTDP approach to therapy around a unique concept of "Transformance" which took psychodynamic thought into a more humanistic, strengths-based orientation from where it previously was. This approach promotes the therapist creating a safe, supportive relational environment that is inviting, celebratory of client strengths and successes, and promotes broadening and building upon the healthy core within us all to become our best selves where past experiences have not promoted this of self or other. AEDP easily integrates with Emotionally Focused Therapy in spirit, technique, and the therapist's use of self in session. I am a "Level III" practitioner pursuing AEDP Institute certification, having completed the "Immersion" foundational training as well as the Essential Skills training sequence, Advanced Skills courses, and have been in formal supervision with AEDP Institute Certified Supervisors and Faculty for the past 3 years.
How does this fit with Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?
First, both EFT and AEDP share emotion-focused and attachment-based foundations. While Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) focuses on contemporary relationships to promote healing, using the therapist-client relationship and past relationship experiences as a way to safely heighten and validate emotions in contemporary relationships, AEDP aims to ultimately point the focus back on unresolved past traumatic relationship experiences, how they influence our current emotional and behavioral patterns, and how corrective current psychotherapeutic relational experiences can process past experiences to resolution. EFT and AEDP can be compatible and mutually reinforcing approaches in my experience, each providing powerful antidotes to experiences of unmet current relationship needs and unresolved grief, loneliness, and deprivation from past relationships. These approaches can be woven together into a seamless individual therapy experience.
What AEDP Training Have You Had?
I am a Certified Practitioner, and I have completed the initial AEDP Institute Immersion Course, Advanced Skills, additional short advanced skills workshops in AEDP, over 100 hours of supervision, and am engaged in ongoing intensive self and formal study of AEDP, as well as ongoing AEDP Clinical Supervision.
What If I Want to Learn More?
In addition to talking directly with me about any questions you have, you can learn more about the EDTs by visiting www.iedta.net and more specifically about AEDP by visiting www.aedpinstitute.org (where you can also verify my training and membership).
James is currently waitlisting new clients at this time. To connect to available employees under James's supervision at North Carolina Therapy Professionals or to join James's waitlist, please visit https://www.nctherapists.com/
Let's work together to create connections and build your life how you want.
Let's work together to create connections and build your life how you want.
