All About AEDP Therapy: Transforming Suffering into Flourishing

The most recent AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) textbook includes this phrase in its title: transforming suffering into flourishing. AEDP is a therapeutic modality that not only wants to alleviate the negative effects of psychological distress, but believes that as humans, we need opportunities to thrive in our lives, existing as our full, expansive, selves. 

We live in a world where much of mental health has become about managing symptoms or learning tools and tips to reduce the experience of anxiety or depression. For those of us who work as AEDP therapists, our goals are much bigger. We want to see ourselves and others access calm, an increased capacity, and truly flourish in our lives. It is only through accessing our innate creativity that we as a community will be able to move forward and build a better, safer, and more inclusive world. 

What is AEDP Therapy?

AEDP is a healing-oriented style, developed by Diana Fosha, that focuses on positive neuroplasticity developing out of relationship. This allows for transformation; healing both relational and attachment based trauma. AEDP trained therapists are not looking to “fix” us, but believe we are already wired for healing, and need relational support to allow that healing to come forward so that you can flourish in your life. As human beings, we are wired to be in community and relationships with each other. 

Imagine you were raised in a home where the emotions of sadness and anger made your parents uncomfortable, or maybe showing those emotions even left you feeling unsafe. As a result, you learned to do everything possible to prevent you from being in an experience where you would have these emotions surface, or if they did surface it caused a major family disruption. It’s easy to see how being raised in this environment could teach someone that their sadness and anger was a problem that needed to be avoided. 

Because of contexts like this, we often learn to develop strategies to protect us from feeling emotions. This can be anything from distracting ourselves, numbing, feeling anxiety that surfaces to try to push the emotion away, or dissociation, to name a few. What you miss out on learning is that you can feel angry or sad and still be ok. In reality, those emotions give you much needed information about your wants, needs, values, and priorities, and are incredibly useful for decision making. 

Relearning Our Emotions

AEDP therapy can help us relearn how to experience our emotions. By being with someone who is not afraid of or uncomfortable with our feelings, we can also learn to tolerate them in a different way, and maybe even welcome them, as a necessary part of the human experience. Feeling the full spectrum of our emotions does not have to be scary, or something to be avoided.  

Emotions like anger specifically, are so important to help us know when things around us are out of alignment with our values, or that we are not ok with how we or someone we love is being treated. Without being able to feel this, it’s possible we can stay in situations that are not healthy for us for far too long.  To have the chance to thrive in your life, emotions are a critical part of that.

This is especially needed when it comes to untangling the impacts of systemic injustice and the power dynamics at work in society that impact us all. AEDP makes space not only for an exploration of these systems on a macro level, but also explores how those power dynamics show up in our relationships, including in the therapy relationship. There is also space to explore how those power dynamics are internalized and impact your relationship with yourself and the way you feel towards yourself as a result. 

AEDP is one of the more accessible forms of therapy. All we need are two people who are committed to building a relationship, and because of this, it lends itself well to online therapy.

How AEDP Can Help Us

Maybe we're feeling stuck in therapy, maybe we struggle to identify and make space for our emotions, or we find ourselves in the same patterns in relationships over and over and are wondering what needs to change. Working with a trained AEDP therapist can help. 

AEDP is an evidence-based therapy. Ongoing research shows that folks working with an AEDP therapist experience change that lasts long after the therapy ends. AEDP is effective in treating trauma, depression, grief and loss, emotional dysregulation, negative thoughts, interpersonal problems, and other issues. 

When we experience pain or find ourselves in relational dynamics that feel impossible to change, which is often the case during childhood, our brain works to protect us and in doing so can limit our access to our full emotional experience. As we grow, we gain more agency and capacity, but unless those pathways are rewired, our brain continues to use the same strategies we developed in childhood. By addressing the root causes and origin points of these strategies and by using positive neuroplasticity, your brain's neural pathways are transformed allowing you to see shifts in your everyday life. 

AEDP in Social Contexts

AEDP also recognizes the wider social and cultural context we all exist in and are impacted by daily. Systems of oppression impact all of us. For example, a system like patriarchy causes us to internalize gender roles and power dynamics and impacts how we feel about ourselves. It also shows up in our relationship dynamics, affects the opportunities we have access to, and how we may be discriminated against or hold power in the broader society. 

There are societal pressures on all of us to behave in alignment with the expectations of a patriarchal structure. All of these levels of experience need to be addressed, and while we cannot eradicate the effects of patriarchy through individual therapy, we can help identify when and how it shows up in our lives, and shift our response to it in order to live in a way that is in stronger alignment with our values. We can also make space to feel and and process all of the emotions that surface as a result of our experience, and it can be powerful to have those witnessed and shared with another human. 

This style of therapy is not only beneficial for us as individuals, but benefits our communities. One of the beautiful byproducts of living from our core selves, is that we have increased access to creativity, calm, and connectedness. These are traits our communities desperately need to imagine a better future with equity for all.  

What to Expect in an AEDP Session

An AEDP therapist will focus on ‘Healing from the Get-go’. That means from the start of the first session we will be looking for places where emotion is surfacing and explore what might be getting in the way of those emotions being expressed. In addition, we use a trauma informed approach, meaning you have a say in what happens, and we go at the pace that feels comfortable to you. 

Many times in therapy, we can feel obligated to regurgitate vulnerable and personal details of our lives without first creating a relationship of safety to know that those details will be held with care and compassion. That feeling of “safe enough” comes from being able to feel trust in your therapist's capacity to be with you in what you’re sharing. In AEDP, we prioritize the relationship we are building together, and that relationship is co-created. This means nothing in therapy happens without your consent. In many cases, we start by exploring how vulnerable and nerve wracking it can be to share with someone we are just getting to know, and focus on building trust. 

Part of what makes this work a great fit for online therapy, is that as therapists, we are focused on moment to moment tracking, meaning we are watching your facial expressions, and posture, just as much as we are listening to the words you’re saying. Often our facial expressions will show a hint of emotion that may not be present in what we’re saying. 

In AEDP therapy, you’ll find your therapist will pause you, and ask something like ‘What are you noticing right now?’ or ‘What just happened?’, with the intention of surfacing an emotion that might otherwise be glossed over, in the rush to share the details of a story. AEDP is focused on the experience and processing, instead of prioritizing the content you might be sharing. 

My Experience with AEDP

I have been captivated by AEDP from the time I first heard about it in grad school, and then was lucky enough to have a clinical supervisor during my practicum who had completed some AEDP training. This was the first way of working I found that encouraged me to bring my whole self, and needed me to engage in my own work in an ongoing way. This felt hopeful to me, and I believe creates a more sustainable way of working, allowing me as a healer to flourish too. So many clinicians experience burnout, to me this felt like a better, more holistic option. 

AEDP therapists undergo extensive training in the forms of lectures, demonstrations from skilled clinicians using clinical tapes, and experiential practice. Many of our training workshops include hours of time trying out therapy skills on each other as colleagues. The goal of training is to learn skills while also having the opportunity to experience what a session would feel like from the patient or client's point of view.  Because of this, we know exactly how vulnerable it feels to do this work. I also work with an AEDP therapist for our own personal therapy.

Start Your Healing Journey

If this style of therapy resonates with you, or feels like something you want to learn more about, I would love to hear from you! I am committed to supporting folks not only in reducing the distress they are experiencing, but also to seeing them thrive and flourish in their lives. 

I’d love to chat with you and answer any of your questions about AEDP.  With the convenience of online therapy, all you need is a private space and an internet connection to get started. I am committed to making therapy access as accessible as possible!