AEDP™ in Action: Navigating the Therapeutic Journey Through Emotional Pain into Transformational Change

Presented by Richard Harrison, PhD

6 Tuesdays: March 5 + 19, April 2 + 16,  April 30 + May 14, 2024

12:00 – 3:30 pm Eastern Time USA + Canada


AEDP is a proven, clinically effective, healing-oriented, experiential therapy with a dual focus: the transformation of suffering and the fostering of flourishing. Incorporating knowledge from attachment research and theory, contemporary neurobiology, emotion theory, and body-based therapies, AEDP is highly integrative, yet unique.


This course is open to:

Licensed Mental Health Providers practicing legally in your state, province, or countryincluding Counselors, Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Social Workers, other Behavioral Health Therapists and related professionals. For information about whether this course offers Continuing Education credits for your license, see the bottom of the page. 

This learning opportunity is well-suited to mental health clinicians who are new to AEDP, as well as therapists with previous AEDP training and experience who want refresh, consolidate, and expand prior learning.  


Course Description

This seminar series explores the AEDP transformational arc through emotional pain into meaningful positive change and enhanced wellbeing. The series features extensive video examples from AEDP therapy sessions with clients who differ from each other in terms of salient aspects of identity and history (e.g., ethnic and cultural background, race, age, gender, trauma history, etc.), and who present with varied attachment styles. 

Many clients fear and avoid emotions that they have previously experienced as too overwhelming to deal with on their own. When clients successfully face and fully experience these emotions, within the context of a safety-engendering, affect-facilitating therapeutic relationship, this frequently results in an affective shift experienced by the client as positive. AEDP has developed a unique therapeutic immediacy task, metatherapeutic processing, to amplify and extend these in-session moments of therapeutic change, to promote positive neuroplasticity (Iwakabe & Conceicao, 2016; Fosha &Thoma, 2020). 

Diana Fosha, PhD founder of AEDP, identified six distinct positive emotional states that frequently arise in the wake of processing painful emotion. These transformational affects are a crucial component of the AEDP change process:  When processed, they fuel a transformational spiral, and promote flourishing in the wake of suffering and loss. As a participant, you will learn to recognize and work effectively with these powerful emotional experiences, in order to expand, deepen, and consolidate therapeutic change-for-the-better.

Together, we will witness, track, and discuss AEDP psychotherapy’s remarkable transformational arc: through the processing of painful core affect (State 2) into the expansive realm of transformational experience (State 3). We will also explore moments of integrative Core State (AEDP State 4), which is energetically distinct from both State 2 and State 3, and is characterized by an internal, deeply felt sense of calm, compassion, clarity, and integrative truth.

Each seminar meeting incorporates: Didactic Lecture, Clinical Video Demonstrations from AEDP Therapy Sessions, Interactive Discussion in Small and Large Groups.

Course Goals:

Collectively, we will co-create a learning community in which we:

  • Explore specific strategies to accompany and guide patients through the above described process of tolerating and fully experiencing previously feared emotions, within the context of a security-engendering therapeutic relationship
  • Delve deeply into the recognizable, yet phenomenologically distinct, characteristics of the six transformational affects that arise from processing painful emotions
  • Unpack key interventions that advance the therapeutic process in State 2 (processing of core affective experience) and State 3 (metatherapeutic processing of transformational experience)
  • Identify psycho-biological markers that guide the unfolding process and inform therapist choice points, as they arise in clinical work
  • Explore opportunities to amplify and extend moments of therapeutic change-for-the-better, to promote positive neuroplasticity and flourishing
  • Recognize the therapeutic potential of judicious self-disclosure to deepen and expand patients’ experience of positive emotional states
  • Witness transformance in action: the innate healing potential that pulses towards self-righting and resuming impeded growth
  • Build community and connections between colleagues
  • Expand and consolidate prior learning
  • Foster increased self-confidence in your therapeutic skills and empower you in your clinical  practice!

Learning Objectives: 

Participants will be able to:

  • Summarize key aspects of AEDP theory and the four-state map that guides AEDP’s transformational process.
  • Discuss therapeutic tasks and interventions aimed at helping patients tolerate, experience, and express their emotional experiences.
  • Identify and discuss psycho-biological markers that guide and inform therapist choice points, as they arise in clinical work.
  • Identify markers of positive-valenced affective shifts, which can become the focus of subsequent experiential work with ensuing positive emotional states.
  • Discuss clinical opportunities to expand moments of therapeutic change-for-the-better.
  • Describe the steps involved in the AEDP intervention of metatherapeutic processing. 
  • Utilize metatherapeutic processing in clinical work to expand and consolidate in-session moments of therapeutic change.
  • Distinguish between six phenomenologically distinct positive affective states (i.e., transformational affects ) of AEDP State 3.
  • List the components of an intervention set “SPACE” (Slow down, ask Permission, Allow and Attend, Co-embody, Explore) to access and deepen patients’ emotional experience.
  • Explore and discuss the therapeutic potential of self-disclosure to amplify and deepen positive affective states.
  • List the components of a clinical intervention set to extend positive affective experience, captured by the acronym “HEART” (Have the experience, Enrich and Explore, Absorb, Reflect, Together).
  • Explain and contrast interventions that advance the therapeutic process in AEDP State 2 (Processing of Emotional Experience) and AEDP State 3 (Metaprocessing of Transformational Experience), respectively.

Meet the Presenter

Richard Harrison, PhD

Richard Harrison, PhD, is a faculty member of AEDP™ Institute and a Registered Psychologist with over 25 years’ experience as a clinician and teacher. He was trained and supervised in AEDP by Diana Fosha, founder of the model. He is a Certified Supervisor in both AEDP and EFT. Richard teaches and supervises graduate students in the Counseling Psychology and Psychiatry departments at the University of British Columbia, and maintains a full clinical caseload with individuals and couples in private practice in Vancouver.

Richard has authored peer-reviewed publications on AEDP theory and practice; attachment-informed supervision; and therapist self-care; including a 2020 article in Psychotherapy on “Termination in 16-session

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2024 Dates | 6 Tuesdays | 3.5 hours per session

6 Tuesdays: March 5 + 19, April 2 + 16,  April 30 + May 14, 2024

Time:

12:00 – 3:30 pm Eastern Time USA + Canada
Please be sure to calculate your local time zone if it is not US Eastern Time

Agenda

Requirements to Participate Effectively Online: You will need a private space with a reliable Internet connection for a desktop/laptop computer that has video and microphone. Click here for AEDP’s Live, Online Learning: Requirements & FAQ’s.


AEDP Level Prerequisite:

Level:  Beginning/ Intermediate 

AEDP Certification: This course does not count toward AEDP certification.


Registration Fee

Member Registration Fee: $659 USD (log in to register)
Non-Member Registration Fee: $669 USD

Important Note: This seminar series was presented in 2022 as “The Gift Side of Loss.” If you are looking for a refresher, we hope you will join us!

Important Note: This seminar series was presented in 2022 as “The Gift Side of Loss.” If you are looking for a refresher, we hope you will join us!

There are a limited amount of scholarship seats available for this course- click here to fill out an application

Continuing Education:

CE may be available. See registration confirmation email for details.

Attendance, Makeup Policy & Refunds

Attendance and Makeup Policy
Refund Policy
File a Grievance

ADA

Disability Access: If you require ADA accommodations please contact Marilia Rodriguez, admin@aedpinstitute.org or call 813-553-1294 thirty days or more before the event so we can be sure to accommodate you..

Questions

Course and all customer service related questions:
Please contact Customer Service Administrator
Marilia Rodriguez
admin@aedpinstitute.org
813-553-1294