Dear Beloved Community,
It is with great joy that I announce that Alyssa Gavulic Howk is now a certified AEDP Therapist!
In the spirit of the therapist being the intervention, Alyssa is unabashedly relationally caring, present, delighting and intimate. Her clients feel totally held, accompanied, recognized – “loved up” by her. And, beyond these heart qualities, Alyssa combines a skillfulness that adeptly pulls the transformance strivings of her clients to fruition such that they get to experience more of their true selves.
Alyssa’s caring presence is so evident in her capacity for moment-to-moment processing; her staying and being with the emergent experience and bringing back the experiential focus when it strays. This capacity is also so evident in the way she disarms defenses and regulates when emotional experience becomes dysregulated. Alyssa keeps a somatic focus and really facilitates the processing of emotions to completion and then helps her clients metaprocess what was good about what they just experienced.
Alyssa’s clients are so fortunate to be cared for in her heartfelt, skillful way and we are so fortunate to have her in our community now as a certified AEDP clinician.
Congratulations, Alyssa!
Here’s what one reviewer had to say about Alyssa’s work:
LIKED, ENJOYED AND RESPECTED BOTH VIDEOS—BEGINNING SESSION AND STATE 4 WORK. THE THERAPIST WAS SO DIFFEREnt IN BOTH: ONE LEADING AND ONE FOLLOWING; ONE EXPLAIniNG AND ONE TAKING IN; ONE FORCEFUL AND ONE PEACEFUL; ONE MEETING AND PRESENT AND THE OTHER DEEP AND REAL. THE SIMILARITIES WERE THE THERAPIST KNOWING WHAT SHE WAS DOING AND BEING THERE AS NEED FOR EACH OF THEM IN VERY DIFFERENT WAYS.
THIS THERAPIST UNDERSTANDS AEDP THEORY AND THE FEEL OF AEDP AND ABLE TO TRANSLATE THAT INTO PRACTICE (LEFT BRAIN) AND CAN WRITE ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE WITH HER DEEP UNDERSTANDING (RIGHT BRAIN) (THINK I GOT THE BRAINS IN THE RIGHT PLACE?!). ONE CAN SEE THE CHANGES AND GROWTH IN BOTH VIDEOS THROUGH THEIR ATTACHMENT AND SECURITY WITH THE THERAPIST. SHE SEES AND HOLDS Onto IMPORTANT GLIMMERS OF POSITIVE TRANSFORMATION AND HELPS THEM THRough. SHE HAS THE ABILITY TO STAY WITH AND DEEPEN IMPORTANT MOMENTS
Here’s what the other reviewer had to say:
I was moved by the relational work in both of these tapes. The connection between patients and Alyssa was palpable. She stayed with them moment by moment, attuning, scaffolding, slowing them down, and making space for emergent relational experiences both between patients‘ internal parts and with Alyssa. I was impressed by many elements in these tapes. What stands out the most is the therapist’s relational bravery. She could get incredibly intimate with both of these men, working hard to make sure they felt her connection and felt seen. She very accurately listened and could rephrase what they shared and you could see how important this was to each of them, perhaps for the first time being seen and heard fully. I also loved how she kept slowing them down, to take what was being shared relationally and making it experiential in the patients own bodies.
Alyssa demonstrated skill in most of the 9+1 transformational processes in these tapes: She noticed her patients transformance strivings & self-recognition of growth and change, seizing and harvesting these moments experientially and relationally. She worked diligently to undo aloneness and these many moments were met by her patients. Additionally, she maintained an experiential focus, facilitating connection with the body whereby her patients demonstrated access to somatic experiences ultimately accessing a felt sense of authenticity and connection with younger parts and Alyssa simultaneously.
Here’s what Alyssa has to say about her AEDP journey:
The birthplace of my AEDP journey was during my doctorate studies at the Congress on Attachment and Trauma in New York City in October of 2017. I would have already considered myself an attachment-oriented, emotions-focused therapist with a strong draw towards existential theories. But when I heard Diana Fosha speak for the first time, and I was enamored with the brief introduction to a beautifully integrative modality that seemed to so cohesively bring together all that I was drawn to in my personal theoretical lens. I soon after attended an in-person immersion course in 2019 with Diana and realized quickly that I had indeed found my theoretical home. I distinctly remember feeling profoundly impacted by the breadth and depth of knowledge I was encountering as I was immersed in AEDP. Yet I also left with some trepidation about how I would ever be able to integrate these rich and diverse concepts so seamlessly into my own clinical sessions. The AEDPness of the videos that I saw seemed like it would take years for me to ever replicate. Since then, I have continued to pursue deepening my AEDP skills by attending a variety of workshops, seminars, and advanced skill modules that have continually challenged me to soak in AEDP knowledge, witness AEDP in action in videos, and then apply AEDP interventions in experientials. I have also loved learning from all the diverse individuals that are a part of the AEDP Institute over the years. I love how each faculty member holds the heart of AEDP but presents a different facet or flavor. This has made AEDP come alive to me as a universally relevant orientation but with such an individually specific application for each client I see in my actual practice. The process of preparing for certification by having me work closely with a supervisor and complete the micro-analysis of both of my sessions was also pivotal in entrenching my understanding of not only what interventions I am intuitively integrating into my therapy sessions but also why it is an effective 9+1 intervention. As I now reflect on my growth as an AEDP clinician, I feel like I went from a place of awe and wonder at my first encounter with hearing Diana to trying to absorb all of AEDP eagerly in immersion to carefully and consistently practicing AEDP in my past 7 years of practice to a deep place of knowing AEDP “in my bones” as I apply for this certification. I am so grateful for every single layer of this learning process and every single individual who has been a part of my AEDP journey. Thank you!
So, please join me in celebrating Alyssa’s wonderful accomplishment in becoming a certified AEDP Therapist. You can share your acknowledgements with Alyssa at: <alyssa@omniatraumahealing.com>
With much excitement and delight,
Steve