Dear Beloved Community:
It is with so much joy that I share this news: Chiaki Yamada is now a certified AEDP® therapist! 🎉
I had the privilege of serving as her certification supervisor, and I have been genuinely moved watching her grow through the process of preparing her certification materials.
Below are words from her long-term clinical supervisor, Yuko Kobayashi:
Chiaki has been one of the precious supervisees I have worked with since the earlier years of my journey as an AEDP Certified Supervisor. Because of that, it does not feel as though I have simply been witnessing her growth from afar — rather, it feels as though we have grown together along the way.
As a Japanese psychologist living and working in France, Chiaki has continued to nurture and protect the kind of clinical work she deeply believes in, despite the loneliness and challenges that can come with being in a different culture and language. I feel truly honored to have accompanied her as her supervisor throughout this journey.
I was deeply moved many times by the courage and strength it took for her to engage in experiential work in her second language, while navigating both time differences and language barriers. It has not been an easy path, and because we have moved through so many struggles and challenges together, this certification feels almost as joyful and emotional to me as if it were my own.
Chiaki’s sensitivity, deep kindness, and careful attunement to the inner world of others are truly beautiful qualities in a therapist. I have no doubt that she will continue to support profound healing and transformation for many people in the years ahead.
Chiaki, congratulations from the bottom of my heart on becoming an AEDP Certified Therapist. I am so excited to witness all that lies ahead for you.
And in Chiaki’s own words, her AEDP® journey:
My journey with AEDP began through a book by Yuko Hanakawa Ph.D., which was introduced to me by a psychologist colleague and friend. Working clinically in France, I was deeply drawn to AEDP’s emphasis on emotion, attachment, and the healing power of relationship. Because formal AEDP training was available to me only in English, I gradually strengthened my conversational English so that I could participate more fully in the experiential aspects of the training. Entering experiential work in a second language brought significant anxiety at times, but that process itself became part of my own transformational journey.
As a Japanese psychologist practicing in France, I have often experienced the challenges of being a cultural and linguistic minority, as well as the limitations and vulnerability that come with working in non-native languages. AEDP is also still relatively unknown in France, both among mental health professionals and the general public, and there were times when I felt alone, wondering whether I was doing something very different from those around me. Through supervision and learning spaces, however, I experienced a profound sense of undoing aloneness — realizing that I was not alone in the way I was working and understanding therapy. That relational support has sustained me throughout this journey. Receiving certification has allowed me to more deeply recognize that the relational presence I bring into the therapy room can truly support transformation and healing. That recognition has felt both grounding and quietly moving for me. I feel deeply grateful to the teachers, supervisors, therapists, EAs, LAs, colleagues, and clients whose presence, encouragement, and support have accompanied me throughout this journey.
Her reviewers’ responses say it beautifully:
Reviewer 1: It has been a profound delight to review Chiaki’s clinical work. She fully embodies the spirit of AEDP through her exceptional relational skills, creating deep safety with her warmth, explicit affirmation, and exquisitely attuned presence. With remarkable somatic precision, Chiaki skillfully guides clients from anxiety about emotion into rich core affect processing, skillfully tracking glimmers of transformation toward resilience, integration, and authentic self-connection. Her outstanding capacity for dyadic regulation and intersubjective expansion, along with her seamless movement between implicit and explicit processing, marks her as a truly gifted and compassionate AEDP clinician.
Reviewer 2: Chiaki Yamada has a calm and holding presence that feels instantly settling for me as the audience. The quality of her companionship, her tracking of the client, verbally and non-verbally, and explicit attunement, was gentle, consistent, and evidently regulating for the client. With the palpable safety she co-created with clients, she made it a clear and sturdy focus for the clients to explore, feel, deepen, and understand their affective experiences, both in regard to difficult experiences and new positive experiences. Her work was an excellent example of the transforming power of a new attachment experience, where the therapist is received as an older and wiser, resourceful and emotionally available attachment figure.
If you would like to join me in congratulating Chiaki, her email is yamadachiaki8@gmail.com.
Please join me in celebrating Chiaki’s beautiful milestone! 🩷
With so much excitement, joy, and pride,
Yuko Hanakawa–
Kindly,
Yuko Hanakawa, Ph.D.
Chiaka Yamada’s Directory Listing- Here