Dear AEDP community,
It is with great joy that I announce that Yael Stiles, a therapist practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley) is now certified as an AEDP therapist. It has been such a pleasure getting to know Yael and her work better over the past couple of years. She truly embodies the spirit of AEDP: relationally engaged, emotionally courageous, and deeply committed to facilitating transformation.
Here is what Yael shared about her AEDP journey to date:
My first exposure to AEDP came in 2016 viewing Diana Fosha’s talk “Dopamine and Being Seen.” Hearing Diana describe the phenomenon of the “click of recognition” felt like a revelation. I was learning that, as a beloved mentor taught me, “therapy isn’t just about something, it IS something.” In delving into AEDP’s uniquely experiential offerings, I myself experienced a click of recognition. The bravery it required of the therapist was a challenge I intuitively knew would yield some of the most transformative moments for both me and my clients. It was a challenge I wanted to take on with all my being. My right brain was moved by the heart and humanity in how Diana spoke about transformance. My left brain lit up at the attention she gave to the anatomy and mechanics of transformation itself. The combination of scientific rigor and deep heart, the fact that Diana quoted rock lyrics as freely as she quoted the great intellects of our field, the fact that the word “love” was ok to use in the AEDP clinical discourse… it all added up to a deep sense of rightness as AEDP became my clinical “home.”
Throughout the long and often challenging process of working toward certification while raising a family and running a full-time practice, I felt free to engage with AEDP at my own pace, warmly accompanied and encouraged by the community. In the company of brave and loving colleagues and mentors, I felt safe to try new things and take risks. Along with the rich trainings and experientials, I had the privilege of receiving supervision from Natasha Prenn, who taught me the mechanics of deepening with clients and making the implicit explicit. Later in my process, Monica Bradley’s supervision indelibly informed and enriched my work. She offered gentle but incisive feedback as we watched tapes together, and she taught me how to detect and “glue” glimmers, affirm and dyadically regulate, “slow down,” and “stay with.” I learned immensely from her practice wisdom.
Finally, I was lucky enough to join a group of certification-track colleagues facilitated by Jenn Edlin. Jenn not only got me across the certification finish line with her fierce belief in me and the permission she gave me to make AEDP my own, but in the process, she taught me how to track both myself and my clients with even greater specificity and skill. I emerged from the experience with a sense of precision and clarity that has increased my confidence in both the transformative capacity of the model and in myself to practice it with greater fidelity, to really “trust the process.” Together with my dear and brilliant colleagues in this group, we became a cohesive and gritty team that thoroughly undid each other’s aloneness in the certification process as we all got to support each other all the way through to submission, a gift for which I am profoundly grateful.
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Her first reviewer commented the following about Yael and her work:
From the get go Yael’s manner and approach exuded safety and expertise in her clinical interventions. Backed by a solid and coherent theoretical foundation, I could see that her Presence and ways with clients would have to be profoundly effective and full of deep caring and love. And so it is!
Every element of the cert package was executed with such care and precision which made reviewing it a pleasure, not to mention the exquisite quality of Yael’s work. These sessions are beautiful, powerful, transformational, and chock full of as much right brain experience and left brain knowledge as can be packed into one cert submission. I am awed at the care and supremely high caliber of her work and this package!… Truly exceptional work. As one of her client’s says “you’ve started to occupy a different space in my heart”…and “i’ve integrated you into my being…that’s the transformation” Wow!! And yes. I feel all that too just viewing Yael’s work! She is so genuine. present, skilled and caring. Her Presence is Healing and words are balm.
Her second reviewer adds:
Yael beautifully employs the AEDP stance in both sessions. She meets her clients with compassion and empathy, inviting them to pay attention to their internal and relational experiences as they unfold moment by moment. I could feel her warmth, interest and concern as I watched each video and, although I could not see her, I could tell that she was tracking her clients closely based on her attuned responses. Yael beautifully utilizes her tone, pace and words to help each client slow down during significant moments, whether that be the emergence of state 2 phenomena or new experiences of transformation and change.
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What has been especially notable during the certification process is Yael’s intellectual and clinical curiosity. She has engaged AEDP theory with remarkable depth, continually seeking to understand the nuances of what is occurring in each therapeutic moment—both theoretically and experientially. Her dedication to learning is evident in the care and rigor she brought to preparing her transcripts.
Yael is highly adept with understanding and applying the AEDP model. She demonstrates a sophisticated capacity to shift her therapeutic stance moment-to-moment as the client’s experience evolves and to know theoretically what is happening and what intervention is called for next. She is attentive to transformance, skillfully detecting and amplifying it, and she celebrates moments of transformation with authenticity and warmth. As a result, her clients consistently have the experience of feeling deeply felt and accompanied in their emotional work and her sessions demonstrate an appetitive process unfolding. And even more importantly her deep authenticity and joy in other humans and the model shine through in every interaction with her.
Please join me in celebrating this achievement, and if you wish to congratulate Yael her email is therapy@yaelstiles.com.
Congratulations Yael!
With great warmth,
Jenn Edlin
Jennifer Edlin, MFT