Transformance Journal: Experiential Assistants

Goretti Faria, MSW, RCSW, CCC

Goretti is a certified AEDP Therapist and Supervisor who practices as a Registered Clinical Social Worker in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada. She attained her Master of Social Work degree from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and brings over 30 years of experience from community mental health settings and private practice.

Goretti’s expertise lies in psychodynamic psychotherapy, family systems therapy, EMDR, and Internal Family Systems. Embracing AEDP in 2014, she has contributed significantly to numerous ES1 and ES2 courses globally, serving as both assistant and Lead Assistant. Until recently, while actively involved with AEDP Vancouver, Goretti was dedicated to championing the growth of AEDP in Vancouver and its environs. In addition to her clinical work, she offers individual and group supervision services. (Read More…)

Lia Jones, LMFT

Lia Jones, LMFT is a certified Therapist and Supervisor in both AEDP and EFT in Denver, Colorado. She has worked with children and families experiencing homelessness in non-profit mental health services and has been in private practice since 1998.. Lia has served as both an assistant and Lead Assistant at multiple Immersion and Essential Skills trainings and helms multi-faculty core training groups in Denver. She teaches core training modules, introductions to and specific topics on AEDP to professional and student communities.

Lia is the founder of AEDP Rocky Mountains, a community group that sponsors AEDP workshops and community lunch and learns for practitioners learning the AEDP model. In addition to her practice, community work, and teaching, she offers group and individual supervision live and online. Lia has been delighting in AEDP since the 2003 Immersion followed by three years (Read More…)

Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT

Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT is a certified AEDP therapist and supervisor, working in Israel. Idit has received her MA and Family Therapy Certification from Tel Aviv University and has practiced therapy with individuals, couples and families, in Aluma Therapy Center and private practice, since 2006. She completed the certified studies of treatment of stress and trauma, at The Trauma Center (Boston, MA), directed by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk (2013-2014).

Nowadays, Idit is teaching family therapy and AEDP through the Ministry of Social Services, and through the Israeli Association of Couples and Family Therapy. Since June 2018, Idit has been appointed the formal AEDP liaison for the Israeli community. In addition, since 2015 she is supervising a medical forum for couples (Read More…)

Molly Eldridge, LICSW

Molly is a certified AEDP Clinician and Supervisor. Known for her enthusiastic embodiment and love of sharing AEDP, Molly’s appreciation stems in part, from its emphasis on the experiential, “right here, right now” focus, coupled with its heartfelt and cogent theoretical framework. She champions capacity to embrace therapists authentic selves, encouraging them to integrate their diverse skills and approaches into the model.

Molly, like so many others, discovered her therapeutic home in AEDP and works in supervision to assist others in finding their place there too. With extensive training in AEDP beginning in 2008, Molly has taught AEDP at the Cape Cod Institute, New England Society of Trauma and Dissociation, and workshops around the US. Molly is committed to the modality and has been a part of various AEDP committees and is now chairing the 2025 AEDP Conference. (Read More…)

Kaori Stram, LMHC

Kaori Stram, LMHC is a certified AEDP therapist and supervisor. She is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in New York. Her AEDP journey started in 2014 when she was first introduced to the work of Yuko Hanakawa and attracted to its warm heart-to-heart connection between a therapist and a client. She has assisted many courses in-person and online as an experiential assistant and lead assistant. Since 2021, she has presented at Immersion and ES1 courses as well as trained Japanese therapists in Japan.

Kaori is also participating in an AEDP 16-session research project as a treating therapist.

Her passion is to help spread AEDP to Japan where she originally comes from and has been actively involved in the AEDP Japanese community.

Martina Verba, LCSW, DSW

Martina Verba, LCSW, DSW is a certified AEDP therapist and supervisor in private practice in Westchester County, NY. She fell in love with AEDP when she took Diana’s Immersion course in 2008. She has both assisted and lead-assisted for Immersion and Essential Skills, as well as presented at Immersion. She has extensive experience working with patients with eating disorders and has developed a practice that integrates eating disorder treatment and AEDP. She is on the faculty of the Integrative Trauma Treatment Program at the National Institute of Psychotherapies.

Prior to finding AEDP, Martina worked as an eating disorder specialist at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, a staff therapist at Harvard University’s mental health service, an adjunct professor at Simmons College, and the Director of Counseling at a program for at-risk youth in Boston. (Read More…)

Ilene Yasemsky, LCSW

Ilene Yasemsky, LCSW. I first heard Diana present in Oakland in 2003. I sat in an empty conference room for over an hour after her presentation ended, writing things I wanted to say to all my clients. AEDP became my clinical home from that day on.

Fast forward 17 years—post-immersions, 3 years of Core Training, assisting multiple times at ES1 and ES2, and hours of precious individual supervision—I am still a striving therapist and inspired student of AEDP, a model that continues to deepen and expand.

AEDP has held me (and vice versa) in my private practice in Berkeley, where I see a combination of individuals, couples, and families, and in my role as the Clinical Director of an AEDP-informed acute adolescent psychiatric hospital in the east bay. I love the concept of transformance, how it is always there to spur us to change for the better and, especially at this moment in time, I am betting every day on the good trouble transformance brings to the condition of our humanity.

Being an experiential assistant is a chance for me to emulate and honor the teachers and supervisors I have had and to help make it safe and fun to learn this model I love.

John Wiskind, LCSW, MPH

John Wiskind, LCSW, MPH was born and raised in Ohio, I’m itching to travel and my husband and I are so glad our son is now a rising 5th grader. I’m a LCSW in the Bay Area in California. I completed Immersion in 2012 followed by Core Training, ES1 & ES2. I’ve been working with a faculty supervisor for the last 4 years and have had the honor of assisting at various trainings.

Working with fellow therapists to enhance their understanding and application of the model gives me a lot of joy, especially because AEDP has been so professionally and personally transformative and I like being a part of that for other clinicians. Assisting and being an experiential group member have, for me, been some of the most profound and impactful learning experiences along my AEDP journey.

I am tremendously grateful for each of those experiences and fellow clinicians. Even in the midst of the global health pandemic and the pandemic of racial injustice, I’m finding AEDP a beacon of hope and groundedness and look forward to jumping into this work together.

Judy Silberstein, LCSW

Judy Silberstein, LCSW has been an experiential therapist for over 30 years and has a private practice in NYC. She has been in small group/individual supervision with Diana Fosha & Natasha Prenn and has assisted in Immersion, Essential Skills (ES1 & ES2). She is the co-chair of AEDP Metro NYC – a salon style learning community dedicated to nurturing and growing AEDP in the metropolitan area.

With her roots in somatic therapy, Judy specializes in using the intersubjective field and AEDP–IR to help process and heal traumatized clients and their parts. (Read More…)

Karin Dorell, MD

Karin Dorell, MD is an Italian/Israeli board certified Psychiatrist and Certified AEDP psychotherapist and supervisor currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her medical training in Milan, Italy and her Residency and Fellowship in New York City.

Over the years she worked in Emergency Psychiatry and in Community Outreach Projects as well as in private practice in New York city, London and Rome. Very early in her training she got passionate about the AEDP model that became an integral part of who she is and how she works. She is currently heading both the AEDP Italy and AEDP Africa Communities.

Over the past 3 years she has been supervising staff at the Scalabrini Refugee Center in Cape Town, South Africa where she developed a personal development curriculum for women refugees informed by the AEDP model.

(Read More…)

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