Presented by Diana Fosha, PhD
Friday and Saturday, October 18 – 19, 2024 | 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM EST
Level: Open to all levels
In AEDP, affirmation is not a mere nicety but a robust therapeutic intervention
activating the brain’s intrinsic capacity for healing and self-repair.
Description
This immersive seminar with Dr. Fosha will explore the transformative power of recognition and affirmation in AEDP to heal attachment wounds and revitalize the self. Relational trauma disrupts the ability to trust and connect, draining vitality from self and leading to negative self-concepts and feelings of invisibility, rejection, and unworthiness. In AEDP, affirmation is not a mere nicety but a robust therapeutic intervention, activating the brain’s intrinsic capacity for healing and self-repair. Through affirmation and AEDP Psychotherapy’s hallmark dyadic experiential work, patients experience profound shifts in self-concept, attachment security, and overall quality of life.
As we delve into the neurobiological underpinnings of recognition and affirmation, we will integrate Diana Fosha’s work on transformation using the double helix of affirmation and relationality, Jaak Panksepp’s insights on the neurobiological core SELF, and Louis Sander’s work on recognition. Through didactic presentations, in-depth discussions, and detailed microanalysis of clinical videotapes, participants will how learn how to harness recognition and affirmation, and how to work with the defensive walls traumatized patients have built. Key elements include attunement and moment-to-moment tracking, crucial to being able to co-create a therapeutic environment where clients feel deeply seen, understood, and valued.
We will explore Panksepp’s neurobiological core SELF model, demonstrating how affirmation and recognition activate neural circuits linked to exploration and discovery. Panksepp’s neurobiological core SELF model together with the SEEKING, CARE, and PLAY systems demonstrates how these brain systems contribute to a vital, energized self and vibrant connections.
Participants will leave with practical tools and strategies to integrate recognition and affirmation into their clinical practice, empowering patients to rediscover their inherent worth, and capacity for connection, in co-created healing therapeutic environments conducive to transformation and growth.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
Describe the theoretical foundations and therapeutic mechanisms by which recognition and affirmation in AEDP facilitate the revitalization of the self.
Define affirmation and be able to use it in work with patients with relational trauma
Identify and evaluate techniques for harnessing recognition and affirmation in therapeutic settings, focusing on attunement and moment-to-moment tracking.
Develop and demonstrate practical strategies for working with the defensive walls built by traumatized patients.
Identify and track patients’ responses to recognition and affirmation, and assess whether they were received or led to defensive responses
Develop techniques to integrate recognition and affirmation into clinical practice, enabling patients to rediscover their inherent worth and capacity for connection within co-created healing therapeutic environments.
Integrate theoretical knowledge of AEDP, neurobiological models, and recognition principles with practical application in therapeutic settings to foster patient transformation and growth.
Suggested Readings
Fosha D. (2009). Emotion and recognition at work: Energy, vitality, pleasure, truth, desire & the emergent phenomenology of transformational experience. In D. Fosha, D. J. Siegel & M. F. Solomon (Eds.), The healing power of emotion: Affective neuroscience, development, clinical practice (pp. 172-203). New York: Norton.
Also reprinted in the Neuropsychotherapist, (2013), 2. www.theneuropsychotherapist.com
Fosha, D. (2013). A heaven in a wild flower: Self, dissociation, and treatment in the context of the neurobiological core self. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 33, 496-523. DOI: 10.108007351690.2013.815067
Fosha, D. (2021). “We are organized to be better than fine:” Building the transformational theory of AEDP. In D. Fosha (Ed.) Undoing aloneness and the transformation of suffering into flourishing: AEDP 2.0. (Chapter 14, pp. 377-400). APA Press.
Who Should Attend
Licensed mental health practitioners (or the local/regional equivalent to ‘licensed’*) as well as interns legally practicing under the license of a supervising practitioner. These include Counselors, Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Social Workers, other Behavioral Health Therapists and related professionals.
Level: Open to all levels
If you have a question about the relevance of this course for you and/or your eligibility for this course please contact admin@aedpinstitute.org.
Meet the Presenter
Diana Fosha, PhD
Diana Fosha, PhD, is the developer of AEDP™, a healing-based, radically relational, transformation-oriented experiential psychotherapy. She is the Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute.
For more than two decades, Diana has championed a scientific foundation for AEDP, a therapeutic approach that focuses on healing trauma, repairing attachment wounds, and rekindling vitality. Her work integrates positive neuroplasticity, recognition science, and dyadic developmental research into experiential and transformative clinical practice. Her most recent work focuses on promoting flourishing as a seamless part of the AEDP therapeutic process of transforming emotional suffering. Drawing on affective neuroscience, attachment theory, mother-infant developmental research, and research documenting the undreamed-of-plasticity in the adult brain, AEDP exemplifies the integration of scientific research and clinical practice in psychotherapy.
Based in New York City, where she lives and practices, Fosha has been on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of NYU and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Medical Centers (now Mount Sinai) in NYC, and of the doctoral programs in Clinical Psychology at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University and at The City University of New York.
Date, Time, Location
Date: Friday and Saturday, October 18 – 19, 2024
Time: 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time USA + Canada
Location: Live, Online
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.
Registration, Fees and Scholarships:
- $229 USD Member Pricing (must be logged in to register)
- $255 USD Non Member Pricing
Scholarships:
Scholarships are available. To learn more and apply, please go here.
Attendance, Makeup Policy & Refunds:
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
AEDP Institute is a part of AEDP Works, LLC. AEDP Institute is a DBA of AEDP Works LLC.
There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between AEDP Institute, the presenter, program content, research, grants, or other funding that could reasonably be construed as conflicts of interest.