APPROACH
the touchstones of this work
AEDP
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
"Our 'true self' emerges by fully experiencing and processing our emotions in the presence of a 'true other'.
- Dr. Diana Fosha -
AEDP heals trauma and helps to undo aloneness by championing the innate healing capacity of neuroplasticity in a safe, attached therapeutic relationship. At its core, AEDP is built on the belief that deep, transformative change can occur by harnessing adaptive emotional experiences. It's grounded in the idea that humans can self-repair.
The AEDP treatment process is characterized by its moment-to-monemt focus on exploring and processing emotional and relational experiences experientially. Therapists help clients to identify and express their emotions, particularly those that have been repressed or avoided so that the client can recover their sense of core self and experience increased resilience.
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AEDP has roots in many disciplines including interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, emotion theory and affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches as well as transformational studies.
As an experiential psychotherapist, I will notice both verbal and non-verbal communication of emotion. I want to help the client understand, deepen, release, and ultimately make positive use of their emotions. You may hear me invite you to slow down and pay attention to the feeling of each emotion in your body. I may comment on the emotions I see arising on your face, or draw attention to how your hands are making fists as you recount what happened. We will make contact with the visceral experience of your emotions and I will teach you how to release the impulse in constructive ways, rather than acting out or acting in.
EMDR
“For all of us, unprocessed memories are generally the basis of negative responses, attitudes and behaviors. Processed memories, on the other hand, are the basis of adaptive positive responses, attitudes and behaviors.”
- Dr. Francine Shapiro -
EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment that is designed to alleviate the distress and symptoms associated with traumatic memories and disturbing life experiences.
The Adaptive Information Processing model considers symptoms of PTSD and other disorders to be the result of past disturbing memories that were not adequately processed and stored. These unprocessed memories contain the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and physical sensations that occurred at the time of the event. Instead of getting stored in long-term adaptive memory, trauma gets stuck in the nervous system. It is, for this reason, that many people experience intense physiological reactions to triggers in the present.
EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory and is intended to change the way that the memory is stored in the brain. Unlike other talk therapies, EMDR does not require the client to continually talk about their trauma in detail repeatedly. Instead, the memory is briefly discussed between sets of bilateral stimulation. Bilateral stimulation works both hemispheres of the brain and is accessed through eye movements, tapping, and auditory forms. EMDR allows for the traumatic material to be integrated.
SE & SP
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.”
- Dr. Peter A. Levine -
Typical talk therapies such as CBT engage only the mind, not the body, and focus on becoming aware of disturbing thoughts and behavior patterns to create change. But in somatic therapy, the body is the starting point to achieve healing. This form of therapy cultivates an awareness of bodily sensations and teaches people to feel safe in their bodies while exploring thoughts, emotions, and memories.
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Somatic Experiencing, created by Peter Levine, Ph.D., offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses, discharge, and release of traumatic activation from your nervous system and help resolve these fixated physiological states. We all have experiences with “keeping it together” after a traumatic or distressing event, but this self-preservation mechanism can inhibit the natural cycle of energy release needed for our body to return to a relaxed, balanced state. SE is a body-oriented therapeutic model, looking at how trauma shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. rather than focusing solely on thoughts or emotions associated with a traumatic event, SE expands to include the natural bodily (somatic) responses. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions and working to complete defensive responses previously thwarted from resolution. SE helps people build awareness, coherence, self-regulation capacities, resilience, and a deeper understanding of the body/mind connection.
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Pat Ogden, Ph.D., creator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and leading expert in working with the body to resolve trauma, offers a similar somatically based approach. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented approach to help patients process traumatic memories and manage threat responses. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is an approach to treating trauma and attachment issues that encourages engagement in the present moment and mindful awareness of the body. This work will focus on the "somatic narrative" being told and help clients expand their “movement vocabulary" as we look at gestures, posture, prosody, facial expressions, eye gaze, and movements. The language of the body communicates implicit meanings and reveals the legacy of trauma and of early or forgotten dynamics with attachment figures. To omit the body as a target of therapeutic action is an unfortunate oversight that deprives clients of a vital avenue of self-knowledge and change.
