Psychologists (Introductory), Psychoanalysts, Social Workers (Beginning Levels), Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists, Creative Arts Therapists, Chemical Dependency Counselors, Educators, Nurses

• Define Transformance and apply it to psychotherapy

• Explain the self-other-emotion triangle and identify the 4 States and 3 State Transformations of AEDP.

• Explain the key clinical concepts, theoretical contributions, and the credo of AEDP.

• Discuss the role of healthy attachment and attachment trauma in health and psychopathology, as well as identify the right brain processes engaged in the process of attachment.

• Identify the 3 elements of dyadic affect regulation: attunement, disruption, and repair and to define dyadic affect regulation in clinical work.

DAY 1

TRANSFORMANCE: Putting neuroplasticity in dyadic clinical action

• The Neurobiology of Healing: Neuroplasticity, Transformance, Emergence

• The Phenomenology of the Transformational Process: What happens in each of the 4 States and 3 state Transformations

• Metatherapeutic Processing & The Transformational Affects – Take 1

8:00 – 9:00 - Registration and Check in

9:00 – 11:00 - Introductions, Orientation to the 5-Day Immersion Course

Essential Aspects of AEDP: Healing Orientation, Undoing Aloneness, Experiential Work with Transformational Experience, Privileging the Positive as a Manifestation of Neuroplasticity in Clinical Action

Experiential exercise: Undoing the aloneness of the course participants.

 

11:00 – 11:15 - Coffee break

11:15 – 12:30 - Intro to AEDP, Neurobiology of Healing in Clinical Action The Birth of

Transformance, Neuroplasticity; Transformational Theory and AEDP’s Healing-Based Clinical Practice. The Phenomenology of Transformational Experience.  Metatherapeutic processing. 

12:30 – 1:30 - LUNCH

1:30 – 3:00 - Becoming a Transformance Detective: Healing from the Get-Go. Affirmation, receptivity, metaprocessing. Clinical Videotape.

3:00 – 3:15 - Coffee break

3:15 – 4:45 - Neuroplasticity in Clinical Action. Energy for Life: Recognition, Vitality, Delight, Truth, and the Emergent Phenomenology of Transformational Experience. Clinical Videotape.

4:45 – 5:00 - Discussion and metaprocessing workshop experience of Day 1.

 

DAY 2

ATTACHMENT: How to undo aloneness & how to do experiential work with attachment

• Undoing Aloneness: Attachment as a Transformative Process

• The Neuroception of Safety in The Polyvagal Theory (Porges) & AEDP’s Therapeutic Stance

• Experiential Work with the Experience of Attachment

• Intersubjectivity in Rigorous Clinical Experiential Action: Right Brain-to-Right-Brain Communication and the Dyadic Repair of Attachment Trauma

• AEDP & The Transformation of the Internal Working Model: “Taking in” love and care; Work with Receptive Affective Experiences

9:00 – 9:15 - Questions, Reflections on Day 1

9:15 – 11:00 - Undoing Aloneness, Part 1:  How AEDP Heals Attachment Trauma: The Transformation of the Internal Working Model. The Co-creation of Safety & The Dyadic Affect Regulation of Intense Emotions

The Representational Schemas of AEDP; Techniques for Working with Defenses and Anxiety (State 1 work with different attachment styles).

11:00 – 11:15 - Coffee break

11:15 – 12:30

Undoing Aloneness, Part 2: The Intimacy of Moment-to-Moment Relational Work in AEDP. Making the Implicit Explicit and the Explicit Experiential:  Work with Receptive Affective Experience. One of the central places attachment trauma shows up is in difficulties “taking in” positive experiences. The focus will be on how to overcome the barrier to the taking in the therapist’s empathy, care, and concern, and thus enlarge patients’ capacity for receptive affective experience.

12:30 – 1:30 - LUNCH

1:30 – 3:00 - Explicit/Experiential Work with the Experience of Attachment in the Here-and-Now of the Patient/Therapist Dyad.  Clinical Videotape

3:00 – 3:15 - Coffee break

3:15 – 4:45

Healing Affects and Healing Interactions: Dyadic Affect Regulation and the Processing of Intense Emotional Experiences Clinical Videotape, Experiential Exercise

4:45 – 5:00

Discussion and metaprocessing workshop experience of Day 2.

 

DAY 3

EMOTION: How to work with intense emotional experience

• The Neurobiology of Emotion (Damasio, Panksepp) and the Role of the Insula in the Felt Sense, and in Moment-to-Moment Tracking (Craig)

• Affective Change Processes.

• AEDP’s Model of Psychopathology; Representational Schemas

• State 1 Work with Defenses and Anxiety: Dyadic Affect Regulation of Intense Emotion

• State 2 Work: The Processing of Intense Emotional Experience

• Relational Strategies for Healing Attachment Trauma

• “Stay with It and Stay with Me:” The Healing of Attachment Trauma and the Emergence of the Self

9:00 – 9:15 - Questions, Reflections on Day 2

9:15 – 11:00

The Experiential Method in AEDP: The Neurobiology of Emotions, Emotion Processing and the Felt Sense of Emotional Experience. Techniques for Processing Emotions and Other Affective Change Processes: Portrayals, etc. (State 2 work).  Clinical Videotape

11:00 – 11:15 - Coffee break

11:15 – 12.30 - Processing Intense Emotional Experience to Completion: The Rise of Resilience and Adaptive Action Tendencies Clinical Videotape

12:30 – 1:30 - LUNCH

1:30 – 3:00 - From Suffering to Flourishing, From Trauma to Transcendence Part 1. Clinical Videotape.

3:00 – 3:15 - Coffee break

3:15 – 4:30 - From Suffering to Flourishing, From Trauma to Transcendence Part 2. Experiential Exercise: Small group work practice activating the transformational spiral

4:30 – 5:00 - Discussion and metaprocessing workshop experience of Day 3.

 

DAY 4

TRANSFORMATION: Metaprocessing

• The Processing of Transformational Experience: Metatherapeutic Processing and the Transformational Affects (State 3 work)

• “Stay with It and Stay with Me:” The Healing of Attachment Trauma and the Transformation of the Self

• Neuroplasticity in Action: From Suffering to Flourishing

 

9:00 – 9:15 - Questions, Reflections on Day 3

9:15 – 11:00

Metatherapeutic Processing and the Transformational Affects – The experiential exploration of the experience of transformation unleashes a transformational process, a non-finite process that, when nurtured, engages the depths of the human spirit.

11:00 – 11:15 - Coffee break

11:15 – 12:30

Metatherapeutic Processing: The transformational spiral unleashed. Clinical videotapes using AEDP’s technique of experientially processing transformational experience, deep experiential work with trauma and emotional suffering naturally culminate in the release of energy and vitality.

12:30 – 1:30 - LUNCH

1:30 – 3:00 - Immersion in Experiential Exercises – with Assistants

3:00 – 3:15 - Coffee break

3:15 – 4:30 - Immersion in Experiential Exercises – with Assistants

4:30 – 5:00 - Discussion and metaprocessing workshop experience of Day 4.

 

DAY 5

INTEGRATION: The Grand Integration: Applications to the Healing of Attachment Trauma and the Emergence of the Core Self

• The Neurobiological Core Self (Damasio, Panksepp) & Recognition Processes

• Truth, Love, Compassion and New Meaning –in Connection (Core State: State 4 work)

• Integration of Attachment, Neuroscience & Clinical Work

• Evidence-Based Research on AEDP

9:00 – 9:15 - Questions, Reflections on Day 4

9:15 – 11:30 - The Neurobiological Core Self & Recognition Processes: The Click of Recognition and the Emergence of the Radiant Self

Truth, Love, Compassion and New Meaning –in Connection: Core State work. Clinical Videotapes. The clinical videotapes will illustrate State 4 work, including the activation of the transformational spiral and how to go about fostering the emergence of new meaning and the co-construction of a

11:30 – 12:00 - Coffee break

12:00 – 2:00 - Integration and reflection. Through reflection on the didactic and clinical material presented, as well as on their own experiences, we will engage in the co-construction of a new cohesive and coherent autobiographical narrative for each participant, for AEDP, for clinical practice.