AEDP Essential Skills, aimed at practitioners, will provide practical skills for the application of AEDP. Our aim is to teach, in both left-brained and right-brained ways, skill sets, concrete and specific. Different skill sets will be introduced, explained, illustrated and practiced each week, so that participants will emerge with both an understanding and a felt sense of how to practice AEDP. The basic skill sets necessary to practice AEDP will be introduced each week, with theoretical foundations and with videotapes and group experiential exercises in the afternoon.

In AEDP, we pride ourselves in how thoroughly and deeply we seek to both (i) undo professional aloneness and (ii) engage in rigorous clinical teaching with skilled accompaniment. We are proud to say that our ES courses feature a high number of highly skilled assistants.

What we consider AEDP’s “essential skills” will be didactically demonstrated and experientially explored so that participants develop both a felt sense and a cognitive understanding of them.  A key component of the experiential practices is the opportunity to “try on” sets of interventions as a therapist and to receive them as a client. We have found that learning new skills can give rise to experiences of safety, attachment security, transformation, increased therapeutic courage, and related phenomena; precisely the kinds of experiences AEDP facilitates for its clients. Each day course faculty lead small groups in practicing essential AEDP skills.  The concentrated time that participants spend together immersed in learning inevitably leads to the development of a culture of trust and generosity that allows for risk-taking and a supportive environment that is uniquely suited

DAY 1

9:00 – 9:30 - Course Overview, Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - AEDP Stance and Technique:
The Basics and Moment to Moment tracking experience

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - WHAT, WHY and HOW We Do AEDP: Videos

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises*

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 2

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Understanding the 4 State/3 State Transformation Model I

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Understanding the 4 State/3 State Transformation: Videos.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15  -Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 3

It’s Not a Once and For All Kind of Deal: Building, Renovating, and Reconstructing a Secure Theraputic Attachment (Jerry Lamanga, LCSW)

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:00 - How to Build a Secure TheraputicAttachment from the Beginning

11:00 – 11:15 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - How to Deepen a Secure Attachment Relationship as Therapy Progresses.

1:00 – 2:15 - Lunch

2:15 – 2:30 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 4

Working with Defense and Anxiety in AEDP (Jerry Lamanga, LCSW)

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - ANXIETY and how we work with and regulate it in AEDP

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - When Defenses Don’t Melt and Anxiety Doesn’t Dissipate.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 5

Meta-therapeutic Processing: Integration in Action (Jeanne Newhouse, NCPsyA)

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Meta-processing: What Is It and How to Do It.

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 12:45 - Meta-processing Continued.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 6

9:00 – 9:30 - Course Overview, Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Reviewing and Anticipating: Special Attention to State 2 Adaptive and Maladaptive Core Affective Experience (CAE):  This session will recapture some of what was learned in week 1, forecast work with portrayals which will be elaborated later in the week, discuss the different kinds of State 2 CAE that we want to deepen and expand and give special attention to maladaptive CAE

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Clinical Decision Making via reviewing client sessions:  While we are not deepening these, our witness, presence, capacity and willingness to co-regulate can offer tremendous healing potential.  Finally, we will look at the risk of leaving people alone in our attempts to “undo aloneness.”

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 7

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Working with Defense and Anxiety in AEDP: When Defenses Don’t Melt and Anxiety Doesn’t Dissipate – Part 2:  This module will focus on how to work with defenses and inhibitory affects to (a) transform self-at-worst into self-at-best and (b) promote access to State 2 core affective experience.

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Clinical Decision Making via reviewing client sessions:  We will also explore strategies from intra-relational AEDP and learn how to use parts work to deal with more recalcitrant trauma-based defenses and anxiety.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 8

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - The Experience of Emotional Experience:  Processing Emotions to Completion:  Helping patients to access and viscerally experience previously blocked core emotions in the context of a secure therapy dyad is the central agent of therapeutic change in AEDP. In this module, we will focus on tracking where we are at any given moment in the 4 State model of emotion processing and we will learn State specific skills for accessing, deepening and sufficiently processing core emotions.

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Clinical Decision Making via reviewing client sessions:  We will focus on the powerful technique of portrayals for helping patients to bring online cognition, emotion and somatic experiences associated with core emotion in order to release their adaptive action tendencies, transform trauma-based internal working models, and reduce the energetic drain of anxiety and defenses.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 9

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Working with Transformational Experience: Transformational Affects and Core State:  AEDP is a treatment model that places transformation and the provision of new experiences at the center of its approach. Today’s training day explores how AEDP works to create the conditions for positive change and makes the most of these change moments when they occur.

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Clinical Decision Making via reviewing client sessions:  a look at ways to facilitate moments that fuel “upward spirals” where healing begets waves of positive affect that in turn beget additional rounds of healing.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

DAY 10

9:00 – 9:30 - Today’s Overview

9:30 – 11:15 - Reviewing What We’ve Learned: Watching and Tracking Together:  This afternoon’s session will be more of a spontaneous, co-created response to the whole week, and indeed, the whole course.  We will take time to watch a video (or two) through the eyes of what we now know to solidify all the learning that has taken place during the course

11:15 – 11:30 - Break

11:30 – 1:00 - Clinical Decision Making via reviewing client sessions:  There will also be more time than usual for review, discussion, and still-unanswered questions.

1:00 – 2:00 - Lunch

2:00 – 2:15 - Big Group Q&A and Review Directions for Experiential Exercises

2:15 – 4:00 - Small Group (Triad) Experiential Exercises

4:00 – 4:15 - Break

4:15 – 5:00 - Big Group Process/Q&A/Check Out

 

• Demonstrate an AEDP therapist stance: welcome, affirm, validate, orient
• Construct safety and undo aloneness
• Apply moment-to-moment tracking to clinical practice
• Construct dyadic safety and connection
• Build and rebuild a secure attachment
• Integrate healing and transformance from the get-go
• Classify different aspects within the Triangle of Experience, including both verbal and somatic processes, to optimize attunement and accelerate the healing process
• Analyze the 4 State Transformational Process: Working with relational trauma in a first session
• Integrate Meta-therapeutic processing and transformational processes
• Relate the experience of emotional experience: processing emotions to completion
• Define attachment styles and utilize different interventions according to attachment style
• Utilize various ways to regulate anxiety, bypass defenses and other inhibitory forces which block progress in therapy
• Describe how to regulate/alleviate anxiety and traces of shame
• Identify and access core affective experiences
• Identify expressions of transformance in clients