AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) is an attachment-based therapy, wherein healing from the very first session and all of its visceral iterations are collectively cultivated. Dyadic affect co-regulation (the relational dance of two nervous systems finding rhythm together) transpires exuberantly between co-conspirators of the patient and therapist.
Resilience is a shared experience that we can see glimmers of in the first seconds of therapy. We therapeutically privilege the positive. This is very existential to me. Resilience, as the most common human response to potential traumas, was the cornerstone of my graduate research, a lifelong passion I pursued alongside my advisor, George Bonanno. Together, with careful scientific exploration and precision, we asked: What are the markers of resilience? That question has never left me.
The primary intention of the therapist is to undo aloneness. It must not just be felt but explicitly verbalized, and reflected back to the therapeutic dyad. When we consciously feel less alone, something fundamental shifts. First, by the therapist, and then outside of the therapy office, patients internalize others in their lives through building secure attachment.
Technically, what we are doing is slowing down: self-regulating, so that we can co-regulate with dyadic interventions. When a patient feels dyadically attuned to, defenses soften. We move together into deeper exuberance, into core self. We move from our pathology with pacing and acknowledgment; sometimes they melt away, and other times they are bypassed.
At an immersion course with Diana Fosha in 2018, she described the goal of therapy, the core state, with a line I have never forgotten: “Core state is when a mere layman is suddenly a poet.” As therapists, we have all, indeed, witnessed this level of transcendent transformation, and having a way to target it explicitly is another intention of therapy. AEDP gives us a way to aim for it and to create the conditions in which such magic becomes possible. We must metaprocess (turning toward the experience of the experience) to understand the impact of the work on both people.