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Date: Monday, March 3, 2025
Time: 12 – 2 pm EST

Format: Hybrid

  • Livestream via Zoom, or
  • In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

CE Credit: 2 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $35 (scholarships available)

Description: 

Feeling alone intensifies emotional distress. This workshop introduces Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), an evidence-based therapy that focuses on undoing the aloneness that arises from feelings of disconnection, overwhelm, and traumatic experiences. Rooted in attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, affective neuroscience, emotion theory, somatic-based approaches, and transformational studies, AEDP facilitates healing through empathetic attunement, validation, and establishing a secure therapeutic bond in support of individuals’ innate drive to self-actualize. AEDP is known for its profound healing potential. Participants will learn AEDP strategies across four states—defense/anxiety, processing of emotional experiences, metatherapeutic processing of transformational experience, and core state integration— to dismantle defenses, regulate anxiety and emotions, nurture genuine expression, and integrate transformative experiences. Led by Sonya Parker, this workshop introduces AEDP principles and techniques, with attention to intersectionality, cultural attunement, and intergenerational trauma.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the training participants will be able to:
1. Explain the role of dyadic regulation to ‘undo aloneness’ when working intersectionality with clients.
2. Engage in moment-to-moment tracking of emotional expressions and somatic experience to identify emotional blockages, defenses, and opportunities for emotional processing and positive valuation of the self.
3. Apply at least one technique for corrective emotional experiences within the therapeutic relationship.

Trainer: Sonya Parker, LCSW, RYT-200a licensed therapist and registered yoga teacher, offers interventions that are grounded in attachment, relational, affective neurobiology, trauma-informed, and somatic-mindfulness modalities. Sonya has over 15 years of experience in school social work, inpatient behavioral health, outpatient psychotherapy, community mental health, substance abuse treatment, with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and groups in various clinical and organizational settings. She is currently earning her doctoral degree in social work, researching the allostatic load that racial discrimination contributes to mental health disparities in particular. Sonya is actively involved with evolving AEDP psychotherapy and is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of spirituality and AEDP psychotherapy to develop tools to mitigate racialized trauma and oppression. Sonya serves on the AEDP Vision Collective and as Lead Chair of the Vision Collective’s Racialized Trauma and Spirituality Exploratory Group.

References:

  • Harrison, R. L. (2020). Termination in 16-session accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP): Together in how we say goodbye. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 57(4), 531-547. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000343
  • Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., & Thoma, N. (2022). A phenomenological case study of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy: The experience of change in the initial session from a client perspective. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 32(4), 363-376. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000261
  • Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., Fosha, D., Gretton, H., Joseph, A. J., Nunnink, S. E., Nakamura, K., & Thoma, N. C. (2020). The effectiveness of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) in private practice settings: A transdiagnostic study conducted within the context of a practice-research network. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 57(4), 548-561. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000344
  • Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., Fosha, D., Thoma, N. C., Gretton, H., Joseph, A. J., & Nakamura, K. (2022). The long-term outcome of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy: 6- and 12-month follow-up results. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 59(3), 431-446. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000441

UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Lecture Series

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