Description:
Feeling alone intensifies emotional distress. This workshop introduces AEDP™, an evidence-based therapeutic approach that focuses on undoing the aloneness that results from disconnection, overwhelm, and trauma. The AEDP model integrates attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, affective neuroscience, emotion theory, somatic-based approaches, and transformational studies into a cohesive and comprehensive four-state framework. AEDP seeks to alleviate suffering and distress by harnessing clients’ innate healing capacities and facilitating corrective emotional and relational experiences that lead to positive change and transformation.
Led by Sonya Parker, LCSW and Ben Medley, LCSW, this workshop will introduce core AEDP principles and techniques, with attention to intersectionality, cultural attunement, and intergenerational trauma. Participants will learn to utilize the AEDP transformational map to dismantle defenses, lower anxiety, process emotion, expand and integrate transformative experiences, and restore the core self.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the training participants will be able to:
- Identify the 4 States of the AEDP Transformational Map.
- 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.
- Explain the role of dyadic regulation to ‘undo aloneness’ when working with clients.
- Use metaprocessing to help expand and reflect on positive change and transformation.
- Identify 2 ways to apply AEDP techniques and interventions with cultural responsiveness.
Trainer:Sonya Parker, LCSW, RYT,is a licensed AEDP therapist and registered yoga teacher. Sonya has 17 years of combined experience in school social work, inpatient behavioral health, outpatient psychotherapy, community mental health, and 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 how racial trauma contributes to health disparities in African American populations. Driven by a commitment to social justice and building an ecosystem of healthy, resilient communities, she plays a vital role in broadening mental health access across NC for vulnerable populations through her advocacy and work with Pro Bono Counseling Network. Sonya is also 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.
Trainer: Ben Medley, LCSW is an AEDP senior faculty member and has taught AEDP nationally and internationally. He has a private practice in New York City and specializes in working with the LGBTQ+ community. Ben teaches regularly in AEDP courses and has presented specialty seminars on working with oppressed populations, LGBTQ+ individuals, and men. Ben’s published works include “Recovering the True Self: Affirmative Therapy, Attachment and AEDP in Psychotherapy with Gay Men” in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. He also contributed a chapter on using portrayals to process core affective experience for the AEDP book Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0 and a chapter on AEDP in Experiential Therapies for the Treatment of Trauma. Ben is currently writing an article on the Triangle of Social Experience, an AEDP schema he developed for working with internalized oppression.
References:
- Harrison, R. L. (2020). Termination in 16-session accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP): Together in how we say goodbye. Psychotherapy, 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, 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, 59(3), 431-446. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000441
- Medley, B. (2021). Recovering the true self: Affirmative therapy, attachment, and AEDP in psychotherapy with gay men. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 31(4), 383-402. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000132
- Medley, B. (2024). Accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP): A model of change and transformation. In Senreich, E., Straussner, S.L.A. & Dann, J. (Eds.). Experiential Therapies for Treating Trauma (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003455851
UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Lecture Series