Okay let’s get a few things straight. No matter what, person first, modality second. Practicing with clinical rigor and using evidence-based methods is important but so is being attuned, adaptive, and flexible. Plus, I’ve never been very good at following a rule book.
My approach, no matter what technique I’m using, is centered in the belief that we are evolutionarily and biological wired for healing, connection, and growth. When those capacities have been compromised for whatever reason—trauma, loss, pain—they can be restored.
AEDP
Although I have learned and applied several different modalities over the years, currently my clinical homebase is a type of therapy called Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, or more commonly called AEDP. The work we do within this model is experiential, relational, and somatic. Instead of telling and analyzing your story from a distance, we work to allow things to be experienced in the here and now, with careful pacing and moment-to-moment attunement. Change is born not because of forcing or fixing, but rather figuring out together how to allow what has historically been held back to move through. I have found AEDP especially useful in helping clients come to understand their ways of surviving, adapting, and protecting themselves throughout their lives. We often come to understand that the strategies that once protected may be causing harm, or keeping clients from having the experiences they desire most.
In AEDP, we move gently and together. We heal through relationship and not just in an abstract way, in a strategic, specific way. We help emotional experiences unfold in the presence of a caring, engaged other. AEDP allows the therapist to have a healthy amount of skin in the game. Many people come to this work because there were times in life where they had to manage alone what was too much to handle. AEDP works by offering a different experience: one where you are not alone as emotions arise, shift, and transform.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
Now for something completely different! ART supports the processing of experiences that the nervous system has been unable to digest. When something overwhelming happens, it can remain stored in the brain in a raw, unintegrated way—showing up as anxiety, depression, emotional flooding, intrusive memories, or hypervigilance. ART helps the brain and body complete what was interrupted, allowing these experiences to be remembered without the pain. During an ART session, the therapist is a supportive guide taking the client through a specific process to replace the negative images that might be causing trauma symptoms and emotional pain. ART uses visual bilateral stimulation, also referred to as “eye movements,” to allow self-directed changes in the client’s mind. People are alleviated from acute suffering quickly. ART is unique because it is highly structured, somatic, creative, and each ART session ends in a spot where the client should feel stable, even good! Honestly? It’s a little bit weird. But it’s fun. And it works.