What Is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy?

Accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. That is quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s just call it AEDP. It’s a form of psychotherapy that can help you understand your true self. But what is it? In this post, we will look at AEDP and what it can do for you.

What Is AEDP?

AEDP believes that everyone can heal themselves, self-correct, and transform into the person they envision themselves to be. Unlike with Integrative Body Psychotherapy(IDP), seeing one's whole self requires combining the mind, body, and spirit to attain genuine self-awareness. It’s just that most aren’t in the right place or haven’t had a chance to. With AEDP, the client is put in an emotionally safe environment that lets the client connect with their true selves. Then, the therapist dives in with the client to view the painful experiences they have experienced and help the client heal in a corrective way. The therapist strives to heal the client by helping them to strengthen their weaknesses and making them realize that some weaknesses are actually strengths.

How It Works

With most therapies, they rely on the experiences people divulge. They talk about their pasts, current relationships, fears, and so on. Then, the therapist looks at these stories and helps change what they perceive is wrong. AEDP differs from this approach; instead, they help the client unpack and unfold their experiences as they tell them in the moment.

The therapist needs to be a person who is engaged and involved in the experiences of the other person. Most therapists need empathy, but an AEDP therapist goes above and beyond to ensure that their experience's strengths are being noticed and that they are open to new experiences. Most of us save ourselves from new points of view when we are children, so we don’t feel a particular way. When you’re a child, having new experiences and feelings were not able to be express safely. In this environment, however, the patient can experience them.

Sometimes, we don’t realize that we have created barriers for ourselves. Sometimes, these barriers aren’t caused by a significant trauma but instead caused by other emotions. For example, the emotions your parents feel may rub off on you. If they feel sad when you get sad, you may end up feeling like you shouldn’t have new experiences because you’ve pushed the feeling of sadness away.

So when you go to AEDP, you may feel the sadness returning and realize the emotions you’ve kept hidden for so long. These emotions can adapt, and when you see your full experience, your emotions come flowing out.

Each AEDP session is a transformation. You will find yourself exploring new emotions and other experiences that will help you heal and unlock your true self.

What Can AEDP Help?

With any form of therapy, AEDP is used for more than one condition, and instead treats a slew of different conditions. These include:

• AEDP helps treat depression in many ways, such as unfolding your experiences that have caused the depression or finding new ways to think and handle your depression. New experiences and new routines are a great way to treat depression.
• You can help find the source of what makes you anxious and learn how to let it go. If your anxiety is due to a condition, you can learn to be more mindful of your body.
• If something makes you feel ashamed, AEDP can help you find the reasons for your shame and learn how to let go of any confidence blows. If someone is shaming you, you can learn to take their words with a grain of salt and allow you to be yourself.
• As mentioned before, AEDP helps find past traumas and lets you experience them in a new light.
• Relationship issues. Being in a relationship is hard, and AEDP can help you by being its form of couple’s therapy. AEDP is a way to gain trust in your new partner, let go of any insecurities, and find the solutions needed to strengthen the relationship. Plus, new experiences are important in keeping a relationship fresh.
• Attachment problems. If you have a hard time letting go of someone, AEDP promotes new experiences and tells you that you can let go of this person long enough to live your life.
• If you have a hard time staying off of a drug, AEDP can help you by teaching you the reasons for your addiction and how you can replace them with new, healthy life experiences.
• If you’ve ever felt abandoned, AEDP helps you find a reason to be loved, and you can let go of those who have abandoned you and move onto a life where you feel wanted and validated.
• Any transition you have in life. From starting a new school to living in a new home, it’s hard to adapt to new experiences. But AEDP can help you by taking these experiences and making them your own.
• If you feel disconnected from your identity, it can affect how you perceive the world and yourself. AEDP helps this by allowing you to become more associated with yourself and find your identity.
• Self-growth. You don’t need to be a troubled person to want to seek AEDP. You can be someone who is wanting to learn more about their inner self, and they can do this through meditation, learning about their experiences, and growing more as a person.

The Theories Of AEDP

AEDP has many theories that it’s based on.

One theory is psychodynamic theory, a theory that explains our personality through our desires. Sometimes, our desires are conscious, and at other times, they are buried deep in the unconscious.

Another theory is attachment theory. This theory is based on how short-term and long-term relationships work, such as how infants are attached to their mothers.

Then, there is an emotional theory. There are many theories of how emotions have come to be. In fact, there are six well-known theories.

AEDP recognizes how the brain works whenever it has relationships they are attached to. Whenever we become attached to a new person, the brain can make new neurons and thus can help you change how you feel, act, and think. Think about it. Ever seen someone’s personality change whenever they have a new lover or find someone else to be attached to? This is because their brain has changed a bit.

The therapist themselves require much empathy to connect themselves to their clients. The client needs a safe place to express themselves and explore new experiences. If something makes the client feel uncomfortable, the therapist can then help them to back away from experience and find something that makes them feel more comfortable.

History Of AEDP

Diana Fosha, a psychologist, developed AEDP. She combined several premises and departed them from other forms of psychotherapy. She has her theory of how healing happens. She believes that healing is a trait that is wired into the mind, and this is known as the transformance drive. When someone develops a new experience, their brain rewires, and there is a new form of attachment. The client might become attached to the therapist, for example, and be able to handle certain emotions that were too intimidating if they had experienced them in the past. She believed that healing is tested by tracking and seeing how the effect comes to be, and this helps the patient understand what they’re experiencing. She calls this meta-therapeutic processing. Fosha sets herself apart from other psychotherapists because of her focus on how changing a person’s experience can help change the person.

AEDP is still a new form of psychotherapy, with its institute formed back in 2004.

Effectiveness

As AEDP is still new, there haven’t been too many studies about its effectiveness. However, what has been discovered seems to be promising. It is indeed true that one’s experiences shapes who they are, and by being able to discover new experiences in a safe environment, it can shape the person in quite a few ways. It’s worth trying, and this article does not do justice in explaining its concepts and how it works. If you want to experience something new, give AEDP a try.

Seek Help!

If you believe that you need help with your troubles, or to improve your life experiences, you need help from a therapist to be the best person you can be. A therapist can help you let go of your past, open you up to new experience, and help you accomplish all your goals. It’s worth it to talk to a therapist near you and see what they can do. Not just AEDP, but also any other form of therapy that is suitable for your situation.

AEDP is a unique form of therapy for sure, and it’s worth trying out if you want to know more about yourself. Find a therapist who provides it and they can educate you about its uses.

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