Approach · AEDP
AEDP: not doing it alone
A great deal of what hurts most was not only painful. It was painful with nobody there. The illness nobody in the family named. The fear you managed by yourself at nine years old. The grief you carried while continuing to make dinner for everyone. AEDP stands for Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, and the plain version of what it means is this: you feel the thing, all the way through, with someone present while you do it.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
What this looks like with me
I am not a blank screen, and this is where that becomes obvious. When you tell me something difficult, I respond as a person. You will hear it in my voice, and I will sometimes say plainly what it was like to hear what you just said. Some people find that unfamiliar for a session or two, particularly people who have had therapy where their words landed in silence. Most find fairly quickly that it is the reason something moves.
We go slowly at the exact points where you would usually speed up. You will tell me the hard thing and then move straight to the summary, the joke or the qualification, and I will ask you to stay for a moment. Not to be difficult. Because the middle of a wave is where the important information is, and the habit of getting past it quickly is usually learned rather than chosen. So we stay. Sometimes for less than a minute, which can feel much longer.
Then we look at what is actually here now. Very often it is not what people expect. On the other side of a wave of grief there is frequently a tenderness or a gratitude that surprises the person feeling it. On the other side of long-held anger there is often something closer to sorrow. I ask what you notice in your body and I do not rush the answer. This is the part of the hour that people most often describe afterward as the part that mattered.
And we notice what is happening between us while it happens. You said the unsayable and I did not flinch. You cried and I did not change the subject to make myself more comfortable. Left unremarked, that goes by unregistered. Named out loud, it becomes evidence against a belief you have been carrying since long before you met me.
It was not only the pain. It was the being alone in it.
We stay long enough to find out what is on the other side of the wave.
Where I find AEDP fits
Grief that was borne alone
Grief is my primary specialty, and it is astonishing how many people did their grieving in private while looking fine in public. Doing it once with another person present is a different experience than doing it again by yourself.
Feelings judged unacceptable
Relief after a death. Rage at someone you also love. Envy of your own friends. What makes those feelings unbearable is usually not the feeling but the certainty that it would cost you your standing if anyone knew.
When insight has not been enough
You understand your history thoroughly and nothing has shifted. That is often a sign that the material has been discussed but not felt through with anyone present.
Numbing and going flat
Going quiet is a skill, and it worked. We start well upstream of big emotion, with whatever small thing is actually here, and let range come back gradually rather than demanding it.
How we would work
We start with a free 20-minute consult by phone, text or video. You tell me what has been going on, and I tell you honestly whether what I offer is what you are looking for.
If we go ahead, sessions are weekly by secure video or audio. This way of working runs alongside the rest of what I do rather than replacing it: Internal Family Systems when a part of you is not willing to go near something yet, somatic work when the feeling is physical before it is verbal, EMDR when one memory still carries a live charge and I am EMDR certified, and my own Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning when the same loop keeps closing.
I work with adults, seniors, couples and families. In couples work this often means slowing a familiar fight down to the moment just before one of you protected yourself, and finding out what was there instead.
- Slowing down where you would normally move on
- Staying with a wave to its other side rather than stopping mid-way
- Naming out loud what happens between us
- Working with what is actually present, not what should be
- Making room for feelings you have been told are unacceptable
- No pressure to produce emotion on demand
Questions people ask about this way of working
- I do not want to be pushed into crying. Will that happen?
- Not by me. Emotion that is forced is not the same thing as emotion that arrives, and the forced kind leaves people feeling exposed rather than relieved. What I do instead is slow down and stay with what is already happening, which is often a much smaller signal than tears. If a wave comes, we let it come and I stay right there with you. If nothing comes, that is not a failed session. It usually means some part of you is not convinced yet that this is safe, and that part gets attention rather than pressure.
- Why do you keep asking how it is to tell me this?
- Because the answer matters as much as the content. Most people learned somewhere that certain feelings drive others away, and they learned it by having a feeling and watching what happened next. When you say something you have never said and I do not withdraw, wince or hurry you along, that is a new piece of evidence, and it only counts if we notice it out loud. So I will ask. And I will tell you what it was like for me to hear it, which is not something every therapist does.
- Is this the same as venting?
- No, and the difference matters. Venting discharges pressure and typically leaves the arrangement exactly as it was; people can vent about the same thing for years. What I mean by feeling something through is going all the way to the other side of a wave rather than stopping in the middle of it, and then staying still long enough to notice what is present afterward. That afterward is where most of the change is, and it is the part people habitually skip.
- Can this work over video, where you cannot be in the room with me?
- It works, and the closeness of the frame helps more than it hinders. I can see your face at a distance I never would across an office, and small changes are visible: the flicker before you laugh something off, the swallow before you change the subject. What is needed here is being accurately seen and reliably met, and both of those come through a screen. Being in your own room, with your own things, often makes it easier to let something surface at all.
You do not have to do it alone this time
If you have understood your own story for years without much changing, this may be the missing part rather than more analysis. Text or email and we will find a time to talk. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.