AEDP is a transformation-based, healing-oriented model of therapy. Developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, author of The Transforming Power of Affect, it has roots in and resonances with many disciplines, including attachment theory, affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches, and transformational studies.
There is no better way to capture the ethos of AEDP than to say that we try to help our patients—and ourselves—become stronger at the broken places. Working with trauma, loss, and the painful consequences of the limitations of human relatedness, we are surprised to discover places that have always been strong and were never broken: steeled for the worst, we encounter the best. Crisis and suffering can be opportunity: they sometimes awaken extraordinary capacities that otherwise would lie dormant, unknown and untapped, and that, without them, would never see the light of day. AEDP is about making the most of that opportunity.
In AEDP, we foster the emergence of new and healing experiences through the in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences. Key to this experiential enterprise is the establishment of the therapeutic relationship as secure base, which we seek to do from the get-go.
