At this historical moment, many white people are attempting to heed the call from BIPOC healers and activists to address our whiteness in order to address white-body supremacy (a term used by Resmaa Menakem) at the levels of psyche and soma, as well as institutions and systems.
On Saturday, November 14th, from 12:00-3:00 pm EST, we will gather together online to watch footage of a session in which a white AEDP therapist and white client attempt to do just that.
This workshop is focused on bringing an antiracism lens to AEDP work; therefore, folx attending should already have a basic working knowledge of the AEDP model. Our gathering together is intended to provide the opportunity to
— explore some of the phenomena associated with whiteness, white defenses, internalized racial superiority, and white racialized trauma as they appear in session
— discuss how these phenomena can be mapped with the aid of the AEDP model and how the model might be expanded or revised to address racism
— explore how this work lands for us, somatically, as we watch and discuss it
— explore how individualist and white supremacist culture shapes the work we do as therapists
— explore what it means for therapists who identify as white to join with the white folx we work with, not as an ‘older wiser other,’ but as someone doing the work and willing to be in the messiness together
— participate in the formation of a community devoted to addressing these challenges directly, together, with courage and integrity
While we recognize that the focus of this workshop is on a white therapist and white client facing whiteness, we welcome all who wish to attend. In addition, we want to make transparent that the organizers of this workshop are three white therapists and one non-Black poc therapist.
There is no registration fee for this workshop. Instead, reflecting a commitment to acknowledge and address historical and ongoing racial inequities, we request that white participants make a $25+ donation to a BIPOC-led organization working to heal and build a liberatory future and invite BIPOC participants to choose what feels right to them.
We look forward to joining together in this exploration! All are welcome!
Nalini Kuruppu, Nicole Meitzen, Kristina Kyser and Dwight Dugan
Register here
Video Fridays are on pause for now, but if you’re interested in organizing a video-viewing group, please feel free to contact me. I am happy to put you in touch with others interested in setting up a group video viewing. My fee for one hour is $180+HST, regardless of the number of participants.
Nothing helps us internalize the AEDP model of transformation like watching clinical videos. Whether you are new to AEDP or have completed Essential Skills training, consider joining us for a weekly opportunity to watch clinical video and track phenomena and interventions. We will be live tracking the 4-state model as well as the 9 change mechanisms in a single session each week. The format is designed to be informal and affordable, so that anyone can benefit from frequent viewing of tapes selected for variety. Feel free to email me with any questions: kristina@spider.org
Fridays from 10:00 – 11:00 am EST on Zoom
Please note: the Zoom meeting opens at 9:45 – we start right at 10:00 and the meeting will be locked at that time
Separation with Resolution: Transforming Unresolved Loss in AEDP
Tuesday February 4, 2020 via webinar with AEDP Israel
6-Part AEDP Seminar: September 2019-February 2020
Extended by popular demand: additional dates are April 2, May 14, June 25, July 16 (email me for details)
AEDP is a healing-oriented model founded in the neuroscience and phenomenology of positive change. When we practice AEDP, we seek out, privilege, and activate the innate transformance drive that exists in every one of us. The practice of AEDP is based in moment-to-moment tracking of our clients’ somatic affective cues and navigating with the help of the 4-state model, the triangle of experience, and the 9 change mechanisms(transformance detection, undoing aloneness, experiential focus, affirmative defense work, emotion processing, dyadic affect regulation, metatherapeutic processing, privileging emergence, and processing and integrating Core State experiences).
I am thrilled to be offering a 6-part monthly seminar in which we will have an opportunity to closely watch clinical tapes and track together how AEDP looks, feels, and works. In a collegial and supportive small-group setting, we will pause and track what is occurring in the tapes, where client and therapist are in the 4-state model and on the triangle, which therapist interventions are being used and why, and which change mechanisms are active. This seminar is suitable for individuals with minimal exposure to AEDP as well as therapists who have taken ES1 or ES2. The content, focus, and selection of tapes will be guided in part by participant feedback and consensus about what topics and kinds of work will most facilitate your growth and learning (past topics have included working with pathogenic affect, addressing avoidant defenses, I-R AEDP, the transformational spiral, and making use of relational interventions).
The seminar will take place Thursday evenings from 6:30-9:00 pmat the Miles Nadal JCC at Bloor and Spadina: Sept 5th, Oct 3rd, Nov 14th, Dec 12th, Jan 9th, and Feb 6th
A light snack and water will be provided.
There are 2 options for registration:
- $600 for all 6 seminars
- $500 for 5 seminars
The first half of your registration fee is due by Thursday August 1st. The second half is due by Sunday September 15th. Please send your e-transfers to kristina@spider.orgwith the password “AEDP” and I will send you a receipt electronically.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all in September!
What Remains Intact: Working with Core Self in the Midst of Trauma
Presented by Kristina Kyser, RP
Hosted by Dwight Dugan, AEDP Austin
There is compelling clinical support for the existence of a Core Self that remains undamaged even by severe trauma. Accessing Core Self in session provides an experience of integration and wholeness that counterbalances the dissociation, fragmentation, shame, and terror suffered by trauma survivors. A client’s access to Core Self is associated with resilience, embodiment, mental clarity, and compassion for self and others – all of which help consolidate therapeutic gains and advance healing. Although Core Self exists within each of us, we cannot will or lead ourselves or others into this state. Rather, as Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) teaches, it is the transforming power of affect, skillfully processed in the context of a secure therapeutic attachment, that gets us there.
AEDP Austin is delighted to welcome Certified AEDP Therapist Kristina Kyser, who will lead a one-day experiential workshop exploring the steps to and benefits of accessing Core Self during treatment of complex trauma. In addition to lecture, Kristina will feature over two hours of edited clinical video across 18 months of treatment with a single client. Kristina’s presentation will bring focus to the following:
- intra-relational parts work to invite/deepen affective experience
- the importance of consent and how to request it
- making safe and explicit use of therapist-client attachment
- what Core Self looks, sounds, and feels like in session
- transforming the backlash against positive change
In line with AEDP’s experiential and relational orientation, Kristina will carve out ample space during the video screening for real-time sharing and discussion with an emphasis on eliciting right-brain, body/emotion-focused responses. Whether you are an AEDP newcomer or veteran, this workshop will provide relevant review of AEDP’s centerpiece – a four-state phenomenological model of change – and of AEDP’s hallmark techniques of dyadic affect regulation, healing-oriented emotion processing, and metatherapeutic processing.
We hope you will join us as we continue to learn together and grow the AEDP community in Austin!
Date: Saturday, April 27, 2019
Time: 9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Location: Casa de Luz, Synergy Studio
1701 Toomey Road
Austin, TX 78704
Registration Fee: (includes lunch)
Early Bird Registration $150 (through March 27)
Regular Admission $175 (after March 27)
5-Part AEDP Seminar: Facilitating Transformance
January 10, February 7, March 7, April 11, and May 9, 2019. 6:00-8:30 pm
Location: Miles Nadal JCC, Bloor and Spadina
Registration is now closed
AEDP is a healing-oriented therapy that makes use of the potential for transformance present in every client – no matter how challenged – from the get-go. The axioms “make the implicit explicit,” “make the explicit experiential,” and “make the experiential relational” reflect some of the directions this 4-state model gives us for facilitating positive change in every session. In this seminar, we will have the opportunity to watch and respond to videos of 5 diverse clients at various stages of treatment as they move towards greater clarity, integration, and resilience.
Some of the phenomena we will get to observe and explore together include: the varieties of State 2 experiences; the power of recognition and “undoing aloneness”; “transformance detection” even in the absence of obvious core affect; bypassing and softening defenses; the therapist as an explicit and engaged attachment figure; the use of self-disclosure; working in the transformational spiral of State 3; and using IR AEDP to integrate self-systems fractured by trauma and dissociation.
* Please note: enrollment in this seminar does not count towards AEDP certification. If you are interested in learning more about the training available through the AEDP Institute, I encourage you to read this. You can also contact the coordinator for AEDP Toronto, Simone Levey, at aedptoronto@gmail.com
4-Part Seminar: Transformance in Action
January 10, February 7, March 7, April 4, 2018, 5:30 – 8:00 pm
Diana Fosha, creator of AEDP, says that “the potential for transformation is something that resides in the individual from the get-go” and names this “transformance.” In the course of my own learning, I have found that watching AEDP applied with diverse clients has helped to solidify my understanding of the model and what it teaches us about core experience and the drive to transform in all of us.
This seminar provides an opportunity to watch and respond to clinical tapes of 4 different clients moving through AEDP’s 4 states and 3 state transformations in a small group setting. Sessions have been chosen for variation so that we can explore different attachment styles and affective states and how working with these in an explicitly relational and somatic way facilitates change. The seminar is suitable for therapists who are interested in working experientially with affect and have had some introduction to AEDP.
*Please note that I am not an AEDP Trainer and enrolment in this course does not count towards AEDP certification. If you are interested in the AEDP Institute’s training, please visit their excellent website here.
What remains intact: working with core self in the midst of trauma
Saturday September 30, 2017, 12 – 5 pm
The Elm Room, 2nd Floor
Chestnut Residence and Conference Centre
University of Toronto
89 Chestnut Street
There is compelling clinical support for the existence of a core self that remains undamaged even by severe psychological trauma. Access to this self is associated with resilience, mental clarity, embodiment, compassion, and change for the better. Incorporating methods from Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) and Internal Family Systems (IFS), presenter Kristina Kyser will demonstrate the benefits of accessing core self as part of the treatment of severe trauma.
Through lecture and video illustrations of sessions, Kristina will track the steps involved in accessing core self. Attention will be paid to intra-relational work with protective and traumatized parts, making safe and explicit use of the therapist-client attachment, working with the backlash against positive change, the importance of consent, and what core self looks, sounds, and feels like in session.
This workshop will be of interest to therapists working with trauma, whether you are already familiar with AEDP and/or IFS, or working in a different modality and considering incorporating experiential methods.
Coffee and refreshments will be served.
Payment is accepted via Paypal or email money transfer. Please fill out and submit the form below:
Kristina Kyser Registered Psychotherapist 