Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

The role of the therapeutic relationship

In AEDP, the relationship between therapist and client is central, not incidental. It is the primary medium through which healing happens.

This means I am genuinely present in the work, not a neutral screen, but a real person who is moved by what moves you, curious about what you carry, and actively engaged in creating a space where something previously impossible becomes possible.

Many people have never had the experience of being fully seen and held by another person without judgment, without agenda, without the relationship requiring something of them in return. That experience, right here, in the room, is itself healing. It begins to update what the nervous system believes is possible in relationship.

Working with emotion as transformation

AEDP draws a careful distinction between emotions that are stuck or defended, the anxiety, the shame, the numbness that keeps deeper feeling at bay, and the core emotions underneath: grief, anger, fear, joy, love. When core emotions are given enough safety and presence to be fully experienced rather than managed, they move. They complete. And they leave something different in their wake.

AEDP also works with what it calls transformational experience, the feeling of something shifting, opening, settling. The moment when a long-held tension releases. The unexpected lightness after grief moves through. These experiences are tracked carefully and deepened deliberately, because they are where lasting change lives.

What AEDP can help with

Trauma & complex trauma: working with what is held in the body and nervous system, at a pace that feels safe

Anxiety & chronic disconnection: reaching what lives beneath the defenses

Depression & emotional numbness: reconnecting with the aliveness that has gone quiet

Attachment wounds: experiencing something genuinely different in relationship, which begins to change what feels possible

Grief & loss: creating space for emotions that have been waiting to move

Shame & self-worth: meeting the most vulnerable parts with genuine compassion rather than judgment

Relational difficulties: understanding and shifting the patterns that play out in intimacy

Feeling stuck despite previous therapy: AEDP often reaches what other approaches have not

What sessions feel like

AEDP sessions are active and present-focused. We work with what is happening right now, in the body, in the room, in the relationship between us. I follow the emotional thread closely, slowing down when something important is emerging, staying with what is alive rather than moving past it.

There is gentleness in this work. And there is also real depth. People often find that things they have carried for years begin to shift in ways that feel surprising, not because they have been pushed, but because they have finally been met.

Sessions include moments of reflection on what is happening, metaprocessing, in AEDP's language, where we notice together what has shifted, what has opened, what the experience of healing itself feels like. This attention to transformation deepens and consolidates it.

My training & approach

I am trained in AEDP and bring it into integration with IFS, somatic approaches, attachment theory, and psychodynamic work. In practice, this means the work is always shaped by what you need, by what is alive in the room and what your system is ready for.

AEDP's orientation toward healing rather than pathology, toward the relationship as medicine, toward emotion as transformation, runs through everything I do, regardless of which specific modality is most present in a given session.

Something worth knowing

AEDP was developed for people who have been through a great deal, and also for people who sense there is more available to them than what they have been able to access. It is hopeful work. Not naively so, but because the evidence, clinical and experiential, is that human beings are genuinely capable of healing, of changing, of experiencing their lives differently. That possibility is what this work is oriented toward, in every session.

Format & availability

AEDP therapy is offered online across New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Sessions are 50–60 minutes. AEDP can be the primary approach of our work together or woven into an integrative frame depending on what fits you best.