Podcasts about aedp institute

This week, Kirsty speaks with Karen Pando-Mars, MFT, founder of the Sandtray Network, Senior Faculty at the AEDP Institute, about her new book, co-authored by Diana Fosha, "Tailoring Treatment to Attachment Patterns."   Show Notes:  Karen's Socials: Instagram: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/4ee83593/3Jtwd8KpbUeV7oyAckZqJw?u=https://www.instagram.com/karenpandomars/ Facebook: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/0e1938b3/2ODU15VKUECxCrMhfdLF_Q?u=https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570004499134 LinkedIn: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/1789c66e/2ieOykpph060LobTliDkJQ?u=https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-pando-mars-3b673624/   AEDP's Socials:  Instagram: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/566bd07b/sX48N5NZiEqZVJ-ZBZyExA?u=https://www.instagram.com/aedpinstitute/ Facebook: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/1223fd69/048yVbeI606RV2_kXg50IA?u=https://www.facebook.com/AEDPInstitute LinkedIn: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/617ee07b/GGXLBBiNtEaSNvy7vfUgWQ?u=https://www.linkedin.com/company/aedp/   Norton Mental Health Socials: Instagram: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/e7064f94/q2x4dzlJ3Uy4JiZnzr0I0Q?u=https://www.instagram.com/norton.mentalhealth/ Facebook: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/d58a48c3/rPbzjyZoNUaaAyR9C4bnkQ?u=https://www.facebook.com/NortonMentalHealth/ YouTube: https://link.edgepilot.com/s/5a6120a4/FfjlobHwUk6oxSlz9gJIgA?u=https://www.youtube.com/@NortonMentalHealth   https://www.attachmenttheoryinaction.com/  https://www.tkcchaddock.org/events/atiawebinar/  https://shop.tkcchaddock.org/  https://www.facebook.com/share/g/19Xm5Nhk2K/  https://www.facebook.com/TKCChaddock https://www.linkedin.com/company/tkcchaddock/posts/?feedView=all https://www.instagram.com/tkcchaddock https://www.facebook.com/krugglesatchaddock https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstynolan84/

To support the podcast make your donation here: https://gofund.me/99e09b6b Dr. Shapiro is a clinical psychologist who maintains a full-time private practice in suburban Philadelphia and has over twenty-five years of clinical and teaching experience. Dr. Shapiro conducts training of psychotherapists internationally. His instruction is often commended for translating complex clinical theory into clear, precise, and practical techniques which are easily understandable and readily applied immediately and deliberately in clinical settings by therapists of all orientations. For 16 years, Dr. Shapiro was the Director of Psychology and Education at Montgomery County Emergency Service (MCES), an emergency psychiatric hospital, where he worked with a range of severe disorders and those committed involuntarily to treatment. This intensive experience has helped inform his approach to transforming resistance with challenging patients who have a history of trauma, a high degree of resistance, or excessive anxiety and dysregulation. He is a founding member and currently an adjunct faculty member of the AEDP Institute in New York City. Being Human and Doing Psychotherapy is a podcast that portraits the human in psychotherapists and the psychotherapist present in all of us. Whatever profession we pursue, we first enter it with humanity and the fullness of the whole being. Through this podcast, I curiously explore what the “secret ingredients” of various psychotherapeutic directions are and how they integrate through the specific life and human stories of the therapists who practice and live them. I hope this conversation brings something new in your perception and knowledge on this topic. If you like what you hear please share, like and subscribe so these stories can reach more people.⁠ Connect with Being and Doing by clicking on the link of your interest: Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/being_and_doing This podcast represents my own and my guests views and opinions. The content here should not be taken as medical, financial or any other advice. The content is for informational purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult the appropriate professional for any specific questions you have. Thank you for joining me on this journey

My latest #ReRooted podcast on Be Here Now Network is out! Diana Fosha PH.D. of AEDP Institute https://beherenownetwork.com/francesca-maxime-rerooted-ep-4-diana-fosha/ Therapist Diana Fosha visits the ReRooted Podcast for a conversation about innovative methods for healing trauma. Diana Fosha, Ph.D., is the developer of AEDP, a healing-based, transformation-oriented model of psychotherapeutic treatment, and is the Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute. She has been on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of NYU and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Medical Centers (now Mount Sinai) in NYC, and of the doctoral programs in clinical psychology at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies and The City University of New York. Learn more about Diana’s AEDP method at aedpinstitute.org The Healing is Always There Diana discusses the principals of her AEDP method of therapy and trauma recovery. She and Francesca discuss AEDP’s emphasis on the relational connection between the therapist and the client. “I think this is something that is so fundamental to AEDP and to how I work, that the healing is there. It is about engaging it and bringing it forth. Getting it to engage with that that is broken. It is not like we are broken and, at the end, we are healed. It is like the two are side-by-side.” – Diana Fosha Explore healing from a different perspective with Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Oren Jay Sofer on Ep. 86 of the Metta Hour Podcast Existing in the Heart and Mind of an Other (14:30) How can a deep relational connection low our defenses and allow us to heal from trauma? Diana shares how recognizing another for who they really are can open them to this kind of healing. “Sometimes the small things, little details, can provoke a profound sense of, ‘Oh, I exist for you. Feeling seen and cared about in those terms is just huge – people just melt.” – Diana Fosha No Longer Lost (40:00) Francesca and Diana discuss the breakthroughs that occur during therapy and spiritual practice which awaken a person to a deeper understanding of themselves. They discuss the life-changing shift that is inevitable once someone realizes their potential for positive transformation.

Thank you to this episode's sponsor, TherapyNotes. Get a 2-month free trial of TherapyNotes by going to www.TherapyNotes.com and using the promo code TherapyChat.  Welcome back to Therapy Chat! In today's episode, host Laura Reagan speaks with Dr. Eileen Russell about her book Restoring Resilience: Discovering Your Clients' Capacity for Healing.   Eileen Russell is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City and Montclair, NJ. She is author of a book on resilience and affective-experiential psychotherapy called, Restoring Resilience: Discovering Your Clients’ Capacity for Healing, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in June 2015.  Eileen is Senior Faculty at and founding member of the AEDP Institute through which she teaches and supervises psychotherapists who are learning Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. She is also on the Faculty of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies’ (NIP) Integrative Trauma Program. She is generally interested in integrative approaches to psychotherapy particularly those that emphasize psychodynamic and experiential models and has also studied and practices EMDR and Gendlin’s Focusing. She believes the most effective psychotherapies combine depth with the power of a focus on the positive, change processes and resilience. She has taught and trained people in AEDP nationally and internationally and is happy to speak about it to anyone who is interested.  Eileen’s research and writing interests include the development of AEDP theory and practice, resilience, positive psychology and psychodynamic practice, and spirituality in psychotherapy, and most recently, psychology and social responsibility. She is a big believer in balance and finding time and space for contemplation, being present, and hanging out with her family.  Resources  https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=16667   https://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Resilience-Discovering-Clients-Capacity-ebook/dp/B00YWZ30Y2   Are you a therapist needing support to sharpen your clinical skills in working with trauma survivors? Want to work with Laura for clinical consultation? Get in touch via laura@bahealing.com. Or if you're interested in joining an upcoming online or in person clinical consultation group, go here to sign up on the interest list!  Please let us know what you'd like to learn more from Laura by completing this short survey!  Want a cool Therapy Chat t-shirt, sticker or mug? Find them here: https://www.teepublic.com/user/therapychat  Please consider supporting Therapy Chat by becoming a member on Patreon! Just $1 a month would make a huge impact to keep Therapy Chat going strong! To learn more head to - https://patreon.com/TherapyChat where members get special perks and swag too!  Leave me a message via Speakpipe by going to https://therapychatpodcast.com and clicking on the green Speakpipe button.  Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat! Please be sure to go to iTunes and leave a rating and review, subscribe and download episodes. You can also download the Therapy Chat app on iTunes by clicking here.  Podcast produced by Pete Bailey - https://petebailey.net/audio 

How do you actually heal old attachment wounds in partnership - so you can create passionate, secure attachment with your partner? Today you’ll learn how to connect with your partner powerfully, in the present moment, to rewire your brain, break unhealthy patterns, and find the joy and wonder that’s waiting for you just below the surface. Our guest today is Dr. David Mars, the creator of AEDP for Couples. He specializes in helping couples heal attachment wounds and traumas, find each other again in the present, and create a joyful, passionate vision for their future together. His work can help you if you’re in a new relationship, or if you’ve been with your partner for 30 years. David integrates more than 30 years of experience as a couples therapist with today’s cutting edge neuroscience - and you’ll see exactly how that allows you to get into really deep touch with your own experience, with your partner’s experience - and how to bridge the gap between you. I’m so excited for you to experience David Mars’s work, and to see how AEDP for Couples can offer you something new in how you show up in your relationship! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Visit David Mars’s website to learn more about his work and therapist trainings. If you’re in a relationship and interested in experiencing David Mars’s work, visit https://www.aedpforcouplestherapy.com/ Check out David’s AEDP for Couples' Training DVDs. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/mars to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Mars. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. It's been my mission to bring to you the most powerful healing modalities, the most powerful ways for you to find yourself in a deeper state of connection, with the people in your life that you're closest to. And of course, this can travel into all aspects of your life, but nowhere is it more important than with our partners, our spouses, our beloveds. And so it's been really important to me, not only to bring you what I consider to be the best of the best, but to also be uncovering new avenues that we haven't explored yet, because as fun as it is to have John Gottman on the show over and over again, he's a pretty cool guy, at the same time, there are so many modalities available to us that are effective and powerful. Neil Sattin: And you may have heard my episode fairly recently with Diana Fosha, which was all focused on AEDP, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. And even though that's a mouthful, in its most basic form, it's about helping us heal the attachment wounds and traumas, the things that get in the way of us having the richest experience of life that we could possibly be having. It's important stuff. And of course, my goal for you is that you can not only access that, but that you can also bring it to your relationship. Neil Sattin: So you get to overcome what it's like, not only to feel alone in you sometimes in some challenging experiences, but also what it can be like to feel alone as a couple, or alone in your couple. How do you bring connectedness in a powerful way to your experience of being with each other, in a way that deepens and leaves you feeling safer, more connected, more passionate, etcetera? So in order to dive more deeply into this topic, today we have an amazing guest with us, his name is David Mars and he is the creator of AEDP For Couples. Neil Sattin: So it is the application of this work for therapists, in... So in a therapeutic setting, towards bringing couples into deeper connection with each other, and bridging the gaps of disconnect, bringing them into a more of a sense of peace and justice with each other, and also how they enter the new phase of their life, like that new phase that happens after the work that they do together, so that it can really be a powerful send-off into this new phase. And in preparing for this conversation, I've had the honor of being able to watch David work with couples, and it has been amazingly powerful. Neil Sattin: So I'm really excited for you to be able to experience him here with me today and to get more of a sense of how this approach to healing some of our deepest wounds can actually be this amazing, life-giving, joyful, burst of experience that you can then bring into your relationship. That might sound like a lot for an hour-long conversation but I'm pretty sure we'll get close. So as usual, we will have a detailed transcript of this conversation, and in order to download that, you can visit neilsattin.com/mars, M-A-R-S, as in David, Mars, today's guest. Or, as always, you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. I think that's it. So David Mars, welcome to Relationship Alive, and thank you so much for joining us today. David Mars: Thank you so much, Neil. I'm so touched by your introduction. And I'm just so aware of your dedication to watching all four of these three DVD sets of video training, and just so happy to have this honor of talking with you and with our audience as well. Neil Sattin: Well, it's great to be here, and I appreciate your generosity in giving me access to your work. And as people who are regular listeners of this show have hopefully come to know, it's so important to me to be able to have that level of familiarity so that we can dive more deeply. And otherwise, we could talk for an hour about how you came to be an AEDP therapist, but I want to go more deeply into what you do, in ways that also are in the context of other conversations that we've had here on the show. So for example, we spoke to Diana, so you don't need to give us the full run-down on AEDP. We may do... David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: A little bit of that just to bring people up to speed. But if you're watching or listening to this, then I invite you to also check out the interview with Diana Fosha, which is really powerful, and where this, the AEDP, part of the work originates. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: And David, you mentioned to me that you were a couples therapist for 30 years before coming into the AEDP realm. David Mars: Yeah. Yes. Starting in 1975. So it's 43 years. It's hard to believe [chuckle] but that's true. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's amazing and let's just say that I was one-year-old when you first started. [laughter] David Mars: I should say that my beginnings with psychotherapy and couple therapy were really also working with families and with the groups, and it's a lot of aspects of work that was beyond couples alone. But the couple therapy has always been my strongest affiliation and connection, and my favorite work to do, partly because it's so darn difficult to do well, so it keeps me growing through these four and a third decades and continuing in my personal relationship also with my wife of 35 years, it's so wonderful to be with her and to see how what I learn and she learns because she co-teaches the work with me. Karen Pando-Mars and I teach together and being married together with a 19-year-old daughter and a 46-year-old daughter, from a previous marriage, really gives me a sense of the meaning, a deep meaning of how it is to be alive, how it is to have love be a guiding force and a guiding principle for how to be making decisions and how to exist even in conversation. Neil Sattin: So David you were saying that you have been in, you've been a couples therapist for 30 years, and I'm curious for you, in terms of, as we think about the landscape of what's possible in the couple's world, what was it like for you, even having been a therapist for 30 years to discover AEDP and just can you give us a glimpse of what that brought to you and what that's brought to the way that you've seen your work unfold with couples? David Mars: Yeah, I want to give a little context. In the decades before finding AEDP, which was 13 years ago, that I came to AEDP, I had done work that was very related to AEDP in process work through Arnold Mindell, and in respiratory psychophysiology, meaning the knowledge of how the breathing and the body co-relate and I would... For two decades plus would use monitoring equipment, computerized and very accurate monitoring equipment to look at breathing, heart rate, hand warming, muscle tension etcetera of the couples that I worked with, so that I could see how they're being affected by each other, but even more important, they could see how they were affecting each other, and realize that, for example, if I'm a man who speaks to his heterosexual wife in a way that's very firm and strong and sharp and clear and as expected of me at work, but when I see that her hand temperature drops her breathing rate increases. Her heart rate increases and becomes more agitated. David Mars: And I find out that, wow, that's strong masculine... How I'm speaking actually turns her off rather than on, [chuckle] except for stress arousal gets turned on. But not her closeness to me, if I'm that man, I can learn to speak more kindly and softly and firmly in a way that's more meaningful and sourced by my own experience rather than my judgments, very powerful. And in these decades that I'd worked before finding AEDP, I also was very much oriented toward positivity and would have to be kind of apologizing sometimes because people would find that over the decades, that positivity wasn't really regarded yet as being optimal for psychotherapy. David Mars: Many people felt that going darker, going more into the harsher aspect of life or a scream therapy or whatever it would be [chuckle] in the 80s, for example, or 70s, was really more important than the attending to love, to kindness, the feeling of really modulating harsh impulses and speaking even when angry, about what is really meaningful, what you really want to be understood about where I don't take my "Hurt" and hurt someone else with it, but rather maybe choose a more vulnerable side of feeling sad which is a part of hurt, feeling sad that I'm hurt and angry that I got hurt, but I go with sorrow, then the partner is much more likely to come close to me. David Mars: So, that preceded AEDP. What was different with AEDP, in 2005 for me was that in meeting Diana Fosha, within the first 20 minutes of her presentation, I knew I wanted to study with her. And work with her and come to New York and get trained by her and by the morning break... David Mars: I decided on that first morning break to come to New York and study with her, with my wife Karen Pando-Mars, and in going to New York, I found that I was able to share video of my work even during the first five-day training called an immersion course, and had that thrill of experiencing the cohesion of how I'd been working with AEDP, but also the organization of AEDP's scientific principles, the effect of neuroscience in particular, the understanding about attachment research which has been immense in my life since, to understand how attachment research informs me, and helps me as a person and as a therapist, and also Diana as a person, her remarkable intellect and, genius really, and kindness and humbleness, an odd package to find in a person, [chuckle] and it was so inspiring to me, that within a few years of study and intense work, I was able to become a faculty. I guess it was four years or so, of really intensive study and supervision with Diana. David Mars: And so the quality of, the felt experience of love that I already started with, got more deepened by understanding how the work of AEDP, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, holds out for individuals and then transfer that understanding into the couple work and adding to it my own background in bio-feedback and understanding how the heart, and breath, and mind correlate with each other, and how we can enhance that loving vibe, which is literally a pulse wave from the heart that can be felt, that that power is so gratifying to be part of an institution. The AEDP Institute in New York is so moving to be a part of. All the people in it, the 24 faculty plus Diana, are so resonant with the values that I hold, it's quite, quite a joy. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I mean, if you get the sense of like... I was watching these DVDs of you working, and found myself moved, moved to tears so many times and laughing and, or accessing even in a really sorrowful moment, we'll talk about this in a minute. But, so tapped into my own experience that I would be starting to cry and then, I'd notice "Oh my goodness. The person in the video is also on the verge of tears right now." David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: So it's all about developing that. And so this is just watching DVDs. So imagine the power of bringing that into how couples really learn to experience each other. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: So it's not like glimpsing that level of positive effect, but also living there. David Mars: Yeah, I so agree with you. And I just saw a couple last night, for example, where the couple came in with the dynamic actually, like the one I described, of the harsh speaking pattern in the male in this heterosexual couple, and the woman being quite well-meaning, quite dear, very sensitive, and not used to being talked to harshly. And how she was raised, for her it's shocking to be disrespected, but for him, he grew up with a lot of disrespect, and a lot of challenging behavior from his elder brothers, and lack of protection by the parents, so for him, harshness, is part of a defense structure that is survival-based, and as he lets go of it and becomes kinder and loving with her... David Mars: I was able to say to the couple, "You know I just see how much progress you're making between sessions, how many great examples you've given me today of how I see you becoming more loving with your wife, and she's responding so warmly. My thought is, let's just shorten the session today, I could see you doing the work in between sessions, and you can see this recording of the session and rehearse it at home," And he said, "I'm so glad because I'm exhausted, I would love to go home early." [chuckle] It's a very unusual situation of knowing their work is between sessions right now. David Mars: With their two-year-old son, and that's a joy from me, that that work comes home, and shows up in the next session, as evidence of the work, really, I mean, part of the natural lived life of this couple. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's an interesting feature of your work. And my understanding is that obviously, it's not a requirement for couples to have their work with an AEDP for couples therapist videotaped, but that is something that you do encourage as... And it gives them the opportunity to see themselves... David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: In these, sometimes less than ideal states with each other. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: And also to witness their transformation moments and... David Mars: Yes, absolutely. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that seems really powerful for the couples that choose to do that, and choose to watch the videos that are taken. David Mars: Yup, yeah. It is true that in the therapists that I supervise and train, most do not videotape all their couples. But all videotaped some of their couples, a couple, so they can get trained. And for me, I videotape all the work that I do, and I'm so joyful that my couples that call, I let them know over the phone, that's how I work. And for me, my first experience of video being used with me was in 1970, and I got to see myself several times a week, on video as part of my undergraduate training interacting with others, trying to solve problems and seeing how my brilliant idea when expressed in a certain way, would shut down the conversation. In another way, I could be more humble and come forward in a more soft way, a more relational way that would bring the conversation up, and all of us would rise together, like the tide rises, lifts all boats. David Mars: So, I got to see in 1970, how that is, had that blessing. So for now, all the way from to then, I have this continuous relationship to video as a way to enhance learning, into how people understand, how the reflective function can increase, and the capacity to reflect on oneself accurately is a direct relationship to secure attachment and developing more earned secure attachment. If I know actually how I am being, and I'm aware of myself, I can be aware of you, and by being aware of you and me together, I can become more attuned, and this attunement is so precious because, without it, it's like driving a car around with newspaper glued over all the windows, not knowing where one is going. It's so important. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that reminds me of really learning any skill, and the process of myelination, and how important it is to slow things down in order to get to a new place. And I think particularly around self-reflection, that's something that, it's not easy to, a lot of us don't learn that as we grow up. So I can see that video-ing, process as a way of actually slowing down the circuit, and bringing people into that cycle of self-reflection in a way that would eventually accelerate and become just part of how you operate, from practicing it that way. David Mars: Yup thank you for that. In attachment research, it's very clear that when babies are reflected by their mothers or their fathers, and they are shown that they exist and are recognized in a harmonious way that's reciprocal, that goes back and forth and it's contingent, where the baby's response and the loving parent's response are in harmony with each other, and there's a conversation called the proto-conversation before speech, that baby learns, "I am safe, I am loved, I am delightful, and I'm with delightful people who delight in me being delightful." It teaches that love is a guide, as opposed to fear being the guide, and it's a powerful, powerful example of reflection. David Mars: I'm going to mention something else, Neil, that you mentioned about a couple seeing themselves when they're in these regulated states and realizing how they unconsciously and habitually, they drive their partner away rather than bring their partner closer. What I also really enjoy, is couples seeing each other in love. Pinking cheeks, reddening lips, eyes becoming more vivid in color, bright like shining light, and seeing the light in each other and the love in each other and learning to enjoy love. For many people, love was not something that they had joy with. It's loved mixed with fear, love mixed with danger, love mix with avoidance and dissociation. And so to find that love is safe to soak in, safe to send and receive, and visualize it on the video, visualize it and see more clearly how I can see love in my partner, and feel love for my partner by choice. These are immense, immense powers to possess and to cultivate. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I noticed over and over again as I was watching your work, the refinement with which you were able to notice what was happening in a couple, and then to draw their attention both the person who may be having the experience to, their own experience that they were having, and then to bring their partner in, to invite them into the experience. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: In a way that kept them in dyad with each other. David Mars: Yup. Neil Sattin: Can you talk about that part of your process and why that's so important? David Mars: I'm having such an experience of delight that you've seen these videos, and they're so dear to me, I've seen them so many times in the process, [chuckle] of doing them, creating the workshops etcetera. For me, there's something of great, great delight in being a bridge of consciousness, somatic consciousness, and to see the best in people, and reflect the best of them back to them, and for them to see, hear, feel, sense, even knowing their own movement, that they are vehicles of love when they want to be, with increasing skill, with increasing pride, because it is such a deep deep shame for people and deep sorrow to feel not competent to love. David Mars: It's such a feeling of loss, that I can feel I'm speaking of it. And to be able to love, to be able to be loving, and to be lovable, being loveable, is a skill that many, many people did not learn to do. Survival is not enough in my point of view, and thriving in this world to me, actually, it really requires people to love and be loved. And that's really, I think one of the core elements of how I can help couples to see the best in each other, and to see the moment of a smile before the frown appears to cover it, and just to be there as an open channel for the couples to see, and hear, and feel, and sense each other more vividly in each session. Neil Sattin: Now, if I'm listening, then the question that comes up for me is, "Okay, but how do you address problems then if you're so focused on finding the goodness," I mean the goodness sounds great. Yeah, sure, right. So if you're having this kind of question, maybe one thing to ask yourself is, how open are you to the experience of love, like David was just talking about? And at the same time... Yeah, because people come in right with big, big stuff. "You cheated on me, you're always negative, you're... " right? David Mars: Absolutely. One of the parts I really enjoy about couple therapy is the challenge of having a couple come in, who already is coming in with a dryness, with an anger, with a revenge impulse, with feelings of bitterness, hopelessness, deep, deep, deep even rage, about, let's say, betrayal. And the challenge for me as a therapist, to find the sweet spot with them, in the first question I ask them, which is, "What do you want with each other?" David Mars: What do you want to develop with each other, not for each other or to get from each other? What do you want with each other to experience, should this therapy be successful? And the couple might say I just came in, we have just came in from an argument. I can't think about that right now. I said well I understand this is a transition that's difficult to make. I do see this intention between you, but all the more reason in this therapy, to choose to remember what you want with each other. Because that's our purpose in being. We can certainly talk about what happened in the car before you came into the waiting area. But I would rather have you approach that in a place of loving each other and valuing each other and feeling that you are worth working this through to each other. And from this place we can do great things, working out your conflicts, but only from this place of love can we do it successfully. Neil Sattin: So you're grounding them in that sense of, why are we here? And if this could work, what would we want with each other. And how would you help someone who, for instance, is really landing in a sense of, "Wow, I'm struggling. I'm struggling to even want to answer that question for you". David Mars: Right, so in that case, I might say. I wonder there's a part of you that wants to want to know what you want with your partner and find that part of you that wants to want to be close to her, and just to suspend for the time being the doubting part of you, or the angry part of you that is here. I understand that's a real part of you, but for the time being, to practice a mindful choice to occupy the place of choosing her, just to take the moment. Now, if you will please just see her right now. As you see your partner, "What do you love about her? Just set aside all the rest, just find that 10% of you maybe that really is willing to do this and occupy this part of you". Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: What would I find Neil is that it may be almost unbelievable to imagine people can do this the first session, but it is true. I have video to show it. What I have permission to teach from videos, is very clear that people can choose love over revenge and love over aggravation or love over dissociation because they want to, they get better and better at it. Yes, more, more complete at it, yes. David Mars: Some people can get out one phrase of what they love about their partner, what they want with their partner, and the next Non sequitur is what they're mad at them about. I just need to say, "Wait wait wait, so that lasted 20 seconds. On the positive side, please would you go another minute, just stretch to go a minute of being positive with your partner what you want with your partner. Just one minute." And they go another 14 seconds, another complaint, and I say, "Wow okay, 14 more seconds we're now 34 seconds in, see if you can go another 26 seconds and just be with this that you really want something with your partner, and just hang in." And I'm smiling when I'm saying this, I'm really getting how difficult it is, particularly in contentious couples who come often, at least one of them comes from argumentative family systems. Where learning to argue and have conflict was a skill. And to set it aside, you could hear the armor clinking on the floor, to release that armor is scary, it's downright, terrifying. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And what I love about what you're offering is the way that love and tapping into that energy gives people the strength, and safety to then visit harder places. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Because I definitely saw that in your work, that there were times when one member of a couple would get to this really vulnerable place and offering something and then the other person just like... And as you're watching it, you're like, "What do you think is going to happen right now?" And of course what happens is it's like, is that love received? No, it's met with some harshness, or disbelief or doubt. And something that I'm curious about is your ability to hold the love and the vulnerability that one person offers and I think this is a valuable skill as a therapist, and also in relationship to be able to... Neil Sattin: For instance, hold that you're offering something that's vulnerable, and at the same time to be met with a no from your partner, a refusal, and to allow them that experience without it necessarily sending you into a shame spiral or a dorsal vagal response. So yeah. How do you hold that dynamic as a therapist? Because I was impressed by how powerful it was to honor, like, it's okay that you're resisting this love right now, I'm not going to force you to accept it. David Mars: Absolutely. Neil Sattin: In this environment, even though that, it's probably what you think. I want you to do... David Mars: Exactly. That's very well put, Neil. Yeah, it isn't about compliance, it isn't about love your partner because I'm saying you should. It's much more really to remember for example in the... That volume one volume two from New Jersey the 30-year marriage DVD set that is a two-part set, when Joanne is refusing Mike's overtures to being loving and at a point, she says I've had 30 years of difficulties with you. I am not going to simply just collapse with my upset with you just because you're nice to me in this session, I'm not, I'm still mad at you. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: And I have a right to be, and I'm not going to... I'm not going to just set it aside. I'm really, really hurt and lonely. And you haven't gotten it, and I want you to get it. Of course, the way she does it, puts him into dorsal vagal again, but I just love that her assertion is so clearly based in her sense of her rights to be a person who has truth with self as the first prerogative beyond behaving herself with a partner and complying with me or her husband and her ferocity I think is really an essential response to being deprived of having rights all through her life growing up. Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: So, it was such a... She taught me something there in that. Because it went on. [chuckle] It was like a 13-session series of sessions. It wasn't a super long treatment, but it was one that sometimes felt long to me because the setbacks were almost every session. There would be some part of her that just needed to be mean to him and, thump him one, not physically, but with contempt. And I would just go, wow, okay. [chuckle] Ouch. That actually hurts from over here. And that kind of transparent response that often bring humor to her. She said, "Oh that was really sharp. I don't want to be that aggressive 16-year-old right now, I'm sorry". And she'd apologize to him sometimes. It's that subpart of self that really wasn't quite in her conscious knowing, that would sometimes reach out and do something of an ouch to him. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. David Mars: In the sweetest, most vulnerable moments. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. So much here to unpack, first I love that you incorporate that notion of multiplicity and parts that are operating. We've had Dick Schwartz on the show to talk about internal family systems and also Toni Herbine-Blank, which is her incorporation of that into couples work. So I find that to be so helpful in people being able to give a voice to the more challenging aspects of their experience, but in a way that keeps a healthy distance from it, while at the same time honoring it, so that they are not becoming it. So I love that you've incorporated that into your work. And I also just want to give some context, to everyone who's watching and listening to that... So David is talking about this two-part DVD set so it's actually six DVDs that are this couple's Conference and in it they show video of David working with a couple, and this couple had been together for 30 years and they were on the brink, the woman partner had had enough, she was done with things being the way they were, and so... Neil Sattin: And I often get emails from listeners like I've been married for 30 years. Is there any hope for me? I think I literally got that email, like three days ago. So one, yes, there is hope for you. And then we get to watch over the course of 15 sessions how they progress together. So it's not like an instant fix and it's also not an un-enduring length of time that it took for them to achieve a lot of progress as a couple. David Mars: Yeah. Neil Sattin: So, just setting some context. The DVDs are amazing. And if you're a therapist or a healer, that immersing yourself in the approach like that is one way that I think would be super helpful for you. David Mars: Can I add something to this Neil? Neil Sattin: Please yeah. David Mars: I'm thinking about how Joanne and Mike, and they had given me permission to use their first names. Neil Sattin: Great. David Mars: In discussing their work, they're very, very joyful about being of service in the world. So that their couple experience can inspire other couples to grow and develop past traumatic ways of interacting and deadening ways of interaction, to ones that are really truly conscious and enhancing. And the couple was on stage with me, and in the... In showing their videos. So they were being interacted with the audience of about 100 therapists in using language, I-language like I use with them, like they use with each other, with the channels of experience, which are sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, visual, and imaginal and using these seven channels along with I-language. They can communicate about their internal experience, what's moving in them, what they sense in their bodies, what emotions are coming up, what kind of energetic experience they're having. David Mars: And the intimacy of that speech with the audience of 100 therapists gets combined when the therapists are also speaking level, not speaking and pontificating, giving ideas or advice but are actually being moved and speaking from their own experience of their own hope that's being opened in them by Joanne and Mike and speaking from that hope and that joy and that honoring of Joanne and Mike for their struggle and for their breakthroughs, and for their being present with us. They flew all the way from San Francisco Bay Area to New Jersey to be there at that conference, and [chuckle] it's just quite a statement of their dedication to wanting to transform. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. Joanne, just to revisit something, we were talking about a moment ago, she mentions that one of the most powerful moments for her to witness was the moment where you... To say called her out isn't really exactly the right phrase, probably, but you highlighted how she was coming at Mike in a very cutting way and the beautiful way you said it, it was something like, "Are you perhaps mocking him right now?" but you said it in a way that wasn't at all talking down to her, it was just like, I'm inviting you to ponder, was that maybe mocking him? And she spoke to just the impact of, "Oh my goodness! Right, I am doing that. And that is, as you mentioned, not what I want to be doing." David Mars: Yeah, that's huge, that's huge. And I love this part about tapping in the middle of my forehead, the orbitofrontal cortex, the third eye in more mystical traditions. The orbitofrontal cortex is the senior executive that chooses how to be relational, how to be conscious or it can lay relatively dormant. [laughter] David Mars: If we're really actively choosing our partners in an atmosphere of love, choosing to want to be with them or even to want to want to be with them, as I mentioned earlier, to find the parts of us that are really open to moving away from argumentation and toward really saying, "What do we want to be understood?" As opposed to going for revenge or for an impact, to go instead for understanding is a major, major shift in consciousness and is an invitation to be recognized for the depth of what one wants to say and to bring the partner closer, even though it could be in the context of conflict. It does not have to be in the context of conflict, because I can speak about the part of me that wants the closeness. David Mars: I can also say how I feel saddened that I'm not reaching that, and particularly for a male in this world that I live in, to be soft, the one that I grew up in, in my family it was not such a wise strategy. To be tough, to be resistant rather than resilient, a lot of what I learned, and now in these many years, decades really of practice, how to be soft and responsive, is such a joy in marital relating, because it's so conducive to being understood. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. For me, what comes up is this vision of true responsiveness. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Like the more... What I particularly love of the many things in AEDP for couples is, how you're bringing people more and more online into their present moment experience and all the different channels, you just named the different channels of experience, we can maybe talk about that a little bit more. David Mars: Sure. Neil Sattin: But as a way of enhancing how you show up in the moment. So when you say softness, what I feel is my own like, "Oh yeah. It allows me to take in the world, to take in my partner." David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: And to not be bowled over by it, but also to really respond to it. I don't have to push back at it, I don't have to react to it, I don't have to shut down typical fight-flight responses. I don't have to do that because I'm learning how to feel that in the moment. David Mars: Yup. I like that. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I wonder if you could give... Just because I'm noticing we've been talking a little while without naming... I would love to hear from you what you feel are the unique features of AEDP for couples and how people learn to experience each other, and how therapists learned to work with couples and bridge, be a bridge of consciousness, as you were mentioning earlier. David Mars: Sure, yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. I want to spring from what I heard you just saying about when a person knows they don't have to do anything, they're not required to do anything, but it's simply a choice. That's the key to me about AEDP for couples, it's about choosing, about the freedom, the liberty, the liberation from feeling constrained. I must do something for you. For many people already brings up resentment and a hardening inside, to submit one's own wishes to do the wishes and biddings of another. Part of the control struggle that is phase two in marriage. First stage, falling apart... [chuckle] into love, kind of disassembling into love, merging into love, being, kind of losing our senses into love. For many of us, it is how we fell in love, not all, but for many. And that merger state moves into the next state, which is control phase. Who's in control? David Mars: Who's driving this bus? "It's me." "No. It's me. I drive the kids and you drive at work." How do we actually have a life with two steering wheels in the vehicle and not have it be a battle? There's something about the quality that for me is in AEDP for couples, that is symbolized by a marriage ritual where there are three candles and that the two lit candles are the candles that represent each of the couple members, be they same-sex or heterosexual, and they come forward and they light together. The middle candle represents the marriage, but they don't blow out their separate candles. In some ceremonies, the individuals blow out their candles and the union is always left. David Mars: This is a major problem. It gives me chills to think about the fate of that couple that gives up their individuality to become merged into one, and for me, it's a mess that's invited, where one couple gets absorbed... One couple member gets absorbed into the other perhaps and submits to the other and the dying of the self is a tragedy that does not go well, for most couples in my experience. So when all three candles are lit, both individuals are thriving and bringing light into the world and to each other and the middle candle of their marriage is also doing this, that the children that come from that marriage can be, if there are children that come from it, can be loved and loving, and feel the joy the parents share with them as well. As part of that AEDP for couples model, that if the guiding light of love, the consciousness of love and the guiding principles of the whole body. David Mars: Mind, heart, and gut helping the couple members to discern what is right action, what is the correct and wise way to be right now with you my partner, my beloved, my chosen one? How do I be with you in a way right now because my habit right now would lead me into another direction, that I know is going off a cliff of sorts. I'm going to run into a brick wall of sorts. That habit is not my friend right now. How do I, in this moment of activation, of anxiety, of pressure, how do I find myself? Of exhaustion perhaps. How do I find myself freshly, consciously and be guided by my own body to do the un-thought known. David Mars: That's something that I haven't given thought of yet, but it suddenly springs to awareness. I can be like this with you. It's an actual creativity, and that creativity and living is so much part of how we humans, in fact, all sentient creatures can be creative, and I'm thinking about hummingbirds, for example, who are so, to me, remarkable in their durability, and resiliency to get through storms, and cold and rain and to still be there the next day at the hummingbird feeder at the Mexican sage getting sap from the flowers. How they do this is a miracle of their, to me, divine nature to be following their own guidance. They know how to raise a family, how to be directionally wise to go where it's warm, to go where there's food. David Mars: This is part of what the research of Northoff and Panksepp brought forward before Panksepp's untimely death this last year, the trans-species, neuro-biological core self, and this is a consciousness that's in living beings that is not just the high brain, but it's in some cortical areas as well, that guides us toward wise choices and it's tapping into this that AEDP for couples is specialized in, tapping into sentience and the knowing of the self, is biologically corrected and overrides early defenses and early habits that are not necessarily helpful. They're just habits. David Mars: And I want to say one more thinking about this, part of my joy is seeing couples take the best of each of their lineages, the best attributes what they learn through modeling through their parents through being raised, and surviving in that home their, true strengths, but they simply don't need to be all the space junk of everything else that their parents brought through their unresolved trauma that can be moved out of the back yard of this couple's lives and just cleaned up. It does not need to be that the replication of traumas with the couple has to endure together, but rather the healing of trauma through kind firmness. There's a clarity of mind and heart that are really dedicated to having a life that really thrives. That's really the core of AEDP for couples. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple things one like a really kinda broad concept and one like a very specific thing. The broad one being, what we spoke about in the very beginning of our conversation, that the work is about accessing those core states of being and how we bring them to each other. And along with joy and sadness is your lust and sexuality. This is the work you were just referring to and your ability to bring all of those things online is related to your ability to shed your defenses and your defensive states, not in a like laying yourself bare kind of way, but in a practicing new habits of interaction, new habits of handling big emotions, which also seems like something that AEDP and AEDP for couples is really strong at helping people with. Neil Sattin: And then the specific thing that popped into mind is, when you ask people, "How do you know that you're having this experience?" Can you talk a little bit about that question because I think it's such a lovely invitation to bring people more into their awareness and also, to combat the projection, that so often is happening. David Mars: Very well put Neil. Yes, and rather than operating by projection which is... Projection is necessary if you don't have sufficient information of what's going on and projection is not a bad thing, it's just that it's sort of inaccurate often, its approximate and often has our own stuff laced into it or it very confusing and sort of it condemns the other person if we follow projection as our way of understanding our partner, it condemns them to having our internal material put on them rather than really seeing them truly for who they are. Its very lonely to live like that. Neil Sattin: Right. David Mars: So for me, one of the beauties is when couple members have an experience of discernment. I'm noticing, oh, my gosh, my partner right now is smiling at me. I could have totally missed that had my therapist not pointed it out. She's smiling at me and I love her smile and I suddenly realize that her eyes are bright, she still has a light in her eyes even though it's just being disassociated, just that I lost track of where she was in the room even. Lost track of the fact she was actually here. And I was just talking to myself in a way and that moment of seeing more clearly in the foreground awareness that my love for her is in my heart, and I can actually feel heat in my heart. And then this is a quote from a session where the man says, "This is weird, there's heat in my heart. It's so weird." And she says, "I've been waiting for you to say that for 23 years." [laughter] David Mars: "I am so glad to hear you have heat in your heart looking at me when I'm smiling at you." And then he says, "It's actually more like warmth. It's so weird." And I could just... It brings tears to my eyes to imagine a lifetime of his life before meeting her then 23 years later, that she's still waiting for him to feel a warmth in his heart and know the warmth is real and he can trust it and therefore he can trust her and relax his defenses against her hurting him or being less than. And there's something so liberating that that moment changes everything. David Mars: Once the feeling heart isn't just a pump, is actually a heart that feels and knows that sentience of being is with him. This is not a man who studies consciousness. He's a businessman. It doesn't matter, he could be a military person, he could be a dentist, it could be a doctor, whatever it is, we all have hearts of knowing, particularly if we can train ourselves to listen to them, and hear our whole bodies how they can speak to us and get this tingling in my fingertips, I'm having right now, as I'm speaking with you, as an energetic state that relates to the excitement I feel in this conversation and that if I can relax myself a little bit and slow my speech I can feel a heart movement. David Mars: I can start to notice how my muscles can start to relax. I can start to let my excitement tone down some, so I can feel more of the sense of grounded-ness in my chair, the sensation of my chair seat and my chair back behind me and the floor beneath me, supporting me, I can feel I'm really here more grounded with you. I can begin to hear that in my voice, so the auditory channel, come online. I can feel the deeper resonance of my voice coming in. The quality of this self-reflection in this moment that is so much about the sensations, the movement, the auditory, the visual, the whole imaginal field that come alive in me when I imagine the possibility of this being heard by so many of your listeners and just there's something about that awareness and any moment for any couple member's life, any therapist's life, to know I can choose right now to get more grounded and connect more deeply with myself, simply because I want to, is a great freedom. Neil Sattin: So this is so powerful and I want to spend just a little bit more time here and the invitation for you listening or watching, if you're watching is to tune in to each of these aspects of your experience, because at any given moment, you can bring your awareness to them and that will help do what David has been talking about, to bring you more into a sense of presence with your partner and more of a knowing, "How do I know that my partner trusts me, right now, how do I know that I'm safe with them? How do I know that I'm angry? How do I know that they're angry with me because I might be interpreting something that isn't actually happening?" So and to be clear too, you use these channels of experience in a therapeutic way as well, because as a therapist being able to tune in to what's happening in your experience and the overall field experience of what's happening between you and your clients, you're able to wake up in them, all of these dimensions of their experience with each other to things that are happening in their body that they may have not even been aware of. David Mars: Yes. Thank you for that Neil. I'm aware of this two-part way, that I can interact with a couple. One is, how do you know that right now you're feeling sad, or I could even say, how do you know that the wetness on your shirt, the wetness on your cheek is saying something to you and the person literally says, "Really. Oh, right my cheek is wet right." I guess I'm sad. Oh, I am, I'm sad". And then he says to his daughter... Sorry his step-daughter, who is on a video monitor, cause it wasn't really safe for her to come into the session. Cause they had such rancorous exchanges with each other, she's on a video monitor instead, on Zoom, as we are in this session, you and I. And he says, "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I'm sad that I hurt you." David Mars: And she's so shocked because his boarding school in Britain didn't train him to be this way, the beatings that he got from age seven on taught him to never cry. And the tears are leaking out unbidden unknown until he sees them on his shirt and he feels them on his face, and suddenly it brings chills into my legs and my back to feel the power of his being able to apologize for that totally shocks his wife, that totally shocks his wife of 22 years. David Mars: Totally shocks his step-daughter and she begins to weep just weeping and he's weeping and she's weeping and her mother's weeping in this couple session with the daughter there, who's 43, and we're all with tears and the feeling of the mercy of his breakthrough based on him for seeing the tears on his shirt. Answering the question, what do the tears want to say? How can you tell what the tears want to say? And suddenly his apology comes completely out of the blue. And a man who does not apologize particularly not from the heart. I could say as him, "I'm sorry you feel that way." Which, that's not an apology. But in this case, that dearness of his true self, the true core neurobiological self of him breaks through the defenses and suddenly his face is soft, his eyes are loving and his wife and daughter get to see him. At this moment she's his daughter, not his step-daughter, she really is in this united experience that she wants to be in with him as part of family. And the reunion happens this way. It's just so touching. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I can feel that, that that is an example of how we transform in an instant. David Mars: Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. David Mars: This is very true. Neil Sattin: And can you highlight because you've gone through them quickly, but can we just spend maybe 10 seconds on each of the channels of experience so we can all really take in what they each are? David Mars: Sure. Neil Sattin: Yeah? David Mars: Yeah. So sensation right now, probably I'll just say, the sensations I can notice are a fine hum that I feel throughout the surface of my body, the sensations of the hairs of the back of my neck, the sensations of my muscles becoming more relaxed, the sensations of my vocal cords and my voice again slowing down. The sensations of resonance in my chest as I'm speaking. Neil Sattin: Great. David Mars: And the auditory channel linking with the sensations that validate that what I'm feeling in my vocal cords and in my chest vibration is related to the pitch of my voice dropping and the quality of hearing my own breath coming in, the friction of my breath is part of that auditory channel that helps me to pace myself in my breathing which is central to self-regulation as a therapist or a partner in a marriage, and the quality of the tonal, the slight raspiness of my voice, the gravely-ness of my voice, the drop in for me is part of the feeling of gratitude for the grace of being with this couple that I just spoke of from last Thursday and to think of the channel of emotion. Mad, sad, glad, scared, disgust and surprise are the six categorical emotions. David Mars: Many of us have one emotion that we specialize in that we can really access and regulate quite well. Perhaps there are other emotions that we don't do quite as well with that are very difficult for us to regulate. But to be regulated in all six emotions is part of the goal of AEDP for couples and AEDP. To be able to be with surprise for example and say, "My gosh, I was surprised you said that. And now I'm still surprised you said that and I'm still feeling the delight in surprise that I'm having this experience with you right now, Neil, I feel so joyful and so connected. David Mars: And to feel surprise is not a fleeting moment, but one that I can continue to experience again and again as a surprise of the enlightenment of moments that are so... Are so precious and dear because they are literally unbidden, they just come sometimes. And if we go on... Surprise really is one of the categorical emotions that is most often missed by therapists because it happens and comes and goes so quickly. Present tense experience of surprise can remain for a lifetime. David Mars: A surprise for example, when I'm 13 years old and I'm really asking for a sign that God exists and suddenly I feel, and see, and sense energetically I'm filled with this purple energy in my... Above my solar plexus, just between my heart and my gut, and it stays with me today at age 67. I was 13 years old, I am 13 years old in this hand dug cave and I have this energy of response and this powerful, powerful combination of imaginal seeing the purple energy, the body sensation of the energy filling my whole body as light, the body sensation throughout my body still now feeling a head to toe experience of being occupied by a sense of some deep surprise, that also is something that was so deeply longed for and wanted as a sense of validation that I'm not alone. So when we think about the emotion of this, for me, it's a combination of the gratitude and the sadness of having missed that in the previous 12 and a half years of my life, and now to feel that joy and connection with still having this as a presence. David Mars: So in terms of what we've covered now, are sensation, energy, emotion, think about movement, as I'm giving these, counting these out my fingers are involuntarily showing automatically showing a counting of four, and these movements are moved by the anterior cingulate in the brain unconsciously, but they inform what I'm saying as I move from my heart out to you the audience to be able to know I'm really wanting to come from my heart and speak, knowing that I deeply, deeply care about, about AEDP for couples and about love and the healing power of love and how hand gestures can also be involuntarily showing push away or put down, or harsh measures of threat that are unconscious, and seen by the other more clearly than by the self often. That is part of the value of tracking movement channel, to my mind its the most unconscious of all channels because it's also clearly visible that it's happening to others but maybe not to us. David Mars: So we have sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, and imaginal. Let's speak about the imaginal channel. The imaginal channel contains the other six channels. I can have imagined emotion, I can have imagined experiences of moving of being free when I'm feeling stuck and I can imagine my couple member and I being joyful, my partner Karen and I being joyful, and in that imagining of joy I bring the biochemistry of joy into my body, the oxytocin, the dopamine, the citicoline come into my body and my brain cells. All the neurons of my body are affected by the imagination of love, being pure and true, and reliable and resilient. David Mars: So for me, it's an upwelling of a combination of energetic thrill and emotional gratitude that it's possible to be 35 years into a marriage and be joyful about it and feel tears in my eyes, the sensation of tears in my eyes that we have this. Not that it's a permanent... That could be just uncultivated because marriage always has to be cultivated. In my mind, either a marriage is improving or devolving at any moment. David Mars: This is not a guarantee. Oh yeah, we're set now. There's no set part of it for me. It's a living organism. So for me that's the channels of experience. I'll just say them again sensation, emotion, energy, movement, auditory, visual, and imaginal. I didn't overtly say the visual part. I just want to mention visual channels are essential to us humans, to see eye expressions, to see facial coloration, to see markers of tension, in ourselves and others, and to be very conscious about our own peripheral vision of our movement. So I'm aware of what I'm actually signaling. It's a great gift to know what I'm actually signaling to my partner or just someone else in the grocery store, whatever, I'm actually showing myself. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Perfect, thank you for giving us the rundown, and I like too in terms of the imaginal, I love that it contains all of those, and I also find that they're such a gift often in those images that come to us. I often offer those in my coaching sessions with clients and Chloe and I, that's part of how we interact with each other, my wife. This image just came to me of blah, blah, and so often that has a really positive and deepening impact on our interaction. David Mars: Absolutely. What a transcendent function to have, to share between you and Chloe. Neil Sattin: We're lucky. David Mars: Absolutely. Neil Sattin: And we practice it, as you were just alluding to. It requires attention. David before we go, this has been such a rich conversation, I could talk to you for another hour easily cause this time has flown by. Hopefully, we will have the chance to talk again. David Mars: I hope so. Neil Sattin: First, I do have a question for you, but I'm wondering... Let's just talk about how people can find out more about your work and if they want to work with you, or if they want to train with you, what's available to then? David Mars: Well, there's a website, the Center for transformative Therapies website, which is, the URL is C-F-T-T site, so it's C-F-T-T-S-I-T-E.com, and also the AEDP Institute site, A-E-D-P Institute, both have programs and training that I'm giving. A five-day program in Cape Cod that will be happening this summer and also in July and also one in Vancouver, Canada will be happening, another five-day training in Vancouver in June, and also other workshops that I give that are local and international and ongoing that'll be on their websites. Also, I give intensives for couples that want to fly in to have a weekend intensive, and also group work. Where a group work can come together and decide they want to fly in to work with me or fly me out to work them to facilitate group work that's transformational. David Mars: And that's direct delivery to people that may want that, couples groups, for example, can fly me in or religious organizations, church organizations can fly me in. And the power of the work is so joyful to deliver because in a day or in an afternoon or two days so much can happen that really changes lives in a forward-moving way. You mentioned coaching, Neil, I'm so glad for that because it's something that's so important in the world to have this capacity, not just psychotherapy to work deeper but also coaching to work deeply. Neil Sattin: Thank you, and we will have links to your sites on the show notes for this episode, and as a reminder if you want to download the show notes and transcript you can visit NeilSattin.Com/Mars, M-A-R-S, which is David's last name, or you can text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions, and David, I'm curious, do you have time for one more question? David Mars: I do. Neil Sattin: Okay great. David Mars: I do. Neil Sattin: There are actually so many more, so it's challenging for me to pick one, but I'm curious so many couples who listen to this show, so many are married, many are not married. David Mars: Yes, yes. Neil Sattin: And I'm wondering, there's something about being married obviously that elevates our levels of commitments to each other, most of us. How do you work with couples who aren't married, and who are in that dance around, I'm not even sure... You know they could be asking the very same questions that a married couple would be asking like, "Are you the right one for me, do I still want to be in this. Wow, this is really hard, part of me has a foot out the door." Is there something extra that you bring, or that you would invite for a couple that's not hitched as a way of helping then actually stick with the work that's required in order to figure out maybe those questions that they have about each other? David Mars: Yeah, I appreciate the question. You know the DVD set called Infidelity that is about trauma treatment and a case of infidelity, was of a couple that was not married, and they are still not married. They're still very deeply connected and committed, in having a joyful experience of relating, which I just saw one of the couple members just in a restaurant just recently and she was quite radiant and very grateful for the work, which happened five years ago. We're not doing the work anymore, but it's still living in their lives. So the marriage part isn't required, but it certainly does help from my point of view for many, many of us to have a commitment of marriage, to have that knowing my partner is with me in a way that has some kind of a substance beyond our decision making unto ourselves. David Mars: And for me, a couple I'm working with now that is actually not married and they have a child and they're in the process of dissolution of their living together due to some pretty ingrained issues that are not, they're not remedying. I've only seen them twice, but they came in really this direction of unlinking with each other but keeping, of course, the responsibility of parenting. And for me it's a major joy in my life and a major piece of meaning to see that even couples who have never married can be deeply committed, even couples that have a child and who end up not continuing to be in a relationship can be loving parents of that child and can be wonderful co-parents even without living together, even without being married, but can still be in that place of that child coming up with a strong and secure attachment. If they haven't gotten that secure attachment already, they can develop that secure attachment over time by living with parents who are growing and transforming themselves. Neil Sattin: And so for a couple who's let's say, there may be a little bit more in. So they're not actually dissolving but they don't have the, we're married to rely upon. Is there something, is there a way that you invite those couples to find safety, the safety that's kind of inherent in a marriage vow, because I know, as you just mentioned, "Okay, we're in this. We got married". And divorce as common as it is hard and challenging and requires a lot to make happen. So yeah, how to deal with the paradox of safety in a relationship where they haven't spoken vows with each other. David Mars: Yeah exactly. And for me, I want to give the example of polyamory, which is funnily one of the most challenging ways to be in relationship that exists on the planet. I know many people are very keen on that. It works for them but the couples that I've known who have done that work on polyamory, it is a very, very complicated process, and for me, the safety experience is really, in many cases about how securely attached is this person to themselves? There's a recent song lyric I was listening to of an old song, "And I know you won't let me down because I have my feet so firmly on the ground". David Mars: In truth, we're all vulnerable to having our heart broken, no matter how strong we are, and it's one of the greatest agonies that can be, to have a lost love in my experience, and also in research as well, but to be able to feel the truth of one's words is real, that one's actions and one's words match to me that's part of the integrity of married or unmarried, whatever it is, that can help couples to feel truly safe and truly believable and believed is to really make sure that our actions and our words match. That our apologies are followed by corrected action, not just words that sound good, and actually a commitment to live differently. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and a commitment to be in that process of the experience of earned secure attachment with your own being, and I've seen how that even changes what people ask for in relationship. I've experienced that myself, I've seen it in others, so yes, that I think is a great way of confronting that, I'm always safe in me and then I can bring that into however complicated this situation is to try and resolve it for the better. David Mars: Yeah. Wonderful. Neil Sattin: David. It is such a treat to have you here. I really appreciate your time, your wisdom, your work. AEDP and AEDP for couples is such a powerful modality and I'm really delighted that you were able to be here, to share with us, and I hope that for those of you watching and listening, that your curiosity is peaked and you're going to seek ways out of experiencing this for yourself. But, David, I have such appreciation for your work in the world and the way that that's rippling out from here and from the other ways that you're training people and working with people, it's super powerful. David Mars: Thank you so much. What an honor to be in this conversation, with you and to be asked questions I've not been asked, before. Neil Sattin: Oh. Good. [laughter] David Mars: Yeah. It was a joy to be with you and I hope we get to speak again in another podcast another time. Neil Sattin: Great, great, we'll make that happen for sure. David Mars: Okay, bye. Bye.

Have you ever felt stuck, within yourself or within your relationship? Have you felt the effects of depression or anxiety as a result? You may know that intimacy is important - but today we’re going to show you how intimacy can help you heal your traumas and attachment injuries - so that you can get unstuck. This week, our guest is Diana Fosha, PhD, the developer of AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), a healing-based, transformation-oriented model of psychotherapeutic treatment. Diana Fosha is the Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute, and the author of The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. Diana shares how she creates intimacy in a therapeutic setting and how that intimacy and safety helps clients make huge transformations in terms of their experience of their own lives. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Our sponsor today is Audible. Audible has the largest selection of audiobooks on the planet and now, with Audible Originals, the selection has gotten even better with custom content made for members. As a special offer, Audible wants to give you a free 30-day trial and 1 free audiobook. Go to Audible.com/relationship or text RELATIONSHIP to 500500 to get started. Resources: Visit Diana Fosha’s website to learn more about her work. Pick up your copy of Diana Fosha’s book, The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/fosha to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Diana Fosha. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. You know, intimacy is a powerful thing, super powerful. It brings us together with our partners and enables us to achieve more than we would be able to on our own. And yet sometimes we get stuck and things don't flow quite so well. And that could be a stuck-ness that happens in our relatedness, in our relationship with our partner, or it could be more like an inner stuck-ness, where you feel like you're not being quite as effective as you'd want to be in your life, or you feel the effects of depression or anxiety; the kinds of things that hold you back where you know that you might not be shining your brightest. Neil Sattin: And yet intimacy has this amazing transformative power in how it gives us access to these deeper parts of ourselves. And I'm bringing this up because today's guest is a master of creating intimacy in a therapeutic setting, in a way that helps clients make huge changes in terms of their experience of their own lives. The name of her therapeutic modality is AEDP, or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. Now that sounds like a mouthful. It is a mouthful, but what you are going to discover in today's episode is just how simple it can be to effect profound transformation, all through harnessing who we innately are as humans, as feeling creatures. Neil Sattin: And I know we're called homo sapiens, we are people who know, but I believe that it's also important to acknowledge how we feel and that our feelings, as many illustrious people before me have noted, are part of what has allowed us to adapt to our world in ways that are beneficial to our survival and also to our enjoyment of life and living. So today's guest is none other than Dr. Diana Fosha who, along with being the creator of AEDP is also the author of The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. And her modality uses attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, to help therapists, again, create amazing changes, or facilitate amazing changes in their clients. And I think there's also a lot that's useful just for us to learn here about how we operate as people, that we can take into our lives and into our relationships in order to enhance our experience. And we're even going to talk about that process of enhancing our experience in today's conversation. So I think that's it from me, along with just mentioning that if you want a detailed transcript of today's conversation you can visit neilsattin.com/fosha, F-O-S-H-A, which is Diana's last name. Or as always you can text the word "Passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. I think that's it, so Diana Fosha, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive. Diana Fosha: Such a pleasure to be in conversation with you Neil. Thank you so much for the invitation. Neil Sattin: You are most welcome. And I hope I encapsulated everything in a way that... That makes sense, but we are of course going to dive in a little more deeply and help everyone understand what AEDP is all about. Diana Fosha: You are absolutely did a stellar job, and it's actually a wonderful thing to sort of hear my work sort of mirrored and condensed in that way, so I think we're off to a good start. Neil Sattin: Excellent, excellent. Well, to condense it and mirror it even further, because I've had people ask me, "What is that?", and "What's that big book you're reading?", because I've been carrying around The Transforming Power of Affect with me for probably the better part of the past month, and "Who is this person?" And the way that I've explained it to them is that by creating safety in the therapeutic setting, so a therapist creating enough safety so that you can experience the core emotions that contain within them the power to transform your experience. Diana Fosha: That's great, what shall we do for the rest of the hour? [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Well, let's talk about how we get there. And maybe you could start by talking about your stand, because it's clearly super important to you that a therapist be able to participate actively with their clients, as opposed to what I think we tend to think of with our therapist, which is that they're more passive or receptive, or maybe they validate, but they're not necessarily down there in the trenches with us. Diana Fosha: Right. And I'd be happy to talk about that. And I want to sort of just take one step back to sort of... To the... Another what I think of as really essential aspect of the model, and then we'll go to the stance and then get more deeply into it. And what I want to say is that, in addition to the safety that you talked about, in terms of the safety to really have people feel safe to come forth with their experience and who they are and then process those emotions, I would say that the most sort of core, core, core, fundamental assumption is that healing resides within us, that it's there from the get-go, side by side with the suffering, the stuck-ness that you talked about in your introduction, what have you, trauma, depression, difficulties in relationships, whatever it is that brings people to therapy and accounts for their not being fulfilled or shining as brightly, again, as you sort of said it in your introduction, that side by side with that, always, there's a capacity for healing that's just absolutely wired into us. Diana Fosha: And I think that's just something that's the guide, and an assumption that actually allows me to sort of sit with whoever I'm working with, just in a confident or comfortable way, that what they need is already... So much of it is so deeply within them, if we can just bring it forth. So with that, as I was going to say it in the background, but it's not in the background, with that as a foundation, I think that my stance as a therapist, is about creating a relationship, that the safety really comes from the fact that we actually are two people in the room and acting in that way. And that I consider myself part of this healing diet that my patient and I formed together, and that my experience and my responses, not just my thoughts and not just my words, are really part and parcel of what we're co-creating, that allows the person, hopefully, to start to feel safe from very, very early on, at the beginning. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, you speak very eloquently in your book about the importance even of, right from the beginning, of the first session, to be creating that context of safety and being in it... Co-creating the process. Diana Fosha: Yes. I really spend a lot of time... I do a lot of training of therapists, and one of the things that I like to talk to them about is that the first session is sacred and it's sacred in one very, very particular way, it's the only encounter that we will ever have that has no history, that we're creating history in that first meeting, we've come to it with no history of each other, even by the second session, we already have an established way of being, not that it can't change, not that it can't be altered, I don't mean that, it's not fixed, but it's history. Whereas in the first session, you have this unique opportunity to define the relationship in particular terms, so that I think it's incredibly important. So that in AEDP, the first session is not really so much devoted to, "Tell me where you were born," and, "How many people are in your family?" and, "How many therapies, did you have?" that kind of history taking, which, of course, is important, because it captures information. But that information is there for the acquiring in the second session or in the seventh session, or in writing, or by a million different ways. But this unique interaction between us, where we're sort of creating something together for the first time, it's a unique opportunity; so therapy really starts from the very, very first moment of that very first encounter. Neil Sattin: It reminds me of a first date. And sometimes that can be a degree of pressure that people don't really like. But it's really true that before that moment, you don't have any idea about that person, or do they of you. And what I really like is that you're honoring the fact that you're creating a relationship by going to see a therapist. Diana Fosha: Exactly. Exactly. And in a way... And I like the first date analogy, it's a little bit easier in some ways, in that there's one person who's sort of in charge [chuckle] So it's not both people, sort of in one way it is and it one way it isn't there, that's why we have roles, and that's why you're going to see a therapist. But it has some of that unknown and potential and excitement, as well as terrifying aspect; being vulnerable with a total stranger who, by the second meeting, will not be a stranger anymore. Neil Sattin: Right. And one thing that really... Of the many. There are so many things that actually stood out for me about your work, but it was this idea of how so much of our suffering and pain comes from having experiences that occur in isolation, where we feel like we can't share them with another person, or there's something wrong with us and we have no way of really checking that out because, again, it's all happening inside us. And so the power of bringing an acknowledgement to every experience with an AEDP therapist of, "You're not alone. What you just went through right here with me, do you see how we were in this together?" Diana Fosha: I think that it's so crucial, and of course, it's implicit in any relationship, or in any therapeutic relationship. Yet the strange thing is that merely by being with another person, whether in conversation or in relationship, does not necessarily automatically translate into not feeling alone. And actually, I think, one of the most painful ways of feeling alone is feeling alone in the presence of other people. So that... One of the things that I'm very, very, very conscious of is to actually explore together with the person that I'm working with, who I'm working with, what their experience is of are being together; if it feels like we're being together, and if they feel accompanied. Diana Fosha: If they are aware, that as they're sharing something, or saying something, or feeling something, or not thinking something, and saying it out loud, it's actually being registered by another human who's there with them. And that's... To actually be able to have that experience of not feeling alone as you're going through something, is just very powerful and potentially very therapeutic, in and of, of itself. Because I think, as you've said, so much of what becomes our suffering or various forms of it, really has something to do with our aloneness, and either the fact that there's nobody that we can share it with, or the fact that we're experiencing something that absolutely overwhelms our resources, that were we there with somebody else. Diana Fosha: The trauma was... Would be as horrible, that our capacity to bear it or deal with it would be quite different. There's very, very interesting research that shows that for people who are in combat, if they have a buddy that they're going through the combat experience with, their chances of getting PTSD are significantly reduced, and that kind of finding is present in many, many other settings. Another... Just to mention one other, and sorry, because you were about to say something, there's also a similar kind of research that during World War II there were all these kids who were orphaned as their parents were taken to concentration camps and they were actually in a therapeutic home school run by Anna Freud and this other woman named Dorothy Burlingham, and they studied these orphans. And what they found out is that, again, with those kids who had somebody they were close to, a sibling, or a friend, or somebody really whom they felt bonded, were much less traumatized by these most devastating of experiences that they were going through, and this actually influenced the therapy. Neil Sattin: What I was going to say is... What was striking me in that moment was how we're here to talk about relationships, and it's always such a big irony when things start to get a little uncomfortable in relationship, how, theoretically, you're there with another person, but you can feel so alone. And I think that that's part of what we're trying to overcome when there are issues in a couple, is to remember that they are also there for each other, they're on the same team, they are each other's buddy, which hopefully helps them survive without too much trauma that they're inflicting upon each other from that stuck place. Diana Fosha: Exactly. Exactly. And of course, that so many couples who come to therapy are in a couple, but the difficulties have been such that they have been feeling very alone. So that's really the paradox, that if we're just able to sort of recognize that presence and share enough of ourselves that the other person also feels us, we've already done something very significant. Neil Sattin: Can we talk for a moment about what is it about this model that... Where does the healing take place? And in particular, I'm thinking about the difference between our core affective emotions and other things that come out as more like our defenses, our defensive strategies. Diana Fosha: Yeah, the healing... God. There are many opportunities for it and there are many aspects of AEDP that are experienced as healing, we're actually in the process of doing some empirical research into the model, and to do so we needed to create some scales to measure that the therapy is actually happening in some fashion related to how we say it should be happening. And we created a scale to measure change processes, and there are nine, and there could have been more. But I'll try to be... [chuckle] Diana Fosha: But I'll try to actually reduce it and condense it, even from the nine. I think that sometimes what we have been talking about, which is the experience of having one's alone-ness undone and feeling seen or feeling cared about, or just validated or understood, that in and of itself can be so profoundly transformative, not in and of itself and not forever, but those kinds of moments have tremendous power, so I think that's one piece. I think the other that you were beginning to talk about, which is that when we can't process, we can't fully process or express them, feel them, express them and do something about our emotions, either because they're overwhelming or because we're in environments where our core emotions are met with criticism or with ridicule or what have you, we do develop these kinds of protective strategies and... Which work beautifully in the short term; you don't get hurt, and you don't get shamed, and you don't get overwhelmed. Diana Fosha: But over time, by relying on them, they sort of... They form almost like a crust, a... Or a shell over our hearts and ourselves. And they become sort of like the I who we present to the world, and that person is not authentic or is not our true authentic self, so that just in being able to break through or let go of those protective mechanisms that protect us but also limit us, and have the courage to be vulnerable and touch our emotions, and start to experience them and express them and process them with another person, is another huge transformative opportunity, particularly because those emotions are wired into us to help us. I mean that's why they survived over so many eons and eons of evolution, they're really good for us, even though they're difficult. So that's the second piece. Diana Fosha: And then, I think I've said... So that's sort of three. [chuckle] And I'll mention one other, which I'm sure we'll end up talking about a little more, which is that in AEDP, in the kind of work that goes by that name, we do something very, very specific that, to my knowledge, is not done by any other therapeutic model, or it's not done systematically in any case, which is this. That any time there's a moment of change for the better, be it big or small, in a given session, we start to focus on the experience of that change, the experience of that moment of transformation. And we've discovered something really cool, which is that when you do that, the experience and the process of change or of transformation grows, and that in and of itself, is a huge source of transformative potential. Neil Sattin: Right. The power of focusing on what's going right versus always being focused on what's going wrong. And as soon as you fix something, "Well, let's move on to the next wrong thing," as opposed to... Diana Fosha: Exactly, like, "Okay, now we did that, it feels better. Excellent. Let's tackle the next thing." [chuckle] Which is reasonable enough, except that there's this other thing that can happen, that when we stay with a positive, when we stay with this thing that has just changed, and just gotten better or that feels right, these amazing, cool things happen when we do that. Neil Sattin: Like what? [chuckle] Diana Fosha: Like that feeling of something right growing, and it grows in a way that we can feel it in our bodies, literally, that we start to feel our chests expanding, or we start to feel this kind of streaming of alive-ness; so that's one aspect of it. And another aspect of it is that one feeling of something feeling right or good leads to another; pride can lead to calm, which can, in turn, can lead to joy. It varies from moment to moment and from person to person, but all of a sudden it's like you start with a little nugget and it just... Or you start with a seed, there are so many metaphors. And if you sort of nurture this particular seed, it just blossoms, right? We have this term, "flourishing," and I think that's, for me, one of the coolest things about the therapy, which is that people come in because they're suffering and they want their suffering relieved, and that's certainly a fundamental aim of the work, but it doesn't stop at relieving suffering, it continues, sort of organically, seamlessly, moves into also creating flourishing, this kind of from little seeds of growth or little seeds of change, and letting them flower. Neil Sattin: Right. And it makes an intuitive sense to me. And I'm reminded of, I can't remember who said it, but someone said something about how you get rid of darkness by shining the light brighter and... But not by taking away the darkness, and... So it makes me think of that, that the more you amplify the flourishing and allow that to grow organically, and that brings up a question for me, but the more that you do that, the less room there is for the shadow, the dysfunction, to be there and to be a problem. Diana Fosha: I think that's true. I think that's true. Yeah. Neil Sattin: So the question, the question was, and I do want to go back to core affective emotions, but before we do, what are some ways... because I don't know about you, but I've been in situations where someone has shone a spotlight on how good a time we're all having and it's actually doesn't amplified, in fact, it feels almost inauthentic, or like that person is somehow kind of removed from the moment instead of actually they're participating in it with all of us, so what are the qualities of shining a light on positive change, or on a moment of goodness that actually help create resonance? Diana Fosha: Right. No, I think that's excellent. So first of all, it has to come from within the individual who's doing the experience. In other words, it's not the therapist who says, "Gee whizz, look at that, isn't that great?" Which can evoke very much, or elicit very much exactly what you're saying while, actually, it actually isn't. You think it may be, but I'm actually sitting here feeling embarrassed, or it's evoking a lot of discomfort in me, or whatever it is. And so that we're always attuning to the experience, the internal experience, so that it's not that it looks like it feels right, it's the person, him or herself, who's really... So that, for instance, if I said, "What's that like for you?" Then the person will say, "Wow, I am really, really aware in this moment that this discomfort that I walk around with usually, is just not here. It's crazy, but it's really not here." I had this woman, and I'm thinking of her as I'm saying this, and I can hear her words sort of echoing for me, that she kept saying, "This is so weird. It's good, but it's so weird." [chuckle] Diana Fosha: Right? Because the actual experience of not having the depression, or not having the uptight-ness, it's nice, but if that's what you're used to, and like if you're wearing a tight shirt and you've just worn that tight shirt all the time, it's so nice to take it off, but it's also so strange, if that's what you're use to. So we're just... That's what we're processing, we're processing the person's very sort of granular and very specific experience. And as to your point, it's not just a linear process that one good thing leads to another, it can very often lead to another defense or another block or all of a sudden self-consciousness or embarrassment or anxiety. I mean it can go one thing... I'm sort of theoretically talking about what can happen and often does. But sometimes we're as uncomfortable and as embarrassed when we're feeling positive things, they feel exposing. Alright, so then there's another round of work, be it with protective mechanisms or shame or other traumatic issues that can be brought forth by the positive emotions. So it's not like the A leads to B leads to C leads to D. It's very... The process is very individual and the safety isn't staying very connected to what each person's experience really is. And welcoming it, welcoming it whether it's good or whether it's difficult. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And one thing that, in what you just said, that really stood out for me, even just in my initial question was, that it wasn't so much a declaration about, "Isn't this amazing what just happened?" It was more like a recognition that something is happening right now, and the question like, "What's your experience of this that's happening right now?" Diana Fosha: Right, what's this like for you? Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, which I mean I'm just even thinking in terms of our day-to-day lives, the number of times that we make assumptions about what's going on in our partner's worlds, versus just asking, "What's going on for you right now, what's your... What's this like for you, that we're experiencing right now?" Diana Fosha: And may I add? And also listening. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. Diana Fosha: Right. It's asking the question, knowing to ask the question and not assume and then really listening to what the other person has to say, because our experiences are so specific to us, and those assumptions so often turn out to be surprisingly not true for the other person. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. And that's so much I think about what excited me in reading more and more about AEDP. And, you know, actually I was like looking are there any AEDP therapists in Maine. There aren't many actually, which is where I am. But I definitely want to experience it. Because again for me, I'm experiencing this more on a gut level that the power of being held that way in a therapeutic setting of being accepted, of having someone see me of being... Having someone there with me, and allowing me to get at whatever I haven't been able to quite get at before, and where my defensive structures and protective structures might be getting in the way of me just doing something simple like getting my to-do list done in an organized way. Diana Fosha: Yes, and I [chuckle] think I need to try to see if we can... Neil Sattin: Right, hook me up, Diana. Diana Fosha: Absolutely, absolutely. I'm doing the match-making. And we do have a therapist directory. But I appreciate what you're saying, it's a powerful thing. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and so let's talk a little bit more about...because we've been generalizing about particular kinds of emotional experiences that contain within it a lot of resource. It's resource for how we show up in the world, how we show up with our partners, how we fuel creative endeavors, but they're not... It's not all... It's not all joy, right? There are other emotions there that are important in terms of their power for us. Diana Fosha: Yes. Yes. Absolutely, all of the emotions, and there are really two that come to mind that I might want to just mention, because we tend to... Or people often avoid them, and one has to do with grief, and the other is anger. And I think there's just a... There's something about grief which is intrinsically painful, grief and sadness about losses and disappointments, and... Neil Sattin: Right, you even talk about how that can... And this... I read this and I was like, "Yes, of course," how that can come up in a therapeutic setting where something great has just happened, and then, rather than that feeling amazing, you can feel this overwhelming sense of grief for all the missed opportunities or times you didn't feel that when you were younger, and how important it is to be nurtured through an experience of grief or mourning around those losses. Diana Fosha: Exactly. Exactly. And to just recognize that actually, particularly if we're not alone and we're supported and that grief can be witnessed as we're feeling it; actually something very, very important happens, that in going through it and going through the process of mourning or feeling our sadness or grief, there's actually... When we come out the other side, there's a tremendous feeling of relief, and... I can feel it sort of as I'm saying it, that I almost feel my chest expanding and I feel... I feel my heart and all of this kind of energy is not going into containing something but actually feeling it. It's almost like you see a movie or a play that's deeply emotional, and you're crying, and then you come out, and there's an openness that comes in the wake of the grief, whether it's perspective or acceptance, but there's just something about... Our organism needs to mourn when we have those losses, and that's part of what psychic health really is. And when we just reflexively tighten up not so as not to feel it, we're putting all our energy into containing something that's natural; it's difficult but very profound and important. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Something that feels important here is how all of these deep emotions, when you experience them, you get to metabolize them, and I think that's not always clear to us that...because grief... The prospect of mourning something important, the loss of a relationship or a loved one, or a friend, or an opportunity, it can feel like, "Well, how will that... How will going through that pain help me?" so I'm going to, instead, I'm going to just pretend I'm okay, or like I got over it. Diana Fosha: Right. Right. Right. And it's sort of... That's what I mean, that these are very sort of powerful wired-in emotions, we have them; people all over the world, regardless of culture, experience grief and anger and sadness, and fear and joy; these are just sort of wired into us, and they're also wired into mammals. They're very, very powerful experiences, and if we don't fight them and we experience them, and metabolize them, then we're able to really come to terms with whatever these experiences are that evoked them and realize things. So I'll tell you something... A story comes to mind of work that I did many, many, many years ago, pretty early in my career, when I was working with a man whose father had died when he was a young boy, and he was left very alone with that experience. There was the belief in his family that he was too young, and therefore, nobody talked to him about it, I think under the good intentions of saving him pain; again, misguided intentions. Diana Fosha: He wasn't allowed to go to the funeral, so he was really... And by the time I met him several decades later, that wasn't the only thing, of course, but that was a major aspect. So he was a very numb person, he was very numb and dissociative and so on and so forth, and quite, quite distant and disconnected from his feelings, and he couldn't have... It manifested in his not really being able to have intimacy in his relationships. So after some time, we were finally able to make our way back to the little boy, he was seven or nine or so, I think, when his dad died, and he really was able to feel the grief and the fear of those early experiences, I think, for... Really for the first time, or one of the first times, certainly first time with somebody, and it was really, really deep sobs and deep pain. And I just have it as clear as if it had happened a week ago, or yesterday, of his weeping and the wave of tears ending, and his sort of breathing deeply and looking at me and starting to sort of calm, and his saying, "I have to go sit at the grave of my father," which he had never done. Neil Sattin: Wow. Diana Fosha: And that there was something about the power of that moment, of that knowing of what he needed to do, that only came after he went through this deep grieving. Neil Sattin: I'm feeling really moved by that, just imagining that person's experience and the power of that, and it makes me wonder how do we know if we're safe enough to go there? Is it a knowing or is it more like a deeper knowing where... I'm not even sure I'm articulating this question well, but I'm thinking about how often we end up in relationship because the dopamine and oxytocin and that potent cocktail, that... Of bio-chemicals that we get to experience when we're together, it gives us that illusion of safety, and often there's even the sense of like, "I can tell this person anything," or, "They see me more deeply than anyone ever does." And then part of the reckoning that comes later is trying to establish true safety, and I'm just wondering, yeah, how do we... If our goal is to really foster that safety where we are allowed to go to those deep levels of experience and come out the other side metabolizing them, what... Yeah, how do we know that we have that? Diana Fosha: You don't mean just in a therapeutic relationship, you mean really in the relationships that we have? Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. Diana Fosha: Right? Neil Sattin: Right, because so many of us are trying to heal attachment wounds, right? And especially with our partners. Diana Fosha: Right. Right. I think a couple of things sort of come to mind in response to that, I think we... That's how we gain experience, is that sense of when we go to those deep places, how the person that we're with is able to respond and they can listen and empathize and be there with each time one of these things happen in small ways or large ways, I think that increases our sense of safety and vice versa, that sort of heavy cocktail that you're talking about of early days and... You know and then being willing to be really, really vulnerable to only discover that that person then sort of shuts down or disappears or gets critical or... Right? Diana Fosha: So, but then, which are... They're both very not unusual experiences, and I think the learning and the intimacy is forged through caring about getting better at it and repairing and owning our mistakes and trying again and being willing to risk again, because I think what's... And that takes me back to what I said at the beginning about the healing within, the great big assistant all of that is that while we want to feel safe and need to feel safe and we spend so much effort protecting ourselves, there's another way in which we want to be known, we want to... We also, much as that gentleman I was talking about had spent 40 years in numbness and dissociation, when he finally felt safe, there was also something in him that needed to grieve and wanted to grieve. So it's both; we need to feel safe, but we also want to feel known and that pushes us to take chances and be vulnerable and also, the importance, and this is what I want to emphasize, whether it's therapy or... And/or life, to learn to repair, because we sure as hell don't get it perfect we're just right so much of the time. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that must be an amazing part of your training for AEDP therapists, is that art of repairing with their clients when they haven't made quite the right step, in terms of an intervention or a noticing. Diana Fosha: Exactly. Exactly. And all of a sudden the person before you gets defended or spaces out or starts to talk pretty superficially. So there's maybe something got activated for them, but maybe it's something that I, as the therapist, "Wait a second, have I done something? Did I miss that? Did I... " Or any number of things. And I think the willingness to just want to know and the willingness to own those mistakes or those... Yeah, is so huge. "I am so sorry, please tell me," and let me look in myself, "What happened there? What made me space out? What made me be insensitive, or say something that felt un-empathic or... Right, let's be with that together, and let me own my stuff." Neil Sattin: Yeah, that willingness to be vulnerable that way, as a therapist or as a partner, to say, "Wow, I'm really sorry. I clearly messed up just then," and to recognize, in that way, that you're holding the well-being of the other person within you, and recognizing that you have some responsibility in that moment, for that. Diana Fosha: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Diana Fosha: And I want to say another thing about that, that's sort of specific to how we teach and train in AEDP, which is that we make use of videotape, we videotape our sessions. So first of all, that requires our patient's trust in allowing us to do that, but patients really want to be seen and very often appreciate the fact that not only do they have their session, but that the therapist is going to look at the session again or... But it's the willingness of therapists to be vulnerable in showing their tapes to their supervisors. By the way, tapes is a dated term. Neil Sattin: I was going to say. [chuckle] Diana Fosha: We still call them video tapes, I haven't had video tapes in 20 years, but the language hasn't quite caught up with the technology, but it's that patients allowing the therapists to do that, the therapists being vulnerable and sharing that with their supervisors. And myself and my colleagues who teach AEDP are being vulnerable and actually showing our video tapes. You don't have to just... When you're training in AEDP, you don't have to just listen to me tell you, "Oh, do this and do that," I have to be vulnerable and put this thing up on the screen that shows me doing this work, for better and for worse, right? And I... So... Neil Sattin: I love that even in your... In the book, The Transforming Power of Affect there are lots of clinical vignettes, where you describe work, and it's annotated, so we know, as the reader, what's going on. But I loved how you even annotated like, "Well, this was a place where I totally messed up," or... It's really helpful to see that. And then, to also see, after, subsequently, how... What you do about that, how you don't just kinda go off the rails and stay off the rails. Diana Fosha: Right, or have to get it perfect all the time, because then we would [chuckle] be in very big trouble. Neil Sattin: Right. Right. Diana, I'm wondering if we can... There are obviously so many other things to talk about. And your work is so rich, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. Hopefully, we can talk again at some point. One topic that's come up several times in this conversation has been the topic of our defenses, or protective strategies, and I'm wondering if you could give us some thoughts before we go on how to recognize a defensive strategy in ourselves and maybe in someone else, and then that next question of like, "When you recognize it, what do you do?" Diana Fosha: So I think maybe one of the ways to recognize it in ourselves is that we feel maybe comfortable enough, but nothing happens. [chuckle] Meaning things don't deepen, things don't open, they... It's almost like a conversation that stays somewhat superficial. Nobody's making a faux pas, but nobody's learning anything either, it's a little boring maybe. Conversationally, that's the equivalent of sort of keeping safe, but too safe, so safe that there's no exchange, right? So it would be some version of that, the sense of, "Okay, I stayed safe, but nothing happened, I didn't connect, I didn't learn, I didn't take chances." And I think the opposite of that feels a little whatever one's version is, a little breathless and a little risky, a little scary, a little exciting, a little bit like you don't exactly know what you're going to say next, right? I'm describing, I'm trying to describe sort of qualities of... Neil Sattin: My best podcast interviews. [chuckle] Diana Fosha: Right. Right. Right. When you ask the question to which you really don't know the answer yet. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Diana Fosha: As opposed to the... Right? Either way, in both ways. And similarly, you recognize it in somebody this, if you walk out of an encounter, a get-together, and you're not moved, or you haven't learned anything, or you're leaving much as you came, that's a pretty good indication that everybody's nice and protected, and nobody got hurt and nobody got shamed, but nobody connected. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah, and so if I recognize that's going on, two questions come up for me, one is the... “What do I do about that?” The second is like, “are there hints of how I could discover what's the core experience that my defenses are actually protecting me against, to know myself more deeply?” Diana Fosha: There's actually a book that was written by a colleague of mine, which does a wonderful, wonderful job of talking about that, outside of the therapeutic situation. She actually uses examples from therapy, but she uses examples from therapy to help people identify their own defenses and their own emotions. It's called, It's Not Always Depression and the author is Hilary Jacobs Hendel, H-E-N-D-E-L. So that might be a very, very good recommendation about how to sort of apply this stuff to oneself. And I think the other is that we know... We know when we're avoiding grief... Not always, but a fair amount of the time we know that we're trying not to be angry, we know that we're trying to pretend that we're not anxious or afraid. I think there's a fair amount of knowing what we're trying not to feel when we're trying to not feel it. Right? I'm talking about sort of ordinary interactions rather than sort of deep-seated drama. That sort of necessarily takes us to therapy. But in our daily interactions, I think we have a pretty good idea in some part of our mind are these core experiences, core emotions. So, we're trying to not go near because we're scared of them, or they make us feel just vulnerable. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I could see even asking yourself the question in that moment of just asking yourself, "What am I avoiding by doing this thing that I always do, this engaging in this habit and being open to the answer that arises there?" Diana Fosha: Right, right. If I weren't talking so much now or if I weren't just asking the other person questions about him or herself, what might I be feeling? You know, whatever one's particular strategy is. Neil Sattin: Whoo. Yeah. Diana Fosha: Yeah. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: My sigh in that moment is just a recognition of... As much as I myself am an optimist, I try to dwell in the gratitude and all of that, but I recognize yeah, there's... There are a lot of places where there's pain or there's anger or there's disappointment or... And I'm feeling for all of you listening, the blessing hopefully in allowing yourself to feel more of that, so that you get the richness that's on the other side of metabolizing those things in your life. Diana, are you still there? Diana Fosha: I am. Neil Sattin: Okay. [chuckle] You were so silent, I wasn't sure if you had just been like, "And cut." I really appreciate your taking the time to be here with us today. And what's the best way for people who want to learn a little bit more about AEDP or therapists who might want to get some training in that modality. What's the best way for people to find out more about you and your work? Diana Fosha: Yes, thank you for asking that. I think that we have a very rich website. The URL is www.aedpinstitute.org. A-E-D-P institute, one word, lower case. And there is a lot about AEDP. There are a lot of papers that people can download for free, by myself and by my colleagues who teach in the AEDP Institute. And there's a lot of stuff on our trainings. I myself teach an immersion course, which is a five-day intensive, which I teach several times a year. The next one is coming up at the end of January in Florida. And there are other courses. We have skills courses and so on, and so forth. And we have a therapist directory [chuckle] where we might look for somebody that you or other people who are interested in this might see. And so I would highly, highly recommend that people who want to know more about it, either for therapeutic training, or just to learn a bit more about the approach really go to our website and has references to all of my books, and video tapes, and just a whole bunch of different kinds of resources. Neil Sattin: Great, and we will have all those links on the show notes, which you can get, again if you visit neilsattin.com/fosha. F-O-S-H-A. And so we'll have a link to aedpinstitute.org. And you can also download a transcript of this conversation to study it again and again. Unfortunately, we won't have a videotape for you to watch. [chuckle] Diana Fosha: Videotape. You're picking up my antiquated language. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Diana Fosha, thank you so much for being here with us today. Such a treat to be able to talk with you. Diana Fosha: Neil, thank you so much. This was one of those conversations, much like we were talking about that doesn't feel flat. And it goes to unexpected places, which makes it feel lively. And I'm really, really appreciating this chance to share this work. And you're really having gotten to know it. So, thank you so much. Neil Sattin: You're welcome. And the pleasure is totally mine I think. Well, maybe not totally, but quite a bit mine. Diana Fosha: I don't think so. Very mutual.  

I think this is one of the most inspiring interviews I've done. Again, not because of me, but due to my guest and how she works with clients. In this interview we'll learn about AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) and the emphasis on being in the moment, and naming the experiences that are happening between the client and therapist. This calls for authenticity from the therapist as well as creativity. And each of these things excite and inspire me! I hope you enjoy this one.  Kari Gleiser is a clinical psychologist in Hanover, NH, specializing in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders. She is a senior faculty member at the AEDP Institute and co-founder/co-director of the Center for Integrative Health.  Keri has developed a relational model that incorporates AEDP into work with dissociative disorders, and dissociative parts of the self, called Intra-relational AEDP.     In This EpisodeAEDP InstituteDr. Diana Fosha, the author of the The Transforming Power of AffectCenter for Integrative HealthLeaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition, Walt WhitmanEducated: A Memoir: A Memoir, Tara WestoverSong of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy, Walt WhitmanSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-trauma-therapist-podcast-with-guy-macpherson-phd-inspiring-interviews-with-thought-leaders-in-the-field-of-trauma/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands