power of emotional and relational experience. He is the author of the award-winning book Living Like You Mean It: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want (Jossey-Bass, 2009), a senior faculty member of the Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) Institute, and Co-founder of the Center for Courageous Living, based in Beverly Hills, CA, which offers innovative therapy, coaching, and consulting. Noted for his warmth, humor, and engaging presentation style, Dr. Frederick lectures and facilitates workshops nationally. An invited contributor to several professional books, his work has also been featured in the APA Monitor on Psychology and Clinical Psychiatry News: The Leading Independent Newspaper for the Psychiatrist, and he's been quoted on CNN.com. In addition, Dr. Frederick is a certified EMDR therapist. Ronald Frederick 
Cultivating Emotional Mindfulness: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
August 13-17, 2012
The ability to mindfully experience, regulate, and respond to one’s feelings is essential to mental health and well-being. Yet problems managing emotion abound and play a central role in most psychiatric disorders. How can we best help so many of our clients who, regardless of diagnosis, have difficulty being present with and making good use of their emotional experience?
Drawing on current findings in the areas of affective neuroscience, attachment, and neuroplasticity, “Emotional Mindfulness” provides a conceptual framework through which we can more readily identify, understand, and help cultivate the skills of affective competence. This workshop will illustrate how our emotional development can go awry, but how, through clinical interventions in which emotions are experienced as positive and free from fear, we can help clients develop essential capacities, stimulate and strengthen new neural pathways, and restore vitality and well-being.
Grounded in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), a healing oriented model of therapy, and incorporating components of current experiential, relational, mindfulness-based, and cognitive-behavioral therapies, the presenter will introduce a proven four-step, approach to emotional mindfulness that can be integrated into any treatment orientation. Dr. Frederick will illustrate practical and powerful techniques for: 1) Increasing awareness, 2) Reducing anxiety and fear, 3) Developing emotional competence, and 4) Expanding one’s capacity for expression and reception. Through demonstration, video clips, and experiential exercises, you will learn how to integrate these strategies into your practice and help clients develop skills they can apply in their daily lives—thus accelerating their therapeutic progress. You will leave this workshop with a toolkit to help you and your clients overcome fear, open up to a richer emotional experience, and realize a broader range of personal and relational possibilities.
Course Objectives:
- Identify and describe how over- and under-regulation of emotion is often the root of many presenting problems.
- Understand cutting-edge findings from affective neuroscience and attachment studies and their relevance to clinical work.
- Learn powerful techniques to rewire the brain and restore vitality that can be incorporated into any clinical practice.
- Make optimal use of the present-moment, relational experience to affect long-lasting change.
- Increase your own comfort with emotions as well as your confidence and skill at helping clients navigate their emotional experiences.
Monday
Introduction, Assessment, and Orientation
- Understanding psychological disorders through the lens of emotional mindfulness
- Clinical implications of affective neuroscience, attachment, and mindfulness studies
- Building new neural pathways: Why experience is essential
- Overview of a four-step approach to developing emotional mindfulness
- Orienting clients to treatment
Tuesday
Increasing Awareness
- Tools for increasing emotional awareness
Wednesday
Reducing Distress
- Tools to calm the nervous system; regulating anxiety and fear
Thursday
Increasing Emotional Competence
- Tools to regulate and increase the capacity for emotional experiencing
Friday
Developing the Capacity for Expression and Reception
- Helping clients make use of the wisdom of their feelings for “Information, Insight, and Direction”
- Mindful Communication
