Experience Real Change

Overcome your challenges and become the best version of yourself through Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy

Relational, Somatic, Evidence-Based, and Comprehensive

Relational: Our internal “attachment system” holds the keys to greater resilience, calm, flexibility, and strength. AEDP therapy helps us access that system.

Somatic: The key to accessing and shifting emotional states lies in the body. Somatic therapies focus on body sensations, body wisdom, and the unmet emotional needs that are often expressed in bodily symptoms.

Evidence-based: There is a large and growing body of evidence helping us sort out which approaches work best. The therapeutic approaches that I use are being subject to ongoing studies, making sure we are really helping people experience the kind of change they want.

Comprehensive: I respect that every person is complex and lives on multiple levels. Our therapy can discern and address the needs of whichever level is showing up in the moment: physical, emotional, social / relational, mental, energetic/spiritual.

What is AEDP?

While I am trained in a number of different therapeutic modalities, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy creates the fundamental framework for my therapy work.

Briefly, AEDP combines a robust theoretical framework of trauma healing, emotional expression, anxiety tolerance, and resilience with an experiential stance that uses the healing relationship to activate the body’s natural emotion healing processes.

To learn more about AEDP, please see the informative videos by Dr. Tori Olds on YouTube.

AEDP Intro Video

The DEPTH Method for Transforming Burnout

Burnout is a condition that can either be simple (such as a vitamin deficiency) or complex (such as an emerging childhood trauma). It can be individual (such as a personal life re-direction), or relational (such as the exhaustion of living daily with oppressive forces like racism). Burnout is unique to every person, and requires careful listening and a multi-level perspective to respond accurately.

To learn more about my work with professional, academic, caregiver, religious, athletic, relational, or even psychological burnout, click the button below.

UtahBurnoutRecovery.com

Starting Therapy: The Steps

Step One: The Phone Consultation

Contact me for an initial phone consult. This is a free, no-obligation 15-minute call to determine whether we both feel therapy could be beneficial for your situation.

Step Two: The Initial Session

We meet either in-person or online to clarify what you want from the process and create a clear plan how therapy can help you get there.

Step Three: Creating Change

Working together, we create new emotional experiences, update limiting beliefs, restructure unconscious defenses, heal traumas, reduce anxiety, and cultivate the capacities you need in order to find real, lasting change.

My sessions were so helpful and I feel so free…You are amazing at listening and deciphering the most important piece or emotion and it was so helpful. My marriage is thriving and I am executing in business and emotionally present more than ever with my family. [My spouse] and I just got back from a Monday lunch date and we are having amazing quality time again… Thank you
MD

That experiential moment shifted some things in me from “knowing the truth” in my head, to feeling the truth in my heart and body. So I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you for believing in me and helping me believe in myself.
TE

At the end of the session is when I realized how much I’m going to miss our conversations. You are a great therapist, a great listener and teacher, and a great person.
BH

I wouldn’t be here enjoying the holidays if it wasn’t for you. Thanks for helping to save my life. I’m eternally grateful to have you in my corner.
NB

Andy Johnston LPC CMHC

Licensed Therapist in Utah and South Carolina

After a varied vocational journey which included an undergraduate business degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, non-profit work (Habitat for Humanity International, the Atlanta Toolbank), the Many Glacier Hotel in Montana, a software marketing company, and a graduate degree from Emory University’s seminary, in 2012 I followed my deepest passion in psychology and earned a Master’s in Community Counseling,. I started the Greenville Relationship Institute in South Carolina where I spent over a decade providing individual therapy, couples therapy and therapist supervision, before finally relocated to Salt Lake City in 2023.

Currently I operate my private practice in downtown Salt Lake as part of the Crossroads Mental Health Collective. For recreation, I enjoy hiking, contra-dancing, writing fiction, bouldering, and taking road trips and playing games with my two amazing teenagers.