Dear AEDP Community,
We are delighted to celebrate Emily Bilbao, LCSW, on becoming an AEDP® Certified Supervisor!
Following a rigorous and comprehensive review of her submitted materials, the review panel unanimously conferred this designation, recognizing Emily’s clinical and supervisory capacities, depth of understanding of AEDP, and readiness for this important role.
Congratulations, Emily! We celebrate the dedication, curiosity, and wholehearted engagement you bring to this work. Your reflections below offer a moving glimpse into the professional and personal transformation that has accompanied this achievement.
We also extend our sincere gratitude to Emily’s supervisors, Diana Fosha and Ben Medley, whose mentorship, guidance, and support helped nurture Emily’s development as an AEDP Certified Supervisor.
This is truly a shared success for all three of you!
In Emily’s own words:
I am so excited to have reached this milestone of becoming a Certified AEDP Supervisor.
When I first encountered AEDP, it resonated so deeply with who I was and how I approached therapeutic relationships that I was immediately drawn to it as a therapeutic home. It felt natural and right—a reflection of how I intuitively felt this work should be. Over time, AEDP has become much more than a therapeutic model for me. It is the lens through which I move through my life and the world. It shapes how I see humans and how I approach relationships.
What I love about AEDP is that it gives me permission to be my most authentic self as a therapist, and now, in turn, as a supervisor. That self is explicitly caring, relationally vulnerable, excitable, playful, fierce, and serious. AEDP is a model that continues to evolve—and, as it turns out, I continue to evolve as well.
One of the things I have learned throughout my journey toward becoming a supervisor is that sometimes the journey really is more important than the destination. When I first found AEDP, I wanted to be on the fast track to getting where I am today. Thirteen years later, despite throwing myself into every opportunity I could find with all my energy and passion—assisting at 12 Immersions and 12 Essential Skills, completing two Core Trainings, teaching multiple courses, seeing five research patients, and helping start AEDP & Psychedelics—it turned out there was more for me to do on this journey than hone a craft. I also needed space to transform and emerge alongside my clients and supervisees.
With the help of my AEDP mentors and colleagues (thank you, thank you Ben Lipton, Diana Fosha, Natasha Prenn and so many others!), my own AEDP therapy, and psychedelic exploration, my path toward becoming a Certified AEDP Therapist and now a Certified AEDP Supervisor has also led me face-to-face with my own expanding self.
During this journey, I have grown and changed in so many ways. I have been touched by so many people with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing space, tears, and tea. I have left and begun significant relationships, grieved immense losses, moved three times, joined two choirs, and explored my gender and identity in many ways.
And so, vulnerably and with joy, I want to share another important part of this moment of emergence: I have chosen to go by a new name, Ocean.
Being a supervisor, for me, is not only about teaching. It is about developing relationships. I love that this work asks me to be brave myself—to share my own vulnerability and open my own heart. In return, I get to witness, celebrate, and share in the joy and pride my supervisees develop in themselves.
Becoming an AEDP Supervisor has expanded my heart, as well as my love for this work. I feel deeply grateful for this model, grateful to have found it for myself, and honored to be able to teach it—first and foremost by trying to live it by example.
With love and gratitude,
Emily (Ocean) Bilbao, LCSW
Please join us in warmly congratulating Emily on this wonderful achievement.
With much joy in sharing this news,
The Supervisor Certification Review Board—
