Supervision

Group supervision is highly encouraged early on:

• Cost-effective – more affordable than individual sessions
• Supportive – fosters connection with colleagues
• Enhanced learning – observe and learn from others’ work

Individual supervision is required for AEDP certification:

• Focus on challenging cases
• Personalized guidance and mentorship

Tip: Many therapists combine both: monthly group sessions + individual sessions every other month.

Supervision hours vary based on your learning style, goals, and clinical challenges.

• Minimum hours are provided in our guidelines for Level 3 completion
• Most therapists need additional hours beyond the minimum
• After Level 3, you will need more individual supervision with a Certification Supervisor

📄 Certification Guidelines | 📄 Levels Defined

Zoom sessions: Use Gallery View to capture both therapist and client.
In-person sessions: A mirror can help show both parties’ somatic responses.

Properly recording sessions allows supervisors to observe interactions and provide precise feedback.

Eligible supervisors: click here for the AEDP Supervisor page

1. AEDP Institute Faculty
2. AEDP Certified Supervisors
3. Supervisors-in-Training (up to 10 hours count immediately; extra hours count after certification)

How to find a supervisor:

• Browse AEDP Faculty page or AEDP Supervisor page
• Email findasupervisor@aedpinstitute.org with the following criteria:
  • Your supervision needs
  • Any preferences or criteria
  • A brief description of yourself and your practice
• Supervisors who may be a good fit will reach out directly. Please respond promptly. You may also use the AEDP Therapist Directory.

As a courtesy to our supervisors, please respond to all emails you receive from them.

Notes on Supervisors-in-Training:

• Can supervise any therapist level
• Max 10 hours count immediately toward Level 3
• Cannot serve as Certification Supervisors

⚠️ Important: Supervisors are independent. The AEDP Institute does not oversee their clinical practice, supervision methods, fees, communications, or ethics.

A supervisor-in-training is someone on the AEDP supervisory certification path. On this path, supervisors-in-training can supervisor clinicians wishing to learn AEDP. Clinicians that receive supervision by a supervisor-in-training can count 10 supervision hours immediately towards their certification as an AEDP therapist. Any excess hours with the supervisor-in -training will count once the supervisor-in-training has attained certification as an AEDP Certified Supervisor. There is no guarantee that the supervisor-in-training will fulfill the requirements necessary to become an AEDP Certified Supervisor. 

The role of the supervisor is to assist clinicians in developing their relational and affective capacities and the skillful means to become an effective AEDP therapist. Supervisors provide individual and group supervision.  They have a thorough grasp of the theoretical model of AEDP with which they can guide clinicians’ assimilation and application of AEDP.  Supervisors have a solid foundation in the overarching ethos and principles of AEDP and are versed in the detail of specific skills sets and intervention sequences to facilitate processing through each of the four states of transformation.  

These guidelines outline areas of growth and specific elements of the AEDP supervision process to support supervisors-in-training to achieve readiness to apply for certification as an AEDP Supervisor.  

AEDP Supervisor Responsibilities:

• Review Certification tapes for therapists to become certified
• Participate in quarterly supervisory meetings
• Participate on AEDP project committees and other supervisor committees
• Attend AEDP seminars or webinars for Continuing education – (12 hours every 2 years)

Supervisors role of helping to Introduce Videotaping:

Help clinicians who are beginning the process of videotaping to 1) talk about videotaping with new clients and 2) transition established clients to videotaping.

Orient clinicians to the experience of using videotape as part of the supervision process.   Help them acclimate to sharing their clinical work with other therapists and to navigate the vulnerability of this process while developing a respectful and safe way to share and work through whatever feelings are evoked.

Undo aloneness and restructure shame that can arise, especially in the beginning of showing videotape of one’s work.

Developing the Therapeutic Stance:

Supervisors model the AEDP therapeutic stance in many ways including fostering positively toned interactions; going beyond mirroring; dyadically regulating affect; delighting in the specifics about the supervisee; affirming, validating and appreciating what the supervisee does well, especially in the early, first experiences of showing work; and employing mindful self-awareness, interpersonal mindfulness, exquisite empathy and active optimism.

Supervisors help the supervisee detect and follow transformance in their client, explore and expand the positive, foster moments of recognition, and embody the somatic experience of shifts, collaboration, being helped, and being seen etc.. 

Supervisors help supervisees track attunement, disruption and repair with clients, being mindful of non-verbal communication.  They also help supervisees develop awareness and skills to address coordination/recoordination.

Supervision Process Areas:

1. Developing the Supervisory Stance

In addition to modeling the AEDP therapeutic stance, focusing on undoing the supervisee’s aloneness and as well as focusing on what is going right, and following their transformance, provides tremendous support and energy to the learning process and enables risk taking, deepening, etc., just as in the therapy. 

As supervisors, we balance the competing pulls within a supervision session of working within the supervisory dyad, working with the supervisee’s experience of themselves and of the therapy session, and teaching AEDP skills.  In addition, we need to balance how to find what’s going right and while also exploring both the supervisee’s view and our view of their growing edges and what AEDP skills that need more understanding and/or practice.   

• Group Process Issues

Supervisors work to develop the skills to work with anxiety, defenses, vulnerability, and shame that can emerge in supervision groups.   They keep the focus on the learning context rather than therapy, while also making room for deepening awareness about procedural learning that may block significant levels of perception, reception and expression in the relational work.

Supervisors work with group dynamics/process to develop safety, respectful communication practices, establish a culture of trust, generosity, recognition and the development of true self/true other experiences.

In small communities and/or newly developing AEDP communities, supervisors might need to pay particular attention to negotiating dual relationships with sensitivity and with clear and respectful communication.

• Scope of AEDP Supervision 

Supervisors, and supervisors-in-training, need to be aware that sometimes supervisees will bring something to you that is outside the scope of teaching AEDP and beyond your particular expertise. Be attentive to when you may need to help your supervisee recognize when a specific problem may require additional, specialized consultation.

• The Teach/Treat line:

Supervisors need to understand how to work experientially with therapeutic issues that come up for the supervisee in supervision. It is common for supervisees to struggle personally with the things they want to learn as therapists. 

One organizing mandate is focusing on what interventions are in service of the client.  Another is developing the professional self of the therapist.  For example, if the supervisee struggles with receptive capacity, it might be prudent for the supervisor to assist the supervisee to stretch their own receptive affective capacity in order to work successfully with a client.  This can apply to moments of being activated or triggered or in a defensive reaction as well.  

Supervision Content Areas:

1. Staying with Emergent Phenomena  

Supervisors often assist supervisees to develop their capacity to SLOW DOWN:  track non-verbal process and moment-to-moment experience, notice an affect laden word,  and deepen connection to internal experience.

• Developing right-brain-to right-brain coordination: Make use of your SELF in the supervisor room”.         

Supervisors lean into the nonverbal, body to body/right brain to right brain communication with trust in the unfolding process.

They enhance nonverbal, moment-to-moment synchronizing with supervisees with the focus on helping themconnect and feel into the relationship with their client. 

Supervisors point out glimmers of connection between the supervisee and client; help supervisees see what they are doing well in order to further trust the connection in the therapeutic relationship.

• Using the maps, schemas and concepts of AEDP

Supervisors need to be fluent in understanding and articulating the various maps, schemas and concepts of AEDP: the four state and three state transformations; the triangle of experience; the self-other-emotion triangle; the triangle of relational comparisons; true self/true other; working with cycles of disruption, repair and recoordination,;working with defenses and anxiety; shame/pathogenic affects; processing emotion to completion; working with positive affect; transformance; recognition; the use of portrayals; metaprocessing; working in core state; deepening the somatic experience;and  keeping the work experiential. Refer to the AEDP Certification Guidelines for more specific detail.