Supervision

What does it mean to you and me? And how do we best use it to support our clients?

I view the supervisory relationship as a series of vessels. Your client pours their untenable thoughts, somatic responses and emotions into you as their psychotherapist and you contain them in the room. Our own vessels have little nicks and cracks in them, before we even consider the other aspects of our lives taking up our capacity to contain our own personal emotional "water". So, the places where your vessel has cracks and leaks are then contained in supervision, while you work with your personal psychotherapist to repair any permanent cracks or manage day to day life situations through personal therapy.

Holding all that water for our clients can be hard, lonely and tiring work. Over my career, I've found that reminding myself that there's someone I can talk to about what's going on in the room makes my practice more sustainable and rewarding. That can sometimes have the look and feel of working at what Chinnock calls the "teach-treat boundary" or it can sometimes be more about working through what we could have said and done differently to create more options. But in any event, when we work with the right supervisor, it allows us a place to grow and refresh our practice.

My personal style as a supervisor is framed by Mazetti’s seven point model for evaluating supervision. It fits with that idea of catching the leaks describe earlier by recognising the need for emotional contact with the supervisee. I value this as it ensures that both the supervisee and client are adequately protected in their work. It also makes sure that we have a clear outline for the work we are doing in any given supervision. This ensures you get what you need from the time we have together. Supervision is not cheap. So it needs to be useful. Mazetti's framework provides enough structure to ensure your technical and ethical needs are met without you being missed in the process. Yes, the purpose of our work is to consider the work you are doing with the client. But it's important to me that you are also a person, not a periscope through which I look at your client.

That said, it is important to respect your personal therapeutic privacy to maintain each relationship’s defined purpose. So, I am clear with supervisees when something needs to be taken to personal therapy. But when difficult aspects of our process are brought into the client sessions, we need to be open about what's happening. If we don't, we discount both the supervisee at the Existence level and the potential client impact at the Significance level. Our purpose in this space therefore is to bring those parts of your process into awareness so we can make sure that you conserve energy in the room to attend to your own wounds whilst supporting the client with theirs.

It's often useful for student supervisees to know that their supervisor is actively involved with TA education too. I am a tutor at South West Psychotherapy and Counselling Alliance and a guest lecturer at the Connexus Institute. I also examine for the Connexus Institute, both as a marker and viva panelist. This, along with my MSc and CTA training at Metanoia Institute, gives me a strong foundation in the academic side of the journey to become a psychotherapist. I have a special interest in safeguarding and ethics. While I am EMDR trained, I do not supervise EMDR. However, my experience gives me excellent depth of experience working with trauma and dissociation. I also have experience working with traumatised witnesses in the pre-trial environment.

So, if you'd like to have a conversation about supervision, please fill in the contact form to get in touch. Online Sessions are £65 for 55-mins. In person sessions are available on request.