Are you seeking supervision for learning, sustenance or to work towards licensure? Have you been searching for a supervisor who has masterful clinical skills as well as the ability to support and nurture your process?
Supervision should provide you with both a powerful and integrative learning environment where you can hone your expertise as a therapist as well as a safe and an empathic environment where you can probe the depths of your own experience. Paradoxically, what makes us most vulnerable is also what makes us powerful in psychotherapy. Our personal shadows are continually being brought up to be looked at. And so we are vulnerable in the sense that we open our own psyches and souls in the process of becoming therapists. And so we are powerful as we confront, make peace with and/or sometimes eliminate our own shadows. As we work through our own issues and reactions, the more clear and open we are to our clients’ experience. If we are going to do this important work, we will always be learning about ourselves and healing ourselves in order to be better healers. Psychotherapy is fundamentally relational; transference and countertransference are present.
Along with dealing with the shadows sometimes ethical issues arise as well. If they do, I am a seasoned supervisor with over 15 year’s experience of therapist supervision, I can provide guidance.
Do you want to learn to be clearer about your own reactions to clients?
Therapy is a holistic experience. We sense things and receive immediate information in an embodied way, as well as intellectually and emotionally, for example while listening to a clients you might find a tight sensation in your stomach. Looking deeper you can come to access what this response means in the context. You could be empathically feeling with your client or having a countertransference response. You might be picking up on a feeling of distress the client is not aware of. The clearer and deeper your assessment of this experience the more possibilities are opened to help your client.
In a safe and contained environment with a skilled practiced therapist with years of experience, you can settle in to delving into the important issues that come up when we are doing therapy. Whatever is unresolved in our own family dynamics stems to surface, our. Sometimes we see too much of ourselves in a client and other times we confront issues and dynamics. Unlike us the test are empathy and our clinical skills. All of this is a learning experience and all of this has potential to truly lead us into being great helpers and healers.
Do you want to be clearer about what significant issues a psychotherapist should deal with in the process of doing therapy? Do you want to learn more clinical skills?
What are the most primary issues we grapple with as a psychotherapist are boundaries. We tend to struggle with either being too close to our clients or too distant. This issue with boundaries may, in part, stem from our family background. Some families are very close, almost to the point of merging and some families are distant and aloof, leaving people feeling somewhat alone. So we do a dance of learning boundaries with the aim of being respectful of the client protective of ourselves and to facilitate growth and healing for our clients. We learn to contain.
Empathy and connecting are hallmarks of a psychotherapeutic relationship. However, our emotional connection to our clients must always be monitored so that we are able to maintain strong boundaries as well as self-care for ourselves. The compassion and caring we provide for our clients is without self interest at its best and is reward in itself. We must get our nurturance and needs met somewhere else: often within the supervision relationship.
Having been a therapist with a wide array of clients (from suicidal individuals, to elders to veterans). I have studied many interventions and methods which I integrate in my practice and will share with you. I have also taught psychology and related topics which are relevant to clinical work. Knowledge is meant to be passed on.
Do you have clients who seem to push your buttons?
It is natural to have some reactions we wish we did not. Our reactions offer fuel for learning. In supervision, you have the chance to air all of your feelings and responses and then to uncover the core issues. Like peeling back layers of an onion you learn as you uncover the sources of your discomfort and reactivity. As a supervisor with years of clinical experience I can guide you through these experiences and help you analyze your responses and learn skills to use your response to the benefit of your clients while you are with them. Also, I am a somatic experiencing practitioner; I can also help you to learn to recognize messages from your body telling you when you are overstressed or highly reactive. I can also teach you how to deal with stress in an embodied way while you are exploring intellectually and emotionally the roots of your reaction to clients you find difficult. I have found that eventually we can work with clients of all sorts, including those who we may find challenging.
