Why supervision ?

All of us in the helping professions are working with people in need – some of our clients are experiencing physical pain, others psychological, many suffer both. We offer them a space to process their pain and work towards acceptance and hopefully transformation of their wounds. This process requires our professional tools and expertise, but – from a relational perspective – what it requires most of all is containment. We provide a relationship which can contain our client’s anger, fear, vulnerability and passion – the whole range of experiences they struggle with and find unbearable. In making ourselves available in this kind of relationship, it is inevitable that we ourselves will be affected – as a practitioner, but also as a person, with our own wounds, history and body/mind identity. In order to keep ourselves available to our clients, we ourselves need to be contained – both as people and professionals. Without this, explicit burn-out or low-level depletion are the common consequence throughout the helping professions. Containment is, therefore, one of the main elements I focus on and aim to provide in supervision. Supervision also offers us a space to learn and grow, to struggle with the challenges our clients present us with, to be supported with our difficulties and encouraged with our strengths. Supervision engenders continuing professional development, by focussing both on the current work and the developing personal-professional capacities, qualities and resources of the practitioner.

My supervision style

My main focus in supervision is on the therapeutic process: by reflecting on the practitioner’s as well as the client’s process, we gain an understanding of the issues and dynamics in the relationship. My supervisory style, therefore, emphasises reflection and containment and is based on support, understanding, nourishment, feedback, continuing development and appropriate challenge. In supervision I aim to build a respectful and safe relationship that will invite mutual exploration and learning. My intention is to encourage the practitioner to find their own style and strength.

Therapeutic models

In my own work, I integrate a wide range of therapeutic models and techniques. Whilst I do not expect the same of my supervisees, my experience of the different approaches can provide useful perspectives and resources in supervision. Underpinned by a person-centred attitude, these models and approaches include both humanistic and psychodynamic perspectives, and specifically draw on Body Psychotherapy, Gestalt, Family Constellations, Somatic Trauma Therapy and EMDR as well as object relations and relational psychoanalysis. They can each make their unique contribution to support the thinking and learning process of the supervisee.

integrative

In drawing on a wide variety of therapeutic approaches, I recognise the dangers of mixing contradictory paradigms in an eclectic, purely pragmatic fashion. What holds the diversity of approaches together in a coherent stance, is a focus on the relationship and its unconscious processes as reflected also in body/mind dynamics.

body-oriented & holistic

Working with the whole body/mind – of the client and the practitioner – allows the relationship to deepen and to access spontaneous forces in the client’s process. This is supported by recent insights from neuroscience and attachment theory, and can be applied whatever the supervisee’s therapeutic approach.

psychodynamic

The continuously developing tradition of psychoanalysis provides us with the essential concepts to understand the relationship process in terms of transference and countertransference. This is one of the cornerstones of my approach both in psychotherapy and in supervision.

relational

The relational perspective, including the notion of the ‘wounded healer’, has been part of my therapeutic position since the beginning of my training, and continues to inform and shape my work, both as a therapist and supervisor.

parallel process

The recognition that the dynamic between client and therapist can and often is repeated and replicated between therapist and supervisor allows a multidimensional perspective in supervision. We can attend to the client, the therapist’s interventions or internal process, the therapist’s reflections or their presence with the supervisor, giving us access to a range of areas we can usefully attend to. Parallels between the therapy and supervision are also highly relevant to the process of containment.

somatic trauma

The manifestations of trauma, based in early attachment or in childhood as well as in single-event trauma later in life, are increasingly recognised as pervasive. My expertise in the specialised range of treatments recently developed, from Somatic Trauma Therapy to EMDR, can inform supervision and support the supervisee’s work and continuing learning.