Clinical Supervision

 

What is it?

Female therapist speaking with male therapist and offering clinical supervision training.

For those new to the psychotherapeutic practice you will need to find a clinical supervisor. The College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) mandates this, but it may also be mandated by a professional association that you belong. It could also be a requirement of a college that you are training with.

I am often asked by students, what is supervision? I believe that supervision is an opportunity for you to learn about who you are as a therapist in training. Why do we need to know about who we are as a therapist in training, why is that important? I believe that it’s important because understanding ourselves as therapists can be the most important thing that helps us and helps our clients to become well it helps us to become good clinicians and therapists. It also helps us to avoid mistakes, which can be harmful to ourselves and to our clients. Supervision is a process where we can unpack our caseloads in a confidential environment where we can talk about our feelings, our beliefs, our fears, and again where we learn about who we are and what our identity is as a therapist. Probably, the most important thing for therapists to learn about is the ideas of transference, countertransference and projections. All human beings experience these things. It can however both help and or hinder the therapeutic process. While you’ve probably read about these things in your textbooks, most therapists that I’ve worked with don’t really understand how they work. Which is why therapists are required to practice for so many hours before they can become licensed. Having a minimum of 1000 hours, which by the way is not a very long time, helps us to start to see and understand how complicated processes like transference and countertransference can both help and or hinder in the therapeutic relationship. The way I work as a supervisor is to help you to understand who you are as a therapist. I do that by drawing our attention to our emotions primarily, trying to understand which beliefs are activated within the therapeutic setting and where those beliefs come from in our lived experience. Then we can explore and understand how we work with our clients—and whether the responses or interventions we use with clients is the result of transference, countertransference and projections.  The other area that I help client students to work on—is to understand what a clients presenting issue is, and help them to work on what might be an underlying issue.

Supervision is also important for people who are growing in their practice. Supervision is a necessary part of ongoing psychotherapy—simply because it is so easy for us to become enmeshed within our clients story. In our profession, it is important to have an ongoing check in with another seasoned therapist.

I have been working as a therapist for 24 years. I have been educating and supervising student therapists for the last 12 years. I have supervised at least 100 students directly in that time. I have a master’s degree in divinity. I’m currently working on my doctoral studies, with a thesis topic of Best Practises in Suicide Bereavement. I currently am cross appointed as Sessional Faculty at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, and Martin Luther University College at Laurier University. I have published an article on “Assessing Transcendent Experiences Versus Mental Illness” and I have appeared on CBC’s radio program Tapestry.

I have worked with hundreds of clients with severe mood disorders including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, Personality Disorders, Schizophrenia, Schizo-Affective Disorder, Major Addiction Disorder, Prolonged Grief Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. 

I am available for consultations, for supervision on a regular basis or for periodic check-ins.