I enjoy supervising counselors with a wide range of professional development and experience. On the one hand, I am excited when teaching basic professional standards and micro-skills to first semester practicum students. On the other hand, I enjoy exploring complex questions with more advanced practitioners as they gain experience and their own style of providing therapy. In that sense, I operate from a “developmental” approach that honors each therapist’s path to their own professional goals.
I have a long standing interest in interpersonal psychotherapy. This type of therapy is oriented in psychodynamic and attachment theory and my supervision style reflects this. I believe learning a foundation of interpersonal skills and a basic conceptualization ability can be a scaffolding that a therapist can use to expand into many therapy modalities. Furthermore, I believe supervision is at its best when it is a safe-base to explore client material and therapist reactions. This allows therapists to take risks and stretch in their practice as they grow professionally.
What does this look like? Reviewing clinical material, providing co-therapy, watching video taped sessions and discussing cases is an important part of the supervision work. However, of equal importance is learning and exploring the process-dynamics of therapy. This is best achieved by experiencing and understanding those counseling dynamics as they are recreated in the supervision relationship.