My Philosophy of Supervision
This is the paper I wrote towards completion of my Certification as an Emotionally Focused Therapy Supervisor, and have since reformulated to integrate how it is I conceptualize clinical supervision beyond EFT consultation. I have posted it here in service of transparency to my practice.
A McCrackenian Philosophy of Clinical Supervision
Clinical Supervision: Helping Supervisees (and their Clients) Work Better (Together)
Clinical supervision is perhaps the most important supportive and integrative structure available to psychotherapists independent of their professional affiliation, modality of practice, preferred method or orientation, or stage of practical development. Supervisors are the most immediate support figures available for psychotherapists, and supervision as a practice is increasingly recognized as a specialty within each profession and developed models of therapeutic practice. Supervisors not only help supervisee therapists integrate the teachings and ethics of their schools and models of exposure and act as guardians of these institutions and groups, but also provide reflective space for personal development within their practice, and the development of an empowered voice: an effective self-as-therapist. Within this context, clinical supervisors are afforded a privilege unlike professors, trainers, professional organization and board officials, and administrative supervisors. Clinical supervisors can help therapists become better versions of their self-as-therapist, and, more importantly, self-as-therapist explicitly in relational-process with clients.
My Foundation of Supervision in Clinical Social Work
As a Clinical Social Work Supervisor, I have developed an appreciation for both the idiographic and nomothetic aspects of supervision. As Clinical Social Workers aim to “start where the client is,” Clinical Social Work Supervisors aim to “start where the supervisee is,” and thus the relationship is supervisee-need-centered. Yet, without structure, purely supervisee-centered clinical supervision can be prone to wander without clear goals and objectives, and can be limited by supervisee blocks to development and under-resourcing. So, as Clinical Social Workers understand individualized needs through more generalized theoretical lenses of behavioral and social development which guide their interventions, Clinical Social Work Supervisors see individualized supervisee needs through these same theoretical lenses guiding their actions. As such, I consider the foundation of my clinical supervision practice to include in it a “Mentoring, Modeling, and Monitoring” framework that incorporates elements of Self Determination Theory, particularly attending to supporting supervisee sense of choice/autonomy, competency building, and relatedness support.
A Stabilizing Framework from a Relational-Dialogic Approach to Supervision
I believe a constant growing edge for all humans is in developing our self-in-relationship, and particularly in privileging dialogical practices and resisting single-story, monological habits learned from our cultures. Something identified in my own supervision-of-supervision is an opening to grow towards an expanded systemic, process-oriented, interpersonal focus. This privileging of what is within each person, while equally privileging what is between the actors in a dialogue, fits precisely with Emotionally Focused Therapy and Clinical Social Work practice. This is leading me to further understand the importance of stabilizing the clinical supervision experience for and between supervisee and supervisor in a systemic-dialogical frame, which acknowledges the experiential expertise of each the supervisor, the supervisee and the supervisee’s client(s). This includes the supervisor’s expertise in the subject and process of relevant professional development, the supervisee’s expertise in their self-as-therapist experience, and the client’s expertise in their lived experience. Although clinical supervision maintains a focus on supervisee need and growth, from this frame the clinical supervision process can allow space for reflection and growth of all dialogical actors as self-in-transition-in-situation together, and for parallel process observations and experiences to be used towards the full developmental benefit of the supervisee, their client(s), and the supervisor.
Platforms from the Emotionally Focused Therapy Approach to Supervision
The “ACES” framework of clinical supervision that EFT offers, provides concrete guidance to the supervision process, without any mistake of importance in the order of the elements found within this acronym.
Alliance
As with any psychotherapeutic, counseling or coaching practice, EFT included, alliance is a crucial element for effective clinical supervision. This starts first with establishing safety in the supervisory relationship, and can be facilitated by supervisor-to-supervisee affirmations, and emotional transparency and responsiveness as book-ended interventions to any corrective feedback offered during a supervision session. Additionally, the supervisory alliance benefits from attending to task-orientation during the supervision session including elements of task setting (i.e. “How would you like me to help you today?” and “What 1 or 2 skills would you like to improve today?”), task-tracking (i.e. “How is this session going for you so far?”), relationship tracking (i.e. “How is this for us to be together in this way right now?” and “How am I doing for you so far?”), and end of session follow-up to facilitate specific successes (i.e. “What would you like to take away from our meeting today, and how would you like to put this into practice?”). Most importantly, for alliance to be built and grown, ruptures in the supervisory alliance need to be detected, acknowledged and actively repaired, with the supervisor modeling leadership of acknowledging ruptures, vulnerable emotions and facilitating related rupture repair. This is the sine qua non of clinical supervision, which all else rests upon.
Conceptual Grounding
Again, as with any psychotherapeutic practice, including EFT, conceptual frameworks are essential platforms for practice-focused growth. In EFT in particular, base theories that we should attend to and immerse ourselves in as both supervisor and supervisee include:
Experience of Skill Development/Technical Skill Development
As experiential learning theory and research demonstrate, it is not enough to recognize (know) something to demonstrate understanding (applied knowledge). Thus, it is critical that supervisees go beyond the cognitive platforming of knowledge, and move into experiential practice during clinical supervision. Attending to this element of the supervisory process involves:
Self-of-the-Therapist
While any psychotherapeutic approach involves the effective use of the self-of-the-therapist, EFT calls upon the self-of-the-therapist to be fully engaged with the process of the individual client and their relationships with self and others. While the EFT model, with its effective integration of powerful attachment-grounded experiential and systemic interventions, offers therapists and supervisors a coherent map for change on the intrapsychic and interpersonal levels, no map is useful if the reader is disoriented and unable to use their sense of right direction because they are emotionally jarred and unable to regulate their self in session. These moments of dysregulated emotion in states of aloneness as the therapist can create blocks to effective use of the EFT model and basic therapeutic use of self, including limiting situational awareness, and evoking ineffective strategies of the therapist which limit their accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement. The EFT supervisory process offers to supervisors and supervisees the unique “HEARTS” experiential-relational dyadic process to undo the supervisee’s aloneness of dysregulated emotion. This process allows for complete processing of therapist emotional blocks to effective use of self and effective orientation and use of the EFT model. The supervisor-supervisee corrective inter and intra-relational experience can become a compass for the supervisee to find “True North” on the EFT map, and re-engage in the empirically-supported process of facilitating change.
A Constant Work-in-Progress/Need-Responsive Supervision
Clinical supervision is an indispensable experience for growth as a psychotherapist. Each profession that includes psychotherapy within its scope of practice, and each model of psychotherapy acknowledges the importance of clinical supervision, but Emotionally Focused Therapy offers a thorough and complete supervisory map to the process which can enhance clinician autonomy, competency and relatedness. This map not only provides for effective learning and growth as EFT practitioners, it also applies equally to supervision of all therapeutic professions (i.e. clinical social work, psychology, marriage & family therapy, counseling, etc), illuminating growing edges, which never have a finished state so long as we are in practice. We are a constant work in progress, never finished with our growth process, and always growing in dialogic-relation with an accessible, responsive and engaged supervisory other. While teaching and rehearsing concepts and skills are crucial elements of learning psychotherapy, EFT in particular, EFT supervisors have a privilege at their access by going beyond and allowing room for exploration of the self-of-the-therapist-in-process as needed, allowing for a more transformative experience of mentoring, modeling, and monitoring.
Clinical Supervision: Helping Supervisees (and their Clients) Work Better (Together)
Clinical supervision is perhaps the most important supportive and integrative structure available to psychotherapists independent of their professional affiliation, modality of practice, preferred method or orientation, or stage of practical development. Supervisors are the most immediate support figures available for psychotherapists, and supervision as a practice is increasingly recognized as a specialty within each profession and developed models of therapeutic practice. Supervisors not only help supervisee therapists integrate the teachings and ethics of their schools and models of exposure and act as guardians of these institutions and groups, but also provide reflective space for personal development within their practice, and the development of an empowered voice: an effective self-as-therapist. Within this context, clinical supervisors are afforded a privilege unlike professors, trainers, professional organization and board officials, and administrative supervisors. Clinical supervisors can help therapists become better versions of their self-as-therapist, and, more importantly, self-as-therapist explicitly in relational-process with clients.
My Foundation of Supervision in Clinical Social Work
As a Clinical Social Work Supervisor, I have developed an appreciation for both the idiographic and nomothetic aspects of supervision. As Clinical Social Workers aim to “start where the client is,” Clinical Social Work Supervisors aim to “start where the supervisee is,” and thus the relationship is supervisee-need-centered. Yet, without structure, purely supervisee-centered clinical supervision can be prone to wander without clear goals and objectives, and can be limited by supervisee blocks to development and under-resourcing. So, as Clinical Social Workers understand individualized needs through more generalized theoretical lenses of behavioral and social development which guide their interventions, Clinical Social Work Supervisors see individualized supervisee needs through these same theoretical lenses guiding their actions. As such, I consider the foundation of my clinical supervision practice to include in it a “Mentoring, Modeling, and Monitoring” framework that incorporates elements of Self Determination Theory, particularly attending to supporting supervisee sense of choice/autonomy, competency building, and relatedness support.
A Stabilizing Framework from a Relational-Dialogic Approach to Supervision
I believe a constant growing edge for all humans is in developing our self-in-relationship, and particularly in privileging dialogical practices and resisting single-story, monological habits learned from our cultures. Something identified in my own supervision-of-supervision is an opening to grow towards an expanded systemic, process-oriented, interpersonal focus. This privileging of what is within each person, while equally privileging what is between the actors in a dialogue, fits precisely with Emotionally Focused Therapy and Clinical Social Work practice. This is leading me to further understand the importance of stabilizing the clinical supervision experience for and between supervisee and supervisor in a systemic-dialogical frame, which acknowledges the experiential expertise of each the supervisor, the supervisee and the supervisee’s client(s). This includes the supervisor’s expertise in the subject and process of relevant professional development, the supervisee’s expertise in their self-as-therapist experience, and the client’s expertise in their lived experience. Although clinical supervision maintains a focus on supervisee need and growth, from this frame the clinical supervision process can allow space for reflection and growth of all dialogical actors as self-in-transition-in-situation together, and for parallel process observations and experiences to be used towards the full developmental benefit of the supervisee, their client(s), and the supervisor.
Platforms from the Emotionally Focused Therapy Approach to Supervision
The “ACES” framework of clinical supervision that EFT offers, provides concrete guidance to the supervision process, without any mistake of importance in the order of the elements found within this acronym.
Alliance
As with any psychotherapeutic, counseling or coaching practice, EFT included, alliance is a crucial element for effective clinical supervision. This starts first with establishing safety in the supervisory relationship, and can be facilitated by supervisor-to-supervisee affirmations, and emotional transparency and responsiveness as book-ended interventions to any corrective feedback offered during a supervision session. Additionally, the supervisory alliance benefits from attending to task-orientation during the supervision session including elements of task setting (i.e. “How would you like me to help you today?” and “What 1 or 2 skills would you like to improve today?”), task-tracking (i.e. “How is this session going for you so far?”), relationship tracking (i.e. “How is this for us to be together in this way right now?” and “How am I doing for you so far?”), and end of session follow-up to facilitate specific successes (i.e. “What would you like to take away from our meeting today, and how would you like to put this into practice?”). Most importantly, for alliance to be built and grown, ruptures in the supervisory alliance need to be detected, acknowledged and actively repaired, with the supervisor modeling leadership of acknowledging ruptures, vulnerable emotions and facilitating related rupture repair. This is the sine qua non of clinical supervision, which all else rests upon.
Conceptual Grounding
Again, as with any psychotherapeutic practice, including EFT, conceptual frameworks are essential platforms for practice-focused growth. In EFT in particular, base theories that we should attend to and immerse ourselves in as both supervisor and supervisee include:
- Humanism and Experiential Theory: Growth and healing oriented perspectives that privilege strengths, Here-and-Now phenomena, and the presence of the therapist and supervisor.
- Systemic Theory: Attendance to linkages and reciprocity in systems, and isomorphism in intrapersonal and interpersonal processes.
- Attachment Theory: Attendance to the biopsychosociospiritual needs-in-relationship that are present for clients with their partners and family members, clients with their therapist, supervisees with their supervisor, and the supervisor with their supervisor-of-supervision.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy Integrated Theory: Attendance to how the above three theories compliment and complete each other in theory and practice, and should include cognitive knowledge of the Stages and Steps identified in the task-analytic research, the “Tango” moves identified in process-of-change research, recall of EFT interventions from experiential and systemic theories, and use of reinforcement exercises (i.e. “homework”) such as readings, workbooks, videos and workshops/trainings.
Experience of Skill Development/Technical Skill Development
As experiential learning theory and research demonstrate, it is not enough to recognize (know) something to demonstrate understanding (applied knowledge). Thus, it is critical that supervisees go beyond the cognitive platforming of knowledge, and move into experiential practice during clinical supervision. Attending to this element of the supervisory process involves:
- Targeting skills to develop including:
- therapist-client alliance and attunement,
- experiential-emotional tracking and organization, and accessing and heightening primary emotion and attachment needs,
- systemic interaction tracking, negative interaction redirection, and affiliative interaction facilitation (i.e. enactments),
- and meta-therapeutic processing of corrective relational-emotional experience.
- Clarifying and confirming with supervisees that the targeted skills are understood and seen as relevant to the supervision session (i.e. asking for the supervisee to put concept and skills in their own words)
- In-supervision practice (i.e. role play) where the supervisor models the skills “as therapist” first, the experience of the supervisee receiving the skills “as client” is processed, then the supervisee practices the skills “as therapist” while supervisor gives affirmative and corrective feedback, and finally the experience of the supervisee practicing the skill is processed while highlighting specific successful experiences and noting room for additional growth opportunities
Self-of-the-Therapist
While any psychotherapeutic approach involves the effective use of the self-of-the-therapist, EFT calls upon the self-of-the-therapist to be fully engaged with the process of the individual client and their relationships with self and others. While the EFT model, with its effective integration of powerful attachment-grounded experiential and systemic interventions, offers therapists and supervisors a coherent map for change on the intrapsychic and interpersonal levels, no map is useful if the reader is disoriented and unable to use their sense of right direction because they are emotionally jarred and unable to regulate their self in session. These moments of dysregulated emotion in states of aloneness as the therapist can create blocks to effective use of the EFT model and basic therapeutic use of self, including limiting situational awareness, and evoking ineffective strategies of the therapist which limit their accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement. The EFT supervisory process offers to supervisors and supervisees the unique “HEARTS” experiential-relational dyadic process to undo the supervisee’s aloneness of dysregulated emotion. This process allows for complete processing of therapist emotional blocks to effective use of self and effective orientation and use of the EFT model. The supervisor-supervisee corrective inter and intra-relational experience can become a compass for the supervisee to find “True North” on the EFT map, and re-engage in the empirically-supported process of facilitating change.
A Constant Work-in-Progress/Need-Responsive Supervision
Clinical supervision is an indispensable experience for growth as a psychotherapist. Each profession that includes psychotherapy within its scope of practice, and each model of psychotherapy acknowledges the importance of clinical supervision, but Emotionally Focused Therapy offers a thorough and complete supervisory map to the process which can enhance clinician autonomy, competency and relatedness. This map not only provides for effective learning and growth as EFT practitioners, it also applies equally to supervision of all therapeutic professions (i.e. clinical social work, psychology, marriage & family therapy, counseling, etc), illuminating growing edges, which never have a finished state so long as we are in practice. We are a constant work in progress, never finished with our growth process, and always growing in dialogic-relation with an accessible, responsive and engaged supervisory other. While teaching and rehearsing concepts and skills are crucial elements of learning psychotherapy, EFT in particular, EFT supervisors have a privilege at their access by going beyond and allowing room for exploration of the self-of-the-therapist-in-process as needed, allowing for a more transformative experience of mentoring, modeling, and monitoring.
