Supervision

I define the supervisory relationship as one that is welcoming, safe, anxiety regulating, leading, normalizing, affirming, and explicitly helpful. It represents a space of trust, openness, and vulnerability. It is through this supportive and validating supervisory dynamic, with an emphasis on delighting in and celebrating all that a supervisee is clearly doing well, that confidence is built and clinicians grow personally and professionally.

The overarching goals for supervision are:

• To create a secure base for my supervisees to turn to in moments of need, insecurity, and uncertainty;
• To delineate measurable goals for competency and methods of evaluation to provide supervisees with a sense of structure, direction, and clarity;
• To build knowledge through theoretical grounding in attachment theory and recognition of steps and stages within the therapeutic process;
• To teach foundational experiential skill sets and intervention sequencing, such as slowing down, process language, privileging the positive, moment-to-moment tracking, making the implicit explicit, and asking permission;
• To navigate legal and ethical considerations;
• To tend to self-of-the therapist development.

My preferred theoretical orientation of therapy closely coincides with my models for supervision, which is best defined as attachment-based, emotionally-focused, and experiential dynamic. I follow the frameworks of Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), two systemic theories that regard relationships as the vehicle for change. Clients and supervisees alike are consistently engaged experientially and relationally, as therapists and supervisors tend explicitly to the cocreation of safety with an intense focus on privileging the positive, the adaptive, and a felt sense of what feels right and true.

My preferred supervisory method or process involves viewing video recordings of clinical work, on account of privileging the moment-to-moment tracking of the physical, emotional, and cognitive expressions of therapist and client. Additional methods used are case review and role-play. I promote opportunities for both individual and group supervision. Currently, I provide MFT supervision under AAMFT mentoring.