SUPERVISION FOR INTERNS
What to Expect in Supervision
Supervision is the process of examining your own assumptive world. Your personality and way of being in the world is colored by your socialization, experiences, culture, gender, orientation, race, color and class, to name just a few influences. This means that your view of Reality is very limited. It means you are filled with assumptions, biases, blockages and limitations and unresolved issues and suffering of your own.
The more aware you are of your own limited humanity, the clearer you will be in accurately understanding and having empathy for the condition of the clients that come to see you. Without a dedication to your own path, your own growth in awareness and your own evolutionary process, expansion and deepening, what you have to offer in terms of compassion and wisdom will be limited. Supervision is the process of examining your own feelings, needs, defenses, beliefs and thoughts that are the limited lens through which you interpret others. Supervision is the clearing of your lens - dealing with your counter-transference to your clients.
What is Required from the Intern in Supervision
Our work as clinicians is to do our own work in becoming aware
The more aware you are the more you will be able to be a guide to someone else attempting to get aware. The real value of case consultation is that you come away from it with a deepening appreciation and awareness of your own beautiful inner life, with more insight, compassion and deeper wisdom about yourself which translates into compassion and wisdom in relating to others – whether your clients, family or friends.
Your job is NOT to control, change, rescue, advise, fix or caretake another human being. This is ultimately disrespectful. Just consider the message you are giving? It is superior and therefore puts the other person into a dependent and inferior role, instead of them being a partner in their own growth. Any one of these behaviors retards growth in consciousness and awareness. Until you are curious instead of thinking you know how to fix someone else you are not being a therapist, a leader, a guide – you are joining into a codependent relationship with the client and becoming part of the problem. Furthermore, if you bring this to consultation you make the group unsafe for everyone and undermines trust.
YOUR AWARENESS IS THE ONLY “TOOL” YOU NEED
Counter-transference - Ego as Memory
Personality develops as a superimposed artefact on the empty intelligent consciousness of the new born soul. The sum total of every feeling, thought, (including word, belief, attitude and values) need and learnt way of responding to the world is the ego or what we call our personality. Our true innocent state is so identified with this socialized aspect that we mistakenly believe that this is our identity.
“As is well known, one understands nothing psychological unless one has experienced it oneself. (And is aware) Not that this ever prevents anyone from feeling convinced that his own judgments is the only true and competent one.”~Carl Jung
Exercise 1
Below is a poem about one of my own counter-transference issues. Read it and see if you can come up with theoretical answers to the questions posed.
Exercise 2
Below is a dialogue indicating a transference/counter-transference issue. Read it and see if you can come up with options in dealing with self and other
“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body and though we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated our perception confused, our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill for it remains as incorruptible as the child who accepts no compromises or excuses and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.”~Alice Miller
Exercise 3
Read this poem Sandra Maria Esteves and consider what it means to you to be a therapist
“So when you come to me, don’t assume
That you know me so well as that
Don’t come with preconceptions
Or expect me to fit the mold you have created……”
Closure Letter with Clients
Consider all the goodbyes we have to say in life. How do we navigate these transitions with dignity and grace?
For more … Read here
Termination session with Clients
Counter-transference - Seduction of the Intellect
Remember heart and awareness first - smarts second!
What is Therapy?
You cannot “do” therapy with people if you do not know why you are doing it, what your purpose is, what your life philosophy is, and what your personal goals for your own life are. It is important to really work at understanding what you are about as a therapist and why you are doing what you are doing. I have written a short explanation on what I believe therapy is for my clients so they know what to expect and where I am coming from. I invite you to do the same. You may use my example as a springboard into your own thinking, of do it without any example. Either way you need to be able to clearly define for your potential clients who you are and where you are coming from so they can make an informed decision about working with you.
“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”
~Carl R. Rogers
How is therapy Hard Work?
What are the lessons Toad had to learn?
Resistance - “I don’t want to blame my parents - or - “I don’t blame my parents”
One form of resistance to interospection is the mistaken idea that therapy is about blaming parents. How do you address this as a therapist? Consider what you would teach about this before reading the handout I give to clients around this. Then read it my explanation and see what questions, arguments, additions etc. come up for you.
Counter-transference - Joining a System in Dysfunction - No Secrets for Couples and Family Members Form
There are many ways of joining in clients in the original dysfunctional ways in which they grew up. One of the rules of a dysfunctional system is to form alliances against another person, indirect communication, blaming others in the system and keeping secrets. It is common for one person want you to keep secrets from the other family members. This is not confidentiality - it is keeping dishonest secrets. To this end, study the form and see if you would modify it when working with couples. Create your own form and educate your clients about the difference between confidentiality and keeping secrets in a system.
The Issue of Medication
This is a highly complex issue that requires each clinician to be deeply and fully aware, with complete clarity within themselves about what issue they themselves might have that cloud their perception of when to advocate for drugs or not and make them vulnerable to making huge mistakes in pushing drugs or denying the possibility of them being effective in some way.
Professionalism
It is your great honor and privilege to represent the discipline of Psychology with the reverence and respect that it deserves. You come from a long line of great thinkers in the world - you are now their representatives and I would like you to consider how you would present yourself to the world in the lineage of great minds like Jung, William James, Jean Piaget, Carl Rogers, Maslow, Erik Erikson, Joe Campbell and on and on. Research the way these great people, or anyone you particularly admire and base your work on, represented their work and their presence to the world. You stand on their shoulders, you are the lucky recipients of their contributions. Think of this in terms of your responsibility - physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, ethically and write a statement of intent for yourself as to how you will learn to present yourself to your clients and represent the discipline of psychology.
Please dress professionally, behave professionally, speak professionally. Present yourself in a way that you too can be admired and respected.
It is sad to me that I have to tell interns to dress appropriately to the profession, be well groomed and clean, do not sniff and wipe your nose on your hand, sit up straight and do not slouch around like a teenager, have good manners, welcome people with a smile and eye contact and on and on….. Please assess your demeanor, dress and conduct, and adjust accordingly. If you are not sure, ask how you come across to others. The way you come across determines whether you colleagues will refer clients to you, or whether clients will come and stay with you. Head knowledge is not enough. Basic social skills are essential. Your inability to actually receive feedback is a measure of arrogance that excludes you from actually practising the fine art and science of psychology - the study of the soul, the Self and all it’s functions with authenticity.
Roadmap to Awareness
Study this handout and see if you can apply it to your own behaviors, including things you say, and see if this gives you greater awareness into your clients motivations and the consequences of their choices in their lives. How do we help our client live from their center instead of going round and round in circles? Consider the quote below in light of the formula in the handout, as a example
“Conformity begins the moment you ignore how you feel, for acceptance.”
~Shannon L. Alde
What is the Ego? - Ego and Counter-transference
Don’t think.
Don’t get lost in your thoughts.
Your thoughts are a veil on the face of the Moon.
That Moon is your heart,
and those thoughts cover your heart.
So let them go,
just let them fall into the water.
~Rumi
Counter-transference Issue - I am working harder than my client
Do you find yourself getting irritated when no matter what you say it is met with resistanc and no perceivable changes in their lives, “I don’t know…” “I can’t….” “that will never work ….” “yes, but …..” The issue is not only your clients victim presentation and victim presentation, but your co-dependency of needing to feel competent and superior and have power through “helping.” it is time to give your clients life back to them and help them find solutions to their own lives through active listening and reflection of the dynamics and processes of their relationship with you.
To understand this read the following parable and questions and look deeply into how you got set up as a child to be responsible for other peoples lives. What was the cost? What was the benefit to you?
To recognize victim behavior, read here
Helping vs Service
Read the following beautiful article and see if you can discern the difference between “helping,” and being of “service” to another human being. How did you learn to “help?” How was listening and presence modeling do you as a child? How were you encouraged to be responsible for yourself instead of others? Or was it the other way around? Please note that no-where in the image to the left does it say, apply techniques, teach and give advice.
