A Fictional Day at the Office of a Clinical Supervisor
“Well it’s about this client, Todd, that I’ve been working with for the past two months. When he first started seeing me he was so eager to change and would welcome any possible suggestion I might have. But now, I have to drag the words out of him. It’s like he’s lost in some sort of fog and I can’t get him out.”
Why Does Clinical Supervision Give Me Anxiety?
In fact, anxiety is the most recognized emotion for both supervisors and supervisees (Kuo et al., 2016). One of the many theories for why anxiety is so prevalent in clinical supervision is the many roles that a supervisee might take on a daily basis. They could be a student, a parent, a partner, a therapist and a supervisee all in one day. These dual roles of the student and trainee at the same time can lead to role conflict. The roles of student and the role of therapist are quite different, yet we expect supervisees to effortlessly sway back and forth between the two roles. The two roles are behaviourally-distinctive from one another (Holloway, 1995) so having to switch between the two can be anxiety-provoking.
I’m Done School. Why Do I Need Clinical Supervision?
It’s important to be humble as therapists. It’s easy to think that we know better than our clients or that if they just followed our advice better, their lives would improve. But imposing our own ideals onto our clients is a common topic in clinical supervision in Ontario for many reasons. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we think the client should do. What matters is what the client thinks they should do and even more importantly, what they believe they have the capacity to do. We aren’t here to provide answers. We are here to help our clients find their own answers.
Psychotherapy in a Post Pandemic World
Therapists have been able to fit more clients into their schedules and have also found an easier time of working in the off-hours. Suddenly, an evening session on a Thursday isn’t out of the question whereas three years ago that would have sounded absurd.
The Basics of Clinical Supervision in Ontario
The main purpose of the College is to protect members of the public from nefarious actions on the part of the therapists. This can include boundary violations, sexual involvement with clients, practising out of scope as well as conflict of interest issues. Simply put, the harm that a therapist can cause to client can be life-changing and we need laws and practices that protect vulnerable populations.