Professional Supervision
“Supervision interrupts practice. It wakes us up to what we are doing. When we are alive to what we are doing we wake up to what is, instead of falling asleep in the comfort stories of our clinical routines and daily practice…We have profound learning difficulties when it comes to being present to our own moment to moment experiences. Disturb the stuck narrative. The supervisory voice acts as an irritator interrupting repetitive stories (comfort stories) and facilitating the construction of new stories”
-Ryan, 2004
I see supervision as a quality of just being in the work we do as therapists. Mindful supervision brings a quality of looking at the work we do without fear or favour. It is a process of connecting with what resonates in us as we sit opposite another person or persons. Mindful, experiential supervision encourages us to reflect upon our embodied experience in the therapeutic setting.
In my supervision practice I work with my supervisees:
- To be mindful
- To create an atmosphere of compassionate curiosity
- To create a space where uncertainty is welcome
- Establishing an I/we learning relationship
- Learning how to give and receive feedback to each other – something like fearless compassion
- Attending to individual learning styles
- To be a place of experience, experiment and creativity
- To have fun
For supervision to be transformational it must attend to both personal and professional learning. In transformational learning we not only reflect on the experience we are having but also on how we construct those experiences. When we undertake this process mindfully we create new mental maps or meaning-making frameworks for ourselves as well as the people we work with.