
Hobart Group Supervision Collective
Join a small group of peers to learn, explore, connect, express and reflect through shared discussion, music and creative arts experiences.
If you're a helping professional, being connected to your humanity is your superpower.
In the past week, I have found myself in tears with the people that I support in my work.
I don't mean uncontrollable sobbing. I’m talking about tears pricking at the corner of my eyes during moments of connectedness and emotion in our shared humanity.
What brought the tears?
At times I was touched by the pain of what was being shared, and at other times by the unexpected, joyful transformation I was witnessing.
It's a real, human thing to be touched in this way; and it's an important part of what can make this work so transformational.
We see, we hear, we feel the impact of life on others, and we in turn are impacted.
Whilst transference and countertransference have always been part of the discussion, for a long time the importance of distinguishing between the personal and the professional for health and caring professionals was emphasised.
The message was clear: keep the personal at home, and the professional at work.
However, people are messy and not so black and white.
And there are many shades of grey that are important to explore as a clinician, not only for ourselves, but in ensuring the wellbeing and best outcomes for the people that we support.
Luckily these days, it is much more broadly accepted that being aware of, connecting with and understanding the crossover of the personal and the professional in clinical work is an important resource.
Being aware of all of these parts of ourselves, being able tease out what is ours, what belongs to someone else, what is present, what is past, what is shared and what is separate, is essential in this work of being with other humans.
And sometimes delving into what is happening in these moments of nervous system / emotional tangle, going into the real, human response, is what makes this work transformative.
Certainly, sometimes we need therapy, but not every time we feel emotional.
As a starting point, what we do need, is to:
This is often easier said than done!
This is where therapeutic supervision comes in.
Therapeutic supervision embraces a holistic approach to supervision that values and prioritises the psychodynamics at play in the therapeutic relationship, the supervisory relationship, and the wider context of the work.
Therapeutic supervision is not therapy within supervision.
However, personal responses and experiences may be explored to support greater ethical presence for supervisees, facilitating clarity, insight and better outcomes for those accessing clinical services.
As Brené Brown articulates so articulately, we can never offer a 'safe space' but we can offer brave spaces that can be safe enough. These are spaces created in vulnerability, moral courage and trust so that we can engage in honest, challenging or vulnerable conversations, even when discomfort arises.
Of course, the usual areas of supervision (outlined in a previous blog here) are still important in therapeutic supervision:
Therapeutic supervision however, broadens and deepens its scope to also explore the emotional, psychological, physiological, spiritual and interpersonal needs and impacts of helping work, to enquire, to recognise, and to discover the inherent value and information they offer the clinical work.
This enables the supervisee to sit within a stance of ethical presence, thereby facilitating greater insight, both for the wellbeing of the supervisee and their clinical work.
Hobart Group Supervision Collective
Join a small group of peers to learn, explore, connect, express and reflect through shared discussion, music and creative arts experiences.
Creative embodied group supervision for therapists, clinicians and service providers
Join a small group of peers to learn, explore, connect, express and reflect through shared discussion, music and creative arts experiences.
Header image: Priscilla Du Preez