Linda provides both clinical supervision and supervision of supervision to senior practitioners.
The focus of the supervision is not only on assisting clinicians as to:
-
how to be the best resource to their clients in the way they facilitate client growth and change,
-
emphasizing the self of the therapist, and
-
how to manage the clinician's own response when working with challenging presentations.
The following reflections on supervision are taken from Linda's paper, "Differentiation of Self: Enhancing Therapist Resilience When Working with Relational Trauma" which was published in the ANZJFT in December, 2017. It describes the basis of a Bowen family systems theory (BFST) approach to working with clients and the kinds of reflections that supervision from this theoretical approach privileges.
Clinical work, and supervision of that clinical work, involves
-
Gaining an even wider multi-generational view of the client family’s emotional process.
-
Increasing the capacity of the therapist to reflect on their own reactions and anxious responses to clients and other family members, before, during, and after therapy sessions.
-
Assisting the therapist to take time to pause and reflect as to what they are observing in self as they find themselves ‘having to act’ or ‘to help’ or ‘to fix’ in an anxious and less thoughtful way.
-
Encouraging in the therapist a posture that assumes more responsibility for self, as this encourages more objectivity about the work AND IT improves wellbeing outcomes for clients and therapists alike.
-
Reducing any pull to over-function for the client, given this reduces the client capacity to take more agency for themselves.
A high level of differentiation of self facilitates ... a clear sense of self, good adaptability, and efficient coping abilities when under stress ... The therapist’s ability to maintain both clear and flexible personal boundaries ... allows him or her to uphold an effective separation between the patient’s emotional world and his or her own. This separation is essential to reduce possible damage to basic cognitive schemas, and to lessen the risk of developing vicarious trauma caused by exposure to aversive content in the course of clinical work
(Halevi & Idisis, 2017, p. 5).
Halevi, E., & Idisis, Y. (2017). Who helps the helper? Differentiation of self as an indicator for resisting vicarious traumatization. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Advance Online Publication, 10, 1–8.