My background.

I trained as an Existential psychotherapist and am a member of UKCP, BACP (senior accredited member), the Society for Existential Analysis, the European Association for Psychotherapy, the Society for Psychotherapy and the International Council for Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy. Although my own therapeutic orientation is Existential, I also welcome the opportunity of working with supervisees from other theoretical backgrounds, in an integrative manner, provided we can find sufficient common ground to do so.

In our supervision work together, we each have responsibilities towards ourselves, towards your clients and towards each other.

I see my responsibilities to you as offering you a holding environment in which to feel and think out loud about your work with clients. It needs to be a safe enough place in which to explore your own world-views, sets of values, assumptions and feelings, as well as the client’s, so as to shine greater light on the therapeutic relationship. 

It is my responsibility not to seek to impose my way of working on you, but to help you develop your own approach, abiding by the Code of Ethics of our profession, in a way that is most beneficial to your clients. At times this is bound to involve my challenging some of your interventions. We all have our own strengths and limitations; the process of supervision should help you clarify these for yourself, so that you may make the most of your strengths and gain confidence in yourself as a therapist, working ethically, responsibly and effectively within your own acknowledged limits. 

It is your responsibility, as a therapist, to work within the ethical guidelines of the BACP or your professional body and to be suitably insured. 

It is your responsibility, as supervisee, to bring your various clients to supervision and to discuss the issues, questions and feelings involved. You need to be prepared to identify and express freely any problems and concerns you may have with aspects of your work. I understand that this may be daunting at first, within a new supervisory relationship; it is, however, something you owe your clients and that you and I must try to facilitate by building a trusting relationship between ourselves.

You are responsible for letting me know if you happen to be going through a difficult time and if there are any issues in your past or present situation, which might affect or be affected by your work. Although I am not your therapist, your wellbeing is my concern, in so far as it may have an impact on your clients and they may impact on you.

It is my responsibility to offer you helpful feedback in a sensitive way and you are responsible for the way in which you receive it: allow yourself to make mistakes without feeling you need to either apologize or justify yourself. On the other hand, it is not helpful for any of us (your clients, you or me), if you are uncritically acceptant of my feedback: if you think that I am out of order or have got ‘the wrong end of the stick’, it is important that you let me know and that we clarify the situation.

The content of our sessions remains confidential, with the two usual exceptions: first, I shall be reflecting on some parts of our sessions in my own supervision; secondly, if some aspect of your work is causing me serious concern, I may feel duty-bound to bring it to the attention of your professional body. However, I would first encourage you to do so yourself or, failing that, I would inform you of my decision to break confidentiality and take the matter further. This would be a last resort. My own organization of reference for queries and complaints about me is the UPCA branch of UKCP.

Practicalities

If you would like to us to work together, this letter will form our contract.  Naturally as time goes by, we shall develop our own way of working together and our relationship will evolve. Besides, your needs will change over time; therefore we should review the situation occasionally, to make sure that our work is still meeting your needs and those of your clients.

Supervision also contains elements of therapy, teaching and relating to the work place and you may wish to stress one of these aspects more at different times. I have a particular interest in Existential therapy as such and its philosophical roots and have contributed a chapter to van Deurzen, E. and Young, S. (2009) Existential Supervision. (London: Palgrave).