In 2011, I contacted the person who would later become my supervisor. With some apprehension, I asked whether she still had room for me. She replied immediately: “Yes, I’d be delighted to help a fellow Romanian colleague!” (she was from New Zealand).
It was a professional relationship that lasted ten years, and from the very beginning I felt that I was being met with respect, trust and support. That single word – “colleague” – changed the way I began to view power dynamics within the supervisory relationship and profoundly shaped the way I approached my work with both clients and colleagues.
I understand and practise supervision as a living dialogue between colleagues, in which each person brings their own contribution and expertise, albeit in different ways. I believe that the therapist presenting a clinical case knows their client better than I do. From this perspective, one of my roles as a supervisor is to help the therapist hear what they already know and to create, together, a sense of quiet around their thinking and feeling, so that new meanings can emerge. In this way, they may discover both the impasses that are hindering the therapeutic process and new questions that can guide them towards a deeper understanding of the client, themselves, and the relationship between them.
Quite often, after a successful supervision session, I hear therapists say: “In a way, I already knew this, but now it is clearer.” I believe this has something to do with what Eric Berne said about communication: that messages are only truly understood once a shift has taken place in the psychic energy of the person receiving them. In supervision, such a shift becomes possible through the creative and responsible integration of clinical experience, intuition and thinking on the part of everyone involved.
Any clinical topic or professional interest may be brought into a supervision session, and one of my responsibilities as a supervisor is to distinguish between what can be worked through in the moment and what first needs to be explored more deeply in the therapist’s personal therapy. Any ethical risks or dilemmas will be addressed as a priority, as will any concerns, uncertainties or questions regarding clients’ diagnoses.
I believe that supervision has served its purpose when the therapist leaves not only with new ideas, but also with greater confidence in their own thinking and intuition, and with a sense of being professionally supported.