What Every Supervisee Needs to Know Before Starting Supervision with a Licensed Therapist
First off, I’d like to acknowledge that you are taking a big leap towards accumulating the hours needed to get your license. It is not an easy journey and I know that even though it is tough, for many like me it is definitely worth it!
For many licenses, one of the requirements for obtaining licensure is completing supervision hours with a licensed clinician. Depending on the license, this can be around 100 hours (in Colorado) and makes up a majority of the one-on-one learning time you gain after completing graduate school.
I have been fortunate enough to have had so many supervisors and mentors who guided me and showed so much kindness as I worked toward gaining my license. As I continue this journey in marriage and family therapy, addictions counseling, and with becoming an approved supervisor (ACS), I have learned some tips and tricks to be sure that you get the most out of your supervision experience. I will frame these tips in the form of questions!
Who is being assigned as your supervisor?/Who are you picking as your supervisor?
In some cases you're able to pick your supervisor and in others your supervisor is assigned to you. I have personally been in both of these situations.
When I was assigned a supervisor, I found it was important to lean into the key strengths that supervisor has while honoring that you do not need to be exactly like your supervisor. What do I mean? I mean that there will always be differences between you and your supervisor and it is important that they help you curate your own professional personality and support you in developing your niche.
In situations where you are able to pick your own supervisor, it is important to ask what your supervisor will provide you and what it is that they know best/what doesn't align with what you want to know best. In my personal experience, I found that having many different supervisors with many different areas of expertise allowed me to narrow in on the concepts, interventions and professional skills that I wanted to gain from each supervisor.
By the time I was finishing my social work license, I had five social workers who were signing off for my license. In my opinion, getting a diverse perspective on how to work within the mental health field is sealant for your success. It will help you learn how to effectively niche and gain the necessary skills needed to succeed.
What do you want to learn or become an expert in? How will your supervisor help you get there?
This is so incredibly important. When I started out in supervision, I had no idea what I wanted to be a specialist in. I just knew that I wanted to work with communities of color but I didn't know how that would look like on a day-to-day basis. My supervisors encouraged me to try out different modalities and styles and figure out which one felt most like me.
After much exploration, I realized that being person centered felt most authentic to who I am as a person and the cultures I've grown up within. Because of this, I realized that I wanted to take a person centered approach to my work. I wouldn't have learned this if I didn't work in different areas and in different modalities in order to decide what I wanted my expertise to be in.
If you are having a conflict with your supervisor, what do you do?
This is tough! Fortunately, I have not had much experience with this as a supervisee. However, it is never easy to tell a supervisor that you need something different to support you in your journey. I highly recommend that you address any conflict or concern directly with your supervisor and get external support if that conversation does not go well.
As a reminder, this is not meant to be any legal or ethical advice. My thoughts are purely my opinion based on my life experience.
Who is on the journey of licensure with you?
As I name all of these qualities that are important in a supervisor, I think it is also important to have colleagues and peers who are on the same journey.
In my experience, these are the folks who encourage you not to give up when the hours feel overwhelming. They are the ones who will give you tips, study with you for your exam, and will help talk you through things that only you all can understand in your experience.
As a therapist going through supervision and licensure during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a very unique experience that those before me and those after me simply did not fully understand. Because of this, leaning on my peers made me a better therapist and helped me through moments of overwhelm.
What can supervisors do/not do? What can you as a supervisee do/not do?
When looking at what supervisors and supervisees can and cannot do, I highly recommend you look into this specifically for your license. By knowing what the answer to this question is, you will know what is best for you individually and what is ethically appropriate within your specific mental health field.
I think distinguishing boundaries that also exist in the supervision relationship is incredibly salient and can be answered by most codes of ethics or revised statutes or laws within the state in which you are practicing.
Can you accept hard and constructive feedback? How does the supervisor provide that feedback?
Feedback is the backbone of supervision. Without feedback, you are simply taking the time to meet with another therapist and have them tell you how great you are. That is simply not helpful, especially as we work to get better as professionals within this field.
There has been many times where I received feedback that was difficult to absorb. However, I am incredibly grateful for that feedback because it made me the therapist I am today and now helps me be a better supervisor to those that I am working with currently. Some of the most constructive feedback that I got was not clinical. It was about the ways that I was taking care of myself, my working patterns, my balance and my burnout. It was very hard to hear at the moment but without those experiences of hearing that I was overworking myself and burning myself out, I would not be able to accept hard feedback today as I continue to learn not to do this.
I think that when you first meet your supervisor, it is important to figure out how they give feedback. By learning this, you can figure out how much you can handle and you can ask for exactly what you need.
Find these tips helpful? If this blog post resonates with you, click here to schedule a 30 minute consultation with us.
Please know that this article is not for the purposes of providing legal or ethical advice, it is solely my opinion of what I found helpful in my journey!
