The most useful thing I say to a new supervisee is usually this.
Nothing is too difficult or embarrassing to bring here. Especially your own personal failings.
I say it early, because the things that most need supervision are exactly the things people are least willing to say out loud.
Some of what I mean
- Attraction to a client. Or a prurient interest you would rather not have.
- Shock. Disgust. Horror.
- Fear of somebody, or feeling intimidated by them.
- Fascination that has tipped into preoccupation, so that you think about one client between sessions more than you think about anyone else.
- Envy of a client’s life.
- Boredom, which almost nobody admits to.
- A sense of superiority. Or of being the only person who could possibly help.
And some reactions are provoked less by what a client brings than by what they are. Fame. Infamy. Great wealth. Everybody has a reaction to those, including the people most certain that they do not.
The word for it, and why the word matters less than the naming
The literature calls this countertransference. Not every model uses the term, so to be plain about it: this is the effect the client has on the practitioner. In supervision of supervision it is also the effect a supervisee has on their supervisor.
None of it is evidence of a defect in you. It is information about the work.
It is only dangerous when there is nowhere to take it.
What happens to a reaction with nowhere to go
An unexamined reaction does not sit still. It leaks into the work as a session that ends slightly early, a subtle withdrawal, an over-involvement, a referral made for reasons you have not quite admitted to yourself.
None of those look like countertransference at the time. They look like clinical judgement, and they are usually defended as such.
So the practitioner most at risk is not the one who feels these things.
It is the one who believes they do not.
A worksheet for working with it
I have written a free self-supervision worksheet for this. Five steps to go through after a session, and an honest account of where working alone stops being enough. It is free on PsycheVita, with no sign-up: What the Room Leaves in You.
How I work with supervisors, senior practitioners and coaches is set out on the supervision page.