Clinical Supervision

Clinical Supervision is a formal, systematic and continuous process of professional support and learning for counselors in training. Trainees are assisted in developing their practice through regular discussion with experienced therapists. Supervision aims to promote autonomous decision-making, valuing client confidentiality and safe care provision through reflective processes and intervention analysis.

At Roots Wellness Center we provide clinical supervision to graduate level students and mental health professionals in both Greek and English. Our goal is to help you develop skills in the following areas:

  • intake interviewing, case conceptualization, planning, and assessment
  • exploring and coping with therapeutic challenges
  • developing and sustaining therapeutic relationships
  • recognizing personal therapeutic style and learning how to be your authentic self
  • improvement of therapeutic intervention skills
  • support and guidance regarding professional goals
  • learning and following the ethical framework based on a standard code of conduct

Clinical Supervision

Supervision also includes the following processes:

Reflection on the content of the therapy session

Attention is concentrated on the actual phenomena of the therapy session: how the client presented themselves, what they chose to share, which area of their life they wanted to explore, and how the session’s content might relate to content from previous sessions. This process aims to help you pay attention to your client, the choices they make and the relatedness of the various aspects of the client’s life.

The focus here is on the interventions you choose to apply – not only what interventions were used but also when and why they were used. Alternative strategies and interventions might then be developed and their consequences anticipated. The main goal of this process is to increase your ability to choose and utilize appropriate interventions.

You will learn how to recognize what was happening consciously and unconsciously during the therapy process: how the session started and finished; what happened around the edges; metaphors and images that emerged; and changes in voice and posture. Exploring such aspects through supervision will help you increase your insight and understanding of the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship.

It is important to concentrate on whatever issues you may be dealing with as a therapist both consciously and unconsciously and whether these issues may affect your perception of the client. Such matters, if left unchecked, may diminish the therapeutic relationship and hinder the course of therapy. There are many types of countertransference, once any issue is identified you can then work through it both both supervision and your personal therapy.

The therapeutic relationship is explored during supervision. Your client may unconsciously be playing out or paralleling hidden dynamics through your sessions together. For example, if the client was covertly acting in a passive-aggressive manner towards you, this might emerge during supervision through you becoming unconsciously passive-aggressive towards your supervisor as they discuss that particular client.

Here the supervisor primarily pays attention to their own here-and-now experience in the supervision – what feelings, thoughts and images the shared therapy material stirs up in them. The supervisor uses these responses to provide reflective illumination for the trainee. The unconscious material of the therapy session which has been unheard at the conscious level by the therapist may emerge in the thoughts, feelings and images of the supervisor.

Lastly, the supervisory relationship also exist within a wider context which affects the processes within supervision. The client-therapist-supervisor triad does not exist in a void. There are professional codes of conduct and ethics, organizational requirements and restrictions which must be acknowledged.

Individual and group supervision are provided at our Kallithea office and online. Additionally, our team regularly organizes workshops and seminars. For more information, emails us at internship@roots.gr

A journey of a thousand miles… begins with a single step.

– Lao Tzu

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