Person-Centred Counselling Supervision

Personal and Professional

Richard Bryant-Jefferies

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315342689
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Each preceding book in the Living Therapy series provides a demonstration of the application of the person-centred approach to counselling and psychotherapy to clients presenting with particular issues. To complement these, this book focuses more on the supervisory element of the therapeutic process. It brings together examples of supervision sessions from the Living Therapy series, and presents each one as an example of person-centred supervisory practice of person-centred counselling. The supervision sessions deal with a range of issues that arise when working with clients who are seeking counselling in order to resolve difficulties from a wide range of difficult human experience. Each supervision session is introduced with a summary of the background, and points for discussion are included at the end of each chapter to stimulate further thought and debate.

The book does not attempt to demonstrate a definitive way to apply person-centred principles to supervision, but does demonstrate core principles. It will prove valuable to experienced and novice supervisors, and to those uncertain about supervising counsellors working in areas outside their own professional experience. It should also be read by counsellors in training who are preparing to be supervised, for whom the book offers insights into this collaborative process.

CHAPTER 1

Supervising the counselling of a young person at a youth counselling agency*

The dialogue introduces the client, Jodie, who was originally brought by her mother after she had found indications that she was using cannabis. Sandy, her counsellor, has experience of substance misuse work and is discussing their first few sessions with Courtney, her supervisor. Like many young people, Jodie is having to cope with a range of issues including: parents, school, best friends, street cred and her developing drug use.

Supervision session

Supervisor: Courtney

Supervisee/Counsellor: Sandy

Client: Jodie

‘I've got a new client at the Agency. 15 year old. Jodie. Referred by her mother really, she'd found cannabis in her bedroom. Anyway, Jodie didn't want to be there and made that pretty clear at the start, but the relationship has developed since then, although I'm not sure she'll come back after the last session.’

Courtney smiled. ‘They don't often hang around, do they?’

‘Well, it got uncomfortable for her and she's really caught between using cannabis with her friends, or not using/or cutting back and risking losing her reputation and stuff.’

‘Yeah, important stuff. So how does it feel being in relationship with her?’

^* Taken from Counselling Young People: person-centred dialogues (2004) by Richard Bryant-Jefferies. Radcliffe Medical Press, Oxford.

A key feature of person-centred supervision lies in exploring the relationship that the supervisee has with her client and the feelings, thoughts and experiences that the supervisee has within that relationship. The emphasis is on helping them to re£ect on their congruence, the quality and nature of their empathy and their ability to be warmly accepting of the client, and what may interfere with any of these. The intention being to clarify and to ensure that the supervisee is able to offer those aspects of the ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’ for which she has responsibility.

‘It feels good and it feels challenging. I nearly said ‘‘felt’’ which I guess re£ects my uncertainty as to whether she will come back.’

Courtney was nodding, ‘yes, that seems quite present’.

‘I'm concerned and I guess I'm wondering how well I handled expressing that concern.’

‘Can you say a little more?’

‘Well, we got into exploring her cannabis use.’ Sandy went on to describe the party and the effects the cannabis had had on Jodie the next day, and the dilemma she felt she was facing with her two best mates, Ally and Em over it. As she spoke, Sandy could feel a sense of heaviness in her, it just felt so weighty to talk about. She voiced this.

‘OK, so as you talk about this dilemma you can feel a real weight. In you, on you, around you?’

‘Inside me, here.’ Sandy put her hand over her tummy, just below the solar plexus. ‘Feels kind of bulky as well.’

‘So, weighty, bulky, in this area.’

As Sandy focused on it she realised that it was changing, dissipating and becoming more of an all-over sensation, but more on the edges of her body. ‘It's shifted. It's more a kind of weight, no, more a kind of pressure all over my skin but it doesn't feel like it touches my skin. Makes me feel quite lethargic.’

‘Lethargic, sort of not feeling motivated?’ Courtney wasn't sure about that as he said it, somehow it sounded like he was trying to hang his own meaning on what Sandy was trying to say.

‘No, she's motivated, but… I've switched to talking about Jodie, that's interesting. Wonder why I did that?’

‘I wonder too.’

Sandy sat with her experiencing. She couldn't figure out why, but she had a clear image of Jodie sitting like she had for a lot of the sessions, sort of slumped in the chair, and picking at her nails. She described this to Courtney.

‘That how you feel?’

‘Yes, I guess it is, and I'm aware I feel quite tense as well, up here, in my shoulders.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Feels like I'm carrying something, something heavy.’

‘Mhmm, I'm just wondering whether it was something you picked up when you were with Jodie.’

Sandy could still see Jodie sitting there, and the struggle she had had, saying how she couldn't change, that she shared everything with her mates. She thought about how the session had continued. How Jodie had switched into wanting to go, to get on and live her life. Shit, Sandy thought, she kind of left it behind, dumped the heaviness of it all on me, or at least I picked it up. Or did she just leave me more sensitive to my own stuff? ‘You know, I don't know that I picked it up, but maybe she put me in touch with something in me. I don't know that I believe we pick up our client's stuff unless we have something that kind of resonates to it within ourselves. I'm wondering what it may be in me that kind of got triggered by her dilemma, the weightiness of her struggle to decide what to do.’

‘OK, so the question is what might be present for you that in some way may be similar to, affected by, Jodie's experience in that session?’

Sandy felt an overwhelming urge to stretch, which she did, and it felt good. Her back had become really tight and it felt energising to just open her arms out and move her back muscles.

‘That looked satisfying,’ Courtney smiled.

‘Yeah, felt like I needed to expand a bit.’ She paused to think for a moment. She thought about herself at Jodie's age. ‘I never got out and about like she does when I was her age. Seemed to be at home most of the time. We lived in a fairly remote area. Didn't get out to many parties, but had the occasional sleep over. Don't remember any drugs being around much though, just didn't really figure. Why did I stretch when you said about what might be similar in me to what Jodie was experiencing? She just seems so different, head strong, out and about. Me, I was quiet, never really defied anyone. She just seems such a contrast.’

Courtney nodded and was struck by the difference. He wanted to ensure that Sandy knew he had heard this. ‘I'm really struck by the difference between you, a real contrast.’

‘Yes.’ Then a powerful thought struck her, and it was powerful. One of those thoughts that she kind of knew, but then suddenly she really knew, like it became very immediate, and very present.

Courtney noticed Sandy's expression change. She had suddenly frowned. ‘Yes?’, he asked.

‘Part of me would have so liked to have been like her, but would have been scared to death at the idea as well.’

‘She kind of reminds you of how part of you wanted to be, but that also scared you as well.’

Sandy nodded. She could see some of the girls from her school, they just seemed so care free, so liberated, she couldn't think of a better word, just seemed to have a ‘not care’ attitude to life. She had always been so serious, and a little bit timid.

‘I'm just thinking about some of the other girls at school and how they just seemed so cool, so… the word I had was ‘‘liberated’’, kind of freed up and con-fident. I was never like that, not really until I got into counselling. The training and the therapy changed all that.’

‘But there is something about Jodie that kind of echoes from your past, of looking up to the other girls and wishing you were like them.’

‘You know, I'm beginning to wonder if being with Jodie has kind of burst a bubble for me.’

Courtney frowned, unsure what Sandy was meaning.

‘It's like maybe I've been carrying a secret desire to be like those girls, like Jodie is, at least, part of me has been carrying that dream, hope, call it what you will. And now Jodie has kind of burst it, shattered the dream. Made me, well that part of me, realise that maybe it isn't so glamorous as I thought it was. Yes, the more I think about this, the more real it feels. Part of me I have carried, unnoticed, and it has taken Jodie to come into my life to draw my attention to it.’

‘She's given you quite a gift.’

‘Well, I've often thought about how two-way this counselling is, how both the counsellor and the client learns through the process.’

It does seem that counselling is a two-way process, that whilst the counsellor is offering an opportunity to their client, the client is generally offering something back to the counsellor as well. It can be helpful in supervision to re£ect on what ‘gift’ the client has given the supervisor in terms of their experience of being with that client.

‘Mhmm. So Jodie represents a dream that you have carried, kind of unwittingly, and suddenly the dream is seen through, no longer so glamorous.’

‘No. And it seems to have left me more acutely aware of the risks that Jodie is taking, and I kind of feel that really did affect the way I was with her. I think I was maybe more concerned than I was aware of. I mean, she's not going psychotic on the cannabis, she's not smoking that much but she didn't feel good after that spliff she smoked and maybe if she carries on, and maybe they smoke more, well, I guess I'm concerned. I know I'm concerned. Shit there's part of me that wants to say, ‘‘for fuck's sake, Jodie, stop before it gets to you’’.’

‘But you didn't say it?’

‘No, and I don't know how much of that I was consciously aware of at the time, but I can certainly feel it now, and I'm left wondering if I'll see her again and whether an opportunity to make a difference in her life has been lost. And I really feel that.’

‘Heavy feeling, huh?’

‘Shit yeah, that's what it is. Yeah.’ In that moment it felt like something had shifted and lightened inside herself. There was something about being able to acknowledge it, but she was also aware of feeling angry with herself as well, and aware that she wanted to trust Jodie, to trust her own process. But the truth was, she knew she didn't, at least she didn't trust it to keep Jodie safe. And that was what she was feeling more than anything else. Whilst she didn't have children herself, she felt that she wouldn't be letting her do what she did without saying anything. Oh-oh. ‘I think I have the capacity to be too much like Jodie's mother.’

‘You look shocked.’ Courtney responded to Sandy's facial expression.

‘Well, I began wanting to form a relationship with Jodie. I didn't know anything and just felt that here was another young person who wasn't understood and was being taken to us to be ‘‘sorted out’’ and ‘‘told what to do’’. Which we don't do. But now, I think I have a lot more sympathy for the mother. Well, I mean, I seem to have feelings for both Jodie and her mother now, and I can just see the fix they are in. Her mum must be exasperated, and Jodie is just, well, potentially heading for problems if she is particularly sensitive to cannabis, or it leads to other, harder drugs. Not that it started with the cannabis, she's already smoking tobacco and drinks alcohol, so she was already on the conveyor belt of mood-altering substances.’

‘There seems to be a kind of inevitability in your voice, and I'm unclear where that's coming from. Not everyone does develop huge hard-drug problems from this kind of origin, though we know that many do.’

Sandy thought about it. She remembered something. ‘Drugs are too close, too available. They get the cannabis from the brother of one of her friends, Ally I think, but I'm not sure. And that sense that they do everything together. I feel concerned that Jodie might have more problems with the substances. And I may be wrong, but it's what I sense, what I feel.’

‘And it's important to acknowledge that, and I want to say that I really feel for you sitting with all these feelings, and I want to ask what you want from me to be able to, I don't know, manage, process – what's the right word? – be with what is present for you.’

Encouraging the supervisee to re£ect on their supervisory needs is important. The person-centred supervisor will want to be open to what their supervisee feels they need, and seek to offer this where possible.

‘I think having the space to just be with all of this, but in awareness, not having it on the edge and sort of unknown to me, is hugely important. I feel I'm kind of owning myself, my reactions, and that feels important. Like I don't want to go back to being with Jodie with a load of stuff on the edge of my awareness that impacts on our relationship and I'm not conscious of the process. I want to be congruent, authentic. I want to know myself accurately when I am in the room with her, you know? I don't want stuff going off inside me that disrupts my congruence or distorts my ability to accurately hear what she is saying and communicate what I have heard. I want to ensure that I can be warmly accepting of her and not let some reaction in me to her behaviour get in the way of that. Yeah, I don't mind not feeling good about what someone is doing, but I still hope to feel warm towards them, as the unique person that they are.’

Sandy could feel herself becoming more passionate as she was speaking. She cared, she really did care about her clients. She wanted to be authentically present for them, and for herself. She knew she felt more satisfied in her own experience of herself when she felt she was being authentic. She believed in those necessary and sufficient conditions, she knew from experience that they challenged the client, and the therapist, in so many ways, providing a relational climate within which constructive personality change could occur.

Courtney felt wonderful listening to Sandy connect with her passion and her belief in the approach. She just seemed to come alive, such a contrast again to how she had been a few minutes before, struggling with the heaviness of it all. He wanted to support her in this, acknowledge her strength of feeling. He knew he could say something jokey, but he also knew that would take away from the seriousness of the moment. Sandy was serious about her commitment to this way of working and he wanted to acknowledge the strength of that, support it, nourish it, encourage it. ‘I'm really touched hearing yo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Supervising the counselling of a young person at a youth counselling agency
• Chapter 2 Supervising the counselling of a young person in a school setting
• Chapter 3 Supervision of a counsellor working with a person with an alcohol problem
• Chapter 4 Supervising the counselling of a sexually abused client
• Chapter 5 Supervising the counselling of a client facing the diagnosis of a progressive disability
• Chapter 6 Supervising the counselling of a client with a disability who is in the process of accepting her need to use a wheelchair
• Chapter 7 Supervising time-limited counselling for stress in a GP surgery
• Chapter 8 Supervising the counselling of a young man seeking to find identity and independence
• Chapter 9 Supervising the counselling of a mother who is struggling to cope with her son's cannabis use and mental health disturbance
• Chapter 10 Supervising the counselling of a young person in his late teens experiencing psychotic symptoms associated with cannabis use
• Chapter 11 Supervising the counselling of a recovering drug user
• Author’s epilogue
• Reference
• Person-centred organisations
• Index