Supervision

I am an AAMFT Approved Supervisor and am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of Oregon and California. I provide group and individual supervision to masters and doctoral students who are seeking supervision towards licensure or to safeguard their clinical work. 

Clinical Supervision & Supervision of Supervisors

I provide individual and group supervision for therapists in training, associates working toward licensure, licensed clinicians seeking continued growth, and supervisors developing their own supervisory practice.

My approach to supervision reflects the same values that guide my clinical work: relational depth, curiosity, emotional attunement, systemic thinking, and attention to the self of the therapist. I believe becoming an effective therapist involves more than learning techniques. It involves developing the ability to understand what is happening beneath the content of a session, recognize relational and emotional patterns, remain grounded in difficult moments, and use who you are thoughtfully and ethically in the therapeutic relationship.

These ideas are central to my book, The Heart of Counseling: Discovering and Embracing Your Authentic Self as a Therapist, and they are foundational to how I approach supervision.

My Supervision Style

Supervision with me is collaborative, reflective, and growth-oriented. I want supervisees to have a space where they can be honest about the complicated parts of clinical work while also being challenged toward greater clarity, competence, and confidence.

We often explore questions such as:

• What is happening beneath the presenting problem?

• What relational or systemic pattern is organizing the interaction?

• What emotions, attachment needs, or protective strategies are present?

• What is happening inside of you as the therapist?

• Where do you lose your footing, become overly responsible, pull back, or feel stuck?

• What might the client need from you in this moment?

My work is strongly influenced by Emotionally Focused Therapy and systemic approaches. I pay close attention to cycles, attachment processes, emotion, vulnerability, and the ways therapists themselves can become pulled into a relational system.

At times, supervision may include reviewing recordings, slowing down key moments in a session, practicing interventions, identifying cycles, strengthening emotional attunement, or exploring how to work with moments of intensity and disconnection.

The Self of the Therapist

A significant focus of my supervision is the development of the self of the therapist.

We all bring our histories, attachment patterns, values, identities, strengths, fears, and vulnerabilities into the therapy room. The goal is not to eliminate those parts of ourselves, but to understand them well enough that they become resources rather than barriers to our work.

Supervision can be a place to explore moments when you feel protective, frustrated, intimidated, disconnected, overly responsible, uncertain, or especially activated by a client or couple. These reactions often provide important information about both the therapeutic system and our own growth as clinicians.

My goal is not to help therapists imitate my style. It is to help them develop their own authentic therapeutic presence while becoming increasingly thoughtful, grounded, and intentional in how they use themselves clinically.

Supervision of Supervisors

I also provide supervision and consultation for clinicians who supervise other therapists.

This work adds another layer of reflection: not only what is happening with the client, but also what is happening with the therapist, within the supervisory relationship, and across the larger clinical system.

Supervision of supervisors may include developing your supervisory identity, navigating difficult supervisory relationships, giving meaningful feedback, addressing performance or ethical concerns, attending to power and difference, recognizing parallel process, and balancing the supportive and evaluative responsibilities of supervision.

My goal is to help supervisors become increasingly intentional about the learning environment they create and the kind of supervisor they want to become.

AAMFT Approved Supervisor

I am an AAMFT Approved Supervisor with more than 25 years of experience in the counseling and marriage and family therapy field. The Approved Supervisor designation reflects specialized training not only in clinical practice, but in the distinct skills involved in developing and supervising other therapists and supervisors.

Over the years, I have supervised therapists at many stages of professional development and have extensive experience training clinicians as they learn how to become supervisors themselves. Supervision requires its own set of competencies: understanding therapist development, creating a strong supervisory relationship, giving meaningful and sometimes difficult feedback, navigating ethical and legal responsibilities, attending to power and difference, recognizing parallel process, evaluating clinical competence, and learning how to balance support with accountability.

My experience as an active clinician, supervisor, supervisor of supervisors, and university professor allows me to bring a particularly broad perspective to this work. I remain closely connected to both the realities of contemporary clinical practice and the training and development of emerging therapists and supervisors.

For clinicians learning to supervise, my goal is not simply to teach the requirements of supervision, but to help them develop a thoughtful supervisory identity—understanding how they create safety and challenge, how they use themselves in the supervisory relationship, and how they help another therapist grow into a competent, ethical, and authentic clinician.

You can learn more about AAMFT Approved Supervision and access the AAMFT Code of Ethics at www.aamft.org.