Episode 2: Making the most of Supervision and the supervisory relationship

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Supervision can be one of the single most helpful things to getting you well on your way to where you want to be. In this episode I talk about how to get the best out of the time you spend in supervision.

The Highlights:

• Welcome: 00:28
• Feeling safe in supervision: 04:18
• Distress tolerance and containment: 05:58
• Boundaries and limits: 07:16
• Duty of Care 08:40
• Cringing in supervision: 10:03
• Feeling safe continued: 11:14
• Max: 14:38
• When supervision isn’t meeting your needs: 16:26
• Summary & Close: 19:32

Links:

• To download your copy of the supervision guidance contract, head to: www.GoodThinkingPsychology.co.uk/supervision  
• Check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0
• To check out The Grief collective Book: https://amzn.to/3pmbz5t
• To check out The Our Tricky Brain Kit: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/tricky-brain

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• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marianne-trent-psychology
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodThinkingPsychologicalServices
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmariannetrent/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodThinkingPs1

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Hi. Welcome along to this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Today, we are going to be thinking about using supervision and the supervisory relationship. Now, of course, as an aspiring psychologist, it's really important that we have got some sort of supervision which helps us feel contained, that helps us also, in a really ideal world, advance our skills across a pretty broad skillset. So I have to say that I've always been reasonably fortunate with my psychology supervision and that I've been able to use it and shape it to get the best out of me and to serve my clients and the service as well as I can. Basically, I always used to think of as an assistant psychologist as a way of helping the qualified psychology team do their job optimally. So in very much the way that I run my private business now, if the job doesn't actually need to be done by me, it can be done with someone with skills in a certain area.

Then actually, there's a school of thought that says I ought not to be doing it, because it's not the best value for money. So I don't have any assistant psychologists on my payroll currently, other than writing blog posts, which I will pay you 15 pounds to write for me. If that's interesting to you, do give me a shout. But I recognize that I'm a good writer. I enjoy writing. I always have. But it doesn't really make sense for me to write that stuff myself when actually I can use that hour of my time in a much more lucrative way for me and in an effective way, hopefully, for my clients. So yeah, if you're interested in that, do give me a shout.

Anyway, I digress. So using supervision is a way for helping to make sure that I was supporting, and that you would be supporting, the needs of that qualified psychology team to help them do their job more optimally. So I know when I was an assistant psychologist, it meant that I was doing kind of some of the audit stuff and maybe helping pre-score up some of the psychology measures and questionnaires. I had a job in a forensic setting where there was quite a lot of challenging and sexually inappropriate behavior. And so I would log all of that and keep it in a database. I made a wicked Excel spreadsheet, I love a bit of Excel, and used that to be able to generate trends and then to be able to write reports for people's CPA reviews. I learned so much there in going to ward rounds, either with the psychologist or as a psychologist kind of deputy to go and feedback anything or to try and contribute as much as I could with my burgeoning psychology experience.

But me and meetings are still not great. Long meetings, oh, I find them a bit of a struggle. So yeah, if you are in that same camp, welcome to my world. But anyway, so using supervision effectively, it's kind of important that you feel safe. And a way that you can help think about developing the best possible relationship is to think about contracting. And that's something that I've always done in my own supervision, but also when I'm supervising other members of staff, too. And you might be like, "I don't really know what a supervision contract is." And if you'd like to download my example of a supervision contract that you might want to use to shape your thinking and to shape your conversations with either current supervisors or new supervisors, then do go to www.GoodThinkingPsychology.co.uk/supervision. So www.GoodThinkingPsychology.co.uk/supervision. And what I will do is you will automatically then be sent my supervision contract. And I hope you find that really useful, because it has been superbly useful for me across my career.

So I hope you find the same too, but it gives you the opportunity to take away the ambiguity, to really know what happens if our relationship gets a bit tricky? So it's got conversations to support that as well. It helped me understand what the expectations are of me during supervision. And just to check in, with the fact that I know what I'm being asked to do and what I'm expecting of others in supervision. It can also be useful to think about how protected your supervisor's time is. So I think for me, it's important to think about developing your distress tolerance. But it also takes time to work out what is appropriate, distress, tolerance and containment. So containment, in case you're not sure, is kind of the ability to keep stuff together without it leaking out every now and then. So I know I'm was probably quite annoying in my first assistant post, because anything that cropped up to me I'd be emailing it and asking it as a question.

But over time, I have got better and more contained at holding that, unless it's issues of imminent risk to myself, or the service user, or the staff team, because, of course, we are not to be keeping that to the next available supervision. And if you're like, "Well, why not?" It's because, of course, we have a duty of care to protect. And so if you are concerned about someone's wellbeing, safety, then we need to pass that on. And that might involve making safeguarding referrals or contacting emergency services, whatever needs to happen. But again, this is a useful conversation to have with your supervisor. If you haven't had it already, what do I do if something is so big that I can't keep it for the next supervision? What are the policies and procedures? I know that you might be really busy and that you've obviously told me that your office hours are such and such, and some supervisors are very bounded and some are obviously, of course, so busy that they don't really have capacity to be supervising junior members of the team.

But, of course, there is a duty of care to offer the supervision. But supervision, for me, isn't just about one hour a week, or one hour a fortnight, or whatever it looks like for you. I really enjoy being a supervisor and having that ability to help shape someone. And so whenever I have had someone as my supervisee, I've made sure that I have time for them to be able to not just have supervision, but to be able to come along to things that I'm doing and to help advance their skills, so to observe assessments. And sometimes when I was working in family service, where there was a screen, sometimes patients didn't mind if junior members of staff sat and observed the session through the window. Some did, of course. And you might need to pick who you ask about that. But if you are wanting to increase your experience, and especially if it is a family session, it can be useful to have an observer to be able to talk that through with afterwards. So is that something you could offer?

But yeah, I also used to do the very cringey thing of recording myself and the client on audio during sessions and bringing that to supervision so that we could listen to bits, which I promise you, feels horrid, but you get over the sound of your own voice pretty quickly, to be able to advance your skills. So if your supervisor doesn't have a chance to observe you or can't sit in a room, and obviously, it's not always appropriate, would a client let you film some bits so that you can go through that with them? But, of course, I didn't do loads of therapy before I got onto my doctoral course. So I've done a bit and trust me, oh, when I look back on it now it was cringe-worthy. And I say a bit more about that in my story in The Clinical Psychologist Collective book. So check that out if you haven't already.

But yes, psychology supervision would feel safe, safe to be yourself, safe to be able to say, "I don't really know what the next step is. I don't really know if I feel that confident or that sure about how to get this result or how to do this." And if you're doing some neuropsych and you actually don't really know, you could do with a refresher on scoring or interpreting, then it's really important that you feel safe enough to be able to raise your hand in supervision and ask for some more explicit hand-over-hand guidance or examples. So from time in that supervision to go through and problem solve. And sometimes in supervision, I will role play stuff that's gone on with me and clients to be able to demonstrate that with someone I'm supervising. So that might be another way that you could ask for your supervisor to help shape you. It's to ask them to do a little bit of role play with you.

We're not talking about dressing up here. But just to say, "I'm not really sure how I'd explain that to a client. Could you maybe do that with me, how you think you would usually do that or how it would be appropriate for me to do that, so that I can just really get my head around how to do that?" And when you've done a supervision contract you know that it's okay to ask those kinds of questions. So I know that in the past I have worked with someone who kind of wasn't okay with me using supervision in that way and asking questions like that and that they felt that made me look like I was not really good enough. But actually, what I've been able to work through is actually, that's kind of an erroneous viewpoint for me, because it's so far outside everything else that I've ever experienced about supervision that actually, I think this was just a case of us not being that well attuned. And that does crop up in supervision relationships from time to time.

I'm just going to take a short break for a little advert and I'll be back very soon.

(Singing)

Hi. I'm Max and I work as an Assistant Psychologist in the Learning Disability Service in West Yorkshire. Like most people working in psychology, I'm slowly but surely working myself up to that seemingly impossible goal of getting onto the clinical doctorate. With that end goal in mind, I thought I'd have a look at what's out there and see what books might be helpful for this. I came across Marianne's book, The Clinical Psychologist Collective, and decided that this would be a great buy for me to help me on my journey. I found Marianne's book really informative, most insightful. I especially liked how the stories reassured me that you don't need to be academically perfect to become a psychologist. And that as long as you have good interpersonal skills, such as compassion and empathy, you will get there. I would highly recommend this book to all aspiring psychologists and also those who want to know a bit more about the world of clinical psychology and maybe want to work in that field one day.

So what happens if a supervision relationship just isn't really meeting your needs? Do you feel like it would be okay to ask to change that, to amend it, to try and strengthen and improve your relationship? Could you, even if things have broken down, ask about a new supervisor? And it might be that there's not anyone in your immediate department where that's possible. But if you're in NHS Trust or in a private hospital, it might be that there's someone else in a different department who'll be able to support you in that. And it might be that you might need some support from HR to help you to improve of your relationship. Or if you feel like you are being treated unfairly, that might be something that you wanted to speak about with HR.

It's really, really tricky, because the power imbalance, which can feel like it's around in this profession, because, of course, I recall very well that you want someone to be able to think that you are good at the job and that they think that you'd make a good, qualified psychologist and that it's really useful to have their reference. And so, sometimes we can just have that pressure to think that we need to just keep plodding on. But you do matter. You are important. And if your needs are not being met or you are being treated really unfairly, then it's okay to raise that. So someone recently had said that their supervisor had said they didn't really have time to write their deep insight reference, so could they just write it themselves? And that just made my heart hurt. That's not okay. If you don't have time to do that for someone, then you don't have time to be a supervisor. Someone shouldn't be writing their own reference. And it's also how valid that then is. If across the country, people have written their own reference, that's not very honest.

It's not really very fair to the prospective clients that you might be working with, if you do then get on to a clinical course, because I can say I'm great. But actually, what would be better is if my supervisor was able to demonstrate, actually, I am all right at what I say that I do and whether they're able to weave in any kind of feedback from clients to help strengthen that example of why I am good at what I do. So it's not an easy situation, unless you have a golden supervisor, but it's important that you are able to feel like it's okay to be yourself and to use that supervision as a safe space.

If you have got any questions or feedback, or you'd like me to say more about anything, please do get in touch. And, of course, do bear in mind that free resource that I mentioned for the example supervision contract, which you can get hold of a copy by going to www.GoodThinkingPsychology.co.uk/supervision. I hope you find this super useful. If you do, please subscribe, like, consider giving it a review, a rating, all of those lovely things. And I will look forward to catching up with you on our next episode soon. Take care.

(Singing)