Therapists use their personal experiences, their insights, their intuition, their "self" as a source of soul or core. As a therapist, you owe it to your clients to keep your therapeutic tools sharp. Your best and most effective and efficient therapy tool is your "self". A therapist who is not aware of their own history, blind spots, wounds, biases, joys, celebrations, privileges, is a risk to the health of a client or family system. Supervision at The Institute for Relational Well-Being is aimed at not only examining best practice systemic and relational therapy based in the highest ethical practices, but also examining cases with a specific eye on socio-cultural, identity, and the politics of oppression in gender, race, ability, class, culture, and orientation.
Supervision at The Institute for Relational Well-Being is rooted in the Person of The Therapist Model (POTT) developed by Harry Aponte. At the core of this model is identification and challenging of signature themes, deeply ingrained narratives created and supported about our beliefs about people, how change happens, and what aspects of the world most influence our world view. Therapist in training will be offered a safe, yet challenging, environment to examine, practice, and play out how signature themes within their own lives impact and change the trajectory of the therapeutic services that they provide.
Protection of the client in the therapeutic relationship is of the utmost importance. I believe my role as supervisor is to offer you, the therapist in training, a paralleled service provision experience of a safe, compassionate, and contained experience that mirrors the best parts of insight based collaborative therapy. The process of accruing hours for licensure, observing ethical considerations, and establishing best practices can also be a time spent in self-care for you. Supervision, when done intentionally in a curated space of integrating the self of the therapist, is the ultimate experience for the pre-licensed and associate licensed professional. The Institute for Relational Well-Being is launching supervision dyads and groups aimed at keeping the health and welfare of the clinician front of mind, knowing that a stable and supported clinician leads to excellent care for clients.
Supervision areas of focus will include a strong intention of looking at self of therapist, signature themes present in case conceptualization and diagnosis, intentionality around systemic oppressions present in societal discourses around race, gender, ability, and sexual orientation, and examination of hurtful discourse about families, individuals, and systems.
I have a strong interest in examining cases from a narrative, IFS, and developmental trauma or relational addiction and relational avoidance framework. I also think supervision needs to be a place of being light-hearted and supported even in the face of weighty and important topics.
Please contact clinic@irwb.org for more information or to inquire about AAMFT supervision with Naomi Schwenke or Shawn Neel.
Click below to download the Consent and Supervision agreement in PDF format.
