Supervision

Supervision

Today I had two supervisory meetings; one for my counselling and one for my worn with vulnerable families ; and tomorrow I have my ministry supervision.  What a lot of supervision for 2 days!  

You might think I would look forward to my supervisions, and mostly I do.  But these were the first sessions after my very tough, grief stricken December and I knew the sessions meant bearing my soul and that's usually hard.

So what's the purpose of supervision?
The British association of Counsellors and psychotherapists provides this definition:

"The primary purpose of supervision is to ensure that the counsellor is addressing the needs of the client. It involves many functions including:
- enhancing the therapeutic effectiveness in the counsellor client relationship
- monitoring and supporting the counsellor
- enabling the counsellor to develop his/her professional identify through reflection and guidance
- clarifying the relationship between counsellor/client/organisation 
- ensure standards are being met"

As you can see that involves a lot of sharing about experiences, feelings, problems and reactions.  It requires going back over situations which were difficult and learning from those.

So I was apprehensive.  But thankfully I have great supervisors and they, as ever, steered me gently through the sessions.  I touched on the emotions again but have come through having learned more about myself and how I can help myself better next time.

Tomorrow is my ministry supervision, I will blog on that then.