Chapter seven: Analysis
5. Managing anxiety
The containing nature of supervision is described as a ‘godsend’ by the counselling supervisee (13463). She describes it in this way:
13489: my anxiety builds and sometimes ... most of the time, nine out of ten
times I manage it but there’ll be that one occasion where it sometimes runs
away with itself. And G will actually, I suppose, help me to reel that back in
Words such as ‘runs away’ and ‘reel back in’ being illustrative of an image of supervision as containing anxiety.
Interestingly, neither the nursing nor the psychology supervisees speak of
supervision as a place for containing anxiety, and raises questions as to why this well documented process barely features in the transcripts. Perhaps the term anxiety relates to closely with the affective domain, in that to talk about anxiety comes very close to talking about ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’, terms more closely allied to a therapeutic encounter. Perhaps anxiety has become unsayable in the supervisory
encounter as to do so would be to permit a therapeutic aspect to supervision,
something which is strongly resisted, both in the literature, and in the transcript data.
6. Therapy
The prevalent assumption that supervision is not, and must never become, therapy was reiterated to me on a number of occasions such as this one by the mental health nurse supervisee:
5106 so I’ve always been…you know, you’re always warned against the risks
of falling into a…a counselling situation…
The relationship between supervision and therapy was often spoken about in relation to boundaries. For example, the mental health nursing supervisor reflects to his supervisee, almost by way of re-establishing the boundaries of what may and may not be discussed within the supervision session as the conversation perhaps begins to veer towards therapy.
Indeed, on reflecting on this in the subsequent interview with me, the supervisor stated:
14603:Well I mean the process that went on was something between supervision and therapy and ... it was ... it was an appropriate subject for supervision, um ... but at the boundary between, um, the work and ... and J as
an individual really, and ... this was about J’s experiences of her work or of her role.
Likewise, the clinical psychology supervisee was clear in his first interview with me that the boundaries of supervision clearly indicate that therapy is on the outside of the supervisory container:
3513: For me it seems fairly clear that there are things… there are enough things to discuss in supervision as it is. My feelings about clients are useful inasmuch as they inform the therapy, and that is the boundary of supervision in a way. There is no need to go beyond that.
13630: I would still bring it because it would all be connected somehow. Er, I mean if it was a completely personal, um ... issue that was in no way
connected to my work, no I wouldn’t. That ... because I would need a counselling session basically, which is not what supervision is about.
However, the boundary is not always clearly defined. In my second interview with the mental health nurse supervisor, he was more ambivalent about the distinction:
11000: Um, I would see my role in not making interpretations, I’m not a therapist. But I would make those observations. Um, and maybe say
something like I’ve just said to you there, kind of feel that the difficulty in the
workplace is overshadowing the difficult [inaudible – 21.50] Um, and er, but, I
spoke earlier about parallel processes, and I think, I think it’s helpful to bring
both together. I think there might well have been something about that client, in that, that influenced the way that session went. I think it would be
interesting to say something about that.
This comment was made following the third supervision session in which this same supervisor commented to his supervisee:
14258: And I'm just needing to, I suppose, remind myself that this is supervision, not therapy
perhaps indicating that he was finding it difficult to hold that line. In the interview following this session, he commented to me:
14603: Well I mean the process that went on was something between supervision and therapy and ... it was ... it was an appropriate subject for supervision, um ... but at the boundary between, um, the work and ... and J as
an individual really, and ... this was about J’s experiences of her work or of her role. …That is a boundary you see, it ... you know, the therapy is about
challenge isn’t it and this was really on that cusp….
And a few lines later:
14647: Um, and so I mean the supervision kind of came on to her need to be an ideal carer, um, and take care of others at her own expense. Um …and
how she might do some things to look after herself, um … I don’t, yeah I
mean, you know, just saying that, you know, is very much the stuff of therapy
it’s …
Similarly, the counselling supervisee recognised that some of the context of the supervision session was almost therapy, and she justified it by explaining that it was important to develop self-awareness:
7574: she [her supervisor] taught me to look at my stuff because how could I have been with her [the client] really if I didn't have work on my own stuff
Suggesting that whilst it may not be possible talk about anxiety, it is possible to talk about self-awareness. This may be because notions of self-awareness can be seen to derive from the discourse of supervision as development, where an emphasis on reflection and reflective practice actually requires the develop self-awareness.
What was more often commented on was the way in which some supervisory processes were similar to those that take place in therapy. For example, the clinical psychology supervisee said, in his first interview with me:
3635: I do think there is an overlap between the therapeutic relationship you have with a client, which enables you to do some aspects of the work, and I also think there is an overlap with some of that with the work that you do in
therap….. in supervision.
And his supervisor commented to me in our first interview:
2732: I do supervision somewhat similarly to how I try to work with a client or
with um… families and that is to… to try and find out from them first of all how they see the world and what they think they need and then to see if I can get alongside that somehow and give them what I think um… is going to be most
helpful given their… their… their sort of needs.
And the nursing supervisor:
5104 which has been, um, I don’t know I…I’ve, err, you know, tried to use the sort of…a counselling skills approach but, err, you know, I’ve also discovered, you know, supervision’s supposedly very dif…different to, um counselling, so I’ve always been…you know, you’re always warned against the risks of falling into a…a counselling situation…