Subordinate theme two: Picking the bones

space. Some participants seemed to express recurrent feelings of tension and intense frustration, often directed towards peers and supervisors. This was particularly evident when the phenomena felt like an imposition, either by a supervisor being overly directive, interrupting or even by assuming too much about a client before the participant has had time to present their client or practice. Therefore, themes among participants began to form with names like; ‘interruptions and impositions’ vs ‘space to think’ and ‘reflective space vs interpretations’. These convergences and divergences from the themes of how directive a superivor or supervision group was eventually formed this subordinate theme through the mechanism of abstraction. The impact of these impositions was often felt in the client work as portrayed by P3’s language below, which subsequently formed the name of the subtheme.

“I’m like hang on a minute, I felt like I did violence to the clients really

(S:mmm), because the supervisor hasn’t even met this client, you’ve only got it third hand really from me and then for to have everyone else sort of picking up, picking the bones out of this poor person. I thought no, no, this doesn’t feel comfortable to me. So, I went through a difficult period of a couple of months or so where I didn’t really feel safe in the supervision here.” P3, line 492

On a descriptive level the participant talks about wanting to fiercely guard their clients from “picking the bones”, a gruesome use of language which seems to display the violence that they feel implicated in. The felt sense of the participant’s experience here seems to be one of a righteous anger in defending the client’s truth that they are striving to present in the supervision, but also a resentment that they have been implicated in this process of heavy handedness. There is a sense from this participant that supervisors or peer supervision groups can overstep the mark and push assumptions and interventions before the client has been thought about.

P3’s varied experience of a range of supervisions and supervision groups gives them an unspoken ability to compare and contrast the experiences of supervision. It would be interesting to know more about when and in what context they experienced this ‘picking the bones’.

“Where they work from a specific approach and where they erm . . . There’s a, the supervisor that I work well with erm, including one in the NHS erm work with a range of models and might have sometimes suggestions (upward inlfection) erm, but there’s never an imposition of a perspective and erm with supervisors who might be working wholly psychodynamically erm, and who don’t sort of have that break that says well this person works differently it’s a bit frustrating to feel as though you’ve got to fit everything that happens into their model (laughs) . (S: ah ok). Erm and then actually follow their advice. So erm, fortunately for me, by the time I had to work in that way, I’d worked long

enough not to be steered off course (upward inflection), I would say (S:yes). So I would understand that’s how they would see it and that’s what they would suggest and some of the suggestions might be apt and part of the perception was apt, but I would just have to suffer the hour (both laughing) and I would go off to do what I do.” P1, 326

P1 faces a similar frustration, but describes a supervisor working from a singular modality, which is then imposed onto the participant’s supervision, despite the

practitioner identifying as integrative. This is experienced as the possibility of “being steered off course”, almost a force as powerful as the weather that has the ability to change a supervisee’s direction in both supervision and perhaps practice. The length of the description of this experience is almost at odds with some of the language and bodily cues (for instance laughing), suggesting that the participant is not wholly comfortable with criticising their supervisors, but does indeed feel frustrated, perhaps more so than can be fully communicated.

“I might, I might set something else up erm, because I think we all interrupt each other, much more than we realise and so then we get into exchange

thinking which is not really the same as thinking well for ourselves.” P5, line 883

P5 notes a practical step in wanting to “set something else up” as a solution to the interruptions and “exchange thinking” which is at odds with the “time to think”

practice that she experiences elsewhere. It is possible to interpret a dichotomy here between expansive, freedom and facilitation to think as opposed to the “exchange”

where others’ thought processes are forced, perhaps violently as with P1, onto the practitioner. This feels at odds with P5’s earlier noting that supervision means “the opportunity to stand back”, espousing generative and open dialogue as integral to supervisees finding their own answers in facilitative supervision.

Both P1 and P5’s backgrounds as experienced therapists and psychologists may give some context to their apparent irritation with interruptions and impositions as these phenomena are often discouraged in psychotherapy supervision in order to facilitate thinking and reflection. It would be interesting to know more about when and how these practitioners experience this in the supervisory space.

There is a sense from the accounts that all participants bring diverse and unique training backgrounds and practice to supervision. The integrative nature of their various trainings means that freedom and flexibility to express themselves are valued, but when this freedom is opposed by overly structured directedness or inflexibility, the

participants can perhaps feel interrupted and controlled. This seems to lead to anger, frustration and oftentimes a rejection from the supervisees which can be seen in P5’s wanting to take back control and “set something else up”. I discuss this perceived desire to change the status quo in a later subtheme “integrative supervision – it would be bloody marvellous”, under the superordinate theme “a conscious sense of belonging”.

4.3.3 Subordinate theme three: Fear of “Am I doing the right thing?” The