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Description of Work and Background:

I am a humanistic and integrative trained psychotherapist grounded in the existential and gestalt approaches. I focus on the human experience of being in the world and on the limits of the ‘givens’ of life in which we find ourselves and I pay close attention to the present moment/s that can shed light on our experiences. I am an experienced relational psychotherapist working full time for the last 10 years both in private practice and in the HSE’s National Counselling Service.
I developed hugely as a psychotherapist as a result of my own supervision. Here with the support of my supervisor, in a safe supervisory space, all my prior learning was deepened allowing my own process to grow and develop. Indeed one of the reasons I trained to become a supervisor was connected to this positive experience.
This training reinforced in me the value of working with integrity, authenticity and genuineness and sharpened the skills to explore and process the human experience through the body, mind and feeling realms within the supervisory setting.
I would like to offer my supervisees a safe space to develop, be supported and resourced as they face the challenges that arise in the client/therapy relationship and also to deepen their self-awareness, resilience and positive energy for the therapy work.
Please feel free to contact me with any queries and/or to explore your needs in supervision.
Contracts can be negotiated for student, pre-accredited or experienced psychotherapists. I have a preference for face to face sessions but am willing to supervisee on-line if required.

Description of Work and Background:

In its website, the Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrated Psychotherapy (IAHIP) expresses that “care for the client is at the core of supervision”. My wish as a supervisor is to provide a regular support, oversight, and learning, with an in-depth reflection on supervisees’ practice that safeguards and upholds the standards of psychotherapy.

I approach supervision as a collaborative relationship, with the view to make sense of what is presented of supervisees/clients processes. I use the Seven-eyed model as one supervisory format. I have found that it informs, shapes and supports supervisees with the direction they wish for their supervision.

My supervision training is a level 9 Certificate in Clinical Supervision with The Gestalt Institute of Ireland and SETU. While my core theoretical knowledge is Gestalt’s theory and methodology, I feel competent to be able to support supervisees who are not Gestalt trained, as my knowledge and interests extend to other psychotherapy practices and theories. They are inclusive of Lowen’s Character Structures; Bainbridge Cohen, Frank and La Barre’s Somatic and Early Developmental Movements; Trauma and Neuroscience, Siegel’s Window of Tolerance; Bowlby’s Attachment Theories, and Bern’s Transactional Analysis.

A part of my supervisory methodology includes creative experimentation for which I use symbols, imagery, drawing, movement, the sand tray… My intention is to expand supervisees’ awareness of their therapeutic work, and to encourage them to grow their own intuitive creativity. Erich Fromm says that “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties”. I integrate to my therapy and supervision work, the view that “cultivating uncertainty” (Staemmler) is a necessary focus from which supervisees’ own creative therapeutic methodology can become a supportive element for clients’ growth.

As a supervisee myself, I learnt that until I was able to reach further into the depth of my countertransference, I couldn’t fully meet clients within the authentic contact I was hoping to create. Therefore, I like to offer the opportunity to allow, at times and with boundaried caution, a personal therapy approach in supervision to support working through countertransference processes. My intentionality is to help reorganise and restore in the here-and-now the therapist’s position and agency within their relational dance with clients.