Tips for Choosing a Supervisor (If you are able to have external supervision with the supervisor of your choice.)

• Ask your peers if they can recommend someone. Or go to the PACFA website to see who is in your area, or is your style. You nay want someone who understands a particular model of counselling.
• Find someone who is within a distance that works for you. Or try skype if that suits your situation.
• Remember it is your supervision and you can choos...
  

I know! Belly breathing sounds gross. A bit too…er …physical, or embodied. But how else can I communicate the need for us all to breathe deeply? Of course we breathe in our lungs. Yet somehow, experientially, most of us associate our lungs with our heads or our necks, rather than deep in our bodies. So I call it belly breathing.
Belly breathing in a slow and practised way brings clients more fully into their bodies. It is very effective for relieving anxiety, for centring the self. It is...

In my previous post Identifying Dissociation I mentioned the importance of keeping dissociative clients present during a session. Or of bringing them back to the room if they have energetically absented themselves. (Believe me, you will usually know if this has happened.)
I start with a foundational belief that if a client is dissociative in session, then the dissociative pattern needs to b...

Lots of people talk about trauma and dissociation, but how can you is identify if a client is dissociative? Firstly, you need to be able to recognise if a client is actually dissociating in session. You also need to be able to recognise if the client has a pattern of dissociating that is interfering with day to day living.
How can you pick up if someone is experiencing dissociation in front of you?
Sometimes you, as therapist will experience a feeling of floaty-ness, sleepiness or absenc...

I have recommended the book, The Secret Message of Shame in the resources section (Books) of my web-page.
This book is really helpful for both clients and therapists. It is a workbook, written in laymen’s language, and it has helpful exercises at the end of each chapter. Take it slowly and revisit. Shame is a slippery sucker. It wants to hide. And therapists want to hide from it too, so it can go round in circles in s...