Supervision for West Virginia
Licensed Professional Counselors
Pursuing a counseling license is a major commitment. The biggest factor for success is the supervisor/supervisee relationship. When it comes to selecting a license supervisor, it is essential to find someone who aligns with your beliefs and philosophies of counseling.
Theoretical Orientation
Just as classroom teachers need to be able to differentiate instruction to meet the individual needs of their students, so to must counselors in addressing the unique needs of each client. Wedding & Corsini (2019) assert that "applying the identical psychosocial treatment to all patients is now recognized as ethically questionable and practically impossible" (p.528). When addressing unique client
needs, the answer is not the application of random techniques from a variety of theories and applying them without an empirical basis. An integrative approach, instead, assimilates other evidence-based practices and theoretically common factors into a foundational therapeutic orientation (Wedding & Corsini, 2019). In doing so, the process of psychotherapy becomes one of systematic treatment
selection in order to provide “more evidence, flexibility, responsiveness and effectiveness” (Wedding & Corsini, 2019, p.532). Therefore, I personally utilize the framework of Arnold Lazarus’ Multimodal BASIC ID to create and implement a behaviorally integrated approach to psychotherapy.
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According to Lazarus, human functioning can be broken into seven different modalities: B (behavior), A (affective responses), S (sensations), I (images), C (cognitions), I (interpersonal relationships) and D (drugs; including biological functions, nutrition, and exercise) (Corey, 2005).Shahrabad, Bayazi, Zafari, Teimouri, & Rajabzadeh (2018) write that these different modalities are interactive and that while they may be discreet from each other, they are not mutually exclusive. For example, the death of a significant person (Interpersonal) could impact a client's thoughts on life and death (Imagery), leading to a change in thinking (Cognition), thus causing anxiety (Affective), which leads to a fear of leaving their house (Behavior) and subsequent biological changes to the body (Drugs).
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Multimodal therapists tend to be very active during therapy sessions, functioning as trainers, educators, consultants, and role models. They provide information, instruction, and feedback as well as modeling assertive behaviors, challenging self-defeating beliefs, offering constructive criticism and suggestions, offering positive reinforcements, and being appropriately self-disclosing.
Approach to Supervision
I believe that clinical counselor supervisors have the responsibility of ensuring that their trainees are prepared for the goal of independent work with clients. . Preparing supervisees means assessing their technical and clinical skills and supporting the growth of cognitive complexity. Effective clinical supervision also includes teaching and modeling effective leadership skills and professional behavior by demonstrating adherence to ethical standards and the law. Promoting client advocacy is another essential piece in clinical supervision. I believe supervisors need to work with supervisees to understand consultation and collaboration by teaching and modeling the triadic-dependent, collaborative-dependent, and collaborative-interdependent approaches. Finally, supervisors understand the rights of supervisees when it comes to autonomy in their practice and due process for issues needing remediation.
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As a supervisor for provisionally licensed professional counselors, I find the Cognitive-Behavioral approach to supervision to be ideal. The structure of a CBT supervision session (check-in, agenda setting, bridge from previous session, inquiry of previous cases, review of homework, attend to major agenda items, assign new homework, summarize, and offer feedback and elicit feedback from the supervisee) offers both the supervisor and supervisee expectations and consistency for sessions. CBT supervision sessions are also helpful for documentation purposes when reviewing the content of previous sessions and throughout the goal setting/accomplishment process of supervision.
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