Clinical supervision
for therapists and counsellors
Good clinical supervision for therapists gives you room to think aloud. You can talk about the client in front of you, and also about what that work is stirring up in you. I take both seriously. I hope supervision with me feels like a place where you can slow down enough to see what is really happening in the room.
I offer online clinical supervision to therapists, counsellors, coaches and other practitioners in the helping professions, and supervision for supervisors too. I work with practitioners across Europe in English, Maltese or Italian.
You might be on your first placement, or you might have been practising for decades. Either way, everyone is welcome. I’m especially glad to supervise work around trauma, sexuality, or psychedelic preparation and integration, because these are the areas I specialise in myself.
We begin with a free introductory call to talk about what you need and whether we feel like a good fit, with no obligation either way.
Accredited Clinical Supervisor
Malta Psychotherapy Professions Board
MA in Counselling & Psychotherapy Supervision
Middlesex University
London Fire Brigade Counselling & Trauma Service
MA in Advanced Clinical Practice, London
How I work in supervision
My approach is integrative. Rather than fitting you into a model, I bring in whatever helps you and your clients. Underneath that, a few foundations shape everything I do, in supervision as much as in therapy.
A relational space
The relationship between us is part of the work, not a backdrop to it. What happens between you and a client often finds its way into how we talk about that client together, and noticing this can tell us a great deal. Trust takes time. As it grows, you’ll probably find you bring more of what is actually going on, and I’m able to challenge you more usefully.
Somatic supervision: bringing the body into your practice
Most of us were trained mainly to think about our clients. My own work is anchored in the body, where so much of a person’s history and wisdom is held. In supervision, the somatic focus is mostly about helping you bring the body into your own practice. That might mean noticing what your clients’ bodies are communicating, or finding ways to help them move out of the maze of their thoughts and into their actual experience. If you’d like to develop a more embodied way of working, we can explore it together, whatever your modality.
Trauma-informed supervision
Trauma shapes a lot of what turns up in therapy, sometimes clearly and sometimes in ways that are easy to miss. Working in a trauma-informed way means remembering that defences were built for good reasons. Change tends to come from creating enough safety for them to soften, not from pushing through them. In supervision we often look at pacing and at knowing when to slow down. We also look at how you look after yourself when the material you’re holding is heavy.
The same principle applies to supervision itself. You’re far more likely to bring what’s difficult when the space feels safe enough to do so.
Giving the work time
Supervision doesn’t need to produce an answer every time. Clients grow at their own pace, much like a plant, and pulling at it only damages the roots. Part of what I offer is permission to slow down, in a profession and a world that often expect quick results. It also means remembering that you and your clients live within a wider context, from the organisation you work in to the culture around you. That context has its own influence on what happens in the room.
Adapting to where you are
Different stages of a career call for different things. Early on, you may want more structure, more containment and permission not to know. Later, you may want a thinking partner who will push back. I try to adjust accordingly, and I hope you’ll feel able to tell me directly if I’ve got it wrong.
I draw on what I’ve trained and practised in: relational and humanistic approaches, psychodynamic thinking, cognitive-behavioural work, EMDR and trauma-focused practice, somatic, body-oriented work, and mindfulness. In supervision these are resources rather than a model I’d expect you to adopt. If you work in a modality I don’t practise, mention it on the introductory call. We can usually find a way of working together.
Supervision is not only about your clients
You are the main instrument of your work, and instruments need attention too.
Alongside the client material you bring, there is room to look at transference and countertransference. That means what a particular client stirs in you, and what your own history might be doing in the room. Supervision isn’t therapy, but it also isn’t a place where you need to leave yourself outside the door.
There is room, too, for the parts of the job that rarely come up when the focus stays only on the client. These include ethical grey areas that don’t resolve cleanly, organisational dynamics and workload pressure. They also include being managed by people who haven’t done the work themselves, and the ongoing question of how you keep going in a demanding profession.
If you work in a second language, or with clients who have left their home country, that adds its own layer to the work. I know this well, having lived and worked in several countries myself.
You are the main instrument of your work.
The things that are hard to bring
Most practitioners have something they haven’t quite brought to supervision. It might be a place where you’re stuck and feel a little embarrassed to still be stuck, or something you find yourself avoiding. It might be a session that went somewhere you didn’t intend, or a client you dread or think about more than you’d expect.
For many people, attraction belongs on that list. It’s talked about far less than it happens, enough that it became the subject of my MA dissertation, on erotic transference and countertransference in supervision.
Finding a client attractive is a common experience. It isn’t a failure of professionalism, and on its own it isn’t a sign that anything has gone wrong. What tends to matter more is whether you feel able to look at it, and what it might tell you about the client and about what’s being played out between you. Holding it alone and hoping it settles is usually the riskier option.
The same is often true of other reactions: irritation, boredom, envy, feeling out of your depth, or something you did that you’re still unsure about.
You don’t need to bring me a polished account of your work. I’d much rather we put that version down and look together at what actually happened. I may ask questions that aren’t always comfortable, and I’ll say gently when I think something needs a closer look. But you won’t be met with shame for having a human response to another human being. A space that only ever hears the tidy version of things can only offer so much.
If you’d like to know how I hold boundaries with supervisees, they’re set out on my professional boundaries page.
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My experience of Michael is that he has an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge in terms of counselling modalities and techniques which he can draw on to offer a valuable and holding experience to clients. As a supervisor Michael has been perceptive and supportive in all our meetings. Most helpfully, for me, has been how Michael creates and allows a space into which more unconscious processes in the counselling can emerge and take shape. I have found this such a valuable learning experience which enhances the subsequent work with clients.
Angela, Psychotherapist
If this sounds like
the kind of supervision
you’ve been looking for,
let’s talk.
Supervision in my areas of specialisation
You’re welcome to bring any area of practice. These are the areas I’m especially glad to supervise because I work in them myself, so I can usually hold the detail without you needing to explain the basics first.
Trauma and EMDR
Complex and developmental trauma, single-incident work, occupational trauma, and the pacing questions that come with all of it. I’m also glad to support your EMDR practice reflectively. That can include protocol drift, knowing when to stop, what to do when processing stalls, and the impact on you of sitting with it all.
This is clinical supervision rather than accredited EMDR consultation. If you need supervision that counts toward EMDR accreditation, an accredited consultant would be the better fit.
Gender, sexuality and relationship diversity
As a queer practitioner myself, I know much of this territory from the inside as well as through training. Your work might involve lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and non-binary clients, people questioning their gender, kink and BDSM, or non-monogamy and open relationships.
There’s also room for what can be harder to say out loud in supervision: your own discomfort, your assumptions, or a moment you caught yourself pathologising something. It might also be a time you over-affirmed something to avoid getting it wrong.
Psychedelic preparation and integration
Supervision for therapists, facilitators and integration practitioners working with psychedelics, whether in retreats, clinics or integration-only work. We can look at power and consent, at holding boundaries when ordinary ones loosen, and at the sexual material and trauma that can surface during sessions. If you work outside the field, you’re welcome to bring a client who is considering a psychedelic experience or returning from one. I also offer reflective practice for teams.
General integrative practice
Plenty of the supervision I do isn’t about any of the above, and you’re welcome to simply bring your client work as it is.
Supervision for supervisors
If you supervise others, you need a space of your own to think about that role. My MA is specifically in supervision, and I’ve supervised and tutored on an MA programme for experienced clinicians in London.
In supervision of supervision, we might look at:
- the supervisory relationship itself
- parallel process
- the weight of being responsible for clients you never meet
- the gatekeeping side of supervising trainees, which can sit uneasily alongside wanting to support them
Supervision and reflective practice for psychedelic work
Psychedelic-assisted work is growing quickly, and the support around practitioners hasn’t always kept pace with it. I offer individual supervision to therapists, facilitators and integration practitioners working in the field. I also offer reflective practice sessions for teams.
Altered states leave people unusually open and vulnerable, which puts power and consent at the heart of the work. In supervision we can look at how you hold boundaries when the ordinary ones loosen, and at moments in a session that didn’t sit right with you. Sexual material, including erotic transference, comes up far more often than most trainings acknowledge, and it’s welcome here, as are the particular needs of LGBTQ+ clients in these settings. Trauma can also surface with real force during a session, and we can think together about how to stay with it without re-traumatising someone.
You don’t need to work in the field to bring this kind of material. If one of your clients is considering a psychedelic experience, or bringing one back into therapy, supervision is a good place to think through what to keep in mind and where your role begins and ends.
I come to this as a trauma and sexuality therapist trained in ketamine-assisted therapy and currently doing a Foundations in Psychedelic Therapy training. I co-facilitate psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, and I’ve presented on MDMA and erotic transference.
Reflective practice for teams
For retreat teams and clinical services, I offer reflective practice sessions where you can step back from the work together. These can follow a difficult session, or they can be a regular space to look at ethics and team dynamics before tensions build. Sessions take place online, or in person across Europe by arrangement.
Individual and group supervision for therapists
Individual supervision
The session is yours. That gives us the time and attention to go into both your clients and your own process in depth.
Small group supervision
Groups are for up to four practitioners, and I put them together on request. If you’d like to be supervised alongside colleagues, or to join a group, mention it on the introductory call. In a group you get less time to yourself but often a good deal more perspective, and it costs less per session.
We can agree a frequency together based on how many clients you see and what your professional body asks of you, and then review it as we go.
Training and experience
I am an accredited supervisor with the Malta Psychotherapy Professions Board. I hold an MA in Professional Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy Supervision from Middlesex University, London. That’s a supervision qualification specifically, not only a general clinical one.
I’ve worked as a supervisor and tutor on the MA in Advanced Clinical Practice at the Minster Centre, London. At the London Fire Brigade Counselling & Trauma Service, I was Senior Counsellor and Deputy Head of Service. There I co-managed and supervised a team of therapists across general and trauma-related work, including the period after the Grenfell fire.
I’m also an ICF-trained integrative coach, which may be useful if your work sits somewhere between therapy and coaching or moves between the two. In private practice I’ve supervised practitioners from a range of disciplines.
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Michael’s encouraging, empathic and empowering approach to our supervision helped me to stay grounded whilst working with something new, but it also challenged me to trust and stay in touch with my own intuitions. I found Michael’s integrative approach and vast knowledge of different theoretical orientations very encompassing. I felt that he respected my way of working within the modalities I was familiar with, whilst he also gave me the confidence to work with approaches I was less so. Moreover, I found Michael’s insights into my wellbeing and issues around transference hugely beneficial for steering my work, where needed – always delivered in a way which I found compassionate and containing.
Chrissy, Psychotherapist
Practicalities
Session length, fees and scheduling are on the practical information page.
If you belong to a professional body, it’s worth checking its supervision requirements before we start. Required hours, ratios to client work, and what counts as a qualifying supervisor can vary quite a bit between professions, countries and stages of practice, so it’s better to confirm than to assume.
Ready to start?
Book a free introductory call
We’ll talk about your practice, what you’re looking for, and whether working together feels right, with no obligation either way.
