Some of micropractices as a relational supervisor and therapist:
· Name power and that time and intention is necessary to build trust, rapport and safety to share more deeply
· I swear and don’t care if you swear
· I will laugh if I find a joke you told funny, sometimes I will joke around
· I will express emotions and feelings and self-regulate (without making you feel responsible for them)
· I will tell the client if something they said triggered an emotion in me – happy, sad, angry, furious, etc. It’s not to centre my feelings but to show you that an emotional response is a reasonable response to the circumstance (e.g. anger at injustices)
· I will name when I’m not doing my best but think I can do a good enough job in session to model humanness, imperfection, self-awareness, and vulnerability.
· Relatedly, I don’t expect or even want perfectionism from you. I want authenticity and honesty and vulnerability.
· I don’t expect you to communicate perfectly – I will assume goodwill and always ask clarifying questions to refine my understandings (it’s my job!)
· I will name people pleasing, or dynamics that are happening in the room/between us
· I will self-disclose to establish safety and connection
· I validate and do not pathologise reasonable/normal human responses to traumatic and/or shitty experiences
· I will send a text or email outside of the session if I see something that made me think of them/we talked about i.e. a meme or a job ad
· I am always ready to receive feedback – praise, constructive criticism, anything. I try to explicitly invite it at the end of sessions but you shouldn’t feel pressure to say anything if you don’t want to
· I will always lean in to repair a rupture and see generative conflict as an opportunity to deepen trust and build safety
· I share parts of myself in the small talk at the beginning and end of sessions when asked. I’m always happy to talk about my cats and how much I hate public transport.