Are You A Licensed Therapist Looking To Revitalize Your Practice?

Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your abilities as a therapist? Are you looking for:

Guidance on transference and counter-transference with your patients?
The supervision necessary to move out of an agency and venture out on your own?
A more comprehensive understanding of depth psychology in your practice?

Maybe you’ve practiced depth work and studied the psychodynamic model in the past, but you want to learn how to better integrate it into sessions. Perhaps you have difficult patients who leave you feeling uncertain, uncomfortable, or confused, and you want to feel more confident in your ability to handle challenges on the fly during sessions.

As a result, maybe you’re thinking it’s time to hone your skills with the support of an experienced clinician who understands depth psychology in and out.

Previous Experiences With Consultation May Have Fostered Shame And Judgment

Perhaps you’ve worked with supervisors before, but they’ve never given you the clinical guidance you needed. You may have come to your supervisor experiencing self-doubt and lack of confidence, all of which led them to judge you or question your abilities.

Deep down, you love the work you do, but you’re tired of feeling stuck. You want a relationship with another professional who can sit with you in a nonjudgmental way and help you develop better self-awareness and sharpen your skillset so that you can better serve your patients.

If this is the case, then you’ve come to the right place. As someone who’s been in the mental health field for over three decades and has worked with many different supervisors and consultants myself, I believe that I can help you level up in your therapeutic confidence while bringing the warmth and sensitivity that allows for an open, constructive dialogue.

If You’ve Had Bad Experiences With Supervision, You’re Not Alone

Let’s face it: despite all the schooling and training that we therapists go through, few of us receive the depth of supervision and consultation that we need to treat difficult cases. According to two of the top studies done on clinical supervision, roughly 93 percent of therapists report receiving inadequate supervision and 35 percent report receiving supervision that’s outright harmful.* This shows just how essential supervision is for mental health professionals to keep the field alive, both during their training and when they’re practicing independently.

Oftentimes, the reason supervision isn’t helpful is that the supervisor isn’t aware of how their own counter-transference impacts the supervisee. The supervisor doesn’t see the blind spots in their own counseling work and personal growth; as a result, they inadvertently give feedback and advice that causes the supervisee to feel shame over their inability to deal with difficult patients.

Naturally, this can impact your confidence as a therapist. It can make you feel inadequate or uncomfortable and hold you back from opening up about honest mistakes you’ve made. And when you feel shamed or humiliated in this way, it can be traumatic on its own, directly affecting your self-esteem as well as your ability to show up effectively in sessions.

That’s where I come in. Not only am I trained and equipped to provide clinical consultation on an in-depth level, but I also have lots of experience as a supervisee—and I’m well-aware of the many pitfalls that supervisors aren’t always careful to avoid.

Clinical Consultation Can Help You Trust Your Inner Voice And Build Confidence In Your Practice

If you want to be a great therapist and stand out from the rest of your field, having a consultant whom you trust and respect is a vital resource. And if you’re reading this page, it’s because you love what you do and you want to keep learning, to which I say, hats off to you—instead of choosing to rest on your laurels like many clinicians, you’re looking to build on what you know and strengthen your repertoire of therapeutic skills.

I, too, am a lifelong learner in this profession. That’s why I started my own consulting practice. I know how frustrating it is for therapists to go unappreciated for all the hard work they do. In clinical consultation, you have a chance to work with someone who will recognize all the time and energy you’ve put toward being the best therapist you can be. My mission is to empower you to trust your inner voice, build confidence about the direction of treatment, and feel safe talking about honest mistakes you’ve made.

Basic Guidelines For Clinical Consultation

When signing on for one of my clinical consultations, it’s important that you’re aware of some basic requirements beforehand:

You must be licensed—Clinical consultation is not an opportunity to gain hours toward licensure. You must be fully licensed and able to practice independently on your own when you start working with me.
Clinical consultation is not therapy—There is a fine line between psychotherapy and seeking consultation to get help working through a past negative supervisory experience. In consultation, you may need to talk through your experience so you can let it go and build up your confidence again. However, if the negative supervisory experience has triggered deeper distress or trauma, then we may need to discuss referring you out to a therapist. We will go over this during your consultation with me.
You must have a malpractice policy—Having a malpractice policy ensures that I am not liable for any mistakes made in sessions with your clients.

Before you sign a contract with me, I will go over these policies in greater detail so that you understand what you’re committing to. Additionally, you may have other issues pertinent to your needs and experience we need to talk through before determining if I could be a good fit for you.

What To Expect In Clinical Consultation Sessions

In the beginning of our work together, we’ll discuss what goals and intentions you have for clinical supervision. I’ll ask you to outline what you want to learn and take an in-depth look at your history in the field as well as what kind of patients you’ve served thus far. I will openly share my own background and the skills and experience I bring to case consultation, reminding you along the way that what I offer is merely one way of managing cases successfully.

In sessions with me, you can expect to learn how to:

Use your emotional responses as tools to guide you in your work with patients
Feel more confident in your ability to assess your patients from a psychodynamic lens
Become your own supervisor by listening more closely to your thoughts and emotions
Handle patients’ emotional challenges while feeling more confident in your abilities to understand and manage your patient’s transference and your counter-transference.

The main goal of clinical consultation is to help you learn to lean on your intuition and build self-trust. When you’re a therapist, there are so many fleeting thoughts and subtle intuitions that arise from one moment to the next. By paying attention to them, you can better understand yourself as a therapist and better serve the patients in your care.

You May Have Some Questions About Clinical Consultation...

What if you have concerns about my work?

There's a distinct difference between egregious or unethical actions versus honest mistakes, and if you’re seeking clinical consultation, that shows you have ethical standards and are most likely dealing with mistakes of the lesser variety. If there is a glaring issue in what you bring to supervision, I will do my best to walk you through how to move forward in the most ethical manner to ensure that your patient’s mental health and overall safety and wellbeing is upheld. In special cases, I may refer you to an attorney should you need guidance in protecting your license.

What if we disagree on how to handle a case or the assessment of a case?

We all have different styles of practicing, so disagreements on how to handle a case and its assessment occur fairly often between professionals. If it happens between us, I would first encourage you to look at the disagreement as a learning opportunity to work through together. Working through it with you will be an opportunity both for your growth and for my growth.

What if my own personal issues and countertransference keep coming up?

I will handle it with the utmost sensitivity and compassion. In all that I do as a consultant, I strive to create a safe space where you can talk about difficulties you’ve had with your patients without fearing judgment or humiliation. I will normalize your struggles and invite you to talk about your fears, striving to guide you constructively each step of the way.

You Deserve To Have Someone Who Appreciates Your Hard Work

Therapy can be a lonely business, and sometimes it’s hard to know where to turn for support when you’re so used to always being there for others. That’s why I offer clinical consultation, giving licensed therapists like you a chance to get honest feedback, constructive advice, further education on depth psychology and compassionate support. To learn more about how I can help you revitalize your practice, I encourage you to fill out the contact form.

*“Inadequate and Harmful Clinical Supervision Testing a Revised Framework and Assessing Occurrence” by Michael V. Ellis, Lauren Berfer, Alexa E Hanus, Erin E Ayala, Brett A Swods, Michale Siembor in Counseling Psychology Volume 42, Issue 4, Pages 434-472