The early stages of working as a counsellor are a particular kind of experience.
There’s genuine excitement — you’re doing work that matters, with real people, in a field you chose because it means something to you. And alongside that, often quietly, there’s the weight of it. The complexity of the cases. The moments of uncertainty. The question of whether you’re actually helping. The realisation that your training prepared you for a lot — and couldn’t prepare you for everything.
This is completely normal. And it’s exactly where supervision comes in.
What supervision actually is
Clinical supervision — sometimes called consultation, depending on the context and stage of your career — is a regular, supported space where you bring your work. The cases, the questions, the moments that stuck with you, the things you’re not sure you handled well. You examine them with someone who has more experience and can help you make sense of what’s happening.
It’s not evaluation in the threatening sense. It’s more like having a thinking partner — someone who can see your work from a different vantage point, help you identify your patterns, challenge your assumptions, and support you in developing your own clinical voice.
Good supervision holds two things at once: support for you as a developing clinician, and accountability for the people you’re working with. Both matter. They’re not in tension — they reinforce each other. When you’re better supported, your clients receive better care.
Why it matters beyond the requirement
For many counsellors working toward registration — particularly RCC designation through the BCACC — supervision is a formal requirement. A certain number of supervised hours needs to be completed, and those hours need to be documented.
But supervision that’s only about meeting a requirement tends to be supervision that doesn’t serve you as well as it could.
The counsellors who get the most from consultation are the ones who bring their real questions — not just the cases they feel good about, but the ones that confused them, the moments they feel uncertain about, the patterns they keep noticing in their work and aren’t sure what to do with.
That kind of honest engagement with your own clinical development is what supervision is actually for. And it’s what tends to produce the most growth — both in you as a clinician and in the quality of care your clients receive.
What tends to come up
Every supervisory relationship is different, but some of the things that commonly come up in consultation include:
Working through complex or stuck cases — not just what to do, but understanding what’s happening and why. Developing a clearer clinical framework — what approaches you’re drawn to, why, and how to work with them more intentionally. Recognising your own patterns — the countertransference, the places you get pulled, the relational dynamics that show up across multiple clients. Navigating ethical questions — the grey areas that don’t have obvious answers. Supporting the development of a private practice — the business side, the boundaries, the particular challenges of working for yourself. And the ongoing work of developing your own identity as a therapist — figuring out what kind of clinician you actually want to be, not just what you were taught to be.
A note on imposter syndrome
It would be strange to write a post about early career supervision without mentioning it.
Most new counsellors experience it — the persistent sense that you don’t quite know enough, that other people are more competent, that it’s only a matter of time before someone finds out you’re not as capable as they think.
Supervision and consultation are one of the most useful antidotes to imposter syndrome — not because they tell you that you’re doing everything right, but because they give you a real and accurate picture of where you are. The things you’re genuinely doing well get named. The things that need development get identified and worked on. The uncertainty gets normalised — because every experienced clinician you talk to will tell you they still carry some version of it.
It doesn’t disappear entirely. But it gets a lot more manageable when you’re not carrying it alone.
Supervision isn’t just for new counsellors
It’s worth saying clearly: consultation is useful at every stage of a counselling career — not just when you’re starting out.
Experienced counsellors seek supervision too. For complex cases. For particular client populations they’re less familiar with. For periods when the work feels heavier than usual, or when they want a fresh perspective on something that’s been stuck. For the kind of ongoing professional reflection that keeps practice alive and grounded rather than habitual and stale.
If you’ve been practising for a while and haven’t had regular supervision or consultation for some time, that’s worth noticing. Not as a criticism — but as an invitation to consider what it might be like to have that thinking partnership again.
Working with me
I offer individual supervision and consultation for counsellors at various stages of their careers — from those working toward RCC registration to experienced clinicians who want a regular thinking partner for their work.
My approach to supervision is relational and integrative — drawing on the same body of training I bring to my clinical work, including Focusing-Oriented Therapy, Integrative Psychotherapy, somatic approaches, and couples work. I’m particularly interested in supporting counsellors who want to develop a grounded, embodied clinical practice rather than simply applying techniques.
Supervision and consultation are available in person in Squamish and online across BC.
If you’d like to explore whether we might be a good fit, the best place to start is a conversation. You can reach me at jill@communicatingwell.com or 604-909-2401, or find more information on the supervision page.
