06/05/2025
The Power of Creative Clinical Supervision
Clinical supervision is a cornerstone of ethical, reflective, and effective practice across the helping professions. It is not only a space to explore client work, but a vital container for self-awareness, emotional processing, and professional growth. In my 20 years as a creative psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, I have come to understand just how transformative supervision can be—especially when we bring creativity into the process.
Why Clinical Supervision Matters
For those working in emotionally demanding roles—therapists, social workers, healthcare professionals, teachers, and carers—supervision offers a necessary pause. A place to process, be witnessed, and reflect on what is stirred in the work. It helps to prevent burnout, deepen insight, and support ethical practice.
Supervision helps us distinguish what belongs to us and what belongs to the client. Without that clarity, we risk becoming overwhelmed, enmeshed, or disconnected. Knowing ourselves well is essential in this work—and supervision helps us do just that.
The Role of Creativity
So why bring creativity into supervision? Because the logical, verbal part of our brain can only take us so far. When we engage in metaphor, image, sand tray, movement, or symbols, we access deeper layers of knowing. We bypass the inner critic and connect more directly with the unconscious.
Creative methods allow supervisees to express feelings or dynamics that might be difficult to articulate in words. A simple image can hold more than a thousand words—and often reveals patterns or truths we may not have noticed otherwise. These creative approaches support supervisees to work at depth, with safety, curiosity, and insight.
Models That Guide Us
Two supervision models I often draw on in my work are the Seven-Eyed Model (Hawkins & Shohet) and the Developmental Model.
The Seven-Eyed Model offers a comprehensive lens, exploring not only the client’s material, but also the relational dynamics between client and therapist, therapist and supervisor, and the wider systemic context.
The Developmental Model recognises that supervisees grow through different stages of experience and confidence. This model helps tailor supervision to meet the supervisee where they are—whether they are just starting out or are seasoned practitioners.
Both models, when combined with creative approaches, offer a rich and layered experience of supervision.
My Experience as a Supervisor
Over the years, I’ve worked with many supervisees—therapists, trainees, and practitioners from a wide range of settings. I have also led clinical supervision training for six years with a well-respected training organisation, helping others learn how to hold this role with depth and creativity.
What I’ve seen time and again is how creative supervision helps people connect to themselves, their clients, and their practice in powerful and meaningful ways. It brings the unconscious into the room. It holds emotion. It invites playfulness, spaciousness, and insight.
An Invitation
If you work in the helping professions, I invite you to consider supervision not as a task to complete—but as a vital support for your emotional and professional wellbeing.
I offer face-to-face, online, one-to-one and group supervision. My approach is warm, grounded, creative, and rooted in many years of experience.
If you're seeking a space to reflect, grow, and reconnect to your work and yourself—I’d love to hear from you.
To find out more or book a supervision session, please get in touch.
