As therapists, regular supervision is a professional requirement.
It can be a space for genuine clinical growth, or it can feel like a tick-box exercise.
My approach is focused on making it a valuable and productive part of your working life.
This guide is for my colleagues who are feeling the pressure of this work. It’s for when you feel drained after a difficult day, or when a client’s situation presents a complex ethical problem.
As a BACP accredited member therapist and supervisor, I see our ethical standards and our personal well-being as being directly linked. This guide explores that connection in a practical way.
The BACP Framework in Practice: A Practical Tool
The BACP Ethical Framework is most useful when seen as a practical tool for problem-solving, not as a rigid rulebook we’re afraid of breaking. Its purpose is to help us think clearly and keep both our clients and ourselves safe.
Let’s consider a common scenario: you are a therapist in a small town, and your new client is exploring their gender identity. You then realise the client’s parent is a casual acquaintance you see regularly. This immediately brings up practical ethical questions.
- Boundaries & Confidentiality: How do you protect your client’s privacy when your lives overlap outside the therapy room? The risk of an accidental slip is higher.
- Professional Competence: If you have limited experience with trans, non-binary, gender queer and questioning clients, the framework’s commitment to competence becomes an immediate, practical concern.
- Awareness of Systems: The principle of ‘Justice’ requires us to be aware of the societal pressures our clients face. How can we best support a gender-diverse person in a community where they may feel particularly exposed?
In supervision, we would use the framework as a checklist to think through these issues. What does ‘doing good’ look like here? How do we absolutely ‘do no harm’? This approach provides a reliable process to follow when you feel professionally uncertain, turning that anxiety into clear, ethical decisions.
Are You Heading for Burnout? The Observable Signs
The exhaustion that many of us feel is a genuine occupational hazard. Burnout can be hard to spot in ourselves, but the signs are often clear.
Many therapists I supervise describe the early stages in similar ways:
- Feeling cynical or detached from your work.
- A noticeable drop in empathy for your clients.
- A sense of dread before sessions.
- Exhaustion that isn’t solved by a weekend of rest.
- Questioning if you are being effective in your work.
These are signals that your resources are low. They can be ‘good information’ that you need to take some positive action towards self-care.
Compassion Fatigue vs. Burnout: The Distinction
It can be helpful to distinguish between these two states.
- Compassion Fatigue is often a direct result of exposure to our clients’ trauma. It’s the emotional cost of empathy and can feel similar to secondary traumatic stress.
- Burnout is often more connected to the context of our work: an excessive caseload, administrative pressure, or professional isolation.
Making this distinction in supervision helps us get specific. Do we need strategies to manage the emotional impact of the work, or do we need to address the practical structure of our working lives?
A Practical Tool for Supervision: The Johari Window
To have these direct conversations, it can be helpful to use a shared model. A straightforward tool for this is the Johari Window, developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham. You probably encountered it at some point during your training. It maps our self-awareness into four areas:
- The Open Area: What you and I both know about your work.
- The Blind Spot: What I might see about your patterns that you don’t.
- The Hidden of Facade Area: What you know about yourself but haven’t shared.
- The Unknown Area: Untapped potential or unconscious processes we might discover together.
My role as a supervisor is often to help illuminate the Blind Spot. I might observe, “I notice that your style changes when clients talk about anger. What do you think is happening there?” The aim is to bring something new into your awareness.
How Effective Supervision Builds a Sustainable Career
The goal of good supervision is straightforward: to help you do better work, feel more confident, and build a practice that can last.
An engaged, relational supervision process helps you to:
- Ensure you are working safely and ethically.
- Maintain strong professional and personal boundaries.
- Process your own emotional responses to client work (counter-transference).
- Recognise your skills and counter imposter syndrome.
- Stay connected to the purpose of your work.
A therapy career requires resilience. Effective supervision provides the professional support and perspective needed to do the work well over the long term. It is an investment in your most valuable asset: your professional capability.
Finding the Right Fit
If this article has resonated with you, and you are a therapist looking for a space to explore these themes, I may be able to help. I work online with therapists across the UK, offering a space grounded in psychodynamic and humanistic principles, with specialist knowledge in trauma-informed and LGBTQ+/GSRD-affirmative practice.
You can learn more about my approach to supervision here on my website. If you feel we might be a good fit, please get in touch to book a free, 20-minute introductory chat to discuss your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often does the BACP require me to have supervision?
The BACP requires a minimum of 1.5 hours of supervision per month for practising therapists. Trainees and those with heavy or complex caseloads may need more, and this is something to be discussed and agreed upon with your supervisor. I would recommend when starting out in private practice to increase the amount of supervision you have, as training rarely prepares people for the variety and complexity of the work.
What should I do if I don’t “click” with my supervisor?
You might not need to click, but you should get something out of your sessions. If you’re in an existing supervisory relationship that doesn’t feel supportive or challenging in a helpful way, it is a valid and important issue to address, initially directly with your supervisor. If that still doesn’t seem to shift things, perhaps by seeking a new one.
Is online supervision as effective as in-person
My experience, and that of many colleagues, is that online supervision can be just as effective and containing as in-person work. It offers greater flexibility and accessibility, allowing you to find the right supervisor for your specialism, regardless of geography. The most important factor remains the quality of the therapeutic relationship you build.
How can I bring up my feelings of burnout in supervision without feeling like a failure?
This is precisely what supervision is for. A good supervisor will see your honesty as a sign of strength and self-awareness. You could start by saying something like, “I’ve been feeling incredibly drained lately, and I think it might be affecting my work. I’d like to make some space to talk about that today.” This opens the door for a supportive, non-judgemental exploration.
I’m working with more GSRD (Gender, Sex, and Relationship Diversity) clients. Can supervision help me feel more confident?
Absolutely. Good supervision can help you explore your own knowledge and assumptions, identify areas for further training, and navigate specific ethical considerations, such as writing letters of support for gender-affirming care or working with relationship structures like polyamory. Finding a supervisor with specialist knowledge in this area can be particularly beneficial.
I don’t feel I need supervision, it feels like a waste of time
If this is how you feel – tell your supervisor! Something needs to change and if it’s not possible to facilitate that change with your supervisor, find a new one. Supervision should challenge you and leave you feeling resourced. If you feel like you are just ‘going through the motions’, you’re wasting your own money and time.
Useful Resources
Supervision Resources
Videos and Podcasts
- Counselling Tutor – Engaging with Clinical Supervision – Rory and Ken take you through how to engage in supervision.
- The Therapy Show – How Supervision Aids Effective Therapy – Bob and Jacci talk about the importance of supervision and how the therapist is left unprotected if they don’t have a supervisor.
- Three Associating Podcast – Relational psychoanalytic supervision, showing how therapists’ hidden feelings and motivations influence the therapeutic process.
Books
BACP Ethical Framework Resources
- BACP Ethical Framework Good Practice Resources – Videos, FAQs, and resources to support members in working with the Ethics section of the Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions.
- BACP Supervision Competence Framework – A guide identifying the competences associated with effective fulfilment of the supervisor role, divided into eight domains of Core competence and three domains of Specific competence.
- Good Practice in Action 064 – A resource prepared for BACP members to engage with the Ethical Framework in respect of supervision, providing answers to commonly asked questions (requires login).
- Good Practice in Action 043 – Research overview on supervision within the counselling professions, explaining what supervision is and its context within the counselling professions
Professional Burnout and Compassion Fatigue Resources
Books
- The Compassion Fatigue Workbook: Creative Tools for Transforming Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Traumatization by Fran̤oise Mathieu РA practical workbook with experiential activities designed to help professionals identify and transform compassion fatigue.
- The Resilient Practitioner by Thomas M. Skovholt and Michelle Trotter-Mathison – Focuses on establishing working alliances and charting a hopeful path for practitioners working with human suffering
- Overcoming Compassion Fatigue by Martha Teater and John Ludgate – Book for understanding and addressing compassion fatigue in helping professionals
Podcasts
Therapy For Real Life Podcast – They cover this subject quite a bit with an episode titled “Burnout Prevention Checklist” and another called “Preventing Burnout Among Helping Professionals“
Online Resources and Training
Keeping Well NHS Resources – Coping with stress and burnout
Professional Quality of Life Measure – A questionnaire that can help measure and evaluate professional stress in helpers.
Thinking about a change in Supervisor?
You can learn more about my approach to supervision here on my website. If you feel we might be a good fit, please get in touch to book a free, 20-minute introductory chat to discuss your needs.