Insecure Attachment in Clinical Supervisory Relationships: Balancing Personal with Professional
Creators: Volk, Brittany Elena
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

<p>Background: The clinical supervisory relationship (SR) between counsellors-in-training and established psychologists has been considered by counsellor trainees, researchers, and the profession to be one of the most crucial and influential aspects of the training process. Accordingly, more positive and strongly bonded SRs have yielded a higher amount and magnitude of positive supervision outcomes in supervisees’ observed and felt sense of professional development and competencies. In the past few decades, an attachment theory lens has been applied to the SR to help explain relational dynamics that can enhance or hinder the quality and strength of the alliance. Within this literature base, insecure (as opposed to secure) supervisory attachments (ISAs) have been demonstrated to interfere with the SR and thus, the training process and its positive outcomes. Ethically speaking, part of a supervisor’s professional responsibilities is to work through relationship barriers or ruptures that occur within the SR that have the potential to impede training. However, addressing attachment concerns often involves more personal, rather than professional, interactions and conversations which can cross professional boundaries, take time away from other training activities, and create more emotionally intimate relationships. Overcoming an ISA in the SR can therefore further threaten the already challenging personal-professional balance supervisors are expected to maintain. As such, the current study aimed to acquire a deeper understanding of clinical supervisors’ experiences navigating and overcoming ISA in their supervisees, while still appropriately balancing their personal and professional roles. <br>
Methodology: Three clinical supervisors practicing in Alberta were interviewed. All participants had experiences within the last five years of successfully easing at least two supervisees’ ISAs into a more secure bond during clinical supervision. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was then employed to analyze each interview separately and later collectively to extract similarities and differences in themes among participants.<br>
Results: Five group experiential themes (GETs) and 15 sub-themes emerged from the interviews. GETs consisted of: (1) Increased Demands on Supervisors, (2) Supervisors’ Intentional Attunement for Guiding Action, (3) Supervisors’ Encouragement of Vulnerability (Becoming a Safe Haven), (4) Supervisors’ Activation of Exploration (Becoming a Secure Base), and (5) The SR Gaining Equilibrium.<br>
Conclusions: The findings from this study reflect many of the findings and recommendations in the attachment theory literature and established best practices for clinical supervisors in the supervision literature. Furthermore, these findings provide further insight into how ISAs can (a) be identified, (b) challenge the supervisor, (c) be successfully and appropriately addressed in the SR, and (d) change when easing into more security. Implications for practicing clinical supervisors and supervision training are presented. Future research may wish to investigate the success of particular methods outlined in this study, gain the perspectives of supervisees, and understand the role of diversity in addressing ISA in SRs.</p>