Focusing on the client can help the supervisor become more attuned to the client’s motivations, needs, and desires in the here and now of the therapeutic relationship. It can be an effective way of empathising with the client, experiencing the therapeutic relationship from their perspective.

Here I consider the following questions:

1. How do they come into the room?
2. How do they sit?
3. How do they hold themselves?
4. How do they talk?
5. What might be their perception of you?

Focusing on the interventions the therapist uses with clients allows the supervisor to discover hitherto covert aspects of their therapeutic relationships.

Some considerations here are:

1. Do they use a certain kind of intervention more than other? If they ask a lot of questions:
   1. For whose benefit are they asking?
   2. What are they trying to discover?
   3. Why?
2. What do they hold back and why?
   1. Who are they protecting?
   2. Who or what are they protecting them from?
3. If they could switch off the part of their mind that filters what comes out of their mouth, what would they say to their client?
   1. What does that tell you about themself?
   2. What does that tell you about their perception of the client?
   3. What does that tell you about the therapeutic relationship with their client?

The therapeutic relationship created by both therapist and client is the vehicle of therapeutic change. The quality of the relationship is often the deciding factor in the therapeutic outcome.

To help get perspective of a therapeutic relationship, it can be useful to consider the relationship in terms of metaphor, or by taking a perspective view on it.

I consider questions like:

1. If they were shipwrecked on a desert island with their client, how would you each behave?
   1. What would they do straight away to survive?
   2. Imagine they’ve been on the island together for a month, how are they each behaving now?
2. Think about their client’s most recent session and imagine you’re watching it as an observer, what do you notice about the client and counsellor?
3. If they were both animals, what would they be?
   1. How do they interact with each other?
4. What do you imagine is the transference and countertransference occurring in the relationship?

Their ‘process’ is the sum of their moment-by-moment thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behaviours in response to their client. They can use awareness of their process to discover what within them might be hampering the therapy.

Some questions to consider:

1. How do they feel emotionally in response to their client?
2. What are their physical sensations in response to their client?
3. What thoughts do they have about their client?
4. Notice their body language in response to their client, what are they saying through theirgestures?
5. What do they imagine the client is covertly telling them?
6. What are they covertly telling the client?

What happens in the counselling room may be played out between therapist and supervisor. This is called parallel process. For example, the therapist may become angry, tearful etc when talking about their client and discovers that their client is experiencing the same emotions. Parallel process may also operate in reverse, the relationship between therapist and client may mirror what happens outside of the therapists awareness between them and their supervisor.

Some questions to consider:

1. How are they similar to their client?
2. What are they holding back from their supervisor?
3. How do they regard their supervisor when they talk about their client?
4. How do they regard their client in the sessions immediately after supervision?

The supervisor must also turn their attention to their own process. By the supervisor focusing on their own process, it will help them gain insight into parallel process, the quality of supervisory relationship and the ‘relationship-by-proxy with your client, which is how the supervisor would imagine your client to be, how they imagine the therapeutic relationship to be, and how they imagine they might interact with the client if they were in your place. The supervisor focusing on their own process can help identify how your relationship with them mirrors that of your relationship with your client.

The wider context is the current and historical background of the client-therapist-supervisor relationship and is comprised of two important types of influence, which are called Stakeholders and Ghosts.

Stakeholders are those elements of the wider context which currently influences the relationship. For example:

1. The organisation you work for.
2. The regulating bodies we each belong to.
3. Ethical frameworks to which we are bound.
4. The wider system of people and organisations (influences) in the client’s life (e.g. partner, children, parents, GP, psychiatrist, probation service, keyworker).
5. The wider influences in my life.
6. The wider influences in your life.

Ghosts are those elements of the wider context which are no longer present, but who’s effects remain in the lives of you, me, and the client. For example:

1. School teachers
2. Deceased family members
3. Significant events
4. Other people in our personal histories