Moving from training, or from working inside an agency, into private practice changes what you need from supervision. The clinical questions don’t go away, but you’re suddenly also the receptionist, the bookkeeper and the marketing department. Here’s what a good first year of supervision can look like. You’re in a recognised developmental stage Research on […]
Author: John Belchamber
Recognising Burnout Before It Takes Hold: A Guide for Employees and Managers
There’s a particular kind of tired that a weekend off doesn’t fix. You go to bed early, sleep in, and still drag yourself into Monday feeling like you never left. If that’s been your baseline for weeks or months rather than days, it’s worth taking seriously — because what you might be describing has a […]
Countertransference: The Supervision Conversation Many Counsellors Avoid
Every counsellor has had a client who stirs something up — irritation you can’t quite explain, a pull to rescue, a flicker of boredom or dread before a session. It’s easy to read those reactions as a sign you’re doing something wrong, and so they often go unmentioned. That silence is exactly what makes countertransference […]
Rebuilding Trust After an Affair: What the Research Says About Recovery
Discovering an affair is one of the most disorienting experiences a relationship can go through. It’s common to feel like the ground has shifted under everything you thought you knew — including things that had nothing to do with the affair itself. If you’re in the middle of that right now, it can help to […]
Ethical Dilemmas Counsellors Bring to Supervision
Ethical dilemmas rarely arrive as a clean textbook case. They usually turn up as a nagging discomfort about a particular client or situation — something that doesn’t feel quite right but isn’t obviously a rule violation either. Supervision is exactly where that discomfort deserves airtime, before it turns into an actual problem. The dilemmas that […]
Stuck in the Same Argument? Understanding the Demand-Withdraw Pattern in Couples
Most couples have at least one argument that seems to happen on a loop. One person raises the same issue, again; the other goes quiet, changes the subject, or leaves the room. Nothing gets resolved, both people walk away feeling worse, and a few weeks later it happens again, almost word for word. If that […]
The Business Side of Supervision
The Business Side of Supervision: Why the PRACTICE Domain Matters as Much as Clinical Skill Most supervision, understandably, focuses on your clients — case conceptualisation, technique, ethics, your own reactions. All essential. But if you’re building or running a private practice, there’s a second job happening alongside the clinical one: running a small business. That […]
Why Anxiety and Depression Are Rising Among Young Australians (and What Helps)
If you’re in your late teens or twenties and it feels like anxiety and low mood are just more common than they used to be, you’re not imagining it. The data backs this up, and it’s worth understanding why, because it changes how we think about getting support early rather than waiting until things feel […]
Imposter Syndrome in Private Practice, and How Supervision Helps
If you’ve ever sat with a client and quietly wondered whether you know what you’re doing — despite the qualifications, the hours, the good outcomes — you’re in very good company. Imposter syndrome shows up often in this profession, and private practice, where there’s no team down the hall to reality-check you, tends to make […]
The Sleep–Mood Loop: Why Poor Sleep and Low Mood Feed Each Other
You’ve had a bad night. Maybe two or three in a row. And you’ve probably noticed that it doesn’t just leave you tired — it leaves you flatter, more irritable, more anxious, less able to cope with things that would normally roll off you. That’s not in your head. Sleep and mood run on the […]