1) The author chose a person-centered theoretical framework for therapy and supervision due to its emphasis on relationships, trust, empathy, and creating a safe space for self-reflection. 2) In supervision, the author focused on building trusting relationships to allow supervisees to openly discuss challenges. This helped the author provide support and connect issues to clinical work. 3) While the person-centered approach worked well, the author realized their knowledge of other theories needed expanding to better assist supervisees grounded in different frameworks.

1. Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample Essay
Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayWhen I began this program almost
three years ago, I struggled with identifying a theoretical framework that matched my
understanding and idea of a therapy framework that I believed would be the most beneficial
for my patients/clients. In addition, what approach matched my philosophy in my daily life
and what I believed would work for me personally and professionally. After exploration of
the many theoretical therapy foundations, I found Person-Centered theory to fit my life
philosophy. I choose this framework due to the emphasis and importance that it puts on
relationships, trust, empathy, warmth and being in the present and in tune with one's own
feelings and explorations of these feelings. Additionally, providing a safe place to feel
comfortable and at peace to be able to allow one's self to reflect on the many feelings and
emotions that we experience and that changes from minute to minute, day to day and year
to year. Therefore, this is the theory that I base my therapy and supervision upon. Person
Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayThis semester Person-Centered supervision
guided my meetings/sessions with my graduate students. Initially, the most important
factor to me was establishing trusting and comfortable relationships with my supervisee's.
This was important because if my supervisee's did not find me as a trusting and reliable
supervisor they would not have brought the many difficult problems/issues they were
experiencing with their clients/patients and the many struggles and doubts they were
experiencing in their own personal lives. I knew I established these bonds when I had many
of my supervisee's in my office that disclosed many personal and intimate details in their
personal lives that they felt was affecting them in their sessions with their clients. For
example, I had a supervisee disclose that her mother was raped while in college and
contracted an incurable sexually transmitted disease where this particular supervisee had a
difficult time dealing with it within a group where woman disclosed sexual trauma at their
practicum site. I also had a supervisee report that she felt that she was a member of the
group versus a co-facilitator because she had been a victim of domestic violence and sexual
trauma and she was amongst women like herself. Having established this trusting
relationship and a safe environment allowed my supervisee's to feel comfortable and be
honest to share these experiences that evoked many different and uncomfortable emotions.
This allowed me as a Supervisor to provide empathy, understanding and warmth and use
this time for them to explore and address these feelings and connect it to how it relates to
their work with a particular population which is all congruent with the person-centered
approach. In addition, this allowed me to use a teaching tool on professionalism and how to

2. handle it, when in a situation and how to handle it appropriately and in a professional
manner. I also was able to recommend my supervisee's to seek out personal counseling and
the importance of self-care. I was able to utilize self-disclosure on my own personal
experience with self-care and its importance not only for us but also to the profession.
Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayI was able to establish great
relationships with each one of my supervisee's but I must be honest that I struggled with
doubts on how receptive the graduate students would be of me being, an African-American
female and using a cane. I was not insecure about my competence but more so my
appearance based on the majority of the students in our graduate program being Caucasian
students and use to being advised or instructed by other Caucasians. I believe this allowed
for a great experience and exposure to a different culture and perspective for most of my
supervisee's. Once again because of the established relationship and safe space they were
able to feel comfortable addressing many challenging issues about race, sex, culture,
lifestyle and differences in general. The differences of race and culture in the supervisory
relationship allowed for a learning experience to occur organically and may have changed
some of my supervisee's stereotypical beliefs of African-Americans, more specifically
African-American women. Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayI often
found myself asking myself after a meeting with my supervisee's was that a therapy session
and/or supervision and if there is a clear difference between the two. Although I
understand that supervision goals can and may be different than therapy goals. The
function of supervision is to "assess the learning needs; change, shape, and support the
behaviors of the supervisee; and evaluate the performance" (Bernard & Goodyear, 2009,
p.219). In my opinion, the function of supervision is pretty similar to the goal of therapy.
Bernard & Goodyear (2009) suggest that the facilitative nature of person-centered, "the
process within the context of the relationship, trust, and the exploration of one's own ability
and motivation to grow" (p. 83) resembles the same components which one would conduct
in a therapy session. Through my supervision with graduate students, course readings and
through my person-centered lens I am able to answer this question. My goal in each
situation is to assist an individual, rather it is a patient or supervisee, to reach their
potential by providing a safe and conducive environment that allows for exploration and
processing of feelings and growth through some guidance and direction. Person Centered
Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayThis semester as a supervisor of 9 graduate students I
believe my supervision style method is influenced by person-centered theoretical
framework, my past personal experiences with supervision which assisted me in identifying
what I thought worked and didn't work, my worldview and my philosophy in life which
have all lead me to be who I am today.My experience utilizing person-centered approach
has been very beneficial. It has also allowed me to meet my supervisee's where they are
developmentally (in the present) which varied from student to student. Some students
needed more directions and guidance in where they are in their therapy skills which
required more concrete thinking and objectives. For example, some students brought in
their progress notes and wanted clarifications on what should be covered and/or included
in notes. Whereas, I the Supervisor had to clarify that this may change from site to site but
there is always basic tenets that needs to be included which we were able to go over.Then

3. there were students that were more advanced and utilized supervision for consultation,
they brought in specific topics or patients to cover with specific questions and utilized the
time very wisely. These students took notes and demonstrated professionalism, the
questions and explorations amongst these supervisee's were at a different level compared
to some of their peers. I believe I was able to appropriately meet each student at their
specific developmental level. I found some students to be more challenging than others, in a
good way. Some students challenged my ability to be creative and demonstrate how
competent I am at this level of education, which I truly appreciated. Person Centered
Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayMy supervision sessions were conducted in a semi-
structured manner. My supervisee's were aware and generally prepared for each session. I
generally did a routine check-in to see how they are doing at their sites, any problems
and/or concerns or pressing issues that needed to be addressed, immediately. My
supervision intervention style generally consisted of my supervisee's self-reporting on their
self-selected patients/clients that they wanted to discuss and/or update me on. Through my
supervisee's self-report I was able to gauge their ability to case conceptualize, provide their
perspective on the client-therapy relationship, explore their possible treatment plan/goal
for their current and subsequent sessions, examine their problem-solving skills and
professionalism through their self-report. This semester I wanted to utilize the audio
recordings and transcribing interventions but there were logistical and confidentiality
problems which prevented us from partaking in this form of supervision. My goal with the
transcribing was to assist the supervisee's in being cognizant of the questions they are
asking and exploring if the questions are congruent and grounded in their stated theoretical
framework. Although, I was not able to accomplish this activity with my supervisee's, we
were still able to address and explore theoretical frameworks.If I was able to utilize any
supervision intervention and had access to the necessary accommodations and technology,
I would have loved to see my supervisee's in action. I would want to observe them utilizing
audio/video recordings to observe their body language, non-verbal's, and witness the actual
questions they ask, their personality/therapy style, and be able to attest to their theoretical
framework. I would opt out of being able to use techniques such as bug-in-the-ear, in vivo,
walk-in and phone-ins. I believe the best way of learning is through making mistakes and
processing them if they do not cause any harm to their patient/clients. The interventions
mentioned above will be distracting and disruptive to the therapeutic process in my
opinion. I believe presession planning and postsession debriefing interventions would be
beneficial to discuss their clients beforehand and process their session after their therapy
session while it is fresh on their mind and I have been able to observe as the session was
occurring. Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayORDER A PLAGIARISM-
FREE PAPER NOWI also would have like to complete a supervision agreement/contract. I
believe there are many benefits to doing this type of documentation. The most important is
accountability and responsibility of the supervisor and the supervisee. In addition, the
acknowledgement of the significance of the weekly meetings, the process, expectations of
the meetings, supervisory relationship, address ethics and issues of the supervisory
relationship and evaluation. This would ensure that the process and expectations are clearly
explained and understood and allow for questions about the process. This agreement would

4. also provide more guidance and structure for the supervisor, somewhat of a protocol. The
supervisor toolbox provides a wealth of information and guidelines that are advantageous
for individuals in supervisory rules which I wished I utilized more. Person Centered
Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayThrough this course and the opportunity to experience
supervision, I have been able to identify my weaknesses and strengths as a supervisor. I
believe the things that I can state are strengths can and may also be seen as weaknesses.My
strengths are my confidence in my competence, my ability to build a trusting rapport with
my supervisee's fairly quickly, my intuition and ability to listen more than I talk and deal
with silence, my capability to be honest, positive and provide constructive
criticism/feedback and my ability to gently guide, direct, explore and challenge. I feel we all
as human beings, no matter the level of education, can question ourselves and our ability to
lead and fear making mistakes and doing or saying something wrong. Initially, I doubted my
skills and feared that I may not have all the answers but I was able to remain confident that
I have received the necessary education, experiences and obtained the knowledge and
techniques which in my opinion allowed me to provide adequate and appropriate
supervision. My upbringing and work with diverse and multicultural populations have
afforded me the skills to be open minded and able to get along with and build rapport fairly
quickly with people. My caring nature and my philosophy to treat all people with respect,
dignity and like family allows me to provide an environment that is safe and trusting which
in turn leads to developing trusting relationships. I believe people know themselves better
than anyone and can be the best advocate for themselves, therefore being able to listen, and
deal with awkward silence allows the supervisee time to process and explore their feelings
on their own. This allows the supervisor to assist with the exploration of feelings through
guidance, direction and challenges of thoughts and feelings. Person Centered Philosophy
Reflection Sample EssayMy weaknesses can be my tendency to care and want more for my
supervisee's maybe more than they want or believe in themselves, being too
accommodating, flexible and available to my supervisee's better working knowledge of all
theoretical frameworks to assist my supervisee's in grounding their therapy session within
a specific theory. In addition, time management and termination. Some meetings with
supervisee's I found myself spending the whole session attempting to convince and/or
assist the supervisee in feeling good about their skills and working on building that
confidence within themselves and recognize they belong in the profession. Although, this
was needed maybe I provided too much without forcing the students to internalize and find
it for themselves. I believe my supervisee's may have in my opinion taken advantage (a little
bit) of my willingness to accommodate their schedule to the best of my ability and making
myself available via email and phone. Although, this could be seen as positive this could also
be seen as enabling the supervisee to not take full responsibility and uphold their share of
the obligations of the mandatory in person weekly meetings.My knowledge of person-
centered theoretical framework is pretty good but working with my supervisee's who
endorsed other theories forced me to recognize that I need to further my working
knowledge of the other theories. Due to the limited allotted time to meet with each student,
I feel we did not always have time to address all issues and I struggled with cutting some
students off due to my feelings of being rude but not doing this affected everyone's

5. scheduled meeting times. Lastly, termination is hard for everyone and I am able to address
and explain this but I still struggle with termination even though it occurs on a regular
consistent basis but I continue to get better with it each passing year. Person Centered
Philosophy Reflection Sample EssayThis semester I believe I was able to find my niche in
providing supervision. I enjoyed each and every one of my supervisee's and enjoyed getting
to know them, their patients through their self-reports, the honor to have many of my
supervisee's disclose many personal and intimate details, experiences and feel comfortable
crying in supervision, providing feedback, brainstorming and assisting them with
professional and patient problems. I was able to recognize how important individual
supervision is as the foundation for my supervisee's professional development and the
magnitude my choices, skills and competence play in their development. I hope I was able to
leave a good and everlasting impression on my supervisee's experience and future careers.
My supervisee's have given me such good feedback and expressed how much they will miss
this component of practicum because they are able to really hone in on things not addressed
in their onsite supervision which they articulated is necessary. This feedback gave me a
greater appreciation of the work and importance of my supervision and the relationship to
the supervisee's and ultimately, their caseload.I am amazed at the number of options that
are available in conducting supervision and the value of quality supervision. My selected
supervision method was determined by my experiences, interest and capability in accessing
and utilizing different methods based on perceived and actual needs of my supervisee. The
field of psychology is forever growing, developing and changing and the importance for
psychologist and supervisors to continuously study and know many different
methodologies is imperative to serve our supervisee's, their clients and the profession.
Person Centered Philosophy Reflection Sample Essay