Clinical Supervision

Specialist Clinical Supervision for Mental Health Professionals

DBT Clinics Australia provides clinical supervision for psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, counsellors, psychotherapists and other suitably qualified mental health professionals.

Our supervision is designed to provide a collaborative space where clinicians can think carefully about their clinical work, strengthen therapeutic skills, develop case conceptualisation and maintain safe and sustainable practice.

We provide specialist supervision in:

– Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
– DBT-informed clinical practice
– Somatic Trauma Therapy
– trauma-informed and stabilisation-focused practice
– complex clinical presentations
– emotion dysregulation
– working with suicidality and self-harm
– clinical formulation and treatment planning
– DBT program development and implementation.

Supervision is available with Dr Peter King and Stuart Langley, with the focus and structure of supervision reflecting the expertise, professional training and clinical experience of the chosen supervisor.

Clinical Supervision with Dr Peter King

Dr Peter King provides specialist clinical supervision to clinicians working with complex psychological presentations, with particular expertise in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Somatic Trauma Therapy.

His approach to supervision is practical, collaborative and strongly grounded in clinical formulation.

Rather than simply asking, “Which technique should I use?”, supervision encourages clinicians to step back and consider:

What is happening here?

What is maintaining this behaviour?

What function does the behaviour serve?

What does this client need from treatment at this stage?

What is happening within the therapeutic relationship?

What might we be missing?

The aim is not for the supervisor to take over clinical decision-making.

Good supervision develops the clinician’s capacity to observe, conceptualise, make informed clinical decisions and reflect upon their own therapeutic practice.

DBT Clinical Supervision

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is a sophisticated behavioural treatment that involves considerably more than teaching DBT skills.

Specialist DBT supervision can help clinicians move beyond simply knowing DBT terminology and skills towards understanding how to think and work behaviourally within the DBT model.

Specialist DBT supervision internationally emphasises developing competence and adherence in DBT principles, case conceptualisation and treatment strategies.

Supervision with Dr King may therefore include:

– DBT case conceptualisation
– behavioural assessment
– behavioural chain analysis
– solution analysis
– treatment targets and target hierarchy
– commitment strategies
– contingency management
– validation strategies
– dialectical strategies
– balancing acceptance and change
– managing therapy-interfering behaviours
– working with suicidal and self-harming behaviours
– managing difficulties within the therapeutic relationship
– DBT skills and skills generalisation
– individual DBT therapy
– DBT skills training
– telephone or between-session coaching
– DBT consultation teams
– developing and maintaining comprehensive DBT programs
– adapting DBT while maintaining an understanding of the treatment model.

Supervision can be tailored according to the clinician’s experience.

A clinician beginning to incorporate DBT into practice will have different supervision needs from an experienced DBT therapist or a clinician responsible for leading a comprehensive DBT program.

Working With Suicidality and Self-Harm

Clinicians working with people experiencing chronic suicidality and recurrent self-harm can face complex therapeutic and professional challenges.

Supervision provides an opportunity to think carefully about these presentations without reducing treatment simply to risk management.

Depending on the clinician’s role and professional responsibilities, supervision may explore:

– understanding the function of suicidal and self-harming behaviours
– behavioural chain analysis
– identifying antecedents and consequences
– distinguishing chronic and acute changes in risk
– treatment priorities
– therapy-interfering behaviours
– maintaining appropriate therapeutic boundaries
– responding to crises
– balancing validation with behavioural change
– maintaining a therapeutic relationship when risk is elevated
– clinician responses to risk and uncertainty.

The clinician remains responsible for practising within their professional scope, regulatory requirements, organisational policies and local legal obligations.

DBT Consultation Team Supervision

The consultation team is a core component of comprehensive DBT.

DBT consultation is sometimes described as therapy for the therapist.

Working with complex presentations can influence therapists in ways that are not always immediately obvious. Clinicians may become overly cautious, frustrated, overly accommodating, rigid, avoidant or lose confidence in the treatment.

A well-functioning DBT consultation team provides an opportunity to identify these patterns while helping clinicians remain compassionate, effective and adherent to the principles of DBT.

DBT consultation teams meet regularly to support therapists, strengthen clinical skills and help maintain effective delivery of the treatment model.

Dr King provides supervision and consultation for individual clinicians as well as DBT consultation teams and services developing DBT programs.

Consultation may include:

– complex case consultation
– treatment planning
– target hierarchy
– behavioural analysis
– treatment adherence
– consultation-to-the-client strategies
– team dynamics
– therapist burnout and sustainability
– implementation challenges
– development of DBT programs
– maintaining DBT principles within multidisciplinary services.

Supervision in Somatic Trauma Therapy

Dr King also provides specialist supervision for clinicians incorporating Somatic Trauma Therapy and stabilisation-focused trauma treatment into their clinical practice.

Somatic Trauma Therapy was developed by internationally recognised psychotherapist and trauma educator Babette Rothschild.

Dr King undertook extensive Somatic Trauma Therapy training with Babette Rothschild and subsequently co-led professional Somatic Trauma Therapy training alongside Babette Rothschild in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

This experience has had a significant influence on his approach to trauma treatment and clinical supervision.

Somatic Trauma Therapy places particular emphasis on safety, stabilisation, autonomic nervous-system awareness and tailoring trauma treatment to the individual.

The approach also recognises an important clinical distinction between people who may benefit from trauma-memory processing and those for whom direct processing may not currently be appropriate.

Trauma Therapy: Knowing When to Accelerate and When to Brake

One of the most important skills in trauma therapy is not simply knowing how to activate traumatic material.

It is knowing when not to.

Trauma therapy does not need to become an endurance test for either the client or therapist.

Supervision may therefore explore questions such as:

Is the client sufficiently stable for this intervention?

What is happening physiologically as we approach traumatic material?

Are we helping the client process an experience or simply increasing arousal?

Is the client becoming overwhelmed or dissociating?

Do we need to continue, slow down or stop?

Would improving current functioning be more useful than processing this memory?

What does the client actually want from treatment?

A central principle of Somatic Trauma Therapy is that treatment should be tailored to the individual rather than requiring every client to follow the same pathway through trauma therapy.

Somatic Trauma Therapy Supervision May Include

Supervision may focus on:

– trauma assessment and formulation
– establishing physical and psychological safety
– stabilisation
– recognising autonomic nervous-system responses
– identifying hyperarousal and hypoarousal
– recognising dissociation and shutdown
– non-touch somatic interventions
– developing body awareness safely
– identifying internal and external resources
– grounding and orientation
– pacing trauma treatment
– determining readiness for trauma-memory processing
– recognising when trauma processing may be contraindicated
– maintaining client choice and control
– avoiding unnecessary re-traumatisation
– integrating somatic approaches with other psychological treatments
– therapist responses when working with traumatic material
– maintaining sustainable trauma practice.

Somatic supervision is not about applying a collection of body-based techniques to every trauma client.

The emphasis is on developing the clinician’s capacity to observe, assess and decide what an individual client needs at a particular point in treatment.

Integrating DBT and Somatic Trauma Therapy

Dr King’s clinical background allows supervision to explore the intersection between behavioural treatment, emotion regulation, stabilisation and somatic approaches to trauma.

This can be particularly useful when working with people whose presentations do not fit neatly within a single treatment model.

For example, a client may experience significant trauma-related symptoms alongside emotion dysregulation, self-harm, dissociation or chronic suicidality.

Rather than immediately asking:

“Which therapy should I use?”

supervision can help clinicians develop a more useful question:

“What does this person need from treatment right now?”

Sometimes that may involve DBT strategies.

Sometimes stabilisation and somatic work may be more important.

Sometimes another evidence-based approach may be indicated.

Clinical supervision provides a space to think through these decisions rather than forcing complex clients into a predetermined treatment model.

Clinical Supervision with Stuart Langley

Stuart Langley is also available for individual clinical supervision through DBT Clinics Australia.

Stuart’s supervision is informed by his own clinical experience, professional training and areas of therapeutic practice.

His supervision provides clinicians with an opportunity to reflect on their work, strengthen clinical reasoning, discuss complex presentations and consider different approaches to assessment, formulation and intervention.

Rather than presenting supervision as following a predetermined model, Stuart’s sessions are directed by the intersection of:

the supervisee’s needs, the clinical presentation being discussed, and Stuart’s own areas of training and clinical experience.

Supervision may therefore be particularly useful for clinicians seeking a reflective and clinically grounded perspective on their therapeutic work.

Areas discussed may include:

– case conceptualisation and formulation
– treatment planning
– complex clinical presentations
– therapeutic relationships
– clinical decision-making
– barriers to treatment progress
– professional boundaries
– integrating therapeutic approaches
– therapist responses to challenging clinical situations
– developing confidence and competence in clinical practice.

The precise focus of supervision is discussed with Stuart and tailored to the clinician’s professional role, level of experience and supervision goals.

Individual Clinical Supervision

Individual supervision provides dedicated time to examine your clinical work in greater depth.

Sessions can focus on a particular client, recurring therapeutic difficulty, development of a specific clinical skill or broader professional practice.

Clinicians are encouraged to bring real clinical questions rather than feeling that they need to present a perfectly formulated case.

Questions might include:

“I feel like therapy has become stuck. What am I missing?”

“I understand the client’s behaviour, but I’m unsure what to target next.”

“I’m finding myself becoming increasingly cautious with this client.”

“The client knows all the skills but isn’t using them.”

“Every time we approach the trauma, the client becomes overwhelmed.”

“I’m not sure whether I should continue trauma processing.”

These are precisely the kinds of questions specialist supervision can help clinicians examine.

Supervision for Experienced Clinicians

Clinical supervision is not only for clinicians who are beginning their careers.

Experienced clinicians can benefit from having a space where complex cases and therapeutic decisions can be examined critically.

As experience grows, supervision may become less about asking:

“What should I do?”

and more about exploring:

“Why am I choosing to do this?”

“What assumptions am I making?”

“What evidence supports my formulation?”

“What alternative explanations should I consider?”

“How is my own response influencing treatment?”

“Is this intervention actually moving the client towards their goals?”

This reflective process can be particularly valuable when working with complex and long-term presentations.

Supervision for DBT Teams and Mental Health Services

Supervision can also be provided to organisations developing or maintaining DBT services.

This may include:

– DBT consultation team supervision
– program development
– treatment structures
– implementation challenges
– maintaining fidelity to DBT principles
– supporting clinicians following DBT training
– skills program implementation
– integrating DBT within existing mental health services
– consultation around complex clinical presentations.

DBT is fundamentally a team-based treatment, and consultation is an integral component of comprehensive DBT practice.

Specialist supervision can therefore be particularly useful for services seeking to move from simply having staff who have attended DBT training towards developing a sustainable DBT program.

A Collaborative Approach to Supervision

Clinical supervision should be challenging enough to promote growth while remaining a space where clinicians can openly discuss uncertainty and difficulties.

You do not need to arrive at supervision already knowing the answer.

In fact, some of the most valuable supervision begins with:

“I’m not sure what is happening here.”

Supervision provides an opportunity to slow the clinical situation down, examine what is occurring and consider different ways of understanding and responding.

The goal is not to create clinicians who simply follow their supervisor’s instructions.

The goal is to develop clinicians who can think independently, formulate carefully, remain curious and make increasingly sophisticated clinical decisions.

Who Can Access Clinical Supervision?

Clinical supervision is available to suitably qualified mental health professionals and may be appropriate for:

– psychologists
– mental health nurses
– social workers
– counsellors
– psychotherapists
– psychiatrists
– occupational therapists
– allied health clinicians
– DBT therapists and skills facilitators
– clinicians working with trauma
– DBT consultation teams
– mental health services implementing DBT programs.

Supervision is tailored to the clinician’s professional discipline, scope of practice, experience and goals.

Enquire About Clinical Supervision

Whether you are developing your skills in DBT, working with complex trauma, seeking specialist consultation on challenging clinical presentations or looking for ongoing professional supervision, we can help identify the supervision arrangement most appropriate for your needs.

Supervision with Dr Peter King

Specialist supervision in:

– Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
– Somatic Trauma Therapy
– Complex Clinical Presentations
– Suicidality & Self-Harm
– DBT Consultation Teams & Program Development

Supervision with Stuart Langley

Clinical supervision informed by Stuart’s professional training, therapeutic experience and areas of clinical practice, tailored to the individual supervisee and the clinical work they bring to supervision.

Contact DBT Clinics Australia to enquire about individual, team or ongoing clinical supervision.