Win a $15 GC - The Art of Self-Supervision by Laurie Ponsford-Hill



This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Laurie Ponsford-Hill will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

At last, the field of relational therapy has a technique for the art of self-supervision. Everyone agrees that supervision is essential, however the ultimate goal of supervision is to provide a tool beyond supervision for self-supervision. This book captures the primary ingredients of self-supervision and proves the link between self-reflection and self-care. No matter where you are on your journey as a professional, The Art of Self-Supervision: Studying the link between self-reflection and self-care will lead you to a process to tune into your own expert guidance and a greater capacity to help yourself.


Enjoy an Exclusive Excerpt

Important to the work of the therapist is a continued self-study process; one that lends itself to taking care of the self. Boy and Pine (1980) discuss how an important counselling goal for the counsellor is to be authentic. To avoid counsellor burnout the authors, discuss the need for counsellors to be committed to a specific counselling theory, to engage in self-assessment in order to care for the counsellor’s inner core, so that “when understood, permits a higher level of commitment and effectiveness” (p. 163), which encourages role renewal. Everyone has a way in which they care for themselves, such as listening to music, or going for a walk. It provides a means to tend to the self to manage stress, emotions, and body and mind fatigue.

The art therapist is often the ‘witness’ to client experiences and the process they take to work through their issues. The art therapist also needs this process to be an agent self. This means incorporating self-study within their practice, with an emphasis on art. C. H. Moon (2002) defines “selfstudy” (p. 57) as an attempt to know more about the self within the context of efforts to achieve authenticity and describes her engagement with her own art-making as a means of self-study. She describes the ethic of care as demonstrated by commitment to: the acquisition of knowledge through engagement in ongoing learning; sustained immersion in the arts; and insistence on maintaining disciplined practice. For this enquiry, self-care is linked to: self-study as a means to attune to the self of the therapist; ongoing self-witnessing to increase self-awareness; and continual engagement with the arts as disciplined practice for self-supervision.

About the Author:
Like many therapists, Laurie Ponsford-Hill began as a newly graduated therapist feeling like she could provide her services all day, every day. She realized at a certain point in her career that this was simply not true, and this fueled her determination to understand everything about the need to maintain balance in her life.

Laurie earned a Master of Divinity degree, and directed her work towards pastoral care, later earning a Master of Counselling Psychology degree and furthering her Registrations to that of Psychotherapist, Marriage and Family Therapist, Social Worker, and Art Therapist. Her career led her to a greater understanding about herself and her relationships. Laurie continued to broaden her education and went on to complete a doctoral program in Human Relationships at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary.

Laurie feels fortunate to have attained balance in her work and home life and empathizes with many others engaged in their own personal struggles to attain balance. She has dedicated her career towards helping others on that journey, designing the Self-Supervision program, which was meticulously tested in this clinical research study. The Art of Self-Supervision: Studying the link between self-supervision and self-care chronicles the remarkable findings of this study: that professionals can overcome burnout and improve their health and life balance by focusing on their self-portrait.

Laurie is currently the Clinical Director and Supervisor at The Counselling House, in both London and Woodstock, Ontario, an agency that focuses on the supervision of counselling interns and newly graduated therapists, and their development of self-supervision. Laurie maintains a private consulting practice specializing in the development of maintaining healthy relationships with self, work, home, others, God, and the world.

Website ~ Goodreads


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