I provide individual and group supervision, as well as customized training programs
Obtaining both a Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University and a Master’s in Education from Bank Street College, as well as completing the therapist training program and later serving on the faculty at the East Side Institute, I have a wide variety of educational, training and supervising experience. This includes serving as an adjunct professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work, working in public and private schools in New York City, and supporting a staff of therapists at Tribeca Therapy. In 2008, I, with Carrie Lobman, published Unscripted Learning, a book providing practical instructions and a theoretical framework for using theatrical improvisation in the classroom. I have also regularly presented at academic and professional conferences.
I take these diverse experiences with me in my approach to both training and supervision:
Training
I have experience with training in organizations, schools, colleges, group therapy, and individual therapy on a wide range of subjects. I taught graduate social work students diagnosis and advanced human behavior at Hunter College, helping them look critically at diagnosis and labeling, as well as understand that the medical model, while important, is but one way of helping people. I have worked in schools, training teachers and counselors on creating emotionally engaged classrooms. I also helped educators, school administrators and therapists make use of the tools of theatrical improv to create emotionally responsive classrooms, and build teams and therapeutic relationships. Additionally, I worked with a consulting firm, training corporations and not-for-profits to use improvisation to manage difficult conversations and build relationships, as well as worked with the Employee Assistance Program to offer training, relating to “managing up,” work/life balance, dealing with difficult teens as a working parent, and workplace stress.
In terms of my own therapy work, I’ve practiced as a group therapist for over ten years, and have worked with workplace teams and mentored managers on group dynamics, difficult employees, and building thriving teams. In my individual therapy, I have coached professionals–both as individuals and teams of leaders–on difficult employees, investor relationships, and clients. Discretely, I have also done co-founder therapy and coaching, working with start-up founders in navigating the changing dynamics within their relationships as their businesses grow.
While I can–and do–speak on a wide range of topics, my training is interactive
I can provide training in and talk about lots of things ad nauseam, and I always come prepared to do so. However, my preference is to talk to real people, teachers, parents, managers, and therapists about the actual situations that they’re dealing with in order to create conversations with them. In my training, there’s some lecture–and I like to do that–but I also want my training to be interactive. I’m a good improviser inasmuch as the practice of therapy means creating conversations all day, every day with people who have no idea, hour after hour, what they’re going to roll in wanting to talk about.
I believe groups, when well-organized, can be brilliant and can create meaningful conversations
Much like in group therapy, I work, when training, to make sure the conversation isn’t derailed by a big talker, giving voice to those who are inclined to be more quiet or reserved and dealing with those who might try to take the conversation over. I’m comfortable saying to a group of people, for example, “We’re here to talk about workplace stress. What’s that look like for you? What sort of stress are you dealing with?” and then, creating meaningful conversations.
Supervision
Regularly supervising therapists who are both new to the field and more experienced, I am fluent in collaborative, postmodern, and humanistic modalities of therapy and have supervised therapists on their work with adults, children, teens, couples, families, and groups. I recognize that, for therapists in private practice, the relationship between clinical and practice development is vital. Building strong clinical skills and building a financially successful clinical practice are one and the same. While I offer individual supervision, I also thrive in the creatively rich environment offered by therapists in group supervision.
Like my practice of therapy, my approach to supervision is intensely collaborative
While I have well over a decade of experience practicing therapy and supervising therapists, it’s the collective and collaborative expertise that I create with my supervisees that is the most generative. I acknowledge that I’m not every therapist and that every therapist isn’t me. I don’t need my supervisees to practice like me or even want to practice like me.
I help therapists develop their own doctrine rather than impart my own
Often skilled therapists who train and supervise seek to transfer a doctrine, a methodology passed down from their supervisor, and so on. While I have been gifted with mentors and supervisors, and their influence is surely present in my practice as a therapist and a supervisor, I’d rather help therapists develop their own doctrine than impart my own. I help therapists be strong and powerful, give artful expression to their compassion, value self-care and when necessary, self-protection, and negotiate terms that work in bringing patients into therapy. I also help therapists navigate issues of intimacy when they’re afraid to get closer or to move in.