supervision approach

Supervision, in my practice, is meant to be a safe and respectful space. Whether we're meeting one-on-one or in a group, the goal is to create an environment where you can bring your real experiences, challenges, and questions without worrying about judgment. For me, good supervision involves more than just talking about cases; it's about actively working to address the harmful ideas that show up in our work and within ourselves. This includes looking at how dominant culture, especially internalized white supremacy and other forms of internalized oppression, can subtly shape how we see things, how we practice, and even how we feel about ourselves. This opens up honest conversations about systemic issues and the internalized beliefs we carry – the quiet messages we've picked up about who matters, what success means, and how healing is "supposed" to happen. Your feedback is important here – I need to know what's helpful and what's not, so we can make sure this space truly supports your growth.

My supervision practice is guided by frameworks that question traditional approaches to mental health and healing that often come from a Eurocentric and oppressive viewpoint. These ways of thinking help us see how power, privilege, and systemic oppression show up in therapy and within ourselves, pointing us toward a practice that is more freeing.

Some key influences include:

Intersectional Feminist Pedagogy: This helps us understand how identities like race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability overlap and shape people's lives and their access to mental health care. We challenge dominant ideas by focusing on lived experience and looking at our own perspectives and biases, including how internalized white supremacy and other internalized oppressions might affect how we see things and interact.

Decolonial & Indigenous Knowledge-Based Learning: We respect and value healing practices from Indigenous, African, and other non-Western traditions as valid and powerful. This challenges medical approaches and encourages bringing in body-based, spiritual, and ancestral wisdom, while also exploring how colonization and white supremacy have disrupted collective healing and pushed dominant ways of knowing.

Abolitionist Pedagogy in Mental Health: This view sees mental health work as connected to the movement to abolish prisons and policing, addressing how psychiatric institutions have historically harmed marginalized communities, often through practices rooted in white supremacist and ableist ideas. We look at moving away from punishment-focused approaches towards healing-centered ones, considering alternatives to forced treatment and supporting community-led crisis response.

Anti-Oppressive Social Work Model: This model clearly recognizes how power and oppression, including the dynamics of white supremacy and other systemic disadvantages, show up in therapy relationships. We work to identify systemic barriers and biases, find ways to share power with clients, and address experiences like racial gaslighting and invalidation in therapy, which often come from internalized or open oppressive beliefs.

Community-Centered Healing & Mutual Aid Learning: Moving away from a focus on just the individual, this approach values collective healing and understands that communities hold important knowledge and solutions for well-being. This challenges the individualistic focus often found in white Western thinking and encourages learning from mutual aid efforts and exploring how to create healing spaces outside of traditional therapy settings, supporting connection over isolation.

Liberation Psychology (Martín-Baró’s Framework): Developed in response to state violence, this framework sees mental health as tied to politics and therapy as a way to resist and gain power. We shift from just "fixing" the individual to addressing collective trauma and looking at how systemic forces, including white supremacy, colonialism, and economic inequality, affect mental health, working alongside marginalized communities.

Critical Race Theory in Mental Health Education: This theory helps us see how systemic racism, a key part of white supremacy, is built into mental health systems, questioning the idea that Western psychology is neutral. We look at differences in diagnosis, access, and treatment based on race and other identities, and explore mental health advocacy led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color, thinking about changing policies as a form of therapeutic action.

Reproductive Justice & Mental Health: This model links mental health to reproductive justice, acknowledging how race, class, gender, and control over our bodies are connected. We explore how reproductive oppression, often rooted in white supremacist and patriarchal control, impacts mental well-being and advocate for care that affirms gender and is trauma-informed.

Restorative & Transformative Justice Learning: This approach moves from punishment-based responses to focusing on healing and accountability in resolving conflict and in community mental health. We explore practices like circle processes and transformative accountability, looking at how ideas of punishment, often influenced by white supremacist control, can appear in therapy and emphasizing reducing harm.

Disability Justice & Neurodivergence-Affirming Model: This framework puts disabled, neurodivergent, and Mad-identifying individuals' experiences at the center, challenging medical models that often come from white supremacist ideas of what is "normal" or productive. We look at the history of institutions and psychiatric harm, training in therapy that affirms neurodivergence and avoids labeling differences as problems, and exploring radical disability justice ideas.

— Bringing Theory to Practice —

How These Frameworks Show Up in Supervision

  • We'll use Intersectional Feminist Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory to explore how your clients' multiple identities and experiences of systemic racism and oppression, including the effects of internalized white supremacy and other internalized oppressions, are impacting their mental health and showing up in therapy. We'll look at your own background and potential biases, and how internalized messages might affect your clinical choices or how you see things.

    Drawing on Decolonial & Indigenous Knowledge-Based Learning and Community-Centered Healing, we can talk about how to respectfully include non-Western healing practices or support clients in connecting with their own ancestral wisdom and community resources, recognizing how white supremacy and colonialism have tried to erase these traditions and the internalized shame or disconnection that can result.

    Abolitionist Pedagogy and Restorative & Transformative Justice frameworks will inform our talks about navigating required reporting, working with clients involved in the legal system, or addressing harm in therapy in ways that prioritize healing over punishment, challenging ideas about punishment often linked to white supremacy and the internalized belief that punishment is the main way to respond to harm.

    The Anti-Oppressive Social Work Model will be key to analyzing power dynamics in your client relationships, finding ways to share power and ensure informed consent, and addressing microaggressions or invalidation that might happen in therapy, especially those coming from internalized or open oppressive attitudes. We'll explore how internalized oppression might show up in clients' interactions with you or in how they see themselves.

    Liberation Psychology will help us understand your clients' struggles within their wider social and political context, seeing their experiences not just as individual problems but as responses to systemic pressures, including white supremacy, colonialism, and economic exploitation, and exploring how therapy can help them feel stronger and resist internalized messages of not having power.

    Reproductive Justice will guide our discussions when working with clients whose mental health is affected by issues of control over their bodies, reproductive oppression, or medical racism, ensuring care that is trauma-informed and affirming, and recognizing the history of white supremacist and patriarchal control over bodies and the internalized shame or fear this can create.

    Disability Justice & Neurodivergence-Affirming Model will shape how we talk about working with disabled, neurodivergent, or Mad-identifying clients, challenging assumptions based on ability that often come from white supremacist ideas of what is normal and productive, and focusing on affirming their experiences and their right to make their own choices, while also addressing internalized ableism or the pressure to be "normal."

  • Group discussions offer a space to explore how Intersectional Feminist Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory apply by sharing case examples and hearing different views on how intersecting identities and systemic issues, including internalized white supremacy and other internalized oppressions, affect clients and our work. We can give each other feedback on how these internalized beliefs might be influencing how we understand or intervene clinically.

    We can collectively learn about and use principles from Decolonial & Indigenous Knowledge-Based Learning and Community-Centered Healing by sharing resources, talking about how to work with community healers, or exploring ways to support well-being outside of traditional therapy, actively working against the erasure of non-Western traditions by white supremacy and challenging the internalized belief that Western models are the only valid way to heal.

    Using Abolitionist Pedagogy and Restorative & Transformative Justice in a group setting allows us to brainstorm alternatives to responses focused on punishment, discuss ethical challenges related to required systems, and support each other in moving towards practices that focus on healing and challenge ideas about punishment often linked to white supremacy and the internalized belief in punishment as a solution.

    The Anti-Oppressive Social Work Model is actively used in the group by giving feedback on how power dynamics might be showing up in shared case examples and collectively developing strategies for anti-oppressive practice, including addressing how internalized white supremacy and other internalized oppressions appear in group discussions or when talking about cases.

    Using Liberation Psychology as a group lens helps us collectively look at the systemic factors affecting our clients and ourselves, including the widespread influence of white supremacy and other forms of oppression, building connection and exploring how we can collectively contribute to wider social change through our work, challenging internalized ideas that individuals are solely responsible for systemic problems.

    Group supervision provides a space to share knowledge and support each other in using Reproductive Justice and Disability Justice & Neurodivergence-Affirming Models in our clinical work, making sure we are providing care that affirms and is trauma-informed for clients navigating these specific experiences and challenging the ways white supremacy and patriarchy have historically affected these communities, including the internalized shame or stigma clients (or we ourselves) might carry.

    We can use the group's shared knowledge to better understand how all these frameworks connect and lead to a practice that is truly freeing and ethical, openly addressing the role of internalized white supremacy and other internalized oppressions in both clinical work and our own development, creating a space for collective healing and change.

become a supervisee

i am currently accepting associates working towards licensure. i am able to supervise:

clinical social work associates (cswa)

Licensed Professional Counselor associates (LPC-a)

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs)

please complete the form below.

this inquiry form, while detailed, offers the opportunity for reflection. Each piece of information requested is aimed at facilitating a thoughtful and intentional connection. It helps ensure that the supervision space we might create together is a good fit for your needs and aligns with the values of safety, growth, and authentic presence that are central to my practice. It's about gathering enough context to move forward in a way that honors your journey and supports your professional unfolding.