Before You Choose a Supervisor, Ask This First
- Komal Kaira
- Jun 30, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 1, 2025
Supervision is only as effective as your readiness.
Change is an interesting concept, one that is rarely applied to the therapist as a measurable category in the therapeutic space. It is often assumed that therapists will just know how to track their own growth. But the truth is, most of us were never really taught how to do that. Some of us are lucky enough to get supervision through an institution. Others pay for it out of pocket. But even then, the lack of solid supervisors or the struggle to find the right fit leaves behind a quiet knowledge gap that shapes the field more than we admit.
Supervision can be one of the most powerful ways to deepen your work. But it only works when you have some sense of what you’re looking for.
A lot of therapists end up spending years and sometimes decades trying to make supervision work with people who were never meant to be their supervisors. Not because they’re not invested, but because they’ve never really had space to sit with what kind of support would actually serve them.
And to add to that, there’s a common misbelief that further erodes this work is that all senior therapists automatically make good supervisors. That’s not always true. Being skilled in therapy and being skilled at supervision are two very different things.
So before you begin looking for the right supervision fit, it helps to pause and ask:
Who am I as a therapist, and what kind of space do I grow best in?
A 4-Column Exercise to Help You Get Started
Grab a large sheet of paper and divide it into four columns. Sit with the prompts below and take your time. There’s no rush to fill it in perfectly.
Column 1: Who am I when I’m doing therapy? What values, thoughts, feelings, and parts of my lived experience shape the therapist I am today? Who or what helped form this version of me? A teacher? Clinical work? Something personal? What did each add?
Column 2: How do I understand mental wellbeing? What frameworks feel closest to how I make sense of change and pain? What is my lens when it comes to healing and emotional life?
Column 3: Where do I get stuck in therapy? What moments feel repetitive, emotionally hard, or performance-driven? Are these blocks about technique, emotional regulation, confidence, or something else?
Column 4: What helps me learn and grow? Think of your best memory of learning — a space where you actually felt like you grew. What was the teacher or mentor like? What was the environment like? What made it work?
Why This Matters
This sheet isn’t about getting answers.It’s about gathering a deeper kind of understanding and insight. Noticing what you need is the first step to figuring out who might be able to meet you there. Each column forms a larger picture of you and your journey.
Look at the masterpiece you created. Each column moves you closer to a deeper kind of supervision.
Column 1 helps ground you in who you already are. The therapist you that came to be not just by training but by being.
Column 2 shows you what anchors your work. It provides almost like a snapshot of what matters most in the therapuetic space for you.
Column 3 gives you a direction for growth. It makes your blind spots accessible and work-able. These aren't flaws but directions that havent been fully explored or developed yet.
Column 4 helps you name the kind of learning space you respond to. That’s the actual foundation for supervision fit. Not someone else’s name or credentials, but your clarity on who you are, what you want, who you want to be and how you want to get there..
These four columns serve as a starting point to help you guide your current supervision or to find a supervisor that feels aligned. If you’re a supervisee or a supervisor sitting with some of these questions, I’ll be sharing more through this weekly series.
No hard rules. No perfect answers. Just spaces to think through what we were never taught to ask.
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