Blog 91. The Significance of Supervision

Assimilation of the Approach

If you are interested in learning about Motivational Work it is imperative that you know about the significance of supervision. You can read my books and blogs, but to fully use Motivational Work, you must integrate values, theory, motivational relationship, and methods into a personalized way of meeting the unmotivated client. The manner of emotionally incorporating all the components into a whole is through supervision.

By being supervised, again and again, you assimilate the approach, so it becomes a part of yourself. The process takes some time, but the advantage is that it ends with that you can use Motivational Work in a free and independent way. It is not a methodology where you must learn specific techniques by heart. You trust yourself and professionally use yourself.

Illustration of supervision

The following case illustrates how Motivational Work is integrated through supervision. To be noted, the motivational worker Irma is at the beginning of her process. Therefore, the supervision focuses mainly on her emotional relationship with the client and building her protective suit against being burnt out.

The following blog (92) will continue the story about the staff member Irma to show the result of the learning process over time.

The Case

The Client

Jim, 35, has been a shelter resident for two weeks. One of the staff, Irma, decides to pursue a course of Motivational Work with him for as long as he stays at the center (the plan is for him to be discharged after two months).

The client is always adequately attired and looks after himself; most staff find him very charming. He always has constructive plans for the future and says he feels fine. This is, however, not his first stay at the center – whenever he has an intensive period of alcohol abuse, he goes for detox and then to the center; it is now his tenth time there.

The Negative Rebound

After six weeks, Jim seems unwilling to talk to her anymore. Irma still attends their sessions, but Jim ensures he is absent from the center at the appointed time. Immediately when Jim stopped seeing Irma, she could see his contact rebus and recognized it as his negative rebound. At the same time, she started to develop feelings of insecurity: what if Jim genuinely didn’t want to meet her?

Irma’s Mounting Insecurity

Irma is anxious about meeting Jim at the center in other situations and receives even more insecurity. All this makes it hard for her to approach a colleague about him. It is as if he has got emotional power over her. She feels helpless in her inability to shield herself from fresh pain.

Her reaction indicates that she is losing her commitment (motivational relationship) to her client and, in the long run, risks being burnt out.

The Supervision Group

The following week, she takes the matter up in her supervision group, where she is helped to interpret the contact rebuses. Most importantly, she obtains understanding and commitment from the group, and several recognize her reaction in themselves. This reaction from her colleagues relieves Irma, who feels different and incompetent.

The Contact Rebus and the Positive Core

She is helped to see that her client’s withdrawal is a negative rebound. The client has left his compliance contact rebus and feels such confidence in his motivational worker that he dares to go into withdrawal and risks being abandoned. It is an affirmation that a motivational process is underway.

Jim has left his compliance contact rebus and opened up about his problems, which he never before dared to do. He has also started to show aggressive testing towards her. Deep down in himself, he has a positive core that urges him to seek help.

Emotional Openness

Irma’s insecurity is emotions dumped from her client, who is testing, through his contact rebus, whether Irma can withstand his withdrawal without suffering too much damage to her self-confidence. The group points out that the open contact with her feelings, as Irma has shown, is the most crucial professional demand on a motivational worker. It is also skilled to discern when you can deal with it yourself or it is time to bring it up under supervision. You cannot avoid strong feelings when you meet latent motivated clients.

In contrast, Jim generally transmutes his pain by denying it and drowning it in alcohol. Consequently, Irma has a capacity that Jim lacks. He gives her his pain, which she manages to deal with through her positive energy and the help she receives from the supervision group. Jim tests her by giving her negative confirmation through his withdrawal. If Irma is still committed to him in spite of his behavior, he will bond more with her.

The supervision group also advises how she can use confrontation (Motivational Work, Part 3, Method and Techniques, pages 11 -289) and continuity (Motivational Work, Part 3, Method and techniques, pages 291 – 356) when meeting the client.

Irma’s Confidence Increases

When she experiences positive engagement and constructive comments from the supervision group, her confidence in her increases. Afterward, Irma feels that her emotions of insecurity have gone and that she is pleased with her efforts to help Jim. She is no longer helpless regarding how to support her client and feels a renewed commitment to him.

The Integration Process

The Theory of Contact Rebus

Jim starts with a compliance contact rebus. Six weeks into the Motivational Work, he shifts over to withdraw from Irma, which is a positive sign in the motivational process. By experiencing her insecurity when Jim’s negative rebound appears and meeting the reaction from the supervision group, she starts to integrate the theory of contact rebus into practice.

The defense (the contact rebus) is an effort from the client to make contact. The approach reformulates Jim’s communication to a positive confirmation of Irma’s Motivational Work and gives positive energy to her.

Boosting Self-Confidence through Supervision

Before bringing it up in the supervision group, Irma is in a demotivational process and is losing energy. There is a hole in her protective suit. Being more convinced that the client’s behavior is a contact rebus stops the draining of her confidence.

At the same time, Irma has already lost some energy and has lowered her self-esteem. Therefore, she needs also to be filled up with more supportive feedback from the supervision members. One essential confirmation is that it is professional to have the courage and self-confidence to dare open to painful feelings, in this case, insecurity.

Openness is the essential difference between the motivational worker and the client. And also to decide when and if it is time to bring it up under supervision. Another aspect to point out is that the client’s dumping of painful emotions is inevitable in Motivational Work. It goes with the territory. 

Thus, the recovery of Irma’s commitment to her client reinstates her motivational relationship and builds her protective suit.

Homework Assignment

It is as if the client gives you a homework assignment. In the case of Jim, he unconsciously wants to test how Irma deals with lowered self-esteem. He will attach to her more deeply if she can manage the situation.

The Supervision Process

By repeating this cognitive and emotional experience repeatedly in supervision with the same or different clients, Irma assimilates Motivational Work and can cope with her clients more and more independently. In this process, she will find her way of using herself when meeting her clients.