IJSP Number 4, 2022

14 made comments that reflected obliviousness to the power and privilege associated with the supervisor position: “I tended to be quieter , soft spoken, less direct in therapy due to many factors, e.g., cultural values, identity differences with clients. However, my supervisor favoured more direct approaches and pushed me to be more assertive and louder, which I did not find natural to do. She said that my personality was impeding me to be an effective therapist, which was very hurtful. I didn ’ t say anything back but probably seemed upset. She apologized in the following session and just encouraged me to try more, but we didn ’ t get to talk about how I really felt. ” Supervisee # 7 also revealed an example in which the supervisor insensitively and in a biased manner promoted the “American way” . “[my] supervisor said despite my culture values, in the US I should behave in certain way in group (participating through talking out-loud) because it shows my leadership. In my view, supervisor did not truly understand the beauty of multicultural diversity. ” Third, the supervisor ’ s incompetency in handling clients ’ multicultural issues was identified in this theme ( n =7). Commonly reported concerns included the supervisor ’ s tendency to over-pathologize marginalized clients (e.g., undocumented families; #5, 7 &9); the supervisor ’s unawareness of the “White culture” until the supervisee brought up cultural differences between supervisor-supervisee (#1, 6 & 8); and the supervisor ’s ignoring the topic of how “Whiteness, straightness, and maleness affected the supervisee ’ s wellness in their practicum training site (#5). ” As an example, supervisee #6shared: “With this supervisor, I shared my countertransference toward a certain group of international clients (I have a large amount of international student clientele), but the supervisor quickly referred me to another psychologist with an international background …… this particular supervisor failed to model how to hold space for difficult conversations, how to sit with unknown/uncertainty, and to me, they were unwilling to spend time to explore or process it with me. ” Another indicator of the supervisor ’ s lack of cultural competency was that supervisors showed a low level of trust in international supervisees ’ clinical work and micro-managed supervisees ’ clinical schedules, despite the fact that the international supervisees had successfully progressed in multiple pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training levels. Finally, several supervisees ( n =6) reported that their supervisors were dismissive of their needs and reluctant to advocate for them in cases of racism/ microaggression, even when requested to do so. As a result of experiencing these negative incidents, international supervisees reported feelings of powerlessness, being attacked, diminished, helplessness, scared, frustrated, disappointed, and disillusioned ( n =7). Some supervisees reported that through these negative supervision incidents, they learned the necessity to advocate for them and not to repeat the similar errors with their future supervisees when they become a supervisor. In addition, following these negative critical incidents, the most common outcome reported by most supervisees was that it damaged the supervisory relationship (e.g. increased mistrust). Strikingly, 80% of the international supervisees in our sample revealed that the negative critical incidents went unaddressed. Our participants revealed several possible reasons for the