IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 8 Soul --- the quintessential heart, seat, of all that is innermost; life force; vital spark; and Struggle --- contend vigorously with adversity; progress with difficulty; advance with great effort (see https://www.thefreedictionary.com/) . Although spirit and soul are defined separately, there is clearly overlap between the two terms. I use them here as inextricably intertwined, referring to that vital essence or spark, the heart and life force that animates, activates, energizes, and inspires. The term, struggle, is self-explanatory and its meaning will be self-evident in the material that follows. So, I share with you an integrated focus on three ever so vital vitalizers for me: (a) my supervision spirit and soul --- those abiding supervision convictions, practice principles, and watchwords that I have come to hold most dear and that accordingly guide my supervisory self in action; (b) as complement to that supervisor-self focus, I also wish to accentuate the ‘supervisee self’ --- shining a laser light on my view of the supervisee’s struggle of ‘becoming’, the supervisee’s journey to answer that critical identity question of “who am I as a therapist?” and, in the process, to build and broaden, demark and define, a sense of therapist identity or Practice Self; and (c) the intersection of my supervisory self in action (ideally) in sync with the supervisee’s self in the process of building and ‘becoming’. To capture and integrate my supervision spirit and soul, my view of the supervisee’s struggle of ‘becoming’, and their supervisory intersection, I do so by positing what I refer to as my Eight Anchors of Honor --- those anchors that are forever supervision honoring and forever supervision grounding of my practice and perspective. Because my supervision practice has been exclusively focused on beginning or Novice phase supervisees (ie. those first starting to see clients, making the shift from classroom to clinic), my Anchors are reflective of that reality. 2. MY EIGHT ANCHORS OF HONOR Clinical supervision, in my view, is decidedly developmental, relentlessly relational, and eminently educational. We as supervisors educate for, and strive to develop, therapist mind, therapist identity, and therapist voice [3]. In that process of developmental facilitation, of striving to be an evolutionary enabler, I have found that I return again and again to these eight helpful and humble touchstones of what I want to remember in supervision, what I hope to do in supervision, and who I want to be in supervision. My eight Anchors of Honor are as follows. 2.1 ANCHOR I: MAY I FOREVER HONOR JOURNEY OF THERAPIST ‘BECOMIMG’ Developmental conceptualization and research support this assertion: Where there is therapist identity formation, there, too, often goes therapist identity formation struggle [4, 5]. So, just as “Therapy often involves a ‘journey through hell’…training to be a therapist nearly always does [too]” [6, p. 7]. And I want to forever remain most mindful of that --- my supervisee’s identity formation struggles and their Practice Self in the painful process of evolving. May I also remember, stay in close touch with, my own therapist identity struggles because: though occurring long, long ago, I do think that that very