IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 9 remembrance matters and matters greatly in my being able to better empathize and sympathize with my supervisee’s plight of progress [7]. As Joan Fleming [8] so sagely stated 60 years ago, “…we have to take [supervisees] from where they are . . . They are not empty vessels into whom we pour from a jug; nor inert lumps of clay to be fashioned after our own image. We are facilitators; gardeners, accepting the plants that spring up in our gardens and doing what we can by pruning” (p. 420). I hope to be that facilitative gardener, accommodating to the developmental learning needs of my supervisees, and as their learning needs evolve, may my supervisory accommodation accordingly evolve as well [9, 10]. Affectivity looms large in this process [11, 12, 13]. Beginning or Novice Phase supervisees [4] need a sense of safety, a safe supervision environment within which they can freely learn and strive and thrive. Containment, hold, security, anchoring, and grounding would each be important elements in that affective affirmation process. In centering my supervisees’ journey to ‘become’, may I as supervisor do my very best to provide them with a space and place of learning liberation, an interval of freedom, where they are fostered and facilitated, encouraged and educated, reinforced and respected, and valued and validated [14]. 2.2 ANCHOR II: MAY I FOREVER HONOR SUPERVISION, GRANTING IT SUPREME, SACRED VALUE I hope to always hold supervision on high, as a sacred, sacramental practice. Where there is supervisor ‘eminent valuation’ of supervision, the supervision process is richly advantaged and best positioned to do good [15]. May I do ‘good’. May I accordingly forever honor the supervision space as sacred space, supervision time as sacred time, supervision service as sacred service, always prizing supervision --- because, again, such prizing matters and matters greatly [16]. Where such prizing and valuation are absent or deficient, inadequate and harmful supervision may well become increasingly likely realities [17]. Let me willfully work to banish any such ‘increasingly likely’ from my practice. 2.3 ANCHOR III: MAY I FOREVER HONOR SUPERVISION AS THE EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE OF HOPE, PROMISE, AND POSSIBILITY I hope to always hold supervision on high, as a place of infinite developmental possibility. I do unequivocally and wholeheartedly believe in the hope, promise, power, and possibility of supervision. I am convicted because: I have had the grand and glorious pleasure and privilege of bearing witness to growth abundant, as supervisee after supervisee has developmentally emerged with their own Practice Self conviction of “Yes, I can…!” solidly in place, where their doubt has become hope and their hope has become belief. And in that process, another pivotal shift occurs as well: where supervisees move from the relentless, pulse-pounding urgency of “Don’t just sit there, do something!!!!” to the circumspect elegance of “Don’t just do something, sit there”, because they have learned the value of listening, understanding, ‘being with’, and relational connection. And they become believers, too; they become convicted --- in the power of the treatment process itself and in their own power to be facilitative treatment providers.