IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 56 Acentral element of the concept is supporting self-regulation as a relational process rather than as an isolated individual skill. Through guided reflection and co-regulation within the supervision relationship, reflective holding contributes to developing the professional’s capacity to manage the emotional and cognitive complexity of practice without resorting to defensive mechanisms or emotional over-involvement. [14, 15] This self-regulatory stability creates the conditions necessary for integrating experience into the structure of professional identity. Aclear delimitation between reflective holding and therapeutic holding is essential. While therapeutic holding aims at restructuring personal experience and alleviating psychological suffering, reflective holding is oriented exclusively toward professional experience, within the role, purpose, and educational frame of supervision. Its objective is not healing or clinical intervention but the reflective integration of professional experience and the support of self-regulation and professional identity development. With this delimitation, reflective holding can be responsibly used in non-clinical educational and psychosocial contexts without generating role confusion or medicalizing formative processes. The concept thus provides an adequate theoretical language for describing supervision’s deep educational function, aligning with relational and trans- theoretical supervision models while bringing a specific emphasis on self-regulatory and identity processes [5, 6]. 6.3. FUNCTIONS OF REFLECTIVE HOLDING IN SUPERVISION Reflective holding manifests through interrelated processes operating simultaneously and mutually reinforcing one another, configuring supervision as a reflective educational space. These processes should not be understood as distinct stages or independent functions but as dimensions of the same formative relational mechanism. The first fundamental dimension is emotional containment. The supervisory frame offers a sufficiently safe and predictable relational space in which emotions associated with professional practice can be recognized, tolerated, and brought into reflection without becoming overwhelming or disorganizing. This containment does not involve therapeutic processing or exploration of personal history; rather, it supports a baseline emotional stability necessary for reflective learning and integration of professional experience. Emotional containment functions as a condition of possibility for reflection, not an end in itself [14, 15]. The second dimension is facilitating professional self-regulation. Through co- regulation and guided reflection within the supervisory relationship, the supervisee is supported in recognizing and organizing emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses generated by complex professional situations. Reflective holding creates a frame in which regulation initially supported relationally can be gradually internalized, supporting the transition from external regulation to autonomous professional self-regulation. In this sense, self-regulation is not treated as an isolated individual competence but as an emergent developmental process mediated relationally and consolidated through reflection [16, 17]. The third central dimension is cognitive-identity integration of professional experience. Guided reflection, supported by relational containment and self-regulatory stability, enables organizing professional experiences into a coherent narrative about the