IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 97 2. ADDRESSING RESILIENCE AND VULNERABILITY In accomplishing my work, the themes of vulnerability and resilience emerge. We need to support supervisees through a trauma-informed lens to understand the different ways in which Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) impacts our clients. I will discuss this further in my case studies. Supervision at its best is focused and informed -- offering clarity, integrity and safety -- but can sustain resilience. How do we cope? Is resilience a trait or a process? According to Lahad, resilience is an innate ability that needs developing and maintenance, so it is both [9]. Lahad categorises the different areas in which we measure coping mechanisms via six modes: B-Belief (faith), A-Affect (emotions), S-Social, I-Imagination (to visualise), C-Cognitive (reasoning), Ph-Physical [9]. Hawkins and McMahon have also linked resilience to the qualities of hope, optimism, a sense of balance and a future orientation [10]. Resilience is therefore personal, individual and in supervision we must meet vulnerability with compassion, gentleness and with humane enquiry. We see vulnerability showing up with supervisees in the creative material that emerges via the creative action methods. Resilience in supervision also implies the ability to bounce back and it relates to the resources that sustain well-being [11]. Of course, individuals have differing levels of resistance. Resilience can also signify our capacity to identify challenges [8]. Creative embodied supervision today touches many forms of trauma [12]. Moments where vulnerability and resilience can be identified in action through vignettes from supervisees working in ‘war and crises’ are brought to attention. Stress is a physiological response to our emotions signalling alarm and danger. Stressors can be physical or physiological, both involving a bodily response. Harris testifies that resilience is possible despite trauma, violence and the most adverse circumstances that arise from war-torn communities such as Sierra Leone in his work with ex-rebel teenage boy fighters. Creating safety, establishing trust, working with the body in movement and in letting the creative process unfold is key to transformation [13]. MacDonald “supports the hypothesis that dance movement interventions can help a traumatised individual to re-inhabit their body and to create new, healthy life meanings and pathways” [14]. There are co-regulation strategies and techniques to handle secondary trauma and methods to build and establish resilience from practitioners who are suffering from exhaustion and need to develop effective psycho-social resilience and self-care strategies [13]. My approach to supervision also draws on creative arts therapies, trauma-informed dance movement therapy and creative approaches [15, 16, 17]. 2.1. USING CREATIVITY IN SUPERVISION I aim to highlight why creativity and embodied methods in supervision are supportive when working with war-time trauma. I also identify a need for a particular focus in holding the space with care when anxiety, burnout and deregulation are present. With loss of the executive functioning, emotions, thinking, planning and concentration can be disrupted. Anxieties, poor sleep, lack of concentration, depression, chronic stress, burnout and dissociation have been frequently identified. These are the realities of working in crises. Creative approaches reduce the level of anxiety that sometimes arises in supervision. Providing safety with creative and embodied support is at the heart of my endeavor as a way to offer a space for personal resourcing.