Using their usual style of humorous narrative, Melissa, Evan, and Eli extemporaneously delve into their professional experience with parallel process as clinical supervisors.  What is parallel process?  Briefly, parallel process is rooted in the psychoanalytic concepts of transference and countertransference where supervisees inadvertently recreate the issues, thoughts, and feelings they experience with clients within the supervisor-supervisee relationship (transference).  Further, parallel process exists when supervisors respond to the supervisee in the same way the supervisee responds to the client (countertransference).  In this manner, the supervisory relationship reenacts, or is parallel with, the client-counselor relationship.  Evan, Eli, and Melissa explore how to recognize and address parallel process, especially within community mental health agencies.  Further, we discuss:

• Recognizing how counselors’ personal and professional development informs the supervisory process;
• The benefits of practicing in community mental health before working in private practice;
• Relationship between re-enactment and parallel process;
• Screening for phenomenology;
• Professional identity formation and the benefit of confrontation as professional development;
• How self-awareness of one’s feelings, personal issues, and the events that trigger them is essential in identifying transference and countertransference;
• Benefits of starting one’s career in community mental health;
• Relationship between self-reflection and effective leadership;
• Adult versus child selves in positions of leadership;

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