Episode 4: Affirming Clinical Supervision for Differing Neuro-Types with Leah Barnes

Kayla: Welcome back to Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast. I’m your host, Kayla Das.

Whether you’re a clinical supervisor providing clinical supervision to therapists, or you’re a therapist receiving clinical supervision to enhance your practice, there are strategies you can take in order to use your neurotype when working with clients.

In today’s episode, Leah Barnes, Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor, will discuss how to provide affirming clinical supervision for differing neurotypes.

Hi, Leah. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Leah: I am so glad to be here. I’m glad you’ve reached out and that we’re getting to have this conversation.

Kayla: Leah, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice and clinical supervision journey.

Leah: Yeah. So I am Leah Barnes. Like you said, I am a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor in North Carolina. It is a mouthful. We extended the letters behind our names.

I’ve been providing supervision in North Carolina since 2020. But I initially was licensed and provided supervision down in Florida for a few years before moving States. I currently practice completely via telehealth, seeing folks in both North Carolina and South Carolina, supervision only for North Carolina supervisees, just because of the way that the licensing laws work.

I love working with not only clients of different neurotypes, but supervisees as well. I think we don’t talk enough about neurotype and supervision. Even though we’re talking more about that in clinical spaces, it doesn’t come up as much in supervision.

Kayla: No, I agree. I think this topic is so fascinating. So just for anyone who doesn’t know, what is a neurotype? And, can you give us some examples of types of neurotypes?

Leah: Yeah, absolutely. So, when we say neurotype, we’re really talking about how is it that your brain works? And of course, everybody is an individual, but just like we have diagnoses, where we’re talking about an individual, but here are patterns that they follow. Same thing with the neurotype. It gets into more of brain structure there.

So, when we look at neurotype and specifically neurodivergence, we’re looking at how does your brain interact with the world and where might that be different from what is considered the norm. Typically speaking, folks tend to think of right now, autism and ADHD are two of the big ones that most people, when they hear the word neurodivergence, or when they hear someone talking about neurotype, that’s what they assume. And those are true. And there are also other things that need to be taken into consideration.

Dyslexia, for example, is a neurotype. Dysgraphia is a neurotype. And we can have all kinds of intersections between them. So even with autism and ADHD, you can be one, you could be the other, you could be both. You could be dyslexic on top of that.

When we talk about neurotypical, that’s where we’re talking about folks that, again, generally when we say the norm, even though that language isn’t the best. That’s the best that we have right now.

Other forms of neurotypes can absolutely include things like personality disorders, OCD, traumatic brain injury. Again, these just differences in neurological functioning.

Kayla: That’s really helpful. And when we think of, say, supervisors specifically, how can a supervisor best determine what a supervisee’s neurotype is?

Leah: So, there’s a little bit of trickiness there just because supervision is not therapy. There’s a lot of overlap between some of the areas. And of course, there’s always going to be differences depending on your particular licensing boards. But there’s a piece there of making sure that as supervisors we kind of know our place. And that also a supervisees that they have that right to privacy and know what they need to disclose and what they don’t.

Biggest piece there is going to be what your supervisee is willing to disclose. It is not up to me as a supervisor to provide a diagnosis or necessarily even ask the question, Hey, do you have an autism diagnosis? Hey, do you have a history of TBI? Those aren’t things that we’re going to be asking.

What we do want to do is make supervision a safe enough space where supervisees can either disclose that information. Or even if they don’t, that they’re still getting their needs met. So, I don’t need to know if a supervisee was diagnosed with dyslexia in the past. If we’re talking about their learning styles, and if we have a conversation about when I have feedback to give to you, what is the best way for me as the supervisor to do that. So that’s really where it comes down to being willing to provide accommodations and be flexible without necessarily needing all of that information, but also making things feel safe enough that folks can disclose.

Kayla: That makes complete sense. So going back to supervisors. If they are working with a supervisee, whether they know it or not, who has a different neurotype than their own. What are some strategies, tips, or things that they can do that can be helpful in their supervision?

Leah: So, I will start with my first caveat is always make sure that you know what your laws are in your state or province for supervision. I know, for example, there are things that we are required to do in supervision in North Carolina that we were not required in Florida and vice versa. So, there’s that blanket caveat to start out there.

So, once you know what your particular requirements are for supervision, where is the flexibility that we have in that. So, for example, in North Carolina, for my particular licensure, part of each supervision session is required to be some form of direct observation of the supervisee’s skills. That can be session recordings, video or audio. That can be co-therapy, that can be me sitting in with my screen off on Zoom. There’s lots of different ways to do that piece. That’s where really being flexible and talking with my supervisees. Okay, what works best for you? And then also in addition to that, their clients as well, because we always have that additional layer with supervision.

I have some folks who it works best for their brains to send me almost an outline prior to our supervision sessions. Here’s my recording. Here’s what I want to spend our time discussing today. Beautiful. I allow them to do that because that’s what works best for their brains. I have some folks who just prefer to take things as they come and go where we’re going to go today. And that is great, too, as long as we are checking that box that the board requires. We can do things that way.

I have had folks where we talk about having a written case study because writing it out is actually helpful for them. Whereas again, if we have somebody say with dyslexia or dysgraphia, that may be really difficult for them. And so then we can do that verbally and process that way. So, a lot of that flexibility and meeting people where they’re at, just as we would with our clients. But also, again, keeping those guidelines in mind.

Kayla: I like that and going back to a word you said earlier, learning styles. People have different learning styles. For instance, I’m someone who loves to learn on my own. I’m not really that much of a be in a group kind of person. I rather do it on my own time. Online courses, things like that work for me. So, when I’m in supervision, I love to have take away homework or things that we’re talking about in session, but that I do my own thing outside of it. So that would be my learning style. But there are other people who may find that that is actually very challenging for them. So, I think it’s, again, going back to not just the neurotype, but also the learning style and both can go hand in hand.

Leah: Yeah, absolutely. And some would probably argue that learning styles could be another viewpoint of neurotype. That’s not something that I’ve looked at research on in particular, right? But it’s how we’re taking in information and how our brain best makes sense of it. And while neurotype and specifically identity are all very, very important things, and I absolutely do not want to minimize that or discount that. If we are truly looking at the individual supervisee in front of us, it almost doesn’t matter because if you are somebody who tends to be a visual learner, doesn’t matter if that’s due to ADHD, due to vision difficulties, due to TBI, due to just preference, I’m still going to try to present those things to you in a way that is going to make the most sense for you and for your brain.

Kayla: That makes complete sense. Now you sort of touched on this in the last question, but if a supervisee may be working with a clinical supervisor who may not be aware of or appropriately navigating the supervisee’s neurotype. Are there things that the supervisee can do to help support themselves within the clinical supervision relationship, especially if they have a different neurotype than their supervisor?

Leah: Self-knowledge can be huge there. So just as a supervisee, doing the work, whether that’s in therapy, whether that’s in your own just general learning. What really works best for me, and then having that conversation with your supervisor. My hope is always that any supervisor would be affirming and would meet folks where they’re at. And I do know that’s not the reality of every situation, unfortunately.

But number one is going to be self-advocacy, knowing what is it that I need and trying to come up with those solutions, whether it’s on your own or whether it’s in conjunction with your supervisor. So again, going back to supervisees that I have and have had in the past who prefer to send me information ahead of time. Great. That’s something that works for them. The first time it happened, the supervisee asked permission to do that. And, you know, it’s like this light bulb went off in my head. Oh, absolutely. And this is something that I need to be as a supervisor offering to everybody just saying, Hey, you can do this if you need to.

So having that not only I’m struggling with this piece of things, but what can I do about this in supervision? There are websites with different accommodations listed that some folks can go to. And there’s going to be differences, of course, if your supervisor is a managerial supervisor. So, if they work at the same practice for you and they’re not only doing clinical supervision, but they’re also your boss, that is very different than either someone who is at the organization, but not above you on the flow chart, so to speak, or even somebody outside. So those are going to be things to take into account as well. Is this a place that I feel safe advocating for myself? Is this a space where I can go to something like HR and get some accommodations in place through, in the US, ADA? What would that look like?

Kayla: Such great points. So, I also know you have a free training that really brings a lot of the concepts we’re talking today even further. So, can you tell us a little bit about your free guide and how it can help listeners?

Leah: Yeah. So, it’s a training talking about recognizing and working with autistic women because women in particular tend to get missed. We are under diagnosed. And it gives you background information, some terms to know those types of things. But we also go through some different presentations you may see through a case study. Not based on a real person based on multiple real people that I have seen over time. And what does this actually look like sitting in front of you, whether across the screen or across the couch?

Kayla: Amazing. So, to sign up for Leah’s free training, Recognizing and Working with Autistic Women, head to canadianclinicalsupervision.ca/leahbarnestraining,

Or simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Also, if any listeners would like to reach out, how can they get in contact? And also, are you accepting anyone in your clinical supervision practice? And if so, who would be a good fit working with you?

Leah: Yes. So, right now, I actually do not have space for supervisees, but I can always do one off consults with other clinicians, whether you are a supervisor yourself, whether you are independently licensed and just looking for a little bit extra. Or even if you are somebody who is under supervision with someone else but does just need a little bit extra for a case that you are working on, whatever.

Best way to get in touch with me is through my website, which is ridgelinecas.com.

I’m sure that’ll be down at the bottom of the show notes as well. There’s a contact form on there. Email is a good way to get in touch with me. I do have a phone number on the website. Full disclosure, I’m terrible at checking voicemails. Email tends to be the best way to reach out.

Yeah, and I’m always happy to consult on anything specific to neurodivergence. That’s really where my specialty is right now. Even more specifically, autistic and ADHD women. So, if you’re needing some case consultation, always happy to talk about that.

Kayla: Leah, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to provide affirming clinical supervision for differing neurotypes.

Leah: Thank you so much for having me.

Kayla: Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.