Moving Forward Together: Inside Reflexive Supervision

Welcome to Moving Forward Together: Inside Reflexive Supervision.

I'm glad you're here.

My name is Dr. Camille Lafleur, and I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, AAMFT Approved Supervisor, educator, consultant, and founder of Moving Forward Together Therapy and Consultation, PLLC. My over 20 years of experience includes community mental health, secondary and alternative schools, in-home family therapy work, teaching in higher education, group and solo private practice work, clinical supervision, and therapist development. Throughout that journey, one thing has remained consistent: my commitment to helping clinicians develop not only their skills, but also their awareness of the person behind the professional.

This blog is a space for conversations about supervision, therapist development, cultural humility, self-awareness, and the ongoing process of becoming. It is also a space for reflection on the realities of practicing and supervising across differences of race, culture, identity, and lived experience.

In many ways, this blog is rooted in my own supervision story.

Throughout my clinical training and professional development, all of my supervision experiences were cross-cultural. I was fortunate to have supervisors who were supportive, encouraging, and invested in my growth. They helped me develop a strong systemic and relational lens. They challenged me clinically and supported me professionally. I learned a great deal from them, and I remain grateful for the many lessons they shared.

At the same time, there were important things that were missing.

As a Black woman navigating predominantly White training and professional spaces, I often found myself being the one to bring culture, race, and identity into the conversation. If cultural considerations were discussed, it was frequently because I raised them. More often than not, I found myself teaching as much as I was learning when it came to understanding how culture, systemic inequality, and lived experience shape both clients and clinicians.

While I was developing as a therapist, I was also searching for examples of how to bring my whole self into the room.

I was learning clinical theories and interventions, but I was also trying to figure out how my experiences, identities, and cultural realities fit within those frameworks. I was looking for representation. I was looking for language. I was looking for spaces where I did not have to separate my professional self from the rest of who I was.

Like many clinicians from historically marginalized communities, I learned to navigate systems that were not always designed with my experiences in mind.

The same pattern emerged years later when I became a supervisor.

My supervision-of-supervision experiences were once again cross-cultural and lacked significant diversity. By that point, I was no longer a student trying to find my footing. I was an experienced clinician and emerging supervisor. Yet I often found myself occupying familiar roles: raising questions about culture, naming systemic inequities, challenging assumptions, and inviting deeper conversations about bias and power.

These experiences taught me something important.

Technical knowledge and clinical skill matter. Ethical standards matter. Competency matters. But supervision is also deeply influenced by who we are, how we make meaning of the world, and how we understand people whose experiences differ from our own.

That is one reason the work of Dr. Kenneth V. Hardy has been so meaningful to me throughout my career. His writing and teaching gave language to experiences I had lived but had rarely seen reflected in traditional clinical training. His work helped me understand the importance of honoring context, naming oppression, and recognizing the impact of race, culture, and power in therapeutic and supervisory relationships.

Similarly, the work of Dr. Nancy Boyd-Franklin helped fill important gaps for me as a new clinician working in community mental health. Her frameworks acknowledged families, communities, strengths, resilience, and culture in ways that felt authentic and relevant to the clients I was serving. Her work reminded me that effective therapy requires us to understand people within the contexts of their lives.

Those influences continue to shape the way I approach supervision today.

As a supervisor, I am intentional about supporting supervisees in developing both clinical competence and self-awareness. I help them explore not only what they do in the therapy room, but also how they show up in the therapy room. Together, we examine how personal experiences, values, cultural identities, emotional responses, and assumptions influence clinical work.

I often describe supervision as a developmental process. My goal is to meet supervisees where they are while helping them move toward where they want and need to be. We attend to professional standards and competencies, but we also attend to the person who is growing into those competencies.

In other words, supervision is not simply about learning to do therapy.

It is about becoming the therapist you want to be.

Similarly, when I mentor emerging supervisors, I focus on helping them become more aware of themselves, more attentive to culture, and more intentional in the ways they use their authority and influence. Effective supervisors create space for learning, challenge, accountability, and growth. They remain curious about their supervisees and equally curious about themselves.

Curiosity is especially important right now.

We are living in a time when conversations are increasingly pushed toward certainty, polarization, and binary thinking. Nuance often gets lost. Complexity is frequently reduced to simple answers.

Yet supervision, therapy, and human relationships rarely operate in simple categories.

People are complex.

Relationships are complex.

Identity is complex.

Culture is complex.

Because of this, I believe supervisors have a responsibility to model curiosity. We help supervisees remain open to multiple perspectives, question assumptions, and stay engaged with complexity rather than rushing toward certainty.

All of who we are enters the room with us.

Our histories. Our identities. Our values. Our wounds. Our strengths. Our cultural experiences. Our hopes and fears.

Reflexive supervision invites us to slow down long enough to notice those influences. It encourages self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-grace. And it reminds us that the same compassion we extend to ourselves (you are extending compassion to yourself right?) can also be extended to others.

That is the heart of this blog.

Together, we will explore supervision, self-of-the-therapist work, self-of-the-supervisor work, cultural humility, racial awareness, professional development, and the ongoing journey of becoming.

Thank you for joining me.

I look forward to learning, reflecting, and Moving Forward Together.