Ayesha

An alumni of the Moving Forward Family Services (MFFS) internship program, Ayesha is excited for the opportunity to offer supervision to her fellow colleagues at MFFS after over 5 years of clinical practice and returning from London, U.K. for doctoral studies.

Ayesha is an integrative therapist who draws on a number of counselling theories and practice to work uniquely with each individual to best support their needs. Within an integrative therapeutic approach she takes a humanistic attitude to each person or group she works with and creatively draws on the models of: Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Psychodynamic Therapy. Additionally, Ayesha works from a holistic, attachment-based and trauma-informed perspective which is also the basis of her current research project.

Ayesha believes that an empowered approach to helping others brings about the best outcome. Her commitment and consistency in working therapeutically with clients to help them understand their issues, explore what they can do to resolve them and move forward with long-lasting changes in their lives also informs her personal approach to supervision.

As a supervisor, Ayesha’s primary goal is to improve the quality of work her supervisees are undertaking with their clients. Counselling is a very demanding profession, practicing as a counsellor can drain inner resources, consume energies and raise questions needed to explore. Ayesha strives to provide a professionally supportive and appropriately challenging environment for supervisees to get the most out of the sessions for themselves and their clients. Quality supervision should provide a safe space for the therapist to step back and look at the therapeutic relationship between them and their client. For this to happen, there needs to be solid supervisory relationship where the therapist feels supported, safe and is able to take risks. Overall, supervision should be a stimulating, motivational process in which challenge and reflection are very much a part.

Supervision should also ensure a duty of care to the supervisee and their clients, ensuring the maintenance of ethical and legal practice, as well as the continued professional development of the supervisee. Ayesha’s aim as a supervisor is to promote the competence and creativity of her supervisees in a non-judgmental way, to enable the supervisee to grow and develop into the most effective therapist they can be, to enable them to work skilfully and ethically with their clients and importantly to develop their own therapeutic style.

Additionally, Ayesha believes in the importance of a reciprocal relationship in supervision where supervision functions as a supportive, instructive, contextual and transformative space for both supervisor and practitioner reflect upon. As such, she places great value in the opportunity to equally learn from her supervisees.

Ayesha also acknowledges an attendance to issues of diversity, equality and the wider social context of our work. Her multi-cultural understandings are shaped by endeavouring the immersive experience of culture through her many travels across the globe.

Working primarily remotely, Ayesha is currently also a part of the Cognitive Analytic Therapy team at a National Health Service in London, U.K. as well as providing services to various charities as a volunteer Trainee Counselling Psychologist.

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Testimonial:

While working with Moving Forward Family Services, I have been meeting with my supervisor Ayesha in bimonthly meetings to view and discuss the recorded sessions I have with my clients. Because of the intimate and focused nature of this supervision, I have been able to receive bespoke and tailored feedback about my practice. Ayesha gave me the space to reflect and discuss how each session made me feel and guided me to look at aspects of the sessions in the different ways I could have approached the situation or part of the client session. Something I would never really focus on is how the client made me feel -  I am focused on their issue and how I can support them. This is a really interesting way to reflect on a session to make sure you are avoiding bias and also remove any blockages you may be experiencing that is preventing you from supporting your client. My supervision sessions were always thought-provoking and crucial to my development as a clinical counsellor. Ayesha also has been a pillar in my success to plan future sessions for my clients and different modalities and interventions that I can use. This is something I will continue to do throughout my practice as I believe there is always room for growth at whatever stage of your career you are in. Thank you to Ayesha and all her support and thank you to MFFS!

‍~ City University Graduate