My Approach | Carissa Hannum Therapy

Board Approved Supervisor

I am currently a Board Approved Supervisor in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. I enjoy providing supervision in the area of trauma, eating disorders, mood disorders, and chronic pain/chronic illness.

Carissa Hannum approaches supervision from a collaborative framework to help a supervisee grow in their professional goals. This involves helping a supervisee clearly develop their professional identity throughout the supervision process. The work is largely an exploration and development of a supervisee’s therapeutic orientation, personal therapeutic style, professional values, and professional identity.

Supervision is a place to develop the necessary skills and practice of counseling to protect one’s clients and become a competent practitioner. Carissa’s approach to supervision follows the Developmental Model, which adjusts for and to the level of expertise of the supervisee. As a clinical supervisor, I am here to help you learn what you do know and what you do not yet know in a safe and supportive environment that allows you, the supervisee, to be accountable while learning. The needs of the supervisee will change substantially over time, and I aim to support and foster that growth while assuring client and therapist safety. I use a reflective model of supervision whether in individual supervision, group supervision, or tape review. The goals of clinical supervision are:

To develop competence in standard mental health assessment and treatment modalities while encouraging learning and growing within the field.
To gain a thorough understanding of theoretical orientations and their practical application.
To develop clinical skills in assessment, treatment planning, implementation and documentation.
To oversee the development of ethical decision making in the clinical setting.
To model and promote appropriate ways to work with issues of culture, gender, sexual identity and preference, religious affiliation or other differences in the counseling setting.
To develop the supervisee’s self-awareness and ability to discern what are his/her issues to sort through in clinical supervision and what are the client’s issues to avoid countertransference in therapy. While clinical supervision is not therapy, in these instances it may brush up against that boundary as we discern which issues need to be discussed in supervision and which would best be addressed within the supervisee’s own therapy.
To assist the supervisee in reducing their own professional performance anxiety while increasing their professional identity and areas of expertise.

The general areas of focus include working to increase competence in major clinical domains of supervisee’s professional behaviors: counseling skills, personal growth and awareness, client case conceptualization, screening and assessment, therapeutic modalities (individual, group, family, and couples counseling), client psychoeducation, ethical and professional standards, cultural competence/awareness, and the ability to create therapeutic relationships. Supervisory roles assumed by Carissa L. Strohecker Hannum, MA, LCPC, LPC, CCTP include teacher, evaluator, consultant, and counselor. Carissa will also work with a supervisee to help them within a developmental framework to increase skills in their own theoretical orientation.