What Queer and Trans MFT Associates Wish They Had Known Before Starting Supervision
What matters most in a supervisory relationship is often what nobody mentions before you start. What queer and trans pre-licensed therapists commonly wish they had known.
By Mx. Love C. Dialogos, LMFT · AAMFT Approved Supervisor
Graduate school teaches you some things about supervision, like the models and the ethical requirements. Other things you learn by being in a supervisory relationship, often the hard way.
This post is about the second kind. It covers what queer and trans pre-licensed therapists most often wish they had known before they started, the things that would have helped them choose better and protect their own development.
None of this is universal. Every supervisory relationship is different. Still, certain themes come up again and again in conversations with queer and trans pre-licensed therapists, and they are worth naming.
"I wish I had known that 'not hostile' is different from 'affirming.'"
This comes up most often.
Many queer and trans pre-licensed therapists start with a supervisor who isn't harmful. The supervisor uses correct pronouns and seems supportive. Then they spend months or years in a relationship that is technically fine and never quite right.
Hostility isn't the issue. The issue is the gap between tolerance and understanding. A supervisor who uses your correct pronouns may still not understand what it means to work with clients whose families rejected them, or whose bodies have been medicalized and pathologized.
That gap matters clinically. When your supervisor doesn't understand your context, you spend energy translating and filling in background that shouldn't need filling in. That energy isn't available for the clinical work.
What to do instead: Ask specific questions in the consultation call. Skip "are you affirming?" and ask "how do you approach identity and culture in supervision?" Skip "do you work with LGBTQ+ clients?" and ask "what is your experience supervising clinicians who work with queer and trans clients?" Listen for specifics. Vague affirmations are not familiarity.
"I wish I had known I was allowed to have expectations."
Many pre-licensed therapists start supervision grateful: grateful to have found a supervisor and to be earning hours, and reluctant to ask for anything that might seem demanding. That makes sense. The power differential is real and so are the stakes.
Gratitude that turns into passivity is bad for your development, though. You are allowed to want specific, usable feedback. You are allowed to want a supervisor who knows your board's documentation requirements, and a relationship where you can be honest about your struggles.
Those are the minimum good supervision should provide.
What to do instead: Before you start, get clear on what you need. What didn't work in past supervision? What would make this time different? Bring that to the consultation call as information about what you are looking for.
"I wish I had known the supervisory relationship is a relationship."
Supervision isn't a service you buy in exchange for hour attestation. It is a professional relationship with its own dynamics and its own parallel process, and it can help you grow or do harm.
So it needs what any meaningful relationship needs: honesty, and the willingness to name what isn't working. Pre-licensed therapists who treat supervision as a transaction (show up, present a case, leave) often find they have collected hours without developing much.
The relationship itself is also clinical material. How you show up in supervision, including what you present and what you hide, says something about how you show up in the therapy room. A supervisor who can help you see that parallel is doing something valuable.
What to do instead: Bring your actual clinical experience to supervision instead of your best work. The sessions that went badly and the moments you didn't know what to do are the most important things to bring. If you can't bring them, the relationship isn't working.
"I wish I had known geography doesn't have to limit my options."
Many queer and trans pre-licensed therapists, especially in smaller cities or rural areas, assume their options are whoever is nearby. They settle for adequate supervision because they don't know better options exist.
Telehealth supervision changed this. In most states your supervisor doesn't need to live in your city or even your state. They need to hold an active license in the state where you are seeking licensure and meet your board's supervisor requirements. That opens the field considerably.
For queer and trans clinicians where affirming supervision is scarce, this is more than convenience. It can be the difference between supervision that sees you and supervision that asks you to make yourself smaller.
What to do instead: Don't limit your search to local supervisors. Look for supervisors licensed in your state who hold the AAMFT Approved Supervisor credential and have real experience with queer and trans clinical work, wherever they are.
"I wish I had known it's okay to leave."
Some supervisory relationships don't work. Some are harmful in a quiet, cumulative way: the relationship keeps asking you to be less than you are.
It is okay to leave. Properly documented hours stay on your record, and your licensure path continues. You find a new supervisor and keep going.
What isn't okay is staying in a relationship that is harming your development because you fear the disruption or feel obligated.
What to do instead: Know your contract's termination provisions before you sign, and keep your hour documentation current so a change is easy. If you've given a relationship a real chance and it still isn't right, give yourself permission to find something better.
Finding What You Need
The supervisory relationship you deserve is one where you can bring your whole clinical self, including your identity and your uncertainty, and have it met with rigor and understanding.
That relationship exists. It may take some looking.
If you are a queer or trans pre-licensed MFT working toward licensure in Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Texas, or Wisconsin, request a session. Bring your questions and whatever you wish you had known before you started.
Mx. Love C. Dialogos is an LMFT and AAMFT Approved Supervisor offering queer-affirming clinical supervision via telehealth. Verify credential.
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Mx. Love C. Dialogos
Mx. Love C. Dialogos (they/them) is a queer, genderless womxn, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, and AAMFT Approved Supervisor offering queer-affirming clinical supervision for LMFT-Associates across 15 U.S. states via telehealth. They write about queer-affirming clinical practice, supervision, and the intersection of Buddhist Psychology and therapy.
