TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

32 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 Overall, we found that participants were more willing to discuss commonly occurring client- related incidents than they were to disclose supervision-related incidents. However, the participants still reported hesitancy in disclosing many of their client-related concerns. This is evidenced by participants identifying client-related issues as salient issues to their supervision experience, and although they withheld some degree of this information from their clinical supervisors, they did not completely withhold the information. Although prior research has found that supervisees are less apprehensive to discuss client-related issues with their clinical supervisors (Ladany et al., 1996; Mehr et al., 2010; Yourman & Farber, 1996), there may be unique differences for prelicensed counselors that help to explain the findings from the current study. Notably, it is possible that as theorized (Loganbill et al., 1982; Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010), prelicensed counselors are better able to self-monitor their own needs. As prelicensed counselors gain more clinical experience, they are able to autonomously address their client-related concerns (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003) and do not need to fully elaborate on their client-related concerns to their supervisors. However, when prompted by a survey such as this one, they recognize that there is more information to share about the incident (i.e., some degree of nondisclosure). Also, given the limited time in supervision for licensure, prelicensed counselors appear to need to prioritize specific information about their clinical work and seek guidance about their most pressing clinical needs (Cook & Sackett, 2018). Thus, at times they are unable to fully discuss the intricacies of their client caseloads. We also found that prelicensed counselors are most hesitant and sometimes unwilling to discuss supervision-related concerns with their clinical supervisors. In the current study, the most common nondisclosures included disagreements with one’s supervisor, negative perceptions of one’s supervisor, and believing one’s supervisor was wrong, all directly pertaining to the supervisor. High levels of nondisclosure in relation to these types of incidents have been reported in prior research with psychology trainees (Mehr et al., 2010). Prelicensed counselors are likely to have started to develop their own counseling style (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003), which may or may not align with their supervisors’ approach to counseling. As such, it is likely that supervisees sometimes disagree with their supervisors or believe that their supervisor handled a situation poorly (Magnuson et al., 2002). It is possible that supervisees’ concerns about voicing dissent to their supervisors could reflect a weak or insecure supervisory relationship, which has been found to be a significant predictor of nondisclosure (Cook & Welfare, 2018; Mehr et al., 2010). A little more than half of the participants (53.3%) reported that they completely withheld information from their supervisors. That is, these participants recognized something as being salient in their clinical supervision but refrained from disclosing any information about their concern with their supervisor. Perhaps most startling, the top 13 items (out of 30 items total) were all supervision- related incidents and some of these incidents occurred with staggering frequency. For example, a number of participants completely withheld their negative reactions to their supervisor’s behavior or attitudes (22.4%), never disclosed that they questioned their supervisor’s competence (16.8%), and declined to discuss that their needs were not being met in supervision (15.0%). These findings underscore the inherent power imbalance between supervisees and supervisors (Cook, McKibben, & Wind, 2018; De Stefano et al., 2017; Ladany et al., 1996). Although prelicensed counselors perceive concerns about their supervisor or their supervision experience, they are unwilling to broach these topics with their evaluative supervisors (Gibson et al., 2019). It is difficult to say why the participants in the current study felt unfulfilled by their supervision experience or wondered about their supervisors’ competencies. We must exercise judgment before assuming that the supervisors of the participants in the current study were providing substandard