Clinical Supervision & Counseling Internships

My practice specializes in OCD and anxiety disorders, with a particular emphasis on Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

That gives me a particular interest in supervising students who want to learn more about OCD and exposure-based treatment.

OCD can be surprisingly easy to miss. A client may come in talking about their relationship, their health, their faith, something they are afraid they might have done, or a thought they cannot get out of their head. The presenting concern does not always make the underlying OCD process obvious. Learning to recognize those patterns can make a significant difference in how you conceptualize a client and approach treatment.

If you're interested in ERP supervision, we will spend time thoroughly training you, learning to identify subtle compulsions, and helping you understand what response prevention involves. You don't need to know that you want to specialize in OCD to find this useful. These skills can carry over into work with anxiety, phobias, panic, perfectionism, and many other clinical presentations.

My Catholic faith is an important part of my own life, and I'm comfortable having conversations about how faith and clinical practice intersect. I think those considerations are particularly worthwhile for counselors who expect religion or spirituality to remain relevant to their professional identity and clinical work.

The 2024 CACREP Standards recognize religion and spirituality as aspects of cultural identity and address their role in the psychological functioning of both clients and counselors. For students who are interested in exploring how Christian or Catholic perspectives intersect with clinical practice, supervision can provide an opportunity to have those conversations while maintaining professional ethics and respecting client autonomy.

This becomes especially relevant when working with OCD.

Scrupulosity can involve religious or moral obsessions and compulsions, and treating it well requires some nuance. A counselor needs to understand a client's faith without treating religious beliefs as symptoms simply because they are religious. At the same time, the counselor needs to recognize when OCD is using religious concerns to demand certainty or drive  compulsive behavior.

Questions like these are worth discussing in supervision:

• How do I respect a client's faith without participating in reassurance seeking? 
• How do I distinguish a spiritual concern from an OCD demand for certainty? 
• How can I use ERP when religious or moral concerns are part of the obsession? 
• How do I work ethically with a client whose beliefs are very different from my own? 

Clients should determine whether and how their faith is relevant to counseling. My role as a supervisor is to help developing counselors understand religion and spirituality as potentially important aspects of a client's identity while respecting client autonomy and avoiding the imposition of the counselor's own beliefs.

I'm comfortable working with students who don't share my religious beliefs. You don't need to be Catholic or Christian to be a good fit for supervision. Students from any faith background, including students who do not identify with a religious tradition, are welcome to apply.

This may be a good fit if you're a counseling student looking for a practicum or counseling internship and you're interested in developing your clinical skills in a private practice setting.

You don't need prior experience treating OCD, and you don't need to have your long-term career figured out.

You may be particularly interested in supervision at Northart Counseling if you're looking for:

• A counseling internship or practicum placement 
• Clinical supervision in a private practice setting 
• Personal experience with OCD and anxiety disorders
• Experience with OCD and anxiety disorders 
• Training in ERP, ACT, or CBT 
• More experience with case conceptualization and treatment planning 
• An opportunity to learn about OCD, including intrusive thoughts, reassurance seeking, rumination, and mental compulsions 
• Supervision that is open to discussing Christian or Catholic faith integration 
• Greater understanding of scrupulosity and religious OCD 

What matters most is that you're curious about your clients, receptive to feedback, and willing to think carefully about the work you're doing.

I'm Paul Northart, MA, LPC, NCC, and I own and operate Northart Counseling. My practice focuses primarily on OCD and anxiety, with an emphasis on ERP and ACT.

I enjoy the clinical side of counseling, but I also enjoy helping newer counselors figure out how to make sense of what they're seeing in front of them. There is a big difference between understanding a counseling technique in a textbook and knowing when, why, and how to use it with a particular person. That's one of the things I enjoy most about supervision.

If you'd like to learn more about my background, you can visit my About Me page.

If you're considering clinical supervision or a counseling internship, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Send me a message with some information about your program, where you are in your training, what your program requires for practicum or internship, and what you're looking for in a supervisor.