Kelly Duggan Shearer, LMFT Conference Speaker
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Kelly Duggan Shearer
LMFT 

 

Kelly Duggan Shearer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor with over 20 years of clinical experience and 14 years of teaching, training and supervisory experience. She has been an AAMFT Approved Supervisor since 2018, a CAMFT Approved Supervisor since 2022, and is a Person of the Therapist trainer. Kelly spent her early career providing child-directed, attachment-focused therapy for neuro-divergent children and their families, then later opened a private practice. Kelly has a Ph.D. in Systems, Families and Couples from Loma Linda University. She is an Associate Professor and the director of the Clinical Counseling program at Point Loma Nazarene University. Her research interests focus on relational teaching practices in MFT and Counselor education.

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Developing Supervisee’s Clinical Judgment: Person of the Therapist Training (POTT) Strategies in Supervision      

Friday | May 1, 2026
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm 
(1.5 CEs)

 

Description:

The therapist’s skilled use of self is essential for creating strong therapeutic alliances that contribute to positive therapeutic outcomes for clients. Yet, honing supervisees’ abilities to use their “person of the therapist” is an elusive task for many supervisors. The “Person of the Therapist (POTT) model empowers supervisors to embrace supervisees’ lived experiences, including their emotional vulnerabilities, to nurture supervisees’ capacity to connect with clients and guide treatment. This compassion-infused and inclusive supervision approach provides supervisors with a structured format to foster supervisees’ use their “self” in a variety of settings.  

This presentation will introduce the POTT training philosophy and its implementation in educational and supervision settings, provide an overview of the benefits of using POTT with supervisees, and outline four strategies that supervisors might consider using to cultivate supervisees’ use of self with clients.      

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

  •  Identify three essential components of the Person of the Therapist (POTT) training philosophy in educational and supervisory settings. 
  • Describe one personal and one professional benefit of using the POTT model with emerging clinicians.
  • Explain at least two components of POTT implementation in training settings. 
  • Apply at least one of four different strategies that are used in POTT-informed supervision.
 

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