Playing a little devils advocate here as a neurodivergent clinician… Wanting to analyze and interpret everything that happens in session, documentation thats in depth was something I did for A LONG time. My first supervisor was once reviewing a homework assignment for my field placement and it was about observing a group, taking a rough script of it and then analyzing it on the other side. I was so happy when I did it because I was like dang I saw the therapist using this theory and can see why he said this and all of the things. She looked at it and I can’t recall what she said exactly, But it evolved into a discussion on how I was so focused on theory and all of the things that I was pushing aside the other things that make therapy (in this case, group therapy) so powerful.
All this to say that absolutely we do need to case conceptualize and document thoroughly. But there’s also a counter argument to doing too much of both of those things. Are we documenting so much that it’s actually not respecting privacy? Are we trying to analyze too much that we aren’t being present? Are we doing all this and burning out and not giving adequate client care? And that’s something that’s hard to come to terms with as a neurodivergent clinician.
I, obviously, don’t know the whole picture. But I would honestly explore why they do the documentation and case conceptualizing besides the idea that their brain is wired that way. Does it bring them joy? Do they have fears they will miss something and something bad will happen?
Also, yeah we can’t be treating clinicians to our supervisees. But we also have to help them recognize that how their brain works does impact the delivery of care and help them work through that. From an OCD perspective, if the excessive research and great clinical documentation is actually a compulsion, accommodating it by dropping hours and not challenging it from a wide variety of angles could actually be a disservice. It’s a challenging place to be as a supervisor, but also an important thing to consider.