Adapted from Chapter 8, “Parallel Process Through a Schema Lens,” of Schemas in Coaching Supervision by Daniela Aneva.
Sometimes the most important thing a coach tells you about a client is how they tell you.
Sam had supervised Grace for a year and had never once felt bored in a session with her. She was quick, funny and full of ideas. So he noticed when, ten minutes into her account of a client called Victor, he found himself fighting to keep his eyes open.
Victor was the CFO of a retail chain in the middle of a turnaround: store closures, four hundred jobs cut. Grace laid out the facts in order, in an even tone, without pauses. “He’s fine,” she said. “Very focused. He’s handling it well.”
Sam caught his mind drifting to his own to-do list. Then he got curious. Grace wasn’t boring. The case wasn’t boring. Four hundred people were losing their jobs. So he said, carefully: “I’m noticing I feel very far away from this case. Almost numb. I wonder if that’s telling us something about Victor.”
Grace stopped. After a long pause she said: “That’s exactly what it’s like to sit with him.”
The pattern travels
Supervisors have a name for this: parallel process. The dynamics of the coaching relationship show up again in supervision. A coach who feels pushed around by a client may push the supervisor. A coach with an evasive client may become evasive in supervision. And a coach with a numb client may present the case in a way that leaves the supervisor numb. Nobody intends it, and usually nobody notices.
The schema lens explains how it travels. Victor was most likely in what schema work calls Detached Protector mode, shutting down grief and guilt so he could keep functioning. Grace, spending hours with him, picked up the same mode. She brought it into supervision, and Sam caught it too. Nobody did anything wrong. The mode simply travelled.
It travels most easily when the client’s pattern connects with one of the coach’s own. When Sam asked whether detachment felt familiar, Grace laughed a little sadly: “It’s my superpower.”
Two shapes to watch for
- Mirror parallel. The coach takes on the same mode as the client, and the supervisor may feel it too. That is Grace and Victor.
- Complementary parallel. The coach takes on a mode that responds to the client’s. A compliant client can draw a coach into over-controlling, and in supervision the coach may then try to control the session, leaving the supervisor feeling pushed into compliance, just as the client did. These are harder to spot, because the supervisor ends up feeling what the client felt.
The hopeful part: it works in both directions
Parallel process doesn’t only travel up from client to supervisor. It travels down too. A rushed, anxious supervisor tends to produce rushed, anxious coaching. A steady, curious supervisor tends to produce steady, curious coaching.
Sam didn’t rush to a plan. He stayed with the heaviness and let there be silence: “It sounds like there’s a lot of weight in this work, for Victor and for you.” Grace’s eyes filled. She had been dreading her sessions more than she had admitted. Sam’s steadiness gave her the experience of someone staying with a heavy feeling without drowning in it or pushing it away, which was exactly what Victor needed from her.
A few sessions later, Victor paused for a long time and said: “I went to one of the store closures last week. A woman who’d worked there for twenty-two years hugged me and thanked me for the severance. I sat in my car for half an hour afterwards.” From that point, their work changed.
Try this: the next time you feel something unusual in a supervision or coaching conversation (sleepy, irritated, rescuing, oddly anxious), ask yourself one question before you push it aside: “Is this mine, or is it coming from the system?” Often it is some of both, and both are worth knowing.
Parallel process isn’t a mistake
Coaches sometimes feel embarrassed when they realise they have been replaying a client’s pattern in supervision. They shouldn’t. It is a natural effect of being deeply engaged with another person. In many ways it is evidence that the coach has really let the client in. The goal isn’t to prevent it. It is to notice it and use it.
Grace, Victor and Sam are a composite drawn from supervision practice. Names and details have been changed.
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