Clinical social work seeks to center the supportive and transformative potential of human relationships (Bogo, 2018; Flückiger, et al., 2018; Karver, et al., 2018). Neoliberalism and racism diminish the vitality and transformative potential of human relationships, disproportionately affecting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities (Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2021; Hingley-Jones & Ruch, 2016; Stanley, 2020). Neoliberalism is a “constellation of socio-economic and politico-cultural relations” (Gahman & Hjalmarson, n.d.) characterized by three propositions: (1) economic markets are efficient and effective; (2) individuals (consumers) are responsible for their own lives; and (3) management knowledge and practices are necessary and effective (Ornellas et al., 2020). Neoliberalism has imposed a market-focused mindset onto non-profit organizations, rewarding productivity and efficiency while decreasing professional autonomy and organizational practitioner support (Baines, 2017; Newcomb, 2022).

Critical theorists articulate how these constricting practices seep down into everyday practice through organizational processes, the construction of who is to be helped and in what way, and constraints against questioning these processes or doing them differently (see, for example, Bernal, 2002; Ortner, 1996). For practitioners, these dehumanizing forces construct understandings of “clients,” mental health “disorders,” and what is viewed as “help,” in addition to shaping the policies and procedures that constrain how they engage in practice (Brown, 2021). For example, organizational efforts to reduce administrative costs have shifted more documentation requirements onto practitioners alongside increasing caseloads (Alenkin, 2020; Soffer-Elnekave & Toft, 2022).

These neoliberal forces have detrimental effects on social workers’ wellbeing, manifesting as workplace stress and burnout (James, 2021; Newcomb, 2022; Stuart, 2021). The prevalence of stress and burnout has been concerning for many years (see, for example, Kim & Stoner, 2008; Siebert, 2005). The impact of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and heightened racism has only increased stress and burnout. Organizations are implementing numerous changes in how services are provided and unable to keep up with the demand for clinical and child welfare services (Holmes et al., 2021; McCoyd et al., 2023; and Soffer-Elnekave & Toft, 2022).

Because demand is exceeding capacity, practitioners are not being allotted time to collectively engage in clinical supervision, ongoing learning, or workplace actions that support practitioner wellbeing. Instead, organizations are generally encouraging practitioners to engage in individual self-care outside of paid employment hours or use a paid sick day as a mental health day. These expectations reflect the neoliberal mindset of individual responsibility to alleviate systemic pressures from the workplace (Newcomb, 2022). In an analysis of the inadequacies of self-care to prevent burnout, Cohen-Serrins reveals the limitations of this approach, stating that “[e]ven the most thoughtful and practiced self-care strategies cannot neutralize organizationally rooted stressors” because the causal forces and processes within the organization remain unaffected (2021, p. 262). Cohen-Serrins and others call for structural resources that support practitioners (see, for example, McCoyd, et al, 2023; Newcomb, 2022), but this requires shifting administrative and funding thinking to understand the importance of such resources.

In addition to heightened workplace stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened systemic racism, the social work profession is engaging in a necessary and long-overdue reckoning with the ways that racism has whitewashed social work history into a faulty narrative that elevates white social work individual leaders, excluding the significant contributions of social workers of color, and devaluing communal efforts of helping (McCoy, 2020; Wright et al., 2021). European American ways of knowing and practicing with individuals have dominated, resulting in epistemic injustice (Lee et al., 2022).

In response, many scholars and practitioners are engaging in various efforts to develop and implement holistic, culturally responsive, and anti-oppressive processes in clinical practice. Research findings from interpersonal neurobiology have informed somatic psychotherapies (Ogden, 2021) and embodied practices (Pyles & Adams, 2016). For the past several decades, social constructionism has affirmed the importance of listening to people’s lived experiences to see multiple simultaneous realities (Witkin, 2012). This paradigm animates current understandings of cultural humility, where the client’s wisdom is contextualized within a critical structural understanding (Gottlieb, 2020). The application of critical theories in social justice, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive practices is also expanding (Hingley-Jones & Ruch, 2016; Lee et al., 2021; Morgaine & DeSyllus, 2022). For example, James (2021) states that liberatory spaces can provide communal responses where practitioners work with those impacted by racial and pandemic-related trauma to understand, heal, and build resilience for resistance and transformation. While these emerging practices are promising, there is much work yet to be done to synthesize anti-oppressive structural understandings with cultural humility in embodied relational interactions.

Practitioners can potentially contribute to efforts that apply critical theory and anti-oppressive understandings within their practice and workplace. While clinical social workers are often not in the position to engage in organizational-level change, they can initiate policy and procedural changes with other colleagues to align their efforts with the ethical responsibility to intervene when clients are negatively impacted (Keenan, 2016; National Association of Social Workers, 2021). Practitioners need guidance, however, on how to respond in those challenging, everyday moments where oppressive forms of power are being imposed onto organizations and embedded within systemic processes. This paper further develops the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic (Keenan, 2021) to guide practitioner actions in two common challenging moments of clinical practice: systemic practice impingements and implementing a new training or practice model.

RE/UN/DIScover Heuristic

Heuristics are practical methods that guide thinking and action in complex situations. The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic is an iterative, embodied set of movements between three sets of practices that tend to self and situation with intentional practice thinking and action in the moment and over time (Keenan, 2021; see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

RE/UN/DIScover heuristic. A circular three-strand woven braid depicts the heuristic’s iterative flow. Text describes the qualities, primary questions and when to use REcover, UNcover and DIScover practices

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The three sets of practices are: REcover with compassion; UNcover with curious, critical reflection; and DIScover with creative courage in relational connection.

REcover with Compassion

Practitioners can be present with self and others, engage in critical reflection, and discover attuned responses when in their window of tolerance (Siegel, 2020). This embodied space is an optimal zone of arousal that allows for response flexibility, including “being” with an experience, reflecting, and making choices (National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, 2023). The window of tolerance will be referred to as the window of capacity in this paper to reflect current efforts to go beyond simply tolerating distress to the expansive potential in this embodied space (Malchiodi, 2021).

The window of capacity is a space of potential but certainly not a given—personal and professional stressors can elicit an internal activation to the edge or out of one’s window of capacity. Although some have a wide window in the face of significant challenges and others have a narrower window, each person has moments of destabilization that activate them to the edge or out of their window into hyper or hypo states of arousal (and potentially into reactive states of fight, flight, freeze, or faint), causing embodied cognition to become disconnected from emotions and behaviors (Siegel, 2020; Wong & Vinsky, 2021). This can be a destabilizing experience, disrupting a practitioner’s ability to be responsive in a practice moment. These states of mind can get activated not only by various forms of trauma, but also by various stressors and interpersonal, organizational, and structural forms of oppression (Menakem, 2017, 2022; Ogden, 2021). Practitioners’ social location in specific situations affect the details and inner experience of an activation. Practitioners who are recent MSW graduates, have less status at an organization, and/or intersectional identities that are targeted, marginalized or exploited may experience heightened activation into hyper- or hypoarousal states of being (see, for example, Cooke & Hastings, 2023; Ogden, 2021). Those practitioners who have greater advantage or privilege due to their organizational status, length of time at the organization, and/or intersectional identities may still experience activation to the edge or out of their window of capacity but do not have the additional societal patterns of oppression to contend with. REcover practices facilitate shifts back into a window of capacity when activated to the edge or out of the window into hyper or hypo states of arousal so that connections between embodied cognition, emotions and behaviors can again occur.

REcover practices invite practitioners to intentionally tune into themselves to become aware of the state of their window of capacity. If practitioners notice that they are at the edge or out of their window of capacity, they then engage in various breathing, orienting, or grounding practices to regain an embodied, holistic presence in challenging or dehumanizing contexts (Ogden, 2021). Compassionate expression of REcover practices conveys attuned acceptance for their humanness, knowing that they are going to experience triggers, charges, and activations that move them to the edge of or out of their window of capacity.

Practitioners likely have a range of clinical strategies to choose from in these situations, both in the moment and over time. When activated in a practice situation, brief practices that can be done in the presence of others can bring them back into their window: a short pause, various types of breathing and orienting, touching their palm, thigh, arm, or face; gentle rocking, and imagining trusted others or other sentient beings behind or next to themselves for support (Menakem, 2017; Ogden, 2015). Similar to clients, practitioners try out various grounding and orienting practices and use the ones that work best for them in various situations.

Practitioners also engage in consistent REcover practices over time to strengthen their window of capacity and expand their capacity for openness, heartful listening, curiosity, critical reflection, and holding the tension of knowing and not knowing. As with clients, practitioners experiment with various practices to identify which ones work in various situations. Some sources of REcover practices include Ogden’s (2015) sensorimotor psychotherapy strategies, Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR; 2003), Siegel’s (2018) wheel of awareness, Menakem’s (2017, 2022) somatic abolitionism practices, and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s (n.d.) contemplative practices.

UNcover with Curious, Critical Reflection

UNcover practices identify how power is being used in specific situations and contexts because knowledge and action in clinical practice are both constructed and constrained by culture and structures (Keenan, 2001; Finn & Jacobson, 2003). Practitioners seek to UNcover how oppressive patterns affect clients and colleagues, what meaning they make of their experiences, and the degree to which they think change is possible (Fook, 2015; Yosso, 2005). Curiosity provides openness and fresh eyes to engage in critical reflection about practitioners’ own beliefs and biases, observe how clinical language can be experienced as oppressive and how interactional and structural patterns can limit hope (Fook, 2015). This requires drawing upon many ways of knowing because human beings live in a world “that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history—in short, from our embodiment” (Varela et al., 2016, p. 149).

UNcover practices focus on identifying the specific power dynamics that may be concurrently at work within clinical relationships, organizations, and social service systems (Pyles, 2021). Practitioners seek to support the client’s use of power from within, power with, and power to do (Townsend et al., 1999). In so doing, practitioners may need to use protective power, a productive form that seeks to share power by enacting some “power over” dynamics to safeguard a person or group who are unable to act on their own behalf or are blocked access to full participation (e.g., child and elder abuse or neglect, adult risk of imminent harm to self or others). Protective power, however, can be experienced as controlling and oppressive in some moments (Tew, 2006). Organizational systems can exert oppressive power as well, by imposing policies and procedures that restrict choices and limit who can receive what kinds of services in what timeframes (Kivel, 2007). And when an individual or group seeks to hold onto control of resources, decision-making, or organizational culture, collusive power is operating. Cooperative power can counter oppressive and collusive dynamics by expanding relationships, promoting understanding of multiple viewpoints, and co-creating possible actions that express dignity and respect (Tew, 2006). All forms of power dynamics can operate across ecological levels through intra- and interpersonal interactions and within organizations.

The use of a power analysis, a strategy used in community organizing, is one practice that illuminates “where power lies in social spaces” and how different forms of power influence and affect each other in that social space (Pyles, 2021, p. 216). Practitioners identify and critically reflect on these forms of power in specific situations by looking at how the past is alive in the present, by noticing how patterns may occur across ecological levels, and by listening for meanings and impact on clients and colleagues (Finn & Jacobson, 2003). Wong and Vinsky (2021) noted that “our social history and cultural environment help us interpret and codify many of our felt patterns. They become shared cultural modes of experience to shape our perception and understanding of our world” (p. 193). As noted above, practitioners appreciate how their positionality (professional status and intersectional social identities) informs what they see and how they are differentially impacted or privileged (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). They critically reflect on their assumptions, beliefs, and potential biases that may be influencing how they experience this situation. With openness and curiosity, practitioners also engage in conversations to learn about others’ experiences to develop a full contextual understanding and inform the creation of transformative DIScover practices (Protonentis et al., 2021).

DIScover with Creative Courage

DIScover practices use UNcover understandings of power with creative courage to imagine what’s possible, constructing interventions that will create socially just and enlivening spaces in practice moments. Depending on the possibilities and constraints in each situation, DIScover practices seek to enact cooperative power to limit oppressive power dynamics or create counterspaces of relational support within the organization (Case & Hunter, 2012; Tew, 2006). Practitioners seek to work with the human capacity for change as they design responses that address the harmful impacts of structural oppression and support flourishing (Finn & Jacobson, 2003). Practitioners hold space in these uncertain moments for many ways of doing, knowing, and being to invite transformative possibilities to emerge, and to imagine pathways that embrace multiple worldviews (brown, 2017).

DIScover practices focus on tuning into inner experiences and the quality of relational interactions because practitioners can become desensitized to oppressive organizational power dynamics within organizations. Procedures and requirements that limit choice, agency, and connection can become habitual, and thus out of awareness (Alenkin, 2020; Newcomb, 2022). DIScover practices draw on empathy and care with self, colleagues and clients to illuminate negative impacts. For example, practitioners can invite clients to share their experiences with clinical and organizational processes, listening for when immediate harm needs to be named, interrupted, or stopped (brown, 2017; Haga, 2020).

DIScover practices also seek to engage in small scale systemic change. These practices start with imagining what “flourishing” and transformation look like. Imagining the change hoped for is a key step in being able to realize transformation (brown, 2017; Kim, 2013). Practitioners then co-create opportunities to experiment with actions that interrupt oppressive patterns and foster collective well-being within organizations and systems (Protonentis et al., 2021). New ways of being and interacting can emerge when oppressive systemic processes get questioned and interrupted (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2020). Similar to clinical practice, learning over time happens through intentional experimentation cycles of noticing, imagining, doing, and learning from the efforts (Building Movement Project, 2018). These efforts can seek to increase resilience and cooperative power dynamics within clinical practice processes and amongst program team members.

How to Use the RE/UN/DIScover Heuristic

The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic is designed to guide thinking and actions from a meta-level of awareness. Practitioners begin with three overarching questions as they engage in a responsive, iterative flow of heuristic practices in each situation: How are you doing? What’s happening? What’s possible? (see Fig. 1). If at the edge of or outside of their window of capacity, they engage in REcover practices to shift back into their window to continue. Depending on what is already understood about a challenge, they delve into UNcover practices or move to DIScover practices to imagine, create, and learn responses that interrupt or shift oppressive power dynamics with clients and colleagues in organizations.

Practitioners focus the heuristic on practice moments and patterns with themselves and with clients, colleagues, or others. Oppressive experiences can elicit countertransference or other self-reactions that activate them to the edge of their window of capacity and negatively impinge on their practice (Ogden, 2021). REcovering with compassion, UNcovering understandings with curious critical reflection, and DIScovering creative, courageous ways to work with what has been elicited will strengthen their window of capacity and ability to work with others in those moments. Practitioners continue to use the heuristic with specific practice moments if needed.

The heuristic seeks to buffer or change some of the impacts of neoliberalism, particularly demands for productivity, efficiencies and diminished time for communal reflection, support, and clinical supervision. Tri-directional, mutually influencing processes are set in motion by engaging all three sets of practices together. For example, the experience of power analysis or co-creating possibilities can be destabilizing; REcover practices assist practitioners as they attend and work with their inner experiences while engaging in UNcover and DIScover practices. Engaging only in REcover practices potentially reifies neoliberalism’s expectation for individual selfcare to manage work within existing workplace system processes (Stuart, 2021). Implementing UNcover practices raises awareness of how neoliberalism may be affecting practitioners’ everyday practice but does not provide ways to intervene within organizations. Engaging in DIScover practices without RE- and UNcover practices can fail to consider how power is operating within practitioners and an organization, resulting in actions that reinforce oppressive power or fail to impact the system at all. The three sets of heuristic practices weave together holistic embodied practices for practitioners (REcover) with practices that analyze power in relational and systemic impingements (UNcover) and imaginal practices that co-create and enact possibilities to counter or shift those impingements (DIScover).

Since many practice impingements manifest through organizational policies and procedures, the heuristic is designed for use by a small group of colleagues within or outside of their workplace. Engaging a few people in the interweaving of RE/UN/and DIScover practices can create a counterspace for support, analysis, and organizational action (Case & Hunter, 2012; James, 2021). Practitioners often commiserate with colleagues about workplace stressors; however, these interactions generally seek to provide short-term relief without organizational change. Such conversations with colleagues can even contribute to further workplace stress when negative thoughts dominate (e.g., repetitive venting about emotional distress, demonizing administrators, or limiting thoughts to continuous critique; Scott, 2020). Like the power of mutual aid groupwork with clients, using the heuristic with a small group of colleagues can spark motivation and generate specific ideas on how to shift systemic practice impingements within the organization (Keenan, 2016). By experiencing the power to effect small changes, practitioners may also experience a diminished need to engage in external self-care with as many workplace stressors.

Two common, challenging practice situations will illustrate how practitioners can use the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic to address oppressive impacts within their organizations or private practice: systemic practice impingements and implementing a new training or practice model.

Systemic Practice Impingements

The ongoing effects of neoliberalism and the COVID-19 pandemic have left non-profit organizations scrambling to keep pace with ongoing changes in policy and funding requirements, resulting in numerous shifts and changes to social work practice processes (Abramowitz & Zelnick, 2021). Some of the impingements include increased documentation requirements, ever-shifting safety protocols, expanded caseloads, and limits on the amount of time clients can participate in services (Alenkin, 2020; Ashcroft et al., 2022). These harmful organizational processes (a.k.a. go faster, do more with less) impinge on what practitioners can and cannot do within organizations and, to a lesser degree, within private practice. As previously mentioned, these expectations have also negatively impacted practitioner wellbeing (Cohen-Serrins, 2021; Holmes et al., 2021; James, 2021). Practitioners are expected to autonomously engage in self-care activities despite calls for organizational level actions.

Practitionerscan subsequently feel caught in a bind because, while they want to resist these pressures, they also need the financial security obtained through some degree of participation in these oppressive systems. Increased demands and ongoing changes within contextual uncertainty can stir feelings of apathy, hopelessness, helplessness, or rage, and activate them out of their window of capacity. This practice moment counters burnout by creating spaces and humanizing, responsive processes with self and others within oppressive systems. Counterspaces can protect and buffer against impingements and human rights restrictions that manifest in non-profit organizations (Hingley-Jones & Ruch, 2016; Tew, 2006).

A composite case example will illustrate one iterative flow of how the heuristic can fuel relational recognition within oppressive contexts.

N, a Latina in her late 20’s, has worked at a community-based recovery organization for the past 4 years. N co-facilitates groups in person and online with people with substance use disorders who live in a small city or neighboring towns. Over the past 4 years, N has had increasing demands placed upon her: pressures to address an intensive outpatient curriculum while also responding to how group members are doing (including thoughts of harming themselves), conducting toxicology screens, and inputting electronic documentation for the organization and funding sources. N’s stress level is heightened because group members do not often know where to go or how to respond to their housing, financial, health, interpersonal, and legal challenges. N sees a need to help coordinate these services for the group members, but her organizational system does not allow practitioners to provide navigational assistance. N encourages mutual aid in the group, and group members offer ideas and information to each other. Group meetings are not sufficient, however, to explore everyone’s needs and cover the curriculum for that day.

Recently, the organization increased the number of group members to 20 to address the waiting list. Hearing this news, N was outraged, and in the days since has oscillated between anger and despair: “That’s not group—there’s no way we can support everyone’s recovery with that many people.” N already stays longer to complete documentation and feels resentful that she would need to take even more time without additional compensation. N felt herself moving to the edge of her window of capacity and shutting down into a space of helplessness. N knew she needed to address the impact of this added burden to ensure group members would still be welcomed.

During a long holiday weekend N intentionally used movement and sensory practices, including dancing to her favorite music, and smelling the lemon before putting it into her tea, to enliven her inner sense of depletion. These REcover practices started to shift N back into her window of capacity, where N felt a desire for a broader perspective. She remembered the passion she had when starting the job, the joy she felt when a group member took a risk to be more vulnerable or express care for another member. UNcovering, N noticed that, over time, the organization put more and more work on the group facilitators to meet external demands. A hopeless heaviness surfaced throughout her body, moving N to the edge of her window of capacity. N stood up and looked at the picture of her abuela who had encouraged her to get an MSW. Feeling tears well up, N gently rocked and cried to release the sadness. These practices helped N REcover once again into her window of capacity, but N still felt stuck. N reached out to graduate school friends and found they, too, were feeling depleted. N wondered if they’d be interested in getting together to explore how to be in these times. The group agreed that they would not use the space to complain or demonize; rather they wanted a space where they could experience the same recognition and presence they offer their clients. They UNcovered the impact of the stressors on their bodies and DIScovered group practices for holding that embodied awareness. They created a gathering structure of checking in with one of these practices, then talking through specific practice challenges. They DIScovered that working in different settings brought fresh eyes to imagine ways to respond. Introspection UNcovered awareness that their expectations might not be achievable at their current workplace. They mapped out the various systemic power dynamics affecting their workload. This led them to be curious: What was possible now? N started looking to see who else in her organization wanted to DIScover ways of supporting humanizing practice. N and her friends began DIScovering new ways to weave group curricula with mutual aid, and to identify what might be possible through informal practices and workarounds. What was essential to cover in group? What were the key points of learning? What visuals or handouts could convey those key points as mutual aid was encouraged? N also started using her phone alarm to tune into her window of capacity throughout her workday, drawing on brief touch and movement practices when needed. The group continues to meet, using the heuristic to counter the overwhelmingness of the workplace.

Figure 2 contains prompts for working with systemic practice impingements.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Heuristic prompts for work with systemic practice impingements. Text of specific questions and prompts are listed to guide UNcover, REcover and DIScover practices

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Here is one iterative flow for using the heuristic with specific practice impingements:

RE: With compassion: Tune into your window of capacity; engage in practices that provide spark and energy (hypoarousal practices) or grounding and focus (hyperarousal practices; Ogden, 2015)

UN: With curious critical reflection: How are you impacted? What forms of power are you using with yourself (Tew, 2006; Townsend et al., 1999)? What might you not be feeling or noticing? What does this mean to you?

DIS: With creative courage: Call to mind a time when you felt passion for practice; explore memories of interactions and context—who was with you, what was happening? What aspects of that time can be tapped into or reclaimed now? Then, visualize what passion for practice would be like in the near future—who is with you, what are you doing (brown, 2017)?

Next, and optimally with others, continue to use the heuristic to focus on the impingement using the prompts in Fig. 2. Continue moving between the heuristic practices based upon what’s happening in specific moments, including falling back into habitual practice, encountering a new impingement, or needing to DIScover additional possibilities (Building Movement Project, 2018). If untenable barriers persist, use the heuristic to discern whether to remain in the organization.

Implementing New Training or Practice Model

Practitioners pursue continuing education to maintain their license and for ongoing personal and professional learning. Organizations also select new practice models and programs that practitioners are required to learn and use in their practice. Meaningful learning can be energizing and rejuvenating, feeding the spirit and benefitting clients; at the same time, literature on learning and the knowing-doing gap also reveals that the benefits can be short-lived and potentially imposed in oppressive ways unless practitioners bring intentionality to those next steps (Sullivan et al., 2008; Umsheid & Brennan, 2015). Although seasoned practitioners tend to practice in flexible, expansive ways, new learning requires intentional focus until skillfulness is established, activating tendencies to “get it right” (Cheetham & Chivers, 2005). Cognitive processing is also slowed when implementing a new practice model, because practitioners need to attend to sequences and details that are not yet integrated into their relational interactional patterns (Scharmer, 2018). Experiencing “not-yet-competence” can be destabilizing, requiring REcover practices and the UNcovering of unconscious expectations, negative judgments, and habitual patterns that block change (Bigdali, 2010).

New learning can also activate a reflexive overconfidence (e.g., “THIS is what’s going to really help some of my clients”) or increased emotional intensity if feeling pressured to implement the learning without time for reflection or supervision. These tendencies can be experienced as oppressive uses of power if openness to the ideas and experiences of clients becomes unintentionally foreclosed. Since the positionality of practitioners and clients (professional status and intersectional social identities) influence the clinical process, practitioners consider how their positionality might evoke client expectations that the practitioner will use protective power in a dominating manner, particularly with clients who have minoritized or targeted identities (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2020). Dumbrill and Yee (2018) noted that changes in practice do not occur simply by participation in professional trainings. Although the intention might be to “help,” the impact can be a forceful imposition, excluding people from the conversation about what is happening, and foreclosing space for others to voice when the “new thing” is missing the mark.

New learning can be brought into practice expertise with enthusiasm and excitement when contextualized within relational connection (Hingley-Jones & Ruch, 2016). An experimentation mindset (Building Movement Project, 2018) that invites accountability with others and feedback from clients supports the application of new learning into practice (see, for example, research on client feedback in psychotherapy effectiveness; Duncan et al., 2010). Compassionate tending to practitioners’ inner experience, including clients in ongoing decisions, and receiving collegial support through an accountability process can promote epistemic and social justice in practice (Lee, 2022).

The heuristic scaffolds a socially just and relational implementation of new learning by focusing on the experience of practitioners as they begin to use new learning in their practice. A composite case example provides an illustration:

K, an African American cis male who received his MSW three years ago and J, a White cis female who received her MSW 18 years ago, work at a community mental health agency that was selected to provide Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS) in a local school district (Rand Organization, n.d.). CBITS is designed for students in late childhood and early adolescence who are experiencing symptoms of PTSD, depression, or anxiety after witnessing or experiencing personal, community or school violence or other traumatic life events. Students who meet the criteria in an initial screening participate in individual and group standardized therapy sessions during school to decrease symptoms related to the traumatic experiences and strengthen skills to respond to future stresses.

The funding organization set an expectation that services would start being implemented within 30 days of the training. J and K shared their excitement about learning this model, as they had a colleague in another organization who found that these school interventions worked well. J and K expressed worry, however, about the quick timeline and wondered whether they would be able to implement the model so quickly. They agreed to meet over lunch to talk further.

During lunch, they UNcovered feeling internal pressure and traced that to two organizational patterns: (1) previous programs funded by external organizations had required practitioners to develop skillfulness with a new model with a one-time training, and (2) supervision had become more focused on their caseload numbers and crises. K began reflecting on how he learned clinical practice models as a student as he tried to DIScover possibilities for this situation. He recalled using simulations, videotaping, and role plays that provided pathways for trying out a model and receiving feedback from peers and instructors. Internship process recordings and supervision also provided space to reflect, receive feedback, and identify specific aspects of the model to pay more attention to in the next sessions. J, who had worked at the organization for 17 years, remembered when case conferences and supervision used to include time for individualized reflection and feedback after new models were learned. K wondered whether it might be possible to structure time in the first weeks after the training to address challenges and questions and offer support with those who were implementing CBITS. J was not optimistic but agreed to give it some thought.

K felt discouraged by J’s response. His energy was flattening as he drifted to the edge of his window of capacity towards hypoarousal (Ogden, 2021). What had he gotten himself into? K UNcovered feeling pressure to perform at a level he did not think he could do without additional support. Before beginning his afternoon of client appointments, he took a moment to look at a picture of his spouse and REcovered by feeling the love and care they expressed with each other. After work, K went to the gym. As he was working out, K reconnected with his feelings of discouragement and performance anxiety and felt the intensity decrease with his physical movements. He felt some of the anxious pressure lift even further as he made a commitment to DIScover how to get the support he needed—whether within or outside the organization.

The next day, J came up to K and said that she had thought a lot about their conversation the previous day and wanted to take some action. J and K DIScovered five possibilities that could support their learning and implementation of CBITS. After engaging in a power analysis to UNcover which past and current organizational patterns of clinical support had been approved, they decided to request a CBITS simulation practice with the trainer and a weekly case conference meeting agenda item that made time to discuss implementation challenges. They also decided to ask whether M, a White cis male clinical social worker was willing to join them in this formal request because M was well-regarded by S, the supervisor, a White cis female. M expressed gratitude for the invitation, saying he was feeling uneasy himself but hadn’t even considered these possibilities. During the meeting with S, S asked questions to understand why a training was not sufficient. M, J and K responded from their differing levels of experience. S began to nod her head and noted that she would need to get authorization since these activities would limit the number of intakes they could do during that period. S received authorization to add those implementation activities for the first six weeks.

During the CBITS simulation practice J noticed she was having some trouble keeping some of the model details in mind. She began to breathe more quickly and became a bit destabilized. J used paced breathing, then placed her thumb on the palm of her other hand to REcover back into a relational presence (Menakem, 2017; Mortimer, 2018). J disclosed to the simulated client that she was still learning some of the CBITS steps and felt a bit confused for a moment. J then asked whether the simulated client ever felt that way at school. Nodding, the simulated client shared that this happened a lot when they were worried about whether there was going to be another school lockdown. J validated and briefly explored the simulated client’s experience before returning to the model’s sequenced protocol. In the debrief, K asked R, the trainer, a Black cis female, whether those process interactions were allowed with CBITS. R said yes if they did not go too far into a new issue. Hearing this, K DIScovered that implementing this new model allowed for incorporating relational process skills he had already developed. After more reflection, K began to think that implementing CBITS might potentially be a more specific use of the common factors he learned about in his MSW program (Keenan & Grady, 2014).

J, K, and M continued to tune into themselves and REcover when uncertainties activated them to the edge of their window of capacity as they began to implement CBITS in the school. In addition to the case conference agenda time, they also began to meet during lunch or after work to informally engage in DIScover practices by sharing and reflecting on surprising or challenging clinical moments and generating possibilities for responding to them in future interactions.

Here is an iterative flow to guide the translation of trainings into other practice actions. Practitioners can use this alone or with others, whether they are choosing to apply a training or are required by their organization:

  • DIS: Flesh out what is new in relation to your existing practice expertise. Is this an additional framework for listening? Additional strategies to access when needed? A new model altogether?

  • UN: What’s the stretch? What’s the gap between how you have been practicing and how you would like to practice? What are your expectations for how long it will take to become skillful with this new learning? Engage in a power analysis (Pyles, 2021) to identify how you implemented past trainings. What past patterns might resurface (e.g., imposing pressure to “do it right,” experiencing feelings of inadequacy or incompetence, forgetting your practice context, becoming disconnected from those in your practice)? What meaning does this pattern have for you?

  • RE: Pause and tune into your window of capacity with compassion. What’s it like for you to hold space for “not knowing how” and not yet being skillful? REcover as needed.

  • DIS: If needed, try new REcover practices for holding space for the dual awareness of not knowing and remaining present with clients or colleagues; observe impact.

  • UN: Who will you use this new learning with? Do they know what is happening? What are their positionalities? What information might they need to know? What choices do they have in participating in your use of this new learning? What organizational processes might support or hinder respectful implementation?

  • DIS: Imagine various ways of trying out your new learning, tuning into your inner experience of being not yet skillful. Invite learning in relationship—share knowledge and choices with those who might participate in the implementation (clients or colleagues). Create agreements for offering and receiving feedback with those involved. With creative courage, start implementing.

  • RE: Tune into your window of capacity. What’s your inner experience as you engage in these new actions? Do you need to REcover?

  • DIS: Ask clients for feedback about their experience and the impact of the new learning; notice the impact on yourself; with trusted colleagues, reflect on your learning and invite them to offer feedback on the impact of your efforts.

  • UN: Engage in a power analysis (Pyles, 2021) to examine how you are using yourself in practice: are you overly focused on any one part of practice? How are you expressing enthusiasm or confidence in the helpfulness of this new learning? To what degree are you present in these practice moments? Are any inner pressures, judgments, or reactions surfacing (e.g., I’ve got to learn this quickly; I’m not doing this well enough; I don’t like feeling incompetent)?

  • RE: Pause, tune in with compassion, and use REcover practices when noticing your focus has shifted to yourself and away from clients or colleagues.

  • UN: With trusted colleagues, engage in curious, critical reflection on specific implementation moments and feedback.

  • DIS: Using an experimentation mindset (Building Movement Project, 2018), incorporate the learning from feedback and your critical reflection in the next round of implementation. Continue meeting with trusted colleagues to DIScover ways to build on your efforts to express cooperative power in your implementation process.

  • UN: Reflect again on how this implementation process might be impacting your use of self in practice moments. What are you focusing on? What’s off your radar?

Continue moving between REcover, UNcover, and DIScover practices based upon what you need in specific moments.

In sum, neoliberalism has imposed a market-focused mindset onto non-profit organizations resulting in systemic and organizational challenges that impinge on practice (Baines, 2017; Newcomb, 2022).

Through an iterative flow of three sets of practices, the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic supports practitioners’ efforts to respond in those challenging, everyday moments where oppressive forms of power are being imposed upon and enacted within organizations. With themselves, clients and colleagues, practitioners engage in compassionate REcover practices; use curious, critical reflection to UNcover full understandings of power dynamics, impacts, and meanings; and draw on creative courage to DIScover socially just and humanizing responses. The heuristic seeks to support practitioners’ efforts to preserve and extend more socially just, relational spaces for themselves and those with whom they work within the broader context of systemic dehumanizing neoliberal forces.