Showing Cultural Competency as a Counselor

Cultural Competency: Challenges for the Counselor

Any committed Christian in a largely secular society will find him or herself faced with challenges, when the need to be empathetic and accepting of the views and emotional needs of friends and families may seem to clash with deeply held beliefs. During such moments, I often say to myself, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7, NIV). However, working as a counselor is likely to give rise to even more challenging situations and scenarios regarding my level of cultural comfort and tolerance. It is vitally important to strike a balance between an open-minded attitude regarding my client’s beliefs while still drawing upon a coherent ethical counseling worldview.

Limitations and Strengths

As noted in Prior & Chatraw (2019), the desire of Christians to engage with culture often ends poorly, even with the best of intentions: even the most committed Christian therapists must engage emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually with different worldviews. I try to be a good listener, and this informs all of my interactions with others. All too often, I have seen people too eager to simply talk about their beliefs, without being willing to listen to others. I believe that offering unconditional positive regard is a critical foundation in counseling. No client can feel safe discussing his or her concerns with a counselor, if the client fears the counselor is passing judgement on his or her lifestyle and culture.

The idea of unconditional positive regard is at the heart of humanistic, Rogerian therapy, which emphasizes the need to create a safe and accepting environment within the therapeutic context for the counselor-client relationship to flourish; an atmosphere of perfectionism is not conducive to this (Miller, Hilsenroth, & Hewitt, 2017). On the other hand, it is also not helpful for the counselor to be too passive when the client is making hurtful decisions, both for him or herself and others. One of my weaknesses is that I may not be directive enough in encouraging the client to engage in such self-scrutiny. This is true under all circumstances, but particularly when the client comes from a very different cultural worldview than myself, or a very different socio-economic context. Because I do not want to throw the first stone, or be too judgmental of what I cannot understand, I may err on the side of not giving enough advice and confidently using my expertise.

Having grown up in a culturally diverse environment, I think my greatest skill is the humility I have learned, and the flexibility of my perspective. I have gained a great deal of comfort with different interpersonal and nonverbal as well as verbal styles. I have a formal toolkit of professional resources in the form of academic journals and textbooks, but also an informal toolkit of friends who can offer me guidance.

Plan for Seeking Feedback

Of course, one way to address this weakness is to actively solicit feedback from clients. Just as counselors must give effective feedback, clients must let the therapist know what is working and what is not working. This, however, may take the client by surprise, so as a therapist, I would have to explain during the first introductory session that therapy is a two-way street, and the client should be prepared to offer feedback, and feel willing to volunteer at any time when something is not working, not simply during the pauses during the therapeutic trajectory which we would take to check in with how things are going. I would also volunteer to the client that I would be interested in learning when the client feels I am not fully taking into consideration his or her cultural orientation.

No therapist can be fluent in all cultures, but when a therapist is uncertain about the decisions or assumptions of the client, the therapist can at least ask culturally informed questions. Owen (et al., 2017) notes that one of the reasons that many therapists struggle with offering culturally informed practice is because of the unwillingness to admit what they do not know. Taking the perspective that the client and counselor are on a journey together, rather than the counselor being the primary guide at all times may be useful. This does not, however, mean that as a counselor I cannot offer my perspective, but rather it is helpful to bracket it, before explaining my own situation, background, and worldview. Self-awareness is thus also critical, so as a counselor I can be aware of when I am offering ideas which are grounded in my own biases or personal beliefs, versus evidence-based practice as a therapist.

Plan for Addressing Limitations

Keeping abreast of professional literature in my area of specialty is critical, given that cultural guidelines are often changing, as the profession of counseling itself becomes more diverse. I am also very aware and concerned about ensuring that I retain my humanistic, positive perspective when counseling, and use that to inform my compassionate Christian perspective, without being dogmatic or imposing my view on clients. For example, one interesting article I read by Miller (et al., 2017) specifically noted one distinct difference between clients with a highly perfectionistic versus non-perfectionist orientation. Perfectionist clients are often less responsive to short-term therapy and often benefit from delving deeper into their personal backgrounds. This is also true of individuals from more rigid, hierarchical, and perfectionistic cultures, and highlights the need for taking greater time and having more patients with clients who may struggle with unreasonably high expectations for themselves.

As well as reading peer-reviewed journals in my field to keep abreast of different ways multicultural practice is becoming more nuanced and informed in research, there are also companies such as ej4.com which offer online training videos in anti-racism awareness and offer an orientation in improving the individual’s understanding of sexual identity, pronouns, unconscious bias, and discrimination. These types of online training courses are useful in helping counselors such as myself take a more critical view of their unconscious assumptions. Videos are an easy way to gain a quicker, better understanding of when a client, for example, might choose to use different pronouns, or when a client might express a complaint that the counselor (or someone in the client’s life) is showing unconscious bias.

It is very easy to have a knee-jerk reaction that something is unfamiliar. These reactions may seem natural, but the counselor must draw upon such educational resources to take a breath and put them in a larger cultural conversation and perspective within the counseling profession. The counselor cannot become a black slate, but can become a more informed and nuanced sounding board through self-education. This does not mean always withholding judgement in the end, but rather temporarily suspending judgement until the counselor is more informed. I plan to watch more such videos in the future.