Assignment:
Remember to respond to Jill and Lynee while being respectful of and sensitive to their viewpoints. Consider advancing the discussion in the following ways:
Post an article, video, or visual to reinforce a peer's idea or challenge them to see their point from a different perspective.
Engage in conversation with your peers around multiculturalism in counseling. Consider asking a question or sharing your own personal experience. Need Assignment Help?
Jill Post:
I think using a multicultural lens starts with recognizing that the counselor's way of seeing the world is not automatically the "normal" or correct way. Culture can influence how someone understands family, relationships, independence, emotions, mental health, spirituality, communication, and even what they believe healing should look like. Two people can come into therapy with the same diagnosis and have very different experiences of it. To me, multicultural counseling is not about memorizing facts about different groups. It is being willing to understand what a person's culture and lived experience actually mean to them instead of making assumptions based on the group they belong to.
One thing that stood out to me in the research was that simply matching a client and counselor by race or ethnicity does not automatically create better outcomes. Smith et al. (2023) discussed research showing that differences between the counselor and client became less of a barrier when counselors were accepting and comfortable talking openly about race, culture, oppression, family, and community. They also found that greater multicultural education and training was associated with higher multicultural counseling self-efficacy. I think that is important because being culturally competent is not something a counselor can assume they are simply because they are caring or have years of experience. It is something that continues to be learned and practiced.
There are also important ethical responsibilities involved. The APA Ethics Code states that psychologists should respect cultural and individual differences and take steps to keep their own biases from affecting their work. It also requires psychologists to obtain additional training, consultation, or supervision when cultural factors are important to providing competent care (American Psychological Association, 2017). For me, that means ethical multicultural counseling requires both self-awareness and curiosity. Personally, if I notice that I am having a hard time staying curious about someone's experience, that is a signal for me to look at whether an implicit bias or assumption may be starting to shape how I am seeing that person. Becoming aware of it gives me the opportunity to separate my own reaction from the client's experience and return to curiosity rather than judgment. A counselor should be able to ask, listen, and adapt without assuming they already understand the client because of a diagnosis or cultural label. The goal is not to ignore differences, but also not to reduce someone to them.
Lynee Post:
I think using a multicultural lens starts with recognizing that the counselor's way of seeing the world is not automatically the "normal" or correct way. Culture can influence how someone understands family, relationships, independence, emotions, mental health, spirituality, communication, and even what they believe healing should look like. Two people can come into therapy with the same diagnosis and have very different experiences of it. To me, multicultural counseling is not about memorizing facts about different groups. It is being willing to understand what a person's culture and lived experience actually mean to them instead of making assumptions based on the group they belong to.
One thing that stood out to me in the research was that simply matching a client and counselor by race or ethnicity does not automatically create better outcomes. Smith et al. (2023) discussed research showing that differences between the counselor and client became less of a barrier when counselors were accepting and comfortable talking openly about race, culture, oppression, family, and community. They also found that greater multicultural education and training was associated with higher multicultural counseling self-efficacy. I think that is important because being culturally competent is not something a counselor can assume they are simply because they are caring or have years of experience. It is something that continues to be learned and practiced.
There are also important ethical responsibilities involved. The APA Ethics Code states that psychologists should respect cultural and individual differences and take steps to keep their own biases from affecting their work. It also requires psychologists to obtain additional training, consultation, or supervision when cultural factors are important to providing competent care (American Psychological Association, 2017). For me, that means ethical multicultural counseling requires both self-awareness and curiosity. Personally, if I notice that I am having a hard time staying curious about someone's experience, that is a signal for me to look at whether an implicit bias or assumption may be starting to shape how I am seeing that person. Becoming aware of it gives me the opportunity to separate my own reaction from the client's experience and return to curiosity rather than judgment. A counselor should be able to ask, listen, and adapt without assuming they already understand the client because of a diagnosis or cultural label. The goal is not to ignore differences, but also not to reduce someone to them.