Essay On Multicultural Counseling

Multicultural Considerations Effective counseling involves considering the culture of the participants. The counselor must be culturally competent and aware of their personal attitudes, biases, values, assumptions, and prejudices. He or she must also have knowledge about the diverse backgrounds of the client because this could affect the dynamics and processes of the sessions. The client may be of different cultural backgrounds, but the problems are the same, poverty is not about a culture that is universal. The problems that occur in families and cultures are very similar. It has been shown that African Americans, typically do not seem to like the help of counseling. The idea of sharing feelings and emotions are not on the top of their list. In the African American culture, it is taught that you do not share information with anyone outside the family. These bottled up problems are …show more content…
Racism and oppression influence psychological development of black people by setting up defense mechanisms and taking “middle of the road” stance using denial, intellectualism, and humor. Historical hostility is present in the black community resulting from slavery and discrimination. As a black counselor, working with a client of the same culture/race could be good or bad. Although we are of the same culture, the gender is different, so that may cause the client to be uncomfortable at first. They may also feel that I wouldn’t relate to them or understand them since I am a female. Since Biko and I would be discussing his issues with his girlfriend, pornography addiction, and anger, he may also feel that I wouldn’t relate to him as well as a male counselor would. It would be important to remember that black males like direct eye contact, so I would keep that in mind so that I wouldn’t take a risk of losing the client by not doing