Living in the United States as one of the most divers’ countries in the world has made me to recognize the importance of increasing my cultural self-awareness. As Sammers-Flanagan, Sammer-Flanagan in the book, Clinical Interviewing (2014) stated: “The ability to understand how your own thoughts and feelings are influenced by your cultural heritage helps you understand how culture has influenced others. Hopefully, understanding other perspectives will help you avoid imposing your cultural values on your clients.”(p. 367). Increasing cultural knowledge and competence, developing counseling skills, conceptualizing individual and systematic case and recognizing my strengths and growth were the most important area that I have tried to improve them in the Clinical skills’ class. First, increasing my cultural knowledge and competence was one of the important approach of this class for me. Mostly, I am familiar with Asian culture, especially the Middle East and specifically my heritage culture, Persian culture. However none of my cohort is Iranian, I have never felt separated from them. It is the beauty of this country that although I am foreigner, other people are interested to my culture and they show their respect to it. I …show more content…
Sharing my experience and getting feedback from my classmates helped me to recognize how my thoughts could affect other people and the most important part for me that I could hear how they think about my beliefs. Because of our instructor’s calmness, we all felt free to talk and share our beliefs with each other. Also, getting group support which in my opinion is one of the most powerful support of the world, has been very precious for me since the beginning of the program. My cohort encouraged me to share my opinion even though sometimes it was totally differ than their own. Respecting and freedom of speech were two other things that I have experienced in our discussion as
“Cultural competence is the ability to engage in actions or create conditions that maximize the optimal development of client and client systems” (Sue & Sue, 2013, p. 49). Multicultural competence includes a counselor to be aware of his or her biases, knowledge of the culture they are evaluating, and skills to evaluate a client with various backgrounds (Sue & Sue, 2013). Client assessment involves gathering information pertaining to the client’s condition. Making a culturally responsive diagnosis involves using the DSM-IV-TR axis (Hays, 2008). Following the axis backwards is ideal to discovering the client’s diagnosis, understanding the client’s ADDRESSING outline will help to come to a closer resolution for a diagnosis.
Culture can be defined as behaviors exhibited by certain racial, religious, social or ethnic groups. Some factors in which culture may vary include: family structure, education, and socioeconomic status (Kodjo, 2009). Some may think cultural competence is something that has an end point, however, when the big picture is seen, it is a learning process and journey. From the writer’s perspective, the client-therapist relationship can be challenging. Culturally competent therapists must realize that behaviors are shaped by an individual’s culture. Many changes are taking place within the United States cultural makeup. Therapists and healthcare professionals are being challenged to provide effective and sensitive care for patients and their families. This type of culturally sensitive care requires the professional to be open and seek understanding in the patients diverse belief systems (Kodjo, 2009).
Remember, self-reflection is vital to becoming a culturally-competent counselor. The counselor should consistently re-examine their worldview and personal beliefs about diverse individuals and other cultures. The idea is for the counselor to explore their own prejudices, emotions, and preconceived notions of those that differ from themselves. Remaining curious and willing to learn about culturally distinct groups is a practical way of working effectively with varied clients in counseling and understanding what barriers and prejudices are typical in their
In today’s society there are many words that are used or said without giving it complete thought. For example, the word “identity” is something to which I have never really given much thought or even considered how I identify myself.
The healthcare system within America reflects increasing numbers of cultural diversity and awareness. According to Holloway (2004), cultural awareness is defined as the deliberate, cognitive process by which health care providers become appreciative of and sensitive to the values, beliefs, practices, and problem solving strategies of the clients’ cultures. Cultural awareness include an examination of one’s personal biases. In order to understand cultural diversity, individuals must strive to acknowledge the prejudices they may already hold toward different cultures. On the other hand, cultural competence is a process through which health professionals can integrate their knowledge and skills to improve culturally effective interactions with clients (Tjale & Villiers, 2004).
knowingly broke the law by entering the country illegally. Another concern is that it encourages future flow of illegal immigration into the United States.
Douglas, Rosenkoetter, Pacquiao, Callister, Hattar-Pollara, Lauderdale, Milstead, Nardi, & Purnell (2014) outline ten guidelines for implementing culturally competent care; knowledge of cultures, education and training in culturally competent care, critical reflection, cross-cultural communication, culturally competent practice, cultural competence in health care systems and organizations, patient advocacy and empowerment, multicultural workforce, cross-cultural leadership, and evidence-based practice and research. One specific suggestion I will incorporate is to engage in critical reflection. This is mentioned both by Douglas, et al. (2014) and Trentham, et al. (2007) as an important part of cultural competency. I will do this by looking at my own culture, beliefs, and values and examining how they affect my actions. I will use this information to better inform my day to day practice when working with patients with a different culture than my
Firstly, beliefs and attitudes infer the counselor’s ability to move beyond cultural unawareness for safeguarding that their personal biases, values or problems will not affect their ability to work with culturally diverse clients (Corey, 2013). In the same way, culturally skilled counselors are cognizant of the fact that “cultural self-awareness and sensitivity to one’s own cultural heritage” plays an integral role in the helping process (Corey, 2013, p.
Moreover, culturally responsive teaching practice demonstrates a clear feature since it contains guidelines that have a connection to different styles of teaching. It uses strategies that fit and matches with the teaching style that the teacher uses. Indeed, culturally responsive teaching practice is crucial because it plays a vital role in appreciating their culture and the cultural heritage of others. Besides, it includes resources, materials in all subjects, multicultural information disseminated in schools. Therefore, culturally responsive teaching practices consider the cultural customs of every student, thus it ensures that the content is worthy and fits in all cultures of the students. It is crucial to note that culturally responsive teaching practices involves considering the environment of the classroom. Activities would
I have never really sat down and thought about my cultural identity, at least until I started this class. I never thought about how my identity was different than that of other members in my community. I also never put much mind to the communication challenges that I could face when speaking with members of my community. To be totally honest, there is more cultural differences that I have faced and actually paid attention to, and now I seem to understand the importance of how one culture differs from another.
In today’s society, many individuals have trouble accepting people whose views differ from theirs. Unfortunately, many outsiders and foreigners find it rather difficult to interact with individuals who do not share similar cultural or religious beliefs. As a Bengali-American born and raised in the predominantly Hispanic community of Laredo, Texas, I have experienced different views and customs entirely different from those of my culture. Because of these cultural differences, I have been a victim of bullying. However, differences in my name, skin color, religious beliefs, and ethnic customs did not hinder by interactions with so-called Laredoans. As I grew older, I became accustomed to the different lifestyles, both mine and to those of Laredo
As each and every day goes by, diversity is becoming widespread throughout the world. As people are presented with culture, races, and different sexualities that differ from their own they may become uncomfortable. Cultural awareness is important because it can combat this unease. Cultural awareness is defined as the ability to recognize the different beliefs, values, and customs that someone has based on that person's origin. Being culturally aware allows a person to build successful and professional relationships in a diverse environment.
Insofar as therapists and patients have different reference groups, all encounters may be considered cross-cultural. If this perspective is endorsed, then one may indeed consider cultural competence to be essential to overall clinical competence. Therapists should strive for cultural competency by acquiring both generic and specific cultural knowledge and skill sets. Various generic cultural issues may occur at each phase of psychotherapy, and specific cultural knowledge guides their resolution.
What made me into the person I am today? I have asked myself this question many times before, yet it all leads back to the same concept. In fact, I came to the conclusion that it is simply a summarization of our developing years. For example, some of our biggest influences, especially in those years, are our parents and friends. Our parents help shape us into the people we are today and, in most cases, we share the same values as them. In addition, our friends are also part of the reason we are who we are. They are the first group of people we interact with and whether we mean to or not, we try to imitate them as much as we can. As a result, the three values of my personal culture that make me into who I am are respect, work ethic, and joy.
I guess I should start at the very beginning which would be getting up at 6:45 in order to make lunches for the students going on the trip. I had agreed to help Brenda make sandwiches, but neither of us got the key for the dining hall so we had to break into the dining hall with a clothes hanger, we are now professional picks locks because we finally got it open on the 30th try. At any rate we had fun making bagged lunches and pick on each other in the process. Then all the mission students piled into the vehicles to ride to New Tribes Mission, I always thoroughly enjoy the rides on these trips because we frequently have some lively discussions and this trip was no exception. Upon arriving at New Tribes the only thing on the outside property