I have had the
privilege of getting my counselling training in a country whose culture is very
different from the one I grew up with. It was only when I interacted with
people from diverse cultures and backgrounds that I realised the impact culture
has on everything we do and think. As long as you are confined to people and
places belonging to your ‘home culture’, you tend to assume cultural norms as
facts. For example, putting the family or community before oneself is an
integral part of a collectivist culture like India. However, assuming that this
is the right thing to do for all people is an error. Similarly, a commonly held
belief in predominantly white western cultures is that talking about one’s
feelings makes one feel better. This again, is a cultural norm and not a
universal truth, some cultures place greater value on being able to keep one’s
feelings to oneself.
A counsellor
needs to be sensitive to minute cultural details such as these. Recent research
has focused on the need for cultural competencies as one of the core skills
required in counsellors. This does not imply that a counsellor should know
everything about every culture, but means that she should not base her
interventions and practice on assumptions. As a practitioner of person-centred
approach to counselling, I believe that the client is the expert on her life
and I try not to make any assumptions about her on the basis of culture, gender
or any other group that they belong to. This encourages me to be inquisitive
about their life situation and ask clarifying questions whenever needed.
Social
psychology research indicates that people generally prefer to associate with
persons who they perceive to be similar. This similarity could be on the basis
of appearance, worldview or affiliation to a group or culture. The obvious
implication of these findings to the field of counselling is that clients would
tend to prefer therapists who are from the same ethnicity as them. However, a meta-analysis
by Cabral & Smith (2011) reports that despite client preference for
counsellors from same background, ethnic matching does not improve therapeutic
outcomes.
Reflecting on my
prior experience with clients from diverse backgrounds, I think that positive
change in a person depends a lot on the therapeutic relationship that develops
between the client and the counsellor, and not on how similar they are.
Considering the social psychology findings I mentioned earlier, it is natural
for clients to want to work with counsellors from similar ethnicity. However,
the presumption of similarity on the basis of cultural affiliations can lead to
disappointment. For example, despite sharing the same nationality or ethnicity,
the counsellor may be very different from the client, and vice versa.
A benefit of
working therapeutically with a counsellor from a different country or community
is that the counsellor can maintain an open stance of ‘not knowing’, thereby
giving the client complete authority to narrate their situation with minimum
risk for bias. Differences can promote insight – your counsellor may be able to
suggest to you things you overlooked because of your conditioned beliefs. The
most important thing is that a counsellor treats you with respect, and does not
make stereotypical assumptions about you.
