Multicultural Counseling and Self Awareness

For the counsellors to have a holistic counselling practice, the professions must enhance the multicultural competency to work effectively with clients coming from different backgrounds. The counsellor must widen their awareness and understand crucial roles played by client’s ethnicity, gender, identity, culture and other aspects of diversity. Understanding the concept of multicultural counselling requires an individual to define the term. The concept looks simplistic; however, in depth investigation of the concept exposes the critical factors it encompasses. Multicultural counselling explains what happens when a counsellor engages a client from a different cultural background and how the counselling relationship is affected by the interaction (Collins & Arthur, 2010). The counsellor must be cautious not to make statements or comments explicitly or implicitly makes the client to feel that his or her culture has been undermined.

The counsellor learns about the culture of the client in a bid to establish a rapport. As such, the professional counsellor will formulate culturally sensitive measures based on the realities of the client. A competent professional counsellor knows the significance of language and cultural iceberg. Researchers have discovered the analogy between culture and an iceberg (Peterson, 2011). As such, clients coming from the purportedly “low class” groups are likely to have values and interpretations that are different. By acknowledging the economic, social, and political backdrops of the client, the counsellor enhances the chances of making significant impact on the life of the client. At this point, another important aspect that emerges is self-awareness. A counsellor can only work with the client if he or she is aware of the beliefs and cultures they hold.