The relationship between the client and counselor presents an important factor for therapeutic outcomes. Therefore, counselors must use the theoretical foundation to guide their practice and focus on the combination of thinking, feeling, and behaving dimensions (Corey & Corey, 2022). Furthermore, while counselors can experience trouble understanding the way of thinking of representatives of significantly different populations, the feeling dimension equally conveys different people’s experiences regardless of their age, gender and ethnicity.
Furthermore, many psychodynamic approaches can be used to effectively work with clients with different backgrounds. For example, the psychoanalytic approach to client dynamics allows counselors to create parallels between the client’s past and present experiences to develop new perspectives and change their behavior. The use of such an approach minimizes the possibility of misunderstandings between the counselor and clients from diverse populations. Thus, I believe I am prepared to work with diverse client populations because I have acquired the necessary theoretical knowledge and know how to apply different psychodynamic approaches in practice.
If someone asked me if I would be able to help them because of cultural differences or world views, I would propose using behavior therapy to maximize the benefits of the client and therapist’s differences. I assume that the client who seeks help from a therapist with different cultural background wants to change his behavior sourced from the sociocultural environment. Thus, the client is searching for a therapist who can assist in the client’s behavior change by introducing him to different cultural perspectives and values.
If I were in a situation where a client doubts my abilities as a human service professional because of cultural differences, I would explain that therapists may use their background differently. Therefore, in some cases, such as behavior therapy, cultural differences can assist in helping to correct problematic behavior in a client. Alternatively, in other cases, the therapist can prioritize using different dimensions to minimize the appearance of misunderstandings due to cultural differences with the client.
Reference
Corey, M. S., & Corey, G. (2022). Becoming a helper (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.