How Do We as Counselors Place the “ISM” on to the Clients Unintentionally, and What Should Be Done, Essay Example

In the ancient times, when a person had a certain problem, it was often easier to commit a suicide than to seek support from others. The communication was limited, the people were locked in small communities, and any family, “work”, or neighborhood matter could truly influence the possibility of the person to reside at the place in the future. Even though modern human beings are more fortunate in this context as they have a special group of people, whose job is to listen and help, the problem is not completely solved. Due to such diversity in almost every society, it is hard to remain neutral and objective. And while it is considered good to have a personal opinion, it may seriously affect the efficiency of the counselor work. Therefore sometimes the psychologists unintentionally place ‘isms’ on their clients and the best way to avoid it is to better understand their own personality and character.

The diversity of the modern society affects the everyday life of modern people in both positive and negative way. First of all, the humanity has learned to tolerate the differences. Nowadays it is not a shame to have a certain skin color, disability, sexual orientation, political view, religious belief, etc. The rapid development of technology has opened the world for communication. The people have started to learn more about one another and realize that their way of life is not the only righteous one. It provides the genuine freedom of choice, one of the brightest examples of which is vegetarianism. At first, the people were not eating meat because it was too expensive. Today many rich people have made this decision, based on reasonable arguments (often dissimilar for different individuals) that are, in most cases, not connected to financial hardships.

At the same time, it has become extremely hard to analyze such diverse society. The counselors meet various types of personalities with different backgrounds, beliefs, principles, values every day. And they are always expected to help and support. But the counselor is also a human being and human nature is not flawless. They were also brought up in certain families, gained certain experience, had been in different life situations, etc. Naturally, they have formed their own life perspective and see the world through it.

One of the most important phrases for any social worker, therapist, or counselor is ‘Counselor, know thyself’ (, p. 25). While it is not possible to completely eliminate any personal influence on the work, the best way to avoid it is to understand the peculiarities of own viewpoints. There is a classical example of it. Let us imagine that a person is born with a pair of sunglasses. An individual with a certain set of beliefs, cultural background, moral values, etc. wears yellow sunglasses. The person with different perspective wears blue sunglasses. If a counselor with yellow sunglasses attempts to put on blue sunglasses in order to understand the client better, he or she will be looking through green (blue and yellow together) sunglasses. The person can never entirely eradicate own way of thinking, however, a better comprehension of own stereotypes and beliefs will allow the counselor be more neutral and place less ‘isms’ on his or her clients.

It is crucial for any counselor to be capable of sharing the worldview of the clients, often so culturally diverse. Such sharing by no means should involve changing of own principles and beliefs. On the contrary, the counselors must recognize the differences between the people and regard them as a positive feature of human society. One of the most important things is to learn to be non-judgmental. It is important to perceive the diversity as a fact and not make a decision whether certain viewpoint or principle is good or bad. The counselor should learn to be empathetic and remember that counselors are like doctors so their very first rule must be ‘do no harm’.

References

Sue, Derald Wing and Monica McGoldrick . Multicultural Social Work Practice. Wiley, 2005.