Chapter 8 - Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and psychotherapy PDF

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Notes from Professor Georgena Haranis's class on overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and psychotherapy....

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Chapter 8 - Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and psychotherapy ● Setting culturally relevant goals ○ Success depends on counselors’ setting goals for clients that are tailored to clients’ specific needs ○ Two types of goals for clients ■ Process goals - concerned with therapeutic movement and conditions necessary for clients to change ■ Outcome goals - clarify changes that clients are expected to make as result of counseling (behavior, attitudes, feelings) ○ Culturally-relevant goals for minority clients ■ Counselors must add culturally relevant goals to other goals ○ The need for collaboration ■ Collaborative goal setting has particular advantages for counseling with minority clients ● Clients gain sense of empowerment and ownership of counseling process when they participate in own goal setting ○ Good for minorities who often feel powerless ○ The counselor’s unstated goal ■ Equitable outcomes should be most important criterion that counselors use to measure success in overcoming racism ■ May be difficult for counselors to achieve equitable outcomes across all racial groups ■ Difficulty is understandable given that multicultural counseling is a complex process ○ Process goals ■ Establishing a working alliance ● Realize that many minority clients enter counseling with fear and anxiety; white SW may represent societal oppression ● Explore clients’ racial attitudes early in treatment ■ Obtaining a counseling agreement ● Must reach agreement in four areas ○ Practical aspects of counseling ■ Length of session, policies regarding cancellations and missed appointments, billing procedures ○ Roles ■ Directive or reflective counseling style and client focus on past or present ○ Expectations ■ Honesty, commitment, effort to reach counseling goals; doing homework assignments ○ Goals ■ Specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, capable of being owned by client ○ Outcome goals ■ Resolution of memories of racial victimization ● Leaves minorities with invisible wounds ■ Bicultural competence ● Several strategies that minorities use to cope with life in two worlds ○ alienation/marginalization ○ Assimilation

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○ Withdrawal or separation Antiracism assertion ● Most minority group members encounter racism in one form or another at some time in lives ● Three general classes of behavior fall under rubric of assertion or assertiveness ○ Refusals to acquiesce to requests of others ○ Expressions of opinions and feelings ○ Expressions of one’s own requests ● Behaving assertively reduces individual’s anxiety...