1. Culture, Counseling and Care
Chapter 1
Culture, Counseling and Care
Created by: Noah M.P. Spector and Shaofan Bu

2. Counseling: A cultural practice
“All counseling interactions are cross cultural”
Lives unfold and are spoken about in cultural contexts.
The counseling conversation is itself a cultural ritual

3. Themes through the book
Conversation
Culture
Care
Meaning and story
Power
Social justice
Collaborative dialogue
Relationship
Mindfulness

4. Conversation Talking is intervention
We all know how to talk…. What is there to learn then?
Familiar tools used in highly purposeful ways.

5. Culture What is “culture”? Ethnicity? Race? Star wars fans?
Culture is the substance of counselling. “Culture is the water; we are the fish”
Understand culture in pluralistic terms.

6. Understanding culture in pluralistic terms

7. Care Centering the client
The best guide for our counseling practice is our care for the client.
This care manifests differently in counseling practice as each client is unique

8. Meaning and story
It is the meaning we make of events (the stories we tell about them) rather than the facts of the matter that constitute our lived realities

9. Meaning and story A same event can be viewed via different lenses
Meaning as the client’s lens of viewing experience
Meaning we make of things constitutes our lived reality
Cultural location gives us the parameters of lived realities.
Therapeutic conversation is both information exchange and world making

10. Power
Power is not a thing, it is a process
Both generative and oppressive

11. Power Power vis. a vis. client’s story
Power is about which version of reality dominates our narrative
Power is about the accessibility of meanings
Power between counselor and client
Professional counselors use “legitimized” constructs. (e.g. expert knowledge and diagnostic criteria).

12. Power
Power and Ethics
Our title and degrees may invite clients to undervalue their skills and knowledge
The power associated with being a professional helper can lead us to overlook that our perspective is one among many

13. Social justice
What is normal/abnormal, functional dysfunctional? Who dictates these terms?
Individualism
Focusing on a dysfunction and comparison to “norms” diverts our attention from contextual factors.

14. Social justice Clients as cultural beings
Makes sense of their experience and actions in a wider culture.
Should counseling stop at the office door?
Consider social barriers to mental health…

15. Collaborative dialogue
Working with the client instead of working on the client
Counselors see clients as active agents in their lives.
Conversations should promote this agency.
Being open to surprises means being responsive while not abandoning theories and models
In addition to discovery, creating. In addition to being, becoming.

16. Relationship Is there a key ingredient that makes therapy work?
Counseling is not a “pill”, not a chemical reaction, nor a one way transaction
What guides us then?
“practice-based evidence”
The relationship between the client and counselor is very important to therapy outcome

17. Mindfulness Be mindful: the stakes are (always) high.
Awareness of visual cues, verbal cues, thoughts, ideas and feelings
“Know thyself”
Awareness of your body and mind, internal dialogue (how are my theories affecting my listening?)
“Attention supports intention”
The more we are aware the more we can base our practice in care