Therapeutic Relations

Self awareness

Self awareness is a crucial component to becoming a competent counselor. It makes a counselor treat clients as unique individuals who are different from themselves. A counselor who does not recognize personal feelings, beliefs, thoughts, needs, or attitudes may not respond appropriately to clients. Such a counselor is likely to attribute personal feelings, thoughts, or beliefs to clients. Self awareness makes a counselor understand the influence of personal values on the counseling relationship. A self-aware counselor changes behavior depending on client’s reaction, distinguishes personal thoughts from those of client, and understands their strengths and weaknesses (Corey, G, Corey, M, and Callanan 2011).

Cultural awareness

A good therapist is supposed to be aware of cultural issues as well as the roles that cultural factors play in counseling. Culture comprises beliefs, traditions, values, symbols, or expectations. In fact it is a form of guidelines of how people feel, think, or behave as part of a particular group. The groups could be religious, professional, or social with unique ways of behaving, dressing, and speaking (Corey, G, Corey, M, and Callanan 2011).

Some of the cultural dynamics that emerge in therapeutic relationship include: communication styles, attitudes towards conflict, ways of completing tasks, decision making, and approaches to knowledge. Communication styles matter because particular groups of people value certain styles of speaking. It is important for a therapist to be aware of acceptable words and phrases, appropriate degree of assertiveness, and importance of non-verbal communication. The attitudes that a group has towards conflict could involve ways of resolving it or the degree of its acceptance. A therapist needs to know whether conflict is acceptable or not and also if it can be resolved by meeting face-to-face. The approaches of completing task may involve the necessity of building relations with other individuals in order to complete specific tasks. The style used to reach a decision could be consensus or major rule.

There are some steps that can be taken when dealing cultural diversity and pluralism. They include being aware of personal assumptions, values and biases; understanding how a culturally different client views the world, and being in a position to develop appropriate techniques and strategies (Jaladin).

Values and ethics

There are times or circumstances where it may appear ethical for a therapist to direct clients in a particular direction. This practice may not be appropriate; existence of universally accepted principles, values, or ethics do not necessarily mean common philosophy of life. Every individual has a unique philosophy of life. This individual philosophy may contain common factors with philosophies of others in the same culture (Patterson