Acculturative Barriers

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Interventions to address acculturative stress and language barriers. Interventions have been developed which can aid in closing the gap between counselor and client forged by acculturative stress and language barriers. The first is to assist the client in clarifying their thoughts and feelings by repeating back what you heard them saying. A second intervention can be used if there is more than one client through encouraging the client to speak for themselves instead of allowing their partner and/or family member to try to explain their feelings for them. Finally, establish guidelines to be adhered to throughout each session in order to create structure and avoid misunderstanding. Religious and Spiritual Beliefs Religious and spiritual beliefs…show more content…
This is especially true when working with couples and with sex counseling. Counselors must not only take into account the religion of a couple, but also their denomination. An example of this can be seen when counseling an Israeli couple who practice Judaism. The couple is suffering from intimacy issues and the counselor would like to incorporate a homework assignment into the treatment plan. The homework is a common one in sex therapy which is for the couple to watch pornography together. An Orthodox Jewish couple assigned this task would most likely take extreme offense to the insinuation that they are the kind of people that would watch that. But if the same assignment were given to a Reformed Jewish couple, who are likely have more modern feelings regarding sexual identity and sex, they may be happy to complete the undertaking (Balkin, Watts, & Saba, 2014). Cultural beliefs surrounding gender roles are also of great relevance particularly for Muslim clients. In many Muslim cultures, women are raised to believe that their needs are secondary to those of men. One study of Iranian women revealed that the predominant motivation for their relationships was the priority of the man’s needs (Merghati-Khoei, Ghorashi, Yousefi, & Smith,

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