Counseling Reflection

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After reading the first nine chapters of the textbook and lecture notes I concluded that I am extremely grateful to be a teacher and not a counselor. I never would have imagined there were so many things you would have to take into consideration to provide therapy to someone. I know I was very naïve to most of the information that I read, and a lot of it was over my head. In this paper I will attempt to discuss the important things I was able to grasp from each chapter and the lecture notes. The first four chapters provides basic information about being a counselor and how to counsel to people of different cultures and backgrounds. Chapter 1 discusses the term empathy. Empathy occurs when one person experiences the feelings, perceptions,…show more content…
Chapter 2 follows by explaining that the term counseling means helping people to help themselves. It provides emphasis on a counselor’s bond with the counselee is the most important aspect of the entire process. This must be met for any of the therapy to be successful. Chapter 3 begins to introduce the steps of how to counsel multicultural clients. The client must be assessed to be assisted. There are four ways for a counselor to assess a client, quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and knowledge based. The quantitative approach has the counselor collect data from the client. An example of this would be a traditional test used for therapy assessment. If the counselor uses the qualitative approach a more informal assessment may be used, such as an interview, or having the client provide an autobiography. The mixed methods approach uses various types of both informal and formal assessments. If a knowledge-based form of assessment is used the counselor will be provided information about the client from other therapists and form conclusions based on their thoughts and…show more content…
In chapter five information is provided for counseling the North American Indigenous people. A counselor must have knowledge of the specific group their client belongs. The counselor must take in consideration of the history and grief that has been suffered by this group of people. The counselor must be kind and strong in all aspects (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, personally, Socially, Emotionally). The counselor must be familiar with the client’s community. Good communication skills are essential to provide therapy for a person of the Indigenous culture. The counselor must be respected and thought of well by the client. Due to such a high number of substance abuse problems that are associated with the Indigenous people, it is very important that the counselor be completely substance free. The client must feel that the counselor has a good relationship with the creator. The counselor must be willing to use more traditional methods of therapy than more conventional ones. Chapter 6 talks about providing counseling services to Asian Americans. It is stated that Asian Americans show much more respect towards their counselors than other cultures. Asian Americans are most comfortable when the counselor serves as the authority figure. The counselor must be familiar with the different gender roles in the Asian culture. Being able to understand

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