Multicultural Counselling
What Is Multicultural Counselling?
Multicultural counselling is an approach used along side therapeutic modalities. A therapist who practices multicultural counselling strategically considers a persons perspective and lived experiences through the clients lens. Providing this element in therapy requires your therapist to have cultural sensitivity, cultural knowledge and cultural empathy.
Why Is It Important?
As a therapist we often hear the reason some people do not attend therapy sooner is because they think the therapist will not understand their experiences due their cultural differences. We understand the importance of having a therapist who can provide support from a place of non judgment. We are committed to providing a safe, culturally sensitive and empathetic environment to navigate our clients needs and goals in therapy.
What Are The 2 Types of Cultures?
Individualistic Culture
Individualistic cultures are largely North American and Western Europe. In these cultures people are expected to be dependent on self and set goals for personal life fulfillment and they focus on their nuclear families. Some common traits that individualistic societies encourage and value are, autonomy, self sufficiency, independence, assertiveness and uniqueness. In collective cultures common attributes that are encouraged are to be self-sacrificing, dependable, generous, and helpful to others.
Collective Culture
In collective cultures decisions are based on what is best for the group and there is more emphasis on common goals than individual goals. Sometimes the rights of families and communities comes before those of the individual.
What We Can Do
In North American mainstream culture is individualistic; however, we are a very multicultural society. As therapist working with the multicultural community we have found children, youth and even adults of immigrant parents struggle to find a balance of the two cultures. Spouses from opposite cultures also struggle with communication and finding a balance between the two cultures. Immigrant parents have expressed that they too feel ill equipped to help their children navigate a culture that is not their own and are not familiar with. The extremely opposite expectations of the cultures cause chaos, uncertainty and an internal struggle. We work with families to bridge the gap and strengthen communication. We work to help build identity and ease the internal struggle and conflict living in two vastly different cultures.