Barriers to Building Successful and Working Counseling Relationship with Culturally Diverse Clients
When dealing with culturally diverse clients, counselors face various barriers and obstacles. These barriers arise from various corners ranging from the counselor’s lack of cultural knowledge to language differences between the client and the counselor (Wong, 2011). These barriers can adversely affect successfully building a good working counseling relationship with culturally diverse clients. They also interfere with the outcome of the counseling. Understanding these barriers can lead to changes in how counselors prepare and deliver services to culturally diverse populations. In this section, three major barriers to building a good cross-cultural counseling relationship are described.
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The counselor’s lack of cultural self-awareness is one common barrier that adversely affects counseling relationship with culturally diverse clients (Wong, 2011). With cultural self-awareness, the counselor acknowledges his/her cultural values and beliefs and the possible clash with that of the client (Wong, 2011). In essence, counselors with a greater sense of cultural awareness are likely to recognize and acknowledge when their stereotyped beliefs and biased views about other groups. As a result, they will likely offer improper counseling services, which may cause high rates of client dropouts. Moreover, culturally aware counselors can recognize when they are conceptualizing a client’s case based on their stereotypical beliefs or prejudiced views about a certain group of individuals.
Language is another source of the barrier. Language differences between the client and the counselor can cause misinterpretations, misdiagnosis, and miscommunications in the counseling process (Wong, 2011). Often, a counselor’s lack of communication or language skills is a major stressor for immigrant or bilingual clients. Moreover, counselors must consider the acculturation level of immigrant clients as this could be connected to their command of English and their Native languages. Though bilingual clients can express themselves in a rudimentary manner, they could need their native language to talk about emotional issues. Due to this factor, many immigrant clients could avoid seeking counseling services because they are afraid of their inability to communicate with counselors (Wong, 2011). Similarly, counselors could avoid immigrant groups because they fear being frustrated by the language barrier.
The counselor’s lack of multicultural counseling training is a barrier to an effective counseling process (Wong, 2011). Although most training programs for counselors have revised their curricula to encompass concepts of ethnicity, culture, and race, we still have some counselors who have not received proper training in this area to offer services to culturally diverse clients successfully.
The Concept of Individualized Addiction Treatment and Application in Group Counseling
Individualized counseling refers to the treatment that involves a one-on-one conversation with a professional therapist. This treatment takes place exclusively between the professional and the client (Turner et al. 2014). Individualized addiction treatment can be applied in group counseling. Such counseling settings are characterized by many members help one other to overcome the challenge of addiction through the adoption of somewhat similar strategies as defined by the counselor. For instance, an addiction patient may feel comfortable receiving an individualized intervention but may also profit from processing feelings and experience with other victims of addiction in group therapy. The two types of treatment interventions can work together, facilitating the healing process in different ways that are equally beneficial to the client.
Although individualized and group therapies have distinct treatment modalities, the two complement each other, facilitating deep interpersonal and intrapersonal work. Some clients believe that their addiction treatment is a private matter since they did not reveal their addiction to others (Turner et al. 2014). Nevertheless, the recovery process is a different matter. Individuals who take individualized treatment in group therapy intervention can learn from the experiences of other addicts. The strategy will make them stay sober and prevent chances of relapsing. Group therapy is an essential tool for people battling addiction. Though it appears overwhelming to share emotional and personal stories with others, doing so enables a person to heal fast and find the needed support to move on in their recovery journey.
Individualized intervention should begin with group therapy to let the patient understand that he/she is not alone in the problem at hand (Turner et al. 2014). Sharing experiences with other people who are struggling with the same issue will help cement the fact that the individual is not alone in the addiction problem. Moreover, it will help him/her see how other people are learning to cope and the person may start to adopt these coping skills. Understanding how others can assist them makes the person open up and release the stresses that kept him/her addicted (Turner et al. 2014). Therefore, the group therapy enhances the rest of the individualized treatment and enables for the much-required socialization throughout the entire recovery journey.
The Characteristics and Stages of Relapse Prevention
Most people seek treatment because they want to prevent relapse. By the time a person is seeking help, the individual has already tried other methods to quit addition and are now looking for a better solution. Although relapse is impulsive, some factors and danger signs can signal the possibility of occurrence. Often, relapse occurs in three stages namely emotional, mental, and physical as addressed in this study.
Emotional Stage
Emotional relapse is perceived to be the trickiest of all the three relapse stages. In fact, most people do not even know that they are experiencing this stage. Emotions can make someone go back to all the familiar triggers of addiction that can lay the foundation for reverting to alcohol or drug use (Harris et al. 2011). Some characteristics of this stage include depression, anxiety, anger, mood swings, frustration and feeling of isolation. At this stage, it is important for the person to seek help and support if the individual is feeling these emotions (Harris et al. 2011)). Lastly, it may stop chances of relapse from occurring at an early stage.
Mental Stage
Mental relapse is when the mind starts to take on the individual’s unhandled emotions and rationalizes them (Harris et al. 2011). The strategy is appropriate for a person to return to the old coping strategies. Some characteristics of this stage include engaging in risky behaviors like hanging out with old friends, meditating about using alcohol or drugs and use of methodological means to pick and use the drugs. It is difficult to turn back from this stage of relapse, so it is advisable that the individual talks to an addiction counselor or therapist. These professionals can help the individual get back to the right path before these feelings of relapse become manifest (Harris et al. 2011).
Physical Relapse
In this final stage of relapse prevention, the individual engages in the physical activity of addiction again. At this point, emotions have already gotten the best of the individual via triggers that might have been unnoticed and unaddressed. In turn, this brings justifications into the mind and eye, which essentially talks the individual into addiction by making the ritual appealing (Harris et al. 2011).
These stages of relapse prevention work together to lead someone into a relapse situation. For this reason, it is important to be aware that the chance of relapse is often strong earlier on when drifting thoughts or emotions start to occupy a person’s mind. Soon, these thoughts and emotions take the individual down a path that he/she already had worked hard to quit.
References
Harris, K. S., Smock, S. A., & Tabor, W. M. K. (2011). Relapse resilience: A process model of addiction and recovery. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 22( 3): 265-274.
Turner, N., Welches, P., & Conti, S. (2014). Mindfulness-based sobriety: a clinician's treatment guide for addiction recovery using relapse prevention therapy, acceptance & commitment therapy & motivational interviewing . New York, NY: New Harbinger Publications
Wong, P. T. P. (2011) “ Meaning-centered counseling and therapy: an integrative and comprehensive approach to motivational counseling and addiction treatment ,” in Handbook of motivational counseling: goal-based approaches to assessment and intervention with addiction and other problems (eds W. M. Cox and E. Klinger), John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK. doi: 10.1002/9780470979952.ch19
