Cultural Competence in Counseling
Cultural Competence in Counseling In today’s society there is a multitude of culturally diverse individuals. As a mental health counselor it is not only in my best interest to make sure that I am aware of my own cultural heritage, but it is also my responsibility to insure that I am aware of my client’s cultural heritage. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how culturally different I am from a client in the following case study Jia is a young Asian woman who immigrated to the United States from her homeland in China. She is the only child and her parents own a small business and have worked very hard to be able to send her to college. Her parents want her to eventually become a Doctor when she graduates from college. Since Jia has been in college she has become aware that she is really skilled at painting and she enjoys it a lot. Jia studying habits and her grades has suffered because she spends much of her free time painting. Jia has been seeing a counselor because she wants help improving her studying habits. She also states that she has been feeling tired this semester and that’s why her grades are not good. There are many ways in which I am culturally different from my client Jia. My client Jia is an Asian female who migrated from China to the United States with her parents. Her biological parents are successful small business owners that left their native country to pursue greater opportunities in the United States. I on the other hand am an African-American male born in the United States and was abandon by my biological parents when I was just a toddler. I do not come from parents who had a successful career in any occupation. Neither of my parents even graduated from high school, they were alcoholics and drug users. My parents did not have a career goal in mind for me, because they did not care. Jia parents on the other hand had dreams of her graduating from college and becoming a doctor. In Jia free