During therapy, it is important to ensure that you feel safe, validated, and understood. It is essential that during sessions you bring your whole self, your religious, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender identity, and cultural values, and in order to feel safe brining your whole self to therapy you must ensure that you are working with a multiculturally competent therapist.
At Mindful Essence TS, our therapists prioritize your feelings of safety and well-being during sessions, making it possible for you to bring your full self to your meetings.
Signs Your Therapist is Multiculturally Competent:
Cultural Humility:
-A therapist who demonstrates desire to learn about your culture and gives admission that they do not know everything about every culture is practicing multicultural competency.
-A therapist who demonstrates self-awareness of their own biases and how their cultural values may differ from yours is important.
Flexibility:
-A therapist who does not use a one-size-fits-all approach, instead molding their therapeutic modalities to fit your cultural norms, worldview, communication style, and values.
Cultural Inquiry:
-A therapist who asks questions about your cultural background rather than making assumptions about you.
-A therapist who is comfortable discussing identity politics.
Validation :
-A competent therapist validates the emotional experiences of discrimination.
-A competent therapist validates your experiences that may be “other” from the norms in your mainstream culture.
Avoids Stereotyping:
-A multiculturally competent therapists engages with you as a unique individual, and does not generalize or stereotype your experiences.
If you find that your therapist is not demonstrating cultural humility during your sessions, it may be time to move on from that therapist and find a clinician who is respectful and open to working with you.
It may be appropriate to seek out a therapist with the same cultural values or cultural identities as you if you feel that would make your sessions more comfortable and increase the therapeutic alliance between client and clinician.
At Mindful Essence TS, we strive to always practice multicultural competency.
Start your therapeutic journey at Mindful Essence TS!
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