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Chapter 4

 

    In Chapter 4, the one thing that stood out most to me was part of a paragraph on page 105 of the textbook: “Awareness of diversity in life experience is critical if we are to recognize uniqueness and specialness in each individual. If you define yourself as White American, Canadian, or Australian and you think of others as the only people who are multicultural, you need to rethink your awareness. All of us are multicultural beings with varying and singular acculturation experiences.” (Ivey et. al., 2023)*. I absolutely simply think of myself as a White American, and I consider no other aspects of my culture. I’ve always felt like, since I don’t know much about my family’s history or where we’re from, I don’t have much culture of which to be aware. I am slowly starting to wrap my head around the many things that culture encapsulates and beginning to recognize my own culture in limited ways. Another reason I think I’ve never considered much about my own culture is that I am included as part of a culture that in many ways carries with them the greatest level of privilege in our society. Others deserve to be admired for their cultural differences; I need to lay low so I bring less attention to the fact that I have things so much easier than so many others simply because I am White living in America. I do find that I am questioning my ability to be sensitive to cultural differences if I’m struggling to recognize my own cultural identities.

            Personally, I think multicultural differences in general make the world a brighter, more engaging, more delightful place. There is so much to learn from people who are different from you. Concerning specifically the topic of this chapter, observation, I think it’s going to take a while to learn all of the important differences in nonverbal communication between one culture and another. Since I started my internship, I find myself wondering how I learn about all the differences if I’m counseling people who mostly are more like me than different from me. How does our client base become multicultural? How to we gain the experience to learn how to best serve clients from diverse cultures if we don’t get the chance to encounter them?

            The other big thing that stood out to me from this chapter is how much there is to learn about nonverbal communication. Not only are there big ideas that communicate across cultures, there are specific nonverbal cues to be learned for multicultural clients. My answer to our last question relates to this answer: I don’t know how to establish my own personal style and theory. I feel like the more I learn, the more I find is out there that I need to know. How are we ever sure that we are doing good for our clients? How will we ever know if we are good enough?

* Ivey, A.E., Ivey, M.A., and Zalaquett, C.P. (2018) Intentional Interviewing and Counseling:

            Facilitating client development in a multicultural society. (9th ed.) Boston: Cengage

            Learning.

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