Embracing Cultural Responsivity and
Social Justice
Re-Shaping Professional Identity in
Counselling Psychology
Sandra Collins, Editor
Embracing Cultural Responsivity and
Social Justice
Re-Shaping Professional Identity in Counselling Psychology
SANDRA COLLINS
COUNSELLING CONCEPTS
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice. Copyright © 2018 by Counselling Concepts. Please
respect copyright law and model professional ethics by not sharing your copy of this e-book with others.
This e-book and its content are protected by Canadian copyright law. Except as otherwise provided for
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The book cover and all paintings reproduced in this book are also protected by copyright law. Copyright ©
2018 by Sandra Collins.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Collins, Sandra D. (Sandra Dawn), 1962-, author
Embracing cultural responsivity and social justice : re-shaping
professional identity in counselling psychology / Sandra Collins.
ISBN 978-0-9738085-3-7 (PDF)
1. Cross-cultural counseling. 2. Counseling psychology.
3. Minorities–Counseling of. 4. Psychotherapy. 5. Social
Justice–Psychological aspects. 6. Multiculturalism–Psychological
aspects. I. Title.
BF636.7.C76C65 2018
158.3
C2018-905755-6
Contents
List of Practice Illustrations
ix
Preface
xiii
Acknowledgements
xxx
Contributors
xxxii
Introduction
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just (CRSJ) Counselling: Principles and
2
Practices
Sandra Collins
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
21
Sandra Collins
Domain I. The Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in Counselling
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling: Appreciating the Complexity
51
and Intersectionality of Client–Counsellor Cultural Identities
Sandra Collins
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self: 冇用 Moh-Yoong
115
Gina Wong
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class: Attending to Class at the
Intersections of Identities
Fisher Lavell
141
Domain II. Attending to Social Location
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice: Client–Counsellor Social Locations
179
Sandra Collins
Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma: A Decolonizing Therapeutic Framework for
275
Indigenous Counsellors Working with Indigenous Clients
Riel Dupuis-Rossi (Kanien’kehá:ka and Algonquin)
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders: Practice Considerations for the Minority
305
Counsellor
Mateo Huezo
Domain III. Professional Identity
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice: A Foundation for
343
Professional Identity
Sandra Collins
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice: Social Justice Activism in
404
Community Work and Therapy and Justice-Doing
Vikki Reynolds
Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights: Exploring the Intersections
416
Kirby Huminuik
Domain IV. Counselling as Relationship
Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices: Facilitating
441
Transformation Through Connection
Sandra Collins
Chapter 13. Navigating the Power of Ageism: A Single Session
506
Cristelle Audet
Chapter 14. Extraordinary Challenges to Live Ordinary Lives: Young Adults with
Life-Limiting Conditions
Karen Cook
531
Domain V. Case Conceptualization
Chapter 15. Collaborative Case Conceptualization: Applying a Contextualized, Systemic
556
Lens
Sandra Collins
Chapter 16. Performing Social Justice in Family Therapy: Exploring the Assumptions
623
Between the *Isms and the *Ings
Emily Doyle and Faye Gosnell
Chapter 17. Learning from the Inside Out: Culturally Responsive and Socially Just
648
Implementation of the TriOptimal Learning Model®
Heather Macdonald
Domain VI. Enacting Multilevel Change
Chapter 18. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Change Processes: Implementing
689
and Evaluating Micro, Meso, and Macrolevel Interventions
Sandra Collins
Chapter 19. Negotiating Multiple, Intersecting, Marginalized Identities: Angéline et
771
Marie Against the World
Sandra Collins
Chapter 20. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Program Development: Inviting
797
Community Competencies
Jeff Chang
Chapter 21. Bearing Witness Internationally and Locally: Trauma and Healing Among
823
Refugees
Adrienne Carter
Looking Backward, Looking Forward
Chapter 22. Endings As Beginnings: Empowering Client and Counsellor Continuing
Competency Development
Sandra Collins
852
Enhanced, Interactive Glossary
Sandra Collins
868
List of Practice Illustrations
Although an automatically generated table of contents is available to support ease of
navigation through this e-book, it does not list the practice illustrations by various
contributors (i.e., client stories, personal reflections, applications of specific concepts) that
are embedded within the conceptual chapters that introduce each domain of the CRSJ
counselling model. The intent of this page is to honour and make transparent the many
important contributions to this work. Please explore the author bios on the Contributors page.
I have positioned these practice illustrations within the domains and core competencies of the
CRSJ counselling model below.
Domain I. Acknowledge the Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in Counselling
Counsellor self-exploration as a foundation for cultural sensitivity (Core competency 1)
• Practice Illustration 1: Black enough? by Dr Lisa Gunderson
• Practice Illustration 2: Cultural inquiry with sexual minority clients by Don Zeman
The complexity and intersectionality of cultural identities and relationalities (Core
competency 2)
• Practice Illustration 3: Respecting the dignity of all persons and peoples: Implications for
counselling by Cristelle Audet
Recognizing and prioritizing client worldview (Core competency 3)
• Practice Illustration 4: Uncovering and integrating my Métis heritage by Melissa Jay
• Practice Illustration 5: Embracing religion and spirituality in counselling: An Islamic
perspective by Mahdi Qasqas
Domain II. Attending to Social Location
Social injustice and the social determinants of health (Core competency 4)
List of Practice Illustrations | ix
• Practice Illustration 6: Let’s ask the right question by Dr Lisa Gunderson
• Practice Illustration 7: Piste pour l’équité et la justice sociale dans les pratiques d’orientation
au Québec: Les jeunnes issus de l’immigration/The path to equity and social justice in
guidance counselling in Quebec: Young people from immigrant backgrounds by Marie-Odile
Magnan
Social locations and the interplay of power and privilege (Core competency 5)
• Practice Illustration 8: What about us? by Dr Lisa Gunderson
• Practice Illustration 9: Risks of dignitary harm: Implications for counselling by Cristelle
Audet
• Practice Illustration 10: Smash the patriarchy by Naida D. Hyde
• Practice Illustration 11: The pervasive discourse of mononormativity by Taya Henriques &
Gina Wong
Social location and cultural identity development and management (Core competency 6)
• Practice Illustration 12: Black enough! by Dr Lisa Gunderson
Cross-cultural transitioning, cultural identity, and relationality (Core competency 7)
• Practice Illustration 13: My identity as a racialized Muslim woman mental health
professional by Fatima Saleem
• Practice Illustration 14: Finding one’s voice: A feminist perspective on internalized
oppression by Judy Chew
Domain III. Professional Identity
Fostering social change: Assuming an anti-oppressive and justice-doing stance (Core
competency 8)
• Practice Illustration 15: Relational ethics by Simon Nuttgens
Values-based practice (Core competency 9)
• Practice Illustration 16: Splitting our world open, one woman’s story at a time by Naida D.
x | List of Practice Illustrations
Hyde
Domain IV. Counselling as Relationship
The transformative nature of the client–counsellor relationship (Core competency 10)
• Practice Illustration 17: Using a cultural safety lens in therapy with Indigenous clients by
Allison Reeves
• Practice Illustration 18: Self-care through self-compassion by Melissa Jay
• Practice Illustration 19: Muslim women’s perceptions of mental health and professional
services by Fatima Saleem & Stephanie Martin
• Practice Illustration 20: The healing power of touch by Naida D. Hyde
Enhancing mutual cultural empathy through cultural inquiry (Core competency 11)
• Practice Illustration 21: Conversation is justice-doing: Shaping identity narratives by David
Paré
Nurturing collaborative and egalitarian relationships with clients (Core competency 12)
• Practice Illustration 22: Deconstructing and co-constructing meaning: Promoting client and
trainee empowerment by Judy Chew
Domain V. Case Conceptualization
CRSJ metatheoretical and theoretical lenses (Core competency 13)
CRSJ case conceptualization (Core competency 14)
• Practice Illustration 23: Honouring client views of health and healing: A Muslim perspective
by Fatima Saleem & Stephanie Martin
• Practice Illustration 24: Applying a contextualized, systemic lens: Considering the rural
context by Judi Malone
• Practice Illustration 25: Working within the refugee narrative by Ivana Djuraskovic
List of Practice Illustrations | xi
CRSJ change processes (Core competency 15)
Domain VI. Enacting Multilevel Change
Designing microlevel change processes in collaboration with clients (Core competency 16)
• Practice Illustration 26: Re-envisioning life through power analysis by Judy Chew
• Practice Illustration 27: Remembering Daniel by Andrew Estefan
• Practice Illustration 28: Favoriser la justice sociale par le biais de dialogues
interculturels/Fostering social justice through cross-cultural dialogues by Jo Anni Joncas
& Annie Pilote
• Practice Illustration 29: Client empowerment through gender role analysis by Judy Chew
• Practice Illustration 30: Who are we as women without our voices? by Naida D. Hyde
Designing mesolevel change processes in collaboration with, or on behalf of, clients (Core
competency 17)
• Practice Illustration 31: Community outreach and psychoeducation with Muslim women:
The story of Sarah by Fatima Saleem & Stephanie Martin
• Practice Illustration 32: Healing as resistance: The interface between psychology and human
rights by Kirby Huminuik
• Practice Illustration 33: L’orientation scolaire dans une approche de justice sociale : regard
sur le rôle des organisations/A socially just approach to guidance and career counselling:
Making the case for organizational level change by Jo Anni Joncas & Annie Pilote
• Practice Illustration 34: Therapist self-disclosure: Modelling culturally responsive and
socially just supervision by Judy Chew
Designing macrolevel change processes on behalf of clients (Core Competency 18)
• Practice Illustration 35: Recovery from Human Rights Violations and Natural Disasters:
Implementing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice Internationally by Adrienne Carter
xii | List of Practice Illustrations
Preface
Welcome to what I hope will be an enlightening and challenging learning experience for you
as you work through this e-book. I encourage you to read all of this preface, because it
provides you with an overview of the book that highlights its uniqueness, from both a content
and process perspective. This e-book has been designed to be read in a less linear way than
traditional print books. The content centres around a model I am proposing for culturally
responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling practice. Although this is, in part, an edited
collection, the content has been more deeply integrated across all contributions than most
edited collections in the sense that the contributors have been invited to interact with and
illustrate various aspects of the model in their writing. Please watch the introductory video to
get a sense of the development and unique features of this e-book.
Click on the image on the left or this link to watch the video
introduction. The video will open in YouTube, where closed captioning is
available.
The CRSJ counselling model builds upon earlier work in mapping out competencies for
multicultural counselling (Collins & Arthur, 2005, 2010a, 2010b). My vision of multicultural
counselling and social justice has evolved over the past decade through my study of the
professional literature, my collaborative research into multicultural counselling and social
justice principles and practices (Collins, Arthur, Bisson, & McMahon, 2015; Collins, Arthur,
Brown, & Kennedy, 2015; Collins, Arthur, McMahon, & Bisson, 2014), my experiences as a
counsellor educator in the Master of Counselling program at Athabasca University, and my
engagement with my own clients. In this book, I synthesize my personal and professional
learning into a model that reflects my current understanding of what it is that counsellors
require in terms of competencies to be able to engage with clients, with organizations, and
with systems in a way that is culturally responsive and socially just.
Perhaps more importantly, this book is also the product of a detailed analysis of over 30 case
studies by colleagues across Canada, some of which appear in this book and some of which
are published elsewhere. In this sense, the CRSJ counselling model reflects the integrated
Preface | xiii
thinking of a collection of highly experienced academic and professional colleagues and their
reflections on what they have learned from clients from a wide diversity of cultural
backgrounds. What impressed me in the case studies I reviewed was the balance between
cultural competency and cultural humility illustrated by each of these authors. We all bring
some level of expertise in culture and social justice to our writing. However, the longer we
work with clients with complex and diverse cultural backgrounds, the more we realize there is
much to learn from them, and the more we come to honour and respect their strengths and
resiliency. I have found this to be particularly true with clients who have multiple
nondominant cultural identities.
The Metaphor of the Colour Wheel
You will notice that the cover of the book is illustrated with a series of paintbrushes arranged
into what artists refer to as the colour wheel. The colour wheel is designed based on the three
primary colours: blue, red, and yellow. By combining pairs of primary colours for the book
cover, I created green, violet, and orange (the secondary colours). Then I mixed adjacent
colours together to create even more variety (tertiary colours). It is this incremental blending
of colour that creates the almost unlimited variety of hues we enjoy in the natural world. As an
artist myself, I see the world through a spectrum of colours, and what brings life to my own
work is the way in colours work with each other in a painting to create an overall effect that is
more than the sum of the individual components. This provides a beautiful metaphor for life,
culture, and the diversity of human experience and expressions of cultural identity. Take the
painting below, for example, in which I captured my reflections on my adventures in Istanbul
in 2013.
xiv | Preface
Flavours of Istanbul © Collins, 2013
The basic principles of colour theory are applied in two ways in this painting. In some parts of
the painting, analogous colours (those that sit next to each other on the colour wheel and
derive from similar starting places in the mixing of colours) create the harmonious, softer
blends. However, the painting would lack energy or liveliness without what artists refer to as
combinations of complementary colours (those opposite each other on the colour wheel like
green and red, or orange and blue). The orange bowl, for example, is enhanced by its closeness
to the blue of the tile patterns, its opposite. In the same way, culture offers both a sense of
belonging and comfort and an opportunity for growth, interest, and energy.
Colour in this book is used as a broad metaphor for the various dimensions of culture that will
be explored: age, ethnicity, ability, gender, gender identity, social class, sexual orientation, and
religion. Notably, the colour wheel is also a symbol for intersectionality, which is a major
theme throughout this book. Just as the colour orange changes its appearance when it is set
Preface | xv
beside blue or combined with yellow, each dimension of cultural identity must be explored
and understood in relation to other dimensions. So, you won’t find a series of chapters in this
book that focus sequentially on each dimension of culture; rather, the focus is on the lived
experiences of counsellors and clients at the intersections of multiple dimensions of culture
within each individual and in the various relationships between counsellors and clients as
cultural beings.
Metaphorically speaking, human beings often seek out analogous colours when they need
comfort, safety, and reassurance. This is why you find soft blends of blue and green in your
massage therapist’s office or, perhaps more importantly, in a colour-smart dentist’s waiting
room. Unfortunately, this tendency towards homogeneity also contributes to a moving away
from difference for some people in relation to certain aspects of cultural diversity. What is lost
in this process is the brilliance of colour and the opportunity for learning that arises from
embracing and welcoming diversity. Consider the monochromatic version of my painting
below.
xvi | Preface
Flavours of Istanbul © Collins, 2013
The detailed designs are still visible in the painting; however, from my perspective, the life is
gone from the images. As an artist, I am known for the colourfulness of my paintings. As an
educator, I bring my focus on colour into this book by inviting you to move out of your
comfort zones, to be open to seeing the world around you differently, and to lean into cultural
diversity as you would a colourful painting on your kitchen wall that calls forth energy,
passion, and curiosity. I hope that, by the time you finish working your way through the book,
you are both more confident with, and invitational toward, human diversity in all its complex
forms.
Preface | xvii
Organization of the Book
This book is organized into eight parts.
• In the Introduction I posit that multicultural counselling and social justice are inextricably
intertwined and both are central to competent and ethical practice with all clients. I
introduce the CRSJ counselling model, which is designed to provide both conceptual
foundations and applied practice guidelines for working with all clients in a way that
honours their multiple, intersecting cultural identities. Both counsellor and client are
assumed to be complex cultural beings, making the client–counsellor relationship an
intersection of cultural identities and contexts. I also position the discussion of cultural
responsivity in the context of social justice. Historically, the counselling psychology
profession has evolved an identity that is primarily individualist in nature. In other words,
our ways of conceptualizing client problems, negotiating goals for the counselling
process, and intervening to effect change have been focused on intrapsychic processes
within the client (i.e., changes in thoughts and beliefs, emotions, or behaviours). In recent
years, however, there has been a dramatic shift in professional attention to the contexts
of clients lives as both sources of injustice that lead to challenges in client health and
well-being and as potential targets for therapeutic and social change. Throughout this
book, I advocate for a change in professional identity to embrace fully the values and
practice principles associated with a broader social justice agenda for counselling and
psychology.
In the next six parts of the book, I introduce the core domains in the CRSJ counselling model.
Each part begins with a chapter in which I examine the conceptual and practice principles
associated with that domain.
• In Domain I I invite you into conscious awareness and active exploration of your own
complex cultural identities as a foundation for fully embracing understanding of, respect
for, and cultural sensitivity toward, your clients’ multiple and intersecting cultural
identities and relationalities.
• In Domain II I argue that applying a social justice lens to counselling necessitates careful
attention to the social determinants of health that impact client well-being, and in
particular, client experiences of social injustice. I introduce the concept of social location
as a way of understanding how privilege and marginalization within society plays out
xviii | Preface
within the counselling relationship and influences conceptualization of client presenting
concerns.
• In Domain III I revisit professional identity in counselling psychology and invite careful
consideration of what the profession would look like if we fully embraced an
anti-oppressive stance in our values, ethics, and practice principles. I introduce what I see
as supportive metatheoretical and theoretical lenses that offer the possibility of fully
embracing cultural responsivity and social justice in practice.
• In Domain IV I begin to bring the themes of cultural responsivity and socially justice more
fully into the counselling process by positioning the relationship between counsellor and
client as transformative through foundational processes of connection, cultural inquiry,
mutual cultural empathy, and constructive collaboration.
• In Domain V I introduce the concept of culturally responsive and socially just case
conceptualization as a foundation for goal setting and intervention planning, with a
particular focus on the importance of applying a contextualized, systemic lens that takes
into account client views of health and healing. By examining both the locus of control
and the locus of change that optimize client outcomes, I invite consideration of multiple
levels of intervention.
• In Domain VI I introduce change processes at the microlevel that support cultural
responsivity and justice-doing in collaborative interventions with individual, families, and
groups. I also make the case for stepping outside the traditional boundaries of counsellor
roles and responsibilities to target change at the systems level, with, or on behalf of,
clients.
In the last part of the book, I pull together what I have learned from writing this book and
provide some suggestions for continuing competency development.
• In Looking Forward, Looking Back, you will find the final chapter of the book. I revisit the
concept of cultural humility as a foundation for cultural competency. I make the argument
that the doing of social justice requires each of us as practitioners to engage actively in
reflective practice, and I introduce the process of cultural auditing to support our
continuing competency development and to optimize our usefulness to our clients. I
reflect further on what it means to embrace cultural responsivity and social justice as a
foundation of professional identity as scholar–practitioner–advocate–leaders in
counselling and psychology.
Preface | xix
A Diversity of Voice
Throughout each of the domains that form the core of the book, I introduce you to some of
my valued colleagues who will speak to various issues and concepts related to the CRSJ
counselling model. My hope is to increase the diversity of voices and perspectives in the book,
as well as to introduce you to some of the people who are living, practicing, teaching,
researching, and writing in these areas. The contributions from these writers range from
several pages to full chapters. Each provides a valuable contribution to the overall learning
process I intend for this book. In some cases, these additional writers have focused in on a
particular concept in the CRSJ counselling model in which they are particularly interested;
often, they provide personal reflections or stories from their interactions with individual
clients or their engagement in systems level change processes. In other cases, my colleagues
have written longer conceptual pieces, shared client stories that exemplify the competencies
in the CRSJ counselling model, or developed examples of organizational, community, or
broader systems level interventions.
I deliberately steered contributors away from writing a chapter on counselling members of a
particular population in order to avoid overgeneralizations and stereotyping. Instead, I invited
them to focus on stories of specific clients, with multiple, intersecting, contextualized cultural
identities and to bring into the mix their own personal cultural identities and contexts, where
appropriate. The intent is to demonstrate the basic premise of the CRSJ counselling model
that cultural identities and social locations must be assessed and navigated with each new
client, based on their particular presenting concerns and taking into account the specific
contexts of their lives. I also asked contributors to pay particular attention to counselling as a
relational practice and to the co-construction of culturally responsive and socially just
counselling goals and change processes with clients.
Some of these contributions are embedded within the conceptual chapters I have written, and
others are presented as stand-alone chapters. For detailed author biographies, see the About
the Contributors section. These contributions have been placed within the specific part of the
book that corresponds to the core domain of the CRSJ counselling model that each piece
emphasizes, although most also include competencies from other domains of the model. The
intent is to encourage you to move back and forth between the conceptual, theoretical ideas
and the applied practice examples that are designed to bring these concepts to life. In this
sense I hope to address not only the what of CRSJ counselling, but also the how.
xx | Preface
You will notice that many of the contributing writers take a position that is values-based. As
practicing counsellors, researchers, and counsellor educators, we are choosing to model for
our students and others the importance of taking a stance and expressing a personal and
professional voice that reflects thoughtful and critical integration of our own learning and of
the current professional literature. What I like most about many of these contributions is that
writers took up the challenge to bring their whole selves to their writing honestly and
transparently. You will see some of them struggle with their own assumptions and biases,
reflect on how relative privilege and marginalization impacts their work, talk about what they
have learned from their clients, and illustrate their counselling process and other professional
roles in ways that are genuine, challenging, thoughtful, and sometimes a bit messy. Although
all of these client stories are fictional or composites to ensure anonymity, these stories come
to life as the writers speak from their hearts as well as from their minds.
I have also been privileged in this work to include many writers who embody diverse
nondominant cultural identities, and who, as a result, understand from the inside out issues of
relative marginalization in society. You will notice that many position themselves along various
dimensions of cultural identity in their writing. As I will argue throughout the book, culture is
complex, fluid, and contextualized. It is impossible to avoid identity labels altogether if we
want to talk in a meaningful way about how culture plays out in counselling, but I encourage
you not to place the writers or the stories of clients in permanent or immovable boxes based
on the self-identifiers they have chosen at the moment of their writing.
Gender-Neutral Language
You will notice that throughout the book I use gender-neutral language wherever
possible and appropriate. In some cases, the contributors, or the clients with whom
they engage, identify as cisgender or transgender and choose a particular singular or
plural, gendered or gender-neutral pronoun. Unless the person being referenced has
explicitly identified as male or female, I default to gender-neutral language by using
they and them. Most dictionaries now recognize the third person plural as an
acceptable use for third person singular in instances where gender is not known or is
Preface | xxi
actively eschewed. For example, a client may express a particular need, which we then
refer to as their need, and we invite them to expand on it further. Failure to use
gender-neutral language or to address a person by their preferred pronoun is
considered a form of microaggression in counselling (Singh & Dickey, 2017). Although I
follow the professional writing standards of the American Psychological Association
(2010) wherever possible, I diverge whenever equity and justice may be compromised.
Voices of Canadians
I have been purposeful in this book to foreground Canadian voices in the selection of
contributors and the client stories. Some of these writers and clients are descendants of
Turtle Island’s First peoples whose land and cultural claims to this vast country have yet to be
recognized by the Canadian government; some like me are settlers whose ancestors came
from European countries at the time of first contact and colonization or in the centuries that
followed; others are descendants of immigrants who came from other parts of the world
within our nation’s more recent history; some are newcomers through forced migration or
immigration. This diversity of heritage forms an important background to understanding the
uniqueness of Canadian multicultural society and to fully appreciating what social justice
might look like within our profession and within society as a whole. Within this colourful
palate of ethnic heritage, we collectively profile other aspects of our cultural identities in the
context of Canada’s evolving demographics, legal and political contexts, and sociocultural
discourses related to age, ability, social class, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, and
sexual orientation. My commitment to the voices of Canadians is reflected also in the use of
Canadian spelling, the prioritizing of Canadian research and theory wherever possible, and the
decision to publish the e-book locally. I hope that these choices will offer a unique perspective
on professional identity in counselling and psychology.
xxii | Preface
Enhanced, Interactive Glossary
In most publications, the glossary is intended as a supplementary resource. In this e-book,
however, it is a core component of the content. Each of the key terms in the CRSJ counselling
model is defined in detail in the Enhanced, Interactive Glossary. It is in the glossary that I
ground these ideas in the context of formative and current research and writing within
counselling and psychology, as well as other health disciplines (where applicable). Developing
the glossary has enabled me to ensure that the concepts introduced throughout the book are
used in a congruent manner, and it has freed each author up to write about their ideas
without having to redefine each key concept in their writing. For this reason, you should not
read any of the chapters without reviewing the relevant definitions of the key concepts found
in the glossary, because that will result in an incomplete picture. So please integrate reading
the glossary into your study of the book. I also hope that the glossary will provide a
stand-alone resource for readers that reflects current thinking in relation to various concepts
in the multicultural and social justice literature.
Optimizing Your Learning Through the E-book Experience
I have carefully considered my research and experience related to how best to support the
development of professional competence through the design and the learning processes
employed throughout this work. For instance, the use of e-book format, itself, is deliberate
from a pedagogical perspective, because it enables me to provide a more conceptually
integrated, interactive, and accessible learning experience.
• The CRSJ counselling model presented in Chapter 1 is organized into six domains, and
each contains a number of core competencies. In Chapter 2, I have articulated
corresponding key concepts and specific learning outcomes to expand each of these
competencies . My intent is to make it easy for readers to track their competency
development and for instructors to build curriculum around these competencies, key
concepts, and learning outcomes.
• You will notice that there is no index. Because of the ability to embed active hyperlinks,
the expanded CRSJ counselling model in Chapter 2 functions more effectively than a
traditional index to support tracking various ideas or concepts throughout the e-book.
Preface | xxiii
From any of the learning objectives in the CRSJ counselling model, you can link directly to
a glossary definition of the key concept(s) addressed as well as to the specific chapters in
the e-book that illustrate, exemplify, or further explain that key term.
• A table is provided at the beginning of each chapter with the specific key concepts that
are highlighted in the chapter. You can click on any of these key concepts to go to the
section of the chapter where it is exemplified or explained. Wherever possible, client
stories are designed to provide applied practice examples of each construct.
• As you read each chapter, you will also notice that certain direct links are provided to the
glossary as key concepts are used throughout the chapter. Click on the link to access the
definition of the term. A comprehensive reference list is provided for the glossary at the
end of the e-book. This allowed writers to minimize the citations in the individual
chapters, makes the chapters more readable by avoiding redundancy in defining and
positioning key ideas, and brings forth author voices more clearly.
• Each of the contributing writers has attempted to enliven their writing by including
personal and professional stories, questions for reflection, direct links to relevant
resources, or other learning tools. We intend these resources to encourage you to engage
both cognitively and affectively with the materials to foster growth in your own personal
and professional knowledge and attitudes. We also hope to encourage the development of
competencies that extend beyond attitudes and knowledge to the fostering of applied
practice skills.
E-book Navigation Tips
Click on the book cover image or this link to watch a short video in
which I demonstrate some of the interactive navigation features of the
e-book.
Other short videos are embedded throughout the book to expand on
these non-linear and reader-driven learning options. See Chapter 2,
Chapter 3, and the Enhanced, Interactive Glossary.
I use Adobe Acrobat Reader in this demonstration; however, the basic
navigation features are similar in other PDF readers.
I encourage you to break with tradition, and resist the urge to read through this e-book only
sequentially, chapter-by-chapter. The CRSJ counselling model, the core competencies, and
the multicultural and social justice constructs are purposefully interconnected throughout. I
encourage you to engage your curiosity and to explore ideas or principles that interest you in
a nonlinear fashion. Read some theoretical material, then check out where it fits into the
xxiv | Preface
expanded CRSJ counselling model in Chapter 2, and follow the links to see how this concept or
principle is applied in one or more case scenarios or other applied practice examples.
I also recognize that, as a reader, you bring your expertise in both your cultural identities and
social locations and in your competency for culturally responsive and socially just counselling
practice. I encourage you to engage in thoughtful self-assessment relative to the CRSJ
counselling model and to set your own learning goals. It up to you, as the learner, to focus on
the resources and activities that support your continued competency development.
Independent Publisher Book Award
I am delighted that this book was awarded a silver medal for best
e-book design in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Since
1996, the “IPPY” Awards have recognized books published by
independent authors and publishers from around the world. These
awards are well-respected in the book industry. The 2019 medalists
were from Australia, Canada, the United States, France, Germany,
Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United
Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
A Living, Evolving, Collaborative Work
Although, for most of my career, I have focused my own research, writing, and teaching on
multicultural counselling, and more recently, on the emergent emphasis on social justice in
counselling, I do not consider myself an expert on either of these topics. I am curious,
passionate, committed, and excited about how cultural responsivity and social justice play out
within the profession; however, I entered the writing of this e-book as a learner, an explorer, a
listener, and a collaborator. Although I did the detailed work of merging ideas and
transforming them into the CRSJ counselling model, I do not lay claim to all of the ideas. I have
been touched and influenced by many others along the way.
It has been a great privilege to write this book and to integrate the writing of so many of my
Preface | xxv
colleagues, supervisees, students, and mentors. It is my hope that you will engage with these
ideas as an active contributor to our shared appreciation for culture and social justice. This
book is not intended to offer a final or definitive or universal perspective, but I do hope that it
will challenge, inspire, and motivate you to carefully consider your professional values and
identity and to embrace a vision for social change in which we collectively address the
systemic challenges that bring many clients into our offices in the first place.
The beauty of an e-book is that the book itself can evolve and grow over time. Because of the
endless combinations and permutations of cultural identities, social locations, and contexts of
peoples’ lives, there are many other voices that could contribute to our shared understanding
of cultural responsivity and social justice in counselling practice. I invite those of you reading
this e-book to contact me directly if you have a story to tell that could enhance this work. I
hope to continue to add to this edited collection over time.
CRSJ Counselling: Teaching and Learning Guide
As a counsellor educator, one of the gaps in resources I have noted over the years is in the
tools for teaching and learning about cultural responsivity and social justice in counselling. To
address this gap, I have built a collection of learning activities and resources that I use in my
own graduate teaching. These activities are designed to engage learners actively in the
learning process. There is considerable evidence that experiential learning, practice-based
learning, interactive and multimedia tools, and other processes that invite constructivist
learning are most effective in supporting competency development (Collins, Arthur, Brown,
2013a, 2013b). In part, this is because they draw on more than simply processes of knowledge
acquisition. They invite learners into emotional, attitudinal, and sensory engagement with the
phenomena, concepts, or practices, and they challenge learners to engage in higher order
cognitive and other skills development and application. The Culturally Responsive and Socially
Just Counselling: A Teaching and Learning Resource (Collins, 2018) provides a series of learning
activities and resources organized according to the domains and competencies in the CRSJ
counselling model. This resource is open source, which means that counsellor educations,
trainers, or practitioners can link to, copy, import, or otherwise repurpose any of the content
within their courses. I encourage all readers of the book to take advantage of this additional
resource. I will link to particular sections of the teaching and learning guide within some of
the conceptual chapters.
xxvi | Preface
Reflections from the Book Editor
I am deeply grateful to my editor for her very important contributor to this book. Chris Fox
has been much more than a copy editor in the creation of this work. She has been a second set
of eyes on the content, including and importantly, my own writing. She brought a wealth of
experience in social justice and activism that informed her lens on the writing. She has
challenged me when I have uncritically inserted assumptions or assertions into my own
writing that required further examination and reconsideration. She has also extended my
ideas by raising additional considerations or inviting elaboration.
There is increased attention in counselling to the way in which our use of language, both
written and spoken, is influenced by and mirrors dominant discourses in society. Because
Chris has a Ph.D. in English, her attention to the subtleties of language use has greatly
enhanced my own writing and given me a stronger appreciation for the way in which language
use is tied so intimately to dominant cultural norms and social stratification. In addition, she is
not a counsellor or psychologist, so she helped me to avoid psychobabble, wherever possible,
and to position my thinking in a broader interdisciplinary context. You can read her biography
and access contact information in the About the Contributors section in the back of the book.
Adding My Voice to CRSJ Counselling
By Chris Fox
Editing this e-book has been a deeply gratifying experience for me. It has been a
unique opportunity to bring all my selves into my work: my editing self that wants to
help by making the words on the page or screen convey exactly what the author
intended, and in a grammatically and stylistically correct way; my lesbian feminist
activist self that cares about creating more inclusive societies in Canada; and my
political working class self that was taught an awareness of being both less and more
privileged than others in the world. I am grateful to have been involved in bringing
something good to life.
Preface | xxvii
Although my doctorate focused on Canadian queer women’s literature, I have had a
lifelong interest in psychology, worked as a lay counsellor for the Community
Homophile Association of Toronto in the early 1970s, and been enriched by engaging in
psychotherapy. More recently, I completed a doctorate and taught academic writing
and literature at several universities. Sandra’s CRSJ model of counselling was a good fit
for me, not only because it is congruent with my social perspectives and my interests,
but also because, as a former student and teacher, it pleased me to help make the
e-book student-friendly. I have also enjoyed reading about how qualified, experienced
counsellors apply the CRSJ counselling model in their practices. I have learned so
much, personally, through editing this work that I encourage you to read it as closely
as I have and to bring its insights into your own life as well as into your work.
I also want to say how much I appreciate Sandra for allowing me to respond fully to
the various levels at play in the work. This enhanced my editing experience
immeasurably and gave me a sense of inclusion that is beyond the ordinary for an
editor; naturally, this also increased my care for the final product. It is unusual to
discuss the editing process openly with readers, as we have in this final document, and
I appreciate that transparency as well. I see CRSJ counselling in action even at this
level. Sandra’s and my author‒editor relationship has benefitted from the respect we
each brought to the endeavour; I trust you will find the work has also benefitted.
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Collins, S. (2018). Culturally responsive and socially just counselling: Teaching and learning
guide [EPub version]. Retrieved from Faculty of Health Disciplines Open Textbooks,
Athabasca University: https://crsjguide.pressbooks.com/
Collins, S., & Arthur, N. (2005). Multicultural counselling competencies: A framework for
xxviii | Preface
professional development. In N. Arthur & S. Collins (Eds.), Culture-infused counselling:
Celebrating the Canadian Mosaic (pp. 41-102). Calgary, AB: Counselling Concepts.
Collins, S., & Arthur, N. (2010a). Culture-infused counselling: A fresh look at a classic
framework of multicultural counseling competencies. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 23,
203-216. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515071003798204
Collins, S., & Arthur, N. (2010b). Culture-infused counselling: A model for developing cultural
competence. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 23, 217-233. https://doi.org/10.1080/
09515071003798212
Collins, S., Arthur, N., Bisson, S., & McMahon, M. (2015). Assessing the Multicultural and Social
Justice Competencies of Career Development Practitioners. Canadian Journal of Career
Development, 14(1), 4-16. Retrieved from http://cjcdonline.ca/
Collins, S., Arthur, N., Brown, C., & Kennedy, B. (2015). Student perspectives: Graduate
education facilitation of multicultural counseling and social justice competency. Training
and Education in Professional Psychology, 9, 153-160. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000070
Collins, S., Arthur, N., Brown, C. (2013a). Counsellor and practicum supervisor critical incidents
in the development of multicultural and social justice competency. International Journal of
Social Sciences, II(2), 16-32. Retrieved from http://www.iises.net/
Collins, S., Arthur, N., Brown, C. (2013b). Critical incidents in graduate student development of
multicultural and social justice competency. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies,
2(9), 105-115. https://doi.org/10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p105
Collins, S., Arthur, N., McMahon, M., & Bisson, S. (2014). Development of the Multicultural and
Social Justice Competencies (MCSJC) scale for career development practitioners. Canadian
Journal of Career Development, 13(1), 14-24. Retrieved from http://cjcdonline.ca/
Singh, A., & Dickey, L. M. (2017). Introduction. In A. Singh & L. M. Dickey (Eds.). Affirmative
counseling and psychological practice with transgender and gender nonconforming clients
(pp. 3-18). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/
14957-001
Preface | xxix
Acknowledgements
First, I want to acknowledge and honour the Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island and, more
specifically, the territory of the Lkwungen (Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ) First Nations,
on whose unceded traditional lands I now live and work. I also recognize the Métis Nation of
Greater Victoria. I acknowledge that I am a settler on Turtle Island, and that my heritage
includes the colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands. I recognize that I am a beneficiary,
both personally and professionally, of the ongoing genocide that Canada has committed
against Indigenous peoples. I choose to position myself as an ally in the process of
reconciliation, to voice my respect towards Indigenous Peoples, and to commit to the pursuit
of justice. My views of culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling have been
shaped significantly by the generous wisdom and gracious teachings of my Indigenous
colleagues.
I am also deeply grateful to all of my colleagues who have actively contributed to this book and
to the evolution of the CRSJ counselling model. I hope they hear their voices and those of their
clients in the way in which I examine cultural responsivity and social justice throughout the
book. I have also drawn extensively on the research and theory of other writers, which is
reflected in the Enhanced, Interactive Glossary.
I appreciate also the privilege I have been granted as an academic in the Faculty of Health
Disciplines at Athabasca University to pursue freely my research and writing interests and to
spend time writing this book. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Graduate Centre for
Applied Psychology for their shared commitment to social justice, which creates space for the
ongoing infusion of cultural responsivity and social justice into our Master of Counselling
program. I am also very aware of the way in which I have been shaped in my thinking by the
students I have taught and those I have been fortunate to supervise. Some of them are also
contributors to this work.
I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to the many clients who have influenced my
thinking and that of the other contributors. Although the client stories are composite and
anonymized creations, they are derived from the lived experiences of our own clients to
whose narratives and lived experiences we have been privileged to bear witness. These are the
people and peoples whose stories have shaped our lives personally and professionally by
xxx | Acknowledgements
teaching us about ourselves, about the counselling process, and about the world we
co-inhabit.
As noted in the Preface, this book would not be what it is without the skilled and thoughtful
editing of Chris Fox who has contributed substantively to the overall quality of this work from
professional writing, academic, and social justice perspectives.
I also want to acknowledge the technical support of Steve Swettenham, who has coached me
and greatly improved the look and functionality of this e-book, as well as the accompanying
teaching and learning guide.
Thank you as well to Kathryn McCannell, the therapist I have worked with for the past seven
years, who has supported me through life transitions, work hurdles, and my continued growth
and self-discovery. Most importantly, in this context, she helped me reclaim voice, embrace
creativity, and bring myself more fully into my writing.
Although last in this list, the one person without whom this book would never have come to
fruition is my lovely spouse, Glo Kelly. She has stood by me through almost impossible odds,
because she believes in me, and she saw the vision I had for this work. As in all things, she is
my home, my comfort, my present, and my future. Her tireless support has made possible the
transformation of this book from a vision to a reality.
Acknowledgements | xxxi
Contributors
E-Book Author/Editor
Sandra Collins, PhD, RPsych
I write from the perspective of a lesbian, cisgender,
middle-class woman with an invisible disability, who is near
retirement age and inhabits a privileged social location. I am
also positioned by my European heritage and consequent
settler relationship to colonization, and my atheist belief. I
am a professor of counselling psychology in the Graduate
Centre for Applied Psychology, Faculty of Health Disciplines
at Athabasca University. I have focused my research,
writing, and teaching, over the length of my career, on
multicultural counselling and social justice with specific
attention to working with LGBTTQI persons, women, and
girls. I have also specialized in the area of counsellor
education, in particular, online and blended delivery.
Currently, I am a curriculum lead within our faculty, and I
am working with my colleagues to infuse the focus on
culture and social justice throughout our Masters of
Counselling program. I have been publishing books and
journal articles on multicultural counselling and social
justice for the past 20 years. I aspire to spend more of my
time painting and engaged in other creative projects! I
enjoyed creating the book cover and other art used in this
book.
http://fhd.athabascau.ca/faculty/scollins/
This e-book can be purchased directly through the publisher, Counselling Concepts, at
https://counsellingconcepts.ca/.
xxxii | Contributors
Professional Editor
L. Chris Fox, PhD
I worked primarily as a queer feminist, and union social
justice activist and an engineering assistant before finishing
a Ph.D. in English at the University of Victoria where my
research focussed significantly on intersectional
postmodern Canadian literature. I have taught academic
writing and literature at Simon Fraser, Victoria, and Royal
Roads universities. My business, Fox Edits
(lchrisfox@shaw.ca), specializes in editing academic work
for publication. I have published as an activist in alternative
periodicals and as an academic in scholarly journals and
literary magazines. I live in Victoria with my partner of 38
years, author Arleen Paré; our children and grandchildren
live in Vancouver.
Contributing Writers
I am deeply grateful to all of my colleagues who have contributed commentaries to elucidate
key concepts, case studies based on their client work, stories of their practice experiences,
and conceptual or theoretical reflections. All of these contributions are designed to help you
imagine how to apply the culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling model in
work with individual clients, families, organizations, communities, and broader systems. Their
contributions of clients’ stories and descriptions of how they have engaged in culturally
responsive and socially just relationships, case conceptualizations, and change processes in
collaboration with those clients bring to life the benefits of practice based on the CRSJ
counselling model.
Contributors | xxxiii
Cristelle Audet, PhD
I am an associate professor of Counselling Psychology at the
University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education. I was previously
president of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy
Association’s Social Justice Chapter and have been involved
with the association’s Ethics Committee since 2010. Devoted
to promoting counselling and psychotherapy practices
informed by social justice values, I co-edited Counseling and
Social Justice: Discourse in Practice (Routledge, 2018),
authored a chapter on social justice for the Handbook of
Counselling and Psychotherapy in Canada, and conduct and
supervise research that focuses on forefronting
under-represented voices of counselling clients.
http://education.uottawa.ca/en/people/audet-cristelle
Adrienne Carter, MSW, RCSW
Co-founder of the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for
Immigrants and Refugees (VICCIR), I am a psychotherapist
with over 40 years of local and international experience. I
have 24 years experience working with Victoria Child &
Youth Mental Health and extensive international experience
working with survivors of torture, war, and natural disasters
through Doctors Without Borders/Médicins Sans
Frontières (15 deployments) as well as the Centre for Victims
of Torture in Kenya and Jordan. I have extensive
capacity-building experience in the area of refugee mental
health and have led numerous trainings on this subject both
locally and internationally.
xxxiv | Contributors
Jeff Chang, PhD, RPsych
I am Chinese Canadian man, born in Vancouver at the
trailing edge of the baby boom. I am an associate professor
in the Graduate Centre for Applied Psychology at Athabasca
University. I also work as a therapist and clinical supervisor
at Calgary Family Therapy Centre and maintain a private
practice. My work as a researcher, a clinical supervisor, a
psychologist, an advocate, and a workshop
presenter-trainer intersect in my interest in improving
services for families immersed in high-conflict separation
and divorce. I am also passionate about clinical supervision,
children’s and school-based mental health (the subject of
my chapter in this e-book), and postmodern therapeutic
approaches like narrative and solution-focused therapy.
http://drjeffchang.webs.com
Judy Chew, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist and training coordinator at
the University of Calgary’s Counselling Centre as well as an
adjunct associate professor in the Werklund School of
Education at the University of Calgary. My professional
experiences and scholarly endeavors include supervision,
training, and clinical work related to trauma/abuse, grief
and loss, relationship concerns, and family-of-origin work. I
was a recipient of the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta
“Excellence in Supervision Award.” I use counselling
perspectives that enhance emotional, social, spiritual, and
physical well-being. I place value on understanding multiple
identities and their interplay in an individual’s experience of
challenges and choices. I serve as a manuscript reviewer for
the Canadian Journal of Counselling and an editorial board
member for the American Psychological Association (APA)
journal, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice,
and Policy. I have published in the areas of grief,
supervision, and trauma.
Contributors | xxxv
Karen Cook, PhD, RCC, RN
I am an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health
Disciplines, Athabasca University. I am also a nurse,
researcher, and family therapist. I have worked with
children and families managing chronic and palliative
conditions across many settings and roles. My current
research and practice is focused on developing a public
health approach to care for young adults with life-limiting
conditions. When they leave pediatric care, young adults
with life-limiting conditions no longer receive coordinated
health and community services that anticipate and manage
their unpredictable disease trajectories, co-ordinate social
services, and support their pursuit of meaningful activities.
A palliative approach to care aims to develop collaborative
partnerships across community and professional agencies
to ensure that timely and seamless resources are available
to support not only health, but also personal, social,
vocational and educational goals. Working with a team of
young adults, we have launched L3: Let’s Live a Little! to
develop these supports in British Columbia, Canada.
Ivana Djuraskovic, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist in Alberta Health Services in
Calgary, Alberta. I have extensive training and experience
counselling refugees and immigrants, and individuals who
are struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, personality
disorders, and other clinical issues. I work with diverse
populations, and I supervise Masters and Ph.D. practicum
students. I have published in peer-reviewed journals and
books. I have presented my research at both national and
international conferences, and I received the Canadian
Psychological Association Dissertation Award for my
doctoral dissertation. My research interests include
acculturation, cultural identity reconstruction, refugee
counselling, refugee women’s issues, and cross-cultural
transitions. Currently, I am a permanent adjunct faculty at
City University of Seattle (Calgary Campus), and a sessional
instructor at Athabasca University, Yorkville University, and
St. Mary’s University College. In my free time, I read, spend
time with my husband and son, ski, and ride a motorcycle. I
enjoy nature, new places, and “growing” my home library.
xxxvi | Contributors
Emily Doyle, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist, family therapist, and
supervisor at the Calgary Family Therapy Centre, and an
academic coordinator and instructor for the Graduate
Centre for Applied Psychology. From my positions of
academic, white, and cisgender privilege, I’m drawn to
approaches to therapy and research that trouble the
taken-for-granted in the institutional organization of our
practices in counselling individuals and families. These
include institutional ethnography, narrative therapy,
systemic family therapy, and other social constructionist
ways to look at my looking to see what I’m seeing.
Riel Dupuis-Rossi (Kanien’kehá:ka and Algonquin), MA,
MSW, RSW
I am a two-spirit person of the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk),
Algonquin and Italian descent. I currently work as a
psychotherapist with urban Indigenous adults in an
Indigenous-specific counselling program in Unceded Coast
Salish Territory (Vancouver, BC). I have also worked in
Indigenous organizations in Montreal, QC and in
community-based clinics in Los Angeles, CA, where the
largest concentration of urban Indigenous people in the US
live. My clinical and academic specializations are in
indigenous historical trauma, intergenerational and direct
residential school trauma, and complex trauma. A central
aspect of my work is to decolonize and Indigenize
individual, couple, family and group trauma therapy.
Contributors | xxxvii
Andrew Estefan, PhD, RPN
I am a registered psychiatric nurse in the province of
Alberta and an associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing
at the University of Calgary. Before coming to Canada, I
practiced and taught in the United Kingdom and Australia.
My practice and research focus upon the intersections of
mental health and human sexuality. In particular, I have
interests in self-harm, eating disorders, and trauma. These
interests have arisen from my practice as well as through
my own particular gay male lens on experience. My doctoral
work used narrative inquiry to explore the moral
dimensions of self-harm in same-sex attracted men. Since
this time, I have maintained a strong interest in how
self-harm is enacted and how it is responded to
therapeutically. My research also extends into
understanding the complexities of the relationship between
sexuality and mental health in experiences of physical
disease.
Faye Gosnell, MC, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist in Alberta. I have worked in
both public and private clinical settings, in teaching
assistant roles at Athabasca University and the University of
Calgary, and in organizational roles as the mental health
coordinator at Athabasca University. I find it difficult to
position myself using the identity labels available. I am a
clear beneficiary of white privilege, but my other cultural
identities (such as single mother) confer less privilege. As
such, I am always alert to the cultural identifications clients
and students privilege for themselves, as well as the
meanings they draw from these identifications. My curiosity
in this regard is supported by family systems, constructivist,
and social constructionist lenses. These allow me to view
persons-in-relationships as dynamic and evolving entities
with multiple possibilities available for change in preferred
directions.
xxxviii | Contributors
Lisa Gunderson, PhD, RCC
I am the founder of One Love Consulting and an
award-winning educator and equity consultant for families,
educational, and organizational institutions. Under OLC, I
am a registered clinical counsellor and intern supervisor at
LÁU, WELNEW Elementary Tribal School in British
Columbia. In 2017, I became the part-time associate
program director for the City University of Seattle, Masters
of Counselling program in Victoria. I received my Ph.D. in
clinical psychology from the University of Southern
California, and for the past 20 years, have focused on
multicultural issues for racialized populations, including
ethnic identity in the US and Canada. Prior to immigrating
to Canada seven years ago, I was a tenured professor of
psychology and a licensed California psychologist. I live in
Victoria with my partner and two children. I am of Jamaican
ancestry and grew up primarily throughout the US and
Jamaica. I enjoy spending time with my family, reading,
travelling, baking, and watching movies.
http://www.oneloveconsulting.com
Taya Henriques, MC, RCC, MTA
I work as a clinical counsellor/therapist with the Fraser
Health Authority in Langley, British Columbia. My primary
clinical interests are mental health advocacy and
counselling individuals, couples, and families from a family
systems perspective. I am a graduate of the Athabasca
University Graduate Centre for Applied Psychology (GCAP)
program, where I first began researching and writing on
counsellor bias with consensually nonmonogamous clients.
I am also an accredited music therapist (MTA), and I hold a
certificate in Marriage and Family Therapy from Living
Systems Counselling.
Contributors | xxxix
Mateo Huezo, MC
I am a clinical counsellor, activist, researcher, writer, and
teacher. I am actively involved across various projects
focused on queer, trans, and ethnoracial group mental
health, research, education, and advocacy. I believe in
shifting the narratives about nondominant cultural
experiences from one of disprivilege to one that centres
minority voice as a source of strength, identity, and
resilience. Check out the e-book I created for the trans
community, based on my masters research:
The trans community says . . .
Kirby Huminuik, PhD, RCC
I hold a PhD in Counselling Psychology and work as a
counsellor, consultant, researcher, and university
instructor. My clinical practice and scholarship is focused
on the intersection between mental health and human
rights. I earned the Global Mental Health Certificate from
Harvard Medical School in 2014, and I have been responsible
for international psychosocial human rights projects funded
by the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture
and the Canadian International Development Agency. I
provided consultation, program development, and
professional training services for the Province of British
Columbia in preparation for Syrian refugees arrival in 2016. I
am currently a staff psychologist and the internship
director in Health and Counselling Services at Simon Fraser
University. I am the lead researcher for a pilot study on
trauma-informed therapy service for refugees in
collaboration with the Immigrant Services Society of BC and
the Vancouver General Hospital Cross-cultural Psychiatry
Program. I also serve as a member of the APA task force on
Human Rights, which is charged with producing a report
advising APA on strategic directions in its engagement in
the promotion and protection of human rights.
http://kirbyhuminuik.wordpress.com
xl | Contributors
Naida D. Hyde, PhD
I grew up in white suburban Toronto, graduated from the
University of Toronto School of Nursing in 1964 and found
my calling when I worked in the local mental hospital. I
graduated in 1970 from Boston College as a clinical specialist
in psychiatric nursing and joined their graduate faculty. I
then fell in love with an African American woman and came
out as a lesbian. I returned to Canada, graduated from
University of Windsor with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in
1975, and became a Registered Psychologist specializing in
psychotherapy with women incest survivors in 1977. Later,
my then partner and I ran a women’s healing centre,
RavenSpirit. At the age of 65, I was invited to go to Lesotho,
in southern Africa, to do gender equity work with girls and
women. I felt a soul connection with the people of that
beautiful mountain kingdom and returned annually for five
more years. I am now part of a daily online creative writing
group, and I am surprising myself by writing poetry and
luxuriating in this new gift.
Melissa Jay, PhD Candidate, RPsych
I am a Métis woman of Cree ancestry who grew up without
awareness of Métis culture or the cultural injustices
directed at Indigenous people. As a psychologist and
university and yoga/mindfulness instructor, I have a keen
interest in authenticity, well-being and relationships. I am
spiritual and deeply connected to others through
compassion. My mission is to empower compassionate souls
to love themselves unconditionally. I earned my Bachelor of
Arts in Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan, my
Masters of Counselling degree at Athabasca University, and
I am a Ph.D. candidate, currently completing my
dissertation at Walden University. My research is focused
on women’s experiences of mindfulness in romantic
relationships. My spouse and I have a private practice in
Canmore, Alberta where I also provide Yoga Psychology
workshops and retreats.
http://www.canmorecounselling.com
Contributors | xli
Jo Anni Joncas, Ph.D.
Je suis une femme franco-canadienne. Je détiens un
doctorat en éducation. Mes intérêts concernent la
sociologie de l’éducation, la justice sociale, les études
supérieures et les politiques éducatives. Je travaille avec les
Premiers Peuples depuis près d’une décennie dans une visée
de décolonisation des systèmes éducatifs.
I am a French-Canadian woman, with a doctoral degree in
education. I am interested in the sociology of education,
social justice, higher education, and educational policy. I
have been working with First Peoples in Quebec for almost
a decade with the aim of decolonizing school systems.
E. Fisher Lavell, MEd, PMCC, CCC
After many years in school counselling, I have opened a
private therapy practice in Northern Manitoba, where I use
my working class and Indigenous cultural knowledges to
work effectively with many client groups. Particular areas of
expertise are authentic relationship-building with poor and
disadvantaged clients; supporting and advising parents,
children, and families; overcoming anxiety, school refusal,
and destructive anger; and processing trauma, loss, and
grieving.
https://heritagenarrativetherapy.com/
xlii | Contributors
Heather Macdonald, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist and clinical fellow with the
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
currently employed as an associate director and internship
coordinator at City University. I have been working with
at-risk children and teens for the last 20 years. I opened my
own private practice 12 years ago and, more recently,
completed my PhD in Clinical Psychology. I bring an
understanding of child and adolescent development,
supervisory and management experience, teaching/training
facilitation experience, and a wealth of knowledge in
connecting with children and teenagers about their
educational and socioemotional needs. My own personal
journey with learning disability gives me an inside view of
what children experience in their day-to-day academic
journeys. Using my own journey to find an optimal learning
and healing environment, I discovered the importance of
secure attachment, of having an environment where the
brain is allowed to change and grow, and of families,
communities, and governments working together.
http://www.trioptimallearningmodel.com
Marie-Odile Magnan, Ph.D.
Je suis sociologue de l’éducation et professeure agrégée au
Département d’administration et fondements de l’éducation
de l’Université de Montréal. Je possède un doctorat en
sociologie de l’Université Laval. Je coordonne le champ «
Éducation et socialisation » à l’Observatoire Jeunes et
Société (INRS-UCS). Mes intérêts de recherche portent sur
l’analyse des enjeux ethnoculturels et linguistiques en
éducation. Mes recherches portent sur les pratiques
d’équité et d’inclusion du personnel scolaire en milieu
pluriethnique. Je travaille également sur les parcours
identitaires, scolaires et postsecondaires des jeunes issus de
groupes minoritaires et racisés.
I am an educational sociologist and associate professor in
the Department of Administration and Educational
Foundations at the Université de Montréal. My research
interests focus on the analysis of ethnocultural and
linguistic issues in education, equity and inclusion of school
staff in multiethnic settings, and identity and
educational-career pathways of young people from minority
and racialized groups.
Contributors | xliii
Judi Malone, PhD, RPsych
In my role as CEO of the Psychologists’ Association of
Alberta I facilitate relationships and engage social media in
advocacy to both strengthen the profile of psychology and
for the critical issue of access. Hailing from rural
northeastern Alberta, I have a passion for contexts of
practice and am humbled to self-identify as both a colonizer
and one of the colonized in Canada’s landscape. My
scientist-practitioner experience hails from clinical practice
and academic roles working with disadvantaged
populations. I have dual registration in Alberta and Australia
and clinical expertise in trauma, the neurobiology of
addictions, and professional ethics in rural and small
communities; I have been an instructor for Athabasca
University since 2000.
http://psychology.athabascau.ca/faculty/jmalone/
Stephanie Martin, PhD, RPsych
I earned my PhD in counselling psychology from the
University of Calgary, Alberta. I am a registered doctoral
psychologist, associate professor and graduate chair in the
Department of Educational Psychology and Special
Education, University of Saskatchewan. My areas of
professional interest include theories and practice of
counselling and psychotherapy, ethics, qualitative research
methodology, psychology of women and gender, healing
from interpersonal trauma, and professional development
and well-being.
xliv | Contributors
Simon Nuttgens, PhD, RPsych
I am an associate professor with Athabasca University’s
Graduate Centre for Applied Psychology. My areas of
research interest include counselling ethics, postmodern
approaches to counselling, paternal absence, and First
Nations mental health. I served two years as chair of the
Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Ethics Complaints
Committee and three years as chair of the Athabasca
University Research Ethics Board. I have written and
presented extensively in the area of professional ethics. I
provide counselling, supervision, and consultation services
for a nonprofit multiservice agency in Penticton, BC.
David Paré, PhD, CPsych
I am the director of the Glebe Institute, A Centre for
Constructive and Collaborative Practice in Ottawa. I am a
registered psychologist and an adjunct faculty member in
Counselling Psychology at the University of Ottawa. I am
the author of The Practice of Collaborative Counselling and
Psychotherapy (Sage, 2013), and co-editor of Counseling and
Social Justice: Discourse in Practice (Routledge, 2018);
Collaborative Practice in Psychology and Therapy (Haworth
Press, 2004); and Furthering Talk: Advances in the Discursive
Therapies (Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Press, 2004).
Contributors | xlv
Annie Pilote, PhD
Je suis professeure titulaire à la Faculté des sciences de
l’éducation de l’Université Laval. Sociologue de l’éducation,
je m’intéresse aux parcours éducatifs des jeunes et à
l’analyse des systèmes scolaires et des dispositifs
d’orientation. Mes recherches en cours portent notamment
sur les inégalités à l’enseignement supérieur selon l’origine
sociale et ethnoculturelle des étudiants.
I am a full professor in the Faculty of Education Sciences at
the University of Laval. As an educational sociologist, I am
interested in the educational pathways of young people and
the analysis of school systems and guidance systems. My
current research focuses on inequalities in higher education
based on the social and ethnocultural background of
students.
Mahdi Qasqas, MC, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist and head of Q&A
Psychological Services. Along with my team, I strive to help
clients overcome the cultural, language, and financial
barriers to timely and culturally responsive services. I have
worked both professionally and probono with a range of
organizations, including but not limited to, Child and Family
Services, Corrections Canada, Alberta Health Services, and
many other nonprofit and Islamic organizations, including
most mosques across Alberta. My international work has
involved countries including Germany, Palestine, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, and the US. I am currently completing my
Ph.D. with the University of Calgary in the Faculty of Social
Work, with a focus on enhancing the motivation and
satisfaction of volunteer leaders.
xlvi | Contributors
Allison Reeves, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist and a faculty member in
Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies at the
University of Victoria. My research interests are in the areas
of anti-oppressive psychologies, sexualized trauma
recovery, and Indigenous healing. My doctoral research and
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto were
funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
and explored culture-based Indigenous mental health and
healing services for individuals recovering from sexualized
violence in Anishnawbe communities. I spent the last five
years in Toronto working as the psychologist on staff at
Anishnawbe Health Toronto, and in a forensic psychology
role supporting sexualized assault survivors in civil litigation
suits.
Vikki Reynolds, PhD, RCC
I am an activist/therapist who works to bridge the worlds of
social justice activism with community work and therapy. I
am a white settler of Irish, Newfoundland and English folks
and a heterosexual woman with cisgender privilege. My
experience includes supervision and therapy with peers and
other workers responding to the opioid epidemic/
poisonings, refugees and survivors of torture, sexualized
violence counsellors, mental health and substance misuse
counsellors, housing and shelter workers, and activists,
working alongside gender and sexually diverse
communities. I am an adjunct professor with City
University, and I have written and presented internationally
on the subjects of witnessing resistance to oppression/
trauma, ally work, justice-doing, and supervision of
solidarity, ethics, and innovative group work. My articles
and keynotes are available free on my website.
http://www.vikkireynolds.ca
Contributors | xlvii
Fatima Saleem, RSW, CCC
I am a Canadian certified counsellor and a registered social
worker with over five years of successful experience as an
educator, researcher, counsellor, and community programs
coordinator. My main interests are mental health and social
well-being of youth, newcomers, and refugee populations. I
believe in the innate strengths and abilities of my clients
and empower them on their path to recovery and healing.
Gina Wong, PhD, RPsych
I am an associate professor in the Graduate Centre for
Applied Psychology at Athabasca University. I am dedicated
to galvanizing maternal mental health and wellness
endeavours in Canada for women in the perinatal period of
life. I am certified with Postpartum Support International
and have trained in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders
(PMAD) in advanced clinical skills. I have authored/edited
three books: Counsellor Know Thyself: Growing Ourselves,
Shaping our Professional Practice (Wong, 2010); Moms Gone
Mad: Motherhood and Madness Oppression and Resistance
(Wong, 2012); and Mothering in East Asian Communities:
Politics and Practices (Duncan & Wong, 2014); and have
developed the PMAD educational curriculum for the Baby
Box University. In my passion for parent-child relational
well-being, I research an early parenting intervention
program, and have trained as a Circle of Security®
Parenting educator, and conduct Circle of Security
assessment and treatment planning. I also serve as an
expert witness in maternal filicide cases in Canada.
http://fhd.athabascau.ca/faculty/gwong/
xlviii | Contributors
Don Zeman, PhD, RPsych
I am a registered psychologist in Alberta. I have been a
healthcare professional for over 28 years, first as a
chiropractor (11 years), then as a sport mental trainer/sport
psychologist, becoming a counsellor and psychologist most
recently. Before that I was a professional figure skater and
did about 5,000 performances in pair and solo skating in
over 50 countries. These experiences contribute to my
current social constructionist, queer, and feminist
perspectives, which I bring into my teaching and
counselling. Currently, I am an instructor with three online
Masters of Counselling programs and an adjunct associate
professor in the Werklund School of Education, University
of Calgary. I am intrigued by, and curious about, how we use
language, receive it, and take it up in counselling
conversations and our lives.
Contributors | xlix
INTRODUCTION
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need
to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Desmond Tutu
For most of their history, the professions of counselling and psychology have focused on
pulling people out of the river, with little or no attention to how they ended up there in the
first place and why it is that they are without the resources to find a way out of the river
themselves. Typically, we practitioners and the professions as a whole have fulfilled this role
without getting our feet wet or leaving the comfort of our practice conventions and
structured environments.
However, people continue to end up in the river, and in fact, the problem is escalating rather
than diminishing. Closer examination often reveals that these people and peoples are
disproportionately among the most marginalized in society. We have thrived as professions by
repeatedly tossing in life preservers in spite of the increased cost to the those struggling
against the flow of the river. Our blindness to the causes of this ongoing crisis has enabled us
to deny our own roles in creating and maintaining the social, economic, and political
structures that position certain others on the slippery slope.
It is time for the professions, and those of us within them who are brave enough, to step
outside our comfort zones to see and act upon the sources of the problem. This requires us to
reposition ourselves to directly address the slippery slope and the wild river, in service of
unsuspecting people and peoples who are perpetually being lead to its edge.
Bishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. See his short biography on the
Nobel Prize website.
1 | Introduction
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and
Socially Just (CRSJ) Counselling:
Principles and Practices
SANDRA COLLINS
One of the things I love to do most in life is snorkeling. I don my mask, put my head under the
water, and suddenly, a whole world that was completely invisible from the surface opens up.
Unimaginable colour combinations, energy and movement, beautiful textures and designs,
and many communities of similarity amid endless diversity. Each time I enter the water, I am
curious and excited about what I will discover. I am also always a little bit scared, because I am
stepping outside my comfort zone, and I cannot fully predict what I will encounter in this vast
undersea world.
© Collins, 2013
Through this book, I invite you to join me on a different kind of adventure that will also
require you to take some risks and to be open to seeing the world in a new way. I am not an
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 2
expert in culture or social justice. Instead, I am on a journey of discovery in which I am a
lifelong learner. As you join me on this journey, considering the following questions for
reflection.
• What excites you most?
• What peaks your curiosity?
• What triggers fear or anxiety?
• Where do you want to take risks and step outside your comfort zone?
• Where do you hope this journey will take you?
Cultural Responsivity in Counselling
Like the vastness of diversity in the ocean, human culture is complex, multifaceted, and
constantly on the move. Within the counselling psychology profession, our understanding of
concepts like culture and multicultural are also ever evolving and changing.
E-Book Navigation Tip
Please be sure to watch the E-book Navigation Tips video in the Preface. Then review
the definitions of culture and multicultural by clicking on the embedded links. Don’t
worry if an idea or term used in the definition is unfamiliar to you; I systematically
introduce each concept in the chapters that follow. Please also review the short video
to optimize your use of the Enhanced, Interactive Glossary.
One of the important shifts in the multicultural literature over the past several decades is an
expansion of our understanding of cultural identities. (Remember to click on these active links
to review the definition as each concept is introduced.) Mirroring, and supported by, the
American civil rights movement of the 1960s, in North America particularly, members of
3 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
marginalized ethnic populations rose up against the Eurocentric culture of counselling and
psychology and advocated for theories and practices grounded in those marginalized cultural
experiences and worldviews. This resulted in the development of multicultural counselling
competencies centred around responsivity to ethnic diversity (American Psychological
Association, 2002; Arredondo et al., 1996; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; Sue et al., 1982).
During the same time period, the feminist movement buoyed up the voices of female
practitioners and academics, who focused attention on the way in which the patriarchy played
out within the professions through the marginalization of women’s experiences, development,
and ways of knowing and being (Miller, 1976; Brown & Ballou, 1992; Gilligan, 1982; Jordan,
Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991; Worrel & Remer, 1996). Similar movements occurred
within other cultural communities (e.g., queer, persons with disabilities), which collectively
resulted in a broader perspective on how cultural identities are defined in the context of
multicultural counselling. It is quite common now, in the counselling psychology literature, for
culture and cultural identities to be inclusive of ethnicity, age, ability, gender, sexual
orientation, and religion or spirituality. More recently, gender identity and social class have
been added to this list.
In this book, I explicitly separate Indigeneity from ethnicity as an eighth dimension of cultural
identities, because too often the voices of Indigenous peoples are marginalized even within
the multicultural counselling literature by failures to recognize the qualitative difference
between the lived experiences and social positioning of First Peoples and those of ethnic
groups who, however painfully they arrived and survived here, are now part of colonial and
settler populations. Although my colleagues in other fields, such as social work, have been
using the term social location for decades, this language has only recently begun to permeate
the counselling psychology literature. Please review the glossary definition of social location.
This concept is foundational to the culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling
model presented in this book, because it provides an important lens for talking about culture
in counselling. The identities associated with gender, ability, social class, and so on are not
value-neutral. These have been socially constructed over time to serve the purpose of
separating and creating hierarchical relationships among cultural groups. In Chapter 6 I
explore in detail the implications for counselling of locating persons and peoples within
society based on their cultural identities.
The other major shift in the multicultural counselling literature in recent years is the focus on
intersectionality (Collins, 2010; Nassar-McMillan, 2014; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler,
& McCullough, 2016). Although each of the major movements noted above had, and continues
to have, an important role in promoting the unique perspectives and needs of various
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 4
nondominant populations, the cultural silos that were erected within the discipline of
counselling psychology also masked important considerations of client lived experiences
within the spaces between and among their various cultural identities. In other words, women
of colour, Indigenous persons with disabilities, or impoverished queer youth have unique,
complex, and intersecting identities that cannot be understood in isolation from one another.
I attend more fully to the implications of intersectionality in Chapter 3. For now I introduce
this term as a rationale for not exploring culture on a population-by-population basis in this
book. Rather, I introduce principles and practices for all counsellors working with all clients,
taking into account both counsellor and client intersecting identities. The client (and
counsellor) narratives positioned throughout the book are intended to support this focus on
intersectionality.
The broad definition of culture and the emphasis on intersectionality forms a foundation for
embracing a ubiquitous approach to multicultural counselling (Arthur & Collins, 2015; Sinacore
et al., 2011). Culture is present in all aspects of the counselling process, within all
counsellor–client relationships, and within the lived experiences and social contexts of both
counsellor and client. In this sense, all counselling is multicultural in nature and culture is
inextricably intertwined with counselling. Therefore, the CRSJ counselling model presented in
this book should not be treated as applicable only to clients who are traditionally positioned as
“culturally different.” In fact, I argue that we, as practitioners, outgrow and oppose this
language of difference, because it reflects the colonial and patriarchal roots of the profession
by most often positioning members of nondominant populations as different from the
dominant norms of the white, male, settler, able-bodied, middle class, middle age,
heterosexual, cisgender, Christian population. It also falsely assumes that the counsellor
identifies with dominant cultural identities and the client with nondominant cultural
identities. These important historical shifts in the way multicultural counselling is
conceptualized lead me to focus on the cultural uniqueness of each counsellor, client, and
counsellor–client interaction, taking into account their self-defined relationships with cultural
communities and contexts.
Please review the definition of cultural responsivity. I have chosen this specific language as a
framework for this book, because it implies an active stance on the part of the counsellor.
Being open to listening to, and valuing, client cultural identities and perspectives is a first
step; however, counsellors are required to take action on what they learn about client culture
to create a culturally responsive counsellor–client relationship, to conceptualize client
presenting concerns in ways that honour client views of health and healing, and to design
change processes that are meaningful and offer hope for attainment of client preferred
5 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
outcomes. Ratts and colleagues (2015) added action as a fourth component of the traditional
competency development markers: attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, and skills. The goal of
this book is to enhance your ability to attend to cultural diversity as foundation for competent
and ethical practice with all clients (Arredondo & Toporek, 2004; Sue, 2008; Sinacore et al.,
2011). I hope that by the time you work your way through it, you will have developed the
knowledge, embraced the attitudes and beliefs, and enhanced your skills, and that this
prepares you to take culturally responsive action in service of each of the clients you
encounter.
Social Justice in Counselling
The second way in which action is currently invoked in counselling is in the enactment of
social justice within and beyond the counselling process. There is a long history of social
justice in vocational counselling; however, it is only in the last decade or so that conversations
about social justice have become more common in counselling and psychology more broadly
(Arthur & Collins, 2014). Many now argue that counsellors have an ethical responsibility to
attend to social justice in and through their counselling practices (Audet, 2016; Wislade, 2018).
Multicultural counselling has been described as the fourth force in counselling and
psychology (with behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic psychology as the first three
forces). Social justice is now accepted by many as a fifth force (Audet & Paré, 2018; Chung &
Bemak, 2012; Gazzola, LaMarre, & Smoliak, 2018). The social justice paradigm entails a shift
away from the individualistic focus of traditional psychological theory and practice and
toward acknowledging, and being responsive to, the sociocultural contexts of clients’ lives.
These contexts must also extend beyond appreciation of their cultural identities and group
affiliations to the broader systems that impact their health and well-being.
Carefully review the definition of social justice. You will notice some tensions within the
definition between the aspirational goal of a just society and what is realistic and efficacious
within a counselling practice (Winslade, 2018). I have struggled over the years with this
tension. I assume an intentional stance of believing the best of people around me, and I am
optimistic about the possibilities for social change, particularly as people join together to fight
against oppression in its many forms. Take, for example, the It Gets Better project, which has
impacted innumerable LGBTTQI youth through stories of hope and solidarity, the Black Lives
Matter movement, a collective political and ideological intervention against violence and
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 6
oppression of Black people, and the Me Too movement, which connects victims of sexual
violence with one another to lift the veil, interrupt, and work against sexual exploitation and
abuse. I am also realistic about the nature of society and the forces that influence our modern
world (e.g., nationalism, capitalism, xenophobia, colonialism), and I see the pursuit of social
justice as a journey and a process, not a destination at which I anticipate the human race will
ever arrive.
What the fifth force in counselling and psychology offers counsellors is a values-based lens
through which to view practice that changes both how we interpret client presenting
concerns and how we approach change with clients, both as individuals and in the broader
contexts of their lives. First and foremost, socially just counselling, in the context of this book,
involves attending to the ways in which certain members of society are positioned as lesser
than, most often by virtue of their cultural identities and group affiliations. For this reason, I
define dominant and nondominant groups in society by their relative personal, interpersonal,
and group positioning in society (i.e., by social location), not by the relative numbers of
individuals in a group. In the case of social class, for example, a minority of people hold the
majority of wealth in all capitalist societies; this minority, therefore, is the dominant
population.
In any writing project, it is necessary to draw lines around what is included and what is
excluded. In the case of this book, I make a deliberate choice to focus attention on the lived
experiences and counselling needs of members of nondominant populations, particularly
those experiencing multiple marginalizations within North American society. I recognize that
cultural responsivity also applies to members of dominant populations and that they, too, are
negatively impacted by the unjust stratification of society. In fact, I argue (above) that all
counselling is multicultural in the sense that both counsellor and client bring complex and
intersecting cultural identities to the client–counsellor relationship and to the counselling
process. Rather, my choice to focus on nondominant populations is intended to advance the
cause of social justice and to align my energy with current and future clients who have
traditionally been marginalized within society and also within the professions of counselling
and psychology (Paré, 2013; Paré & Sutherland, 2016).
7 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
Language Choice as an Act of Justice-Doing
I am very conscious in writing this book of how certain choices in language and
grammar potentially implicate me in supporting the status quo of eurocentric
societies. Take the word, white, for example. The American Psychological Association
(2009) suggested capitalizing proper names of ethnic groups, including white.
However, white, when used throughout this book, is less about ethnic heritage (i.e.,
where contributors employ more specific identifiers such as European, Chinese, or
Cree) than it is about social location, our positioning of relative privilege as writers and
practitioners (e.g., white settler, white privilege). Capitalizing the word, white, also
imbues it with power that I and other contributors are attempting to deconstruct and
dismantle in our writing and our work. By way of contrast, I have chosen to capitalize
Indigenous and Black throughout this book in solidarity with the freedom, right, and
power of these peoples to self-define and to reclaim their collective cultural identities
in a way that enacts self-determination, demands recognition, and disrupts ongoing
colonization. Each person who has contributed to this book has written as an act of
justice-doing that includes challenging dominant norms related to language use.
Another problematic language issue is the use and the capitalization of western and
eurocentric. These word are most commonly positioned as proper nouns (i.e., Western,
Eurocentric) in professional writing, and they have been capitalized by many of the
contributors in this book to reference either European and North American societies
or to the eurocentric, individualist nature of counselling and psychology. However, in
my own chapters, I have chosen, purposefully, to not capitalize either. My intent is to
dismantle the privilege that euro-western influence has been accorded in North
American societies, and instead to celebrate cultural diversity, and to acknowledge the
rightful positioning of Indigenous peoples as the original, First Peoples throughout
North America. Instead, I use the terms eurocentric or euro-western (similarly lower
case) when qualifiers are required throughout the book. My hope is actively to call out
dominant discourses and norms, while loosening their grip on society and psychology.
It is also important to recognize that the language that Chris, the editor, and I have
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 8
discussed and chosen for this book is affected by our own personal, professional, and
academic contexts, contexts that themselves are only a snapshot in time. I expect that
our shared meaning-making and language choices will continue to evolve over time.
The CRSJ Counselling Model
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a model of culturally responsive and socially just
counselling. The CRSJ counselling model reflects my own evolving perspective on
multicultural counselling and social justice. I am influenced in my thinking by my earlier
collaborative research and writing (Collins & Arthur, 2010a, 2010b) as well as by the evolution
of competency models for multicultural counselling and social justice in the professional
literature (Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek, 2003; Nassar-McMillan, 2014; Ratts et al., 2015,
2016). I also integrate numerous conversations with students, instructors, practicum
supervisors, and practicing counsellors; and I engage in critical reflection on my own work
with clients.
In the process of developing the CRSJ counselling model, I conducted a thematic analysis of
over 30 case studies, some included in this book and others published elsewhere. Each spoke
to the application of principles of multicultural counselling and social justice in practice.
Through this thematic analysis and a comprehensive review of the professional literature, I
developed the list of key concepts reflected in the expanded CRSJ counselling model in
Chapter 2 and defined in the Enhanced, interactive glossary. I approached this thematic
analysis as an iterative process, continually revising the list of key concepts and selecting
language that was most inclusive of the diversity of perspectives of the case study authors.
Then I organized these key concepts into meaningful clusters, and from those clusters, I
generated themes and subthemes that became the 6 domains and 18 core competencies (CC)
in the model below. I am deeply grateful to all of my colleagues who shared their work with
me, supported the development of this model, and enhanced my own learning.
9 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
Core Competencies for CRSJ Counselling
Domain I: Acknowledge the Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in Counselling
1. CC1 Cultural Sensitivity: Engage in cultural self-exploration as a foundation for
cultural sensitivity towards client cultural identities and relationalities.
2. CC2 Intersectionality: Appreciate and reflect critically on the complexity and
intersectionality of cultural identities and relationalities.
3. CC3: Worldviews: Value the diversity of worldviews, and prioritize client beliefs,
values, and assumptions.
Domain II: Challenge Social Injustices, and Critique Their Impact on Client–Counsellor
Social Locations
4. CC4 Social Injustice: Attend actively to social determinants of health, and
evaluate the impact of social injustices on client health and well-being.
5. CC5 Power and Privilege: Assess critically the impact of power and privilege on
client–counsellor social locations.
6. CC6 Identity Development: Articulate the relationship between social location
and cultural identity development and management.
7. CC7 Cross-Cultural Transitioning: Analyze critically the impact of
cross-cultural transitions and social injustices on cultural identity and
relationality.
Domain III: Embrace Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice as a Foundation for
Professional Identity
8. CC8 Cultural Responsivity and Social Change: Embrace cultural responsivity
and assume an anti-oppressive and justice-doing stance that fosters social
change.
9. CC9 Social Justice Values: Embody social justice values as a foundation for
scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader professional identity.
Domain IV: Centralize Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 10
10. CC10 Transformative Relationship: Optimize the transformative nature of the
client–counsellor relationship.
11. CC11 Salience of Culture and Social Location: Assess the salience and the
interplay of client–counsellor cultural identities and social locations.
12. CC12 Constructive Collaboration: Nurture collaborative and egalitarian
relationships with clients.
Domain V: Collaborate with Clients to Apply a Contextualized, Systemic Lens to Case
Conceptualization
13. CC13 Metatheoretical and Theoretical Lenses: Establish culturally responsive
and socially just metatheoretical and theoretical lenses.
14. CC14 Case Conceptualization: Position client presenting concerns and
counselling goals within the context of culture and social location.
15. CC15 Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Change: Collaborate to target
levels of intervention and to co-construct change processes that are responsive
to culture and social location.
Domain VI: Implement and Evaluate Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Change
Processes
16. CC16 Microlevel Change: Engage in culturally responsive and socially just
change processes at the microlevel (i.e., individuals, couples, and families) in
collaboration with clients.
17. CC17 Mesolevel Change: Engage in culturally responsive and socially just change
processes at the mesolevel (i.e., schools, organizations, and communities) in
collaboration with, or on behalf of, clients.
18. CC18 Macrolevel Change: Engage in social justice action at the macrolevel (i.e.,
broad social, economic, and political systems) on behalf of clients.
Note. Copyright 2018 by S. Collins.
I then applied the key concepts from my thematic analysis to my own chapters and to all of
the contributions by other writers. This was the final step in this process with the language
and definitions of the key concepts evolving through dialogues with various contributors until
11 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
the very end of the writing process. The end result is a unique resource in that the CRSJ
counselling model, as well as all of the key concepts, has been developed through, and then
applied to, each contribution. The content analysis is transparent in (a) the table in Chapter 2
that lists all of the key terms and provides links to contributions by others that exemplify
those principles and practices, (b) the list of key concepts at the beginning of each chapter,
from this point forward, that links to specific portions of that particular work, and (c) the
embedded links within the body of each chapter that link directly to the final definitions for
each term in the Enhanced, interactive glossary. It is important for me to make transparent
my central role in the content analysis, because the terminology and definitions are not
necessarily reflective of the positioning of any individual contributor; they are my best
attempt to synthesize and make meaning of the myriad of ideas that were introduced by each
contributor and my research into those concepts within the professional literature.
I have chosen to engage in this type of model development, because my core commitment is
to teaching and learning. This book is intended as a resource for students, instructors, and
practitioners in counselling and other related disciplines who want to enhance their
competency for practice with all clients. I acknowledge, value, and support the diversity of
voices and perspectives in the fields of multicultural counselling and social justice. I recognize
the dilemmas, debates, and challenges that invite critical reflection and continued dialogue.
However, as a counsellor educator, I believe that (a) learners need a starting place for
understanding the key concepts that undergird CRSJ counselling practice; (b) connecting
these concepts together in a meaningful way enhances understanding, and (c) organizing the
domains and competencies in a way that mirrors the process of counselling makes more
transparent their connection to applied practice. My focus in this book, therefore, is
predominantly on the commonalities that emerged through my thematic analysis as a starting
place for the development of confidence and competence in working with all clients.
To address this need for clarity and meaningful interconnection among the multitude of
constructs related to multicultural counselling and social justice, I have created an inclusive
conceptual framework in Figure 1 below, which integrates the core elements of the CRSJ
counselling model. I hope that by referring back to this figure as you move through the
various chapters in the book, you can position each authors’ writing within the forest (this
conceptual model) and not get lost in the trees (the many competencies and key concepts
elucidated)!
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 12
Figure 1. A conceptual framework for culturally responsive and socially just counselling
practice. Copyright 2018 by S. Collins.
The CRSJ counselling model is a work in progress, not a definitive statement on multicultural
counselling and social justice. As I continue to delve into the professional literature, I discover
new concepts and competencies that I add to my own repertoire. Each time I have a
conversation with a colleague, student, or client, I reflect on its implications for theory and
practice and on how each such interaction challenges my current thinking. There is no right
answer for how to enact cultural responsivity and social justice in counselling and psychology.
At my core, I am a both/and rather than an either/or person; as a result, this book is about
opening up possibilities and exploring options for meeting the needs of counselling clientele
from many diverse cultural backgrounds. In the CRSJ counselling model, I embrace culture
and social justice as metatheoretical lenses through which all aspects of the counselling
process may be viewed. I explore the idea of metatheoretical lenses more fully in Chapter 15.
13 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
The world is changing rapidly, and cultural oppression and social injustice seem to be
increasing internationally. I fear the ripple effects within my own country, in spite of
invitational policies towards immigrants and refugees and our forward thinking around
LGBTTQI rights, for example. This is a time for us all to remain vigilant and to keep this
foundation for ethical and competent practice in the forefront of our individual practices and
our professions as a whole. I challenge you to consider the identity that you assume as a
professional counsellor, psychologist, or other helping professional. I also invite consideration
of how you position responsibility of the professions as a whole in relation to the social
injustices that marginalized populations face, which often are at the root of their presenting
concerns. Casting these metatheoretical lenses on all of our work opens up possibilities of a
whole range of actions, both within our work with individual clients and beyond to within the
systems that influence their lives.
Evolving Competency-Based Practice
As suggested by the title of this book, I invite active consideration of professional identity in
counselling psychology. Re-shaping the professional identity of counsellors and psychologists,
and of the professions themselves, requires critical analysis of, and thoughtful reflection on,
what constitutes competent practice. The purpose of this chapter is to elucidate
competencies for CRSJ counselling. By breaking these competencies down into specific
learning outcomes and key concepts in Chapter 2, I provide a pathway to prepare
practitioners for working with all clients from a systems perspective as well as an invitation to
embrace a social change agenda. Through this process, I hope to provide a foundation for you
to both self-assess, and build on, your existing competence for culturally responsive and
socially just practice.
The role of competency-based models for enhancing multicultural counselling and social
justice is well established in the professional literature. A ubiquitous approach to multicultural
counselling requires careful attention to the unique way in which culture, broadly defined,
influences development of the counsellor–client relationship, the conceptualization of client
presenting concerns, and the negotiation and implementation of change processes. The focus
is on the cultural uniqueness of each counsellor–client encounter. A number of competency
models have been presented as two- or three-dimensional diagrams where specific
competencies emerged from the interplay of core elements along each dimension in the
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 14
model. The Ratts and Hutchkins (2009) Advocacy Competencies, for example, are organized
along two axes: acting with‒acting on behalf of clients as well as microlevel‒macrolevel foci of
interventions. Similarly, the Ratts and colleagues (2015) Multicultural and Social Justice
Competencies are positioned along the dimensions of privileged‒marginalized client and
privileged‒marginalized counsellor. I acknowledge the importance of these various continua
in the interpretation and application of multicultural competency and social justice; however,
for pragmatic reasons I have kept the CRSJ counselling model and competency profile in
Chapter 2 as simple as possible, in an attempt to avoid redundancy, particularly because of its
comprehensiveness.
Each of us is positioned by our cultural identities and social locations in ways that likely
embody lived experiences of both privilege and marginalization. I more fully examine these
concepts in Chapter 6. I do not assume in the CRSJ competency framework that counsellors
are from dominant populations nor that clients are from nondominant populations (an
unspoken assumption by some writers that is itself a form of marginalization); rather, I join
Ratts et al. (2015) in imploring counsellors to hold continuously the lens of counsellor‒client
cultural identities and relative social locations in the forefront of their minds and to engage
actively in dialogue with clients to assess how these factors may influence all aspects of the
counselling process. Also, as noted above, the CRSJ counselling model diverges in approach
from that of Ratts and colleagues in that I continue to tip the balance of attention towards
populations who are often disprivileged and marginalized in society. You will also notice that
the majority of practitioner voices in this book are framed from within their own experiences
of sociocultural marginalization.
CRSJ Counselling as a Metatheoretical Lens
The model presented in this book is not a theory of counselling; rather it is a conceptual
model that facilitates culturally responsive and socially just application of counselling theories,
practices, and processes. It is intended to be a transtheoretical model in the sense that the
core competencies are relevant and applicable across theoretical orientations and provide an
important metatheoretical lens for assessing the degree to which various models of
counselling address the worldviews and lived experiences of clients from diverse, and
particularly nondominant, populations. Having said that, the CRSJ counselling model does
foster an epistemological positioning grounded in postmodern and constructivist principles,
15 | Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
which may be more or less compatible with various theoretical positions. Applying this
metatheoretical lens facilitates critical analysis of the personal and professional beliefs and
assumptions of counsellors about culture and society, personal cultural identities, the
client‒counsellor relationship, client presenting concerns, and processes of change. The CRSJ
counselling model also calls forth an attitudinal positioning that undergirds each element of
the model with particular professional values, which resonate through the remaining chapters
of this book. The values-based grounding of the model is expressed in an orientation to
practice, as much as in the selection and implementation of practice activities.
The CRSJ counselling model, described in this chapter and in Chapter 2, forms the foundation
for the rest of the book, and I refer you back to this model within the various chapters. In the
main parts of the book, I expand on the six domains in the CRSJ counselling model. I start
each of these parts with a conceptual chapter that focuses on one domain of the CRSJ
counselling model. Within these chapters, I often include the voices of other contributors as
practice illustrations. Then, I introduce other chapters by colleagues who provide conceptual
and case study examples that illustrate that domain of the model. These stories of clients and
reflections of counsellors and psychologists are intended to bring to life the key concepts
related to fostering cultural responsivity and social justice in practice with individual clients
and within the systems that impact their lives.
In Domain I, I focus on the importance of centralizing both client and counsellor cultural
identities as a starting place for culturally responsive practice. In Domain II, I critically analyze
the concept of social locations as a foundation for understanding and navigating
client‒counsellor relative privilege and marginalization. In Domain III, I explore the
implications of assuming an anti-oppressive stance for professional identity. In Domain IV, I
position counselling as primarily a collaborative, relational process. In Domain V, I apply a
contextualized, systemic lens to case conceptualization. Finally, in Domain VI, I elucidate the
principles and practices for engaging in culturally responsive and socially just change
processes.
References
American Psychological Association. (2002). Guidelines on multicultural education, training,
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research, practice, and organizational change for psychologists. Retrieved from
http://www.apa.org/pi/multiculturalguidelines.pdf
Arredondo, P., & Toporek, R. (2004). Multicultural counseling competencies = ethical practice.
Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26, 44-55. https://doi.org/10.17744/
mehc.26.1.hw2enjqve2p2tj6q
Arredondo, P., Toporek, R., Brown, S., Sanchez, J., Locke, D. C., Sanchez, J., & Stadler, H. (1996).
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Arthur, N., & Collins, S. (2014). Counsellors, counselling, and social justice: The professional is
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Arthur, N., & Collins, S. (2015). Culture-infused counselling and psychotherapy. In L. Martin
(Ed.), Canadian counselling and psychotherapy experience: Ethics-based issues and cases (pp.
277-303). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association.
Audet, C. (2016). Social justice and advocacy in a Canadian context. In N. Gazzola, M.
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Canada (pp. 95-122). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association.
Audet, C., & Paré, D. (2018). Preface. In C. Audet & D. Paré (Eds.) Social justice and counseling:
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Brown, L. S., & Ballou, M. (1992). Theories of personality and psychopathology: Feminist
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Chung, R., & Bemak, F. (2012). Social justice counseling: The next steps beyond multiculturalism
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Collins, S. (2010). The complexity of identity: Appreciating multiplicity and intersectionality. In
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Gazzola, N., LaMarre, A., Smoliak, O. (2018). Social justice and advocacy: Critical issues in
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Lewis, B. L. (2010). Social justice in practicum training: Competencies and developmental
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Lewis, J. A., Arnold, M. S., House, R., & Toporek, R. L. (2003). Advocacy competencies. Retrieved
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Nassar-McMillan, S. C. (2014). A framework for cultural competence, advocacy, and social
justice: Applications for global multiculturalism and diversity. International Journal for
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Paré, D. A. (2013). The practice of collaborative counseling & psychotherapy: Developing skills in
culturally mindful helping. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Paré, D., & Sutherland, O. (2016). Re-thinking best practice: Centring the client in determining
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10.1002/jmcd.12035
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Sue, D. W. (2008). Multicultural organizational consultation: A social justice perspective.
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0736-9735.60.2.157
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Sue, D. W., Bernier, J. E., Durran, A., Feinberg, L., Pedersen, P., Smith, E. J., & Vasquez-Nuttall,
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Worrel, J., & Remer, P. (1996) Feminist perspectives in therapy: Empowerment strategies for
women. New York, NY: Wiley.
Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling | 20
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling
Model
SANDRA COLLINS
In this chapter, I expand on each of the 6 domains and 18 core competencies in the CRSJ
counselling model. There is a gap in the multicultural and social justice literature in terms of
how to teach these competencies (Brown, Collins, & Arthur, 2014; Collins, Arthur, Brown, &
Kennedy, 2015). The CRSJ counselling model is designed with teaching and learning processes
specifically in mind. Within each of the core competencies I introduce a series of learning
outcomes, each grounded in one or more a key concepts. There are numerous potential
21 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
learning outcomes for any one key concept; however, I have attempted to organize the
outcomes so that they comprehensively address the principles and practices for CRSJ
counselling. The outcomes and key concepts are clustered into logical conceptual groupings
for instructional and learning purposes.
A Note for Course Instructors and Counsellor Educators
The most effective way to teach and to learn CRSJ counselling principles and practices
is through the infusion of these competencies throughout graduate programs, instead
of the more traditional approach of limiting competency development to a single
course (Brown et al., 2014; Durham & Glosoff, 2010; Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek,
2003; Nassar-McMillan, 2014; Singh et al., 2010). The number of competencies in the
table below reinforces the need to think beyond adding one multicultural counselling
course to the overall design of graduate programs. I have tried to facilitate infusing
this learning into other courses by articulating learning outcomes and key concepts,
so that you can pick and choose the competency development areas you want to
target in various courses. I hope that this will encourage more infusion of CRSJ
counselling principles, and therefore, enhanced overall competency development of
students.
As a complement to this e-book, the Culturally Responsive and Socially Just
Counselling: Teaching and Learning Guide (Collins, 2018) is structured according to the
18 core competencies in the CRSJ counselling model below. For each competency, a
series of stand-alone learning activities have been created that can be integrated into
online or face-to-face instructional contexts. I have drawn on multimedia resources to
make these learning activities more interesting, interactive, and experiential in nature.
The teaching and learning guide is open source, which means that you are welcome to
copy, adapt, and repurpose any of these learning activities within courses, training
modules, or other noncommercial contexts. The learning activities target different
levels of learning, from comprehension to critical analysis and evaluation, with the goal
of making the ideas accessible to all learners.
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 22
The table below provides a comprehensive overview of the CRSJ counselling model. At this
point, you may choose not to review in depth all elements of this table. You will be directed
back to particular domains and core competencies within each of the conceptual chapters to
support an iterative learning process. I encourage you to skim through the table now to
identify areas about which you are most curious or with which you are least comfortable or
confident. This will give you a starting place for your continuing competency development.
E-book Navigation Tips
Click on the book cover image or this link to watch a short video about
how to use the expanded CRSJ counselling model to follow the
conceptual development of, and to explore applied practice
illustrations (e.g., client stories, counsellor‒client interactions,
counselling processes) for, each learning outcome and key concept
below. Please also check out the navigation video in the Enhanced,
Interactive Glossary.
I use Adobe Acrobat Reader in this demonstration; however, the basic
navigation features are similar in other PDF readers.
Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
The expanded CRSJ counselling model below replaces a traditional index with a more
user-friendly way to track ideas throughout the book by linking you directly to the relevant
section of each chapter. To reduce the amount of scrolling use the links below to each domain
and competency.
• Domain I: Competency 1, Competency 2, Competency 3
• Domain II: Competency 4, Competency 5, Competency 6, Competency 7
• Domain III: Competency 8, Competency 9
• Domain IV: Competency 10, Competency 11, Competency 12
• Domain V: Competency 13, Competency 14, Competency 15
• Domain VI: Competency 16, Competency 17, Competency 18
23 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
Domain I: Acknowledge the Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in
Counselling
Core Competency 1: Engage in cultural self-exploration as a
foundation for cultural sensitivity towards client cultural identities
and relationalities.
Back to domain
list
• Appreciate the ubiquitous nature of culture.
◦ Ubiquitous (Chapter 3, Audet, Lavell)
◦ Culture (Chapter 1, Doyle, Gunderson, Lavell)
• View yourself and others as cultural beings and all counselling as multicultural. (Chapter
1, Audet)
• Adopt a broad definition of cultural identities that encompasses the following
dimensions, and their intersections. (Chapter 3, Audet, Gunderson)
◦ Ability (Collins, Cook, Macdonald)
◦ Age (Audet, Collins, Cook, Huezo, Lavell, Magnan [French], Magnan [English])
◦ Ethnicity (Gunderson, Huezo, Wong)
◦ Gender (Audet, Hyde, Macdonald, Wong)
◦ Gender identity (Chew, Huezo)
◦ Indigeneity (Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
◦ Religion/spirituality (Carter, Chang, Chew, Collins, Qasqas, Saleem)
◦ Sexual orientation (Collins, Estefan)
◦ Social class (Audet, Lavell)
• Position cultural self-awareness and critical reflection on your own cultural identities as
a foundation for competent practice. (Chapter 3, Audet, Chew, Doyle, Lavell, Macdonald)
• Pursue actively deeper cultural self-exploration to support culturally responsive and
socially just counselling practice. (Chapter 3, Audet, Doyle, Macdonald, Reeves)
• Increase your cultural awareness of, and respond in respectful, contextualized, and
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 24
relevant ways to, client cultural identities. (Chapter 3, Chang, Cook, Gunderson,
Henriques, Lavell)
• Analyze critically the importance of cultural sensitivity to the client–counsellor
relationship and the counselling process. (Chapter 3, Audet, Chang, Henriques, Lavell,
Saleem, Zeman)
• Treat each person as a unique cultural being based on their personal cultural identities,
and mirror their personal choices in your language use. (Chapter 3, Doyle, Gunderson,
Lavell)
• Explain the importance of, and attend carefully to, clients’ identity narratives or stories.
(Chapter 3, Collins, Cook, Doyle, Estefan, Gunderson, Lavell, Macdonald, Paré, Reeves,
Wong, Zeman)
• Evaluate how your own lived experience has shaped your cultural self-concept, and
attend carefully to the influence of clients’ lived experiences. (Chapter 3, Cook, Doyle,
Lavell, Macdonald)
Core Competency 2: Appreciate and reflect critically on the
complexity and intersectionality of cultural identities and
relationalities.
Back to domain
list
• Challenge the assertion of essentialized, fixed identities, because it limits counsellors’
understanding of clients’ lived experiences. (Chapter 3, Chew, Collins)
• Appreciate the complexity, fluidity, and non-binary nature of human sexuality, and other
dimensions of cultural identity. (Chapter 3, Audet, Lavell, Macdonald, Qasqas)
• Appraise the contextualized and situational nature of cultural identities. (Chapter 3,
Audet, Chang, Gunderson, Huezo, Malone)
• Explain how collective identities play out for individuals and cultural communities.
(Chapter 3, Dupuis-Rossi)
• Challenge the assumptions that undergird eurocentric conceptualizations of identity by
exploring Indigenous concepts of relationality and relationship to land/place.
◦ Relationality (Chapter 3, Dupuis-Rossi)
25 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
◦ Relationship to land/place (Chapter 3, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik)
• Assess the complexity of cultural identity by attending to multiple identities or
relationalities. (Chapter 3, Audet, Chew, Huezo)
• Examine the implications of intersectionality for working effectively with persons with
multiple nondominant identities. (Chapter 3, Audet, Collins, Huezo, Lavell, Saleem)
• Communicate deep respect for dignity towards all persons and peoples. (Chapter 3,
Audet, Chew, Collins, Huezo, Lavell, Reynolds)
Core Competency 3: Value the diversity of worldviews, and
prioritize client beliefs, values, and assumptions.
Back to domain
list
• Value diversity in worldview, and explain its importance to cultural understanding.
(Chapter 3, Lavell)
• Articulate the ways of knowing, being, and doing inherent to the individualist worldview.
(Chapter 3, Dupuis-Rossi, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
• Articulate the ways of knowing, being, and doing associated with collectivist worldviews.
(Chapter 3, Lavell, Saleem, Wong)
• Formulate a detailed picture of the specific beliefs, values, and assumptions common to
Indigenous worldviews. (Chapter 3, Dupuis-Rossi, Jay)
• Assess and analyze the significance of the cultural distance‒
‒similarity between your
cultural identities and those of your client. (Chapter 3, Audet, Chew, Huezo, Lavell,
Malone, Wong)
• Acknowledge the inherent subjectivity of your worldview; step outside your own cultural
lens to listen closely to clients’ perspectives and lived experiences. (Chapter 3, Collins,
Wong)
• Examine carefully your tendencies towards ethnocentrism and discriminatory beliefs
(however subtle or seemingly benign). (Chapter 3, Gunderson, Macdonald)
• Assess the risks associated with cultural encapsulation in your work with clients,
organizations, and other systems. (Chapter 3, Chang, Cook, Lavell, Macdonald)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 26
• Evaluate how the overgeneralization of cultural characteristics supports the development
of stereotypes. (Chapter 3, Chang, Wong)
• Attend to within-group differences rather than simply between-group differences to
avoid the risk of stereotyping; appraise client’s idiosyncratic cultural identities.
◦ Within-group differences (Chapter 3, Chang, Collins, Gunderson, Henriques, Huezo,
Qasqas, Saleem)
◦ Between-group differences (Chapter 3, Wong)
Domain II: Challenge Social Injustices, and Critique Their Impact on
Client–Counsellor Social Locations
Core Competency 4: Attend actively to social determinants of
health, and evaluate the impact of social injustices on client health
and well-being.
Back to domain
list
• Define, and assess the impact of, social injustice and inequity on clients, particularly
those from nondominant populations. (Chapter 6, Audet, Cook, Lavell, Macdonald,
Magnan [French], Magnan [English])
• Analyze critically the importance of relevant social determinants of health to both
conceptualization of client problems and selection of socially just change processes.
(Chapter 6, Chew, Doyle, Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo, Lavell)
• Evaluate the impact of prejudice and discrimination on client health and well-being.
◦ Prejudice (Chapter 6, Chang, Huezo, Joncas [French], Joncas [English], Lavell, Saleem)
◦ Discrimination (Chapter 6, Cook, Gunderson, Wong)
• Reflect critically on the influence of various *isms on the lived experiences and health of
clients from nondominant cultures, on psychological theory, and on the counselling
27 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
process. (Chapter 6, Doyle)
◦ Ableism (Cook)
◦ Ageism (Audet, Collins)
◦ Cisnormativity/transphobia (Chew)
◦ Classism (Lavell, Paré)
◦ Heterosexism/homophobia (Collins, Macdonald, Zeman)
◦ Racism (Chang, Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson, Gunderson, Huezo)
◦ Religious bias/intolerance (Chapter 9, Carter, Chang, Saleem)
◦ Sexism/gender inequity (Collins, Hyde, Hyde, Macdonald, Saleem, Wong)
• Evaluate the effects of cultural/systemic oppression on members of nondominant
groups. (Chapter 6, Audet, Carter, Doyle, Huminuik, Wong)
• Analyze critically and take action to address instances of institutional/organizational
oppression and its impact on clients. (Chapter 6, Audet, Collins, Cook, Huezo, Magnan
[French], Magnan [English], Malone)
• Investigate and ameliorate systemic/structural barriers to inclusion, equity, access, or
safety within social, economic, religious, and political systems that affect the structure of
opportunity for certain persons or peoples. (Chapter 6, Audet, Carter, Chang, Chew, Cook,
Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo, Huminuik, Macdonald, Magnan [French], Magnan [English], Malone)
• Analyze critically the cultural oppression towards Indigenous peoples and members of
other nondominant populations that is inherent in the colonial worldview. (Chapter 6,
Dupuis-Rossi, Reynolds)
• Analyze critically the historical and current practices of colonialism/colonization and
their legacy among Indigenous populations. (Chapter 6, Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson,
Huminuik, Joncas [French], Joncas [English], Reynolds)
• Evaluate the impact of colonial violence or political violence on both Indigenous and
other marginalized populations. (Chapter 6, Carter, Djuraskovic, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik,
Reynolds)
• Own your position within the colonial relationship of colonialists/settlers and
Indigenous peoples, and actively redress the shame of colonization. (Chapter 6,
Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Define psycholonization, and take action to alter the expression and enactment of
colonial assumptions and processes within the theory and practice of counselling and
psychology. (Chapter 6, Dupuis-Rossi, Reynolds)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 28
Core Competency 5: Assess critically the impact of power and
privilege on client–counsellor social locations.
Back to domain
list
• Position social location as an overriding lens for increasing awareness of both counsellor
and client lived experiences. (Chapter 6, Audet, Gunderson, Magnan [French], Magnan
[English])
• Define dominant and nondominant groups, and explain how they emerge in society
based on specific aspects of cultural identities. (Chapter 6, Huezo, Lavell)
• Recognize the experience and impact of marginalization at interpersonal, organizational,
community, and societal levels. (Chapter 6, Audet, Audet, Chang, Cook, Gunderson,
Huezo, Lavell)
• Analyze the concept of privilege, and assess the implications of your position of relative
privilege–marginalization in relation to your clients. (Chapter 6, Audet, Chang, Cook,
Doyle, Huezo, Huminuik, Lavell, Macdonald)
• Explain the nature of power and its relationship to positions of privilege and
marginalization. (Chapter 6, Audet, Audet, Chew, Doyle, Huezo, Huminuik, Lavell)
• Reflect critically on personal views of, and responses to, clients from various cultural
groups through an examination of your cultural assumptions/biases. (Chapter 6, Collins,
Cook, Doyle, Huezo, Macdonald, Saleem)
• Investigate how the process of othering can emerge in both overt and covert ways within
the counselling process. (Chapter 6, Audet, Audet, Chang, Cook, Saleem)
• Acknowledge the sociocultural construction of meaning, including various cultural
labels; evaluate critically the implications for client health and well-being. (Chapter 6,
Chapter 9, Macdonald, Paré)
• Examine cultural norms from both dominant and nondominant groups, and articulate
how these might influence clients’ lived experiences and presenting concerns. (Chapter 6,
Doyle, Lavell, Saleem, Wong)
• Analyze critically the development and maintenance of sociocultural narratives or
discourses that reinforce cultural biases. (Chapter 6, Chew, Collins, Doyle, Lavell,
29 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
Macdonald, Wong)
• Appraise critically how dominant discourses affect the health of marginalized persons or
peoples, and advance alternative, nondominant narratives and stories. (Chapter 6, Chang,
Doyle, Estefan, Henriques, Huezo, Hyde, Lavell, Macdonald, Wong)
◦ Gender role socialization (Chew, Lavell, Macdonald, Wong)
◦ Heteronormativity (Collins)
Core Competency 6: Articulate the relationship between social
location and cultural identity development and management.
Back to domain
list
• Attend carefully to the interplay of counsellor and client cultural identity development in
the counselling process. (Chapter 6, Chew, Collins, Gunderson, Huezo)
◦ Nondominant cultural identity development (Chapter 6, Collins, Cook, Huezo, Lavell)
◦ Dominant cultural identity development (Chapter 6)
• Assess the impact of significant life transitions on the identity development and health of
your clients. (Chapter 6, Audet, Chang, Cook)
• Explore client experience of multiple, intersecting identities for potential identity
conflict. (Chapter 6, Audet, Cook, Estefan, Lavell)
• Identify conflict between socialization messages that may be causing client distress or
dissonance. (Chapter 6, Wong)
• Explore the ways in which clients engage in cultural identity management, across
contexts and relationships as well as over time. (Chapter 6, Collins, Gunderson, Huezo,
Lavell)
• Critically assess the nuances of identity disclosure across various dimensions of culture,
context, and relationships. (Chapter 6, Collins)
• Compare and contrast the process of cultural identity management for clients with
visible versus invisible cultural identities. (Chapter 6, Chang, Collins, Cook, Lavell,
Macdonald)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 30
Core Competency 7: Analyze critically the impact of cross-cultural
transitions and social injustices on cultural identity and
relationality.
Back to domain
list
• Support actively healthy cross-cultural transitioning in relation to clients’ sense of
identity, safety, community, education or career, and other aspects of their lived
experiences. (Chapter 6, Audet, Chew, Joncas [French], Joncas [English], Saleem)
• Examine critically your cultural assumptions or biases related to newcomers in society,
and compare and contrast the cross-cultural transitioning experiences of refugees and
voluntary immigrants.
◦ Refugees (Chapter 6, Carter, Chang, Chew, Djuraskovic, Huminuik)
◦ Immigrants (Chapter 6, Gunderson, Magnan [French], Magnan [English], Saleem,
Wong)
• Explain the psychological, sociocultural, and economic processes of, and barriers to,
acculturation. (Chapter 6, Carter, Chew)
• Identify the challenges and benefits associated with developing and navigating bicultural
identities. (Chapter 6, Chew, Lavell, Wong)
• Explore the multigenerational issues that may emerge as various family members relate
differently to original and new communities. (Chapter 6, Carter, Chang, Chew,
Dupuis-Rossi, Magnan [French], Magnan [English], Wong)
• Identify the factors that contribute to acculturative stress or cultural shock as a result of
cross-cultural transitioning, and design responsive interventions to mitigate these
experiences.
◦ Acculturative stress (Chapter 6, Chang, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Saleem)
◦ Culture shock (Chapter 6, Carter, Carter, Saleem)
• Analyze critically how various forms of cultural oppression can precipitate a loss of
cultural identity/relationality for persons or peoples. (Chapter 6, Audet, Carter, Chew,
Cook, Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson, Henriques)
• Attend to the possibility of internalized oppression resulting from continued exposure to
cultural oppression within families, communities, or society. (Chapter 6, Dupuis-Rossi,
31 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
Huezo)
◦ Internalized ableism (Collins, Macdonald)
◦ Internalized classism (Lavell)
◦ Internalized homophobia (Chew, Collins)
◦ Internalized transphobia (Chew)
◦ Internalized racism (Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson, Wong)
◦ Internalized sexism (Doyle, Hyde, Hyde, Wong)
• Position lateral oppression/violence within the individual and collective impacts of
colonization and other forms of cultural and systemic oppression. (Chapter 6,
Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo, Lavell)
• Analyze critically the nature of trauma and its repercussions at individual, family,
community, and societal levels. (Chapter 6, Carter, Dupuis-Rossi, Reynolds)
• Evaluate the ongoing effects of historical/colonial trauma on Indigenous and other
peoples. (Chapter 6, Dupuis-Rossi, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
• Articulate the distinction between posttraumatic stress (PTS) and complex
posttraumatic stress (CPTS) and the implications for case conceptualization and
intervention planning.
◦ PTS (Chapter 6, Carter, Dupuis-Rossi, Macdonald)
◦ CPTS (Chapter 6, Carter, Djuraskovic, Dupuis-Rossi)
• Evaluate the risk of, and take action to address, experiences that trigger client
retraumatization. (Chapter 6, Carter, Chew, Dupuis-Rossi, Macdonald)
Domain III: Embrace Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice as a
Foundation for Professional Identity
Core Competency 8: Embrace cultural responsivity, and assume an
anti-oppressive and justice-doing stance that fosters social change.
Back to domain
list
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 32
• Frame the concept of cultural competency as a lifelong process that is grounded in a
positioning of cultural humility.
◦ Cultural competency (Chapter 9, Doyle)
◦ Cultural humility (Chapter 9, Chapter 18, Chapter 22, Carter, Carter, Chang, Chew,
Djuraskovic, Huezo)
• Engage in culturally responsive counselling processes and practices that are consistent
with client beliefs and worldviews. (Chapter 9, Chew, Gunderson, Lavell)
• Engage continuously in reflective practice as a means of fostering cultural humility and
cultural responsivity. (Chapter 9, Audet, Chang, Collins, Doyle, Huezo)
• Enhance your capacity for critical thinking as a foundation for both cultural competency
and cultural humility. (Chapter 9, Audet, Doyle)
• Be tolerant of ambiguity, and foster cognitive complexity to enable you to challenge and
see beyond your own cultural encapsulation. (Chapter 9, Doyle, Huezo)
• Articulate the basic principles of social justice and their implications for counselling.
(Chapter 9, Doyle, Huminuik, Paré, Reynolds)
• Discriminate between the concepts of equity and equality, applying the former to
enhance your understanding of social justice. (Chapter 9, Gunderson, Huezo, Huminuik,
Lavell)
• Value and promote inclusivity and diversity in counselling practice and in society as a
whole. (Chapter 9, Chang, Cook, Lavell)
• Analyze critically the ways in which you may engage in unintentional oppression.
(Chapter 9, Audet, Chang, Cook, Huezo, Hyde, Paré)
• Position human rights as superordinate to personal values, beliefs, and worldview.
(Chapter 9, Audet, Carter, Huminuik, Huminuik, Lavell)
• Adopt an anti-oppressive stance that advances human rights and deconstructions and
challenges discourses and systems of oppression. (Chapter 9, Huezo)
• Engage actively in justice-doing at micro, meso, and macrolevels to enact social change.
(Chapter 9, Audet, Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Embrace a social change agenda as integral to the professions of counselling and
psychology. (Chapter 9, Doyle, Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Explain how cultural responsivity and social justice are necessary for ethical practice.
(Chapter 9, Audet, Chang, Huezo, Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Articulate, critique, and apply a model of culturally responsive and socially just ethical
33 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
decision-making. (Chapter 9, Audet, Doyle, Huezo, Saleem)
• Critically analyze and apply relevant ethical and legal codes, principles, standards, and
guidelines. (Chapter 9, Chapter 15, Huezo)
Core Competency 9: Embody social justice values as a foundation
for scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader professional identity.
Back to domain
list
• Acknowledge the fluidity and social construction of values. (Chapter 9, Chew, Doyle)
• Challenge the myth of value neutrality in counselling, and defend the values-based nature
of counselling practice in light of the concepts of cultural responsivity and social justice.
(Chapter 9, Chew, Doyle, Huminuik, Lavell, Reynolds)
• Articulate the social justice values that are becoming embedded in professional values
for the disciplines of counselling and psychology.
◦ Social justice values (Chapter 9, Carter)
◦ Professional values (Chapter 9, Huminuik)
• Assess your personal values positioning, and articulate principles for resolving perceived
personal–professional values conflicts. (Chapter 9, Huezo, Macdonald)
• Draw on the feminist principle of the personal is political to articulate how political
awareness and action interconnect with personal values and lived experience. (Chapter 9,
Collins, Gunderson, Huezo, Huminuik, Hyde, Reynolds)
• Extrapolate from the personal is political to analyze critically the assertion that the
professional is political. (Chapter 9, Huminuik)
• Recognize the risks of peace-making to marginalized voices and populations, and actively
engage in peace-building. (Chapter 9)
• Embrace a professional identity that includes, embodies, and enacts a social justice
identity.
◦ Professional identity (Chapter 9, Chapter 22, Huezo)
◦ Social justice identity (Chapter 9, Huminuik)
• Embrace the scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader model, which fosters the reciprocal
interface and influence of research, practice, action, and leadership for social change.
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 34
(Chapter 9, Cook, Doyle, Wong)
• Evaluate your current level of cultural competency and develop a continuing competency
plan. (Chapter 22, Chew)
• Apply the process of cultural auditing to highlight areas for immediate change as well as
continuing competency development. (Chapter 22)
Domain IV: Centralize Culturally Responsive and Socially Just
Relational Practices
Core Competency 10: Optimize the transformative nature of the
client–counsellor relationship.
Back to domain
list
• Evaluate critically the implications of common factors research, and capitalize on
therapist factors and relationship factors to optimize counselling outcomes. (Chapter 12,
Audet)
• Centralize the client–counsellor relationship in culturally responsive and socially just
counselling practice. (Chapter 12, Audet)
• Position your approach to counselling as a relational practice. (Chapter 12, Carter, Lavell,
Macdonald)
• Prioritize your own health and healing, and address actively personal trauma, cultural
oppression, and other barriers to being fully present to clients. (Chapter 12, Carter, Huezo,
Hyde, Hyde, Jay, Macdonald)
• Appraise clients’ experiences of disconnection (from self, others, community, and broader
systems), and support clients to rebuild a sense of connection, starting with the
client–counsellor relationship. (Chapter 12, Carter, Cook, Collins, Djuraskovic, Doyle,
Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo, Hyde, Jay, Macdonald)
35 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
• Evaluate and facilitate clients’ sense of safety/cultural safety, both internal (sense of
containment, grounding, or personal agency) and external (interpersonal or contextual).
(Chapter 12, Carter, Collins, Djuraskovic, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Hyde, Reeves, Saleem,
Wong)
• Recognize the potential for, and foster a transformative/healing relationship between
counsellor and client. (Chapter 12, Collins, Wong)
• Evaluate the importance of, and implement, a decolonizing therapeutic relationship with
both Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients. (Chapter 12, Dupuis-Rossi)
• Exhibit both cognitive and affective cultural empathy towards clients. (Chapter 12, Audet,
Carter, Djuraskovic, Lavell, Wong)
• Foster mutual cultural empathy between counsellor and client as a means of facilitating a
transformative therapeutic relationship. (Chapter 12, Audet, Carter, Chew, Collins,
Dupuis-Rossi, Lavell, Macdonald, Wong)
• Create the space to bear witness to traumatic events in clients’ past and current lived
experiences; speak and act against interpersonal, sociocultural, economic, and political
violence. (Chapter 12, Carter, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Hyde, Macdonald)
• Engage proactively in self-care and supervision to protect against compassion fatigue.
(Chapter 12, Carter, Gunderson, Huezo)
• Evaluate critically what it means to work with clients within an ethic of care. (Chapter 12,
Audet, Collins, Cook, Lavell, Nuttgens)
• Assume ways of being that reflect a care-filled relational stance that is responsive to
client culture, values, and needs. (Chapter 12, Lavell)
◦ Authenticity (Chapter 12, Collins, Audet)
◦ Nonjudgement (Chapter 12, Collins, Audet, Djuraskovic, Henriques)
• Assess the appropriateness of self-disclosure as a way of building rapport and trust,
modelling, or normalizing cultural identities and lived experiences. (Chapter 12, Audet,
Chew, Chew, Collins, Lavell)
• Exhibit transparency/openness, wherever possible, in your relationship with clients and
in the counselling process. (Chapter 12, Chew, Reeves)
• Establish credibility with clients by building relationships within cultural communities
and preparing clients for the counselling process. (Chapter 12, Audet, Lavell)
• Engender trust in relationships with clients by attending to cultural identities and social
locations. (Chapter 12, Huminuik, Lavell, Saleem)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 36
• Recognize, and work to ameliorate, the stigma of counselling and mental health issues
among members of some nondominant populations. (Chapter 12, Chang, Qasqas, Saleem)
• Acknowledge the underutilization of counselling services by clients from certain
nondominant populations, and take action to address the needs of underserviced
populations.
◦ Underutilization of services (Chapter 12, Audet, Joncas [French], Joncas [English],
Saleem)
◦ Underserviced populations (Chapter 12, Carter, Cook, Huezo, Huminuik, Malone)
• Analyze critically the potential limitation and cultural embeddedness of euro-western
counselling conventions (e.g., counselling structure, timing, location, physical
environment). (Chapter 12, Collins, Hyde, Malone)
• Design a culturally sensitive space for counselling that is inclusive and welcoming of all
cultural communities. (Chapter 12, Wong)
Core Competency 11: Assess the salience and the interplay of client
and counsellor cultural identities and social locations.
Back to domain
list
• Demonstrate cultural sensitivity through the process of cultural inquiry into the lived
experiences of all clients. (Chapter 12, Cook, Lavell, Qasqas, Saleem, Zeman)
• Thicken client narratives to deepen your shared understanding of their lived experiences
of culture and social location. (Chapter 12, Collins, Cook, Estefan, Lavell)
• Assume a stance of curiosity or not-knowing to avoid prematurely foreclosing on full
understanding of client lived experiences and identity narratives. (Chapter 12, Chang)
• Value the client as a source of cultural knowledge while assuming responsibility for
increasing your own awareness of client culture. (Chapter 12, Huezo)
• Assess the salience of culture to client presenting concerns through purposeful cultural
inquiry. (Chapter 12, Audet, Chang, Saleem)
• Evaluate critically your own tendency toward cultural blindness–cultural
hyperconsciousness and the inherent risks of each within the counselling relationship.
(Chapter 12, Chang, Lavell, Saleem)
37 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
• Generate cultural hypotheses that reflect careful attention to the intersectionality of
cultural identities and social locations. (Chapter 12, Audet, Collins, Djuraskovic)
• Approach hypothesis generation with tentativeness to avoid foreclosing on new
information or imposing cultural assumptions and biases. (Chapter 12, Audet)
• Engage in just conversations that are sensitive to client cultural identities, and attend
moment-by-moment to social justice in language and interpersonal dynamics. (Chapter
12, Collins, Cook, Paré)
• Implement judiciously and effectively both verbal and nonverbal counselling skills to
support culturally responsive and socially just processes. (Chapter 12, Collins, Doyle)
• Assess the impact of client‒counsellor language differences, welcome client
first-language use, and arrange for interpretation, where appropriate. (Chapter 12,
Carter, Collins)
• Identify and remediate microaggression within the counselling process as well as in
organizations, communities, and broader social systems. (Chapter 12, Collins, Gunderson)
Core Competency 12: Nurture constructive collaboration and
egalitarian relationships with clients.
Back to domain
list
• Foster egalitarian relationships that attend to relative positions of
power‒marginalization based on client counsellor cultural identities and social locations.
(Chapter 12, Audet, Chew, Macdonald)
• Avoid assuming a power-over or expert position relative to your client; minimize power
differentials. (Chapter 12, Audet, Lavell, Macdonald)
• Adapt your counselling style to fit the cultural identities and social locations of your
clients. (Chapter 12, Lavell)
• Ensure, whenever possible, that the counselling process is client-centred to foreground
client preferences and worldviews. (Chapter 12, Carter, Collins, Huezo, Hyde)
• Believe in and actively position the client as expert in their own lived experiences, health,
and healing. (Chapter 12, Chang, Djuraskovic, Gunderson)
• Encourage and model constructive collaboration with clients. (Chapter 12, Chang, Chew)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 38
• Position informed consent as a consciously iterative process; renew it continuously as
you collaborate with clients on counselling goals and processes. (Chapter 12, Carter,
Chew)
• Evaluate the importance of meaning-making within the counselling process. (Chapter 12,
Audet, Carter, Chew, Lavell)
• Co-construct meaning and language with clients to support the processes of mutual
cultural empathy and constructive collaboration. (Chapter 12, Chew, Collins, Lavell,
Macdonald, Wong)
• Attend carefully to alliance ruptures with clients, and take steps to immediately
ameliorate this breakdown in trust and constructive collaboration. (Chapter 12, Audet,
Chew)
• Reframe client resistance as evidence of a poor working alliance or a mismatch between
counsellor and client in terms of the goals and processes of counselling. (Chapter 12,
Collins)
• Analyze critically, and identify principles for addressing, values differences or conflicts
between yourself and your clients. (Chapter 9, Chapter 12, Chang, Macdonald)
• Avoid imposing your values on clients by increasing your cultural self-awareness and
engaging in reflective practice. (Chapter 12, Collins, Doyle, Macdonald)
• Respond with nonjudgement and cultural empathy to client experiences and expressions
of cultural transference. (Chapter 12, Audet, Collins, Lavell)
• Engage continuously in self-reflection to avoid bringing your own cultural baggage into
the counselling relationship through cultural countertransference. (Chapter 12, Audet,
Collins, Wong)
39 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
Domain V: Collaborate with Clients to Apply a Contextualized,
Systemic Lens to Case Conceptualization
Core Competency 13: Establish culturally responsive and socially
just metatheoretical and theoretical lenses.
Back to domain
list
• Step back to examine various metatheoretical lenses that influence how you
conceptualize client problems, define healthy and unhealthy functioning, and view the
change or healing process. (Chapter 15, Collins, Cook, Doyle, Macdonald, Wong)
• Analyze and articulate the benefits of postmodernism for honouring cultural diversity
and social justice. (Chapter 15, Audet, Chang, Doyle)
• Implement a social constructivist or constructionist lens to appreciate and be
responsive to multiple realities and worldviews. (Chapter 15, Chang, Cook, Doyle)
• Apply the principles of critical theory to elucidate the underlying oppressive discourses
and systemic structural barriers that impede client well-being. (Chapter 15, Cook)
• Apply ecological systems theory to understand the contextual and systemic influences
on conceptualization of clients’ presenting concerns and the change process. (Chapter 15,
Chang, Huezo, Macdonald)
• Articulate a culturally responsive and socially just theoretical lens or orientation for
conceptualizing client problems, defining healthy and unhealthy functioning, and guiding
the change process. (Chapter 15, Macdonald)
◦ Feminist therapy/theory (Chapter 15, Chew, Wong)
◦ Relational‒
‒cultural therapy/theory (Chapter 15, Collins)
◦ Narrative therapy/theory (Chapter 15, Cook, Lavell)
• Acknowledge counselling models or theories as culture-bound, and evaluate critically
their relevancy and cultural validity for each client. (Chapter 15, Huezo)
• Demonstrate theoretical flexibility in navigating differences in worldview, values, and
beliefs with various clients. (Chapter 15, Chapter 18, Collins, Doyle)
• Differentiate between various systems of knowledge/meaning to discern their relevance
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 40
and importance to culturally responsive and socially just counselling practice. (Chapter 15,
Joncas [French], Joncas [English], Lavell)
• Appreciate the role of Indigenous/cultural knowledge and teachings in working with
persons from Indigenous and other cultural groups. (Chapter 15, Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo)
Core Competency 14: Position client presenting concerns and
counselling goals within the context of culture and social location.
Back to domain
list
• Evaluate critically cultural differences in views of health and healing, and assess carefully
your client’s personal theory of change to ensure that co-constructed change processes
resonate with their worldview. (Chapter 15, Doyle, Henriques, Macdonald, Qasqas, Saleem)
• Articulate the assumptions, values, and beliefs that comprise Indigenous views of health
and healing as an example of diversity in worldview. (Chapter 15, Dupuis-Rossi)
• Appreciate and seek out opportunities to learn from, and to refer clients to, cultural
knowledge holders or guides. (Chapter 15, Lavell)
• Appraise the ethical considerations of integrating Indigenous or other cultural healing
practices into counselling, being careful to assess the risks of cultural appropriation, if it
is not your culture. (Chapter 15)
• Analyze the concept and apply the process of CRSJ case conceptualization. (Chapter 15,
Djuraskovic, Doyle, Macdonald, Malone, Reeves)
• Apply a contextualized/systemic lens to understanding client presenting concerns and
to collaborating in the design of culturally responsive change processes. (Chapter 15,
Chew, Cook, Doyle, Dupuis-Rossi, Estefan, Huminuik, Macdonald, Wong)
• Implement a holistic, multilevel approach to assessment, including culture-specific
assessment processes, where appropriate. (Chapter 15, Carter, Collins, Djuraskovic,
Qasqas)
• Assess, in collaboration with clients, the locus of control/responsibility for change.
(Chapter 15, Collins, Doyle, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Macdonald, Reynolds)
• Apply an anti-pathologizing lens to mitigate actively the risk of misattribution or
misinterpretation of culturally embedded beliefs, values, practices, or coping responses.
(Chapter 15, Djuraskovic, Doyle, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik, Reynolds)
41 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
• Co-construct with clients a vision of their preferred outcomes or futures that is
consistent with their cultural identities and personal views of health and healing. (Chapter
15, Chang, Cook, Chew, Joncas [French], Joncas [English], Qasqas)
• Apply the principles and processes of appreciative inquiry to co-construct a preferred
future that builds on clients’ past successes. (Chapter 15, Chang, Lavell)
• Evaluate the importance of, and establish a process for, actively engaging clients in
collaboration on the goals and processes for counselling. (Chapter 15, Chang, Chew,
Macdonald, Qasqas)
Core Competency 15: Collaborate to target levels of intervention
and to co-construct change processes that are responsive to culture
and social location.
Back to domain
list
• Assess, in collaboration with clients, the locus of change/intervention that is most likely
to facilitate attainment of their preferred futures. (Chapter 15, Doyle, Macdonald, Qasqas)
• Critically evaluate when systems level change is essential to client health and healing.
(Chapter 9, Chapter 15, Cook, Doyle, Macdonald)
• Target change at appropriate levels of intervention: microlevel (i.e., individuals, couples,
families); mesolevel (i.e., schools, organizations, communities); or macrolevel (i.e., broader
social, economic, and political systems). (Chapter 15, Cook)
• Implement multilevel interventions, where appropriate, to reinforce change and
optimize success in reaching preferred outcomes. (5, Carter, Chang, Macdonald)
• Expand traditional conceptualizations of the role of the counsellor to support counselling
interventions at the micro, meso, and macrolevels. (Chapter 15, Cook, Huezo, Magnan
[French], Magnan [English])
• Evaluate the importance of, and establish a process for, collaboration with clients in
selecting culturally responsive and socially just change processes. (Chapter 15, Doyle,
Qasqas)
• Adapt traditional counselling models to fit with the cultural identities and social
locations of clients. (Chapter 15, Huminuik)
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 42
• Compare and contrast etic (transcultural) and emic (minority-centred) perspectives on
client presenting concerns and change processes. (Chapter 15, Huezo, Qasqas)
• Invite and integrate practice-based evidence by eliciting formative and summative
feedback from clients. (Chapter 15, Chang, Lavell)
• Analyze critically the influence of culture on the process of ending/closing down the
counselling process with clients. (Chapter 22)
Domain VI: Implement and Evaluate Culturally Responsive and
Socially Just Change Processes.
Core Competency 16: Engage in culturally responsive and socially
just interventions at the microlevel (i.e., individuals, couples,
families) in collaboration with clients.
Back to domain
list
• Assess barriers to client well-being, and provide pragmatic support to ensure access to
services for basic subsistence (e.g., safety, housing, food). (Chapter 18, Carter, Cook)
• Take action to ensure the removal of barriers to accessing services for clients. (Chapter
18, Carter, Cook, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
• Identify and provide clients with culturally appropriate referrals and resources. (Chapter
18, Huezo)
• Engage in consciousness-raising with clients to enhance their awareness of the social
determinants of health and the implications of systemic oppression for understanding
their lived experiences. (Chapter 18, Audet, Collins, Doyle, Dupuis-Rossi, Huminuik)
• Apply the process of externalizing to support clients to view their problems as separate
from themselves and to reinforce an external locus of responsibility, where appropriate.
(Chapter 18, Collins, Dupuis-Rossi, Wong)
43 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
• Collaborate with clients to systematically deconstruct their lived experiences (e.g.,
critically analyze contextual or systemic factors, identify underlying assumptions, bring to
the forefront sociocultural narratives). (Chapter 18, Chew, Doyle, Huezo, Wong, Zeman)
◦ Gender role analysis (Collins, Chew)
◦ Power analysis (Audet, Chew, Chew, Huezo)
◦ Social class analysis (Lavell)
• Apply the process of decolonizing, to dismantle the ideologies, dominant narratives, and
far-reaching impacts of colonization. (Chapter 18, Dupuis-Rossi, Huezo, Reynolds)
• Build mutual cultural empathy with clients by creating space for them to engage in
storying of their cultural identities, lived experiences, and social locations. (Chapter 18,
Carter, Estefan, Lavell, Macdonald, Paré)
• Co-construct new meanings with clients through the process of re-storying to bring new
awareness, to foreground different aspects of their lived experiences, or to help them
recreate themselves. (Chapter 18, Carter, Cook, Estefan)
• Support clients in the reconstruction of cultural identity/relationality, including
reclaiming parts of themselves and their cultural communities or redefining themselves in
relation to new contexts and environments. (Chapter 18, Carter, Cook, Dupuis-Rossi,
Gunderson, Macdonald, Wong)
• Engage actively with clients in the future-focused, generative processes of life-making/
self-composition. (Chapter 18, Carter, Estefan, Paré)
• Analyze critically, and integrate as appropriate, principles of Indigenizing to ensure
culturally responsive and socially just counselling processes. (Chapter 18, Dupuis-Rossi,
Huminuik, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
• Incorporate Indigenous/cultural healing practices, where appropriate on the basis of
ethnic group membership or training and supervision. (Chapter 18, Dupuis-Rossi,
Huminuik, Jay, Saleem)
• Consult with, learn from, or refer clients to, Indigenous/cultural healers and
ceremonialists. (Chapter 18, Dupuis-Rossi, Jay, Saleem)
• Apply the lens of trauma-informed practice to ensure client safety, agency, and
collaboration. (Chapter 18, Huminuik)
• Empower clients to claim or reclaim agency/self-determination over their own lives.
(Chapter 18, Audet, Cook, Dupuis-Rossi, Hyde, Lavell, Reeves)
• Foster clients’ empowerment/self-empowerment through confidence-buiding and
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 44
practical skill development (Chapter 18, Chew, Cook, Hyde)
• Facilitate client empowerment for self-advocacy within the contexts of their lives.
(Chapter 18, Collins, Cook, Wong, Zeman)
• Cultivate client self-efficacy by reinforcing their expertise in their own lives and positive
beliefs about themselves and their futures. (Chapter 18, Chew, Cook, Joncas [French],
Joncas [English])
• Build upon client strengths and resiliency by actively assessing, highlighting, and
celebrating these qualities in their stories. (Chapter 18, Carter, Chew, Collins, Cook,
Gunderson, Lavell)
• Model affirmative practice through your openness, appreciation, and commitment to
honouring the lived experiences and cultural identities of all clients. (Chapter 18, Collins)
• Invite clients to explore their cultural identities and relationalities to enhance their
cultural empowerment (Chapter 18, Audet, Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson).
• Assess, honour, and celebrate acts of resistance on the part of clients that evidence
rejection of colonialism and other forms of cultural oppression and self-affirmation of
cultural identities. (Chapter 18, Collins, Dupuis-Rossi, Gunderson, Huminuik, Huminuik,
Reynolds, Wong)
• Actively foster client voice to strengthen personal and cultural empowerment. (Chapter
18, Chew, Dupuis-Rossi, Hyde, Huminuik, Macdonald, Reynolds, Wong)
• Draw on approaches that support embodiment and draw on other ways of experiencing
self, others, and healing processes. (Chapter 18, Djuraskovic, Hyde, Wong)
• Apply mindfulness practices in collaboration with clients. (Chapter 18, Hyde, Jay, Wong)
• Honour clients’ suffering without judgement to foster their self-compassion. (Chapter 18,
Carter, Chew, Dupuis-Rossi, Jay, Wong)
• Support clients to navigate the interplay of, and to negotiate multiple, intersecting
identities. (Chapter 18, Collins, Huezo, Lavell)
• Support clients to engage in values clarification where values are not transparent or
tensions and dissonance arise. (Chapter 18, Chew, Collins, Doyle, Saleem)
• Expand your repertoire of change strategies that may be employed in culturally
responsive ways. (Chapter 18, Carter)
◦ Expressive arts therapies (Carter, Wong)
◦ Visualization (Wong)
45 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
◦ Role-play (Wong)
◦ Self-talk (Collins, Wong)
• Enhance clients’ social support by reinforcing existing helpful relationships and exploring
additional avenues for interpersonal connections. (Chapter 18, Collins, Cook, Macdonald)
• Effectively integrate psychoeducation to enhance clients’ empowerment, self-efficacy,
and autonomy over their own health and healing. (Chapter 18, Carter, Saleem, Wong)
• Apply a systems lens to relational/family counselling, attending to the impact of cultural
oppression and the interfaces of cultural identities and social locations within the family
system. (Chapter 18, Carter, Cook, Doyle, Wong)
• Capitalize on the potential for normalizing clients’ experiences of cultural oppression and
increasing their sense of social support through group counselling. (Chapter 18, Lavell,
Saleem)
Core Competency 17: Engage in culturally responsive and socially
just interventions at the mesolevel (i.e., schools, organizations,
communities) in collaboration with, or on behalf of, clients.
Back to domain
list
• Evaluate the importance of advocacy on behalf of clients, and advocate for changes within
schools, organizations, communities, and other systems. (Chapter 18, Cook, Doyle, Huezo,
Wong)
• Embrace allyship/solidarity with marginalized persons and peoples to support,
empower, and advocate with and for them in the face of current and historical cultural
injustices and oppression. (Chapter 18, Carter, Chang, Huezo, Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Engage in outreach to position yourself within schools, organizations, and communities in
ways that optimize accessibility, remove barriers to access, and that introduce your
services to clients. (Chapter 18, Collins, Saleem)
• Develop an effective working alliance with schools, organizations, and communities to
provide consultation on cultural competency, responsivity, and social justice in their
provision of services to clients. (Chapter 18, Chang)
• Engage in interprofessional collaboration to increase the breadth of resources available
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 46
to clients and to ensure comprehensive, holistic assessment and planning to meet their
needs. (Chapter 18, Carter, Chang, Collins, Cook, Saleem)
• Create opportunities for interorganizational collaboration as a means to more effectively
meet the needs of all, and in particular, underserviced client populations. (Chapter 18,
Chang, Saleem)
• Seek out opportunities for community development and capacity-building to support
communities as a whole to enhance their diversity, inclusivity, and equity through
grassroots, collective, and community-driven processes. (Chapter 18, Carter, Carter,
Chang, Cook, Huminuik)
• Embrace community engagement as a means of building counsellor credibility and
supporting client integration into LGBTTQI, Indigenous, and other cultural communities.
(Chapter 18, Cook, Chang)
• Plan, implement, and evaluate organizational development initiatives to enhance
effectiveness, diversity, inclusivity, equity, and cultural responsivity. (Chapter 18,
Huminuik, Joncas [French], Joncas [English])
• Initiate organizational policy change to redress discriminatory, exclusionary, inequitable,
or unjust experiences for employees or clients. (Chapter 18)
• Implement prevention programs aimed at ameliorating the conditions that lead to client
problems in the first place. (Chapter 18, Chang, Collins)
• Engage in health promotion activities to support marginalized populations to enhance,
and to increase their autonomy over, their well-being. (Chapter 18, Chang)
• Plan and implement program development and evaluation processes to meet the needs
of underserviced and marginalized populations. (Chapter 18, Carter, Chang, Huezo,
Huminuik)
• Infuse multicultural and social justice values and competencies throughout counsellor
education programs and foster active integration of theory and practice through practica
in agencies with a social justice mandate and clientele from diverse cultural groups.
(Chapter 18, Huminuik, Reeves)
• Model culturally responsive and socially just supervision within the supervisor‒student/
counsellor‒client triad. (Chapter 18, Chang, Chew, Huezo)
47 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
Core Competency 18: Engage in social justice action at the
macrolevel (i.e., broader social, economic, political systems) on
behalf of clients.
Back to domain
list
• Embrace social justice action/activism to effect change in social injustices and
inequalities at the macrolevel, on behalf of your clients. (Chapter 18, Cook, Doyle,
Huminuik, Reynolds)
• Identify and advocate for structural change/systemic policy change within change in
inequitable and unjust social, economic, and political systems that marginalize, and
discriminate against, members of nondominant populations. (Chapter 18, Carter, Doyle,
Huminuik)
• Draw upon direct experience with marginalized clients to contribute to professional
practice/theory change. (Chapter 18, Huminuik, Wong)
• Engage actively in contributing to research that emphasizes cultural responsivity and
social justice. (Chapter 18, Cook, Doyle, Huminuik, Macdonald, Wong)
• Engage in education, social action, and advocacy to raise public consciousness of the lived
experiences of nondominant populations and to transform public perception. (Chapter
18, Huminuik)
• Take a leadership role and advocate with counselling and psychology organizations to
take an active stand against injustice and to promote global human rights and social
justice. (Chapter 18, Carter, Huminuik, Reynolds)
References
Brown, C., Collins, S., & Arthur, N. (2014). Fostering multicultural and social justice competency
Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model | 48
through counsellor education pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy,
48, 321-342. Retrieved from http://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/cjc/
Collins, S., Arthur, N., Brown, C., & Kennedy, B. (2015). Student perspectives: Graduate
education facilitation of multicultural counseling and social justice competency. Training
and Education in Professional Psychology, 9, 153-160. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000070
Durham, J., & Glosoff, H. (2010). From passion to action: Integrating the ACA advocacy
competencies and social justice into counselor education and supervision. In M. Ratts, R.
Toporek, & J. Lewis (Eds.), ACA Advocacy competencies: A social justice framework for
counsellors (pp. 139-149). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.
Lewis, J. A., Arnold, M. S., House, R., & Toporek, R. L. (2003). Advocacy competencies. Retrieved
from American Counselling Association website: https://www.counseling.org/Resources/
Competencies/Advocacy_Competencies.pdf
Singh, A. A., Hofsess, C., Boyer, E., Kwong, A., Lau, A., McLain, M., & Haggins, K. L. (2010). Social
justice and counseling psychology: Listening to the voices of doctoral trainees. The
Counseling Psychologist, 38, 766-795. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010362559
49 | Chapter 2. Expanded CRSJ Counselling Model
DOMAIN I. THE UBIQUITOUS NATURE
OF CULTURE IN COUNSELLING
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and
celebrate those differences.”
Audre Lorde
Lorde, A. (1997). Our dead behind us: Poems. New York, NY: Norton. For a review of her career
as a writer and social justice activist, see the Poetry Foundation website.
Domain I. The Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in Counselling | 50
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of
Counselling: Appreciating the
Complexity and Intersectionality of
Client–Counsellor Cultural Identities
SANDRA COLLINS
I begin my discussion of the CRSJ counselling model in this chapter by expanding the core
competencies in Domain I. Each of the conceptual chapters is organized according to the core
competencies it addresses.
Domain I: Acknowledge the Ubiquitous Nature of Culture in Counselling
1. Core Competency 1 Cultural Sensitivity: Engage in cultural self-exploration as a
foundation for cultural sensitivity towards client cultural identities and
relationalities.
2. Core Competency 2 Intersectionality: Appreciate and reflect critically on the
complexity and intersectionality of cultural identities and relationalities.
3. Core Competency 3 Worldviews: Value the diversity of worldviews, and
prioritize client beliefs, values, and assumptions.
51 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
E-book Navigation Tips
Click on the book cover image or this link to watch a short video for a
few tips about how to make use of the navigation features in this
chapter. The video will open in YouTube, where closed captioning is
available.
I use Adobe Acrobat Reader in this demonstration; however, the basic
navigation features are similar in other PDF readers.
There is little room for debate in the professional literature about the importance of cultural
awareness to counselling. There are now entire journals devoted to topics related to culture
and articles related to cultural consciousness and sensitivity in most other professional
publications. As I write this chapter, the main page of the Canadian Psychological Association
(CPA) website prominently displays a link to culturally competent care for diverse groups. The
Canadian Counselling Association has recently posted an issue paper on Indigenous mental
health services in Canada. The American Psychological Association (APA) home page highlights
a new book on thriving as a same-sex couple. The American Counselling Association, the most
social action oriented of these organizations, advertises its 2017 conference, which they
relocated to California in protest against a bill passed in Tennessee that would permit
professional counsellors (and other service providers) to deny services to LGBTTQI and other
clients, based on religious beliefs. Cultural diversity is clearly at the forefront of dialogues
within the professions of counselling and counselling psychology about how best to meet the
needs of clients competently and ethically.
The purpose of this chapter is to bring into conscious awareness our own complex cultural
identities as counsellors and to increase our ability to embrace fully our understanding of, and
cultural empathy toward, our clients’ multiple and intersecting cultural identities. Throughout
this chapter, I share stories from my evolution into a more culturally conscious, less
ethnocentric human being. I share these stories to reinforce the idea that cultural
competency is not a destination, it is a lifelong journey in which we all remain actively
engaged; I share also to normalize the struggles along the way. The following key concepts
from the CRSJ counselling model are explored in this chapter.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 52
CRSJ Counselling Concepts Illustrated
• Between-group differences
• Collective identities
• Collectivist worldview
• Contextualized/situational
identities
• Cultural awareness
• Cultural distance‒similarity
• Cultural encapsulation
• Cultural identities
• Cultural self-awareness
• Cultural self-exploration
• Cultural sensitivity
• Essentialized/fixed identities
• Ethnocentrism
• Fluidity
• Identity narratives/stories
• Indigenous worldviews
• Individualist worldview
• Intersectionality
• Lived experience
• Multiple identities/relationalities
• Personal cultural identities
• Relationality
• Relationship to land/place
• Respect for dignity
• Stereotypes
• Subjectivity of worldview
• Ubiquitous
• Within-group differences
• Worldview
As I argue in Chapter 1, it is impossible, and clearly undesirable, to extract culture from
counselling. Culture is ubiquitous: ever-present and pervasive. Humans are all cultural beings,
and our cultural identities and social locations influence, whether consciously or
unconsciously, how we view the world. Careful attention to client and counsellor worldviews
and cultural identities, as well as critical reflection on client and counsellor social locations, is
central in the CRSJ counselling model. Without the foundational competencies in this domain,
the rest of the model falls apart. For example, it is impossible to engage in culturally
responsive and socially just relational practice, to do justice to case conceptualization, or to
negotiate change processes that reflect these values without first examining our own cultural
identities and social locations as well as those of our clients.
53 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
Core Competency 1
Back to top of chapter
Counsellor Self-Exploration as a Foundation for Cultural
Sensitivity
Figure 1. The building blocks of cultural sensitivity.
Counsellor self-awareness of cultural identities is foundational to all multicultural
competency models (APA, 2002; Arredondo et al., 1996; Collins & Arthur, 2010a, 2010b; Ratts,
Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; Sue et
al., 1982). In the early models, the term cultural identity was often synonymous with race or
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 54
ethnicity; however, the definition of culture has expanded over time. I refer to cultural
identities in the plural, because each of us embodies experiences and expressions of multiple
dimensions of culture, most often inclusive of gender, gender identity, ethnicity, Indigeneity,
ability, sexual orientation, social class, age, and religion or spirituality. It is the complex and
contextualized interface of these various dimensions that is the focus of most current
literature on multicultural counselling.
The challenge before each of us is to gain cultural self-awareness and come to know others in
a way that bypasses cultural barriers and stereotypes and allows us to connect in real and
meaningful ways with each other. It is my belief that we cannot be fully present to another
person’s lived experiences unless each of us is willing to engage purposefully in
self-exploration of who we are, the origins of our beliefs about ourselves, and how our
self-perceptions evolve and shift over time. Most of us are conscious of our own cultural
identities along one or more of the above-mentioned dimensions; however, there are often
others that we have not yet thought about critically. Cultural self-exploration forms an
essential foundation for the active engagement and genuine presence of the counsellor in
each encounter with clients. I begin this chapter by challenging you to open your eyes and to
really see yourself in all your cultural complexity.
Although it is difficult to imagine in this current day, when social media and the Internet
bring the world to us moment-by-moment, I grew up in a very monocultural world. I
lacked even a basic consciousness of race and class, whether my own or that of others. I
lived in a middle-class suburb of an urban community on a street full of other
middle-class, white, Christian families. It never occurred to me as a child or a young
adolescent that I lived a privileged life or that others did not. My world revolved around
family, school, church, sports, clubs, music lessons, and my friends, all of whom looked
like me and inhabited the same position in society as me. It never occurred to me that not
every kid spent their time engaged in all of these activities. I knew the word, “poverty,”
but I never experienced the phenomenon or ripple effects of class disprivilege. My first
glimpse of differences in ethnicity came through the stories of missionaries. I came to
associate race with heathenism, which did little to raise my cultural self-awareness. I can
picture the only Black teacher I encountered, a substitute high school chemistry teacher. I
still experience a vague unsettledness about those months in his class, knowing now that
55 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
we treated him as other; however, the fact that I can’t conjure up specific examples is
further evidence of my lack of racial consciousness at the time.
Although the current contexts of most of our lives make this degree of race and class
unconsciousness less likely, this does not mean we automatically understand the
resultant social positioning or our part in it. Nor does it mean that racial and class
disparities have disappeared. Cultural consciousness comes about only through the
kind of active engagement in self-exploration I talk about in this chapter.
• Take a moment to reflect on your own upbringing and the messages you
received, and potentially internalized, about culture and cultural others.
• What aspects of your own cultural identities remain less examined? What goals
might you set for cultural self-exploration in service of increasing your cultural
self-awareness.
The second point of agreement within all models of multicultural competency is cultural
awareness of, and purposeful attention to, clients’ cultural identities (APA, 2002; Arredondo et
al., 1996; Collins & Arthur, 2010a, 2010b; Ratts et al., 2015; Sue et al., 1992; Sue et al., 1982).
[Remember to click on the hyperlinked words so you can review the glossary definition of
each of these terms.] Many individuals in our society live with a continual sense of invisibility
that stems primarily from the experience of not being fully and openly seen for who they
really are. By actually seeing others, we validate the reality of their identities and lived
experiences and acknowledge their existence. Cultural awareness begins long before you
encounter a client, as you enhance your overall cultural competency through research,
engagement in cultural communities, and professional training. Cultural awareness is focused
on knowledge acquisition, in the context of genuine interest in, and appreciation of, client
worldviews and lived experiences.
This knowledge of cultural diversity provides an essential foundation for the attitude and skill
of cultural sensitivity to client cultural identities, which plays out as you develop a trusting
and growth-focused relationship with each client. Competency development also continues
beyond the moment you end your professional relationship, because each client–counsellor
encounter potentially raises new areas for continued competency development and, ideally,
increases your curiosity about cultural diversity.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 56
Cultural Sensitivity
Cultural sensitivity is a broad concept that envelops many of the specific principles in
the CRSJ counselling model used to hold at bay our own preconceptions and to
encourage us to listen to our clients with open hearts and minds.
• Which aspects of your cultural identities or group affiliations might pose
barriers to assuming an invitational and nonjudgemental stance toward client
cultural identities?
• What do you know about the cultural groups you are most likely to encounter in
your practice? What is missing in your knowledge base, and how might you
increase your cultural awareness?
• Think of a client you have recently encountered (or someone in another context
if you are not working as a counsellor). In retrospect, what might you be curious
about that could inform your future interactions with this person?
• Cultural sensitivity is an active, not a passive, process. Identify one activity that
you can engage in to enhance and demonstrate your consciousness of gender,
gender identity, ethnicity, Indigeneity, ability, sexual orientation, social class,
age, or religion or spirituality.
The Complexity of Personal Cultural Identities
Over time and across contexts, individuals develop and refine their own personal internalized
culture. There is a tendency to think about our own cultural identities in a decontextualized
fashion, which fails to take into account all the factors that influence how each of us
experiences and defines our gender, ethnicity, social class, and so on. The model in Figure 2
captures some of the factors that influence our cultural selves. Our self-definitions within the
various dimensions of cultural identity emerge through interactions among these factors. I
will introduce each of these components in more detail later in this chapter and in the next. In
57 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
keeping with the image of the colour wheel I introduce in the Preface, the blending of each of
the dimensions below captures the dynamic, interactive, and complex nature of personal
cultural identities.
Figure 2. Factors influencing cultural identity. Adapted from “Self-Awareness and Awareness
of Client Cultural Identities,” by S. Collins and N. Arthur, Culture-infused counselling (2nd ed.),
p. 70. Copyright 2010 by Counselling Concepts.
*Isms are the shadow images that mirror the cultural dimensions or identities in the diagram.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 58
These are discourses in our society that work directly against our embracing various aspects
of our own cultural identities or those of our clients. I specifically separate these *isms from
other systemic factors to highlight their significance in terms of the lived experiences of our
clients and to the counselling process. The systemic factors reflect the broad social contexts
in which we live as well as the cultural, economic, and political systems that shape our
experiences. In Chapter 6, I talk about the dominant discourses and sociocultural norms that
limit and constrain expressions of cultural diversity. Awareness of, and active engagement
with, these *isms and systemic factors feature prominently in the CRSJ counselling model. The
personal cultural factors play out in each of our lives, and the lives of each of our clients, in
different ways; watch for these factors in the client stories that are integrated throughout the
book. In the Canadian context, the Indigenous peoples hold the concept of relationality, and I
discuss, below, how this value has reshaped my perspective on cultural identities in this book.
Traditional models of counselling placed a much stronger emphasis on the personal
dimensions in Figure 2, often failing to take into account (a) the cultural dimensions most
salient to each client; (b) the client’s relationship to others, to community, and to land and
place; and (c) the systemic factors, particularly *isms, that negatively impact client health and
well-being. With the increased recognition of the social determinants of health, these broader
contextual and systemic factors are now emphasized in the multicultural and social justice
literature.
Cultural Self-Exploration
Counsellor cultural self-awareness requires more than a casual or cursory glance at
your cultural heritage. Active, purposeful, and systematic cultural self-exploration
provides an essential foundation for working with all clients. Consider the following
questions for reflection.
• To what degree have you engaged in critical self-reflection along each of the
dimensions of your own cultural identities (Figure 2)?
• Which aspects of your self-identity have you reflected on, contextualized, or
59 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
questioned?
• Which aspects of your cultural identities do you simply assume to be normal
and, therefore, not warranting critical self-exploration?
• What emotional or cognitive reactions might you experience if you really
embraced the notion that who you think you are is a product of the interplay of
each of the factors in Figure 2?
• To what degree have you considered the influence of the systemic factors and
*isms on both how you view particular aspects of cultural identity and how your
own cultural identities have developed over time?
Throughout my conceptual chapters in each part of the book, I intersperse practice
illustrations by other contributors (i.e., client stories, personal reflections, applications of
specific concepts). Then I follow each conceptual chapter with chapters written by other
colleagues. Here are several reasons for organizing the book in this way:
• I believe that learning is facilitated best through the integration of theory and practice. I
want you to consider a conceptual idea, like identity or privilege, and then have an
opportunity to see how that concept plays out in the personal experiences of contributors
or in their work with individual clients, communities, or broader systems. I hope these
stories bring to life the key concepts in the CRSJ counselling model.
• I do not see myself as an expert in culturally responsive and socially just counselling. In
fact, each time I reviewed a new contribution, I found myself asking new questions,
adding to my cultural competency, or applying a difference lens. I want you to have that
same experience and to benefit equally from what these authors have to offer.
• I value and appreciate the diversity of voices of these contributors. Most speak from their
cultural selves, lived experiences, and social locations, which I hope will add a richness
and depth to your learning that I, alone, cannot provide. I hope their stories also
encourage you to embrace and honour your own cultural identities and lived experiences.
• Although I introduce the CRSJ model as a metatheoretical lens, the concepts discussed
are complex and evolving, and contributing authors speak to them from different points
of view, sometimes introducing tensions within the professions or differences of opinion
about how a particular concept (e.g., trauma) is understood or applied. I hope this
prompts you to think critically about, and personalize, these concepts yourself.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 60
• The contributions from these authors are also diverse in style and format: Some
contributions are personal reflections, interviews, or stories, and may include poetry, art,
or audio stories; some share research results or expand conceptual lenses; and many
provide prompts for further reflection. I hope to honour your diverse learning styles and
to ensure that each of you is moved in your own ways, emotionally and cognitively,
through your experience of this book.
As a starting place for introducing this diversity of voice, I invited Dr. Lisa Gunderson to speak
to her personal cultural identities as a Black woman, drawing on some of the ideas presented
in Figure 2. She sets an important tone for this book through her pride in, and her honouring
of, her Black heritage. She positions the systemic oppression she experienced in the broader
context of the strengths and resiliency of Black history and culture.
Practice Illustration 1 Black Enough?
By Dr. Lisa Gunderson
I have always known two things: (a) I am Black and (b) I am Jamaican. Growing up in the
United States (US), my family often quoted a popular song, “No matter where I roam,
Jamaica is my home.” Our Jamaican identity has always been a key and critical
component to who we are as a family. I am the eldest child of the eldest child. My
mom’s responsibility was to aid most of her siblings to come to the US—I have 16 aunts
and uncles, half on my mom’s side. My father was a middle child, yet he had similar
responsibilities for his siblings. This meant that, although I grew up in a predominantly
white culture in the ’70s, we always had Jamaicans in our home, whether an uncle, an
aunt, or my grandmother. I was immersed in this space of very strong Black people,
because we came from a country where Black people run everything and where
everybody looks like us.
According to the Urban Dictionary (Denton, 2006, para. 3), I am a Level 2 Jamerican:
“the largest and most inclusive population of Jamaicans who live in North America and
the driving force that keeps the loving spirit of Jamaica international.” This definition
61 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
speaks succinctly to how I identify. Although I was born in West Virginia, my values,
food (e.g., patties, curry chicken, and rice and peas), and music was Jamaican. I speak
without any regional English accent, because my home language was patois (“twingy
twa”) which I turn on and off depending on my conversational partner. My family
themes resonate with Denton’s (2006) description of family as most important, along
with phrases such as “‘education is key,’ ‘whatever you do, make it your best,’ . . . ‘good,
better, best, never, let it rest; till your good becomes better, and your better is your
BEST’.”
My parents came into the US (separately) in their 20s, so they were firmly grounded in
who they were as people and as Black Jamaicans. My mom entered through Texas, but
she had to get out in the dark of night and ended up in Oregon, where she met my dad
through a blind date. It turned out that they had lived less than an hour away from
each other on the island. Because my parents arrived in the 1960s, they were engaged
in what it meant, personally and politically, to be Black/African American in the US.
Because my dad hung out with international students from other countries that were
majority dominant Black, he did not understand, initially, the US white supremacist
system; the college recruiters who invited him to the US had painted a very different
picture. However, he soon realized, “Oh, hold on a second. When I walk down the
street, they don’t know or care if I’m Jamaican, or Ghanaian, or African-American; they
just know I’m Black.” He was asked to leave a church, because he was Black. My mom
got friends to buy things for her, because Black people were barred from certain
stores. My parents became very involved in the civil rights movements of the time.
Historically my family had a different sense of who Black people were, what we could
be, and what we were about. My mother’s parents owned their own shops in Jamaica
and travelled to England and the States to work. My father’s parents had little money
and little formal education, but they worked hard, had a wealth of love and
commitment to family, and instilled a passion for education and hard work in their
kids. My parents both also held that mindset. My father would tell us, “Yu nose mus
run if yu wan good.” Even though my sister and I grew up in a white society in that
space and time we were taught not to allow this society to define us, because we
were a majority (at home and worldwide). To reinforce these messages, my parents
took us back and forth to Jamaica regularly. Then, in the early 80s, we moved back to
Jamaica for a couple of years. I was 11. This was life altering, because whenever I was in
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 62
Jamaica, I was the epitome of beauty inside and out. The engineers and doctors in our
country and our family looked like me. Consequently, I carried that image of what we
were and what we could do always, despite what we (as Black people) were being told
in the US by the dominant culture.
Racially I understood being a Black person in the US, but culturally Jamaica is very
different. I tried to fit in to the larger US identity and the stereotypical definition of
African-American identity. Many things seemed colour-coded by the music you
listened to or the way you spoke. People would tell me that I did not sound “Black
enough”; they heard a white voice, because I wasn’t speaking Ebonics (e.g., “Lisa
trippin”). It was quite confusing for me. I wondered how in the world could that be
white, if it is coming out of my body? Everybody in my household and in Jamaica spoke
like me. We spoke our language, Patois, at home; however, I used standard English in
school and in certain public circles.
I had my first racial incident in Grade 3, when I was in an all-white class, where I also
experienced a clash of social class. We were the only black family in this upper-middle
class neighborhood. I remember showing my parents the very horrible picture these
kids had drawn of me on which they wrote Nigger. “What is this?” I asked, a question
and conversation for which they had been waiting. I asked them, “Why do people hate
me for the colour of my skin?” I could not comprehend that. I did not realize that what
I was talking about was psychology, trying to understand and unravel human nature
and behaviour. Later I took a psychology class in high school and I thought, “Okay, this
is making sense.” Many racial incidences occurred throughout the intervening years.
Recently, I was reading my Grade 8 yearbook. One of my friends wrote, “I hope to see
you during summer. Do you remember when that guy came up to you, and he called
you the N-word, and you looked at him, and you said, ‘I may be an N, but I’m proud of
it’.” I started crying, because (a) I do not remember the incident—so many more have
happened since then—and (b) I was so happy about my response, “Wow, I said that
then. Dang!” My parents’ lessons, my cultural lessons, were so well-grounded in my
mind.
The strength and resiliency I showed, which has carried forward from my
grandparents, my great grandparents, and my ancestors, made me smile. Spending my
childhood in our home or in Jamaica, immersed in being the majority, shored me up,
63 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
instilled a sense of belonging, and made me believe I am deserving of any space. My
parents made very sure that my sister and I were never embarrassed about where we
came from or how we came. They gave us a cloak of protection, our own Black
identity, knowledge of our history. It hasn’t been easy, but we were able to defend
ourselves and be successful in that racialized US space because of that grounding in
culture and ethnic identity.
My parents also taught us that we have a political responsibility to take action to
effect systems change. I really am grateful to them for that. They could have just
chosen to hate white people. Instead, they envisioned a different future. They
understood they were on the right side of history, building on the strength and
fortitude of our culture. It is not a history of pain; it is a history of power and
empowerment. Despite the horrific things done to us, including attempted genocides,
Black people survived. And we were creative in our survival. Black people had been
resisting from the beginning, long before the civil rights movement in the 60s, and
that story is not really told. It seems like our story always begins with enslavement.
However, our story starts with the continent of Africa and how successful we were
there. We survived and changed and created and maintained who we are as a people.
Look what we have been able to do. We impact the world! I embrace the strength
within the African-American community, the strength of our commonality, despite our
differing nationalities. The traders of enslaved people dropped off first in Jamaica then
made their way to the US, so we had that history in common.
Once I started really understanding all those pieces, it was easy for me to see that I do
fit in. Looping back to the title of this practice illustration, I ask myself, “What makes a
person Black enough?” I am Jamerican, I grew up with immigrant parents from Jamaica
in a US space. My parents were very good at making sure I carried forward my
Jamaican cultural heritage; I taught them about the African-American experience,
music, and history that was not familiar to them. They encouraged me to learn about
being an African-American and the rich history of which I now know I was a part. My
parents very consciously placed me in Black spaces so I could maintain that
strengths-based perspective. I do the same for my kids.
My answer to the question, “Black enough?” is that it is the wrong question. That
question is an oppressors’ question. Black people are not in this small box; we can
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 64
speak different ways, dress different ways, and still be Black. This is the lesson my
parents taught me, the lesson I learned from my African-American friends, and the
lesson I continue to learn from my now very international Black community in Canada.
I continue to forge my identity as a Black woman for myself. That is part of who I am
as a first-generation immigrant. There is no “Black enough”; there is just being Black. I
embody blackness; therefore, I am always enough.
Identity Narratives and Lived Experiences
I talk more specifically about processes for engaging clients in conversations about culture in
Chapter 12; however, here I want to emphasize that assessing and appreciating client cultural
identities begins and ends with listening to their stories. One of the most common challenges
for beginning counsellors is premature foreclosure on understanding. In the rush to be
helpful, there is a temptation to jump to conclusions and miss important elements of clients’
lived experiences and cultural stories. Paré (2013) reminded us that one of the main reasons
for moving slowly and listening carefully is that, without careful attention to the specific
cultural identity narratives that impact client health and well-being, we can easily miss the
less obvious cultural differences between ourselves and others, as well as important changes
in client self-awareness and experience of cultural identities over time. Consider Don Zeman’s
practice illustration below that provides insight into how to engage sexual minority clients in
dialogue about sexuality as part of their cultural identity narratives.
Practice Illustration 2 Cultural Inquiry with Sexual Minority Clients
By Don Zeman
Introducing conversations about sexuality can be challenging. When I first started
65 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
working with Ashley (not their actual name), they initially wanted to talk about how to
manage anxiety. As we co-explored what they were experiencing, Ashley shared that a
large part of their anxiety related to homophobia where they worked (about 50
employees), from a majority of their family, and even from two previous mental health
professionals. Ashley had been with the company for about three years since
graduating from university and was enjoying the work, although not the workplace.
Ashley related that some co-workers made homophobic jokes about sexual minority
persons in their presence and, occasionally, insulting comments about Ashley’s way of
dressing. Two male colleagues stood deliberately in front of the bathroom door as
Ashley tried to enter, blocking Ashley’s way. Going to Human Resources yielded mixed
results, even after a workshop on inclusion and diversity in the workplace in which the
facilitator emphasized the importance of respect for the dignity of all persons. Ashley
had visited two mental health professionals before, one while they were in high school
and one about six months previously. Ashley felt that both counsellors had negative
attitudes about, as well as little experience working with, sexual minority persons.
When I was doing my dissertation research about facilitating conversations about
sexuality with sexual minority (LGBTTQI) athletes, the co-participants identified
passages in those conversations that had been useful or helpful to them to talk about
and explore sexuality. I identified seven themes, and although we had research
conversations rather than counselling conversations, I believe that what they
identified may be useful to mental health practitioners who work with sexual minority
clients. I resonated with those themes myself thinking back over my years as a gay
man engaged in professional sports. Over the last 12 years, I have found two of these
themes particularly useful considerations in my counselling work with sexual minority
clients: (a) recognizing and talking about heterosexism and homophobia and (b)
exploring what worked and didn’t work in previous counselling experiences (Zeman,
2007).
Like Ashley, the research co-participants and other sexual minority clients talked
about experiences of homophobia and heterosexism in their sports, lives, and with
previous counsellors. For Ashley, having the chance to talk about workplace, family,
and other social experiences in our sessions was useful to understanding those
experiences as well as to developing plans for their own actions in those spaces. We
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 66
worked together to deconstruct some of those experiences, noticing, asking about,
and discussing when they may have felt othered and then reconstructing these
experiences in the safe(r) space of our counselling. For example, Ashley and I
role-played possible actions and things to say that were appropriately assertive. Ashley
identified two colleagues who seemed to be more queer-friendly than others during
the workshop and decided to invite them to collaborate on a tip sheet for creating an
inclusive and culturally safe workspace to present to their manager.
Clients have often noted that, following from these conversations, social justice and
social action anti-homophobic stances and activities have become part of their lives.
Although Ashley already had anti-homophobic perspectives, their previous actions
seemed to increase experiences of homophobia, so we discussed possible ways to
keep moving forward safely while persisting in their own workplace advocacy and
where to find support for those actions. The research co-participants found it useful
to have a space to (co-)evaluate the legitimacy of their beliefs and ideas while
suspending, at least for a time, others’ judgements; this has been echoed frequently by
other sexual minority clients. Ashley, for example, noted that they appreciated being
able to talk about and deconstruct their experiences in a place where they felt that
they had someone to talk to who would listen and support them.
Although counselling programs continue to give increasing space and force to the
integration of diversity and inclusive counselling practices, sexual minority clients
continue to encounter the negative experiences with previous counsellors and mental
health care practitioners that the research co-participants noted. Although discussion
of sexuality is not always the reason sexual minority clients seek counselling, I believe
that it is important for counsellors to be prepared for those discussions if they do
occur. I also feel that it is a reasonable expectation that sexual minority clients receive
culturally sensitive and competent help and that is important that we work toward
co-creating places to explore, talk about, reflect on, and understand what may have
been difficult, or even nearly impossible, for sexual minority clients to explore in the
past or in other contexts of their lives.
In the coming together of counsellor and client, their unique cultural identity narratives and
lived experiences become resources for, and influences on, the counselling relationship and
process. However, openness to the other begins with openness to self and a commitment to
67 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
engage actively in self-discovery. The interplay between counsellor and client identity stories
is also important, because our own unresolved issues or points of tension in our identity
narratives may colour the lens through which we view client’s stories.
Although I’ve lived with chronic illness since my early 20’s, I never fully integrated my
physical limitations into my sense of self until my late 40s and early 50s. The
manifestations of my ankylosing spondylitis and related inflammatory conditions are
largely invisible to others. For many years, I treated illness as something outside of myself
that I tried to control and compartmentalize—like an annoying, but persistent, extended
family member. I transformed myself into a “head on a stick,” for this and other reasons; I
lived my life with as little attention as possible to pain or physical challenges. This
limited my ability to be fully knowable or to be completely present to myself and others.
At some point in my early 30’s, I decided to stop shunning this part of my daily lived
experience, and I changed my internal strategies for managing my illness. However, my
experiences remained largely invisible to those around me, and I chose to keep things
that way. In retrospect, I realize that this had to do mostly with my own internalized
fears and biases about being identified as someone with a physical disability. At the time,
I didn’t process the implications of these internalized cultural messages for my sensitivity
and openness to the experiences and identities of others who were also less able-bodied.
My fear of exposure also limited my ability to hold appropriate personal and professional
boundaries, because I would not be honest with others about my limitations. This
inhibited my ability to engage in appropriate self-care. If I had been honest with myself
and others about my health challenges, I would have been better able to maintain optimal
health.
As I reflect on the evolution of my own identity narratives, I recognize a number of core
themes: shame, isolation, internalization of sociocultural biases followed by freedom,
transparency, and a sense of well-being. I have also noticed how the shifts in my own
identity narratives and consciousness have influenced my work with clients over time.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 68
Cultural Sensitivity
• How comfortable are you listening, and then listening again, to the stories of
others?
• What are your stories, your identity narratives, and how might they shape the
lens you bring to your listening and understanding?
• The very nature of a narrative is that it changes over time. How much space do
you allow for others (family, friends, clients, colleagues) to evolve into their sense
of self and to alter their narratives across time and space?
Teaching and Learning Guide
The Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling: Teaching and Learning Guide
(Collins, 2018) provides a series of free, open source, stand-alone learning activities
designed to enhance your depth of understanding and appreciation for the key
concepts within the CRSJ counselling model. I have drawn on multimedia resources to
make these learning activities more interesting, interactive, and experiential in nature.
Please read the Forward and Introduction to that guide to get a sense of the purpose
of this open source resource for instructors and learners.
At the end of each major section in these conceptual chapters, I encourage you to
review the CRSJ counselling key concepts I have addressed. Self-assess your comfort
level with each concept, and identify those about which you remain curious,
questioning, or unsettled. Then, take a few moments to complete some of the learning
activities in the Teaching and Learning Guide related to those key concepts. For Core
Competency 1, please see Core Competency 1 Cultural Sensitivity. If you are currently
69 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
taking a course, your instructor may also have specified certain activities for you to
complete.
Core Competency 2
Back to top of chapter
The Complexity and Intersectionality of Cultural Identities
and Relationalities
The focus of the second core competency is on the complexity of cultural identities and the
ways in which various aspects of our own and our clients’ cultural identities interact and
intersect. Go back to Core Competency 2 in Chapter 2 to review the learning outcomes
related to that competency. As I write this section and explore concepts such as fluidity,
intersectionality, and situational identity, I’m conscious of tensions within the professional
literature and within me. On one hand, it is critical for counsellors to move away from the
more traditional, silo model of learning about, and enacting sensitivity toward, cultural
identities, a model in which specific bodies of literature and practice principles emerged,
separately, related to women’s issues, ethnic identities, or queer culture. What we now
understand more fully is that the experience of gender identity, for example, may differ
significantly between two-spirit Indigenous persons and white transgender people as well as
within each group; or that, for a person of colour, personal cultural identity may be expressed
differently in the context of ethnic as opposed to queer communities. Isolating one aspect of
cultural identity misses the complex, nuanced way in which (a) who we are is more than the
sum of our parts and (b) how we present ourselves is fluid and contextualized. On the other
hand, cultural identity is an important way in which we build community, stand together
against cultural oppression, and co-construct meaning in relation to those various aspects of
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 70
our cultural selves. So, my intent here is neither, for example, to erase race nor to minimize
the importance of deaf culture; instead I want to challenge the rigid boundaries we have
constructed as a society, and sometimes as a profession, around the various aspects of our
cultural identities.
Fluidity of Cultural Identities
One of the primary means of maintaining the dominant social discourse of us versus them,
which seems currently to be increasing in society rather than decreasing, is the underlying
polarizing assumption that many aspects of cultural identity reflect dichotomous, distinct, and
categorical variables. This assertion of essentialized or fixed identities plays out, for example,
in the false, but pervasive, assumption that there are only two genders, male and female, even
though this notion of gender binaries has been widely refuted (APA, 2015). As noted in the
Preface, I prefer not to use the pronouns she or he, except in reference to someone who has
specifically self-identified with these pronouns; instead I employ gender-neutral language.
The interesting social trend of DNA testing to trace one’s ancestry also works against the
notion of fixed identities: The outcomes of this testing most often reinforce the assertion that
distinct categories of race do not exist; instead ethnic heritage has become complex, fluid,
and multifaceted, in part because of increased global mobility (Eisenstadt, 2015). As I note
above, this does not mean that embracing Black or Indigenous or queer culture is not an
important aspect of cultural identity development; rather, the concept of fluidity challenges
the dominant cultural ideology that supports us versus them, and either/or, dialogues about
these dimensions of our cultural identities.
I recall the first transgender person with whom I worked as a practicum student (before I
came out to myself as queer). At that time, I had very little understanding of gender
identity issues beyond what I was learning from listening to my client about their lived
experiences. We had worked together for quite a while before it occurred to me to ask
them if they perceived themselves as gay or straight. [I would not use that binary
language now, but it reflected my level of cultural awareness at the time.] They were
71 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
quite taken aback because this was the first time anyone had asked them this question; so
far, I and others had defaulted instead to a misattribution of gay identity when in fact
they saw themselves as primarily oriented towards opposite sex partners. This one
question opened up a whole new avenue for our continued dialogue and added a layer of
nuance to their experiences of self and self-in-relation to which I had not previously
attended. In retrospect, I also recognized my binary assumptions related to gender,
viewing this client as transitioning from male to female, when their presentation of
gender was more androgynous. I am grateful for their patience with me as a new
counsellor; I think they could at least see my genuine curiosity and nonjudgement, and
that provided a foundation for trust within our counselling relationship.
As you move forward into practice, I hope that you will carry with you a much more
informed and critical lens on gender, sexual orientation, and other aspects of client
culture than I exhibited at the outset of my career. However, these assumptions are
deeply embedded in North American culture, and it is important to stay vigilant in
monitoring the subtle ways in which they surface in our thinking, our language use,
and our actions.
In my earlier writing (Collins, 2010), I argued that various dimensions of cultural identity form
points on intersecting circles rather than linear continua, as illustrated in Figure 3. Reflecting
on my practicum experience above, an individual may identify as predominantly gay, but have
a more androgynous expression of gender identity (see point A on the diagram); alternatively,
they may have a clear sense of masculine identity, but identify as bisexual (see point B); or they
may be two-spirited and position themselves as gender nonbinary (see point C). Reflecting
back on the factors influencing personal cultural identity in Figure 2, other dimensions can be
added to this model to get a sense of the wholeness of a client’s self-identification at a
particular time. Individuals may find themselves shifting over time in various other aspects of
their identity, a concept more easily accommodated through these more circular, fluid
identity models.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 72
Figure 3. One example of embracing fluidity in the intersections of cultural identities.
I encourage you to resist the tendency to force various aspects of identity into discrete
categories and instead recognize the fluid and continuous nature of ethnicity, ability, gender,
sexual orientation, and other aspects of culture identity. Embracing a more fluid and circular
model of identity introduces an infinite number of possible points of identity intersection and
normalizes variability in personal cultural identities. At the societal level, this requires a
fundamental shift in attitudes and beliefs to allow individuals to self-identify truly according
to their own personal realities and to embrace diversity in a way that no longer requires
adherence to an us and them model. I encourage you to take an active role in challenging
oppressive social narratives by pointing out, for example, the ways in which systemic barriers
73 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
are erected on the basis of binary identity arguments that are not supported by the body of
scientific literature. See the examples in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. Systemic barriers and oppressive narratives based on the illusion of fixed identities.
Contextualized or Situational Identities
The concept of fluidity also extends to the lived experiences and expressions of cultural
identities across various contexts and situations. Consider the following client story. This
scenario highlights the active engagement of each person with their contexts and the ways in
which they may shape the expression and experience of various aspects of their cultural
identities to those environments.
Manuel is a student at a community college studying fine arts. He spends most of his spare
time with his queer friends either working on art projects together or hanging out at the pub
on campus. He lives in residence, which has opened up a whole new world to him. He has
known he was gay since he was 11, and he had a couple of brief relationships with other
young men in high school; however, he mostly kept this part of himself tucked away as a
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 74
precious secret. At home, he was who his parents expected and hoped he would be. His best
friend Sarah was his graduation date, which thrilled his parents. After a few hours at the
grad dance, they slipped away to a gay bar for the rest of the evening where Sarah pointed
out eligible young men for him and they laughed about all of the shadow lives lived by them
and their classmates. Now he returns home once a month for a long weekend, and he slips
back into the roles and personae his parents know and respect. He enjoys his time with the
many extended family members who gather for his monthly visits. The problem is that it is
becoming more and more challenging for Manuel to shift his external personae as he
embraces his sexual identity more fully. Yet, he values his family and his ethnic community
and understands that acceptance, or even tolerance, is very unlikely in those contexts.
Ironically, within the queer community he doesn’t fully express his ethnic self, because there
are few persons of colour in his circles, and he doesn’t want to put his sense of belonging at
risk by challenging the subtle othering he sometimes experiences. Yet often, he goes back to
his dorm room and digs into the care packages his grandmother sends and draws comfort
from her homemade treats and little reminders of family and community back home.
Recall the image of the colour wheel from the front cover of the book. I chose this image over
my earlier visual metaphor of the kaleidoscope (Collins, 2010), because the paint brushes
suggest the active stance of each person in the creation and evolution of their personal
cultural identities. There is an endless variation of colour that can be created by blending,
contrasting, highlighting, or greying down the paints we choose for our self-portraits. Other
people, experiences, and contexts lay down layers of paint on the palettes of our lives.
However, we remain active agents in how we choose to combine those colours and what we
choose to add to our self-portraits in different contexts and over time. How we make meaning
of our cultural selves also tends to transform over time. In high school, Manuel (from the story
above) was content keeping his affiliation towards other young men a secret and live his life in
a way that fit the expectations of family and community. Over time, however, he has
strengthened his sense of gay identity and found a new community in which he expresses this
identity freely. This experience then has shifted his comfort in other contexts and made it
more difficult to be content with “passing” as heterosexual. However, he now faces a
secondary challenge of how to express and hold onto his valued ethnic identity. This moving
between contexts has not only shaped how he manages his identity, but also how he views
himself.
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As I reflect on the fluidity and the contextualization of my own cultural identity, I’m
aware of the ways in which the various aspects of my identity have interacted and
developed at different paces throughout my life. For me, the process of feminist identity
development was one of the most profound identity transitions that I have experienced.
As an adolescent and young woman, I internalized social and religious expectations
about my role as a woman and chose paths for myself in keeping with those
prescriptions. I was unaware of my own internalized sexism and heterosexism.
In my mid ‘20s, I found myself caught in an unhealthy heterosexual marriage and
pressured by others to simply accept my role as “wife” in spite of the attitudes and
behaviours of my spouse. I felt trapped and isolated, and I began to see more clearly the
oppressive nature of the beliefs and values that I had internalized. My transition from
that initial point of awareness to my current sense of feminist identity involved an
agonizing decade of moving between my emergent solidarity with other women and the
ingrained messages from my gendered socialization that lead me to rationalize to myself
and others the choices I continued to make.
What I didn’t consciously realize during this time was that a parallel process of
awakening was taking place related to my sexual identity development. Once the veil was
lifted from my clouded sense of gender (i.e., my early gender socialization and the
dominant norms I had internalized around gender), my sexual orientation became clear
to me. This time, the process of shifting my internal and external cultural identities was
rapid and welcome. I had paved the way for my lesbian self to emerge with ease.
Cultural Self-Exploration
• As you reflect on your fluid, contextualized, and socially constructed cultural
identities, what are the turning points or significant life events that precipitated
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 76
shifts in how you see yourself?
• Which aspects of your cultural identity have shown obvious shifts over time? In
what areas are the fluid and contextual nature of identity less clear?
• There is no “right” way to self-define or to experience your cultural identity; in
fact, that is part of my assertion in this section of the chapter. However, there
are contextual and systemic factors, such as *isms, that foster rigidity. Please
consider carefully and honestly any points of tension these reflections raise for
you.
The Social Construction of Culture and Collective Identities
As a starting place for increasing your cultural awareness, it is important to understand which
populations you are likely to encounter in your various roles as a professional counsellor. I
encourage you to begin this learning journey long before you start seeing clients, because this
general cultural knowledge serves as the foundation for your work with each individual client.
It is at this point that your own personal cultural identities may begin to pose barriers to your
understanding and appreciation of cultural differences. The CRSJ counselling model is
grounded in social constructivist principles (Gergen, 2015). Openness to client cultural
identities begins by realizing that culture and cultural identities are socially constructed. In
other words, both the significant others in our family and community as well as socialization
processes at the broader systems levels directly influence how we experience and define our
personal cultural identities. Returning to Figure 2, you notice that, although you are an active
participant in the construction of your personal cultural identities, there are numerous other
influences. These influences affect how you view yourself and also how you view other people,
including your clients.
From a social constructivist perspective the values, beliefs, and assumptions we use to define
ourselves are constructed through relationship and social interaction (Gergen, 2015). In some
cases, these social constructions are also shared with others, particularly those in the cultural
communities with whom we identify, and from whom we sometimes draw descriptors for
ourselves. In the same way that human beings hold multiple, intersecting cultural identities,
77 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
we may be members of a range of socially constructed cultural groups or subgroups (Paré,
2013). Certain aspects of culture are passed along to members of these groups and often
continue to be co-constructed by group members, consciously or unconsciously. The result is
often a sense of collective identity, which may be both life-enhancing and life-limiting for the
individual, as illustrated by the story of Manuel above.
Reframing Cultural Identities as Inclusive of Relationality and
Relationship to Land and Place
It has been such an honour during the writing of this book to shape and reshape my own
thinking through my interactions with its contributing authors, as well as with those whose
case studies are published elsewhere. The concept of identity provided a great platform from
which I was able to examine critically the influences of the eurocentric, individualist
worldview on the evolution of psychological concepts. In traditional counselling models,
identity is positioned as something that exists within the individual as a stand-alone
expression of self that evolves through the developmental processes of independence and
autonomy (recall Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development from the 1950s). The
worldviews of Indigenous peoples, however, offer us an alternative lens for understanding
identity as a product and a reflection of relationality; this perception now features
prominently in my conceptualization of cultural identities, as can be seen in Figure 2 above. Be
sure to link to the glossary definition of relationality to explore the meaning attached to this
term. The Indigenous writers and allies who contributed to this book illustrate the importance
of understanding each person and peoples in-relation to others as part of fully appreciating
client lived experiences, presenting concerns, and healing processes.
For Indigenous clients, in particular, it is also important to invite them to position themselves
in relation to the physical environment. This relationship to land and place is often central to
their cultural identity, health, and well-being. I address the processes of colonization more
fully in Chapter 6, and a number of the contributors to this book pick up this important
dialogue in their writing (i.e., Riel Dupuis-Rossi, Vikki Reynolds). However, it is important to
point out now how the appropriation of land belonging to Indigenous peoples and their forced
relocation to reserves was an active component of a process that is appropriately named,
cultural genocide, because it directly disrupted their connection to themselves, to each other,
and to their ancestors, animals, and other roots in the natural world (Reynolds &
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 78
Hammoud-Beckett, 2018). With the loss of relationship to land and place came a loss of
relationship to self and others.
I note a resonance between Indigenous views of relationality and the self-in-relation model of
feminist therapy. Beginning in the 1970s and 80s, feminist therapists began to chip away
persistently at the dominant narrative about identity in psychology, arguing that women’s
development of self occurs in relation (Miller, 1976; Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey,
1991). The self-in-relation model challenged the “myth of the separate self” (Jordan, 2010, p. 2),
positioning personal identity and cultural identity (Jordan, Walker, & Hartling, 2004) as both a
relational concept and a relational process. You will see this emphasis on self-in-relation in a
number of the case study chapters. Relational-cultural theory (Jordan, 2010) challenges
traditional approaches to counselling all genders and provides a model for working from
within relationship to support culturally responsive and socially just change.
Cultural Self-Exploration
• How does your experience of your own gender and gender identity shape your
reaction to the assertion that identity cannot be fully understood apart from
relationality?
• In what ways have your relationships to others shaped both your development
and your awareness of your sense of cultural identities?
• How does the concept of relationality potentially loosen your grip on your sense
of cultural identity as immutable or unchangeable?
Multiple Identities or Relationalities
Another central tenant of social constructivism is the notion that there are multiple realities
that, in the context of this conversation about cultural identities, opens the door to a wide
range of individual and collective expressions of gender, ethnicity, ability, gender identity, and
79 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
so on. Whether or not we attend consciously to each aspect of our cultural identities, each of
us reflects different lived experiences and sociocultural contexts, and brings to the forefront
of our identities different expressions of gender, ethnicity, Indigeneity, social class, religion or
spirituality, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and ability. Who we are as
persons and as counsellors is played out, in part, in the interface of these multiple identities.
Picture yourself and your clients as paintings, in which each stroke of the paintbrush
contributes to the overall effect. You never stop adding colour or texture to your self-portrait.
Instead you, and each of your clients, are unique and beautiful creations that reflect the
multiplicity of your personal cultural identities. As you set out to gain awareness of your
clients’ cultural identities, picture each individual as a unique combination of colours making a
distinctive design that results from the cultural dimensions of their identities, their
relationships to others, their environments, the systemic influences on their cultural identity
development, and their experiences of cultural oppressions or *isms, as these interact with
their interface of personal histories and lived experiences. The concept of multiple identities
and relationalities also infers that how we experience ourselves, express ourselves, and how
others experience us may change across relationships, contexts, and time.
Intersectionality as a Central Focus
In addition to appreciating the multiple dimensions of identity held by each human being, it is
important to recognize that these multiple identities intersect with each other and that none
of them can be fully defined or appreciated in isolation from one another. Consider again the
metaphor of the colour wheel introduced in the Preface of this book as a means of
understanding the fluid, interactional, and multidimensional nature of cultural identities. You
will rarely find a painting that is created using only primary colours (red, blue, yellow). Instead,
most artists start with a limited palette of their preferred primary and secondary (orange,
purple, green) colours; from these they create a variation of hues (colours) and tones (lights
and darks) to capture the image they are creating. Shifting the colours and tones even slightly
or changing the positioning of colours within the painting will result in a different, unique, but
often equally beautiful, image. Choosing a different colour palette as a starting place will again
produce a new and unique painting. In the same way, each individual’s cultural identity will
evolve and change over time and in different contexts through the interaction of various
dimensions of cultural identity with each other and with the environment.
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© Collins, 2013
One of the weaknesses of an emic or culture-specific approach to multicultural counselling is
that it is impossible to understand fully any one aspect of cultural identity by isolating it from
others. Simply adding together information about gender, ethnicity, and social class, for
example, fails to appreciate the well-known systems theory principle that the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts. In other words, being female and having a disability cannot be
understood by simply adding the dimension of ability to gender or by reading separate
guidelines for working with women and persons with disabilities (although this is an important
step). A person’s cultural identities can only be understood through exploring their unique
lived experiences and social spaces that emerge within the intersectionality of these multiple
identities (Cheshire, 2013). If blue paint represents gender, for example, deleting all of the blue
from a painting will shift the entire work, potentially redefining other elements of the image.
Yellow no longer shifts to show as green in some areas; red does not mute into shades of
purple.
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When I invited colleagues to contribute client stories to this book, I was very specific in
encouraging them not to focus on single dimensions of cultural identity (e.g., a chapter on
counselling gay men), but rather to attend to the ways in which multiple and intersecting
identities—within the client, within the counsellor, and in the interface between them—play
out in the counselling process. I wanted to understand more fully the effect of holding
multiple, intersecting, and sometimes conflicting cultural identities on clients’ development,
self-perception, and experiences. I also wanted to know how the complex and intersectional
identities of counsellors influenced both their interactions with clients and their ability to
build trusting and respectful relationships with clients. You will see some of these writers
wrestle with the interface of multiplicity and intersectionality of identity in conceptualizing
client presenting concerns, co-constructing goals, and negotiating culturally responsive and
socially just change processes.
Respect for Dignity
Embracing the concepts of multiple realities and the social construction of identities and
cultural groups challenges the illusion of us and them, as discussed earlier in this chapter. It
also prepares us to loosen our grip on truth claims (Paré, 2013), so that we are open, curious,
and nonjudgemental in learning about, and through, our clients. One of the values that is
foundational to the professions of counselling and psychology is respect for the dignity of all
persons and peoples. This principle forms a foundation for engagement in culturally
responsive and socially just counselling practice. In the practice illustration below, my
colleague, Cristelle Audet, introduces the concept of dignity and discusses the relationship of
dignity to competent and ethical practice.
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Practice Illustration 3 Respecting the Dignity of all Persons and Peoples: Implications for
Counselling
By Cristelle Audet
Respect for dignity of persons and peoples, guided by codes of ethics, universal
declarations, and charters of rights and freedoms, is considered a cornerstone in
counselling and psychotherapy practice. While dignity remains virtually uncontested
as an important and highly influential concept within the counselling profession
(Miller, 2017; Robbins, 2014), discourses on dignity suggest that the meaning is difficult
to define and capture in practice. What can be agreed upon is that the notion of
dignity is socially constructed and changes as society evolves.
Situating Dignity in Counselling
Mirroring the spirit of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter
of Human Rights and Freedoms, the 2008 Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for
Psychologists identified “Respect for the Dignity of All Human Beings” as its first
principle. This declaration reflects wide international consensus on transcultural
values and ethical principles (Gauthier, Pettifor, & Ferrero, 2010). Respect for the
dignity of persons also features prominently in the ethical codes of the Canadian
Psychological Association (CPA, 2017) and the Canadian Counselling and
Psychotherapy Association (CCPA, 2007). For example, the CPA (2017) code of ethics
prioritizes Principle I: Respect for the Dignity of Persons and Peoples over other
principles, stating that “respect for the dignity of persons is the most fundamental and
universally found ethical principle across disciplines, and includes the concepts of
equal inherent worth, non-discrimination, autonomy, moral rights, and distributive,
social, and natural justice” (p. 11).
Contemporary understandings of dignity are grounded mainly in a Kantian
perspective, wherein dignity is considered an intrinsic and unearned value or worth
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based simply on being human and brings with it certain inherent rights and freedoms
(Misztal, 2012; Robbins & Friedman, 2014). These ideas may remind you of Carl Rogers’
(1961) core conditions within the humanistic perspective: empathy, congruence, and
unconditional positive regard.
As dignity is widely understood as the justification for human rights (Misztal, 2012;
Waldron, 2007), codes of ethics in counselling depict respect for dignity of persons as
not being dependent upon one’s culture, nationality, ethnicity, colour, race, religion,
sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, age,
socioeconomic status, or any other preference or personal characteristic, condition,
or status. Consequently, counselling psychologists and psychotherapists are expected
to not engage in discrimination against members and groups of society based on
cultural identities or social locations and are expected to promote non-discrimination
in all of their activities.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 84
Pathways to Upholding Dignity
In examining the form of dignity, Miller (2017) proposes that dignity is fundamentally
relational; she draws from Carol Gilligan’s (1982) care ethics to examine ways in which
care between two people, such as a counsellor and client, can be dignifying. Caring
well for others is an expression of recognition of the person’s value accomplished by
focusing on the individual rather than on abstract or predetermined principles
typically relied upon to determine how to act toward that individual. Genuine caring
involves being open and receptive to the individual’s lived reality. This often requires
displacing one’s own understandings and self-interests, even in the helping process, to
avoid imposing one’s own ideas of what would be “good” for the person (Noddings,
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1984; Slote, 2007). Although inadequate care would not remove a person’s inherent
worth and dignity, good care can magnify, nurture, and promote the dignity of others.
Allan and Davidson (2013) and Miller (2017) discuss the principle of respect for the
dignity of people and what respect means in professional practice, making the case
that the manner in which professionals show respect to clients is crucial. Rather than
focusing on how someone or something ought to be evaluated (e.g., good or bad; right
or wrong), they make our moral obligation regarding how we act towards others the
focus. Exercising such recognition respect could include considering the question,
“How might the other person experience my action or inaction?” and possessing a
certain capacity to see beyond any negative appraisal when a person does not
conform to our cultural norms or worldview. Although we might covertly appraise a
person or group in less favourable ways based on our personal values and beliefs, a
culturally responsive and socially just approach would entail recognition of the
subjectivity of our worldview and closer examination of our cultural assumptions and
biases. Ultimately, to engender dignity requires communicating recognition respect to
all persons and peoples, objectives that can be further served by applying humanistic,
feminist, critical psychology, and social justice lenses.
Teaching and Learning Guide
Self-assess your comfort level with each key concept in Core Competency 2 of the
CRSJ counselling model, and take a few minutes to explore the learning activities in
the Collins (2018) Teaching and Learning Guide for Core Competency 2
Intersectionality. You may be assigned specific activities by a course instructor. If not,
choose the concepts that you are struggling to understand, or those which have
evoked an emotional reaction, or piqued your curiosity, and complete one or more
activities to reinforce your learning.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 86
Core Competency 3
Back to top of chapter
Recognizing and Prioritizing Client Worldview
One of the concepts that I revisit throughout this book is that of worldview. After checking
out the glossary definition of this term, review Core Competency 3 in the CRSJ counselling
model for an overview of the learning outcomes and key concepts that I interconnect in this
section on valuing the diversity, and in particular, clients’ expression, of worldview.
Individualist Worldview
Consider the description of the individualist worldview below (Arthur & Collins, 2015; Bemak
& Chung, 2015; Collins & Arthur, 2010b; Lenz, 2016; Paré & Sutherland, 2016). I deliberately
position this description in a way that highlights the underlying values and assumptions,
particularly as they relate to cultural diversity and counselling. Pay attention to your cognitive
and emotional reactions as you read through each point, noting how your own cultural
identities, dominant or nondominant, may influence that reaction. Then read through the
description again. Come up with examples to fit with each of the key points from your own
lived experiences, your observations of the organizations or systems to which you belong, or
from media representations of social, economic, or political decision-making and positioning.
Consider also your professional training, and look for ideas or experiences that reflect these
values, assumptions, and beliefs.
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Individualist Worldview
Nature of society
• Cultural ideologies (i.e., the justifications provided for particular beliefs, values,
and assumptions) are driven by dominant moral and capitalist agendas.
• Cultural boundaries (i.e., the dividing lines between dominant and nondominant
groups) are clearly defined, fixed, and essentialized. Cultural supremacy is
embedded in, and masked by, benevolence and beneficence towards others.
Ethical principles
• Utilitarian ethics (e.g., the greatest good for the greatest number, maximization
of return on investment, sometimes the ends justify the means) overshadows the
deontological principle of respect for the inherent worth of all persons and
peoples.
Nature of knowing
• There is only one reality. Eurocentric values (e.g., individualism,
action-orientation, future-focus, materialism) are positioned as based in
universal truths.
• Scientific, economic, and social advancement come about through
decontextualized, rational, and objective approaches to knowing, which are
grounded in monocultural, Eurocentric perspectives.
Relationship to the natural world
• The natural world is qualitatively different from, and inferior in worth and value
to, human beings. As such, it a commodity to be dominated and controlled.
Relationships among people
• Relationships among people and peoples are driven by competition. Dominant
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 88
ideologies of cultural superiority are justified and enforced through the exertion
of political, economic, and social power.
• Cultural diversity is pathologized and invisibilized through monocultural policies
and practices, which have the intent and effect of enforcing cultural assimilation.
• Interactions among human beings are hierarchical; they are governed by
entitlement and social, economic, and political privilege; white supremacy,
sexism, ableism, and so on function to support the status quo.
Causation and change
• There are linear causes and consequences for all events (i.e., determinism),
which are located within the individual (e.g., intrapsychic deficits or
dysfunctions). Psychosocial problems reflect the individual’s ability to cope,
learn, or adapt.
• Resistance to, and internalization of, cultural oppression is pathologized (i.e.,
victim-blaming) and the locus and responsibility for change is located within the
individual rather than conceptualized as a systemic problem.
• Helping professions focus on assisting members of nondominant groups
accommodate to oppression (i.e., develop coping strategies) through
power-over, ahistorical, problem-focused, disorder-specific approaches to
intervention.
It is important to analyze critically the pervasive influence of individualist worldviews on
counselling and psychology, because the underlying values and assumptions pose problems
for culturally responsive and anti-oppressive practices. This does not mean that there is
nothing of value in the individualist worldview or that it is possible or desirable to step
completely outside of that worldview. However, it does mean that, as practitioners, counsellor
educators, researchers, and leaders, we need to be able to view individualist ideologies
through a critical lens, and attend to the ways in which these ideologies slip into our thinking
and our doing unconsciously, because they may not be the best fit for culturally responsive
and socially just practices. The intent is to bring into consciousness the values, assumptions,
and beliefs associated with diverse worldviews, not to elevate one perspective over another.
What is important, in every instance, is the meaningfulness and relevance of the worldview to
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the particular client, within their cultural context, and in relation to their specific presenting
concerns.
One of the places where I see worldview expressed, often without conscious consideration of
its influence, is in dialogues about empirically supported treatments (ESTs). Proponents assert
a best theoretical approach and intervention to address different forms of client emotional
and psychological distress (APA, n.d.; CPA, n.d.). However, there is little explicit analysis of the
positivist, individualist worldview assumptions that undergird this approach, such as the
existence of a singular, objective reality that can be known and predicted through application
of the scientific method (most often in the form of double-blind, clinical trials). The focus is
not on a specific client, but rather on the types of problems that clients, generally, may
present in counselling. So, for example, cognitive-behaviour therapy is widely asserted as the
preferred approach for working with depression; however, little consideration is given to the
contextual factors that may be more influential on a particular client’s presenting concerns
(e.g., experiences of cultural oppression, poverty, other social determinants of health).
Proponents assert that the results are widely generalizable (Carter & Goodheart, 2012);
however, ESTs separate the problem from the person and the person from their environment.
As a result, they lack cultural responsivity and do not take into account the personal cultural
identities or social locations of each client. ESTs may, therefore, not be applicable across
nondominant populations, and in particular, to clients with multiple, intersecting,
marginalized identities (Gazzola, Buchanon, Nutggens, & Sutherland, 2016).
My intent here is not to suggest that there is no place for ESTs or other outcomes of positivist
research in practice. The knowledge gained from this type of research provides a backdrop for
decision-making in collaboration with clients about what types of change processes may fit
for them. I use this example of ESTs to illustrate the risks of uncritical application of
eurocentric, individualist values to practice, because failure to attend to these underlying
worldview assumptions can and has caused failure to meet the needs of clients and sometimes
caused harm to them. Consider the story of Assieh, for example.
Assieh has been suffering from insomnia for a number of months. She has been referred to a
psychologist by her family physician because they suspect that the insomnia is a result of
persistent anxiety and depression. Assieh is given an anxiety and depression inventory in
the first session, and she agrees to an intervention plan based on cognitive-behaviour
therapy. In the next session, Assieh begins to explain some of the thoughts that run through
her mind throughout the day and into the night. She believes that someone is following her
when she leaves the house; she lives alone but she never feels like she is really alone; she has
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 90
trouble falling asleep because something bad will happen if she is not vigilant; she isolates
herself because she does not trust people easily. After several weeks of cognitive
restructuring, she reports that she is able to shift her self-talk during the day but her feeling
of anxiety persists. At one point during her fifth counselling session, she receives a text on
her cell phone and, although she does not pick up the phone, she becomes quite agitated and
unfocused. The psychologist invites her to talk about her reaction, but Assieh does not want
to. In the seventh session, Assieh announces that she does not think she needs to continue
therapy. When pressed for her reasoning, she explains that her younger sister, DelArAm, has
just arrived from Iran. For the last six months, they have been in constant contact as
DelArAm navigated her escape. She was at constant risk of honour killing, since she refused
to marry the husband chosen for her by her father and uncles. Although hidden by friends she
met at school, DelArAm was terrified that the family was hunting her down. Now that she
has landed in Canada, Assieh’s anxiety and sleep issues have turned to relief and joy. The text
she received in the fifth session was from DelArAm, but she did not feel safe sharing this
information, because of a general distrust of people in authority and her fear that revealing
this information could put DelArAm at further risk.
Collectivist and Indigenous Worldviews
Read the definition of collectivist worldviews in the glossary. Now reconsider the story of
Assieh above, to apply some of the values and assumptions of the collectivist worldview to
understand Assieh’s presenting concerns, and analyze where things went awry for her in
counselling.
One of the important examples of collectivist worldviews is the beliefs, values, and
assumptions of Indigenous peoples, both within Canada and around the world. There is no
singular way of knowing or being that characterizes all Indigenous peoples. As you will see
from the definition of Indigeneity, the portion of Turtle Island that we now call Canada is
comprised of the traditional lands of many nations, each with their own unique culture. I offer
the broad strokes below with respect and without intention to speak for Indigenous peoples
about their traditional teachings and wisdom. To do so, I draw on the perspectives of
Indigenous writers and allies (Dupuis-Rossi, 2018; Dupuis-Rossi & Reynolds, in press; Fellner,
in press; Fellner et al., 2016; Stewart, 2008; Stewart & Marshall, 2015). However, I choose not to
make reference to specific teachings, practices, or ceremonies that are not mine, and I
91 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
acknowledge that I have superimposed the organizational structure that follows to allow
comparison with the individualist worldview in the previous section. Riel Dupuis-Rossi
expands on Indigenous worldviews in Chapter 7. I explore Indigenous views of health and
healing more specifically in Chapter 15.
Indigenous Worldviews
Nature of society
• Traditional governance is nonhierarchical, with matriarchs empowered and
valued.
• Interdependence is highly valued, and community is foundational to both health
and healing.
• Indigenous community is defined both by ancestral lineage and also by shared
Indigenous culture, within and across, different Nations.
Ethical principles
• Rules of behaviour are grounded in Indigenous spirituality, relationships to one
another and community, and collectivist values. Local, within-group differences
in protocols are respected as part of the diversity of Indigenous culture.
• Value is placed on connection, equality, balance, and harmony through a holistic
point of view.
• Core values include “courage, honesty, humility, respect, truth, love, and
wisdom” (Fellner et al., 2016, p. 139).
Nature of knowing
• Ways of knowing are grounded in relationship; knowledge is passed through
ancestors across generations, from the spirit world, from the natural world, and
from Elders and other knowledge keepers.
• Knowledge is intimately related to Indigenous spirituality and oral storytelling
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traditions and is expressed through stories, dance, ceremony, ritual, and other
cultural and healing practices.
• The interconnectedness of mind, heart, spirit, and body positions knowledge as
multidimension, fluid, and contextualized.
Relationship to the natural world
• Understandings of self and community are grounded in relationships to land and
place and to all elements of the natural world.
• The relationships with the natural world are considered sacred and are
embedded in collective memory.
Relationships among people
• The concept of relationality embodies the nature of Indigenous persons and
peoples in-relation to each other, to their ancestors, to other living creatures,
and to the Great Spirit of Creation.
• Family is defined broadly to include both biological relatives and other members
of Indigenous communities.
• Interactions among human beings are positioned as nonhierarchical and are
grounded in beliefs about the interconnectedness of all persons and peoples.
Causation and change
• The holistic view of change requires inclusivity of, and balance among, all
dimensions of human experience, including mind, spirit, heart, body,
relationality, and grounded in relationship to land and place.
• Change follows a nonlinear, circular process and respects the interrelatedness of
past, present, and future.
• Healing is rooted in spirituality and comes about through engagement in
community through the ways of knowing noted above.
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E-Book Navigation Tip
This e-book is so much richer for the contributions of many of my colleagues. I’ve
placed their contributions in purple to ensure that they stand out from my own
writing. Click on the author’s name in the paragraph that introduces their practice
illustration to read their biographical information in the About the Contributors
section of the e-book. Then use your back button to return to this chapter.
Although I am presenting individualist and collectivist worldviews sequentially in order to
make the distinctions more clear, you are unlikely to encounter individuals who embrace
either worldview fully or exclusively. Rather, worldviews like cultural identities are social
constructions that emerge through active engagement of each person with their families,
communities, and other contexts of their lives. Review the dimensions of personal cultural
identities in Figure 2. Each of the elements in this diagram also influences the internalization
and self-construction of worldview. Consider the story of identity development by Melissa Jay
below.
Practice Illustration 4 Uncovering and Integrating My Métis Heritage
by Melissa Jay
As I reflect on my cultural identity, I feel grateful to be growing and evolving each day.
My belief systems are adaptable, because I have learned to take what fits and leave the
rest. I am a Métis woman, with Cree ancestry, who appears Caucasian, and grew up
without awareness about Métis culture or the cultural injustices directed at
Indigenous people.
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During my undergraduate years, I began taking courses with an emphasis on Canadian
Aboriginal populations and established a strong connection with my late-father’s
brother Ric and his spouse Rose. Together they live in a Métis community. Rose is a
Traditional Healer and Knowledge Keeper, and they have a beautiful teepee on their
land. When my Uncle Ric was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2017, he opted to
rely solely on traditional medicines as his treatment rather than the suggested
chemotherapy and radiation treatment options. This has sparked a call for equitable
Indigenous healthcare in Canada! Here’s the inspiration video focused on this call for
reconciliation within healthcare system: Call for Equitable Indigenous Healthcare in
Canada: Nation to Nation Collaboration.
Over the years, I have had numerous opportunities to learn traditional practices and
have integrated many into my life. Since I was raised within the dominant culture, I am
respectful of all traditional practices and at times have questioned if I am engaging in
cultural appropriation. For me, this speaks directly to the residual effects of the
cultural genocide inflicted on Indigenous and Métis peoples. As I continue growing in
my cultural identify, I embrace the aspects of Métis culture that speak to my spirit. For
example, part of my spiritual practice often includes a smudging as a cleansing ritual,
and nature has always been a way in which I connect with the Creator and my
ancestors.
As an educated woman with a psychology practice and in my role as an educator, I
believe it is my responsibility to advocate for those who have been forgotten, rejected,
or who do not feel heard. I aim to live authentically with deep compassion and
presence. I advocate by sharing what I have learned about my Métis heritage and
believe that through education we can all engage in necessary, positive social change.
Cultural Distance−Similarity and Subjectivity of Worldview
Every encounter between counsellor and client is influenced by the interface of
client‒counsellor worldviews and cultural identities. In early writing on multicultural
counselling, an argument was made for matching clients with counsellors based on similarities
in cultural identities, in particular, visible markers of difference. However, professional
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conversations have shifted over time to focus on the cultural distance‒
‒similarity between
client‒counsellor worldviews. One of the most important elements of this shift is that it puts
both the responsibility and the opportunity in the hands of each counsellor to engage actively
in assessing client worldview and building bridges where significant differences in worldview
emerge. Consider again the story of Assieh above. How might the outcome have differed if the
counsellor had engaged Assieh in a conversation about how the meaning she made of her
symptoms or the context of her lived experiences?
Slug’s Eye View © Collins, 2016
One of the most important foundations for cultural competency is acknowledgement of the
subjectivity of your worldview. Once you do this, you are left with the following persistent
questions: What lens am I using in this moment? In what way is my own worldview helping or
hindering my understanding of, and empathy for, this other person? What do I need to
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 96
understand about the worldview of this person to appreciate how they view the problems with
which they are struggling and what they see as possibilities for change? Although I argue that
cultural differences will come into play, in at least subtle ways, in every client‒counsellor
interaction, there will be situations where there is more or less cultural distance‒similarity
between you and your client. Appraising cultural distance‒similarity also requires counsellors
to take into account gender, ability, ethnicity, social class, and other dimensions of cultural
identity. You may, for example, encounter a middle-class woman with whom you assume
cultural similarity, only to discover upon deeper engagement with them that they are
embracing their Métis heritage, like Melissa above or that they have an invisible disability that
is affecting the quality of their life. The salience of each of these factors may shift over time
and context as well as in relation to their presenting concerns.
Escaping Our Own Cultural Encapsulation and Ethnocentrism
Beyond recognizing the subjectivity of your worldview, I invite you to embrace and truly value
cultural diversity. Each culture is unique, inherently valuable, and is best understood and
appreciated without reference to another cultural framework. For example, when a client
from a collectivist culture talks about interdependency on others in decision-making, attend
to your own self-talk, and try to censor out your own assumptions and preconceptions about
healthy decision-making. In doing so, you will make space for genuine cultural curiosity, and
you will increase the likelihood of understanding your client’s worldview.
Most people, counsellors included, tend to see the world through the lens of their own
experiences, cultural identities, and social locations. This positioning of cultural
encapsulation limits our ability to truly appreciate cultural diversity, because we remain
contained within our own cultural bubble, incapable of recognizing the degree to which we
perceive others through our own cultural lens. Over time, everyone develops cultural
schemata that can either limit or expand their ability to engage and appreciate cultural
diversity. Cultural schemata are clusters of beliefs and assumptions that are formed through
social conditioning and experience around particular phenomena; these clusters then act as
filters for processing information. Rigid adherence to cultural schemata may foster the belief,
either consciously or unconsciously, that our cultural perspectives are normal or right and
that difference means abnormal or lesser than in some way. This is the essence of
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ethnocentrism, the positioning of some aspect of our own culture as the centre, the standard
from which all other experiences are measured.
There was a time, in one of the many versions of my self, when I lived in a very
monocultural world. I recall clearly the moment when I first realized that I no longer fit
in that world, and I looked around me for the physical and emotional spaces where I
might hope to find myself. I am ashamed to admit that I found only one small opening in
my world, and I had deliberately created it for the purpose of imposing my own beliefs,
values, and worldview.
At the time, I was studying in a very conservative seminary, and one course assignment
was to befriend and convert a non-Christian to the Christian faith. Through my then
husband’s work, I met a lovely young couple and set to work on my project. At first, I was
completely ignorant of my own cultural encapsulation. I assumed I knew what was best
for them, rather than being curious about their ways of making meaning of their lives.
Later, when I began to question my own worldview and the beliefs and values I had
grown up into, these were the only two people I knew who were not part of that religious
world. Fortunately, I had failed the class project, and they opened their arms to support
me; they provided a window into other worlds I knew little about, but which resonated
with my own emergent sense of self.
My point here is simply that I had embraced a community in which there was little
diversity of perspective and no openness to alternative expressions or experiences of
gender, religion, or spirituality. And, in that context, I lost and could not find myself. I am
deeply grateful to that young couple who welcomed me without judgement in my state of
flux and confusion. This was my first step in moving outside my own cultural
encapsulation and seeking an open and curious positioning towards cultural diversity,
including diversity in religious perspective.
Within-Group and Between-Group Differences
One of the main reasons for providing you with a detailed analysis of the complex, fluid,
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 98
contextual, and interactional nature of cultural identities is to reinforce the idea that
within-group differences can be as significant (in terms of both magnitude and importance)
as between-group differences. As I note, for example, there are some commonalties in
Indigenous worldviews and cultures. However, Indigenous populations in Canada are
comprised of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and there are 50 distinct First Nations,
divided into over 630 communities and speaking over 50 different languages (Statistics
Canada, 2016). Riel Dupuis-Rossi, for example, provides insights into common values,
experiences, and theoretical principles related to working with Indigenous peoples. However,
it important not to make generalizations about all Indigenous persons. Not only do cultural
differences exist among various Indigenous groups, but each individual may hold more or less
tightly to their cultural heritage, based on their social locations, personal and family history,
age and generational impact, historic and cultural contexts, as well as other elements listed in
Figure 2.
The salience of within-group and between-group differences to any particular client is also
fluid, contextualized, and situational. For example, there are times when a person may point
to their social class in order to make meaning of an experience in which they feel marginalized
or when they are searching for common ground with others; at other times, they may distance
themselves from others who share similar socioeconomic circumstances, because they have
very different lived experiences or sense of self. For this reason, I specifically invited
contributors to this book to describe their interactions with specific clients, embedded in
particular social locations, to illustrate the principle of cultural sensitivity to the ways in which
ethnicity, gender, age, ability, sexual orientation, social class, gender identity, spirituality, and
religion are internalized and embodied in the lived experiences and personal cultural
identities of each unique client.
Consider the perspectives on Islam, provided by Mahdi Qasqas in the practice illustration
below, in the context of with-in and between-group differences. Traditionally, religion and
spirituality have not been given the attention they deserve within counselling and psychology.
Spiritual competency is an essential aspect of cultural competency. As Mahdi demonstrates
below, engaging with this important element of client lived experience and personal cultural
identity may involve accessing relevant spiritual resources that can be applied to clients’
presenting problems to support their growth and healing, either as part of the counselling
process or as an adjunct to it (Houshmand, Spanierman, & De Stephano, 2017).
99 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
Practice Illustration 5 Embracing Religion and Spirituality in Counselling: An Islamic Perspective
By Mahdi Qasqas
Like most cultures, homogeneity among Muslims is a fallacy, and both intracultural
and intercultural differences are plentiful. Canadian Muslims are a growing and
dynamic population of over 1 million people from nearly all ethnicities. Future trends
estimate that by 2030, there will be over 3 million Muslims, either be born in, or
migrated to, Canada. The geopolitical disaster within which many Muslims live, and
which prompt many to seek asylum and a new home in Canada, add another dynamic
to this demographic mix. Given the myriad of factors that make up their cultural
formulation, a one-size fits all technique for working with Muslim clients does not
exist, and thus, the core competencies in this book are essential to competent and
culturally responsive practice. In particular, just knowing a client is Muslim should not
automatically lead you to believe that they are (or are not) religious or spiritual;
making assumptions is a type of microaggression. Rather, the salience of Islam in the
client’s life is the pertinent question to explore as one begins to go deeper into the
client’s narrative.
Differentiating Between Religion and Spirituality
Religion and spirituality are two aspects of cultural identity that, amongst many
others mentioned in this book, can be leveraged to enhance positive therapeutic
outcomes. I define religion as the observable behaviours or actions which clients
engage in around a belief system; whereas, spirituality reflects the deeper connection
to religious practices or the intrinsic value of the behaviours. It may be difficult to
differentiate the two. However, generally speaking, religion is a product of external
motivation or Mustivation (obligation, external or internal pressure, as in “I have to
pray,” or “I’m glad I completed the prayer”); whereas, spirituality is a product of
autonomous motivation or Wantivation (volitional, enjoyable, and can result in feeling
a sense of elation during prayer as in “I feel at peace,” or “I can’t wait to pray”). Both are
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 100
powerful sources of motivation, with the latter representing a higher degree of
personalization or internalization of behaviours.
The process of differentiating between religiosity and spirituality can be
conceptualized based on the cognitive, affective, and behavioural domains. Staying
with the client and in the right domain is a core skill that every practitioner should
have; understanding their religious and spiritual experience is no different. Thus,
religiosity is evidenced by behaviours symbolizing the expression of faith that are
mostly observable and often, but not always, obligatory (e.g., obligatory prayer in
Islam, fasting during Ramadan, attending the mosque for Friday prayer). Each
behaviour can be observed and quantified, making them useful in establishing specific
and measurable goals with the client, a common practice in nearly all counselling
modalities. In short, conceptually, Islamic religiosity can be defined quantitatively and
objectively. Islamic spirituality on the other hand involves the personal value and
valuing of the practices and the subjective factors that a client reports in terms of
feelings and thoughts. For example, prayer can be broken down into quantitative and
qualitative components. Quantity of prayer is straightforward, but what does it mean
to have engaged in quality prayer?
Cultural Inquiry: Inviting Consideration of Religion or Spirituality
Assessing spirituality is not necessarily the counsellor’s role; however, helping the
client assess themselves and attending to the spiritual domain in counselling are two
important elements of attuning to what is going on with a client. When inquiring about
religion or spirituality, it is important to demonstrate nonjudgemental attitudes,
because some clients may feel embarrassed to state that they do not pray or engage in
other religious behaviours. I find it is often best to let clients themselves bring it up,
and then engage in the appropriate response. However, becoming comfortable
initiating conversation with clients about all aspects of their personal cultural
identities is part of developing cultural competency. This must be approached,
however, from a position of openness, cultural humility, and cultural curiosity.
Another reason for not positioning the counsellor in the role of assessor of client
spirituality is that client lived experience can fluctuate drastically from one moment
101 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
to the next or from one session to the next. A Muslim who prays regularly, on time,
and in the mosque may indicate a high degree of religiosity, but the intrinsic value of
the prayer needs be assessed further by considering the degree of concentration,
spiritual development or healing, and positive impact on the client’s interactions with
others. For the Muslim counsellor, clients may feel obligated to present as religious
when, in fact, this may not really be their preference. Or the opposite may be true;
they may take a solid stand against religiosity, and then later begin to state how
important faith is in their life.
Openness to Religious or Spiritual Goals in Counselling
Often Muslims do not seek counselling from outsiders, because they feel their culture
will not be understood or will be undermined. The stigma of therapy has even led
some to consider counselling to be anti-Islamic. Thus, utilizing religious or spiritually
based goals and perspectives can be an effective tool in building strong bonds of trust
and respect with your client and in reducing the stigma and beliefs associated with
counselling. This can begin at any point in the counselling process, and particularly
when discussing the outcomes or goals of therapy. Helping clients enhance the
quantity or quality of their prayer need not be looked at solely as Islamic counselling
(e.g., faith-based counselling), given the psychosocial benefits attached to prayer (e.g.,
community involvement, purpose, structured daily routines, relaxation). Rather, it
reflects a culturally responsive approach to change that attends to, and integrates,
client worldview and values in therapy. Thus, counselling Muslims is not much
different than counselling members of any other cultural group and requires all of the
core competencies discussed in this book if it is to be collaborative and move toward
positive goals. Muslims do experience unique sociopolitical challenges as a
community, and at the individual level of analysis, they cannot be assumed to be
homogenous. However, inquiry into the degree of religiosity or spirituality of the
Muslim client is an important starting place.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 102
Views of Health and Healing
One concept that is important to note is how most Muslims conceptualize change.
Most devout Muslims refer all of their success to God and any shortcomings to
themselves. This is a safe assumption to make with devout Muslim clients; nearly every
Islamic scholar mentions this in their writings, directly or indirectly. It is an act of
humility to recognize that God is the source of success and ultimately the change
agent in the client’s life, and by extension, in therapeutic gains. Although this
particular belief is a goal of both religiosity and spirituality, it can also be a foundation
for keeping the client feeling culturally safe. You can assess views of change by asking
simply, “Where do you feel your success comes from?” and “To what do you attribute
your struggles or shortcomings?” I find these questions essential to developing
rapport with clients during the informed consent process (Muslim or otherwise) and
as an inquiry into their degree of religiosity or spirituality. If the client holds strongly
to God being the change agent, then you will want to employ your knowledge, skill,
and judgement about when and how to build upon that belief in counselling. It
provides a starting place to ask more questions about their daily routine and how they
use their faith as a motivator for other behaviours. It is also useful in enhancing hope
during the client’s darkest hours.
When counselling Muslims, alignment with other therapeutic models is possible from
a theoretical and technical perspective. Below is a client vignette that demonstrates
how religion and spirituality can be used to support client goal attainment in therapy
irrespective of the counsellor’s background.
A Client Vignette
A young man came to my office after being involved in a serious motor vehicle
accident. He had been experiencing fear and intense anxiety triggered by thinking
about driving or actually being in a vehicle. His avoidance behaviour was remarkable,
and he would not leave the house for days at a time because he was afraid to drive and
103 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
reluctant to get in a car with anyone. The recommended treatment for dealing with
these phobic symptoms is exposure therapy, which would ultimately reduce his
avoidance behaviours. Thus, getting him to drive more was the specific and
measurable goal. He had also recently shifted his lifestyle from what he called a
“jahiliyah” (period of ignorance) to becoming a practicing Muslim; in short, he had a
re-affirmation of his faith. Nevertheless, the presenting concern was not lifestyle
change, but rather both the specific phobia and depressive symptoms emanating from
not socializing as much as he used to and struggling to return to pre-accident
routines. However, assessing this shift towards increased religiosity provided an
important backdrop for our work together.
He would meet with me usually after the Friday prayer, which he recognized as being
obligatory; thus, his motivation was externally controlled and powerful enough to
force him out of the house. Since he was motivated enough to go to the prayer, that
was the leverage that we used to maintain his motivation to move from contemplation
to preparation and eventually to action in relation to leaving the house and exposing
himself to vehicles, while trying to remain relaxed. We charted how many times he was
leaving the house, and then he accepted the challenge to increase that during the first
week, adding one more time. Going to the mosque made the most sense to him and
was a mutually agreeable task that would serve the ultimate goal. The next week, he
reported five visits to the mosque; the week after, increased to nine visits; then on the
third week, reached 14. He eventually stopped charting, because leaving his home to
attend the mosque had become normalized. This allowed for multiple secondary gains
(e.g., a sense of purpose, socialization, a peaceful retreat). Most importantly for his
treatment, his fear diminished as the repeated exposure to the stimulus weakened the
fear response; thus, his travel anxiety became manageable. The presenting concerns
were both conceptualized and treated through a cognitive-behavioural therapy
approach, while utilizing religion as a source of motivation and reward. We also
engaged in mindfulness from an Islamic perspective to enhance the quality of his
prayer and thus enhance his spiritual experience.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 104
Recommendations for Working with Muslim Clients
The following is a summary of recommendations that apply one or more of the
components that are often associated with definitions of competency in psychology:
knowledge, skill, judgement, or diligence. They demonstrate a merging of etic and
emic perspectives to foster culturally responsive change.
• Understand the pillars of Islam as basic and foundational knowledge for working
with Muslim clients (ample material exists online and in peer-reviewed journals).
• Assess demographics, dynamics, and sociopolitical issues impacting Muslims, in
general, and your client, specifically.
• Differentiate between religious and spiritual domains.
• Assess religiosity as an important element to inform your intervention plan.
• Listen without judgement or criticism, irrespective of your faith or worldview.
• Make religious assessment a collaborative venture, and respect the right of the
client to explain or evaluate their relationship to religion or spirituality as they
wish.
• Respond to client reluctance or incongruence in talking about religion or
spirituality by demonstrating respect and cultural responsivity to help them feel
safe enough to speak freely.
• Draw on the same skill set required for counselling in general, including
microskills such as attending, responding, questioning, language matching, and
so on.
The counsellor need not be an insider to engage in competent practice with Muslims
as long as these principles are considered and the CRSJ core competencies in this
book are embraced.
105 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
The Risk of Stereotyping
The saying, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, is a reminder that we need to hold
tentatively to our awareness of client group affiliation and other aspects of cultural identity
lest we misattribute, or make inappropriate assumptions about the fit of, particular values,
beliefs, practices, or labels. Remember that each person internalizes culture in their own
unique way. Overgeneralizing, based on group affiliation or other aspects of personal cultural
identities, can easily lead to stereotyping. One of processes that supports the establishment
of stereotypes, and then continues to reinforce them, is selective attending. Children often do
this when parents don’t give them the answer they are looking for; they latch on to confirming
information and actively resist disconfirming information. Sometimes this happens for us as
counsellors quite unconsciously, because stereotypes abound in the sociocultural narratives
that surround us on a daily basis. At other times, we may hold rigidly to an overgeneralization,
because we are convinced of the correctness of our beliefs. In either of these cases, the
worldview and internalized culture of the client with whom we are working is being defined
externally and without active engagement in, and genuine openness to, cultural exploration
with that individual.
Both counsellors and clients may fall prey to the tendency of overgeneralization and may
make assumptions, based on cultural group membership, that restrict understanding and
appreciation of the uniqueness of the other person. To avoid this tendency, cultural awareness
should be employed as a foundation for tentative and loosely held cultural hypotheses, which
can then be replaced, modified, or supported by listening carefully and repeatedly to clients’
descriptions of their particular lived experiences and cultural self-definitions.
Cultural Sensitivity
• With which cultural groups or subgroups do you tend to align, and how do
between- and within-group differences play out in your lived experiences?
• About which aspects of client cultural identities might you be inclined to hold
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 106
preconceptions that could result in stereotyping?
• Which stereotypes are commonly expressed in your family, your school or work
environment, or your community? How might you purposefully increase your
cultural awareness to guard against internalizing these stereotypes?
Teaching and Learning Guide
Before you move on, take a few moments to complete some of the learning activities
for Core Competency 3 Worldview related to the key concepts addressed in this last
section of the chapter.
Final Reflections
In this chapter, I draw attention to the cultural issues that impact both counsellors and clients
during every counselling interaction. No two individuals will present for counselling with
identical worldviews or personal cultural identities, nor will there ever be a complete match
between counsellor and client. It is from this foundation that I assert the importance of CRSJ
counselling practices with all clients. To be effective with clients with a broad range of diverse
cultural identities, we each must be willing to engage in continuous reflection about our
cultural assumptions and our applications of cultural knowledge. Failure to attend to specific
cultural messages from clients risks stereotyping them and perpetuating their sense of
marginalization.
Viewing clients solely as members of a particular nondominant group homogenizes their
experiences and ignores the tremendous cultural variability within any population. The CRSJ
107 | Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling
counselling model is designed to facilitate general awareness of cultural differences alongside
specific cultural inquiry, thus taking into account the relative similarities and differences
between the worldviews of counsellors and client. To fully appreciate the cultural identities of
our clients, we must move beyond their group affiliations to consider what each person has
internalized from their personal histories and lived experiences, their relationships with
others in their lives, and the positive and negative influences of the broader social systems
with which they interact on a daily basis.
Gaining self-awareness and awareness of client cultures is an ongoing developmental process.
Whether you are a novice or an experienced counsellor, competency in this area also includes
continuous reflection on the potential influences of personal cultural identities on your
professional role as a counsellor. Culture is complex, and our views of ourselves, others, and
the world around us shift over time and with additional life experience. As I note at the
beginning of the chapter, cultural awareness involves lifelong learning about who we are as
cultural beings—how we are similar to, and different from, others; how diversity enhances our
lives individually and collectively; and how we can actively build bridges across worldviews.
I invite you now to read the story that Gina Wong presents in Chapter 4. This chapter
highlights many of the issues related to the intersection of client–counsellor cultural
identities, including the influence of particular aspects of worldview. Gina argues that
pervasive sociocultural myths and assumptions must be actively deconstructed and
dismantled in order to understand cultural conscriptions and prescriptions that shape
motherhood; doing so can pave the way to maternal agency and positive self-defined notions
of mothering from nondominant perspectives. Then in Chapter 5, Fisher Lavell positions
herself, through stories from her family history, as a member of the working class and
highlights the ways in which social class intersects with other dimensions of cultural identity.
She is a storyteller, and she uses stories of her counselling with working class and poor people
to share their lived experiences, the ways she positions her role as counsellor, and the
approaches she finds particularly helpful for attending to social class in counselling practice.
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 108
E-Book Navigation Tip
Case studies and chapters with multiple clients stories centred around a common
theme will be interspersed throughout the e-book to illustrate the ideas I am
presenting in the conceptual chapters related to each domain of the CRSJ counselling
model. You will notice in the next chapters that Gina and Fisher introduce other
concepts and practices that I will expand on in later chapters. I have deliberately
interspersed the case study and conceptual chapters to support a back and forth
between theory and practice. Remember that, as you are introduced to other domains
in later chapters, you can follow the links from the CRSJ counselling model in Chapter
2 back to practice examples in chapters by Gina, Fisher, and other contributors that
illustrate key concepts in those new domains.
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NR34201).
Chapter 3. The Cultural Embeddedness of Counselling | 114
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to
Self: 冇用 Moh-Yoong
GINA WONG
As the author of this chapter, I am informed by epistemological frameworks supported in
women’s and gender studies (particularly in women of colour studies) and Asian North
American studies, all of which critique traditional methodological approaches and legitimize
the voices and experiences of marginalized communities. The culturally responsive and
socially just (CRSJ) counselling model also supports approaching work using such frameworks.
A cornerstone of such approach is feminist standpoint theory, first established by feminist
philosopher Sandra Harding in 1986. Other prominent figures in the advancement of this
theory included Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock, and Dorothy Smith. Standpoint theory is
a feminist orientation that underscores how individual experience and identity are
inextricable from the individual’s social locations. This chapter highlights the intersectionality
of multiple nondominant subjectivities experienced by a Chinese mother who emigrated from
Mainland China to Canada at a young age.
Feminist Standpoint Theory
Feminist standpoint theory was developed as a response to existing dominant
ideologies that claimed to know how best to represent women’s experiences (Harding,
1986). Feminist standpoint theory problematizes the epistemic privilege of those with
sociopolitical power and underscores how individual experience and identities are
created within, and impacted by, social locations. It calls out the oppression of
marginalized groups and reification of specific, dominant ways of knowing. Feminist
standpoint theorists demand the need for underprivileged representation and insist
that marginalized persons occupy positions traditionally held by those with social and
115 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
political power so that they may dismantle institutions in which dominant ways of
knowing have been perpetuated.
Harding (1986) suggested that researchers start with the experiences of the
marginalized, such as women, who have been left out of constructions of knowledge in
order to repair distorted accounts of women’s lives, which would be for the benefit of
all. It is important to note that feminist standpoint theory is not simply a standpoint
anyone can claim; rather, it is a sociopolitical critique that calls forth the
empowerment of marginalized groups. Feminist standpoint theorists remind us that
women and other marginalized groups cannot be represented in just one way. That is,
standpoints can, and should, differ.
E-Book Navigation Tip
Each of the case study chapters illustrates specific key concepts from the CRSJ
counselling model in Chapter 2. From the table below, you can link to the section of
this chapter in which Gina explicates principles and practices related to each concept.
Review the definitions for each of the key terms in the Enhanced Glossary by clicking
on active links in the text as you encounter them to gain a full appreciation of the
importance of these ideas to culturally responsive and socially just counselling
practice.
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 116
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
• Acts of resistance
• Advocacy
• Between-group differences
• Bicultural identities
• Co-construction of meaning/
language
• Collectivist worldview
• Conflict between socialization
messages
• Contextualized/systemic lens
• Cultural countertransference
• Cultural distance/similarity
• Cultural empathy
• Cultural norms
• Cultural/systemic oppression
• Culturally sensitive space
• Deconstruction
• Discrimination
• Dominant discourses
• Embodiment
• Empowerment for self-advocacy
• Ethnicity
• Expressive arts therapies
• Externalizing
• Feminist therapy/theory
• Gender
• Gender role socialization
• Identity narratives/stories
• Immigrants
• Internalized racism
• Internalized sexism
• Metatheoretical lens
• Mindfulness
• Multigenerational issues
• Mutual cultural empathy
• Professional practice/theory change
• Psychoeducation
• Reconstruction of cultural identity/
relationality
• Relational/family counselling
• Research
• Role-play
• Safety/cultural safety
• Scholar–practitioner–advocate–leader
model
• Self-compassion
• Self-talk
• Sexism/gender inequity
• Sociocultural narratives/discourses
• Stereotypes
• Subjectivity of worldview
• Transformative/healing relationship
• Visualization
• Voice
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
I use the case of Lian to illustrate and highlight pervasive sociocultural myths and
assumptions related to the good mother ideology, which must be actively deconstructed and
dismantled in our work with clients and in societies where it holds sway. Deconstruction is a
117 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
foundational strategy in feminist therapy and is particularly essential when working with
nondominant communities, such as East Asian mothers. Understanding the cultural
conscriptions and prescriptions that shape East Asian mothers paves the way to maternal
agency and positive, self-defined notions of mothering from minority perspectives.
The Good Mother
Schafer (2006) described the prevailing cultural myth of the good mother in Breaking
the Good Mom Myth: Every Modern Mom’s Guide to Getting Past Perfection, Regaining
Sanity, and Raising Great Kids. Caplan (2000) and O’Reilly (2004) further elucidated the
themes that depict the “good,” sacrificial mother:
• Children can only be cared for properly by the biological mother.
• Mothering must be provided 24/7.
• Mothers must never get angry.
• Mothers must always put their children’s needs before their own.
• Mothers are 100% giving and nurturing, 100% of the time.
• Mothers must turn to the experts for instruction.
• Mothers are fully satisfied, fulfilled, completed and composed in motherhood.
• Mothers must lavish excessive amounts of time, energy, and money on the
rearing of their children.
• Mothers, by nature, are capable of knowing everything necessary to raise happy,
well-adjusted children
In this chapter, I also deconstruct the tiger mother and other oppressive myths, such as the
model minority, alongside the good mother canons. I examine the context of mothering in
East Asian communities and explore a Chinese mother’s struggle with postpartum anxiety.
Through the case of Lian, I utilize and demonstrate the CRSJ counselling model and explore
the intersectionality of multiple and complex identities. I bring my sociocultural locations and
myself to my writing, and I identify micro, meso, and macrolevels of advocacy and
co-construction of change for us and others who identify with similar intersecting identities. I
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 118
also illuminate social justice strategies in the application of CRSJ counselling principles as they
relate to the case of Lian.
Author-In-Context
I am a woman who identifies herself through a multiplicity of selves: committed partner,
Asian, researcher, friend, bicultural, academic, psychologist, feminist, and mother (to name a
few). I am a heterosexual woman of color, a registered psychologist, and an associate
professor. In my early girlhood years, I experienced hate and racism as a first-generation
Canadian Chinese girl in Montreal, Quebec. I carry this story, and, for a long time, it defined
my experience of being Chinese. Direct experiences of racism in my early years were
internalized and led to my experiencing a great need to assimilate to North American ways of
being. Please listen to my audio clip of Grade One, Canadian Chinese Girl in Montreal.
Click on the image or this link to listen to the audio clip of Grade One,
Canadian Chinese Girl in Montreal.
The transcript is provided at the end of the chapter [Direct link].
Story of Lian
The focus of this chapter is on mothering, the sociocultural ideologies and conscriptions
surrounding this label, and the intersection of racism and minority cultural pressures
(specifically Chinese stereotypes and expectations) that obfuscate the experience of
mothering in East Asian experiences within Canadian contexts. Lian is a 28-year-old Chinese
woman who immigrated to Canada with her family when she was very young. Lian is a
heterosexual female who was referred to me by her physician for postpartum anxiety; she is
married and has been living with her spouse, Sony, for four-and-a-half years. Lian and Sony
have a 5-month-old daughter, Ruth. Lian is a pharmacist, currently working part-time, and
Sony is a dentist with his own practice. Like me, Lian is upper middle class.
119 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
Lian’s parents emigrated to Canada from Mainland China in 1988. Her older brother, Oliver,
was three years old at the time, and Lian was a one-year-old. Her family had lived in a remote
community in Mainland China and was impoverished in their homeland. Her parents’ dream
was to come to Canada for a better life for themselves, one which would also offer more
opportunities to their children.
Growing up, Oliver was doted on by their parents and given privileges not afforded to Lian.
Their parents emphasized his achievements, and he was at the top in his class. Even though
Lian was also top of her class, her parents lavished Oliver, but not her, with praise. Her father
bought Oliver a sports car when he was in Grade 11, and they boasted about him to others as if
he were their only child. Lian always felt that she lived in the shadow of her brother, and that
she was invisible while he was the preferred child. This gender inequity is a reflection of the
Little Emperor syndrome, in which the first-born only son is put on a pedestal, celebrated, and
lauded with gifts. The little emperor syndrome arises from the ethic of filial piety where sons
are the hope and key to the honour and future success of the family. Lian shares that her
parents were strict and critical of her while she was growing up. Only her achievements and
failures were commented on, and these comments were elaborated on with direct statements
of comparison to her brother. Lian was also expected to do domestic chores for which she was
criticized, while her brother hardly lifted a finger and was thought to do everything right in
her parents’ eyes.
Oliver continues to win the esteem of their parents. As an engineer, he has fulfilled the path
they wanted for him. They pressured Lian to go to medical school but she was not accepted
after her interview. Instead, she became a pharmacist, and she felt like she failed in her
parent’s eyes. The most recent message of being not good enough occurred when her brother,
Oliver, and his wife had a baby boy 10 months ago. Once again, her parents celebrated and
showered him, his wife, and their new grandson with great gifts, attention, and praise. Her
parents have not demonstrated the same excitement about the birth of Lian’s daughter, Ruth.
Lian discloses that she had a C-section with Ruth, and that this made her feel disappointed
with herself. To make matters worse, Lian’s mother criticizes her, and said her body must not
have been strong enough to give birth “the real way.” In addition, Lian also could not hold her
baby for the first two weeks because of the C-section surgery, and she reveals that this makes
her feel even more ashamed, useless, and “bad.”
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 120
Presenting Concerns
Lian reports that she weighs her daughter on a gram scale quite regularly (about every two
hours) to ensure that Ruth’s weight is increasing. Specifically, she weighs Ruth before and
after breastfeeding (and sometimes after a bowel movement) to see how much she has taken
in and kept in her body. Lian breastfeeds exclusively, but she is considering bottle-feeding so
that she can know Ruth’s intake more exactly. Lian expresses shame, and she fears others will
find out she is weighing Ruth as much as she does and think she is a crazy and terrible
mother. Lian reports extreme fatigue and discloses that she checks Ruth’s breathing every
night, sometimes upwards of 10 times.
Ostensibly, the presenting concern is the client’s experience of postpartum anxiety around
her daughter’s weight and ability to thrive, as well as rituals performed to diminish this
anxiety. The untold story involves sociocultural pressures and minority stereotypes that
pervade Lian’s experience. That is, North American dominant ideologies of motherhood
intersect with traditional East Asian tenets, and are further affected by the history of
oppression of East Asians in the Chinese diaspora. Historically, like other people of colour in
North America, Asian immigrants were exploited for their labour, treated as an expendable
race, and rejected as members of society. Chinese immigrants were stigmatized as “coolies,”
relegated to the category of migrant labour worker, and put to the dangerous work of
constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway (Duncan & Wong, 2014).
Salience of Client and Counsellor Cultural Identities
Appreciating Lian’s Cultural Identity
As Lian’s psychologist, I am aware that our stories converge, diverge, intersect, and transect.
I am reflective, aware of my history, and consciously do not to presume to know Lian’s story
simply because we are both Chinese mothers. I reflect critically on my own cultural identity
and experiences. My parents emigrated from Mainland China to Canada before they had
children, so I am a first-generation, a Canadian-born Chinese woman. Like Lian, I grew up
with strict Chinese parents.
121 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
Early in our work together, Lian describes the positive East Asian communities in Edmonton
that were part of her childhood. She speaks of many friends and a sense of belonging while
growing up. I am aware that my girlhood experiences of racism are not the experiences of my
client. While sitting in my therapist chair, my own experience of discrimination growing up in
Montreal floats by like a cloud. In a millisecond, I feel sadness at how it was for me, and before
the second completes, or the feeling takes hold, I recognize that what Lian and I are talking
about has personal triggers for me. At that moment, I intentionally begin lightly tapping my
fingers in slow rhythm over my thigh with the right hand on the right leg and left hand on the
left leg. The natural tempo for me is 3-4 seconds between taps. In times past, I have tapped
my toes in rhythm instead of my hands; or, if my legs are crossed, I move the top foot up and
down rhythmically in a way quite imperceptible to the client. The intentional movement of my
body keeps me grounded and aware; it allows me to stay in the moment. It is as if the
movements keep me sharp and focused on the client and her story. I do not engage memories
of my girlhood; using the mindfulness techniques I describe to clients, I observe the feeling,
and honour it for being there; I do not fuel it with further thoughts or feelings. Pema Chödrön
(1997) writes:
Thoughts go through our minds all the time, and when we sit, we are providing a lot of
space for all of them to arise. Like clouds in a big sky or waves in a vast sea, all our
thoughts are given the space to appear. If one hangs on and sweeps us away [or] . . . when
the clouds and waves immediately return, it’s no problem. We just acknowledge them
again and again with unconditional friendliness, labeling them as just “thinking” and
letting them go again and again and again. (p. 21)
Acknowledging the Subjectivity of my Worldview and Cultural
Identities
With Lian, I ask many questions from a not-knowing stance; I listen and truly hear her
individual experience. I reflect that Lian and I are, ostensibly, from the same ethnic culture,
but that I cannot make assumptions or set standards that stem from my own subjective
experiences. When Lian discloses the pain of her parents’ preference for sons, I am able to
nod with genuine compassion and to relate. Both Lian and I share the same history of female
oppression in our ancestral bones: the binding of Chinese women’s feet and the one-child
policy in Mainland China, for example. Patriarchal governance in Mainland China and the
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 122
beginning of population control in 1979 with implementation of the one-child policy meant,
among many other horrific consequences, that female fetuses were aborted, and that infant
girls were abandoned or became victims of infanticide. Likewise, the Little Emperor syndrome
manifested as a result of the one-child policy. As the third daughter of four girls, I knew at a
young age that my parents had hoped I would be a boy. I was aware of this preference in my
own youth, and so I can relate to Lian. Nevertheless, Lian has a Little Emperor older brother,
which embeds the sociopolitical cataclysm caused by the intersection of patriarchy with the
one-child policy keenly into her everyday experience.
When Lian talks about Oliver and her parents, the nod and genuine expression of
understanding from me is enough in that moment. Therapist disclosure of my story is not
appropriate at this time, and my silence enables Lian to continue talking about her feelings. I
figuratively set aside and bracket my story in that moment. I am aware of the grand narratives
of our Chinese ancestors and the deeply entrenched pressures that underlie Lian’s presenting
concern. That is, in the backdrop of female subjugation lives the overarching oppression of
our peoples. In North America, we have been a marginalized race from the time of the great
humiliation of our ancestors, who were “imported” to provide cheap, expendable labour. This
intersects with the despotic ethos of the good mother. Social stigmas and stereotypes, such
as the myth of the model minority and the tiger mother, activate a complex reformulation of
the perfectionistic ideal of what all good women and good mothers must be and, not
surprisingly, can contribute to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
The Model Minority
In 1966, Petersen first used the term model minority to describe marginalized Japanese
Americans who were successful in the US, despite facing oppression and hardship. The
myth constrains minorities by imposing an overarching set of stereotypes and
controlling images. The model minority myth assumes that Asians, as a group, are
middle or upper class, highly educated, successful in math and science, well-behaved,
and extremely competitive. Being positioned as a model minority is a double-edged
sword. It might seem positive as predictor of success in terms of academic and career
123 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
achievement for Asians, but it is a stereotype that is more harmful than beneficial
(Duncan & Wong, 2014). Not all Asians are successful in these stereotypical ways,
which offers a significantly limited definition of success. The model minority is a
weighted label that is hard to live up to and can often lead to anxiety, shame, and
feelings of failure.
In Session
When Lian arrives to our counselling session, she is punctual and professionally dressed. She
describes her sense of self in relation to being driven, by her parents, to excel in all areas of
her life. She speaks of receiving top grades in school and excelling in her pharmacy training.
Lian enjoys her job, although she talks about having too many extra shifts, because she has
trouble saying, “no,” to others. Lian reports something changed after having Ruth, and she is
uneasy and anxious about things that never bothered her before. She says that she did not
think breastfeeding her daughter was going to be hard and that she feels inadequate and like a
failure. Lian cries when she shares that she feels she cannot do it properly and that her baby is
low weight because of her. Lian explains that when she weighs Ruth, she feels more in control
of what’s happening. In the same way, Lian checks Ruth’s breathing at night, because she says
low-weight babies can fail to thrive and are more susceptible to sudden infant death
syndrome. She discloses that Sony gets upset that she goes to Ruth so much at night, because
it disrupts his sleep. Lian has not disclosed to him that she is checking Ruth’s breathing or that
she sometimes lies on the floor next to Ruth’s crib. On those nights, she crawls back to bed in
the morning so that Sony is not awakened. She hides this behaviour to avoid feeling more
shame and judgement. Further on in our work together, Lian identifies that she prioritizes
Sony’s needs over her own and always strives to keep him happy, just as her parents always did
with her brother, and just as all patriarchal cultures encourage women to do with the men in
their lives.
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 124
Good Mother‒Good Woman
The conventional, cultural imperative of the good woman ideology—so pervasive in North
American and other cultures—promulgates norms of expectation and sets standards of
behaviour for what it means to be female. Girls and women receive and internalize social
messages regarding the good woman. Goodness in this perspective describes a moral standard
of behaviour linked to implicit and explicit expectations of what a woman should be thinking,
feeling, and doing. The good woman scripts contribute to the good mother ethos (Wong,
2012).
The Good Woman
Wong and Bell (2012) described the cultural imperative of the good woman and
summarized related themes from the literature that are conveyed in ubiquitous
messages women receive:
• Be pleasing, selfless to others, and always give rather than take;
• Be happy, cheerful, and get things done without conflict, anger, or any negative
emotion;
• Be strong on your own; do not be needy or show too much feeling lest you be
judged as weak;
• Make sure your husband’s sexual needs take precedence over every other need;
• Your role is wife and mother first, career goals and aspirations are lower on the
list; and
• Be slim, youthful, and attractive at all times.
Notwithstanding, a good woman is successful and achieves greatness.
Adapted from “Reconceiving and reconceptualising postpartum depression,” by G.
Wong and K. Bell, 2012, in G. Wong (Ed.), Moms gone mad: Motherhood and madness,
oppression and resistance. Copyright 2012 by Demeter Press.
125 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
Such pressure on mothers can culminate in individual experiences of maternal mental health
issues such as depression (Wong & Bell, 2014) and anxiety. These oppressive moral standards
of goodness, which are specifically related to women and mothers, are exacerbated by
exigencies of traditional Chinese values and cultural norms such as collectivism, family
honour, filial piety, preference for sons, subservience of women, loss of voice, lack of agency,
loss of self, and deference to authority.
Filial Piety
Filial piety originates from Confucianism and dictates a hierarchical structure for
family and society. Older persons, including ancestors, people in high-ranking
positions, and parents garner the most respect and deference; children and younger
family members, particularly daughters, hold the least rank. Filial piety is an important
virtue in East Asian culture and has strict rules. Sons must honour their parents by
sacrificing and representing the family name in ways that demonstrate status, proper
conduct, and obedience; they must also exhibit extremely courteous respect for
elders, an ability to advise one’s parents, and a willingness to care for parents in poor
health and death. Sons also must ensure male heirs and uphold fraternity among
brothers to perpetuate filial piety in the next generation. Sons must never rebel or
show (or desire) independence from parents. Filial piety is depicted by the Chinese
character, xiao (孝), a combination of the character lao (old) superimposed over the
character zi (son). This represents an elder person carried by a son; the invisibility of
girls is patently clear.
Understanding the politics of motherhood and mothering within East Asian communities is
also influenced by the general scholarship of motherhood studies, which has been shaped by
thinkers such as Adrienne Rich, Sara Ruddick, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Patricia Hill Collins, and
Andrea O’Reilly. However, the good woman and good mother canons also intersect with Asian
model minority expectations. In our history, Chinese people toiled. The great “humiliation
day” in Canada was July 1, 1923 when the Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act came into effect, and
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 126
the Head Tax for Chinese immigrants entering Canada was instituted. Many Chinese
internalized these dominant discourses and worked even harder to prove their worth. East
Asian mothers are very tightly constricted by the culminating pressures of the cultural/
systemic oppression of Canadian Chinese and the detrimental pressures of the model
minority myth. The tiger mother is a specific extension of the model minority myth, but is
grounded in the East Asian collectivist worldview, which compounds the pressure to be a
perfect mother.
The Tiger Mother
Chinese Yale law professor Chua (2011) wrote about the tiger mother in her 2011
best-selling memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. She focused on perceived
between-group differences, contrasting East Asian and Western mothers. Chua
advocated this East Asian mothering practice that focused on children excelling at all
costs and obeying their authoritarian mothers dutifully without question. Chua
proudly exposed her rigid, tiger mom iron-fist and her absolute intolerance for
disobedience and anything less than perfection from her children. She described
withholding and depriving her daughters of anything enjoyable until, for example, they
played a piece of music masterfully at the piano. She criticized Western parenting
approaches for being weak, too emotionally accommodating, overly permissive,
lacking in rules, and having low standards of achievement for children, who were
never expected to ever be top performers. Chua’s ideas were highly disputed in North
America. In fact, she received vitriolic responses and death threats; at the same time,
she was lauded for her frankness about the self-sacrifice of mothers who prioritize
their children’s success above their own needs. The fervor and controversy
surrounding Chua’s book was further fuelled by the provocative headline in her 2011
Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”:
The Chinese mother believes that (1) schoolwork always comes first; (2) an
A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children must be two years ahead of their
classmates in math; (4) you must never compliment your children in public; (5) if
127 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of
the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to
do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and (7) that medal must be
gold. (p. 5)
Many interviews with Chua resulted from the heated debates about parenting that
ensued. In the end, Chua yielded to the masses and described the need for sensitivity
and individualization of parenting to the temperament of different children.
From Lian’s perspective, her mother was not a tiger mother in the sense that she was not
pressured to excel musically; however, she was pressed to maintain a strict academic focus on
science and mathematics, and her worth was measured by her academic accomplishments. In
fact, both her parents were strict and pressured her to excel in school at all costs. Reflecting
with Lian about these pressures and cultural stereotypes facilitates our co-construction in
naming and dismantling the web of ethos and ideologies that underlie the multiplicity of
forces at play in Lian’s life. Without such insight, Lian would be treated as if she is inherently
the problem, a lens that distracts from taking a broad, contextualized view of female,
maternal, and minority subjectivities.
In Session
Lian arrives late to this session. Her homework was to be late as a purposeful failure and to use
self-talk that included compassion as she drove over. I suggested to Lian that leaning into the
discomfort of anxious thoughts and feelings, while sitting with it and curiously looking at it
could lessen the discomfort’s hold; I explained that efforts to stop anxiety can serve to expand
it and give it more power. Lian says that even though she knew this was “just an exercise,” she
felt anxious nonetheless. She indicates that she kept an eye on the time and felt like she was
being judged. She also conveys that it was impossible for her to get familiar with the anxiety,
because she instantly felt bad for being anxious and for not doing the exercise correctly. Lian
recognizes that she feels “fear and worthlessness.” I ask her if she has felt fear and
worthlessness before and if she knows when these feelings first came into her life.
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 128
Lian is not able to connect to earlier experiences until she is invited to illustrate and bring to
life her feelings of fear and worthlessness onto a blank piece of paper. (Review the process for
Externalizing: Drawing and Interviewing the Problem in the Collins (2018) Culturally responsive
and socially just counselling: Teaching and learning guide). At first, Lian appears apprehensive
and shares that she is not a good drawer. I recognize that perfectionism may increase her
discomfort with the activity. I assure her that there is no right or wrong way and that the
drawing itself is not the emphasis of this externalizing activity; rather, the focus is about
bringing the feeling to life on the page. Lian surrenders her need for structure and getting it
right, which is itself courage, as I reflect back to her once the activity is completed. As I
connect with the image she draws, I ask again when the feelings first showed up. Lian recalls a
time when she was six, and her mother quizzed her for a spelling test at school. She notes that
she did not have a chance to practice, and she failed terribly. Her mother berated her, and
called her 冇用 Moh-Yoong (Chinese expression for useless, good for nothing in Toisan dialect).
In speaking to that memory, Lian begins to cry and also recalls her father striking her fingers
and hands with a ruler when she did something wrong. She is not able to remember the first
time it happened, but shares that he made her put her hands on the table, hit her, and if she
cried, he would hit her harder. Lian connects that feeling of fear, distress, and loss of
grounding, to the fear she experienced knowing she was late to session. I listen to Lian and
ask her what she feels in her body when she remembers those experiences. She says that she
does not feel anything in her body, and I note to myself that disconnecting, and possibly
dissociating, could have been one way to survive those times.
I reflect with Lian, and honour those painful memories by allowing her the safe space to feel
them. When I say, “That must have been so hard,” Lian nods and cries more deeply. She says
that she has never talked about those experiences or put thoughts or feelings to them. I share
with her that anyone in her situation would feel exactly the way she feels. We talk together
about how being a good daughter could never be realized given the impossible layering of
gender politics: Western sociocultural ideologies on top of East Asian edicts. Who wouldn’t
internalize a message of being inferior? A need to seek affirmation that she is good enough and
is pleasing to those around her is natural in such a context. I wonder out loud in session about
the roots of Lian’s fears and anxieties and whether they come from self-protection and
vigilance to avoid displeasing others and feeling like she is 冇用 Moh-Yoong.
129 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
Personal Reflections
I know this myself. The experience of 冇用 Moh-Yoong is deep in my bones from
girlhood messages from my parents, shameful ridicule from my peers, and ubiquitous
messages of no-good based on the absence of strong and vibrant Chinese figures in
media and mainstream popular culture. I learned to deny and subvert my Chinese
identity in order to survive. Not until my early 30s, living in Vancouver for a year, was I
able to reclaim and celebrate my Chinese heritage and embrace a bicultural identity.
As the woman I am now, I understand with “compassionate acknowledgement”
(Chodron, 2009, p. 61) and acceptance, and I am fueled all the more to advocate
against perpetuation of 冇用 Moh-Yoong. I witness Lian’s pain from a place of
knowing; I feel the suffering in humanity that connects us all. The humility I feel
invites me to be present and fully engaged with Lian. Tears well up in my eyes as Lian
talks about her pain, and I join her in an intimate, fully connected way. I sense that
Lian feels known and seen in a way she has never experienced before.
Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling
CRSJ counselling involves the deconstruction of, and reflection on, sociocultural constraints;
together, these raise curiosities as to how oppressive messages from family and society may
echo throughout Lian’s everyday experiences and play a role in her experience of postpartum
anxiety. Exploring possible extensions of the standard of goodness is necessary as we attempt
to identify the sources of Lian’s lack of self-identity, self-confidence, self-esteem, which are
coupled with feelings of worthlessness and a deep desire for validation and acceptance. We
work together to understand how coping with such feelings may result in behaviours that
please others and prioritize their needs over her needs. Lian identifies how understanding this
concept puts her inability to say no and have clear boundaries at work into context. Moreover,
it also helps her to understand that her fear she is not mothering right and is perceived as 冇
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 130
用 Moh-Yoong underlies and increases her worries that her baby may not be growing and
thriving adequately.
Committing to value-based, culturally responsive, and socially just practices involves me
partnering with Lian to acknowledge that she is not the problem, and that her anxiety
concerning her baby’s weight and breathing is a manifestation of the pressures and excessive
forces from those early messages so easily and deeply inhaled. In supporting Lian’s journey to
self, I facilitate her understanding and exploration of the deeper roots of her pain, creating
self-compassion and self-empathy in the face of messages requiring her to be perfect,
reducing her focus on others’ needs at the expense of her own, defining her worth internally
rather than externally, and recognizing the voice of self-repudiation and replacing it with the
voice of self-compassion (Neff & McGehee, 2010).
I also walk Lian through a visualization exercise where she kicks down the mirror of
self-evaluation through the perceived gaze of the other (Wolf, 1990). (Review the Visualization:
Kicking Down the Mirror activity.) I ask Lian to share something about which she feels anxiety.
She tells me that she is going to her friend’s baby shower and is bringing Ruth. She reveals that
she is worried that other mothers will pick up that she is a “bad mother,” think that Ruth is
underweight, and judge Lian behind her back. I ask her to visualize the moment she is about to
enter the house, and I walk her through imagery of herself imbued and overwhelmed with
anticipated judgements, comparisons, and self-surveillance. I invite the anxiety into the
moment as I describe an image of a metaphorical full-length mirror in front of Lian. I ask her
to see in the mirror the negative, bad self she sees reflected in the eyes of other moms. As
Lian visualizes this and experiences the related anxiety, we stand side-by-side and I tell her to
use her full force to kick and smash the mirror with her legs. I use encouraging, empowering
words, invite her to see the glass exploding, and ask her to be with the feelings of comparison,
judgement, and self-surveillance as they shatter and fall away. When Lian opens her eyes, she
shares that she put all her weight and anger into her legs when she kicked, and she could
actually hear the glass shatter. She laughs and says she is not sure how the technique is going
to help. I ask her to simply experiment with it; she can try it anytime she anticipates feeling
judged (through imagery if physically kicking is not possible).
In Lian’s story, the “not good enough” messages have their roots in a number of broader
sociocultural narratives/stories derived both from her Chinese cultural heritage and the
oppression of the Chinese in Western society. Together, we co-construct a summary of these
influences:
131 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
• the social oppression and stigma attached to North American Chinese people;
• the expectation of subservience to her parents, reinforced by the tradition of filial piety;
• the Chinese and Western patriarchal messages that girls are of lesser worth than boys;
• the strict treatment and criticisms from her parents;
• the message that she disappoints them, which is coupled with the pressure of fulfilling
the model minority stereotype; and
• the demands of the good mother and good woman ethos, pressure to be a tiger mother,
and expectations to be a certain way for her husband.
Combined, these messages paved the way for Lian’s feelings of deep internalized shame and
inadequacy. I talk about these sociocultural narratives as impingements on self, and share with
Lian two useful resources by Brene Brown: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think
You’re Supposed To Be and Embrace Who You Are (2010) and Daring Greatly: How the Courage
To Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2010). Lian recognizes
that being in control makes her feel safer than when she has no handle on what is happening,
and she identifies that her need for control has a relationship to her checking behaviour with
her daughter. We examine how being vulnerable and not focusing on control are necessary for
connection and for creating a feeling of belonging and acceptance.
We address Lian’s fear of Ruth not thriving, and we recognize that it is symbolic of Lian trying
her best to feel that she has control to avoid feeling like she is a bad mother. As we
deconstruct the pressures that have surrounded Lian and compassionately understand that
she has done the best she could, she recognizes that she has never felt the freedom to just be
herself. She said she does not even know who she is. Turning her focus to her relationship
with herself, instead of prioritizing the needs of others, compels Lian to open up and share
some of her feelings with another mother who also struggles with postpartum depression. She
also considers counselling work with her husband in couples’ therapy.
Lian is exploring the idea of being the good enough mother (Winnicott, 1958; Hoghughi &
Speight, 1998) as a way of resisting the pressure to be the perfect mother. She writes a letter
to express her thoughts and feelings to her mother, and composes it as a stream of
consciousness. I invite her to write the letter in her nondominant hand so that she may have a
stronger connection with her feelings and more easily let go of writing rules. The act of
writing a letter and simply capturing the feelings within written words without filtering and
editing is very hard for Lian. It takes her several weeks before she can fully engage in the letter
writing exercise, and she uses her dominant hand because it feels so unnatural not to. Being
accepting to all of it, I address, in the moment, Lian’s feelings of “doing it wrong” by using her
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 132
dominant hand; this allows me to support her and to encourage a kinder, gentler,
compassionate way of being and talking with herself. I tell her that by making choices for
herself, in the face of potentially displeasing another, she demonstrated courage and
self-respect. Lian brings the letter to session and reads it out loud to the photo of her mother
she has brought with her. The letter writing exercise itself triggers tears and expressions of
anger and hurt when she reads the unsent letter to her mother in our session. The release and
processing of feelings facilitates Lian to ease the pressures of needing to be perfect and to go
further into her journey to self.
Over time, Lian is able to advocate for herself with her husband about her right to have
feelings and needs. Her checking behaviour reduces as she utilizes strategies of self-talk,
imagery, and mindfulness, which involve respectful nonengagement with worry and
identifying it as simply thought. The notion of impermanence also helps Lian to recognize that
although feelings of worry may arise, they will also go away. We develop a list to help Lian
identify anxiety and find compatible strategies to attend to her feelings in the
moment. (Review the Documenting Signs and Strategies to Reduce Anxiety or Depression
learning activity.) Sony joins us for a session to review the signs and strategies around Lian’s
anxiety, to provide feedback, and to talk about ways he can support Lian at various levels. For
example, he recognizes that anger does not help at any point and that, in fact, it intensifies
and affects Lian’s experience negatively. Lian tells Sony that if he acts more affectionately
toward her when he notices she may be at anxiety Level 1, it helps a lot; whereas, more
affection and connection at anxiety Level 2 is not that helpful and can feel like a demand that
she is unable to meet. At anxiety Level 3, Sony knows that inviting his mother to take Ruth for
an afternoon helps Lian a great deal. Both are given a copy of the list of signs and strategies to
take home, and they are invited to use it to continue talking about Lian’s feelings and to add to
and edit it as things change.
Lian also creates more boundaries at work and is able to say no to extra shifts. We examine
the reasons behind Lian not saying “no,” and we link it to the myth of the model minority. Lian
and I role-play an imagined phone conversation with the manager wherein she says that she
is not taking a shift above her part-time hours. At first, Lian struggles and uses words of
over-apology; I coach her to practice phrases that help her advocate for herself without
apology, to set boundaries, and to put herself and her mental health first. Here is an example:
“I appreciate you letting me know that there’s an extra shift tomorrow, but I can’t take any
others beyond the three days I’m working right now.” I emphasize that she is allowed to
decline and that she does not need to say why or provide an excuse. As she practices the
words, I support Lian to match her self-advocacy statements with tone of voice and body
133 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
language (and the importance of this even on the phone). At first, Lian’s voice comes across
very weak and meek, which is a common disposition of females in East Asian culture; however,
it can represent disempowerment and lack of clear boundaries by North American standards. I
support Lian to experiment with what it feels like to project her voice more loudly, to speak
with confidence, and to assume powerful body positions. We also explore what it will feel like,
in general, to take up more space in her life.
Incalculable Shifts to Self
Slowly, over the course of time, Lian begins to see that believing she is enough and operating
from a place of good enough not only alleviates anxiety and checking behaviours, but also
transports her to a new way of being with herself. At first, it might seem like the experience
of postpartum anxiety is unrelated to politics of mothering. However, the process of working
with Lian to collaboratively dismantle the underlying sociocultural narratives reveals their
intricate connections and their relationship to her anxiety. By focusing on how her feelings of
worthlessness, not being good enough, and 冇用 Moh-Yoong, she is able to examine critically
how her anxiety is rooted in her internalization of these stereotypes. The impact of
dismantling politics of mothering by using a feminist and sociopolitical analysis of East Asian
mothering, and how doing so supports a mother experiencing postpartum anxiety, is difficult
to describe in concrete terms. However, it seems that deconstructing Lian’s feelings of
worthlessness, not being good enough, and 冇用 Moh-Yoong helped to unpack the pressures
and messages so intricately tied to her anxiety. My relationship with Lian in therapy creates
the transformative space in which she can feel known, acknowledged, and accepted. This,
along with firm identification of the individual, sociopolitical, and sociocultural underpinnings
brings Lian to see that the prescriptions for perfectionism in mothering, in being woman, and
in being a Chinese mother and wife are impossible, and highly-anxiety provoking, standards.
My work with Lian helps her to see her experiences within the context of the multiple layers
and pressures of our culture, which devalue her identities as Chinese, woman, and mother.
The shift that occurs in counselling is not linear. Incalculable change can come through
discussions and realizations of the impossible ideologies for women. The therapeutic
conversations pave the way for agency, legitimacy, and Lian’s journey to a worthy self.
One year later, towards the end of this phase of our counselling work, Lian speaks at the
Chinese Alliance Church to other Chinese women. She talks about her experience of
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 134
postpartum anxiety, and frames it as one of the best things that happened to her because, in
the process of recovery, she discovered self-love and self-acceptance. She courageously talks
to them about the consequences of filial piety; she relays her experiences of growing up and
empathically shares the context in which her parents grew up. The intergenerational
transmission of 冇用 Moh-Yoong is something Lian and I discuss in counselling, and our
reflections foster a more compassionate understanding of her parents and lessen tendencies
to blame them. In her talk, Lian notes pervasive intergenerational patterns that perpetuate
feelings of unworthiness, particularly for girls and women. Several women come up to Lian
afterwards and speak in confidence about their struggles. Lian meets for coffee with one
woman, in particular, and they become good friends who encourage each other and foster
each other’s continued journey to self.
Central to these examinations is creating understanding and awareness of cultural hegemony,
and negotiating multiple and intersecting identities and pressures. Although I rejoice with
Lian in her new-found sense of self and her emerging freedom from oppressive sociocultural
norms and intergenerational conflicts, I am aware that the shared meaning we have made of
our lived experiences are reflective of the experiences of many other Chinese women and
mothers. From a CRSJ counselling perspective, turning toward a mother-centred perspective
at the macrolevel of socially just change is required; in this case, a change in the theoretical
models that shape professional practice. Andrea O’Reilly strongly advocates for a matricentric
feminism, which places the subjectivity, concerns, problems, and insights of mothers at the
forefront of its analysis. Matricentric feminism validates the unique experiences of mothers
and demands feminist analysis and deconstruction of motherhood.
Scholar–Practitioner–Advocate–Leader
I embrace the scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader model. In my clinical work over the past
16 years, I have witnessed how deconstructing and dismantling sociopolitical pressures on
women is critical. The not good enough or 冇用 Moh-Yoong message affects so many girls and
women negatively. I have keenly observed and worked with clients who, in response to the
pressures of this messaging, experience eating disorders, body image dissatisfaction,
self-loathing, intimate relationship problems, self-esteem and assertiveness issues,
obsessive-compulsive behaviours, depression, and victimization. Because of these experiences
with clients and my recognition of how these forces play out in my own life, I am deeply
135 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
passionate about advocating for maternal self-empowerment. I am involved on national and
international committees and boards, and I am dedicated to the areas of reproductive mental
health and perinatal mood adjustments, often working with nondominant populations
including, but not exclusively, mothers of East Asian descent. I have volunteered for a decade
with Postpartum Support International as an Alberta Coordinator. I conduct research on
mothering and disseminate widely on maternal mental health and wellness from feminist and
cross-cultural perspectives. I edited the book Moms Gone Mad: Motherhood and Madness;
Oppression and Resistance (Demeter Press, 2012) and co-edited Mothering in East Asian
Communities: Politics and Practices (Duncan & Wong, 2014) to bring these issues to light. I
conduct evaluation research in the Circle of Security program and have become a registered
parent educator to work directly with, and support mothers to, interrupt the
intergenerational transmission of not good enough. Most recently, I provide expert witness
testimony after assessing the postpartum mental health of mothers incarcerated for
committing infanticide or filicide in Canada.
Summary
Through the case of Lian, I illustrated how pervasive sociocultural myths and assumptions
related to the good mother ideology must be actively deconstructed and dismantled with
clients, particularly with those of nondominant identities, such as East Asian mothers. Such
practices foster understanding of the cultural conscriptions and prescriptions that shape
motherhood, and pave the way to maternal agency and positive self-defined notions of
mothering from minority perspectives. I examined the tiger mother and other oppressive
myths such as the model minority alongside the good mother canon. The CRSJ counselling
model focuses on socially just change processes in counselling; I conceptualized Lian’s
experience and facilitated her journey to self through applying key concepts, interventions,
and strategies of the CRSJ counselling framework.
Likewise, I demonstrated that awareness of client-counsellor sociocultural commonalities and
differences, as well as the exigent forces that shape our multiple and intersecting identities as
mothers, permits us to disentangle and understand a mother’s experience of postpartum
anxiety. My intent is to increase awareness of North American sociocultural pressures and the
intersection of East Asian ideologies and practices within the CRSJ counselling framework.
This analysis is critical to engendering deeper understanding and deconstruction of how
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 136
multiple sociocultural discourses of motherhood and perfectionistic standards, shape
mothers’ legitimacy, agency, and personal experiences and identity. Such analysis through the
lens of the CRSJ counselling model empowers Lian on her journey to self.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
• What was your awareness of the good girl messages and ethos prior to this
chapter (as male or female)? What relationship to the good woman and good
mother do you see in your life or in the lives of those around you? How might
this messaging impact, or how has it impacted, your past, present, or future
clients?
• Reflect critically on how feminist standpoint theory is important in applying the
CRSJ counselling model. What are the similarities and differences in these
models? How might they each contribute to your work with your clients?
• In Glee (Season 3, “Asian F,” 2011, Episode 3, Aired October 4, 2011) the following
comment was made: “A grade of A- is like an Asian F.” The show made light of this
stereotype. What are your thoughts about comments like this in terms of how
harmful, or not, they are, and to whom.
• What intersecting identities and cultures do you experience? How might these
intersections influence how you view yourself and your clients?
References
Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and
embrace who you are. Center City, MN: Hazelden.
Brown, B. (2010). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live,
love, parent, and lead. New York, NY: Penguin.
137 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
Caplan, P. J. (2000). Don’t blame mother: Mending the mother-daughter relationship. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Chödrön, P. (1997). When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times. Boston, MA:
Shambhala.
Chua. A. (2011a). Battle hymn of the tiger mother. New York, NY: Penguin.
Chua, A. (2011, January 8). Why Chinese mothers are superior. The Wall Street Journal,
Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/
Duncan, P., & Wong, G. (2014). Mothering in East Asian communities: Challenges and
possibilities. In A. O’Reilly (Ed.), Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood Across Cultural
Differences (pp. 7-21). Toronto, ON: Demeter.
Duncan, P., & Wong, G. (Eds.). (2014). East Asian mothering: Politics and practices. Toronto, ON:
Demeter.
Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Hoghughi, M., & Speight, A. (1998). Good enough parenting for all children—a strategy for a
healthier society. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 78, 293-300. https://doi.org/10.1136/
adc.78.4.293
O’Reilly, A. (2004). Mother matters: Motherhood as discourse and practice. Toronto, ON:
Demeter.
Pema C. (2000). When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times. Boston, MA: Random
House.
Schafer, A. (2006). Breaking the good mom myth: Every modern mom’s guide to getting past
perfection, regaining sanity, and raising great kids. Toronto, ON: John Wiley & Sons.
Wong, G. (Ed.). (2012). Moms gone mad: Motherhood and madness, oppression and resistance.
Toronto, ON: Demeter Press.
Wong, G. & Bell, K. (2012). Reconceiving and reconceptualising postpartum depression. In G.
Wong (Ed.), Moms gone mad: Motherhood and madness, oppression and resistance (pp.
141-164). Toronto, ON: Demeter.
Wong-Wylie, G. (2006). Images and echoes in matroreform: A feminist cultural perspective.
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 138
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 8(1,2), 135-146. Retrieved from
https://dce.yorku.ca/armsc/Journal.aspx
Grade One, Canadian Chinese Girl in Montreal
Chinese Canadian girl, misfit.
In a Montreal Canadian girlhood sounds of ridicule emanate from schoolmates. “Chink,
chink, chink” is chanted in indignant rhythm. Images behind the blitz of emotions
show little girls and boys spitting on the sidewalk at my feet as they chase and kick me.
I can’t recall my feelings in those moments, nor my reactions. I must have felt
powerless, confused, and helpless, like a child falling down after being tripped. But as
to the exact feelings and how much the scrape hurt, I’m uncertain.
I’d like to imagine that I wasn’t affected by their insults, that I ignored them and
skipped the rest of the way home, indifferent to their name-calling and cruelty, that I
went home-bound, looking forward to a sweet Chinese sticky bun as my afterschool
snack. Yet this was probably not the case.
Through even blurred memories, saps of intense emotions, and amidst uncertainty of
immediate feelings, one message sinks in loud and clear, “I am different.” But, not only
am I different, I’m inferior to these white-skinned, fair-haired children.
A snapshot captures life lived in moments and bites; it does not, however, preserve the
underlying emotions. I search my memory bank, but cannot recall my feelings about
the ridicule or remember a salient moment when I felt a certain way about myself or
about these white children. Like a pot of water on a low flame stove, the heat slowly
penetrates into the viscera of my soul. Their bitter words, their fingers pulling at the
sides of their faces to imitate my Chinese eyes, flavors the pot and simmers it, stewing
passively over the years in ways that I can only recognize in retrospect.
I recall praying and wishing deep within myself that I could be different from inferior
Chinese people. The greatest complement anyone could have paid me during my early
teen years was that I did not look or act Chinese. I strove hard for this, and it was not
139 | Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self
difficult since I was immersed in Canadian culture and spoke English without an
accent. I spoke no Chinese at all, and when asked if I knew, I denied that I had any
comprehension whatsoever. I spent immeasurable amounts of time trying to alter my
appearance all because I believed the natural me was worthless.
I struggled not wanting to be that Chinese girl with scraped knees.
Chapter 4. A Chinese Mother’s Journey to Self | 140
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the
Working Class: Attending to Class at the
Intersections of Identities
FISHER LAVELL
I come by storytelling honestly; I was raised in an oral storytelling culture. Both my mother
and my father were storytellers in their own way. My father was the teller of manly stories:
stories about men and work and fighting, animal attacks, tragic accidents and gruesome
death, split-second decisions with powerful consequences, heroism and success or tragedy
and payback. My mother’s stories were more the private sort that women tell away from the
earshot of men: stories about what she called the double standard (i.e., sexism), stories about
certain men’s other side (e.g., assault, pregnancy), and then women’s resistance through
speaking up, telling off, fighting back, banding together, or in the absence of power,
sometimes a more womanly sort of come-uppance through secret channels and allies or by
fate, God, and other unseen forces.
But do not imagine us sitting cross-legged around the hearth, nodding thoughtfully, while the
storyteller holds forth. An oral storytelling culture means not just stories as a performance,
but storying as a way of thinking and communicating. In the working class, rural culture
where I grew up, people thought in stories, they interacted through stories. Rather than just
conversing in a linear way, polite and formulaic or with logical arguments unfolding, our
conversations would naturally just veer off into stories. People would be talking together on
any topic at all and then, when a point was to be introduced or illustrated or deepened, the
speaker would simply tell a story. Not one ending in a moral, a statement of the lesson to be
learned, but just a story. This would often be followed by a story on the part of the other
speaker, and that story might echo the first speaker’s point, or it might detract from it, or it
might introduce another factor, and the conversation would proceed from there.
Stories are so much more interesting than a linear argument, and not only that, but by
definition, they tend to be ambiguous. There are various possible interpretations. If there is no
thesis statement or moral at the end, the listener can often choose to hear certain meanings
of the story and to focus on one aspect over others. That’s as it should be. I am not saying, by
141 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
the way, that every story is wide open to interpretation and can mean whatever the listener
wants; no, oral stories have a limited number of possible interpretations, especially since the
listener knows the speaker and so this, rightly, inclines them to the most likely meanings and
intentions of the story.
When my kids were young, and I would start telling some story from my clan, my sons in
particular would sometimes interrupt me. “Mom! We already know this story, you told it
before!” I would explain that this time, the story means something a little bit different than
last time, so hear me out. Or, I would point out that their behaviour seemed to indicate they
didn’t get my point last time, so maybe they need to listen more closely this time. Stories can
have changing uses and nuances, and thus they bear repetition.
So when you grow up in a working class, storytelling culture, not only do you develop your
own repertoire of stories, but you also hold a treasure trove, a hope chest of the stories of
others. I cannot tell you how powerful it is for me, now that my parents, my grandparents, and
all my aunts and uncles have left this earth, that I still have their stories. In a very real but
limited way, because I have their stories, I still have them here with me. And the stories of my
people, in actual fact, are what still sustains me in my darkest hours. They are not beautiful
stories in the conventional sense; in fact, they are most often hard stories, complex and
unsettling, and difficult to hear. Yet in this, they guide and warn and give depth and
inspiration to my life here and now.
As well as using my storytelling cultural knowledge in the practice of narrative therapy, I also
write and publish fiction, much of it closely based on stories from my people and from their
lives. In much of this article, I will discuss how I use storytelling in narrative therapy, but I
want to begin with an excerpt from my unpublished novel, A Seven-Year Ache (Lavell, 2018). In
this way, I want to flesh out the rural, working-class culture of my family, and also illustrate
some of the actual issues and problems working-class people dealt with in the past; problems
and their solutions and consequences that still have relevance today.
Each chapter in my novel is a stand-alone story, and this excerpt is from the third chapter,
called Mother’s Constitutional. It is told in the first person by a character called Rosie. The
novel is set between 1920 and 1939, when Rosie’s family is homesteading in Manitoba, and it is
absolutely biographical, based on the lives of my own family. The excerpt is set in 1936, during
the Great Depression, and it is substantially based on a life-story interview I did with an
elderly aunt, in which she told about the long-ago death of her 17-year old sister, my auntie
Eileen. So, are you ready for a story?
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 142
Click on the image or this link to listen to the excerpt from Mother’s
Constitutional.
The transcript is provided at the end of the chapter [Direct link].
So, as I said, the entire novel is based on the lives of my Lavell relatives. My dad had several
sisters, and they experienced multiple kinds of abuse, lived troubled and difficult lives, and
many of them died young. My auntie Eileen died in 1937, before I was born, but I still go and
visit her grave regularly. Because I know her story, she is both real and important to me. This
story, like all my fiction, has a working-class subtext, working-class characters, and
class-based themes. Gender and social class knowledge are key to meaning. As in all of my
writing, I address and illustrate the ways that classism comes into people’s lives on the
personal and the systemic level. Every story that is based on my family is a tragedy.
The purpose of the present chapter is to bring this working-class lens to bear as class plays
out in the lives of clients and in the ways in which we either honour their experiences, values,
and worldviews in the counselling process, or unintentionally reinforce their marginalization.
This chapter was composed through a dialogue between Sandra Collins and me and will,
therefore, follow an interview style from this point forward. In some places, our conversation
has been synthesized into figures to make the content more transparent and user-friendly.
The key concepts in the table below are addressed in the chapter.
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
143 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
• Age
• Agency/self-determination
• Appreciative inquiry
• Bicultural identities
• Classism
• Co-construction of meaning/
language
• Collectivist worldview
• Counselling style
• Counsellor credibility
• Cultural awareness
• Cultural blindness–cultural
hyperconsciousness
• Cultural distance–similarity
• Cultural empathy
• Cultural encapsulation
• Cultural inquiry
• Cultural knowledge holders or
guides
• Cultural norms
• Cultural responsivity
• Cultural self-awareness
• Cultural sensitivity
• Cultural transference
• Culture
• Dominant discourses
• Dominant/nondominant groups
• Equity versus equality
• Ethic of care
• Fluidity
• Gender role socialization
• Group counselling
• Human rights
• Identity conflict
• Identity management
• Identity narratives
• Inclusivity/diversity
• Internalized classism
• Intersectionality
• Lateral oppression/violence
• Lived experience
• Marginalization
• Meaning-making
• Mutual cultural empathy
• Narrative therapy/theory
• Negotiating multiple, intersecting
identities
• Nondominant cultural identity
development
• Personal cultural identities
• Power
• Power-over/expert positioning
• Practice-based evidence
• Prejudice
• Privilege
• Relational practice
• Respect and dignity
• Self-disclosure
• Social class
• Social class analysis
• Social determinants of health
• Social injustice/inequity
• Sociocultural narratives/
discourses
• Storying
• Strengths and resiliency
• Systems of knowledge/meaning
• Thickening client narratives
• Trust
• Ubiquitous
• Values-based practice
• Visible versus invisible cultural
identities
• Ways of being
• Worldview
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 144
Sandra: Tell me a bit more about how your own family history informs your work, the
emphasis you put on social class, and the intersections between class and other dimensions of
your personal cultural identities.
Fisher: There is a subtext about women in poverty. The women in my family experienced rape,
harassment, and unwanted pregnancies; they were sexually abused by employers and family
members. I have an aunt who was sterilized under the eugenics policies of the 1940s. These
are some of the many things that actually happened to many poor women in those years.
Another subtext is about gender, knowledge, and authority. Because my grandmother, Rosie’s
mother, was a peasant healer, she had an abortifacient tea, called a mother’s constitutional,
that she steeped using plants; it could safely “bring on the periods” if it was under about three
months. That is how women used to deal with problem pregnancies. They would drink those
teas, and most of the time, they would start bleeding and it would be over. It was not a medical
procedure, and there were no men involved. This was basic herbal knowledge shared from
mother to daughter and between women. Yet her daughter, Eileen, went instead for an illegal
medical abortion and died from the wound she got from it. Like many girls still today, she lived
in a world that did not value her mother’s knowledge.
There is also a subtext about ethnicity and Indigeneity. My grandparents came out here
homesteading from Ontario. When my grandmother, who was famine-poor from Ireland, was
17 years old, she ran off and married a man named James Huffman, the son of an escaped slave
who came to Canada from the US on the underground railroad. When they were in Ontario
where people knew their families, James was identified on the censuses of 1891, 1901, and 1911
as Negro. When they were homesteading in the west, he was listed as Irish. So, by his
appearance alone he could pass as “white.” But then as now, there was racism. As far as I know,
when my grandmother married him, her family shut her out of their lives completely. My dad
said she never, ever mentioned her family or anything about them; no one ever wrote to her,
and she never wrote to anybody. And then, Huffman died in the war in 1917, leaving her alone
with three mixed-race children. After that, she married my grandfather, George Lavell, who
was a Frenchman from Mohawk territory. My grandmother’s maiden name was Fisher; that is
why my name is Fisher Lavell.
145 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
The Ubiquitous Nature of Social Class
Sandra: These stories have influenced greatly your sense of identity and your connection to
the women in your past. How has that shaped who you are as a professional, how you engage
in counselling practice, and how you integrate class consciousness?
Fisher: Social class forms an underlay of everything I think and know, but developing a sense
of identity and developing as a professional is a long process. Although our social class is core
to who we are in a capitalist society, it is also invisible, unacknowledged, and misunderstood.
So, the vast majority of people never have the opportunity to develop a social class awareness.
When working-class or poor people come to me in counselling, of course, they have no social
class analysis, just like most professionals. It never occurs to them that their presenting
concerns might have to do with social class, or their lived experiences might have to do with
where they came from and from whom they came. It took me, too, a long time to integrate this
awareness.
This lack of awareness and sensitivity to social class is almost a given in our society:
sometimes, we can see gender, we can see colour or ethnicity. But social class: “What is it?”
Class is actually very complex, even though it is so core to determining people’s lived
experiences, determining people’s access to resources, and determining how they think and
what they value. I use the metaphor of breathing. The average person breathes 23,000 times a
day (I googled this), yet how many people notice their breathing? How many people notice it
23,000 times a day? But if you have cracked ribs, you notice your breathing. You notice every
breath you take, because now it hurts. If you have a full-on panic attack and you feel your
throat closing up and you are terrified of choking, then you notice your breathing. That is how
social class is: If you are part of the middle class, you may never notice it, because it doesn’t
hurt; however, when you are down there on the bottom, even though you might not be able to
explain what is going on or to change it, you notice there is something terribly the matter:
“This hurts.” Social class is real, with real and powerful effects, but people do not recognize
what it is, exactly; they don’t know how to think about it, and so they misattribute its
influence.
A little further on, I will talk about class structure, but here I want to flesh out a little more the
importance of culture—the sum total of how we live—in the rural, working-class world in
which I grew up. I have said that we came from the country poor in northern Manitoba, but let
me illustrate, culturally, what that means. Until quite recently, most rural working-class
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 146
people believed in self-sufficiency, whether or not they had paid work. Back in the ’60s and
’70s, everybody kept a big garden. They worked hard; the women did loads of preserving in the
fall, enough to feed the family all winter; they kept bins full of hardy root vegetables. Through
their labour and planning, they kept everything going. People kept their own chickens for
eggs, maybe a goat or a cow for milk. And almost all men could hunt, fish, and trap. So again,
with or without paid work, people’s labour and knowledge of the land saw them through.
These are troves of knowledge that have largely been lost today.
The rural working class also had a strong communal ethic. Both my parents had been raised
poor and neither ever finished Grade 5, but my mother loved children and was all about taking
good care of us. She fed us, taught us, gave us rules and standards, and because she had
witnessed so much harm to children and teens in her own life, she watched over us like a
hawk. (I truly did not appreciate this at the time, but I do now.) The value of schooling and
education and paying your own way were fundamental values taught by both my mom and
dad. My father was a fabulous worker, a very smart person, a wonderful father in many ways,
but he would sometimes get drunk and lose his job. And they were country people, not just
poor, but country-poor, so they had neighbours and relatives who all pitched in and helped
each other. When my dad would be out of work or when my dad went to jail because he got
into fights, I can remember a knock at the door in the morning before school; it would be one
of our neighbours’ boys, saying, “Granny said to bring you the milk,” and he would hand us a
2-quart jar of milk. Or there would be a knock at the door, and a kid would say, “My mom said
we have too many biscuits today,” and under the tea towel would be a basket of warm,
steaming biscuits. And we, likewise, did the same when people were struggling. My dad was a
fabulous hunter, and he worked the trap lines; he did all the traditional things that Métis and
other men could do at that time, hard-working, strong, working-class men. He would get a
deer in the fall, and everybody in our neighbourhood had venison. No one could use a whole
deer, because we did not have a fridge in those days, in the 1960s. When I left home in 1972, we
still did not have running water, and we did not have a telephone. We were poor by outward
standards, but most of us actually had very good lives, and as children, we were well taken
care of.
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Class and Class Structure
Sandra: Given both the ubiquitous nature of social class and its inherent invisibility to most
people and most professionals, how do you begin to define and explain social class?
Fisher: I will give a quick primer on class and class structure. In Figure 1, I have synthesized
the structure of Canadian society, drawing on a number of sources (Lavell, in press; Marcionis
& Gerber, 2014; Statistics Canada, 2015; Zweig, 2006, 2011). This hierarchy can be generalized
to most capitalist societies.
Figure 1.
The hierarchical class structure of capitalist society.
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 148
The basic class structure is a triangle, with the working class forming the majority in terms of
numbers of people, but certainly not in terms of power and privilege. Economist Michael
Zweig (2011) defined the working class as those who lack authority over others or control over
the work they do, estimating they make up 62%, a sound majority, of the U.S. labour force. I
tried for months to find research on the relative percentages for the classes in our country,
but even Statistics Canada does not provide that data. So, the estimates in Figure 1 are based
on my interpretation of available statistics, including the percentage of the population who
have a university degree. This leaves a very large chunk of people in the working class.
I have coined more meaningful phrases for the two main sub-groups of people within the
working class, as noted in Figure 1. The working class proper have good, often unionized, jobs,
for example, in traditional trades or in oil or other kinds of utilities; in my region, they may
work for Manitoba Hydro or for CN Railway, or up here in Swan River, they may own a farm.
These people are solidly working class or on the fringes of the middle class. Under them are
those I refer to as the working poor. They are working; they are paying their bills; and as long
as they do not lose a cheque, they are fine. If they lose a cheque or get sick, however, they are
in big trouble, because hourly workers typically do not get paid when they don’t work, and
they have few other resources to draw on. People who work in professional jobs have no idea
what that is like, and they will actually get angry with people for coming to work sick, not
realizing that if they do not come to work, they are not going to be able to feed their kids. It is
very serious. It is terrifying just to think how bad it is now for working-class people, and that
more and more outsourcing and automating of their jobs is expected. Where will the jobs be
for working-class people? They’re not going to go into investment banking. This leaves people
incredibly vulnerable. It is also important to understand that, as compared to the transfer
class, members of the working poor often have fewer resources, because many expenses that
can literally land them on the streets, are covered for those on transfer payments, things like
prescription drugs, transportation to medical appointments, school supplies, an extra cheque
and hampers for Christmas, children’s winter coats and boots, moving expenses, and so on.
Oftentimes, if attending to class at all, professionals look at poverty. But the poor are really a
subset of the working class. People from gated communities outside of Toronto, do not
become homeless people—though you might find an exceptional story. But poor people
overwhelmingly come from the working class; they have either fallen down into abject
poverty, or they are positioned intergenerationally at that level, with all of the struggles and
the terrible experiences that often go along with that. I sometimes refer to poverty class
people as the transfer class for two reasons: (a) economically, they often exist on government
transfer payments or charity, and (b) psychologically, they are the people onto whom others
149 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
transfer their shaming and their blaming: “Those are the people who are the problem. If they
were smarter and worked harder, they wouldn’t be in this situation.” The expression working
class proper is also double entendre: These folks are typically psychologically very prim and
proper, straight-laced, structured, and with very strong rule-based views of morality. For this
reason, they tend to be quite judgemental, looking down on the working poor, and those living
in poverty: “Those people, they are not proper, and that’s why they are having problems.”
Class is associated with income level, but also with access to education, resources, and other
forms of capital. And this is where stereotyping and stigmatizing come in, because a big part
of the kind of capital that more privileged people have is social capital. It is what they convey
about themselves through their tastes. It is what they convey about themselves by taking the
most interesting or unusual vacations and being able to display those things for others.
Dominant-class people focus on the looks of things, and this is how they use social capital to
reinforce power and privilege.
Although the middle class is a dominant group, it is important to look at why they are called
middle. It is not because they are at a middle income; their income is actually quite a bit higher
than wage earners, for the most part. Rather, they are in the middle in the sense that they are
the buffer between the truly wealthy, powerful, ruling class and the working class. They are a
tool that the ruling class uses to control all the people at the bottom of the hierarchy in Figure
1. Every middle-class career (e.g., medicine, therapy, education, management) functions to
help the ruling class control the working class. You are the weapon that’s being used to beat
these people or keep them compliant. Without you, they couldn’t be beaten, because there are
so many more of them.
Sandra: This conversation highlights the degree to which the whole experience of class is so
intertwined not only with the social determinants of health, but also with the sociocultural
narratives that we have built up and internalized over time about class structure.
Applying the Lens of Intersectionality
Sandra: In your writing on social class and in these family stories, we see the intersection of
social class with other marginalized identities. Why is it important for counsellors to be aware
of these intersections?
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 150
Fisher: Social class is everywhere, and to work effectively with working-class or poor people,
it is essential for counsellors to have some understanding of the inherent inequities in society
and the impediments to opportunity faced by poor and working-class people. Seeing social
class helps me understand what is going on with working-class and poor people. It is often
very helpful for me, as well, when working with people from middle-class backgrounds; I
recognize class-related values or issues in their lives too. In a capitalist society, where people
compete for limited resources, success is unequally distributed and much more closely tied
to inherited status than a lot of people realize. If you are born poor, chances are you will stay
poor. I am a class straddler, which is highly unusual. To come from a poor home with parents
who never finished Grade 5 and to have a masters and a post-master’s degree hardly ever
happens.
Although social class is always intertwined with other identities, our field often fails to
integrate a consciousness of class into intersectionality. There is a tendency to think in silos:
“That person is Indigenous, so we are dealing with Indigenous issues. This person is LGBTTQI,
so that’s what we’re dealing with here.” However, everything interacts. Gender, sexuality,
ethnicity, age, and other aspects of cultural identities always come in to play in any problems,
in their solutions. Poor white people are often the focus of classism and class-based systemic
oppression; so, in this case, skin colour does not act as a fully protective factor (Lavell, 2014a,
2014b; in press). For example, I am currently investigating a new phenomenon of parental
abandonment by adult children. I strongly suspect that many of the elderly parents who are
experiencing this come from the working class and that their children have bought into bias
against working-class people generally in society, and more specifically, the negative
judgements of working-class styles of parenting.
That is why it is so important to really get to know that person, not to just think, “Okay, this
person has an anxiety problem, so let’s work on the anxiety.” In my role as a school counsellor
and now in my private practice, if a kid is sent to me because they are suicidal or self-cutting, I
am not going to let that kid walk out the door until I have a safety plan for them, but if I have
an hour with that kid, I will probably spend the first 40 minutes just talking in a general way to
get to know the kid as a person. This establishes trust, and they are more likely to tell me the
truth.
Sometimes I just scratch my head, thinking, “How can counsellors effectively help people with
a range of issues if they do not even have any understanding of social class?” Even when we
talk about having a social justice orientation, I think often people are thinking, “Okay, so
homeless people. Poverty. That’s what we’re dealing with.” But everyone has a social class, and
151 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
it is really important to effective counselling practice that we understand people’s
backgrounds and how they may connect to current concerns.
Sandra: I appreciate the move in counselling and psychology away from that sort of siloed
approach to an intersectionality focus. However, it is interesting that social class has not
always been included in these discussions. I wonder if this is because, like you said, there are a
very few people who manage social class straddling and, therefore, are able to enter into the
profession. So, we have an inherent knowledge gap or lack of consciousness of class.
Fisher: Back in the ’70s, sociologists used to talk about the core three cultural factors: race,
class, and gender. Over time class was displaced as other foci emerged, eventually
disappearing altogether from the equation. However, considering that our entire context is a
class-stratified, capitalist society, where every aspect of experience is impacted by the money
and other resources that we have or don’t have, how could social class not be relevant?
The Neglect of Social Class in Counselling and Psychology
Sandra: Given your argument about the importance of attending to social class, why do you
think class and classism have had so little attention in psychology in general, and particularly,
in the multicultural counselling literature?
Fisher: It is astounding if you think about it. Understanding and appreciating social class
should be foundational to social justice and human rights. In our Canadian climate, for
instance, shouldn’t housing be a basic human right? Literally, you could die if you do not have
shelter. I think the main problem that undergirds the neglect of social class in counselling is
that working-class people are not those who can attend university or afford a graduate
degree. People who become counsellors typically excelled at school, which involves having all
kinds of supports and privileges that most poor people do not have. The probability that
someone from my kind of poverty would come into the profession is very low. In addition,
counselling and therapy are all about how you talk and how you think. This is another reason
that counsellors do not tend to be aware of social class; because they talk and think like
middle-class people, they are unlikely to think outside the box, or to have their inaccurate
beliefs challenged or changed. In the particular fields within counselling where you would
likely encounter a lot of working-class or poverty-class people, like addictions or
homelessness, there is a much more patronizing, paternalistic attitude, “We’re going to give
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 152
them stuff, and we’re going to tell them how to fix their lives.” In a private practice focused on
upper middle-class white women, you often negotiate goals, you are super respectful, you
accommodate in all kinds of ways, you do not judge. You see that person with a deep sense of
respect for their feelings and perspectives.
Another factor that leads to cultural encapsulation is the lack of diversity in the personal
lives of most middle-class people. Although middle-class counsellors may think of themselves
as having diverse views about culture, in actual fact, their lived experiences tend to be much
more insular. They are less likely to actually have people of diverse backgrounds in their
personal networks and friendships and families. Working-class people tend to come from
much more diverse communities. I think of the people in my neighbourhood who were an
integral part of my childhood. About 20-30% of my close neighbours were First Nations or
Métis; my cousins came from African-American roots. There were Asian people who married
Indigenous people. This was in the 1950s and 60s when the family was supposed to be Leave it
to Beaver [a 1957-1963 television series] or whatever. But, in my neighbour, people lived
together without getting married; there were two men and a woman living together, one man
and the woman were married but everyone knew the men were together. My best friend and
her five siblings were raised by their single dad. Grandparents were raising grandkids. There
was a lot of diversity, but everybody was just normal. We never thought about “Who’s brown?
Who’s black? Who’s white?” We were all just neighbours. Nobody said, “These people are doing
it wrong”; it was just, “We’re all in this together and that’s how people live.”
I think the not-so-benign neglect of social class within the professions has to do with privilege
and the incredible blind spots of people with real privilege. Yet often, there is a sense of
certainty and rightness in their way of approaching working-class clients, a power-over
positioning. There is a gulf between how I developed my perspectives on social class based on
the place I came from, and the worldviews of the vast majority of people who work as
counsellors, stemming from the unselfconscious beliefs and biases of folks with their
backgrounds. It is huge.
Sandra: As I listen to you talk, I realize even more just how dramatically where we come from,
how we grow up, and the privileges we have, or do not have, shape the way we think about the
world. It is incredibly challenging to set those lenses aside and really be present to another
person’s experience.
153 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
Contrasting Worldviews: Social Class Assumptions, Beliefs,
and Values
Sandra: How would you characterize working-class worldviews, recognizing, of course, the
risk of overgeneralization when we talk about groups of people with shared characteristics.
Fisher: Yes, here we are addressing working class culture, what culture actually is. It is not
just what people wear or from which country their progenitors originated. Culture is how we
live. Working-class people as a group tend to share certain values, worldviews, ways of looking
at things, and belief systems (Carey & Markus, 2017; McCrory Calarco, 2018). The cool thing
about working-class culture is that it crosses race. When professionals deal with
working-class people and they encounter someone with brown skin, too often they assume,
“Okay, this is about ethnicity.” Annette Lareau (2003) wrote a book called Unequal childhoods:
Class, race, and family life. She studied a large group of American working-class families, of
which about half were white and about half Black, and she contrasted them with a large group
of middle-class families, some Black, some white. What she found was that parenting style
varied with class and not with ethnicity. Based on the class criteria used above, the vast
majority of Indigenous Canadians—possibly close to 90 percent—are working class (Circles for
Reconciliation, 2017), and in my extensive experience working with First Nations kids and
families, they often have communication styles, ways of coping, values, and belief systems very
similar to working-class and poverty-class folks of white and other backgrounds.
I have synthesized some of the worldview differences between the dominant and working
classes drawing on the writing of Sears (2015) and Lareau (2013). To review these, please work
through the Bringing social class assumptions, beliefs, and values into conscious awareness
learning activity in the Collins (2018) teaching and learning guide; I will highlight a few key
distinctions here. Nondominant-class people tend to be spontaneous, relational, intense, and
they show their friendliness through talk and open communication. This is clear when
working-class people meet up for the first time with middle-class people; typically, the
working-class people will share all kinds of details and stories about their personal life, and it
makes the middle-class people, who are not inclined to share anything about their lives,
uncomfortable. Both may be dealing with the same issues in their lives, but working-class
people will put it all out there and middle-class people, more reserved and believing in respect
for privacy, will hold it all in.
Another core distinction is that most working-class people tend to respect those in authority
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 154
(e.g., parents, teachers, other professionals); whereas middle-class people tend to have an
egalitarian view of relationships and of people within their social class. McCrory Calarco (2018)
found that middle-class children were more often raised to question and negotiate with
teachers, doctors, and other professionals, whereas working-class kids were taught
considerateness and deference to those in authority. The message to middle-class kids, as
modelled by their parents, is, “You have rights and you can negotiate with anybody and
everybody, even with adults, for what you want.” By way of contrast, working-class families
often see this behaviour as acting entitled and insolent. Working-class kids are taught, “Do as
you’re told.” However, the latter is not just unquestioning obedience; rather, it is a belief that if
this person is a teacher, they have worked hard, they have a university education, they know
what they are doing, so “Do not be a pain in the ass. Do not be bothering them and asking
questions. Do not be arguing with them about the assignment. Just do as you’re told and get
through your day.” From a working-class perspective, it’s about not being a burden to other
people. It’s about developing character and independence and becoming a better person: “Do
your work.”
There are very different parenting styles related to leisure as well. In middle-class homes,
most nights the parents are driving their kids to some activity or other, and that’s how parents
spend their entire life. I raised three kids: “What? You finished your chores, do whatever you
feel like.” That is how working-class parents approach things. One of the things Lareau (2013)
observed was that working-class kids actually could take initiative and figure out what they
wanted to do. They typically had a large extended network of cousins and neighbours to play
with, as I did. As kids, we were always glad to have the time on our own. Seven of us kids could
figure out how to get on to two bikes and ride three miles to the river: “We got two bikes,
everybody can go.” We could figure out how to do that.
Building Trust and Rapport with Working-Class Clients
Sandra: So, how do these differences play out when you encounter a child in school
counselling or an adult from the working class in your private practice? By default, you have
positional power in those relationships.
Fisher: I believe that how I deal with my own authority is a big part of my success with
working-class clients. Inside myself, I acknowledge that I have that authority, and I know that
155 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
I am using it in the best interest of the client, and so I use it. I almost always ask people when
they first start coming to see me, “Have you seen a counsellor before? In what ways was that
helpful, and in what ways was it not very helpful?” Almost every person tells me they have
seen one or more counsellors before, and they tell me, “She was a really nice person, but she
did not help me at all.” I find that so interesting. If I try to elicit more of a story, typically, it
seems that the counsellor asked them all the right questions, normalized and validated their
feelings, suggested strategies for dealing with their anxiety or their anger, and often gave
them handouts or educational materials. In other words, the helper tried to be objective, was
politely reserved, and offered them solutions which were basically cognitive, none of which fit
their values or worldview.
I focus, from the beginning, on sharing myself with them. In other words, I am focusing on
being working-class friendly, on being open, and on storytelling. I am telling them stories
about myself. Now, I don’t just start saying, “When I was five, I did this. . . ” I get to know them
a little bit, in a give and take, and I listen to what they are saying, getting a feel for where they
are coming from and what is happening that brought them to see me. And then I tell them
about myself, the ways that I see my experience connecting with their experience. I start a
little tentatively and invite feedback, “Am I going in the right direction?” Almost always I am.
Even with fairly serious issues, I will probably spend the first 3 out of 8–10 sessions just
getting to know them. What does that mean? It means hearing their story, forming some sort
of a map for myself about who they are and what went on in their life and who the other
people are in their lives. I often create a family tree of sorts to figure out who all the people
are while I am sitting there, because often there are blended families and all kinds of different
relationships involved. I told you the story of Rosie and Eileen at the beginning of the chapter
to paint a picture for you of my life, my relationships, my values, and to position my voice as a
working-class person. Consider how you might hear what I have to say in this chapter
differently without that personal and interpersonal context.
I tell them about my training as a counsellor, I tell them in a general way how I’ve worked with
other people who had similar issues and what they found helpful with those issues. I do it all,
more or less, in stories and as part of a conversation that responds to what they have said to
me. And here is the amazing thing, Sandra. I am not saying it to brag; I am saying it as sort of
an anecdotal, subjective evidence that this works. Many, many times, at the end of the first
session, where objectively, I have probably done 80% of the talking, the client tells me
spontaneously that I am the first person who ever really listened to them. Isn’t that amazing?
They have gone to see some other “very nice lady” who said hardly anything, while they did all
the soul-baring, but they feel that I really listened to them. I have also had so many people tell
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 156
me, over the years, that I was the first professional who actually understood them and helped
them.
Sandra: Because they could see some of those working-class values and worldview mirrored
in the way that you approach them.
Fisher: Yeah. As I said in another publication (Lavell, in press), after I outed myself to a young
girl I was working with by telling her I have a daughter who was a teenage mother, she looked
at me and said, “So you’re not just posing. You are really one of us.” I take the risk to put myself
out there. And there are downsides to that, because I make myself vulnerable. But many
working-class people have learned through hard experience to be distrusting of professionals.
So I get around that issue by just putting myself out there, paying close attention,
acknowledging my own authority, and using that to work with them as an ally and competent
helper.
Class-Based Prejudice and Internalized Classism
Fisher: I am also willing to listen to their criticisms of systems and professionals within
systems without putting other professionals down. I don’t deny their experience and I use that
as a jumping-off place to explore class bias. A lot of working-class and poor kids and adults
have found that people invalidate their complaints about systems. When they say, “I think
there’s prejudice against me,” people tell them not to think that way. I, on the other hand,
actively affirm classism. I affirm the existence of prejudice that people experience just
because they are not privileged or do not have money.
Sandra: I wonder if you might comment on the social permissiveness that seems to be granted
to expressing class-based prejudice.
Fisher: I do not relate to it. I know that is because of my experience within a nonprivileged
group, because of my personality and my character, because of my training and background,
the constellation of who I am. But I sometimes just shake my head when professionals show
their prejudice. I do not understand how they can judge people like that, how they can be so
lacking in empathy towards people who struggle. To go back to the story from my novel, I
think that once you really understand what working-class people have dealt with and deal
157 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
with, their struggles, how hard their lives have been, you feel protective towards them.
Compassion. So I don’t really get the meanness of spirit I have witnessed towards them.
Sandra: Which is a really critical piece in hearing their story, because that experience of
class-based prejudice and marginalization may be a huge part of that story. To not validate
this, would shut a person down.
Fisher: I see it as a sign of trust when clients are willing to share those injuries with me, a
signal that I have made it safe enough. Often times, people internalize these experiences of
classism, and then internalized oppression can also play out in counselling. Internalized
classism is when a person hates themselves or aspects of themselves because of their class
background and experiences. When doing pen and paper or journaling activities with
working-class people, for example, they are often very nervous about their spelling. I’ve
always been really good at spelling [chuckle], so I always say, “Do not worry about the spelling.”
But often, because of experiences they’ve had, they just feel judged on their spelling and get
anxious, and they cannot not worry about it. So then I scribe for them; otherwise, it interferes
with their process to check with me frequently to make sure they are spelling each word
correctly.
It is also really important to understand that social rules and norms are created and
reinforced by the middle-class, and then these sociocultural constructions are used as a lens
through which to evaluate working-class and poor people. I cannot keep up on the lingo of
multiculturalism, for example, so how can actual working-class people who do not have a
Master’s degree possibly manage this? They are not saying things to be offensive; it is just that
middle-class people keep changing the definitions and the right words to say; then they are
biased, prejudiced, and judgemental towards working-class people who do not know the
acceptable words. It is similar to the colonial worldview, in which missionaries claimed to have
proven that the Indigenous people they encountered did not have souls, because they couldn’t
quote the Bible.
Beliefs and values around parenting (noted above) are another example of an area where the
middle class can exhibit prejudice toward working-class people. Sometimes this takes the
form of societal incursions on parental authority in working-class families. In many parenting
programs and in high school family studies programs, the middle-class style of parenting has
now become synonymous with proper parenting. The gist of it is, “Just telling your kids what
to do, and expecting them to do it, that’s wrong. You should always talk with your kids, value
how they feel, and negotiate rules together.” In some kinds of families this may be possible or
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 158
desirable. However, consider a family in which one parent has to drive to Lac du Bonnet for
their work and the other one has to drive to Winnipeg for their work and they only have one
working car. They are barely making ends meet. They are both on shift work. It is just not
practical for everything to be a negotiation or for children to be supervised in their activities
every evening. Working-class parents rightly worry that any authority they take with their
children might be judged as abusive, and unfortunately, they do need to worry about that.
The bottom line is that, as counsellors, we must consciously attend to the values-based and
class-based roots of the rules to which working-class and poor people are unfairly expected
to adhere. Otherwise, we risk engaging unintentionally in class-based oppression within our
practices.
Respect for the Agency and Self-Determination of the Working Class
Fisher: It is important to attend to the ways in which classism and internalized classism affect
clients from working-class or poor backgrounds. However, when people display negative and
self-defeating behaviours, especially addictions or abusive behaviours, there are always two
elements at play: (a) how the system affects them from the outside, the struggles they have
dealt with, the problems they have had, their personal losses, and their class-based history,
and (b) their personal mistakes and failings, who they are as people, and their ability to take
responsibility and change behaviour. It is critical to acknowledge people’s struggles, and it is
also essential to help them see where they have the choice to change negative patterns.
A story here. I knew two sisters, born one year apart to a poor family. One of them worked
tirelessly to raise her kids; she had two part-time jobs, one as a waitress and one at the Dollar
Store. Eventually, she was able to get into a health care aid course, and when she graduated,
she got a job at the local Personal Care Home starting at $17 an hour. She is a caring and fun
grandma, drives her own truck, and likes to go ski-dooing on the lake in the winter. Her sister
got into partying at a young age; she lived on assistance most of her life, although she made a
lot of money selling drugs on the side. Her children were neglected and abused by multiple
partners. Today, she has many health problems and financial worries, and because she has had
so many experiences of being taken advantage of by people she thought were friends, she has
become a recluse. Two girls raised in the same family one year apart; same friends, same
teachers, same town, same system. Two sisters, two different lives. That’s the power of
personal agency.
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So, when it comes to working-class people, or any group of people, there are two sides to
supporting them to better their lives: (a) helping them deal with the pressures, the prejudices,
and the struggles imposed upon them and (b) empowering them to focus on themselves, what
they did wrong, what they did right, and helping them develop do-able processes for change.
You really need both parts, although I tend to focus on the latter. Having said that, the key for
me as counsellor is to never lose sight of the many strengths and resources people can often
harvest from their working-class experience. My friend Barbara Jensen (2012) published a
wonderful book on social class called Reading Classes: On culture and classism in America. She
told many positive stories about her own upbringing, and when she was challenged about
painting too rosy a picture of working-class lives, she said, “There are hundreds of books out
there that trash our people. I just want to provide a bit of balance.” And I feel that way, too. In
the stories I tell about counselling, I like to focus on the strengths of the people that I’ve
worked with and the really good things about them.
Sandra: Which is treating them with respect and dignity, because it is honoring that they do
have agency, strengths, and the ability to empower themselves and to make changes, within
the confines of these oppressive experiences and contexts.
Fisher: It is so affirming to me that you said that in acknowledging the real problems and their
part in them, I am showing respect, because I believe that. That is a working-class way of
doing things, saying to people, “You need to do your own part here.”
Sandra: You started off this conversation talking about the strengths of the community you
grew up in, even though it was a poor rural community, and how those experiences influenced
how you navigate your life. I can see how you would be good at communicating that to the
people you work with.
Social Class Identity
Sandra: You defined yourself earlier as a class straddler. Please expand upon that concept in
terms of social class identity.
Fisher: Class straddlers are people who have moved between two classes, and who integrate
values, beliefs, experiences, and behaviours from each class (Class Action, 2015a). As a
counsellor who was raised working class and who has benefitted from the kind of education
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 160
and other resources usually reserved for the middle class, I feel this is a great strength. Having
my heart and my loyalty with my own people helped me to read critically, research critically,
and listen critically while acquiring my training. And my experiences and education have given
me a knowledge of professional worldviews, attitudes, and processes that allow me to
competently negotiate complex and often hostile systems with working-class clients. In this
sense, I am sometimes a cultural translator or guide, helping clients negotiate within
bureaucracies and other systems. Andrew Sears (2015) talked about social class identity
formation as grounded in four factors: class background, current class access, class
identification, and class consciousness. Please review the diagram of the interlinking of these
factors in the Deconstructing social class identity learning activity in the Collins (2018)
teaching and learning guide.
Social class identity is complex and nuanced, and all these four factors come into play. In my
graduate classes, when I would identify as working-class, people would sometimes correct
me. “Oh no,” they’d say, “now that you have a degree, you’re middle class.” I would cock my
head, looking out at them through the green eyes I’m told I shared with my Auntie Eileen. “No,”
I would say, “I will always be working class.” Returning to the class identity model of Sears
(2015), coupling my working-class background with my middle-class access attained through
my education, which leads to a professional job, income, and health care benefits, makes me a
class straddler. However, I identify with and I am committed to working-class people. My
consciousness and my commitment are to the working class. For that matter, now that I’m
retired, I’m financially back in the working class as well. One paycheque away . . . I will
illustrate this question of identity with a brief story.
When I was in grade seven, my best friend quit school. Everybody I was related to, and
everybody I was friends with, and everybody I was neighbours with were in a different school,
because I had been streamed into the “smart class.” So I literally had no friends at school from
Grade 7 to Grade 12. One of the “fun” games that the kids used to play was called Lavell fleas.
The boys would start it. We would go out for recess or I would be walking down the hall, and a
boy would shove another boy into me, and then they would giggle and screech, “Eeeee!
Lavell’s fleas!” Then they would run around and chase each other with my fleas. “Lavell fleas!
Pass them on!” I handled that in various ways. I always had a book with me, books were my
friends, both the characters in books and the kinds of people who wrote books seemed to be a
lot more like me than my classmates. So, I would just lean up against a wall and read a book.
Every now and then, they would shove each other into me, half knocking me down, and laugh
at me. The girls would sit on the steps, watching, laughing into their hands. That was my life in
school.
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Sometime in grade eight, a new girl moved to our town. Her name was Patty, she was my age,
and she was in my class. At first, people competed to try and be her friends; but then they
must have noticed that she wore older clothes, like I did, and sometimes her clothes did not
fit, like mine. I could not see anything the matter with Patty; she seemed like a very nice girl to
me but, one day when we were outside for recess, a boy shoved another boy into Patty, and
started screeching, “Eeeee! Patty fleas!” They ran around and chased each other, and at one
point, a boy ran past me, slapped me on the arm, and yelled, “Patty fleas! Pass them on!” And
in the two seconds that it took for me to react, a month of Sundays went by. I thought, “What
do I do? I have been included. I can be one of them now. All I have to do is say, ‘Eeeee!’ and
chase someone else. They won’t do it to me anymore. My torment will end. I’ll be in.” So many
thoughts, so many thoughts, it was surreal. I know it was just a couple seconds till I spoke, but
I swear it seemed that time stood still while I thought and thought and thought. Then time
began again, I crossed my arms, I clicked my tongue, and fixing the boy with a frown of
derision, I said, “Ever immature!” and went back to my book. That was a defining moment in
my life. I do not know to this day all the factors that came to fruition in that small,
consequential act, but I know the girl who clicked her tongue is who I am to this day. I didn’t
understand them treating people like that, and I wasn’t going to be one of them.
Lateral Classism
Sandra: In other publications, you have talked about lateral classism, and the internalization
of that classist narrative. When you sided with Patty, in your story (above), you chose not to go
down that path.
Fisher: Yes. Lateral classism is when people project their shame or their blame onto other
people of their own class (Class Action, 2015b). I will talk about this by giving an example of
how I work with relational aggression, what is sometimes called girl bullying, from a relational
practice perspective. Nobody is meaner to poor girls than other poor girls. In schools, I have
worked often with relational aggression amongst poor girls, and here is what I have found to
be successful. Schools present a unique opportunity for really knowing kids; I often knew kids
from the time they were in Grade 6 until they graduated. I knew them really well, and I often
also knew their families, their friends, and their teachers. So when there was bullying going
on, I would start by identifying which girls were involved. Then, I would work with each girl
individually, in my general way of doing counselling, which is to sit down with that girl, to
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 162
share myself, to hear her out, to understand her story, and to figure out what’s going on in her
family and with her friends. Once I had worked individually with each of these girls, I would
plan a group event, usually some sort of a low-key craft activity at the round table, beading or
colouring or friendship bracelets.
I told each girl in advance who all was going to be there and that we needed to work some
things out. And, they would all come, because they trusted me, because in many cases they
loved me, because they knew that I could help them, and because I always acted out of an
ethic of care and wanting to do what was best for them, so they would come. We would just
sit together and do the craft, without a lot of conversation, and then usually, one of the girls
would start talking a little bit about something going on in her life. When it was appropriate, I
might comment on some of the ways people treat each other, and what is right and what is
wrong. I think in some professional circles, they don’t think there really is a right and a wrong;
they see all these shades of moral complexity. However, for working-class people, there is
right and there is wrong, and they believe you should do right. So, I would start talking about
how it is not right to gossip or that people often gossip because they are jealous. I would just
talk in a general way about this kind of stuff. And the girls would join in, and they would talk
too. And the hour would end and they would go back to class. And then typically, things would
improve: The girls would treat each other better, the gossip would calm down, they would
stop excluding each other. Sometimes it would flare up again, and when it did, I would bring in
whatever girl I judged was the main issue, and 99% of the time, the girl would say, “I know. I
know. I just . . . I shouldn’t have done it, but she just made me so mad.” Then we would deal
with her feelings and responses and help her make things right again. Caring about girls and
talking to them about being decent to others goes a long way to solving problems of
aggression.
Talking with Clients about Social Class
Sandra: What strategies do you use to initiate conversations with kids or with adults about
social class, and how do you move through the legitimate distrust that may accompany
experiences of marginalization on the basis of class?
Fisher: You cannot do the work without the trust. That is why my entire approach is built
around establishing trust and nurturing relationship, which tends to mitigate against client
163 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
alienation and feelings of distrust. And I feel that works really, really well with working-class
people, with everybody. Because I am so upfront about my own experience and background, I
am often seen by working-class clients as truly on their side. On the other hand, I rarely
discuss social class as a concept or try to educate people about the class system for several
reasons. First of all, the work I do with clients is always responsive to what they identify as
their needs, as well as other issues which emerge as counselling proceeds. So, although I will
reference social class or working-class experiences as appropriate, I don’t focus in a direct
way on them. In addition, almost by definition, working-class people are not highly educated,
and social class is a complex topic for you and I to talk about with our educations, with our
backgrounds, and as people who have been applying ourselves to studying these concepts for
years. So, for people who get stressed over how to spell an eight-letter word, it is not helpful
to talk about some ethereal concept like class structure and its implications for their lives.
Again, I address issues of social class all the time, but I rarely talk about class as a topic.
I do often talk about biases or prejudices that clients are dealing with, for instance, relating
clients’ issues to being poor, not having a lot of resources, not being able to afford things, or
being looked down on because of the family they come from. I often comment on how unfair
life has been for them and I often reference the system. I will say, in a general way, that this
system is not on our side or in this system, people experience so much prejudice, that sort of
thing. And, of course, I often tell stories of class struggle. Maybe stories about myself and my
family: how we struggled because we did not have money, because people looked down on us,
and because we had a lot of the experiences poor people tend to have, such as alcoholism,
addiction, single parenting, being on welfare, or losing our kids. (Losing your kids is something
that many people in my personal networks have experienced, and it is the worst possible thing
that can happen to a working-class person. Their children, their most precious thing, their
reason for living, being taken away.)
Sandra: I think this is an important piece of the conversation, because as an educator, I want
people to wrestle with the big picture issues and to use their minds in a critical way. However,
there is a big leap between our own consciousness-raising and how we respectfully and
gently, within the worldview of clients, invite in consciousness of social injustice in a way that
is meaningful and relevant to them.
Fisher: I am so aware that when it comes to being effective with working-class people, I am
very fortunate to have come from the same kind of poverty background. I had this extended
network of people, with all kinds of identities, people I actually knew and lived amongst for my
entire childhood and for much of my adult life. I am so privileged in that. When I think about
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 164
how to help middle-class professionals work effectively with poor or working-class people, I
am often at a bit of a loss. What stories can they tell that a working-class person could relate
to? Most often, they do not think in stories; it is foreign to them. So, honestly, my heart goes
out to them; I want to encourage them. But I also do not want them to harm my people, and
really, understanding social class and class-based differences requires a lot of cultural
self-exploration and self-reflection.
Sandra: I am a really good example of a person who grew up in a middle-class family, in a
middle-class neighbourhood, with little ethnic or class diversity, and I have struggled with the
kinds of things that we’re talking about. How do I really make these connections and get
outside the classist worldview that has been so ingrained in me throughout my whole life?
Fisher: Well, maybe I’ll give you a little bit of feedback just on that. Your heart is in the right
place, Sandra. From your work and from our conversations, I can see that you have dedicated
a great deal of your time and energy to understanding these issues, and therefore, to try to
make yourself of service to working-class people, to poor people, and to all people who
struggle and need help in their life. And I feel that you are very competent at that.
Sandra: Thank you, I appreciate that.
Fisher: The other thing, Sandra, is that, in a perfect world, maybe people who came from my
class could have true power and authority in helping our own people; however, we do not have
a perfect world, we have the world we live in. And without people who have privilege and
come from privilege, there would be no way for us to move up. Honestly, in my own life, when
I look at the people—not the systems, because no system ever really does anything for anyone,
it is people within those systems—people who have actually helped me in my life, one group of
people is academics, people like you, who do not come from my background, but because of
where they come from, they actually have the power and the influence to help.
Sandra: It is part of what motivates me in this work. I cannot erase the privilege, not very
effectively anyway. So, if I have privilege, I need to use it in some way.
Fisher: I agree, and I think that is the case with many forms of privilege.
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Negotiating Multiple Intersecting Identities
Sandra: How has social class played out in your work? How do your clients’ stories
demonstrate their negotiation of class with other dimensions of cultural identity (e.g.,
gender, ethnicity, age, ability)?
Fisher: I cannot think of a client story where only social class was at play. Sometimes social
class is the main focus, but hardly ever without gender. Gender is a huge aspect of how that
social class plays itself out as a strength, as part of the solution, or as part of the problem.
Ethnicity is almost always part of it, especially when you start thinking of white people as
actually having a racial background [chuckle] rather than as just “normal” people. And the
other big factor is age and developmental stage. You cannot deal the same way with a
five-year-old as a 17-year-old. This is also the case for adults; perspectives on one’s mother,
for instance, are often strikingly different at the age of 21 versus 41 versus 61. So with each
person, I am also working with developmental stage, such as emotional, relational, social, and
so on.
Gender and Class: The Story of Tannis and Mike
The first example I wanted to share is about Tannis and Mike, for whom social class was very
significant, but gender also factored in. Tannis was referred by a health insurance agency. She
had such major anxiety issues that she had not been able to work at all for a couple of months;
she was basically living in her bedroom. So, I was not surprised when her husband, Mike,
preceded her into my office. Right away, they struck me as working-class folks. Tannis had
been working in a support role within the healthcare industry, so she had no university
education. Mike also supported the family with some carpentry and drywall, some farm work,
some timber work, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They lived on an acreage out of
town with three kids.
We started talking about Tannis’ anxiety, but Mike was right in there, “Well what is this
supposed to be about anyway? She went to this other person; it did not help her at all; she is
having this and that, and the doctors have her on four meds. . . . Do any of you people know
what you’re doing?” Mike had lots to say. “Hm,” I thought, “how should I handle this?” I
considered my options for what seemed like a long time, but was probably about a minute.
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 166
Uppermost was the realization that a lot of practitioners would feel offended by what seemed
like Mike’s challenges to their competence: “Power issues. This guy is way out of bounds. He’s
just supposed to be driving her here. He’s not the client.” By way of contrast, however, I also
thought, “He’s a working-class guy; it’s a working-class marriage. This guy is the key. I am not
going to get anywhere with Tannis, unless I play this right with her husband.”
So, I listened to Mike. Tannis was clearly fine with him doing the talking. So while Mike and I
had a conversation, I continued to include Tannis through eye contact and check-ins from
time to time. I showed Mike all my degrees, I talked about my background in working with
anxiety, and explained how I usually do that. I wanted to communicate truthfully with him and
give him a sense of security in my competence. I was also being directly responsive to Mike’s
assertion that people who are supposed to be helping them, are not helping them. I was
deliberately respecting the ways in which authority and hierarchy are expressed in
working-class families, particularly in country families, instead of seeing Mike as trying to
control Tannis, trying to control me, or inappropriately questioning my authority.
Sandra: One of the risks of not paying attention to our own triggers and our own values, is
that we answer a question that is not being asked. Because we haven’t taken the time to listen
for clients’ values or worldview and figure out what the client(s) actually need.
Fisher: Yes, the key is realizing that this is about their needs; this is not them attacking me.
Mike needs to believe that I know what I am doing, because he loves this woman, and she is
falling apart. He told me all about how hard it had been; how he would come home and find
her literally hiding in the closet, unable to function. This beautiful, vibrant, gutsy woman that
he had married.
At one point I turned to Tannis, and I said, “Knowing all the stuff you’ve been dealing with, I
am kind of amazed that you even made it into my office. How brave you must be.” Tannis burst
into tears, and when she was more collected said, “It took us hours, I couldn’t get in the truck.”
Mike said, “I tried to get her into the truck, but she got out again, repeatedly.” I really affirmed
him, “Wow, Mike, you’re really there for her; you took the afternoon off work without pay just
to drive her to this appointment.” I not only did not reject him or try to put him in his place,
but I actually welcomed him into the conversation, and I said to him, “I hope you come back
again, call me any time if you have questions or concerns.”
Because of my background, I understood the nature of working-class relationships and how
they work. In rural working-class families, people depend on each other. You actually need
that other person in a real and practical way. I thought Mike would be there for the second
167 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
session, but Tannis came in on her own. I asked, “How did you get here?” She said, “I drove.” I
exclaimed, “By yourself?” And she responded proudly, “Isn’t it amazing? I drove by myself. I
have Mike’s number. I have the cell phone. And I told him, ‘If I do not call you when I get to
Swan in 25 minutes, come drive down the highway and get me,’ and he said, ‘Don’t even worry
about it, I’ll drop everything and come.'” She said, “I phoned him when I got to town and I said,
‘Guess where I am? I am here!” That was the first time she had driven to town by herself in
over a year.
Indigeneity, Class, and Age: The Story of Jerome
Fisher: Let me tell you about Jerome. Jerome was an Indigenous teenager living in a foster
care home with a white family. He’d been there since he was two years old. They were the only
parents he knew, although he referred to them as Steve and Lynda. He had always been a
happy, well-behaved kid who excelled at school but, uncharacteristically, in the past year or
two, he had started smoking dope. His foster parents, and his Child and Family Services (CFS)
worker were very concerned. He seemed to be stoned every day; he was getting stoned at
home; he was getting stoned at school. Out here, your elementary school is in your little town,
but for high school, you get transferred into the big school in the big town of Swan River.
Jerome lost key credits in Grade 10 (i.e., English and Math). He was also having anger outbursts
at home, punching holes in the wall. There were other siblings involved, and the parents were
starting to get pretty concerned. The Indigenous CFS agency really felt the key was to send
him to a different foster home or to put him into an addiction program.
The foster parents and CFS wanted something done about the dope and the anger right away.
I contracted for 12 sessions, and for the first three, I just wanted to understand Jerome’s
personal history; experiences with friends, family, and school; and who he was as a person. He
was totally unused to that, as most kids are. At first, he felt a little awkward, because he was
trying to tell me about his problems: how he had become a dopehead and how his anger was
completely out of control. “I’ve gone nuts, man!” he told me. And I was just calmly redirecting
and reengaging with his actual story: early memories, feelings about being in foster care,
relationships with foster parents and siblings, and experiences with, and feelings about, his
biological family.
I came to the conclusion, within a session or two, that the anger and addictions were pretty
normal teenage problems. However, I very clearly heard him express his identity conflict
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 168
related to his Indigenous mother, whom he hardly knew, and his foster parents, who were
white. He was engaged in a grieving process: “If I stay here in this home, I’ll probably have a
good life, but I am abandoning my own people.” It is a painful tension for many foster kids.
Typically, when people see an Indigenous foster kid in pain, they start sending them to pow
wows or to visit some great aunt they have never known. It is often very important for them to
get in touch with Indigenous cultures; however, I am advocating for listening first and deeply
to the individual with whom you are working. Jerome and I created a family tree, and we
talked about his few visits with his mom, who was in jail for manslaughter. There were many
very complex and difficult issues in his extended family, and he felt very mixed up about this.
I affirmed to him how painful it is to love your family, but not approve of what they do, which I
illustrated by talking about my alcoholic father. I told him how much I loved my dad and
admired him as a kid, but that in my own mind I had to have the ideas of my good dad and my
drunk dad. And when my dad was drunk dad, he wasn’t my dad, not really. He was that drunk
guy who did bad things. But the dad who was really my dad, and that I still have in my heart, is
my good dad. He is the one who played guitar, and sang with me, and talked to me, and told
me stories, and taught me to shoot and to drive and to stick up for myself. I affirmed Jerome’s
pain, acknowledged that there is not a quick fix for it, and committed to help him move
forward. Jerome made a decision that, yes, he loves his family, and he wants to understand
them, but he does not want that life of poverty and addiction and violence.
Sandra: He had to be heard at a different level, to have that space that you created for him to
be able to tell that story, and to identify what the underlying issues were.
Fisher: Yes, and then we worked on the marijuana issue, and although he did not completely
quit by the end of our sessions, he was able to completely stop getting stoned at school. We
decided that the priority was for him to catch up on Math and English, so that he could
graduate at age level with his peers, and so that he would have access to more career choices.
And then we worked on the anger issue by focusing on how to communicate better with his
foster parents, recognize his anger triggers, and calm himself in a private space through
relaxation breathing and journaling his thoughts and feelings.
Sandra: Your stories reinforce the idea that we can do all of this educating and consciousness
raising for ourselves as practitioners, but when we enter the room with a person, what is most
important is listening to their story and not foreclosing on really hearing them, because of our
theories, ways of viewing problems, or assumptions about change, as well as any class-based
assumptions.
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Fisher: To help us with our anxieties and our worries as counsellors, we often jump right to
the solution, but the solution is not the solution. Understanding the story is the solution.
Centring Social Class in Counselling: Where to Begin?
Sandra: Throughout this chapter, we have focused on the challenge and necessity of
increasing our consciousness of class, attending to the influence of class at the intersections
of other cultural identities, and working respectfully across class differences. I wonder if you
want to leave readers with some pointers about where to begin on this journey.
Fisher: I like the metaphor of breathing that I introduced earlier in the chapter. Just to let
people know that everybody has a social class. Social class is huge, and if they can think about
it in terms of capitalist society or whatever, think about that, that’s how it works: by the people
on top, holding down the people on the bottom. And coming from a middle-class background,
as most counsellors do, you have to know that you have been inculcated with that. Unless you
have specifically dealt with your classism and your internalized attitudes about working-class
people and poor people, you have them. So, it is similar to racism: It is going to be there,
because this is the society you come from. Reflecting critically on social class within
yourself is the starting place for effectively integrating class consciousness in your work with
clients.
To wrap up the chapter, here are a few practice tips that can all be characterized as a process
of social class analysis.
• Acknowledge that you cannot practice competently without becoming informed about
class and classism. Take courses, and read books and articles to increase your knowledge
about class-based challenges and strengths.
• Look at whatever your main counselling focus is (e.g., anxiety, addictions, disordered
eating) and explore critically the social class implications. Is there any research that looks
at the differences in that experience, or the differences in solutions to that experience for
people of different social classes?
• Pay attention to intersectionality. For particular populations you work with (e.g., youth,
immigrants, LGBTTQI, First Nations), don’t assume that one aspect of cultural identity is
primary; always assess the salience of multiple dimensions, including social class, to the
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 170
presenting concerns.
• Assess actively social class identity (follow the link to the teaching and learning activity).
Everyone has social class background, class identification, current access, and a
conscious or unconscious sense of class awareness. These are part of who they are, part
of their story, and potentially, part of the solution to the problems they are experiencing.
• Inform yourself about working-class and poverty-class worldviews (follow the link to the
teaching and learning activity) until you can recognize them in those sitting in front of
you, and you are clear about the ways in which your own values, assumptions, and beliefs
are class-based.
• Avoid imposing your social class analysis on clients who may not think in the same way
about class. Speak their language, listen to their stories, empathize with their experiences,
respond within their worldview.
• Listen, listen, and listen for clients’ stories. Recognize that they have a story, understand
the story, and then work with the story, and help them to turn it into a better story. But
make sure it remains their story, not your view or re-authoring of the story.
• Recognize that cultural encapsulation develops, and is reinforced by, knowing only people
of your class. Extend your friendship networks. Go to bingo, country music events, a rural
church, a local seniors club or the Legion (the values that many older people hold are
closer to working-class worldviews even if they came from the middle class).
• Pay attention to the complexities of class identity when working with immigrants and
refugees, because (a) some families living as working class in Canada come from the
middle- or even upper-class in their home countries and (b) the values, beliefs, and
assumptions of middle- and upper-class newcomers from certain countries may match
more closely Canadian working-class worldviews.
• Position class consciousness as foundational to multicultural counselling. If working-class
values are reflected in the people who are coming here as immigrants and refugees, we
are missing a whole piece of understanding their experience by not attending to what we
can learn from social class analysis within Canada.
Final Reflections
Fisher: One of the main messages of this chapter is that, in our profession, social class is a
neglected element of our consciousness about cultural identity; however, every person is
171 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
impacted in some way by social class. The media, popular culture, and even the counselling
profession assume, and reinforce the status quo, that middle-class values and worldviews
reflect what it is to be Canadian. But this is not what it is to be Canadian; it is not all that it is
to be Canadian, anyway. The majority of Canadians are living out their lives within the working
class!
I started by positioning myself as a storyteller from a family of storytellers. When I sit and
reflect on a person that I am working with, I sometimes think, “Well, this isn’t a very satisfying
story.” Through this chapter, I am inviting counsellors into our stories. Many poor and
working-class people struggle daily, because their lives are hard and structurally, systemically
things are getting worse, not better. I invite you to consider the role that you can play by
inviting forth these stories; responding with empathy for the challenges we face; respecting
our dignity, strengths, and resiliency; and fostering our sense of agency and
self-determination.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
• In what ways is prejudice towards working-class people (as opposed to the poor)
a big problem in Canada? How do you see this carried over into mental health
systems and services?
• To what degree is classism getting worse or better? Where do you see classism
expressed within the professions of counselling and psychology? What are the
implications for culturally responsive and socially just counselling practice?
• Think of a film that explores working class cultures or themes. How do you see
yourself or your clients mirrored? How are stereotypes of working-class people
reinforced?
• Do you think the media promotes classism? Explain your position, with specific
examples.
• What is the first step you will now take towards becoming more class aware and
class responsive?
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 172
References
Carey, R. M., & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social class shapes the form and function of relationships
and selves. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 123-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.copsyc.2017.08.031
Circles for Reconciliation. (2016). Dispelling the Myths About Indigenous People. Retrieved from
http://circlesforreconciliation.ca/2016/12/06/
gathering-theme-dispelling-the-myths-about-indigenous-people/
Class Action. (2015a). Cross class. Retrieved from http://www.classism.org/resources/
cross-class-resources/
Class Action. (2015b). What is classism? Retrieved from http://www.classism.org/about-class/
what-is-classism/
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press.
Lavell, F. (2014a). Beyond charity: Social class and classism in counselling. Canadian Journal of
Counselling and Psychotherapy, 48, 231-250. Retrieved from http://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/cjc/
Lavell, F. (2014b). North American peasant. In C. Collins, J. Ladd, M. Seider, & F. Yeskel (Eds.),
Class lives: Stories from across our economic divide (pp. 22-28). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Lavell, F. (2018). A Seven-Year Ache. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Lavell, F. (in press). Go back to your trailer: Essential social class awareness for counsellors. In
N. Arthur (Ed.), Counselling in cultural context: Identity and social justice. Cham, Switzerland:
Springer.
Macionis, J. J., & Gerber, L. M. (2014). Sociology (8th Canadian ed.). Don Mills, ON: Pearson
Education.
McCrory Calarco, J. (2018). Negotiating opportunities: How the middle class secures advantages
at school. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
173 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
Sears, A. (2015). Reconciliation across social class. Retrieved from
http://www.urbanministry.org/reconciliation-across-social-class
Statistics Canada (2015). Educational attainment of working-age population, 2004 to 2014.
Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/12-581-x/2015000/edu-eng.htm
Zweig, M. (2006). Six points on social class. Monthly Review: A Socialist Journal, 58(3), 116-126.
https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-058-03-2006-07_11
Zweig, M. (2011). The working class majority: America’s best kept secret (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Mother’s Constitutional
(1936)
©Fisher Lavell 2018
Six bad years into the Depression, with paying work so hard to find, she had found
good work with a wealthy farmer down by Drowning River. Ed Welsh was his name. He
had hired Eileen to take care of his children and ailing wife. Supposed to be anyways,
but turns out, that’s not all he wanted took care of.
I said to her at the time, I said, “Baby Sister, you got to be careful now. Men can get ya
into things there ain’t no good way outta.” But she was young and how can you tell a
young girl about the world we live in today?
She had started at Welsh’s after Christmas and when she come home to visit in
February, she couldn’t wait to tell me all about Mr. Welsh trying to get at her. Me and
Mitch was not getting along again, so I was sleeping down the road at Mother’s. Eileen
and me was whispering and giggling in the back room for half the night, keeping the
whole house awake.
“Fer cryin’ out loud, Rosie!” Mother yelled through the wall. “You with six childern of
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 174
yur own and still carryin’ on like a ninny!” She sighed heavy, then softened a little.
“Girls!”
But Eileen always got me like that. She had this way of being with a person,
encouraging like. You’d be telling her some regular thing you done, she’d be nodding,
smiling gentle into your eyes. Like what you were saying was just the biggest thing in
the world. She would reach out and stroke back your hair, listening in that quiet way of
hers. Every minute you were with her, you just felt important somehow. Adored, I
guess you’d say. Even me, old married woman that I was at twenty-five.
Not that she even knew exactly what Welsh wanted—she’d never had a beau. But she’d
be doing some sort of work—peeling potatoes or cleaning windows—then turn and
there he’d be, telling her, all low and breathy, what a pretty girl she was. She would roll
her eyes and laugh, telling me about it, but I could see the thrill it give her. So much
fun these things feel at first, yet the stakes are dead serious.
I took her aside the next day before she left to go back to Welsh’s and told her that no
good could come from it. You keep that man at bay, I told her. But she figured she was
old enough to handle whatever come. That’s what she told me, the pure white light of
winter in her face. “Don’t you worry, Sissy. Yur little sister is a big girl now.”
The next month when she come home for her sixteenth birthday, she was quiet and
distractible, not her jokey self, and I figured something had happened. Me and Mitch
had that old, cold shack at the end of Mother’s property, and I got Eileen to come
down and help me clean out the animal stalls.
That’s when she brightened up and started telling me about her and Eddy. “My Eddy,”
she was calling him then, as if he was a kid like her. She said he really loved her—true
love—and that she loved him back. Poor Eddy was so desperate unhappy, she said, his
cranky wife always moping and coughing in her upstairs room.
“Oh Eileen!” I said. “Tell me you ain’t . . . given in to the man.”
“Well!” she accused. “You was my same age when you took up with Mitch . . .” She
tossed her head, “and had to get married!”
“Eileen!” I said. “That is not the same. Mitch was a single man, and I was the one that
started things with him. Ed Welsh is your boss and he has a wife.” How can I say this to
175 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
make her understand? “Ed Welsh is taking advantage of you, Hun, doncha see? Because
yur young, and innocent to the ways of the world.”
Well, that just got her going quiet, arms crossed and looking vexed. She said she
thought I’d be the one person who would understand, the one person to see her side
and be happy for her. Pretty soon, she went trudging up to Mother’s house, left me
there shoveling shit and shaking my head. Eileen, Eileen, what hornet’s nest have you
got into?
It was when she come home for Easter that they had the terrible fire out at Welshes’.
Supposed to be a chimney fire, Ed Welsh claimed. Said that by the time he saw the
flames from the barn, it was too late to get them out.
That woman and four little girls all burned alive. Only him and the boy saved.
We was just grateful Eileen wasn’t there at the time. But Eileen was like a cat in an
oven, crawling the walls for want of getting back to Ed Welsh.
Mitch’s cousin Velma whispered she’d heard in town that Welsh had lost a wife and
child before this marriage, the bodies buried somewheres in the hills. Died of fever he
had claimed, but not attested by no one else but him.
I wanted to go to Mother then but she had so much worrying her already. We’d lose
the farm if taxes was not paid and they was due again in fall. Mother was planning to
pay them from sale of crops, and yet we had no money to buy the seed for planting. It
was Eileen’s pay she was giving Mother that was supposed to cover all that.
Within the week, that cad Ed Welsh come driving his fancy buggy into Mother’s yard.
Thick built and hard muscled, he had on a red silk shirt and his dirty yellow hair
slicked back. Mother come out and give him condolences. He had his boy staying with
him in Swan River at the house of his deceased aunt. He still needed Eileen, he said.
My sister could hardly contain herself, dancing and begging to go. So Mother agreed of
course and Eileen ran to get her things. I bit my tongue. Soon as taxes was covered, I’d
tell Mother everything and we’d go get Eileen out of there.
In May, when my sister come home that last time, it had already started. She slept at
my house up the road, so I was the only one knew about her puking every morning.
She admitted she hadn’t had her periods in two months. I said to her right away, I said,
Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class | 176
“Eileen, stay here with us. Don’t go back there, I’m scared somethin’s gonna happen to
ya.” I told her to come with me to Mother. I said, “Eily, she’s got that Mother’s
Constitutional, the special tea for bringin’ on the periods.”
But Eileen said no. She said Ed Welsh knew a man, a medical man, with real scientific
medicine. Not old mumbo jumbo country cures like Mother had. And anyways, she was
scared to look Mother in the eye, being pregnant and not married.
“But Eily,” I said, “she can help you.” She wouldn’t hear tell of it. I thought, Eileen,
someday you’ll learn. Just like me, some day you will learn that when you got a real
problem, Mother is the place to go.
I seen her from my garden patch that Sunday morning, sitting on the step waiting for
Welsh to come take her back. She had on her new yellow dress with the gay, flouncy
hem. Store-bought. Her hair, down loose and pinned back at the temple, shone gold in
the morning light.
How long till you are the cranky wife, Hun, and the man grows tired of you? That’s what
I was thinking. Even then, I thought the danger was somewheres off in the distance
and we still had time.
Chickadees was chirping in the hawthornes when she climbed into the buggy, life and
hope and promise dancing in every move and curve of her.
“Love you, Eily,” I called out as they drove away. “I’ll see ya at the fair in July.”
She waved back, clicking and singing to the horses as they went. “Love you, Sissy. See
ya at the fair.” But she never made it back for that.
177 | Chapter 5. Storying the Lives of the Working Class
DOMAIN II. ATTENDING TO SOCIAL
LOCATION
“Our culture is our resiliency. And, despite hundreds of years of assimilation policy, we
are still here. We have the ability to guide our futures in a self-determined way, reflective
of who we are.”
Maatalii Okalik
Okalik, M. (2017). Maatalii Okalik Q&A—What is your message to Indigenous Youth? [Video
file]. Retrieved from Indspire Awards website. Maatalii Okalik is a political advocate for Inuit
youth.
Domain II. Attending to Social Location | 178
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice:
Client–Counsellor Social Locations
SANDRA COLLINS
The focus of this chapter is on the following four competencies within Domain II of the CRSJ
counselling model. Each of these competencies highlights the relative social location of clients
and counsellors and the importance of attending to issues of social justice in practice. For
continuity, in the text box below, I follow the numbering of the 18 competencies in Chapter 1,
and so begin with number 4.
Domain II: Challenge Social Injustices, and Critique Their Impact on Client–Counsellor Social
Locations
4. Core Competency 4 Social Injustice: Attend actively to social determinants of
health, and evaluate the impact of social injustices on client health and
well-being.
5. Core Competency 5 Power and Privilege: Assess critically the impact of power
and privilege on client–counsellor social locations.
6. Core Comptency 6 Identity Development: Articulate the relationship between
social location and cultural identity development and management.
7. Core Competency 7 Cross-Cultural Transitioning: Analyze critically the impact
of cross-cultural transitions and social injustices on cultural identity and
relationality.
Personal and collective cultural identities, explored in Domain I, are often a source of pride,
connection, and self-understanding for individuals and communities. People tend to gravitate
toward others who share their values, beliefs, and worldviews, particularly in times when they
179 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
need a sense of security or of being known and knowable. At other times, their curiosity, or
their desire to learn and grow, draws them toward others they perceive as embracing different
perspectives, cultural norms, or life experiences. One of the basic premises of this book is that
cultural diversity enriches all our lives and that societies are healthier, more resilient, and
more progressive when they embrace cultural diversity as a core social principle. However,
even within those societies that promote multiculturalism, personal and collective cultural
identities are often (mis)used as grounds to separate individuals and groups into us versus
them.
As noted in Chapter 1, I use the term social location to refer to the relative positioning within
society of persons or peoples based on various markers of difference. Be sure to revisit the
definition of social location in the glossary, because this concept forms a foundation for the
rest of the ideas in this chapter. Most often these markers of difference are socially
constructed based on dominant discourses about gender, ethnicity, ability, social class, sexual
orientation, gender identity, age, and religion or spirituality. In North America, it is typically
the white, male, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender, upper-middle and upper class,
able-bodied, and middle-aged who have historically been in control of the dominant
discourses about what is “normal” or “preferred” in terms of cultural worldviews and practices.
From the time of colonization, for example, Indigenous peoples have been positioned as lesser
than based on their cultural identities and practices. In addition to the tragic government and
church initiatives designed to systematically dismantle their cultures, languages, and
relationships to each other and to their land, the colonial and settler populations have
generated and perpetuated sociocultural narratives that continue to marginalize Indigenous
populations within our society, rather than celebrating their strengths and resiliency
(Dupuis-Rossi, 2018; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRCC], 2015). It is their
relative social location as marginalized others that poses a barrier to their self-determination
and other human rights.
There seems to be an increase in global consciousness, which is both positive and negative, of
the relationship between culture and social justice. It is difficult to turn on the news or engage
with social media without issues of diversity in ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexuality, and so
on coming to the forefront. I am very disturbed to watch the now amplified rhetoric in
support of the dominant discourse of othering in our own society and internationally.
Ironically, the rhetoric has become so blatant that the positioning of us versus them is much
more transparent and accessible for critical reflection. They—whoever they are in the
moment—are to be feared, excluded, marginalized, controlled, and, if possible, prevented from
entering our safe zones. Fortunately, there are also counter-narratives that support cultural
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 180
diversity and social justice at the community, social, and political levels. However, in this
intensifying polarized context, counsellors may find themselves pulled in different directions,
emotionally and cognitively, because small seeds of unexamined cultural biases are fueled by
these conflicting discourses.
I am deliberately choosing not to label who they are, in this moment, because this same
discourse of marginalization has persisted over time while the targets of othering change. In
Canadian society, we no longer sterilize persons with disabilities, force left-handed children
to use their right hands, deny certain genders or ethnic populations the right to vote or own
land, or imprison people for expressing their love to others of the same sex. However,
Indigenous children are still disproportionately living without clean water, adequate housing,
or food security; Indigenous women and girls are still disappearing; hate crimes towards
Muslims and Jews are on the rise. From a historical perspective, these advances in human
rights are also relatively recent, and I believe we need to treat them as tenuous in this current
social and political climate, so that we don’t neglect to continue to defend them actively. It is
also easy for most Canadians to forget the recent nature of their settler roots in this country
and to behave as if they have somehow earned the privileges they experience. Doing so,
consciously or unconsciously, supports dominant discourses that define what is normal and
what is ours, based on the illusion that the colonial or settler population is more deserving
than others.
The professions of counselling and psychology, unfortunately, have not been immune to this
tendency to position certain groups of people as the norm against which health and worth are
measured. A number of the contributing authors to this book articulate the ways in which
certain persons or peoples have been marginalized, underrepresented, or pathologized in
eurocentric psychology (Huezo, 2018, Dupuis-Rossi, 2018, Lavell, 2018). The feminist, queer,
multicultural, and social justice movements have challenged many of these dominant
discourses over the years. There is now relatively widespread agreement that is important to
attend not only to each client’s personal cultural identities, but also to consider the impact of
experiences of social injustice and inequity in conceptualizing both client presenting concerns
and potential change processes. However, the social justice agenda in counselling is still
gaining a foothold in terms of the role of health practitioners in intervening to effect change
in the contexts and systems that negatively influence some clients’ lives. In this chapter, I
argue that applying a social justice lens to counsellor and client cultural identities and social
locations supports an evolution in our collective professional positioning: from increased
consciousness of the centrality of culture in counselling toward active engagement with the
contexts of clients lives, which are often at the root of their presenting concerns.
181 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
CRSJ Counselling Concepts Illustrated
• Acculturation
• Acculturative stress
• Bicultural identities
• Colonial or political violence
• Colonial relationship
• Colonial worldview
• Colonialism/colonization
• Complex posttraumatic stress
• Conflict between socialization
messages
• Cross-cultural transitioning
• Cultural assumptions/biases
• Cultural identity development
• Cultural norms
• Cultural/systemic oppression
• Culture shock
• Discrimination
• Dominant cultural identity
development
• Dominant discourses
• Dominant/nondominant groups
• Historical/colonial trauma
• Identity conflict
• Identity disclosure
• Identity management
• Immigrants
• Internalized oppression
• Institutional/organizational
oppression
• *Isms
• Lateral oppression/violence
• Life transitions
• Loss of cultural identity/
relationality
• Marginalization
• Multigenerational issues
• Nondominant cultural identity
development
• Othering
• Posttraumatic stress
• Power
• Prejudice
• Privilege
• Psycholonization
• Refugees
• Retraumatization
• Social determinants of health
• Social injustice/inequity
• Social location
• Sociocultural construction of
meaning
• Sociocultural narratives/
discourses
• Systemic/structural barriers
• Trauma
• Visible versus invisible cultural
identities
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 182
E-Book Navigation Tip
To orient yourself to each of these key concepts, return to Domain II in the expanded
CRSJ counselling model in Chapter 2. Review the learning outcomes and key concepts
associated with each competency. Pay particular attention to those you feel less
confident about, and lean into them as you work your way through this chapter.
Remember to review the definitions for each of the key concepts in the Enhanced
Glossary to gain a full appreciation of the importance of these ideas to culturally
responsive and socially just counselling practice by clicking on active links in the text
as you encounter them throughout this chapter. The glossary also provides citations
for each concept that link them to the current professional literature. You can follow
the links from Domain II in the expanded competency framework in Chapter 2 to
applied practice examples throughout the e-book to see how these concepts come to
life in counselling.
Core Competency 4
Back to top of chapter
Social Injustice and the Social Determinants of Health
Karen presents in counselling with concerns related to career advancement. She has been
working in a large law firm for over a decade as a legal assistant. She has worked for a
number of different lawyers and has always received strong performance appraisals.
However, she has watched others, who have been there less time, advance within the firm
183 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
while she has not. These seem to be individuals who come in early, leave late, and rarely take
breaks. Most are men who do not have family responsibilities. Karen is up at 5 o’clock every
morning to get her two young children ready for school. She spends time before waking them
up doing stretching and strengthening exercises to prepare herself for the demands of the
day. She arrives promptly for work every day, after dropping her kids off at an early-start
program before school. They finish off their day at the after-school program until Karen’s
work day ends. Karen is extremely efficient with her time, and her supervisor has come to
rely on her when projects require a quick turn-around. Often, other lawyers ask to “borrow”
her when they find themselves up against difficult and urgent tasks. She has earned
performance awards within the firm several years in a row. Karen is also very regimented
about her routine even at work, consistently taking time at noon to make use of the pool on
the ground floor of the building. You have worked with Karen in counselling on and off for
about eight years, since she first became a paraplegic when her ex-husband attacked her for
the last time. Her employer was very supportive during her recovery period and created an
accessible workspace for her return. She is deeply grateful. She is also very worried that her
investment in this agency will not provide her with the financial security she needs if she
cannot advance to a more senior position. Her current supervisor has less experience than
she does.
The experience of social injustice is often closely tied to individual and collective cultural
identities. Carefully review the definition of social injustice and inequity in the Enhanced
Glossary. Take a moment to consider how the various elements of this definition may apply to
the story of Karen. For Karen, the barriers to her career advancement appear to be related to
her inability to be available beyond the normal requirements of her job, because of the
responsibilities she holds as a single mother and the demands of managing her disability. It
may also be that gender and ability play into this scenario in subtler, but equally problematic,
ways. Now consider how this story might have been different if Karen had been unemployed
when she was injured, if she lived in a remote northern community, if she had recently arrived
as a refugee, or if she were white.
What is important in this story is that Karen’s presenting concerns cannot be fully understood
without exploring the broader contexts of her life. This is the case for many of our clients,
whose positioning within society is often more salient to their presenting concerns than their
thoughts, feelings, or behaviours. Recall the story of people being fished out of the river in the
Introduction. The purpose of this chapter is to shift your focus up-river to examine the
broader contexts of client distress. It is fundamentally unjust that certain persons or peoples
in our society have less access to resources, services, information, opportunities, and
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 184
supports simply because they are born into, or are subsequently relegated to, a marginalized
position within society based primarily on their cultural identities.
There has been some resistance in the professions of counselling and psychology to
recognizing the relevance of social injustice and inequity to professional practice and, in
particular, to assuming collective professional responsibility for actively facilitating social
change. However, in recent years, the focus on social determinants of health at both national
and international levels has inescapably linked (a) social injustice to counselling practice and
(b) the health of individuals to the health of communities and society as a whole (Audet & Paré,
2018; Collins & Arthur, 2018; Sinacore et al., 2011). [Remember to link to the definition of social
determinants of health to fully understand this concept.] Many of the presenting concerns of
counselling clients are directly related to these social determinants of health. These broader
contextual and systemic factors influence the development of problems in the first place, and
they result in inequitable access to the services and resources that could ameliorate these
problems. Failure to attend to the social determinants of health can result in victim-blaming
by healthcare professionals who view the individual in isolation from the sociocultural and
politic contexts that negatively influence their well-being (Collins, Arthur, Brown, & Kennedy,
2015; Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2008; Mental Health Commission of
Canada [MHCC], 2012). It is important to assess the degree to which group affiliation on the
basis of ethnicity or social class, for example, predisposes clients to particular health issues
and to consider the role that counsellors and the counselling professions can play in fostering
a more health-promoting society.
Social Determinants of Health
Consider the potential impact of the following social determinants of health on the
clients you currently work with or anticipate working with in the future.
• Poor self-reported mental health among First Nations populations is predicted
by the compounding effects of living conditions, education, unemployment,
poverty, food insecurity, and lack of social support (Statistics Canada, 2012;
185 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2018).
• Almost 17% of children and youth under 18 years of age come from low-income
families; these children represent almost one quarter of the individuals
designated as low-income in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2017).
• The need for adequate housing remains twice as high for new immigrants as
Canadian-born residents, and it is even higher for those from visible
nondominant ethnic populations (PHAC, 2018).
• The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA, 2018) identified stigmatization
and social exclusion, discrimination, sexual and physical violence, and economic
barriers including poverty as key factors impacting the mental health of
LGBTTQI persons.
Conduct an Internet search on the social determinants of health for populations you
work with, or hope to work with, to add to your knowledge base of the systemic
factors that may influence their health and well-being.
Grappling with Prejudice and Discrimination
In Chapter 3, I explore the risks of our own cultural encapsulation and ethnocentrism, as
counsellors, in terms of inadvertently setting up whatever we view as normal or ideal as the
standard by which we assess client thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and interactions. Carried a
step further, these unexamined cultural biases can lead to stereotypes of various persons or
peoples, particularly members of nondominant groups, which then undergird more overt
prejudice or discrimination.
In spite of the pride Canadians place in valuing inclusivity and diversity, discrimination has
been identified as a powerful, negative social determinant of health for Indigenous peoples
(Allan & Smylie, 2015; Reeves & Stewart, 2014), immigrants and refugees (Berry & Hou, 2016),
and other nondominant groups (CMHA, 2018; MHCC, 2012). The experience of discrimination
has many negative consequences on health and well-being: anxiety and depression; loss of
security or safety; self-stigmatization or internalized oppression; breakdown of relationships;
barriers to health, education, employment or other social or economic resources; and even
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 186
loss of life (Nejaime & Siegel, 2015; Pohlman, Rojas-Lizana, & Jamarani, 2014). It is incumbent
upon us as counsellors to attend carefully to the lived experiences of our clients, particularly
those who are disprivileged by virtue of their cultural identities, and to invite dialogue about
the relationship between their presenting concerns and their experiences of cultural
oppression.
Critical Reflection on the *Isms and *Phobias
One goal of this book is to bring into conscious awareness, and to help you weed out,
any lingering attachments to cultural norms or sociocultural discourses that are
rooted in unfounded and prejudicial biases and assumptions. Consider carefully the
list of *isms and *phobias below. Read the glossary definitions, or look up definitions
for the additional terms not linked to the glossary. Try not to gloss over them; rather,
look deeply into your own personal and collective history; your thoughts, feelings, and
physiological reactions; and your interpersonal patterns to consider ways in which you
have enacted or continue to enact these narratives of difference.
• Ableism
• Ageism
• Antisemitism
• Cisgenderism/transphobia
• Classism
• Colonialism
• Heterosexism/homophobia
• Islamophobia
• Racism
• Religious bias/intolerance
• Saneism
• Sexism/gender inequity
• Weightism/sizeism
• Xenophobia
This is not an inclusive list. What would you add based on your self-reflection?
187 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
E-Book Navigation Tip
Remember to link back to Core Competency 4 in the CRSJ counselling model to see
where examples or illustrations of these various *isms and other key concepts are
provided in this e-book. Moving back and forth between the conceptual chapters and
those that focus on client stories and the application of these principles in practice
will help expand and solidify your learning.
In the practice illustration below, Dr. Lisa Gunderson provides some insights into racism in
Canada from the perspective of a Black woman who grew up in the US and then immigrated to
Canada as an adult. Based on her observations and lived experiences, she shares some
important tips for counsellors working with clients from nondominant ethnic groups; these
appropriately centre primarily on appraising critically our own beliefs and attitudes so that we
can respond in anti-oppressive and affirmative ways to all clients.
Practice Illustration 6 Let’s Ask the Right Question
By Dr. Lisa Gunderson
Because I came from the US, people often ask if there is less racism in Canada. This is
not the question to ask, because it masks or minimizes the reality of racism here.
When a person or peoples experience racial incidents here, it does not feel any better
or any less painful, because it is happening in Canada. What we should be asking is:
“How do we deal with the racism here in Canada?” Because it exists. When I consider
how I have experienced racism here in Canada, three points come to mind, based on
my lived experience.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 188
First, Canadian racism can be direct, but it tends often to be passive-aggressive. It
finds expression in implicit and explicit biases that are displayed through
microaggression. I notice a lot of microaggressions in Canada. As Dr. Sue (2015) states,
microaggressions lead to macroproblems and macroconsequences. It is particularly
important for counsellors to understand this, so they do not inadvertently do harm by
not respecting the dignity and worth of all clients. One example of a microaggression
is the expectation that refugees and immigrants express gratitude to Canadians for the
opportunity to come here, and in so doing, graciously accept whatever systemic
barriers or challenges they faced, or continue to face, in this country. See the Collins
(2018) You must be so grateful learning activity.
Second, there is a tendency to focus on racism as only an Indigenous–white issue, and
to minimize and sometimes ignore the history of racism towards other racialized
groups (e.g., Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Indo-Canadians, persons of African
descent, those of Latino descent) except during human rights and equity observances
such as Black History Month (February). There is also a lot of resistance to
acknowledging the depth of racism towards Indigenous peoples and to taking
responsibility, true responsibility, for reparations. That is the ugliest part of Canadian
history, which is why many Canadians do exactly what many from the US do regarding
Native and African-Americans: minimize the impact of colonization and racism or not
acknowledge it at all. I hear it in comments such as, “My tax money is going to them”
or “They need to get over it.” Yet, the results of colonial violence are the same as the
colonial and racial violence in the US: higher incarceration rates, lower graduation
rates, economic marginalization and systemic racism. This is true not just for
Indigenous persons in Canada, but for African-Canadians as well.
Third, my experience in the Canadian Black community is that it takes a while for
newcomers to realize that they are Black. Initially, they tend to focus on nationality as
the common factor (e.g., Ghanaian, Kenyan, Sudanese) which makes sense because
they are coming from majority space and are now being minoritized. However, after a
while, they realize that when they walk down the street, they are perceived as Black. In
our heritage group, we have about 50 different nationalities represented. The beauty is
we can retain our distinct cultural groups and also talk a similar language about what
it is like to be Black in Canada.
189 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
With these considerations in mind, here are few important tips on cultural
responsivity for counsellors working with racialized minorities:
• Recognize that your client knows more about their experience than you do.
• Embrace the fact that you too are a racial being. Whether you are a member of
the dominant culture or come from a nondominant ethnic group, it is essential
to understand, own, and reflect critically on your racialized space, power, and
privilege.
• Be aware that internalized racism often takes the form of denying racial
tensions, discrimination, or other forms of cultural oppression. “Nothing is
wrong” is part of the systemic discourse of racism.
• Adopt a trauma-informed lens. You cannot underestimate the systemic racism
that some of your clients may have experienced, even though they may not be
able to name it.
• Do not minimize the impact of faith spaces. For many Black persons, faith is an
integral part of who we are. It is important to understand the role (good and bad)
that this may have in clients’ lived experiences.
• Pay attention to microaggressions. Clients may simply say they felt
uncomfortable, because they were looked at a certain way or watched as they
walked through a store. You need to stay attuned to and label these experiences
appropriately.
• Be aware that parents may not appreciate, or truly understand, the experiences
of racism their children encounter. Many Black youth, for example, have parents
like mine who come from Black majority societies. It may be difficult for them to
connect with their kids’ experiences if they have not been in white space for a
long time, and they may minimize the issue or tell them to forget it or not know
how to advise their kids on how to handle the situation.
• Feel honoured if your client expresses a racial incident to you (this suggests a
degree of trust), and do not lose the opportunity to explore this openly with
them. If you do, you will not get it again.
• Don’t make excuses, which is another form of microaggression, “Well, maybe
you’re looking at it the wrong way, or you’re being too sensitive, or maybe they
didn’t mean it.” If you do this, you may lose the opportunity discussed in the
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 190
previous bullet.
• Fight the urge to rationalize or dismiss clients’ experiences, overtly or covertly,
through comments like, “Well, that doesn’t sound as bad as the things I hear
coming out of the US,” or “I grew up here; I don’t understand that; that’s not like
how we are.”
• Stop yourself, when you hear yourself think, “Really? I don’t believe . . . What?”
Keep that in your head, and do not express shock, even if that is genuinely what
you feel. Then go for supervision, talk about what you are thinking or feeling,
and figure it out.
• Avoid putting your clients in the position of educating you. That is not their job.
• Ask your clients how they would like you to refer to them. Never assume it is
okay to use their first name (especially with elders). I have interesting
conversations with my students, because I expect them to address me as Dr. G.
or Dr. Gunderson, which is not necessarily common practice in dominant
university academic spaces in Canada. Notice, my practice illustrations in this
book are positioned this way.
• Do not assume when someone wants you to use their title that they are trying to
boast. There is cultural importance in claiming and naming our
accomplishments as Black people, especially in light of the lack of respect and
honour given to our people historically and the purposeful denial of the respect
inherent in using their titles. These are more than just titles, they honour the
fearlessness, endurance, adaptability, and resistance of those who came before
us.
The very positive thing about Canada is that multiculturalism and diversity are meant
to be woven into the fabric of national policies and identity. We are not there yet, and I
do not think that many people really own what that means on a day-to-day basis. BUT
the foundation for enacting human rights and equity is there. I am very hopeful that
our collective work toward making sure Canada fulfills these promises of equity for all
of us will come to fruition.
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One of the challenges that I have encountered in my role as a counsellor educator is the
perception by some students that it is fine to hold prejudicial attitudes and beliefs towards
clients as long as these don’t translate into overt expressions of discrimination. In this regard,
I ask you to consider these two scenarios:
• A middle-aged Indigenous man comes to counselling under the mandate of the court
because he has perpetuated domestic violence while under the influence of alcohol.
• An adolescent girl has been suspended from school for bullying; she comes from an
economically disadvantaged home, has a history of absenteeism and conflict at school,
and self-identifies as queer.
What were your initial thoughts and feelings as you read these two short scenarios? There are
a number of points in these scenarios onto which it is possible to attach stereotypes based on
age, gender, Indigeneity, sexuality, or social class. However, holding these cultural biases
potentially changes the lens through which you view these individuals. In essence, by holding
a prejudice against a particular group of people and categorizing clients, counsellors are
overtly or covertly taking up the societal and cultural messages that positioned clients in
marginalized social locations in the first place. In so doing, counsellors become part of the
systems of cultural oppression that contribute to client distress.
Rooting out our own ethnocentricity and prejudicial attitudes is painful, demanding, and
difficult work. One of my most challenging pressure points has been my intolerance of
intolerance. I respect and appreciate the importance and value of religion and
spirituality to many people, and I believe more attention needs to be paid to the role of
religion or spirituality in clients’ lives. It is not a belief system or the holding of religious
beliefs that I react to, but rather the assertion that a particular belief system is the only
right or true path for humanity.
Even now as I write this reflection, I observe that niggling voice in my head that invites
me to justify a bias based on my lived experience of oppression within religious
communities (by virtue of being divorced, lesbian, and now an atheist) and my reactions
to the role of some religious institutions in historical and current cultural oppression of
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 192
other nondominant groups ( for example, the colonization of Indigenous peoples or the
oppression/suppression of women and girls).
I still struggle occasionally with this paradox (i.e., these juxtaposing lens on religion). It
calls on me to employ my critical thinking skills so that I am able to both (a) recognize,
name, and own any generalized cultural bias inherent in my reaction of intolerance and
(b) simultaneously apply a critical lens to the dominant discourses of intolerance that
derive from multiple sources within our society. Only deliberate attention to the
potential for me to slip back from this position of conscious awareness of the paradox
keeps me safe from inadvertently superimposing a biased perspective on the lived
experiences and valued belief systems of others.
This does not mean that I am any less responsible, from a social justice perspective, for
addressing systemic oppression that derives from religious bias/intolerance. What it
means is that I must guard against applying an uncritical, generalizing, or reactive lens,
so that I don’t fall prey to imposing my own belief system on others.
From the Interpersonal to the Systemic: Casting a Broader Lens on
Cultural Oppression
Our beliefs, values, and perceptions about ourselves and other people do not evolve in
isolation. As I note in Chapter 3, they are social constructions that often mirror the contexts
of our histories and lived experiences. In the same way, although prejudice and discrimination
often find expression within interpersonal interactions, these phenomena are linked to, and
derive from, systemic influences. It is important not only to examine our own cultural biases
and to pay attention to experiences of prejudice and discrimination that our clients encounter
in their daily lives, but also to attend to the influence of cultural and systemic oppression on
their presenting concerns. Returning to the earlier discussion of the social determinants of
health, factors like poverty and lack of food security apply disproportionately to persons and
peoples from nondominant groups in society precisely because of broader, systems level
forces of cultural oppression. Consider for example the story of Alain below.
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Alain is a French-speaking man in his mid-twenties who immigrated with his family to
Quebec from the French West Indies when he was five. After high school, he completed a
pipefitting certificate, and then moved west for a job in the northern Alberta oil sands. At
first, he was happy and successful, working hard alongside people from many different parts
of the country. Occasionally, he experienced racist comments from his supervisor, but he
chose to ignore them. He sent most of his savings to his mother in Montreal. After a year,
however, he began to experience problems. He failed to show up for his shift several times
and his behaviour became unpredictable. His supervisor suspected he was using drugs and
determined that he was unsafe on the job site. The company offered him a letter of
recommendation, one month of severance pay, and transportation south to Edmonton, the
closest major city. The stress of losing his job increased his anxiety, and Alain began to
experience more severe symptoms, including an inability to sleep and problems
distinguishing reality from fantasy. He stopped communicating with his family in Quebec.
He had enough money saved for several months’ rent. Although his spoken English was good,
his written English was less strong; he had difficulty getting job interviews. The longer he
was unemployed, the more exhausted and distressed he became, and the less able he was to
present well when he did get an interview. He sought assistance at a walk-in clinic affiliated
with a nearby hospital, but he had difficulty expressing himself and was told he had to come
back when he was sober. On the way back to the shelter, he was robbed by a group of
adolescent boys who taunted him with racist slurs. The police later picked him up for
vagrancy as he recovered in the entry-way to a downtown condo building.
There are a number of nuances in Alain’s story that evidence the ways in which broader
systemic forces of cultural oppression interplay with life circumstances and personal cultural
identities, including in this case mental health concerns. Rather than listing each of these for
you, I invite you to read the glossary definitions of institutional/organizational oppression
and systemic/structural barriers. Then consider how these might apply to various
institutions and broader social systems at play in Alain’s story. If I now tell you that he is
suffering from early symptoms of schizophrenia, how might that alter your initial assessment
of this scenario? I continue to expand on these broader systemic factors throughout this
chapter. My second purpose in this story is to illustrate how easily a person’s lived experiences
can be dramatically altered by forces beyond their control, particularly when there are
underlying social conditions supporting cultural oppression that position the individual as
more vulnerable than others in similar circumstances.
Consider the research conducted by Marie-Odile Magnan that highlights systemic barriers to
academic and career success for immigrant students in Quebec, referenced in the practice
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 194
illustration below. As part of my commitment in the CRSJ counselling model to first language
facilitation, I invited her to present her work in French. I strongly encourage you to plan ahead
for how you will navigate information you receive from or about clients in another language. If
you do not speak French, reflect on, and test out, the options available to you to understand
Marie-Odile’s work in her first language before you read the English translation.
Practice Illustration 7 Piste pour l’équité et la justice sociale dans les pratiques d’orientation au
Québec : Les jeunes issus de l’immigration
Par Marie-Odile Magnan
Mon positionnement social
Développer des pratiques d’équité et de justice sociale en contexte de diversité
ethnoculturelle s’avère pour moi capital. Depuis mes débuts en recherche, j’ai toujours
fait le choix de me pencher sur la voix des jeunes minoritaires, minorisés ou racialisés.
Pourquoi cet intérêt? En réfléchissant à la question, j’ai réalisé que mon parcours était
marqué par la trajectoire migratoire de ma grand-mère Myriam. Myriam, née à Turin
en Italie d’un père protestant, est arrivée au Québec à l’âge de 20 ans. Elle a choisi de
se marier avec un Canadien français catholique. Comme mes grands-parents n’avaient
pas la même religion, peu de personnes étaient présentes à leur mariage. Et leurs cinq
enfants ont subi des situations de racisme à l’école et de discriminations car ils
n’étaient pas : « catholiques » mais bien athées! Dans les années 1960 au Québec, c’était
plutôt scandaleux! J’ai donc porté ce récit et ces blessures familiales dans ma jeunesse.
D’autres marqueurs ont aussi probablement joué sur mon intérêt envers l’équité et la
justice sociale. Bien que ma mère ait terminé un diplôme postsecondaire (niveau
collège) et mon père, un diplôme universitaire, j’ai vécu des épisodes de pauvreté
temporaires et vécu dans des familles monoparentales après le divorce de mes
parents. Ma mère souhaitait que je réussisse mieux qu’elle et elle souhaitait que je sois
une femme libre et autonome financièrement. Les remariages de mes parents ont
195 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
aussi fait en sorte que j’ai côtoyé des adultes (belles-mères et beaux-pères) ayant des
niveaux de scolarité variés et valorisant différents types de socialisations familiales.
Bref, ces diverses expériences sociales, socioéconomiques et ethnoculturelles ont
ponctué mon parcours et expliquent en partie pourquoi l’équité et la justice sociale, de
même que les théories critiques en éducation, m’habitent.
Les parcours scolaires des jeunes issus de l’immigration au Québec
Au Québec, les jeunes issus de l’immigration réussissent plutôt bien à l’école, que ce
soit au niveau primaire, secondaire ou postsecondaire. Lorsque l’on regarde le portrait
statistique global, ils s’en tirent mieux que l’ensemble de la population québécoise. Les
politiques d’immigration sélectives au Québec expliquent principalement ce résultat.
Nous accueillons des immigrants qualifiés et très scolarisés. La réussite de leur projet
migratoire passe principalement par le succès éducatif et professionnel de leurs
enfants; ils entretiennent donc de hautes aspirations à leur égard. Toutefois, malgré
ces constats positifs, des jeunes provenant de certaines régions (c’est-à-dire l’Asie du
Sud, l’Amérique centrale et du Sud, les Caraïbes et l’Afrique subsaharienne) ont des
taux de diplomation plus faibles au secondaire. Différentes hypothèses pour expliquer
ces écarts entre les groupes sont possibles : des différences en termes de capital
scolaire des parents, de niveau connaissance du français, de revenus
socioéconomiques. Je tiens toutefois à mettre en exergue l’hypothèse d’une
discrimination systémique possible pour certains groupes. Des données récentes ont
souligné la surreprésentation de certains groupes immigrants en classe spécialisée (ex.
élèves noirs venus d’Haïti), la relégation de certains élèves immigrants du secteur
secondaire jeunes vers celui des adultes, une filière de relégation pouvant entraver la
poursuite d’études postsecondaires. Au postsecondaire, les constats sont relativement
similaires. Les niveaux d’accès et de persévérance sont plus faibles pour les jeunes en
provenance des mêmes régions. Plusieurs pistes explicatives peuvent être formulées.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 196
Mes résultats de recherche
Nous avons recueilli plus de 60 récits de vie rétrospectifs auprès de jeunes issus de
l’immigration. Les entrevues ont eu lieu lorsque les jeunes étaient étudiants au cégep,
le collège d’enseignement général et professionnel constituant le premier palier de
l’enseignement supérieur au Québec.
Un premier constat de recherche fut celui-ci : les jeunes issus de l’immigration se
trouvent à la croisée de deux mondes. Primo, ils doivent composer avec les normes
occidentales de l’orientation de la jeunesse, axées sur le plein épanouissement de
l’individu, invitant les jeunes à s’autoconstruire en fonction de leurs désirs et de leurs
intérêts. Secundo, ils naviguent dans un univers familial envisageant parfois
l’orientation comme un processus collectif lié au projet migratoire de la famille, bien
souvent lié à un désir d’ascension sociale et à de fortes aspirations. Les jeunes veulent
à la fois se développer au plan individuel, mais ils veulent aussi satisfaire les attentes
de leurs parents qui répètent souvent s’être sacrifiés pour leur réussite, certains
parents ayant vécu une déqualification professionnelle à leur arrivée au Québec. Pour
leurs parents, la clé de la réussite est l’accès à un programme préuniversitaire,
principalement les programmes de sciences de la santé, de sciences pures. Ils
dévalorisent les programmes de sciences humaines qui n’offrent pas de profil
administration et les programmes techniques (mises à part les techniques offertes
dans le domaine de la santé telle que la technique en soins infirmiers).
Ces jeunes doivent donc faire des choix d’orientation sous l’aune d’une contrainte
parentale perçue. Ils préfèrent faire un compromis entre les attentes de leurs parents
et leurs intérêts. Nicole (parents nés en Haïti) souligne ceci : « Je voulais être
massothérapeute; j’ai voulu être professeure de français, d’arts plastiques. Et là, tu as
aussi mes parents qui voulaient que je fasse un bon métier. Ils voulaient que je sois
avocate, médecin. Moi, je ne voulais pas; ça leur a pris du temps avant de comprendre.
[…] Je n’ai pas perdu l’option de devenir massothérapeute; je ne l’ai pas perdue, mais j’ai
reconsidéré mes choix. » Ils ressentent également une contrainte économique; ils
présument que leurs parents ne pourront pas les aider financièrement pendant leurs
études postsecondaires. Pour certains jeunes, faire un programme technique au cégep
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leur permet d’assurer leur accès subséquent à l’université. Ils calculent qu’ils pourront
avoir un salaire plus élevé sur la base de leur technique obtenue, ce qui leur permettra
de subvenir à leurs besoins et de payer eux-mêmes leurs frais étudiants lorsqu’ils
accèderont à l’université (ce que l’on peut nommer un « parcours par paliers »). Pour
d’autres, réaliser un programme technique leur permettra d’accéder rapidement au
marché du travail, sans toutefois passer par l’université.
Nous avons aussi interrogé des jeunes qui ont vécu plusieurs difficultés scolaires au
secondaire, mais qui persévèrent malgré les embûches. Or, leurs difficultés scolaires
sont toujours présentes au cégep, et l’acquisition du diplôme collégial ne leur semble
pas assurée. Leurs parents ont envers eux l’attente minimale suivante : obtention d’un
diplôme d’études collégiales pour favoriser l’insertion professionnelle par la suite. Ils
ressentent ainsi une contrainte familiale forte tout en ayant un dossier scolaire faible
ne leur permettant pas d’accéder au programme de leur choix. Ces jeunes font donc
des choix d’orientation par défaut, par élimination, compte tenu d’une contrainte
scolaire (difficultés scolaires ou dossier scolaire faible) et familiale ressentie (obligation
de continuer les études selon le discours de leurs parents).
Les jeunes nous ont indiqué ne pas disposer de toutes les ressources
informationnelles nécessaires pour effectuer un choix d’orientation éclairé. Annabelle,
dont les parents sont nés en Haïti, n’a pas été mise au courant des conséquences du
choix des mathématiques enrichies versus les mathématiques régulières sur la suite de
son parcours postsecondaire : « Je sens que c’est comme si ma génération, c’était une
génération sacrifiée. On ne savait même pas dans quoi on embarquait. La seule chose
qu’on sait c’est qu’en secondaire 3, il fallait choisir entre mathématiques 4-16 ou 4-36.
Mais déjà là, tu décidais de ton avenir, mais tu ne t’en rendais pas compte. » Cette
méconnaissance ou mécompréhension du fonctionnement du système éducatif
pourrait contribuer, de manière inéquitable, à des parcours scolaires plus sinueux. Les
analyses révèlent que ces jeunes ont été socialisés dans des établissements scolaires
publics situés en milieu défavorisé, ce qui peut expliquer un manque d’informations
sur les options d’orientation possibles, sur les possibilités d’y accéder, sur les
possibilités d’obtenir du financement pour soutenir leur parcours au postsecondaire,
etc. Il se pourrait également que ces jeunes décodent ou interprètent différemment les
attentes méritocratiques relatives à l’accès aux filières d’excellence comparativement à
leurs pairs issus du groupe majoritaire.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 198
Les jeunes semblent ainsi vivre une iniquité. À leurs yeux, l’établissement ne semble
pas les accompagner suffisamment pour les aider à décrypter le système et les choix
d’orientation possibles. Mela, de parents nés au Salvador et au Guatemala, a déclaré :
« C’est vraiment comme ça que tu finis l’école. Ok, bye, bonne chance, bon futur puis
c’est tout ». Rétrospectivement, ces jeunes s’avèrent critiques envers l’établissement.
Ils indiquent que s’ils avaient été membres du personnel scolaire, ils auraient agi
différemment. Viola, de parents nés en République dominicaine, dit : « Si j’avais, par
exemple, à conseiller du monde, je dirais, “Fais-les tes maths fortes au secondaire,
fais-les tes sciences, fais tout ce que tu as à faire au secondaire pour rentrer au cégep
bien équipé,” parce que ça change tellement les intérêts, ça change c’est fou, tu rentres
puis tu te rends compte, puis tu coules. »
Quelques pistes pour l’intervention
Ces extraits mettent en lumière le rôle important des conseillers d’orientation pour
permettre à ces jeunes et à leurs parents de faire des choix éclairés, en toute liberté.
Plus d’informations sur les conséquences des options choisies sur la suite du parcours
postsecondaire pourraient éclairer l’éventail des possibilités. Les acteurs scolaires
demandent à être sensibilisés aux enjeux rencontrés par ces jeunes afin de lutter
contre des obstacles qui pourraient s’avérer systémiques. Les conseillers d’orientation
peuvent en effet agir comme : (a) des facteurs de conversion permettant à ces jeunes
de bien décoder les fonctionnements institutionnels et de tirer parti des ressources
mises à disposition par le système scolaire; (b) des agents de changement social
permettant de sensibiliser les autres acteurs du système aux enjeux rencontrés par
ces jeunes et de lutter contre les obstacles systémiques; (c) des tuteurs de résilience
pour les jeunes et leur famille. Les conseillers d’orientation peuvent favoriser un agir
professionnel éthique et critique (a) en prenant conscience des filtres
ethnocentriques, des blocages de communication, et des incompréhensions mutuelles;
(b) en expérimentant un processus de décentration; (c) en situant chaque jeune dans
son parcours migratoire et familial afin d’éviter d’essentialiser et de culturaliser les
situations; (d) en établissant un lien de confiance avec le jeune et ses parents; (e) en
ayant des attentes élevées pour tous les jeunes rencontrés en intervention; (f) en
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réfléchissant à la transformation, à l’adaptation des pratiques professionnelles; et (g)
en réfléchissant à la formation des conseillers d’orientation sur la prise en compte de
la diversité ethnoculturelle.
Des études de cas
Choisissez une des études de cas et répondez aux questions réflexives.
Maria, née au Québec de parents nés en Haïti, souhaite faire une technique en
travail social. Ses parents ont vécu une déqualification professionnelle suite à leur
migration au Québec. Son père est chauffeur de taxi et sa mère est préposée aux
bénéficiaires. Ils lui répètent souvent qu’ils se sont sacrifiés pour le bien de leurs
enfants en choisissant d’immigrer et ils ont de hautes ambitions pour elle. Ses
parents sont contre les métiers techniques et croient qu’elle doit absolument
s’inscrire à un programme de cégep préuniversitaire afin qu’elle puisse ensuite
devenir médecin ou avocate. Maria souhaite répondre aux exigences de ses parents
en faisant un compromis à mi-chemin entre leurs aspirations et les siennes.
Hakim, originaire du Maroc, est arrivé au Québec à l’âge de 14 ans. Il rêve de devenir
architecte. Toutefois, son arrivée tardive au Québec, a mené à une diminution de ses
résultats scolaires. Il a dû s’adapter à un nouveau système éducatif pendant son
adolescence. En regardant son relevé de notes, vous pensez qu’il ne pourra pas être
admis dans ce programme à l’université.
• Comment vous y prendrez-vous pour les aider à réaliser leurs objectifs et leurs
aspirations?
• Comment envisagez-vous vos premières interactions avec eux?
• Quels rôles professionnels pourriez-vous adopter pour travailler avec eux le plus
efficacement possible?
• Quel type d’intervention envisagez-vous de déployer?
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 200
Colonization and Colonial Violence: What Does It Really Mean to
Embrace “Truth”?
I specifically chose to use Alain’s story in the previous section, because his experiences may
have also been influenced by his potential (mis)identification as an Indigenous or Métis person
and the subsequent transfer of stereotypes and cultural assumptions and biases. I pay
particular attention to the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples in this book, because of the
historical and current impact of colonization on the ways in which they are often perceived,
positioned, and treated within society. My intent in this chapter is not to provide a detailed
account of colonization and the colonial violence that undergirded the attempted genocide of
Indigenous peoples in Canada. However, I encourage you to read carefully the glossary
definitions of these terms, which link you to current literature, and to follow the links from
Competency 4 in the expanded CRSJ counselling framework in Chapter 2 to the writings of
other book contributors who illustrate these concepts through their stories. In part, I do not
feel qualified to speak to the depth of damage that has been done through colonial oppression
in this country across many generations and nations of Indigenous peoples. It is also beyond
the scope of this book to examine the process and outcomes of colonialism in depth. Instead, I
refer readers to the findings and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada (TRCC, 2015), which makes clear the impact of colonization on the
health and well-being of Indigenous peoples and which calls for responsive action on the part
of health professions, the Canadian government, and all Canadians. It is important not to fool
ourselves into thinking that the TRCC is addressing historical issues only; the colonial
oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada and other countries is very present today.
Consider the true story of Jordan River Anderson below.
Jordan’s Principle
Jordan was an Indigenous child from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba. Because
of multiple disabilities at birth, Jordan was unable to leave the hospital for the first two
201 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
years of his life. Unfortunately, when he was deemed well enough to return home, the
provincial and federal governments entered into a drawn-out dispute about who was
responsible for healthcare support payments going forward. As a result, Jordan’s family
was unable to provide him with the care he needed, and he lived out his short five
years of life in hospital without spending even a day in his family home or community
(Government of Canada [GC], 2018a, 2018b).
Jordan died in 2004. In 2007, based on the lobbying efforts of Indigenous peoples to
access the same healthcare services for their children as non-Indigenous peoples, the
House of Commons enacted the Jordan’s Principle, which mandated upfront payment
for services and supports for Indigenous children even if jurisdictional disputes
existed (GC, 2018a, 2018b). However, this principle was applied in a limited and
discriminatory way, excluding many Indigenous children from essential health
services. More recently, a ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (2017)
mandated the application of Jordan’s Principle with the intent to ensure the child-first,
equitable, responsive, and immediate care of all First Nations children in Canada (First
Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada [FNCFCS] et al. v. Attorney General of
Canada).
Currently, “Jordan’s Principle aims to make sure First Nations children can access all
public services in a way that is reflective of their distinct cultural needs, takes full
account of the historical disadvantage linked to colonization, and without
experiencing any service denials, delays or disruptions because they are First Nations”
(FNCRCS, n.d., “Background,” para. 1). This is just one of many examples of ongoing
cultural oppression by Indigenous peoples at institutional and systemic levels in
Canada.
Throughout this book, contributors speak to their experiences of working with individuals and
communities who have experienced colonial and other forms of political violence and to the
ripple effects this has on entire populations. Many refugees, for example, have been subjected
to extreme traumatic events, sometimes including torture, in their countries of origin and as
part of their asylum journeys. In some cases, the processes of ongoing global colonization
(both economic and political) are at the root of their suffering.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 202
Positioning Ourselves within the Colonial Worldview
Taking up the calls to action in the TRCC (2015) is impossible without first examining critically
the degree to which we are all, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous counsellors and
psychologists, influenced by the colonial worldview. In fact, one of the outcomes of
colonization has been the attempted eradication of Indigenous worldviews and the forced
internalization of the colonial worldview by many Indigenous peoples. In Chapter 3, I provide a
brief synthesis of some of the key components of the individualist worldview. Absent in most
counselling textbooks, however, is a description of the colonial worldview and its direct
relationship to the evolution of the individualist worldview. I deliberately use strong language
in the text box below, because there is a tendency to soften conversations about colonization
to make them palatable to non-Indigenous readers and to avoid offense. Uncritical historical
narratives of colonization, for example, frame the exploitation of human and natural resources
as evidence of capitalist success by European explorers (Huygens, 2009). However,
colonization must be recognized as a process of deliberate and systematic cultural, economic,
and social genocide (TRCC, 2015) if we are ever, as a nation, as a species, and as a profession,
to remediate the past and avoid repeating such injustices in the future.
Relationship Between Colonial and Individualist Worldviews
The colonial worldview and the process of colonization of Indigenous peoples, in
North America and in other countries around the world, reflects the merging of the
imperialist agenda of European nations and the conversion agenda of the Christian
churches (TRCC, 2015), which began in the 15th century and continues to the present
day. The table below is intended to highlight the roots of the individualist worldview in
the colonial worldview (Indigenous Corporate Training , 2017; Silver n.d.; TRCC, 2015)
by pointing out the parallels between them.
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Colonial Worldview
Individualist Worldview
The earth and all of its resources exist
for the benefit of Christian Europeans,
who have the god-given right to
dominate, subdue, and subjugate the
earth’s land, resources, and peoples.
Cultural ideologies (i.e., the justifications
provided for particular beliefs, values,
and assumptions) are driven by dominant
moral and capitalist agendas.
Human beings are inherently divided into
us and them; non-Christian,
non-European persons and peoples are
positioned as in need of salvation,
discipline, and mastery.
Cultural boundaries (i.e., the dividing
lines between dominant and
nondominant groups) are clearly defined,
fixed, and essentialized. Cultural
supremacy is embedded in, and masked
by, benevolence and beneficence
towards others.
Land, animals, natural resources, and
less-than-human beings are
commodities to be acquired, sold, and
controlled in support of the capitalist
social, economic, and political agenda.
Meaning and purpose are derived
through aggressive and persistent
amassing of individual wealth for
personal gain.
Utilitarian ethics (e.g., the greatest good
for the greatest number, maximization of
return on investment, sometimes the
ends justify the means) overshadows the
deontological principle of respect for the
inherent worth of all persons and
peoples.
Commodities and all resources are
expendable at the will and desire of the
conqueror; the earth is there to serve its
masters, not the other way around.
The natural world is qualitatively
different from, and inferior in worth and
value to, human beings. As such, it is a
commodity to be dominated and
controlled.
Racism is instituted as a means to an
end. Rights to land and resources are
established through the exertion of
power based on the assumption of
rightful and just privilege of the civilized
and godly over the earth and its
inhabitants.
Relationships among people and peoples
are driven by competition. Dominant
ideologies of cultural superiority are
justified and enforced through the
exertion of political, economic, and
social power.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 204
Indigenous cultural norms, social
structures, spiritual beliefs and practices,
and language are measured against
Euro-Christian norms, dismissed as
uncivilized and ungodly, and targeted for
elimination.
There is only one reality. Eurocentric
values (e.g., individualism,
action-orientation, future-focus,
materialism) are positioned as based in
universal truths.
The tools of “civilization” (e.g., education,
religion, legislation) are elevated above
Indigenous knowledge, societies, and
ways of life, and then used as a means to
dismantle these foundations of
Indigenous culture.
Scientific, economic, and social
advancement come about through
decontextualized, rational, and objective
approaches to knowing, which are
grounded in monocultural, Eurocentric
perspectives.
The only way to save Indigenous peoples
from themselves is through cultural
genocide, including forced and violent
elimination of their language, spirituality,
and relationships to land, family, and
community structures.
Cultural diversity is pathologized and
invisibilized through monocultural
policies and practices, which have the
intent and effect of enforcing cultural
assimilation.
Christian, male, and white dominance
over Indigenous peoples, women, and
children supports imperialist and
religious agendas. Social stratification is
institutionalized and enforced through
violence.
Interactions among human beings are
hierarchical; they are governed by
entitlement and social, economic, and
political privilege; white supremacy,
sexism, ableism, and so on function to
support the status quo.
The repercussions of colonial violence
and the resultant sociocultural genocide
(e.g., trauma, poverty, addictions) are
interpreted as further evidence of the
moral and cultural inferiority of
Indigenous peoples.
There are linear causes and
consequences for all events (i.e.,
determinism), which are located within
the individual (e.g., intrapsychic deficits
or dysfunctions). Psychosocial problems
reflect the individual’s ability to cope,
learn, or adapt.
Economic, political, and social policies
and practices are put in place to amplify
the repercussions of colonialism and to
counteract any resurgence of
sociocultural autonomy. This includes
institutionalized and legislative racism.
Resistance to, and internalization of,
cultural oppression is pathologized (i.e.,
victim-blaming) and the locus and
responsibility for change is located
within the individual rather than
conceptualized as a systemic problem.
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Control of services, opportunities,
information, and other social, economic,
or political resources remain with white
colonialists, who are positioned as the
helper rather than the oppressor.
Helping professions focus on assisting
members of nondominant groups
accommodate to oppression (i.e., develop
coping strategies) through power-over,
ahistorical, problem-focused,
disorder-specific approaches to
intervention.
Note. Some elements of the individualist worldview have been adapted from
“Self-Awareness and Awareness of Client Cultural Identities,” by S. Collins and N.
Arthur, Culture-infused counselling (2nd ed.), pp. 73-74. Copyright 2010 by Counselling
Concepts.
Truth and Reconciliation: The Colonial Relationship and
Psycholonization
As I note earlier in the chapter, it is important for counsellors to consider carefully their
relative social location, especially if they are members of colonial/settler populations, before
engaging in counselling practice with Indigenous clients. Reviewing the findings and
recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) is an
important starting point in understanding one’s position within the ongoing colonial
relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonial/settler populations. Reconciliation is
defined in the TRCC report as “an ongoing process of establishing and maintaining respectful
relationships. A critical part of this process involves repairing damaged trust by making
apologies, providing individual and collective reparations, and following through with
concrete actions that demonstrate real societal change” (p. 16). Reconciliation can only be built
upon truth, the truth of colonialism and its continued effects. Guilt, shame, anger, and denial
are common reactions when those who are members of settler populations are confronted
with the invitation to own their collective responsibility for actions of historical oppression
and the consequent social, economic, and political privileges that they now experience
(Collins & Arthur, 2018). Moving past these reactions is essential if we are to embrace both
truth and reconciliation as a foundation for decolonizing our professions and our social,
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 206
economic, and political institutions and engaging in meaningful reparation of the damage to
persons and peoples.
Several years ago, there was a student in the multicultural counselling course I was
teaching who had experienced strong, negative reactions from Indigenous women in a
treatment facility. This student was working in this facility as an intake worker, and
from her perspective, she was trying to make connections with these women and was
unfairly rejected by them. When she started the multicultural course, she expressed
concerns that her experiences were not recognized in the calls for nondiscriminatory
and affirmative practice in the course. She felt hurt and angry that she was treated by
these Indigenous women in this way simply because she was white. I was impressed by
the positioning that her peers took in our online discussions, both making space for her
feelings and offering their own experiences and perspectives as alternatives for her to
consider.
I had the privilege of working with this student over the course of the semester, and she
actively chose to engage in the processes of critical thinking and reflective practice
integrated into the course. I met her where she was at in her frustration and lack of
understanding of the broader contexts of her experience. Over time, she began to soften
her views, lower her defenses, and open to the possibility that the reactions she
experienced were about her social location and her positioning within the historical
context of colonization. Many of the activities in the course were designed to foster
cultural empathy and to encourage students to take an inside look at the lived
experiences of marginalized populations (as much as possible).
By the end of the course, she was able to reflect back on these initial reactions and
articulate her growth in appreciation for the impact of colonization. Instead of
generalizing her reactions and blaming the women she had encountered for her feelings,
she developed a sense of cultural empathy for their historical and current lived
experiences as Indigenous women and the many layers of losses they had endured. She
was able to understand how her social location was amplified by the power she held as a
security guard. She still held a small wounded space within herself, but she was both
207 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
willing and excited to move forward in her work as a counsellor without her unfounded
cultural biases and assumptions about Indigenous peoples.
I tell this story for two reasons. First, I want to illustrate the ways in which both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples continue to pay the price for colonization.
Second, I want to invite you, as readers, into the open, transparent, curious, and
vulnerable space that this student assumed toward her learning journey. I may make
assertions in this book that you don’t agree with or poke at emotions that make you
uncomfortable; however, I encourage you to lean into these challenges rather than
leaning out by putting up your defenses (e.g., denial, rationalization, disinterest).
Without conscious and critical analysis of worldviews, the counselling and psychology
professions are prone to embedding within theory, and enacting within practice, the
underlying colonialist values, assumptions, and beliefs. Truth and reconciliation is essential at
both personal and professional levels. Colonialism, as a process, a positioning, and a discourse,
was significant in the evolution of counselling and psychology. It affected whose experiences,
voices, and ways of knowing were included in research, theory, and practice. Without careful
attention to the historical roots and Eurocentric dominant discourses of these professions, it
is nearly impossible to avoid engaging in some form of psycholonization with Indigenous
clients. Dupuis-Rossi and Reynolds point out the risks of imposing a colonial worldview by (a)
failing to attend fully to the impacts of historical trauma and the consequent loss of cultural
identity and relationality for Indigenous clients and (b) positioning client presenting concerns
as individual pathology as opposed to symptoms of systematic and ongoing colonial violence
and oppression.
As I have been writing this book and collaborating with my Indigenous colleagues, I have
wrestled with how best to integrate Indigenous worldviews, ways of knowing, and
counselling practices within the CRSJ counselling model. I remain somewhat tentative
about how to avoid engaging in psycholonization while being inclusive of Indigenous
perspectives.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 208
The practice of non-Indigenous practitioners working with Indigenous clients, however
culturally competent the practitioner, needs to be carefully scrutinized within our
profession. Although I have, with deep gratitude and respect, embraced the contribution
of my Indigenous colleagues to both the evolution of the CRSJ counselling model and to
my understanding of counselling practice with Indigenous clients, I do so recognizing the
continued risk of perpetuating colonization by positioning resources for health and
healing outside of Indigenous communities and self-governance. Although I advocate for
all counsellors to be well-prepared to work with Indigenous clients as the need presents,
there is an irreconcilable paradox in counsellors from colonial/settler heritages
benefiting professionally and economically from the ravages of colonization and being
positioned as helpers within the colonial relationship. I do not have a solution to this
dilemma; I simply want to acknowledge it and bring it into our professional collective
consciousness.
I look forward to seeing how counsellor education programs embrace the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations for the education of healthcare
practitioners. I am very conscious that, so far, we remain ill-equipped to provide a
decolonizing and Indigenizing learning environment that offers Indigenous students a
more culturally responsive and socially just entry into the profession.
Teaching and Learning Guide
Take a few minutes to explore the learning activities in the Collins (2018) Teaching and
Learning Guide for Core Competency 4: Social Injustice. You may be assigned specific
activities by a course instructor. If not, choose the concepts that you are struggling to
understand, or which have evoked an emotional reaction, or piqued your curiosity, and
complete one or more activities to reinforce your learning.
209 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Core Competency 5
Back to top of chapter
Social Locations and the Interplay of Power and Privilege
There is a complex relationship between culture and social location, which influences the
counselling relationship and counselling process in various ways. Clients are deeply affected
by the various forms of social injustice, both individual and collective, that they experience. In
many cases, the presenting concerns that clients bring to counselling are rooted in these
social determinants of health. In the previous section, I introduce some of the social
determinants of health that negatively influence client health and well-being, including
ongoing colonization and the colonial relationship. In this section, I take a deeper look at how
being positioned as a member of a nondominant group in society may bring with it specific
challenges and potential systemic barriers.
The Relationship Between Cultural Identities and Social Locations
In Chapter 3, I examine counsellor and client cultural identities and pointed to the
sociocultural and systemic influences on how we each come to understand and position our
personal cultural identities. Individual and group social location is a way of capturing relative
positions of privilege and power within society as a whole or within particular communities,
organizations, or other systems (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015).
Social location and cultural identities are inextricably intertwined, because one of the primary
means by which individuals and groups are positioned in society is through visible markers of
difference. These dividing lines are reinforced through stereotyping and stigmatization, for
example, to maintain the status quo of relative privilege and marginalization.
The structure of society is inherently inequitable, with those individuals and groups in
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 210
dominant positions within society holding more status, influence, value, and recognition than
those positioned in nondominant social locations. There is now relatively widespread
agreement that it is important to attend not only to each client’s personal cultural identities,
but also to their social locations (Ratts et al., 2015; Sue, 2015). Counsellors may perpetuate the
experience of cultural oppression within the counselling process in subtle and unintentional
ways, unless they attend carefully to the relationship between their own social locations and
those of their clients.
Dominant and Nondominant Groups: A Strategic and
Nonessentialized Position
One of the paradoxes that I struggle with in writing this book is the tension between (a) my
assertion that the CRSJ model is broadly applicable to all client-counsellor interactions,
because we are all cultural beings who share both commonalities and differences in
worldview, cultural identities, and social locations; and (b) my commitment to focus attention
specifically on the needs of nondominant populations and, in particular, on those individuals
and groups whose lived experiences are affected by multiple, intersecting, and nondominant
identities. This commitment is based on my belief that certain groups in society continue to
be systematically marginalized based on their cultural identities and social locations (Reynolds
& Hammoud-Beckett, 2018; Trahan & Lemberger, 2014) and that, as a profession, we have an
ethical responsibility to forefront their lived experiences and to engage actively in social
justice actions to ameliorate the oppressive systems, discourses, and practices that have led to
their marginalization in the first place.
By way of contrast, there are some authors who argue that white heterosexual males, for
example, are becoming marginalized within society and within counselling and psychology
discourses or that members of traditionally dominant religions are increasingly experiencing
“reverse” discrimination. However, these arguments have been challenged on a number of
grounds: in particular, because they fail to take into account the complex and inextricable
relationship between cultural identities and social location. The relative social locations of
these members of dominant groups have not changed; instead, they may experience a
temporary and context-driven loss of privilege that is misconstrued and misunderstood as an
adjustment to their overall position within sociocultural hierarchies (Camara & Orbe, 2011;
Cornish, Wade, Tucker, & Post, 2014; Russell & Bohan, 2014). I do not intend to minimize the
211 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
impact of experiences of exclusion or cultural targeting of any individual or group; rather, I
argue for continued and explicit attention to the persistently marginalized and disprivileged in
our society. Social location, therefore, becomes almost as important as cultural identity in
understanding the lived experiences of our clients and the factors that may influence the
client–counsellor relationship. It is also important to recognize, however, that social location
is not a fixed, essentialized status. We may each hold multiple social locations that shift,
interact, and change over time.
I have worked with some clients whose lives are significantly impacted by a series of
unfortunate events that stem primarily from their multiple and intersecting
nondominant identities and consequent social location. I recall a young, Indigenous
female client who was leaving an abusive relationship, after following her boyfriend to
Alberta, and was next trying to find a way to return home to British Columbia. She had
used up her savings and was living in a tent in a park near my downtown office. She was
turned away from applying for apartments, because she needed a source of income for
the application and from jobs, because she had to include an address on job
applications—a catch 22! Finally, she managed to get an interview for a position in a
coffee shop and stopped at a department store on the way to the interview to buy a new
shirt. She didn’t have enough money for new underwear and, in a moment of
desperation, slipped a pair into her bag. She was caught and charged with shoplifting.
She was devastated, because she dreamed of returning home and being able to make use
of her early childhood education degree to rebuild her life. A criminal record would pose a
barrier to this and to other health and social service positions. She was offered a chance
to attend a prejudgement hearing as part of a pilot project, but did not have a lot of hope
that this would change the outcome. I was not able to attend with her, but I wrote a
detailed letter to be read at the hearing explaining the multiple barriers she faced, her
remorse at making a choice, in a moment of desperation, which could have serious
long-term and compounding consequences, and calling on those present to apply a
broader systemic and social justice lens in determining her fate.
Fortunately, she was given a second chance, and shortly thereafter, she found a way
home.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 212
Privilege and Marginalization: Positioning Personal and Collective
Power
The lived experiences of privilege and marginalization are at the core of the colonial
relationship and as well as being a key aspect of the other systemic sources of cultural
oppression discussed earlier in this chapter. McIntosh (1989) introduced the metaphor of a
backpack of privileges that each of us carries with us through life, based on our relative
positioning within society. On the one hand, individuals from dominant groups start life with
their backpack stuffed to a much larger extent than those who are positioned on the margins
of society, because of their ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender identity, religion, social class, and so
on. These relative privileges can quite literally provide get out of jail free cards, for example,
for the white male walking the streets of Toronto who is not at risk of being carded (i.e.,
stopped, questioned, and documented) simply because of the colour of his skin. In other cases,
these privileges may be subtler, for example, in opening doors to different opportunities or
offering resources that may be taken for granted by those in positions of relative privilege.
On the other hand, those who are marginalized in society are more vulnerable to negative
social determinants of health, both passive (e.g., unmet basic subsistence needs; fewer
resources and opportunities; weaker social, economic, and political voice) and active (e.g.,
organizational and systemic barriers; stereotyping, stigmatization, and discrimination; overt
cultural oppression such as colonization). As with the process of psycholonization,
marginalization of members of nondominant groups has in the past, and continues to be, an
issue within the professions of counselling and psychology. Some of the more obvious forms
of cultural oppression within the disciplines are being corrected over time. See, for instance,
the following examples:
• Nondominant sexual orientations and gender identities have been de-pathologized, to
some degree, and removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(American Psychiatric Association, 2013), and “conversion” therapies that aim at
“correcting” sexual orientation have been widely condemned (Canadian Psychological
Association, 2015; Miller, 2016).
• There has been a shift to more inclusive language in the discussion of evidence-based
practice, as opposed to the original, more narrow focus on empirically-validated
treatments (EVTs) and an emergent recognition of the common factors model (Laska,
Gurman, & Wampold, 2014), which makes room for a broader range of approaches to
213 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
change and for creativity in adapting interventions so they are meaningful to the
individual client.
• More space has been created for the voices of persons of colour within feminist and queer
theory, research, and discourse; and there is significant representation of ethnic minority
perspectives within the professional literature (Jones & Guy-Sheftall, 2015).
• A number of approaches to psychological research are gaining prominence, including
critical and Indigenous research methods, which attend specifically to the relative social
positioning of persons and peoples and support an emancipatory, social change agenda
(Socholotiuk, Domene, & Trenholm, 2016).
However, feminist, multicultural, Indigenous, and social justice writers continue to assert that
the professions of counselling and psychology must persist in tackling the subtler ways in
which the voices of nondominant populations are marginalized; their needs continue to be
neglected in research, theory, and practice. This also occurs at the colleague-to-colleague
level, when the voices of counsellors and academics who hold nondominant identities and
social locations are silenced or marginalized. I am delighted to see many of my colleagues who
contributed to this book speak to their own experiences of oppression and marginalization as
a foundation for their work with clients, as well as of our attempts at collective transformation
of the professions.
In this next practice illustration, Dr. Lisa Gunderson picks up on the story of her Black identity
development from Chapter 3. She focuses now on how her professional identity was shaped
by the absence of research and knowledge about Black culture and lived experience that she
encountered throughout her education. She speaks vividly to the historical marginalization of
certain voices and knowledge sources within academia and professional practice, how this
shaped her path as a young Black student, and how it continues to influence her multiple roles
today.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 214
Practice Illustration 8 What About Us?
By Dr. Lisa Gunderson
I shared some of my early lived experiences as a child and adolescent, growing up in
the in-between space of Black majority and minority societies in my Black Enough?
practice illustration in Chapter 3. Like most of my education in the US, when I finished
high school in Alaska, I was one of only a small handful of Black kids in my grade. So,
when I went to university in Southern California, I was desperate to get back into the
sense of racial and cultural space with which my parents had gifted me. I quickly
joined the Black Women’s Caucus and the Department of Black Students to have that
sense of community. Eventually I started the Black Women’s Honor Society for that
same purpose.
In grad school, I recognized that there was a dearth of literature regarding how certain
psychological principles apply to racialized people, people like me: “What is going on
here?” My colleagues who were gay were also asking, “What does this look like in a gay
family?” When I could not get answers to my questions, everything changed for me
professionally. My friends from different schools and many of my minoritized
colleagues also switched their foci to focus on what these questions and issues meant
for our communities. Although I initially went into graduate school planning to focus
on child sexual abuse, it was impossible to ignore the question, “What About Us?”
The lack of knowledge and consideration of minoritized communities in psychology
was the impetus for much of my professional research and many of my clinical
choices. For the past 25 years, I have focused on multicultural issues for racialized
populations, including ethnic identities in the US and Canada. All my work began to be
shaped around these issues, and this still happens today.
Because of my education and my privilege, it is imperative for me to be active in my
community and to represent that community in broader spaces. I rarely turn down an
opportunity to teach, or speak, or consult, because I know that, whatever I do, it is
never just about me. I tell my kids, “When you’re in class, when you walk around, you
215 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
are not just representing yourself: You are representing our family; you are
representing your grandparents, our great-grandparents, and our ancestors.” Is that a
lot of pressure? Maybe, but I think it is reality. We have been afforded such incredible
opportunity, because of what our ancestors and our families have sacrificed.
I am often asked, “Do you ever take a break,” and “Does looking at inequity get
depressing?” Absolutely! There are times I have to take a break, to take care of myself,
to absolutely detach from as much of this focus as I can. Sometimes, self-care for me is
getting together with other people who look like me and just breathing; other times it
is watching a crazy and completely distracting TV show. You have to care for yourself.
The work we do is not easy; there are days I cry and days I scream and want to quit,
but I do not get to stay there. I say to myself, “What if my ancestors just quit? Well, I
wouldn’t be here.” When I stand up in the world, I have no doubt that it is not just me I
am representing; I am representing my ancestors and my people who choose to be
connected to themselves as a person of African heritage. I cannot and would not
dishonor them or their sacrifice. When my elders remind me of the cost and when
they say, “We’re proud of you,” I know I have to keep going.
Through the enslaved movements, we were ripped apart from each other, and we had
to protect and forge that sense of positive African self that was denigrated in North
America. So, that is the piece we need in every history book: the part of our cultural
heritage that is missing. It is also very important that I speak from a place of strength
and resiliency, rather than from that of historical oppression. No matter which
minoritized group we are part of, often in the professions of counselling and
psychology, and in society in general, the focus is on the facts of our oppression, not
on our courage and survival. That resilience and strength is what helped us deal with
historical trauma, and it helps us to continue to deal with the contemporary
oppression we still face. Minoritized peoples have a long history of winning that battle,
rather than losing it. I see it as my responsibility, personally and professionally, to tell
the facts about history and culture as opposed to repeating the stories that are told
about us that remain part of how the system silences and marginalizes our voices.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 216
I deliberately write from a personal cultural perspective within this book, because I am
positioned to have a voice within the profession and within society by virtue of the
privileges afforded me as an academic, and more specifically, as a full professor headed
for retirement. However, when a colleague asked me if I would choose an academic career
again, I couldn’t answer with the enthusiasm he expected, because my path has been
littered with experiences of sexist, ableist, and heterosexist bias. Although many of my
experiences have been only subtle annoyances (e.g., gendered or patronizing comments or
actions), at other times these cultural biases and my relative marginalization found
expression in outright harassment from academic and professional colleagues. There
have been a few times when I have felt afraid that verbal aggression from a male
colleague would turn into physical aggression. These experiences changed the trajectory
of my career and seriously impacted my health and well-being.
I recall one experience, in particular, when I was in an academic meeting with a small
group of only male colleagues. At some point, I made a statement that one of them
disagreed with. This was not the first time I had watched him immediately respond with
anger, because the comment came from me. However, in a flash, he was on his feet,
leaning across the table with his finger in my face, and yelling repeatedly “You take that
back!” I was immobilized for several minutes and then slid my chair away from the table;
none of my male colleagues chose to intervene. The meeting continued, a new level of
permissiveness for this interpersonal violence having been established.
At this point in my career, my backpack of privileges is quite loaded (McIntosh, 1989),
because of my academic position and nearness to retirement, and I feel compelled from a
social justice perspective to point to the ways in which gender, gender identity, sexual
orientation, Indigeneity, social class, ability, and other aspects of personal cultural
identity continue to form a foundation for marginalization within the counselling
profession and within the world of academia. Collectively, we all form part of the larger
sociocultural contexts that directly or indirectly support or challenge the marginalization
of clients. Naming my own experiences and pointing to expressions of privilege within
our own profession is part of my attempt to be an agent of broader social change.
217 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Examining Privilege
Consider your own social location and your lived experiences of privilege that have
enabled you to pursue a career in counselling or psychology. Consider also ways in
which your marginalized status may have influenced your educational and career
journeys.
• Whose voices are in your head when you sit down with a client (or think about
doing so in the future)?
• Which privileged worldviews, values, and discourses are represented?
• Which marginalized worldviews, values, and discourses are represented?
• How challenging is it to tease these apart?
• Which privileged perspectives might you need to reflect on and analyze critically
to become aware of their potential to marginalize client perspectives?
Privilege and marginalization are reflections of relative power within society and within its
institutions. Power plays out in counselling in many ways. In their recent competencies model,
Ratts and colleagues (2015) were very explicit in drawing attention to the relative privilege and
marginalization of counsellor and client (see Figure 1). In counselling, it is important to pay
attention, on a moment-by-moment basis, to how client–counsellor relative social locations
affect the distribution of personal and professional power. This relative position may also shift
over time and in relation to particular topics or relational dynamics.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 218
Figure 1. Relationship of counsellor and client privilege and marginalization. Adapted from
“Multicultural and Social Justice Competencies” by M. J. Ratts, A. A. Singh, S. Nassar-McMillan,
S. K. Butler, and J. R. McCullough, 2015, Association for Multicultural Counseling and
Development, Division of American Counselling Association. Copyright 2015 by the American
Counselling Association.
If counsellors don’t attend carefully to social location, and in particular to relative
privilege‒marginalization, they may miss how possible inequitable distribution of power may
potentially influence the client‒counsellor relationship, conceptualization of problems,
negotiation of preferred outcomes, and collaboration on change processes. Clients may not
immediately voice experiences of marginalization, in part because they risk exposing their
shame, disempowerment, and internalized oppression. They will rarely overtly challenge the
counsellor’s position or enactment of power; however, they are most certainly impacted by it.
Regardless of their relative social locations within society, counsellors also have positional
power within the therapeutic relationship. Power can be expressed by counsellors in small
ways that still have a considerable impact on clients (e.g., accepting an “important” phone call
that delays the start-up of a client session; sitting in the best chair in the room or behind a
desk; or speaking in psychobabble that is difficult for clients to understand). The Ratts et al.
(2015) model also makes it clear that there are times when the counsellor may be positioned
marginally within the client-counsellor relationship, which introduces another set of
219 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
challenges that must be consciously addressed by the counsellor. I am grateful for the chapter
by Mateo Huezo that specifically addresses these issues.
I find power a challenging issue to deal with in counselling, and it is one that I revisit
frequently in my own reflective practice. I’m very aware of the potential influence I have
over clients’ lives regardless of how collaborative and empowering of them I am. Many
clients come naturally to hold me in esteem simply because I am one person in their lives
who listens without judgement, demonstrates care, values their perspectives and feelings,
and invests in their well-being. Our relationship also offers them a sense of hope for
change, which is inherently intertwined with their own sense of personal power and
their perception of my power as therapist. I recall specific times when I have felt the
weight of responsibility that comes with these complex power dynamics and also other
times when I noted them only retrospectively and had to adjust my course.
Being a client myself, on-and-off over many years, has helped me to work through power
issues in counselling. I have experienced what it is like to esteem and look up to my
therapists and to grab onto hope that they have the power to help me with whatever issue
I am grappling with in that moment. I have also watched them both actively navigate
relative power and, at other times, miss or ignore more subtle power dynamics. This
process has been part of my personal learning to be a client and to optimize my own
empowerment and sense of agency; it has also facilitated my professional learning as a
power-conscious practitioner.
Cultural Assumptions and Biases as a Foundation for Othering
It should be clear by now that, as counsellors, none of us are completely free from cultural
assumptions and biases. However, it is impossible and undesirable to set aside completely our
own cultural lenses. The focus in Chapter 3 is not on eradicating culture, but on valuing,
foregrounding, and focusing our lens on the cultural identities of the client and those of the
counsellor. My key message is about awareness, purposefulness, and commitment to not
allowing your cultural lens to blur your view of your client’s worldview, values, ways of
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 220
knowing, beliefs about health and healing, or their ideas about how change occurs. There are
also cultural lenses at the professional level that counsellors need to attend to, because they
may enhance practice (e.g., social justice lens) or they may limit both the breadth of analysis
and the options for change (e.g., individualist worldview lens).
There is an emergent body of literature in other disciplines, and more recently in counselling
and psychology, that speaks to the dignitary harm that results from acts of cultural oppression
as well as from more subtle and indirect expressions of othering in the absence of overt
prejudice and discrimination. I invited my colleague, Cristelle Audet, to speak to her particular
interest in this important concept.
Practice Illustration 9 Risks of Dignitary Harm: Implications for Counselling
By Cristelle Audet
“When human dignity is under assault, it increases the risk that those under assault
will be stigmatized and their rights will be jeopardized. To protect mental health
consumers from human rights violations, it is first and foremost necessary to protect
assaults on their dignity.”
(Robbins & Friedman, 2014, p. 80)
Stigmatization, discrimination, and oppression are often considered in polar tension
with respect for dignity. Disrespectful and dehumanizing behaviour of persons,
including positioning the directly or indirectly as the other, can have major
psychological impacts, such as psychological distress, shame, and poorer well-being
(Allan & Davidson, 2013). This is most evident in the mental health of members of
nondominant groups. Indignities by therapists are particularly concerning, because all
too often, the very effects of dignitary harm from within broader society can be what
leads members of nondominant groups to seek counselling in the first place.
Attempts to operationalize dignity to assist with recognizing the extent to which it is
engendered (Miller, 2017) often apply a normative approach like Schachter’s (1983) list
of attitudes and behaviours considered incompatible with respect for dignity. Below I
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provide an adapted and enhanced sampling from Schachter’s list (Column 1) with
examples of counsellor beliefs or practices (Column 2) from the multicultural
counselling literature that either “directly offend or denigrate the worth and dignity of
individuals” or that are “implicitly incompatible with the basic ideas of the inherent
dignity and worth of human persons” (Schachter, 1983, p. 852).
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 222
Attitude or Behaviour
Practice Example
Demeaning, devaluing, or marginalizing
individuals or groups because of their
cultural identities
Declining to provide counselling to
people who engage in same-sex
relationships
Vilifying, invisibilizing, essentializing, or
disrespecting cultural worldviews,
beliefs, or values
Perceiving the Islamic faith as inherently
oppressive of women
Denying the inherent worth and claim to
human rights of a person or peoples
Positioning gender as binary, which
excludes (for example) transgendered
persons
Misusing psychological research,
practices, or knowledge in ways that
oppress or marginalize persons, groups,
worldviews, or ways of life
Providing the military with psychological
principles that undergird and enable the
torture of prisoners
Disseminating negative stereotypes of
groups (ethnic, religious, social) and
implying that members of such groups
are inferior
Posting jokes on Facebook about
refugees from particular regions
Misusing psychological research,
practices, or knowledge in ways that are
coercive or attempt to change beliefs or
choices protected by human rights
Conducting conversion/reparative
therapy, which assumes sexual minorities
are inherently unhealthy or lesser than
Restricting opportunities and means to
build and maintain family and
community connections
Failing to observe collectivist values by
not providing Indigenous clients space or
opportunity for family/community
involvement in the counselling/healing
process
Engaging in change processes without
the full consent of the client or in ways
that are insensitive to their culture and
worldview
Assigning a thought log as
between-session homework without
collaborating to ensure a goodness of fit
with client views of health and healing
Invalidating life experiences
(intentionally or not) by not recognizing
the significance of those experiences
within a person’s culture or social
position
Failing to explore with a client what their
religious values and practices mean to
them, because you identify as agnostic
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Conceptualizing cultural values or
differences as deviant or pathological
Testing an immigrant student for a
learning disability or behavioural
disorder without considering language
barriers or war-related trauma from
their country of origin
Imposing the values of a dominant
culture or privileging eurocentric,
individualist perspectives over those of
clients
Engaging a client with career indecision
in an individualistic decision process
without exploring cultural and family
expectations around such decisions
Lacking awareness of personal and
professional privilege
Requiring clients with lower
socioeconomic status to pay a
prohibitive no show/late cancellation fee
to regain access to counselling services
Essentializing persons or groups based
on social discourse surrounding a
particular identity, characteristic, or
value
Perceiving all men in intimate violence as
wanting power and control over their
partner
Imposing personal values on the client
Discouraging client exploration of
abortion in hopes that the client instead
considers a pro-life option such as
adoption
Lack of Dignity in Multicultural Counselling
Despite dignity being viewed as highly relevant to multicultural counselling and the
counselling profession’s core value of respect for diversity, there has been a
concerning legacy of therapeutic harm in the form of cultural oppression that ranges
from microaggression to overt racism (Sue, 2015; Wendt, Gone, & Nagata, 2015). Such
behaviours are often to the detriment of the therapeutic alliance, treatment
satisfaction, client well-being, and therapy outcomes (Owen et al., 2011). Power and
privilege are often at the heart of discrimination and stigmatization that can negatively
impact mental well-being. Therefore, it becomes particularly concerning when
therapy serves as a site for replicating oppression, whether intentionally or
unintentionally, through therapist lack of cultural attunement to the client.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 224
Pathways to Dignitary Harm
Compared to recognition respect, explained in my Pathways to upholding dignity figure
in Chapter 3, appraisal respect occurs when judging persons by certain standards to
determine whether they have special merit and, therefore, deserve esteem. Within this
paradigm, enacting appraisal respect contributes to discrimination and stigmatization
by evaluating and devaluing a person against standards or behaviours that the
dominant group deems desirable, and treating those persons accordingly. When
offering only appraisal respect, counsellors demonstrate a lack cultural self-awareness
and cultural encapsulation, both of which make it difficult for them to acknowledge
the subjectivity of their own values and worldviews. Ultimately, appraisal respect in
225 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
the sense of respecting persons only in accordance with our preferred views is
counter to the very concept of dignity as intrinsic to personhood.
Robbins and Friedman (2014) applied personalist ethics to help characterize
stigmatizing and dehumanizing professional practices considered to be affronts to
dignity. They described processes of denying and suppressing an individual’s
personhood (i.e., stigmatization, discrimination, and stereotyping) that are driven by
dominant groups privileged with different forms of power (i.e., social, economic,
political). These processes reduce the status or perceived worth of persons or peoples
in the eyes of others and result in social distancing, loss of status, and further
disempowerment. Ultimately, whereas dignity puts into evidence the unconditional
and intrinsic worth of the person, these dehumanizing indignities threaten to conceal
a person’s dignity.
Positioning the client as other is one of the risks of enhancing our consciousness of culture.
Othering involves treating visible or invisible markers of difference as if they were truths
rather than social constructions of meaning and then setting them up as dividing lines
between individuals and peoples (Trahan & Lemberger, 2014). This can happen inadvertently
and unintentionally: for example, by making assumptions about client cultural identities and
then applying principles and practices for working with dominant or nondominant
populations, without first ensuring their relevance for the particular client, or their specific
presenting concern. Awareness of client cultural identities is a foundational competency in
the CRSJ counseling model, but it is predicated on complementing and tempering general
cultural knowledge with intimate knowing of the client before you.
In this book, I have chosen not to focus individual chapters on working with specific
populations (e.g., women, persons with disabilities) in favour of highlighting stories about
working with particular clients. In so doing, I hope to avert the risk of reinforcing uncritical
assumptions about between-group differences and to illustrate how the CRSJ counselling
model can be responsive to the multiple and intersecting cultural identities and social
locations of all clients.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 226
The Sociocultural Construction of Meaning
One of the myths that often leads to othering is that the perceived differences between
people and peoples are reified into truths or facts. I challenge some of myths about cultural
identities in Chapter 3. One of the premises that undergirds the notion of social location is
that where people are positioned in society is based on somewhat arbitrary, yet collective,
choices about what is important in defining difference. We don’t, for example, categorize
people according to hair colour, webbed fingers, or flat feet. Rather, over time, other visible or
invisible characteristics have been imbued with societal meaning that is attached to the
concept of difference.
The idea that meaning is constructed through sociocultural influences and interactions is
central to the CRSJ counselling model and to the social constructivist paradigm that
undergirds the competency framework. Consider your own beliefs about who you are, the
values and beliefs you hold dear, and your positioning within society. All of these elements of
self that you may be inclined to treat as truths have evolved over time, in particular
sociocultural contexts, and in response to your interactions with others. If you had been born
in a different part of the world, at a different time in history, or in a different family and
community, you would have developed a different worldview. This same process of
sociocultural meaning-making is happening all around us all of the time.
As I reflect back over my academic career, I am very conscious of the shifts in my own
thinking that have taken place over time as I have been exposed to new ideas and
different ways of looking at culture and social justice. This is the third time that I have
collaborated with colleagues on a book on this topic, and the current e-book is a
reflection of my own sociocultural construction of meaning through research, reading,
relationships with clients, interaction with colleagues, and personal/professional
development. I want to share these ideas with others and contribute to fostering
culturally responsive and socially just counselling practices. This book reflects my own
evolution as a critical thinker and reflective practitioner, and also reminds me
continuously that I have not yet reached an endpoint!
You’ll see, for example, the work of David Paré referenced throughout this book, which is
227 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
because my engagement with his ideas has shifted the meaning I attach to particular
concepts and processes. As noted in the Preface, this book itself is the product of a
co-constructive meaning-making process with each of the contributors and with others
whose case studies I reviewed. I invited these contributors to speak to the CRSJ
counselling model in their enactment of the counselling process and other professional
roles. What I didn’t anticipate is how much the model itself would evolve through this
process as I reviewed each chapter and reflected critically on both their application of the
CRSJ model and their unique contributions to my understanding of how culture and
social justice play out in practice. The end product is much richer and, hopefully, more
broadly applicable for this co-constructive process.
I encourage you to open yourselves to change through your virtual interaction with me,
and with the other contributors to this book. This will support evolution in the meaning
you make of yourself as a person and as a counsellor, your conceptualization of the
counselling process, and your views of the role of the profession within our society.
Dominant and Nondominant Cultural Norms
There are some social injustices and detrimental social determinants of health that are blatant
and undeniable: for example, failure to honour land rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada,
sexual harassment of women in law enforcement services, or overt expressions of
Islamophobia. However, social injustices and inequities in our society often manifest in more
subtle ways through exclusion or marginalization of cultural values, perspectives, or
worldviews though popular culture, language, media representations, educational materials,
and approaches to health and healing. Members of nondominant populations often do not see
themselves represented in these cultural norms.
Although each individual actively constructs their personal cultural identities, these cannot be
disconnected from the broader socioeconomic and political contexts or the implicit and
explicit assumptions of what is considered normal or desirable. Most people assume, to some
degree, that their values, beliefs, and ways of viewing things reflect both truths about
themselves and norms for other people (cultural encapsulation). This is particularly likely
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 228
when those people are in positions of relative privilege in society. Many dominant cultural
norms stem from the eurocentric individualist worldview, which also undergirds much of the
theory and practice of counselling and psychology in North America. These standards for
values, behaviour, and relationships often contrast significantly with nondominant cultural
norms held by other groups in society, including collectivist and Indigenous worldviews.
As counsellors, it is important for you to attend to the roots of your assumptions about what is
normal or healthy, lest you superimpose on clients your cultural expectations for both
preferred outcomes and counselling processes. Helping clients to bring into conscious
awareness the dominant and nondominant cultural norms that define and confine their
relationships with self and others allows them also to consider critically whether these are
functional or healthy for them.
I am very aware that one of the dominant cultural norms that significantly affected my
life trajectory is that of self-responsibility. From early on, I assumed that I was ultimately
responsible for my own destiny and that I could shape that destiny through the active
choices I made. Looking back over my life, I can see how this belief functioned in both
positive and negative ways. It strengthened me and propelled me forward during difficult
times, but it also left me with an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame when things
went awry (even if I had little control over the circumstances). It fostered in me a sense of
autonomy and agency, but it also left me alone on my island of self-sufficiency in times
when I really needed the support and companionship of others.
Although this socioculturally constructed value is now well within my conscious
awareness, I can see how it unconsciously shaped my earlier attitudes and behaviours
towards others and myself. This cultural norm is firmly embedded in the individualist
worldview. My increased self-awareness has not led me to abandon self-responsibility
completely as a core value; however, I actively temper and contextualize it with other
values, such as interdependency and relationality, as well as careful attention to the
contextual and systemic factors that influence both locus of control and locus of change
for me and for my clients. Without this self-reflection and critical analysis, I would
continue to be at risk of superimposing this prescriptive bias on my clients and others.
229 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Sociocultural narratives or discourses
Cultural norms are often clustered together, overtly or covertly, to form what social
constructionist scholars refer to as sociocultural narratives or discourses in society. What I
am arguing is that cultural norms and discourses do not exist in a vacuum; they are embedded
within, and derive from, particular cultural, historic, social, economic, and political contexts
(Paré, 2013). These are the stories that circulate beneath the surface of our conversations and
interactions, stories that we rarely attend to or consciously bring to the forefront. For
example, the term pride is used to capture a generally positive discourse within the LGBTTQI
community that is about a shared sense of cultural worth, connection, importance,
satisfaction, and identity. By way of contrast, the term Islamophobia envelops a complex
narrative that ranges from fear and dislike of Islam and Muslims to hatred of, and violent
opposition to, their social inclusion. Other narratives may appear more neutral, but Paré (2013)
argues that these discourses are always subjective and value-laden in that they shine light on
certain ideas or norms, while obscuring others.
Within the profession of counselling and psychology, both theoretical models and therapeutic
practices are culturally embedded and may become mirrors for some of these broader
sociocultural narratives. In Chapter 15, I argue that it is important that counsellors apply a
critical lens to the underlying assumptions and prescriptions of these models to make
transparent their connections to broader social discourses and to attend carefully to
health-promoting versus health-restricting or damaging narratives.
Dominant Discourses
Not all discourses are equal. Certain narratives are linked to dominant cultural groups or
worldviews and are taken up and embraced more extensively within society generally, as well
as within counselling practice. One of the discourses that has dominated counselling and
psychology historically, for example, is the assertion that psychological and emotional
problems are located within the individual. You may want to revisit the individualist worldview
in Chapter 3 to anchor this emphasis on intrapsychic processes. Consider the cluster of norms
that may be associated with this intrapsychic discourse in Figure 2 below.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 230
Figure 2. Cultural norms supporting the intrapsychic discourse in counselling.
Focusing on intrapsychic factors to the exclusion of contextual and systemic influences on
client lived experiences fails to attend to the social determinants of health and applies an
individualist lens to conceptualization of client problems (Gaete, Smoliak, Couture, & Strong,
2018; Paré, 2013; Winslade, 2018). Not only is this perspective potentially culturally oppressive
towards clients, but it also limits the options available for facilitating socially just change
processes. Consider a single, immigrant mother with three young children who lives just
above the poverty line. Applying the intrapsychic lens described in Figure 2 has the potential
to both disempower and pathologize her, while simultaneously closing the door to systems
level interventions that might effectively alter her lived experiences and those of her children.
Culturally oppressive dominant discourses themselves also function as social determinants of
health. Take, for example, dominant discourses related to gender role socialization that
relegate certain ways of being in the world to particular genders or introduce restrictive
norms for how women, for example, are expected to function within the family or society in
general. Individuals or groups often internalize these discourses in ways that limit their health
and well-being. In addition, dominant discourses undergird the processes of stereotyping,
stigmatization, and marginalization, which in turn erode clients’ sense of worth, efficacy,
agency, safety, and so on (Nejaime & Siegel, 2015; Pohlman et al., 2014). I invited my colleague,
Naida Hyde, to speak to the patriarchy as a dominant discourse. It is easy to assume we have
231 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
arrived at equality given how much advancement women have made in recent decades in
some countries, and to lose sight of the underlying gendered messages that continue to
facilitate the oppression of women and girls.
Practice Illustration 10 Smash the Patriarchy
By Naida D. Hyde
Afternoon Tea
Entrained on the woman at the other end of the table
The old woman’s eyes staring bullets, face set in distain,
disgust melting into hatred
like wax as a candle burns down,
My lover the recipient of her poison,
her skull-and-crossbones mother.
This poem came to me this morning as I considered the patriarchy and its
ever-present tentacles, smell, all pervasive effects on all of us.
As women in this still patriarchal culture, we each carry inside us a toxic brew of our
culture’s woman-hating. When we embark on a life of self-discovery, when we start
from the position of women, when we begin to excavate the truth of our life, we are
startled to discover self-hatred buried deep in our core.
Oh no, you say, I am a loving person,
look at how I care about others,
am considerate of clients,
love my difficult parents.
I say, look again, sister, listen to your self-talk, the tape you run in your head.
You are so stupid,
they will find out you don’t know what you are doing,
you just ate all that ice cream,
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 232
you didn’t get to 10,000 steps today.
Fill in the blanks . . . your own litany of self-shaming.
As a counsellor, stop this the second a client starts, help her to see what she is doing
to herself 24/7.
Many men spout misogyny every chance they get. Just this morning a woman model
declared she was going to show her natural body, not airbrushed thin. A man
responded, saying she had eaten 3000 extra calories that day.
Another favourite from the misogynist playbook these days concerns dismissing sexual
assault on women by men:
You say you were sexually assaulted? Why didn’t you speak up sooner?
Oh, you just see sexual abuse everywhere!
I have worked a lifetime to find my woman-identified voice and to speak up, not stay
silent, as we are trained to do. I do see sexual abuse everywhere. You know why? It is
everywhere. I know that there are men everywhere who are waking a dead asleep little
girl to insert a finger or penis into her privacy, her vagina, her mouth, cutting off her
breath, suffocating her dreams, destroying her safety, for the remainder of her days.
We are all afraid, we women.
I see a woman walking down the street at dusk. I feel a flash of fear rising in me: Will
she get home safely? I scan the street behind her for men, and I see her look around
and do the same.
Every one of us who chooses a life of helping other women must root out, and prune
out these noxious spurs, bulldoze the silences that fear has instilled, the lies that our
silences hold, our vibrating silences. “Oh, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to
hurt your feelings,” and the other cowardly lies you say, because you were trained up
well.
Under the wreckage and rubble of all this lies treasure.
Our love for our self.
We must come together, tell each other the truth of our lives.
We must listen with care, believe each other.
Everything we say is an approximation of a greater truth that will come, with voice,
233 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
with being cared about, within the testing grounds of a healing relationship.
Birthing ourselves is a lengthy process. It doesn’t meet the demands of the male
bureaucracy or a ten session limit no matter what.
We are learning to empower ourselves, with love, speaking from strength, speaking
truth, ours, no matter how misery-laden.
We are learning to stand strong on the Earth, backbone straight, feet planted like
magnolias, belonging to our Mother, voice clear, resonant. Embodied.
We are each constructing our own lives, walking our own invisible path, knocking
each barrier over as it arises to impede us.
Feminism requires this of each of us, to mine the sparkling gem of hard-won
truth-telling.
Only then can you offer the occasional signpost to a woman as you accompany her,
stand beside her as she uses her own voice, croaky from disuse, to speak the
unspeakable, and
map the landscape of her life, one empowered word at a time.
Slow work. Hard work.
And then laughter, release, vibrancy, energy, dancing, song, creating
break through the fog, the gloom.
Blazing sunshine of “Hey, I rock!”
breaks through, bursts through
into freedom.
Certain discourses also prevail within nondominant groups where they function as boundaries
for what is acceptable or valued within those groups. In her chapter, for example, Gina Wong
explores oppressive discourses within Asian culture that related to mothering and their
effects on her client. We are all surrounded by various discourses on a daily basis, which
makes each one more insidious and difficult to recognize and evaluate critically. Yet these
discourses can infiltrate our practices with clients very easily and unintentionally.
It is more difficult to challenge certain cultural discourses than others within ourselves;
unsettling more subtle discourses requires us to examine our own cultural biases and
assumptions and to be willing to embrace nonjudgement with our clients. Consider, for
example, the discourse of mononormativity below. I invited my colleagues Taya Henriques and
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 234
Gina Wong to share these ideas as an example of, often unconscious, discourses that
counsellors may carry forward into their work with clients.
Practice Illustration 11 The Pervasive Discourse of Mononormativity
By Taya Henriques and Gina Wong
Ellis is a 31-year-old bisexual individual who identifies with nonbinary gender
affiliations. The majority of Ellis’ relationships have been consensually
nonmonogamous, and Ellis also identifies as polyamorous. Ellis is currently seeking
counselling for both depression and coming to terms with the ending of their
8-year-long primary relationship, in a polyamorous context wherein Ellis presently
has no additional relationships; this involves much grief and loss of identity. They
have a close relationship to their mother; however, Ellis has not seen or spoken to
their father or their two brothers in 10 years, since a falling out due to their
bisexuality.
After the break-up, Ellis moved out of the home they shared with their partner, and
they are presently experiencing the loss of a close community they were introduced
to in that relationship. They have been staying at a friend’s place, and since the
break-up, they are not motivated to socialize, to pursue romantic relationships, or to
do much of anything. Ellis has thoughts to end their life, but has no means or
concrete plan. Ellis works successfully as an event planner, but recently lost a client
because they were not able to stay on top of things, which caused Ellis much distress.
Ellis has sought counselling previously, but often found the fit was not right. It
always became clear early on that, although the counsellors attempted to be
open-minded, they had difficulty understanding and empathizing with Ellis’s lived
experiences and relational choices. However, four weeks ago Ellis began counselling
with a new psychologist, Reanne, and they are optimistic that she is able to support
them through this difficult time. Reanne started the conversation by asking Ellis
235 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
what pronouns they prefer and proceeded to describe her view of sexuality as fluid,
contextualized, and multifaceted.
Consensually non-monogamous (CNM) people, including those who pursue and
engage in polyamory, swinging, and open relationships are highly underrepresented
within the Canadian counselling literature. Little has been written about the
knowledge, understanding, and sensitivity required for counsellors and psychologists
working within these underrepresented and often misunderstood cultural groups. As
counsellors who do not identify as CNM, we found ourselves overwhelmed by jargon
when interacting with clients who identified as CNM, because new terminology has
been developed within this cultural group to describe relationship practices and types
of physical and emotional engagements that could not be described using existing
relationship language (Ritchie & Barker, 2006). A wide range of CNM practices and
identity categories exist, and scholars attest to the significance of delineating what
CNM represents (Barker & Langdridge, 2010). To work effectively with these clients in
a culturally-sensitive and knowledgeable manner, it is important for counsellors to
understand the within-group differences and to avoid imposing assumptions and
stereotypes (Cassidy & Wong, 2018). Additionally, we recognized how highly sensitive
we had become to our own bias about what constitutes a so-called “normal” or
“healthy” relationship. The notion of mononormativity (Pieper and Bauer, 2005),
referring to society’s standard of monogamy as the norm for engaging in romantic
relationships, implicates a potential for counsellors to inadvertently discriminate or
offend clients who value or engage in alternate forms of relationship by
unintentionally privileging monogamous relationships above other relationship styles
(Cassidy & Wong, 2018; Conley, Ziegler, Moors, Matsick, & Valentine, 2012).
Returning to the story of Ellis, they were lucky to encounter a therapist who
demonstrated nonjudgement and cultural curiosity by inviting Ellis to self-define
and to talk about the communities with which they identify. This created a sense of
cultural safety and opened the door for Ellis to share their multiple layers of loss and
their struggle with their identity development and management.
In our own research (Cassidy & Wong, 2018), we reflected on the ethical imperative to
be informed about the various cultures and subcultures with which we work and to
have sensitivity and respect for client diversity. Taking into account our own
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 236
experiences grappling with both culture-specific terminology and personal bias, we
advocate for further research, education, and training aimed at increasing Canadian
counsellor competency when working with individuals who identify as CNM. We invite
you to consider the following questions for reflection as part of your own preparation
for work with this population.
• What were your honest affective and cognitive responses to Ellis’ story?
• What are the implications of these responses for your own cultural assumptions
and biases around human sexuality?
• What are the implications of these responses for your own beliefs about loving,
long-term, intimate relationships?
• If Ellis had not disclosed identification as CNM, what assumptions might you
have made about Ellis’ relationship ending, and how might your approach with
Ellis have differed as a result?
• What are some of the ways you might broach understanding Ellis’ nontraditional
relationship style from their individual point of view, without implying that CNM
identification contributed to the presenting problem in counselling?
Bringing Dominant Discourses into Awareness
In Chapter 18, I will introduce the process of deconstruction as a tool for working with
clients to pull apart, dismantle, and critically analyze dominant sociocultural
discourses. For now, let’s begin with your own critical reflection on the dominant
discourses that influence you, and which you might be at risk of perpetuating in your
work with clients. Whether you identify culturally with dominant populations or not,
dominant discourses are still likely to have a significant influence on you, and there
may also be nondominant discourses that pose barriers to your openness to client
worldviews.
237 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
• Which dominant discourses have influenced who you are as a person, how you
express yourself to others, or how you interact with others?
• Which nondominant discourses have you integrated into your sense of self,
relationships with others, or ways of being in the world? What are the sources of
these discourses?
Take a moment to consider the client stories in this chapter or those of clients you
work with. How might these discourses influence your relationship with these clients,
the ways you conceptualize their presenting concerns, or the possibilities you
entertain for change.
As the author of this book, I acknowledge openly that I am creating learning processes in the
hope that you will embrace some of the emergent assertions or arguments about mental
health and counselling that I value and see as leading edge in counselling, such as:
• All counselling is multicultural in nature.
• The source of distress and ill health for many persons and peoples rests with negative, or
lack of positive, social determinants of health.
• Many client problems cannot be fully understood without explicit attention to contextual
and systemic factors.
• Socially just change processes require counsellor attention to possible systemic
interventions.
If I am doing my job well, by the time you finish reading this book, you will be able to (a)
articulate the other core operating principles (or discourses) of the CRSJ counselling model;
(b) identify contrasting, dominant discourses within counselling and psychology that reflect
Eurocentric, individualist worldviews; and equally importantly, (c) actively discern for yourself
which principles or practices are relevant and appropriate for your work with each client you
encounter.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 238
Teaching and Learning Guide
I encourage you to review the key concepts focused on in this section. Self-assess
your comfort level with each concept, and identify those about which you remain
curious, questioning, or unsettled. Then, take a few moments to complete some of the
learning activities in the Collins (2018) Teaching and Learning Guide for Core
Competency 5: Power and Privilege related to these key concepts.
Core Competency 6
Back to top of chapter
Social Location and Cultural Identity Development and
Management
Revisit the elements of personal cultural identity in Chapter 3, Figure 2. Consider that figure in
relation to the ideas in this chapter related to the social determinants of health, the impact of
cultural oppression, the importance of attending to social location, and the influence of
dominant, marginalizing discourses and cultural norms. In this next section, I build on these
ideas to explore how social location, and relative positions of marginalization or privilege in
society, impact cultural identity development for both counsellors and clients.
239 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
E-Book Navigation Tip
Remember to link back to Core Competency 6 in the CRSJ counselling model to review
the learning objectives for this section of the chapter and to check out examples or
illustrations of the key concepts addressed below in other parts of the e-book. Moving
back and forth between the conceptual chapters and those that focus on client stories
and the application of these principles in practice will help expand and solidify your
learning.
Dominant and Nondominant Cultural Identity Development
A number of models of cultural identity development have emerged over time in counselling
psychology literature. Comparing and contrasting these models is beyond the scope of this
chapter; however, there are some common themes that have emerged across models that are
important to consider in light of the above discussion of sociocultural narratives and the
sociocultural construction of meaning. Consideration of cultural identity development
processes adds another layer of understanding to both counsellor and client cultural identities
and social locations by considering how each person’s sense of self as a cultural being, and
their expression of cultural identities, shift and evolve over time and in interaction with the
sociocultural contexts in which they find themselves.
One basic social constructivist premise common to all nondominant cultural identity
development models is that how we position our own cultural identity (both internally and in
relation to others) in any given moment is influenced by our encounters with, our
values-based assessment of, and our relationships to, both dominant and nondominant
cultural norms, discourses, and groups. Although earlier stage or phase models of identity
development (Atkinson, 2004; Barret & Logan, 2002; Helms, 1995; Worell & Remer, 2003) have
been challenged in favour of more contextualized, idiosyncratic, and fluid processes, some of
the language introduced in these models is still useful for understanding the lived experiences
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 240
that may accompany nondominant identity development. So, for example, children of new
immigrants may idealize the dominant culture when they first attend school. Later, however,
they may experience various forms of cultural oppression that lead them to feel torn between
two worlds. The terms, conformity or unawareness, followed by dissonance, have been used to
explain these two positionings. LGBTTQI persons may also cycle through various positions
relative to the dominant culture, including depreciation and rejection of heterosexual and
cisgender norms, and immersion in, and celebration of, queer communities (resistance and
immersion). Members of the deaf community may experience similar shifts, over time, relative
to the hearing community, and they may find a point of personal resolution in which aspects
of both deaf and hearing communities are critically appraised, integrated, and valued as part
of their cultural identities (introspection and internalization and integrated or synergistic
awareness).
In the story of Angéline in Chapter 19, I explore such issues of nondominant identity
development in more detail. What is common to all processes of nondominant identity
development is the positioning and repositioning of oneself relative to both dominant and
nondominant cultures, until some sense of internal congruence or comfort is established.
Below, Dr. Lisa Gunderson picks up on the story of her Black identity development from
Chapter 3, painting a picture of racial identity development in the US and contrasting that
with the context of the Black community in Canada.
Practice Illustration 12 Black Enough!
By Dr. Lisa Gunderson
As I stated in my introduction (see Black Enough? in Chapter 3) “Black enough?” is the
oppressor’s question and the wrong one to ask. For my qualifying exam in my doctoral
program, I explored my lifelong theme, “Building a Positive Black Identity,” by asking
the questions: “How is my experience of cultural identity and cultural strength,
coming from majority culture space and living in minoritized space, different from
people who have been always in minoritized space?; What is the real African-American
241 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
identity?; What makes one Black enough?; How do people forge a healthy
African-American identity?”
I realized that part of the systemic racism in the US and Canada involves convincing
minoritized groups that “Everything best is in white space.” So my next questions
became, “When did Black become the antithesis to everything ‘best’?” and “Why is
‘best’ a white space?” We are supposed to be relegated to things that are “Black.” That
means: You are not wealthy if you are Black; you are not smart if you are Black; you are
not this or that if you are Black. Therefore, if you are Black and you are any of those
things, you are not “really Black.” The irony is, of course, that we are all of those
things and still “Black.” I argue that to have healthy African-American identity, we have
to pushback on all of those white supremacist notions and false claims to own all
aspects of our African selves. Our sense of time, our sense of family, our sense of
community, our sense of interdependence, our language, our food, our music, and our
dance, all of those elements of our shared culture, are forged from the continent.
Within our communities, this cultural identity often finds expression in our faith
spaces in the way that we interact with each other and in our call and response. Our
faith is intertwined with politics. From the earliest points in North America, for
example, inside spirituals (songs) were embedded messages about how to get to
freedom, physically and mentally. We have to own and keep all of these spaces.
After immigrating to Canada eight years ago, I became very conscious of how Black
history is different here, both in terms of length of time and the trajectory of Black
migration, and I have continued to expand my understanding of what it means to be
Black, racially and ethnically. Most African-Canadians came directly from the African
continent, from the West Indies, or from the US, many of the latter having escaped
slavery. They are a group of people with incredible skill sets, rich histories, and added
(and continue to add) amazing things to the Canadian landscape. They come from a
history and a space of knowing who they are and of being resistors. That is an
amazingly proud space. So, we have an interesting mix of Black people here in Canada.
Interestingly, many Black Canadians did not really encounter a lot of racism until they
came here.
Many of us come from an enslaved ancestry, but not all of us. If you come from
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 242
Ethiopia or some other African countries, slavery was not part of your history.
However, there is a tendency for the dominant Canadian discourse to over-focus on
African-American history, rather than the diversity within African-Canadian history. A
lot of African-Canadian history is taught from a US perspective; Canadians know more
about Rosa Parks, for example, than they do about African-Canadian, Viola Desmond,
who challenged racial segregation in Nova Scotia 11 years earlier (and is both honoured
in the Museum of Human Rights and pictured on a Canada banknote). The fact that
many Canadians do not know this fact blows me away and makes me sad, because one
of the benefits and beauties of being in Canada is that the incredibly diverse Black
community has a deep Canadian history which has contributed greatly to the
Canadian landscape.
When I reflect on my own cultural identity development, I recognize that I was not
successful in the North American system without sucking in some of the dominant
discourses of marginalization. I still have my internalized oppressor in me. I have to
be very mindful of how I play that out, not only toward people who look like me, but
toward others as well. Although I am a Black counsellor, I still carry parts of the white
oppressive system that allowed me to be successful in academia, in the professional
world, and in the dominant social and economic systems. We have to be careful of the
mythologies that, as Black people, we can step outside of the dominant systems to
create, or recreate, ourselves and our communities without carrying forward our own
oppressions in some way.
From that kind of personal identity space, I am a Black woman raising two kids here in
Canada for whom I am forging three kind of identities: (a) their African-American
sense of self, because they are likely to return to the US; (b) their African-Canadian
sense of self; and (c) their Jamaican heritage sense of self. All these come together in
Black space. My kids know Black people from countries I did not know were Black.
They have Black friends who all speak different languages, have different cultural
histories, and come from different faiths. I developed my strong Black identity,
because I had carried forward a sense of majority from my Jamaican heritage in
combination with being a first generation African-American (recall my Black Enough?
practice illustration in Chapter 3). By way of contrast, my kids who are growing up
within the Canadian Black community, hold in their spirit, and are grounded in, the
heterogeneity of Black people. They have blown out of the water my question, “Black
243 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
enough?” This is not even a question for them, because they see their identity within
this diversity of Black history and lived experience. The idea that they would ever put
themselves in a box (despite what others may do) is outside of their comprehension.
This reality of the diverse Black community in Canada is something that the dominant
group needs to understand. There are so many wonderful opportunities to expand
dominant culture awareness about Black people. One of the biggest gifts for me being
here is that I had forgotten how homogeneously I had thought of us as a Black people.
For counsellors reading this, take the time to find out how much your Black clients
identify with their racial and cultural groups. Be willing to explore their cultural
history and the ways in which they have been influenced by the strengths and
resiliency, as well as the experiences of marginalization that shaped their cultural
heritage. The bottom line: trust their experience and understanding of what being
Black means to them. For me, it will always mean Black is beautiful; Black is strong;
Black is Enough!
In keeping with my premise that we are all cultural beings, cultural identity development
applies equally to members of dominant populations, although the processes may differ
slightly. The early model by Helms and Cook (1995) of white racial identity development
provides some broad brushstrokes that I have drawn upon as a pedagogical process in
presenting the ideas in this chapter. White settler individuals may grow up internalizing
dominant discourses of white supremacy along with other dominant discourses of gender,
ability, and so on. However, increasing awareness of cultural injustices paves the way for each
of us to examine those parts of our cultural identities that offer us positions of privilege in
society and to let go of culturally oppressive discourses, norms, and worldviews. For example,
the TRCC (2015) calls on those who are part of colonial, settler populations to wrestle with
their relationship to historic and current colonization of Indigenous peoples. Such
consciousness-raising in relation to cultural oppression is often identified as a first step in
dominant cultural identity development models. Individuals may then cycle through various
reactions, including cognitive dissonance, denial, anger, guilt, and rationalization, before
finally coming to some sort of reconciliation with their own role in the cultural oppression of
others and their commitment to principles of social justice. From this process space has been
created for a positive, responsible, and culturally sensitive identity to emerge in relation to
privileged social locations.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 244
As I argue in Chapter 3, each of us is characterized by multiple and intersecting elements of
personal cultural identities positioned within the shifting sand of contextual and systemic
influences. Cultural identity development, therefore, needs to be viewed as fluid, contextual,
and multifaceted. Cultural identity development may also be affected by various life
transitions. A change in ability, for example, through illness or accident, recognition of one’s
nondominant gender identity or sexual orientation, or moving from a densely multicultural
urban centre to a rural, monocultural environment may trigger assessment or reassessment of
cultural identities. It is important for counsellors to attend to their own life transitions and to
examine critically and intentionally their own cultural identity development as preparation for
their work with clients. Problems are most likely to arise with clients when there is a
mismatch in consciousness, and current positioning, of development of identity between
counsellor and client. For example, a cisgender counsellor who has never critically reflected
on their gender identity development may not be fully prepared to support a transgender
client who wants to focus on developing a sense of pride in their cultural community.
Alternatively a counsellor who comes from, and has left unexamined, a history of family
poverty may not be able to assume an open and nonjudgemental stance in a therapeutic
relationship with a client who assumes that their upper-middle class positioning is a right, not
a privilege. In each of these cases, the counsellor may find themselves unable to be optimally
effective and respectful of the client’s lived experiences, because the counsellor has not fully
processed their own cultural identity development.
Identity Conflict and Identity Management
In some cases, the process of navigating and integrating multiple nondominant identities or
elements of dominant and nondominant cultures may result in identity conflict, either within
the individual or between the individual and the family or cultural community. Let’s reconsider
the story of Manuel in Chapter 3 by attending to the conflict between his emergent sexual
identity and his desire to remain connected with his ethnic culture through family and
community. For Manuel, there are conflicting values, norms, and discourses, which he is
struggling to navigate, within the two elements of his cultural identity. Some of these tensions
are a result of early socialization messages about what it means to be a man within his ethnic
community, and others emerged as he expanded his lived experiences and the contexts of his
life through education, friendships, and exposure to the queer community.
245 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Although some aspects of cultural identity development and cultural identity conflicts are
primarily internal to the individual, there are other changes that require active negotiation
within the various relationships and contexts of clients’ lives. Take, for example, female
refugees or immigrants who find themselves exposed to, and drawn toward, new and
unfamiliar gender role expectations for education and career opportunities outside the home.
Or consider the transition experience of a young male-to-female transgender person within
family, work, and community settings. Or ponder the challenges for a young Muslim woman
who finds herself in love with a Jewish man when both families expect them to marry within
their faiths. Each of these individuals is inevitably thrust into a process of cultural identity
management, either proactively or reactively, as others in their environments notice changes
or expect different expressions of cultural identity from them. For others, the process of
cultural identity management involves choosing to disclose (or not) otherwise invisible
aspects of personal cultural identities to others: for example, coming out to family or
colleagues as a gay man, talking with friends about values and beliefs located in social class
differences, or negotiating accommodation at school or work for invisible disabilities. As I note
in Chapter 3, many people develop contextualized or situational identities in part as a means
of negotiating multiple, and sometimes conflicting, identities across various contexts.
Cultural Identity Management and Social Locations
A central focus of this chapter is the relationship between cultural identities and social
locations. Our cultural identities cannot be fully appreciated without reference to the
way in which those identities position each of us relative to others in our society.
• Take a moment to reflect on your own social locations by creating a visual
representation of the ways in which you are positioned relative to other
dominant and nondominant groups, cultural norms, and discourses. This can be
a collage, a diagram, a drawing, a series of photos, or whatever else works for
you.
• Given the multiplicity and intersectionality of cultural identities, you will likely
notice that you don’t have a fixed position; rather your social location shifts and
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 246
adjusts to the various contexts and systems in which you participate.
• What points of tension arise among your cultural identities and social locations?
How are these similar or different in the diverse contexts of your life?
• Consider any aspects of your cultural identities that you choose not to disclose
in some or all of these contexts. How might this choice be a reflection of your
cultural identity development?
• What might shift in your visual representation of your social locations if you
choose to disclose more about yourself in various contexts?
Teaching and Learning Guide
Remember to check out the learning activities related to these key concepts in the
Collins (2018) Teaching and Learning Guide for Core Competency 6: Identity
Development.
Core Competency 7
247 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
Back to top of chapter
Cross-Cultural Transitioning, Cultural Identity, and
Relationality
Contextualized or situational identities also provide an important lens for understanding the
experiences and challenges of some immigrants and refugees engaged in cross-cultural
transitioning. For individuals who are either gradually or suddenly, voluntarily or
involuntarily, transported into a different cultural context, the perception and expression of
cultural identity can undergo a dramatic transformation through the processes of
acculturation. A new image of self often emerges that may, at first, appear foreign, even to the
newcomer. It is essential that we, as counsellors, recognize the importance of not only the
current expression of cultural identities, but also the shifts in identity over time, for both
ourselves and our clients.
Acculturation, Acculturative Stress, and Culture Shock
Client and counsellor cultural identity development may be precipitated and influenced by
various predictable and unpredictable cross-cultural transitions. One specific aspect of
cultural identity development is acculturation, which is often prompted by relocation to a
new country where the dominant culture differs substantively from one’s culture of origin.
The process of acculturation can be affected by the nature of the transition. Voluntary
immigrants, for example, may be more prepared for the stresses involved in transitioning to
the host country than refugees fleeing conflict or persecution (Djuraskovic, 2014). Refugees
are often displaced by war or natural disaster, have little choice over the culture into which
they are expected to integrate, and have experienced trauma and disconnection from family
and community in a way that exacerbates the challenges of acculturation (Djuraskovic, in
press). Although acculturation does occur somewhat organically through exposure to
differences in worldview, family and community structures and values, and broader cultural
discourses and practices, it is also an active process (Berry & Hou, 2016) of negotiating and
renegotiating cultural identity and relationality. Counsellors have a supportive role to play in
fostering clients’ sense of agency or control, empowerment, and self-efficacy throughout their
cross-cultural transitioning.
It is important to understand the process of acculturation and to assess clients’ psychological,
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 248
social, and economic acculturative stress. Often, clients come to counselling during
cross-cultural transitions, because they are struggling to position themselves within a new
community and society in which the dominant discourses related to health, family, lifestyle,
religion or spirituality, and community, as well as the expression of personal cultural identities
such as gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ability are often new and dramatically
different. Using the lens of social justice on the process of acculturation reminds us to attend
to the social determinants of health in working with immigrants and refugees. Also, although
we might hope for a welcoming and inviting response from members of the host country,
many newcomers encounter various forms of cultural oppression and marginalization that
negatively impact their acculturation processes, and sometimes, their desire to integrate into
local communities or society as whole. Consider the personal reflections of Fatima Saleem, a
Muslim woman counsellor who works with youth, immigrants, and refugees, by drawing on
her own migration and acculturation processes. Fatima shares her lived experiences of
negotiating the complexities of personal and professional identities.
Practice Illustration 13 My Identity as a Racialized Muslim Woman Mental Health Professional
By Fatima Saleem
In writing the following, I fully acknowledge my personal biases: All I write here are my
personal opinions. I am a (racialized) Muslim cis woman (south east Asian) who
migrated to Canada over 8 years ago. The woman I am today, and my view of human
nature, is embedded in my beliefs, my culture, my upbringing, and my experiences and
interactions with people. I was born a Muslimah (a Muslim woman). I am a Muslimah;
however, because I do not wear the hijab, I am not easily identified as such. The
aspects of my presentation that are identified easily as different or as the “other” are
the dark color of my skin and my accent. That being said, not wearing the hijab has not
made life in Canada any easier for me. I often feel very alienated from the community
at large, because my open hair does not fit in with the Muslim women in hijabs, and
my fasting, five-times-daily prayers, and lack of drinking alcohol do not fit in with my
non-Muslim friends. Unfortunately, and in both cases, I am the “other” to them.
249 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
It is really frustrating to feel I have to defend myself continuously as a Muslimah and a
racialized woman. It is often infuriating to see how contemporary modern Canadian
(and Western) cultures repeatedly frame Islam and Muslim cultural practices, religious
traditions, gender relations, and family structures as oppressive and ill-informed.
People often comment how oppressed women are in Islamic countries, and in fact, I
am often seen as one of these oppressed women. I often tell people that, yes, we have
different values, culture, and religion but that does not make us oppressed in any way.
Muslim women all over the world enjoy the rights of higher education. They have
professional jobs, and many of them are career women. Often women’s roles and
status are dependent on their socioeconomic status as, indeed, they are in Canada.
It is important to understand that religion and culture are two very separate things.
Given the misinformation about Islam and women, I often find it challenging
explaining to people the notions of gender equity in Islam. It cannot be emphasized
enough that a distinction of roles between men and women does not imply an
inherent imbalance of power (Ali & Aboul-Fatouh, 2012). Nonetheless, one of the many
pronounced cultural differences within Muslim communities worldwide relates to
gender: In many cases, the interactions between opposite genders is limited and
controlled. Culturally, gender differences have always been strong, and the social
structure is often dominated by men. Women have been perceived as weak, both
physically and mentally, in comparison to men (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 2000). In many
cultures a women’s status, in contrast to men, is one of systemic subordination,
determined by the forces of patriarchy (Roomi & Parrott, 2008). The influence of the
patriarchy, at a cultural level in Muslim countries and communities, is not unlike that
of the patriarchy in other cultures. There is no singular model for gender roles within
Islam; within the faith, I have considerable freedom to make my own choices about
how I live my life as a Muslim woman.
This mindset of Islam as oppressive is often played out in day-to-day interactions
with other people. It is interesting to see how, post 9/11, Muslims have been
constructed as a serious threat to the survival of the West. We have been vilified by the
media and are often portrayed as backward barbarians, lacking in culture and
humanity. Yet, Muslim women successfully manage multiple identities, and Muslim
women living in the West often have to negotiate their Muslim and Western identities.
Often these identities are viewed as being in conflict with each other. The rise in
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 250
Islamophobia, microaggression, prejudice, hate crimes, and social exclusion post 9/11
are evidence that the Western world sees these cultural and religious identities as
being in conflict with Western identity and values. Over time, these stressors have
had, and continue to have, an adverse effect on Muslim women from all backgrounds.
With the growing population of Muslims in the West, understanding their
psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs is of utmost importance. Although
Muslims are an ethnically diverse group, religious identity unifies their experiences
and worldviews. That being said, it is also important to recognize that Islamic practices
are quite diverse because of its varied cultural influences (Hamdan, 2007; Mahmood,
2013). An understanding and appreciation of this diversity can go a long way toward
effectively addressing the issues and concerns Muslim women face in the Western
world.
Although the term acculturation is most often tied to transitions from one country to another,
cross-cultural transitioning also occurs within societies, as individuals experience substantive
changes in their cultural identities and social locations. As noted above, life transitions can
disrupt an individual’s sense of self and relationship to others. The loss of connection from
leaving a tightly knit religious community, the disconnections with friends and family
precipitated by divorce, the challenge of adapting to incarceration within the prison system,
the loss of independence that sometimes accompanies aging, or a sudden and persistent
change in socioeconomic status can also prompt acculturative stress as individuals and
families adjust to new cultural realities and, often, different social locations. It is important for
counsellors to self-assess carefully their own values and beliefs about acculturation to be able
to meet clients where they are at in their transition processes and not superimpose
expectations about the outcomes of acculturation on them. Each individual or family is
unique, and their definition of healthy acculturation may differ from that of the counsellor.
Many individuals engaged in a process of cross-cultural transitioning establish bicultural
identities over time. Recall the discussion of nondominant cultural identity development
above. One of the common outcomes of cultural identity development processes is a sense of
integration or synergistic existence in the space between new and old cultures. Persons who
hold bicultural identities are often able to move between cultural contexts, to find common
ground or to pick and choose among dominant and nondominant norms and cultural
251 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
discourses, establishing a sense of self that is a blend of, or a new creation, that draws on their
culture of origin and their current host culture. Where challenges often arise is in the
differential experiences and rates of acculturation within families that result in
multigenerational issues. Children, for example, by virtue of their developmental fluidity and
their broader exposure to the dominant culture through school and community, often adopt
elements of the dominant culture that may not fit with the worldviews of their parents.
Culture shock is a more extreme form of acculturative stress that can be particularly
distressing, disorienting, and immobilizing for clients. Depending on the client’s cultural
background, the signs of culture shock may include emotional (feelings of distress,
helplessness, depression), cognitive (disorientation, hostility towards the host culture,
confusion), psychosocial (withdrawal, disconnection, insecurity), and physiological (pain,
insomnia, hypervigilance about health concerns) responses (Djuraskovic, 2018; in press).
Culture shock is more likely when individuals are displaced involuntarily, arrive in the host
country without family and cultural community for social support, or have additional social,
psychological, economic, or political stressors.
A few days before I drafted this chapter, I was out walking with a newcomer to Canada,
and she stopped suddenly, immobilized. I couldn’t figure out what had happened in that
moment, because nothing seemed out-of-place to me. After a few moments, she explained
that she had read on the back of a taxicab a common Arabic saying, and she suddenly was
“out of reality” and questioning whether she was actually here in Canada. She regularly
experienced this sense of disconnection from reality even after months of living here.
This sense of dislocation, or walking between worlds, is not uncommon for people in
cross-cultural transition. It may be experienced also during other significant life
transitions. A number of my clients from the queer community described similar
sensations of living between worlds, and this odd sense of belonging‒not belonging in
their lives as they reconstructed their relationships and environments. That sense of
unreality persisted for a significant period of time, in part because of external cues that
pulled them back into who they were before coming out or beginning their transitions.
Being referred to using a male pronoun instead of their chosen female or nonbinary
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 252
pronoun also precipitated a sense of disconnection from who they are in the
here-and-now.
Internalized Oppression and the Loss of Cultural Identity and
Relationality
As I note earlier in the chapter, many members of marginalized populations experience a
period of disconnection from their cultural heritage as part of their nondominant cultural
identity development process. Individuals may also experience conflict or dissonance between
various aspects of their cultural identities, for example, between religion and sexuality or
gender and ethnicity, which can result in rejection or loss of some aspect of their cultural
selves, as well as connections to family, friends, or community. Although these are painful and
difficult experiences, most people are able to find their own path to reconcile their internal
dissonance and relationships to significant others. However, when individuals are exposed to
persistent discrimination and other forms of cultural oppression, they may over time
experience a significant loss of cultural identity and relationality.
For Indigenous populations, the process of colonization and the ongoing experience of living
within colonialist social, political, and economic systems can lead to individual and collective
loss of cultural identity and relationality. For Indigenous persons and peoples, this loss
extends beyond transitory struggles against the imposition of dominant discourses and
norms. Instead, they were stripped of their cultural, linguistic, and spiritual heritage through
systematic and purposeful colonial violence and oppression. In spite of their resilience and
cultural focus on the interconnectivity of all, this has often resulted in a lingering
disconnection from self, from family and community, and from the land of their ancestors. As
several of the contributing authors (Riel Dupuis-Rossi; Kirby Huminuik; Vikki Reynolds)
illustrate, many Indigenous peoples find themselves without the roots that historically
tethered them to their cultural heritage and community. This transgenerational dislocation
underpins many of the symptoms of cultural oppression Indigenous persons and peoples face.
253 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
I am deeply saddened by the ways I have seen internalized homophobia play out in the
lesbian community. What I find most troublesome are the opportunities that are missed
for genuine connection with other people and for experiencing acceptance at work,
school, and social situations. I often hear women describe their surprise at the positive
reactions they receive from friends or colleagues when they open up about their sexual
orientation or take the risk to bring their partner to a social function. Many of them
realize that it was their own fear and internalized stigma, carried over from situations of
genuine risk to a more generalized approach to the world, that formed the largest barrier
to their nondominant cultural identity development.
A friend of mine died in midlife after a difficult diagnosis of cancer. In her obituary, her
long-time lesbian partner was fully acknowledged for the first time. My friend lost the
opportunity to experience the acceptance and support of many of her colleagues, friends,
and acquaintances, who likely knew that she was gay, but waited for her to speak and
invite them into this important part of her personal cultural identity. She lost that
opportunity because she had come to believe herself what others had told her throughout
her life—that she was not normal and that her life path was not socially acceptable.
I do not intend to suggest that living an out life is best for all LGBTTQI persons, because
the risk of violence and other forms of cultural oppression is still very real in many
contexts. I am privileged to live without fear, for the most part, because of my current
social location. Although I live my life openly as a lesbian, I am aware that I also carry
with me the negative discourses that blocked me from embracing my true self until I was
in my mid-thirties. Choosing not to listen to these subtle, yet lingering, internalized
messages, which still surprise me now and then, is a deliberate exercise that will likely
continue throughout my life.
In many cases, loss of cultural identity or relationality is heavily influenced by the
internalization of dominant discourses and experiences of cultural oppression. Exposure to
ongoing colonization, for example, often results in the internalization of colonialist beliefs,
assumptions, and values and the denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing and other cultural
foundations (TRCC, 2015). Some of the contributing writers address the experiences of
internalized classism, homophobia, racism, and sexism, both by their clients, and often, as part
of their own process of coming to grips with their personal cultural identities. I appreciate
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 254
their vulnerability in sharing their stories with you. As counsellors, it is important to listen
carefully for the subtle ways in which internalized oppression seeps into or lies beneath
clients’ self-talk, their reflections on their cultural selves, their sense of responsibility for
problems that may actually be systemic in nature, or their feelings of disempowerment or
disconnection.
Supporting clients to externalize these negative and oppressive sociocultural narratives and to
shift the locus of responsibility to the broader community and societal discourses is an
important starting place for reconstruction of cultural identities and relationalities. This
process is addressed in Chapter 18. I am pleased to introduce Judy Chew, who writes below
about her work with her client, Anika, who is struggling with internalized homophobia within
the complex intersections of her multiple identities. Judy draws on feminist principles, which
are mirrored in the CRSJ counselling model, to support Anika to find her own voice amid
competing discourses.
Practice Illustration 14 Finding One’s Voice: A Feminist Perspective on Internalized Oppression
By Judy Chew
Anika is a 35-year-old South Asian woman who is Canadian-born. She seeks
counselling to address her ambivalence and internalized shame around being in a
same-sex relationship. Anika was previously married for eight years to a South Asian
man. She describes their relationship as obligatory and economically-driven to
support her aging parents. Anika speaks of embarking on a journey to follow her own
desires and choices in life after her divorce. Her hope in counselling is to let go of
unhealthy relational styles. She believes that this would support her efforts to be more
confident in her sexual identity. Anika describes her present partner, Aesha, as
thoughtful and supportive. With Aesha’s increasing readiness to go public with their
relationship, Anika feels pressure to concede. This in turn reinforces the uncertainty
about her sexual orientation. She expresses her strong opposition to being told what
255 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
to do and who to be. Anika’s distress is communicated through yelling, throwing
objects, “disappearing” for days, and threatening to end the relationship.
From a feminist perspective (Brown, 2010; Worell & Remer, 2003), I engage Anika in a
collaborative discussion about informed consent. This includes my attention to
fostering an egalitarian relationship and attending to my position of power. I introduce
my professional background to enable Anika to ask salient questions and to have
choice in establishing a professional relationship with me. I reassure her that I place
trust in her as the expert of her life. I am with her to support, validate, guide, and
enhance her sense of agency to move forward with her preferred choices. I comment
on the importance of her identifying goals and hopes for counselling. I inform her that
her opinions and feelings are to be respected in our discussions.
Another way in which I attend to the power differentials is to invite a conversation
between us about our cultural identities and social locations. Specifically, I provide a
brief description of my Chinese identity and acknowledge how being first generation
immigrants involves a unique bicultural orientation. We are the first in our families to
step forward into an immersion into two cultures: the one at home with family and the
one in the outside world of school and peer groups. Sharing my own cultural identities
opens a door for further cultural inquiry into Anika’s lived experiences and cultural
worldview. Anika expresses her appreciation and speaks to how this resonates with
her experience as a Canadian-born South Asian. In addition, I note the kinds of
challenges that a bicultural orientation can pose.
We talk about the cultural socialization process and how family values may require a
re-examination for goodness-of-fit over time. There are often some values one wants
to keep. Others may be thought over and modified or completely recreated. She
concurs heartily and states that the gender roles and sexual orientation themes are
most salient for her in our work. I share with Anika my appreciation for the writing on
Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1997). I offer
highlights on how children grow up to listen to, and obey, authorities such as parents
and teachers. Through the years, some of the multigenerational tensions represent the
emergence of the independent mind, the one that pays attention to our own thoughts,
opinions, and inner authority. This psychoeducation piece is something that Anika
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 256
speaks of highly and appreciates. It resonates well with her and she returns to this
conversation throughout our work. Anika becomes increasingly mindful about how she
describes herself in sessions and grows in her understanding of what it means to feel
the inner voice and authority when she speaks.
As our discussion progresses, I invite Anika to consider exploring the theme of power
in her family life. Who held power? What gender held power? How did she experience
the power? In what ways did she experience power or was given freedom to be
powerful? Anika identifies a hierarchy of power in the family. From descending order it
would be by gender and age (her father, mother, eldest brother). She identifies male
privilege as a key influence on who holds power. She learned to fear power as it was
enacted upon her in the forms of ridicule and physical aggression (e.g., restraining,
hitting, belittling, yelling, abandonment). She learned that she did not have power or
choice. In her marriage, Anika was exposed to a similar pattern of power, which
rendered her obedient, silenced, and fearful of making decisions that would counter
the status quo. Through this conversation, Anika gains insight into her present
relationship dynamics and the similar ways in which she responds to perceived
experiences of power over her. To her credit, she is also aware of how she exerts
control by using certain patterns learned in her family-of-origin and previous
marriage.
From a feminist perspective (Brown, 2010; Worell & Remer, 2003), we collaborate to
identify what Anika needs in terms of change processes to move toward her preferred
outcomes. Some of the additional intervention strategies include working on basic
communication skills, problem solving, role playing, and assertiveness training to
enhance her ability to stay with difficult conversations with Aesha. As she requested,
we address Anika’s internalized homophobia through providing her with relevant
books and readings. She is not ready to attend any LGBTTQI groups or organizations,
but she continues to flourish within her social support network. I respect and honour
her times of privacy. She immerses herself in readings and websites that address
topics of homophobia.
Anika gains trust in our working relationship over time. She alludes to the unusual
feeling of being in power, which she attributes to the permission I gave her to go at
her own pace in our work. This allowed her to give herself permission to take her time.
257 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
She became less pressured as a result, and this allowed her to reassure Aesha of her
love and care as they engaged in healthier conversations. Attention to
self-compassion and related activities also gave Anika a sense of renewed power. She
speaks of how radical it is to be kind to herself and accept her humanness, including
her shame, guilt, and uncertainty. Her sense of freedom emerges as she begins to
realize she has the power to set herself free(r) from shame and guilt. She no longer has
to live with the ghosts of the past or be bound by mandates dictated by others.
At the same time, Anika finds the courage to begin exploring the grief and loss of not
having her parents accept her choices in life. The sadness is deep and penetrating as
she realizes what her parents cannot give her. They refuse to accept her sexual
orientation. They are absent in her struggles. They will not meet her partner. Their
voices are missing in her plans to make a difference in the world and to adopt a child.
With a mixture of sad and joyful tears, Anika says, “I would still rather love myself and
live the rest of my days with my inner authority intact than to reside in an empty, dark
cell.” Anika continues with the counselling journey, heavier in some ways, lighter in
some ways but all the more resolved to find the sources of power that support a life of
abundance rather than scarcity.
Several of the contributing authors introduce the concept of lateral oppression as an
expression and consequence of the internalization of dominant discourses that turns into
self-loathing and denigration of one’s own cultural identities. In the chapters that follow this
one, Riel Dupuis-Rossi examines lateral oppression in the context of Indigenous historical
trauma; then Mateo Huezo examines inter-racial tensions within trans communities as part of
his work with his client, Martin. In the previous part of the book, Fisher Lavell introduces the
concept of lateral classism in the context of girl bullying. What all of their stories have in
common is the displacement of justifiable anger and hostility against colonial or other
oppressive forces onto family, friends, colleagues, or community members.
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 258
Trauma and Social Location: The Multiple Faces of Systemic
Oppression
Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the experience of trauma in detail, it
is important to contextualize trauma as it relates to social location and systemic oppression.
Some of the contributing writers will pick up on the discussion of trauma in their chapters.
[Remember you can return to Core Competency 7 in Chapter 2 to link to sections of other
chapters that discuss how to work with trauma in counselling practice.] Carefully review the
definition of trauma in the glossary to get a sense of the ways in which particular individuals
and groups are positioned within society to be more vulnerable to experiences of trauma by
virtue of their relative social location. Civil war, forced migration, colonization, and cultural
genocide all result in trauma to persons and peoples who, in that moment in history, do not
possess the status in society or the collective power to oppose the forces of systematic
oppression. In a later chapter, Adrienne Carter shares stories of her work with Médicins Sans
Frontières that bring to life the devastating effects of war and trauma on refugees.
For those who survive historical or colonial trauma, the ripple effects can be felt across
generations. As noted above in the discussion of truth and reconciliation, it is extremely
important not to inadvertently minimize the lingering effects of historical trauma, because of
personal discomfort with one’s own social location as a member of colonial/settler
populations. To some degree the tentacles of trauma continue to reach across generations,
because of the unwillingness of the dominant culture to acknowledge fully the reality of these
experiences. In addition, substantive social change has not occurred, and the mechanisms of
colonialism remain in place (TRCC, 2015).
Trauma also stems from many other lived experiences of prejudice, discrimination, or other
forms of cultural oppression. Women, for example, are often victims of traumatic emotional
and physical violence. Collectively, they have been marginalized in most societies and suffered
historical nonpersonhood. Members of LGBTTQI communities also face various degrees of
overt and covert cultural oppression that can result in traumatization. Some individuals and
groups who experience trauma consequently suffer from posttraumatic stress or the more
recently recognized complex posttraumatic stress. I have deliberately chosen not to use the
term, disorder, in reference to posttraumatic stress to avoid placing the locus of control within
the individual and to emphasize that, to a significant degree, it is systems level change that is
required to remediate and prevent these crippling conditions. Dissociation, which is often
259 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
associated with posttraumatic stress, for example, can be framed an adaptive mechanism for
dealing with overwhelming memories of traumatic events (Dupuis-Rossi & Reynolds, in press).
One of the risks for persons who have experienced trauma is that repeated and renewed
exposure to cultural oppression, whether similar or different from the original traumatic
events, can result in retraumatization. In some cases, it is these experiences of
retraumatization, through experiences of discrimination, encountering systemic or structural
barriers, or being burdened with new losses, and the resulting more immediate distress, that
leads clients to seek help. It is important for counsellors to recognize the symptoms of trauma
and also to look beneath the immediate presenting concerns to the traumatic histories of
their clients.
As I wrap up this chapter, I want to encourage you to reflect continuously on the key concepts
in regard to your own cultural identities and social location. In Chapter 12, I talk about the
impact of personal trauma and vicarious trauma on counsellors and the importance of doing
our own therapeutic and healing work. This work begins with recognizing our shared
humanity with our clients and the ways in which we, too, may be influenced by relative
privilege and marginalization in society.
Teaching and Learning Guide
If you have not yet linked to the Collins (2018) Teaching and Learning Guide to engage
in the learning activities related to key concepts in Domain II of the CRSJ counselling
model, the following links take you to the learning activities that support Core
Competencies (CC) 4 through 7. If you have been working through the guide as you
read the chapter, then I invite you to focus on CC7 below.
• CC4 Social Injustice
• CC5 Power and Privilege
• CC6 Identity Development
• CC7 Cross-Cultural Transitioning
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 260
Final Reflections
The purpose of Chapters 3 and 6 is to position active awareness of both client and counsellor
cultural identities and social locations as the foundation for culturally responsive and socially
just counselling practices. You may want to take a moment to revisit the CRSJ counselling
model in Chapter 1 to see how these competency domains are positioned within the overall
model. What I hope you gain from these chapters is an appreciation for the way in which
culture is inextricable from all aspects of the counselling and psychology professions: theory,
research, and practice.
Attention to the social determinants of health and other contextual and systemic factors that
influence client health and well-being and the application of a social justice lens are newer
emphases and less well integrated into current practice. My hope is that the concept of social
location, explored in this chapter, is a pebble dropped in the pool of your mind, one which will
send ripples in all directions, as you carefully consider the ways in which relative privilege and
marginalization in society play out in the lived experiences of your clients, in your own life,
and in the ways in which you approach counselling practice (Ratts et al., 2015). Applying a
social justice lens to awareness of counsellor and client cultural identities and social locations
also supports an evolution in our collective professional positioning from increased
consciousness of the centrality of culture toward active commitment to personal and
professional transformation that serves a more just society. As you look back over this
chapter, I invite you to consider not only how you might now be better prepared to help
clients address social injustice in their lives, but also what roles you might play in bringing
about broader social change. I pick up on these themes in later chapters.
I hope by now you are anxious to learn more about how to translate this knowledge and
consciousness-raising about social injustice and the social determinants of health into the
how to of counselling practice. The next two chapters are intended to bring to life some of the
key concepts from Domain II through client stories and applied practice illustrations. They
also introduce new concepts that I talk about in later sections of the book, so you may be
referred back to them as you explore other learning objectives and key concepts in the CRSJ
counselling model.
In Chapter 7, Riel Dupuis-Rossi introduces an Indigenous and decolonizing approach for
Indigenous practitioners working with Indigenous clients to address historical trauma arising
from multigenerational colonial violence and ongoing colonial oppression. Riel demonstrates
261 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
individual, group, and Elder-led ceremony approaches to healing and reclaiming cultural
identity and relationality. In Chapter 8, Mateo Huezo engages in a self-reflective ethical
decision-making process as a person of colour working with a client who expresses white
supremacist beliefs. He presents an ethical framework from the perspective of a
nondominant-identified mental health practitioner speaking to nondominant readers. Both of
these chapters are unique in that they assume a minority-centred perspective in which
Indigenous, person of colour, and trans community knowledge, respectively, is foregrounded. I
deliberately position these chapters early in the book to signal to you, as the reader, that I do
not assume that either counsellors, generally, or you as readers, come only from dominant
groups (which is still often the positioning of speaker and audience in North American and
European academic writing). I hope this choice makes this book more widely relevant and
more proactively supportive of diversity and inclusivity within the professions of counselling
and psychology.
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Practice Illustration 7 The Path to Equity and Social justice in Guidance Counselling in Quebec:
Young People from Immigrant Backgrounds (English Translation)
By Marie-Odile Magnan
My Social Location
I am committed to developing equity and social justice practices in contexts of
ethnocultural diversity. I chose to focus on the voices of minoritized or racialized
youth from the very beginning of my research studies. Where did this interest come
from? Reflecting on this question, I realize that my career was influenced by the
migratory trajectory of my grandmother, Myriam. Born in Turin, Italy, to a protestant
father, Myriam arrived in Quebec at the age of 20. She chose to marry a
French-Canadian Catholic. Because my grandparents did not share the same religion,
few people were present at their wedding. At school, their five children suffered
racism, and in addition, faced discrimination because they were atheist not Catholic!
In Quebec in the 1960s, that was rather scandalous. So, I carried this story and bore
these family wounds in my youth. Other experiences also affected my interest in
equity and social justice. Although my mother completed a post-secondary degree
(college level), and my father had a university degree, I experienced temporary
episodes of poverty and lived in a single-parent household after my parents’ divorce.
My mother wanted me to succeed to a greater degree than she had and to be a free
and financially independent woman. When my parents married new partners, this also
led me to interact with a stepmother and stepfathers who had varying levels of
education and different upbringings. In short, these diverse social, socioeconomic, and
ethnocultural experiences punctuated my journey and partly explain why equity and
social justice, as well as critical theories in education, resonate for me.
269 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
The Educational Pathways of Young People with Immigrant Backgrounds in
Quebec
In Quebec, young people from immigrant backgrounds perform fairly well in school at
the elementary, high school, and post-secondary levels. Looking at the overall
statistical picture, they are doing better than the general population in Quebec.
Selective immigration policies in Quebec are the main explanation. We welcome
skilled and highly educated immigrants whose migration success depends on the
educational and professional success of their children; they have high aspirations for
them. Despite these positive findings, however, young people from some regions (e.g.,
Southern Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa)
have lower high school graduation rates than others. There are several possible
hypotheses to explain these between-group differences, for instance, disparities in
parents’ level of education, proficiency in French, and socioeconomic status. However,
these differences may also be a result of systemic discrimination toward certain
groups. There is an overrepresentation of certain immigrant groups in special
education classes (e.g. black students from Haiti), and some immigrant students are
channeled into adult education, which poses barriers to pursuing post-secondary
education. At the postsecondary level, the findings are similar. Levels of access and
retention are lower for young people from these same regions.
My Research Results
We collected more than 60 retrospective life stories of immigrant young people. The
interviews took place when the youths were students in CEGEP, the general and
vocational college system which is the first tier of higher education in Quebec.
What we found was that young people from immigrant backgrounds are at the
crossroads of two worlds. They have to deal with Western standards of career
counselling, which focus on the full development of the individual and invite them to
build their lives according to their desires and interests. At the same time, they are
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 270
immersed in a family context that may position their education and career in terms of
the collective success for the family, which is linked to a desire for upward social and
economic mobility. Young people want to follow their own individual development
plan, but they also want to meet the expectations of their parents. Parents often assert
that they sacrificed themselves for their child’s success, because some experienced a
professional deskilling upon their arrival in Quebec due to racism or lack of
recognition of existing professional certifications. For their parents, success for their
children means obtaining access to a pre-university program, primarily in health
sciences or pure sciences. They undervalue social sciences programs as well as
technical programs (apart from those offered in the health field, such as the CEGEP
technical nursing diploma).
Faced with these parental constraints on their career choices, these young people,
choose a compromise between their parents’ expectations and their own interests.
Nicole, whose parents were born in Haiti, stated: “I wanted to be a massage therapist; I
wanted to be a teacher of French, of visual arts. On the other hand, my parents wanted
me to have a good job. They wanted me to be a lawyer, a doctor. I did not want that; it
took them a long time to understand. . . . I did not lose the option to become a
massage therapist; I did not lose it, but I reconsidered my choices.” Such students also
feel economic constraints, because they assume that their parents will not be able to
help them financially during their post-secondary education. For some young people,
doing a technical program in CEGEP allows them to secure their subsequent access to
university. They figure that they will be able to earn a higher salary based on their
technical degree, and that that will allow them to support themselves and pay their
own tuition when they eventually enter university. We call this a staggered path. For
others, completing a technical program will allow them to access the job market more
quickly and without going to university.
We also interviewed young people who experienced difficulties in high school, but
persisted despite these difficulties. However, their academic challenges seem still to
follow them in CEGEP, and earning a college diploma does not seem a certainty for
them. Their parents’ minimum expectation is that they obtain a college diploma to
ensure entry to the labour force. They feel strong family pressures to enter particular
programs, and these, combined with weak school records, limit access to their desired
programs. These young people make career choices by default, a process of
271 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
elimination, that is rooted in a combination of their academic constraints (such as
school difficulties or weak school record) and family pressures (obligation to meet
parental aspirations about their education and career paths).
The young people we interviewed told us that they did not have all the information
required to make an informed choice. Annabelle, whose parents were born in Haiti, for
example, was not aware of the consequences that choosing enriched mathematics
versus regular mathematics would have on the continuation of her postsecondary
career: “I feel as if my generation was a sacrificed generation. We did not even know
what we were getting into. The only thing we knew is that in Grade 9, you had to
choose between mathematics 4-16 or 4-36. Right there, you decided your future, but
you didn’t know it.” This misunderstanding or misinterpretation of how the education
system functions may contribute, in an unfair way, to less direct school to career
pathways. Our research revealed that these young people come, disproportionately,
from public schools located in disadvantaged areas, which may explain a lack of
information about career options, possibilities for accessing various options,
opportunities for funding for post-secondary education, and so on. It is also possible
that these young people don’t fully understand the merit-based access to education
and career sectors in Quebec.
Young people thus experience inequity. In their eyes, the institution does not seem to
support them sufficiently to understand the educational system and possible career
choices. According to Mela, whose parents were born in El Salvador and Guatemala:
“It’s really like, you finish school, and ‘Okay, bye, good luck; have a nice future; then
that’s all.’” In retrospect, these young people are critical of the institution. They
suggest that if they had been members of the school staff, they would have acted
differently. Viola, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic, stated “If, for
example, I had to advise people, I’d say, ‘Do advanced math in high school, do sciences,
do everything you have to do in high school to go to college well-equipped, because it
really changes your interests,’ it changes, it’s crazy, you get there and then you realize,
then you are sunk.”
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 272
Some Implications for Intervention
Guidance counsellors play an important role in enabling young people and their
parents to make free and informed choices. More information about the consequences
of high school course selection on postsecondary pathways could clarify the range of
possibilities for students. To increase awareness of and challenge systemic barriers,
guidance counsellors could assume roles such as: (a) information translators allowing
these young people to understand the way the system functions and to take advantage
of the available resources; (b) social change agents to raise awareness about the
challenges faced by such young people and to fight against systemic barriers; (c)
resiliency coaches for youth and their families. Guidance counsellors can promote
ethical and critical professional practice by (a) becoming aware of ethnocentric lenses,
communication barriers, and mutual misunderstandings; (b) engaging in reflective
practice and recognizing the subjectivity of their own cultural worldview; (c) attending
to immigration and family contexts to avoid imposing cultural assumptions or biases;
(d) establishing a bond of trust with each young person and their parents; (d) holding
high expectations for all the young people they encounter; (e) thinking about how to
transform and adapt professional practices to meet the needs of all youth; and (f)
enhancing the training of guidance counsellors related to ethnocultural diversity.
Case Studies
Choose one of the following case studies and respond to the questions for reflection
below.
Maria, born in Quebec to parents from Haiti, wants to do a CEGEP in social work.
Her parents were unable to work in their professions in Quebec; her father is a taxi
driver, and her mother is an orderly. They often tell her that they sacrificed
themselves for the good of their children by choosing to immigrate, and they have
lofty ambitions for her. Her parents are opposed to her pursuing a social work degree
want her to enroll in a pre-university that opens the door for her to become a doctor
273 | Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice
or a lawyer. Maria wants to find a compromise between her aspirations and those of
her parents.
Hakim, originally from Morocco, arrived in Quebec at the age of 14. He dreams of
becoming an architect. However, his academic performance has dropped, because he
arrived in Quebec as an adolescent and had to adapt to a new educational system.
Looking at his transcript, it doesn’t look likely that he could get into an architecture
program in a university.
• How would you help them to achieve their goals and aspirations?
• Where would you begin in your interactions with them?
• What professional roles might you assume to most effectively work with them?
• What types of intervention might you propose?
Chapter 6. The Impact of Social Injustice | 274
Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma:
A Decolonizing Therapeutic Framework
for Indigenous Counsellors Working with
Indigenous Clients
RIEL DUPUIS-ROSSI (KANIEN’KEHÁ:KA AND ALGONQUIN)
Over the last decade of providing decolonizing trauma therapy to Indigenous adults, I have
learned that to be an effective Indigenous trauma therapist means working on multiple
therapeutic levels simultaneously to address the complex and transgenerational impacts of
genocide and colonization. Not only is the trauma historical, ancestral, cultural, and collective,
but also it is ongoing, which adds to the complexity. As Indigenous people, we suffer from
shock trauma, otherwise known as posttraumatic stress (PTS), and we suffer from layers of
historical, intergenerational, and complex trauma as well as profound intergenerational,
unresolved, and traumatic grief that accompanies being subjected to all the different forms of
colonial violence.
Canada’s attempted and ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples on Great Turtle Island
has created significant challenges to doing effective healing and therapeutic work. With that
said, it is being done by many Indigenous people and in many ways: Elders, Matriarchs,
Knowledge Keepers, therapists, outreach workers, and community members are working to
heal the impact of colonization in Ceremony, on the streets, in counselling offices and in
prisons, on the land, by the rivers and lakes, in the mountains and under the trees that have
sustained our lives since time immemorial. Our people are working to heal. We are working in
a heartfelt and committed way to help each other overcome the 500+ years of violence waged
against us by the Settler State. Our Snuneymuxw and Cowichan Elder, Roberta Price, reminds
us that the land, our Ancestors, and the Great Spirit of Creation are holding us up as we do
this good work. We are a part of what our St’at’imc Elder, Gerry Oleman, calls an “Indigenous
healing movement.”
275 | Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma
A Decolonizing Therapeutic Framework
I am a two-spirit person of Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), Algonquin, and Italian descent and am
also an intergenerational survivor of “Indian Residential School.” I grew up on my traditional
territories, off-reserve. I have been on my own continuous healing journey for over two
decades in hopes of uplifting myself and all my relations, including my loved ones, my relatives
in the Spirit world, and my Ancestors. I work as a psychotherapist with urban Indigenous
adults in an Indigenous-specific counselling program on Unceded Coast Salish Territory
(British Columbia). In this chapter, I focus specifically on some aspects of the work of naming
and identifying the experience of Indigenous survivors of attempted genocide, which has been
defined and articulated as Indigenous historical trauma. I have already written about
stabilization work that has proven to be effective with Indigenous adults presenting in therapy
with trauma-related dissociation (Dupuis-Rossi & Reynolds, in press). I aspire to provide a
picture of how to work, as an Indigenous therapist doing therapy with Indigenous clients, as
different forms of trauma, caused by colonization, present themselves in session.
I have found that a variety of therapeutic responses are vital to trauma renegotiation,
resolution, and healing for Indigenous clients. And we are, as Indigenous therapists, called on
to be able to be present for a multitude of experiences that show up at any given moment in
session. In this sense, the work is far from linear, but instead, is circular and multidimensional.
It is Ceremony that occurs between Indigenous client and Indigenous therapist, held up by
the Great Spirit of Our Ancestors, the Great Spirit of Turtle Island, and of our specific
Indigenous territories. It calls on us to remember our cultural inheritances at the same time
that we are asked to acknowledge the importance of healthy safe connection to self and
others at this moment in our lives. Despite the ravages of colonization, we, Indigenous
individuals, have the capacity to make healthy and safe relationships, with self and safe
Indigenous others, possible. And I believe that this is a vitally important step in the larger
project of decolonization (Dupuis-Rossi & Reynolds, in press).
This chapter is based on my graduate thesis on Indigenous historical trauma (Dupuis-Rossi,
2011). The initial research is based on my appeal to the Indigenous historical trauma literature
and is complemented by my practical application of the theory in my therapeutic practice
with Indigenous adults. Within the many layers of therapeutic responses we are called on to
develop as Indigenous therapists, I have found that one major thread runs through them: the
active and ongoing acknowledgement of colonization and its deep and far-reaching impact on
our People. So whether we are working with the trauma of our Ancestors and relatives in the
Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma | 276
Spirit World or with the related complex trauma or PTS that we have survived in our own lives,
the foundational framework has to be the acknowledgement of the relentless violence
committed against our People over the last 500 years. This is the starting point.
However, what precedes this step is the ability to work therapeutically to interrupt the cycles
of colonial violence that repeat themselves in our lives today. We are called on, as Indigenous
therapists, to be able to help Indigenous clients reclaim a positive sense of themselves as
Indigenous persons in relationship to an Indigenous collective, the land, and All of our
Relations. Being able to work clinically to renegotiate the various forms of trauma, born of
hundreds of years of colonial violence, is vital in reaching the therapeutic goal of helping
Indigenous clients to connect or reconnect to a healthy sense of their Indigenous selves in
connection to a healthy decolonizing Indigenous community.
In this chapter, I will focus and define Indigenous historical trauma, specifically, and its related
“symptoms”/responses. I will also, briefly, critically engage with the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in its application to Indigenous people seeking counselling
services; as well as outline Indigenous and decolonizing therapeutic responses to Indigenous
historical trauma in individual and group therapy as well as in Indigenous Elder-led Ceremony.
277 | Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
• Acculturative stress
• Acts of resistance
• Agency/self-determination
• Anti-pathologizing lens
• Bearing witness
• Collective identities
• Colonial or political violence
• Colonialism/colonization
• Colonial relationship
• Colonial worldview
• Complex posttraumatic stress
• Connection-disconnection
• Consciousness-raising
• Contextualized/systemic lens
• Cultural empowerment
• Decolonizing
• Decolonizing therapeutic
relationship
• Externalizing
• Historical/colonial trauma
• Indigeneity
• Indigenizing
• Indigenous/cultural healers and
ceremonialists
• Indigenous/cultural healing
practices and rituals
• Indigenous/cultural knowledge
and teachings
• Indigenous views of health and
healing
• Indigenous worldviews
• Individualist worldview
• Internalized oppression
• Internalized racism
• Lateral oppression/violence
• Locus of control/responsibility
• Loss of cultural identity/
relationality
• Multigenerational issues
• Mutual cultural empathy
• Posttraumatic stress
• Psycholonization
• Racism
• Reconstruction of cultural
identity/relationality
• Relationality
• Relationship to land/place
• Retraumatization
• Safety/cultural safety
• Self-compassion
• Social determinants of health
• Systemic/structural barriers
• Trauma
• Voice
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma | 278
Indigenous Historical Trauma
Before delving into the impact of 500+ years of colonization, it is vital to acknowledge it. As an
Indigenous therapist writing within the confines of a book chapter, I find it difficult to
articulate, let alone honour, the breadth of the impact of colonization on the minds, hearts,
spirits, bodies, and relationships of our People. What I do know is that I have been working for
years, on a full-time basis and in a deeply committed way, to show up for it as it presents in
session through my clients. Historical accounts of the brutality of colonization can move us to
tears and leave us in existential crisis about how “evil” operates in the world. But hearing the
real lived experience as recounted by Indigenous people opening up about what lives in their
hearts is a totally different experience. It’s intimate, but so too is the way centuries of colonial
violence devastates our lives.
I have come to understand colonization as a violence that attacks, with relentless and
brutalizing force, the diversity of relationships of Indigenous nations, peoples, and cultures.
It’s a form of violence that strikes to the very heart of everything that we hold sacred as a
People. Since time immemorial, our relationships to the land, to the water, to the animals and
plants, to each other, and to the Great Spirit of Creation that animates and imbues all aspects
of our existence have been held and upheld, culturally, as fundamentally sacred. Colonization,
by contrast, has invaded and occupied our territories through wholescale military force. It has
attacked and criminalized our Ceremonies, Traditional Teachings, and ways of life. It seeks to
devastate and disrupt every aspect of our relationships to each other, whether those be in the
way we govern ourselves or in the ways we teach, raise, accept, understand, and love each
other.
In sociopolitical and historical terms, this has meant that we, as Indigenous peoples, have had
our lands invaded and occupied for over 500 years. It means that 95 per cent of our relatives
were killed in the first century of colonization. At the same time, we have been dehumanized
and our ways of life desecrated and violated by the imposition of the reservation system, the
Indian Act, the Band Council system of governance, residential schools, prisons, and the “child
welfare” system.
And when all of this is said and done, we, as a People, are “invited” by the insidious forces of
colonization to self-destruct: through the use of alcohol or drugs, by re-enacting in our
communities and families the unthinkable and unspeakable crimes committed against us
through the residential school system, by living our lives in reckless, detached or isolated
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ways, by disowning who we are and where we come from, and by betraying each other time
and time again. If the forces of colonization do not succeed in directly destroying us,
marginalizing us, or disappearing us, Indigenous people are ultimately given very few choices,
within the system of colonial capitalism: Poverty, criminalization, violence, exploitation,
chaos, sickness, and isolation are what we are told we deserve. It is what is forced on us, as
Indigenous peoples, time and time again.
And yet, somehow, contained in the heart of the disenfranchised, unresolved, traumatic, and
complicated grief that all this colonial violence causes, lives an inner and collective knowing
of what it is to be in a good way. Our Indigenous spirits know what it means to walk the
Onkwehon:we path. Deep in the heart of the waves of shock and loss is contained a memory of
a time and place where the waters run pure, the trees are free to touch the sky, the plant
medicines are respected and appreciated, and the animals are recognized as relatives and
teachers who are much older and wiser than we humans. Our Traditional Teachings,
Ceremonies and Original Instructions live in the grief. From my very humble perspective as
an Indigenous therapist, reconnecting and reclaiming this knowledge and history is our
birthright and one of the pathways to reclaim a way of life that respects Great Turtle Island
and Mother Earth, which seems to me of the utmost importance at this current historical
juncture.
Indigenous Historical Trauma: A Definition
So how does what our Ancestors lived through live in us? How does attempted and ongoing
genocide inscribe itself on our Onkwehon:we hearts and minds? On our Indigenous spirits and
lives? On our relationship to ourselves and to each other? What are the very human, very
intimate impacts of 500+ years of ceaseless genocide? Knowledge of Indigenous historical
trauma is hundreds of years old and has been articulated by Elders in Indigenous
communities across Turtle Island (Duran, 2006). I want to respectfully acknowledge the work
of Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and community members across Great Turtle
Island for finding ways to honour our Ancestors and to name our inheritances by organizing
the experience known as the Indigenous historical trauma response. Naming this experience
is tantamount to bringing a sense of structure and order to what can often, otherwise, be
experienced as ongoing chaos, darkness, and pain. This is an important first step in reclaiming
a right to safety and reconnecting to our collective lived experience.
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The most affirming, relevant, and helpful part about how the Indigenous historical trauma
response is conceptualized is to show how past and present, distal and proximal colonial
violence and the trauma it causes, is intricately connected in Indigenous people’s lives today.
Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers, theorists, and therapists stress that the high rates of
substance abuse, intimate partner and family violence, and suicide that plague Indigenous
nations today (defined in the literature as proximal causes of trauma) are a direct consequence
of historical colonialism (i.e., distal causes of trauma, which include forced relocation from
traditional territories and residential schools) (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave Heart & DeBruyn,
1998; Duran, 2006; Duran, Duran & Brave Heart, 1998; Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, & Yellow
Horse-Davis, 1998).
One of the many forms that colonial violence takes is to systematically disempower, devalue,
and marginalize the power of Indigenous women. Throughout colonial history, Indigenous
women, from many territories and Nations, were displaced from traditional governance roles
by the imposition of Canada’s Band Council system of governance and its related patriarchal
system of private property. The historical and distal violence and trauma of the Indian Act,
which put in place these institutions, created the current conditions in which Indigenous
women are more likely to be assaulted or murdered by a stranger in Canada than any other
“social group.” The ways that Indigenous women have been systematically attacked historically
has led to the disappearance of over 1200 Indigenous women in Canada since the late 1960s.
For hundreds of years Indigenous children have also been targeted by the genocidal forces of
“Indian Residential Schools,” which were first established in the 1800s. To this day, Indigenous
children are being targeted for removal from their homes and communities; there are
currently over 40,000 Indigenous children in non-Indigenous foster homes. The number of
Indigenous children being removed from their homes and raised in non-Indigenous foster
care, a modern form of colonial residential institution, is four times greater than at the height
of residential school operations. In this sense, as it concerns Indigenous women and children
particularly, the colonial violence of the past continues today. In this way, it is also important
to acknowledge that Indigenous men are currently disproportionately overrepresented in
Canadian prisons, and Indigenous two-spirit people suffer from tragically high rates of
suicide. All across Turtle Island, Indigenous communities are fighting to preserve the land
from industrial development projects and pipelines in the wake of broken treaties, and
Indigenous individuals are struggling to secure safe housing after being rendered homeless in
our own Homelands.
The reservation system, the system of private property, the supplanting of traditional
governance structures and roles, the patriarchal nuclear family model, as well as foreign
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languages, such as English, and religions, like Christianity, are social institutions that have
been established in Indigenous nations and cultures through acts of horrific violence over
hundreds of years (Alfred, 2005; Cole, 2006). The losses throughout history are great and
ongoing. In this sense, the legacy of loss cannot be located solely in the past (Ledesma, 2003).
In addition to the attempted decimation of Indigenous worldviews, cultural practices, and
relationships to land, Indigenous people suffer from high rates of homelessness, incarceration,
chronic disease, suicide, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, accidents, and deaths.
These are the very personal, sociopolitical, and collective impacts and outcomes of relentless
colonial violence. Historical trauma thus becomes compounded by new traumatic
experiences that are rooted in both past and ongoing oppression (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave
Heart & DeBruyn, 1998; Duran, 2006; Duran, Duran & Brave Heart, 1998; Duran, Duran, Brave
Heart, & Yellow Horse-Davis, 1998).
The Indigenous Historical Trauma Response
According to the Indigenous historical trauma literature, Indigenous historical trauma is
comprised of distinct, but interrelated, conditions that include: (a) the survivor complex, (b)
disenfranchised and unresolved grief, (c) intergenerational transmission (d) acculturative
stress, and (e) internalized oppression (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998;
Duran, 2006; Duran, Duran & Brave Heart, 1998; Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, & Yellow
Horse-Davis, 1998).
The Survivor Complex
The survivor complex comprises an array of trauma symptoms that affect both the survivors
and the following survivor generations of genocidal military campaigns, forced relocations,
and residential schools. Those who are impacted by the survivor complex experience various
symptoms including anxiety and impulsivity; intrusive imagery, including nightmares and
compensatory fantasies; depression and unresolved grief; social withdrawal and isolation;
persistent feelings of guilt and a perceived obligation to share in ancestral pain; identification
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with the deceased ancestors and a sense of responsibility to reverse past tragedies; as well as
a preoccupation with death and persecution (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998; Duran, 2006).
For many of us, these symptoms of Indigenous historical trauma seem to be an unquestioned
way of life that reflects the ways that we have collectively managed to carry on. Our ancestors,
the Old Ones, and our relatives in the Spirit World all fought so that we Indigenous individuals,
families, and communities could prevail through the violence, poverty, misery, and oppression
imposed on us by the Settler State. Our Ancestors and relatives fought to preserve our
territories, our songs, our Ceremonies, Teachings, and Medicines as best they could despite
wholescale attack on every single aspect of our ways of life. It is said that there is generally a
deep wisdom contained in our reactions and adaptations to the violence we survive. In
learning of the survivor complex, I have come to believe this to be true.
I realize the depth of historical trauma in the moments when a residential school survivor
from the Northern Cree territory can “break through the walls of hate that had been taught to
them there” and acknowledge, with deep caring and concern, the plight of the Cariboo who
are plagued by cancer, because of the pollution of the rivers and lakes from large-scale
mining. I re-realize it again when a Gitsxa’an Sixties Scoop survivor can break open the layers
of numbing and isolation from having been adopted out and let flow the anguish about how
many tumours salmon carry beneath their scales. I have witnessed, in Ceremony, the grief of
our Ancestors and relatives in the Spirit World and their knowledge of a time when every tree,
whether it was White Pine or Red Cedar, was 250 feet tall and the beaver were as large as
small bear.
I have assisted in containing, in session, the otherwise unbearable dizziness and deep sense of
disorientation that is stored in the physiology of a Métis woman resulting from the traumatic
loss that spans generations of her family. And I have held, relationally, the resounding
existential cry of a Carrier grandmother who has faced such dehumanizing racism and
marginalization in her life that it begs the questions: “How could this be? Why do they hate us
so much?”
Colonization and attempted ongoing genocide leave our hearts with a despair and anguish
that is relived, time and time again. From Haudenosaunee to Coast Salish territory, I have
witnessed the experience of different Indigenous clients who share that, in walking down the
street, they become starkly connected to the loss of trout and salmon bearing rivers,
respectively, that are now dry from being cemented over and damned. The Indigenous
historical trauma response and the coalescence of its different “symptoms” known as the
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survivors complex involves the repetitive incessant shock of realizing over and over again the
unspeakable, unthinkable, inconceivable loss of a way of life that has existed on Great Turtle
Island since time immemorial. It’s the shock of re-realizing that a way of life that is held so
intimately in your bones, and that has deep integrity to it, could be supplanted by a colonial
system that is so fundamentally destructive. In the words of our Elders, the survivors’ complex
is the form the pain in our hearts takes as a result of colonization making us refugees in our
own Homelands.
When our Indigenous collectivity, the foundation of who we are, is attacked in the very place
we call home, it is deeply wounding. When we witness our fallen relatives and feel the weight
of their absence, we suffer a pain beyond words. If we manage, somehow, to survive the
violence of colonization and the related losses, it leaves indelible scars. And when the fact of
the violence occurring is legislated and legalized, denied, normalized, justified, forgotten, or
never learned of by the very people who benefit directly from it, this creates a whole other
form of violence and pain that must be endured.
The Ongoing Legacy of Loss: Disenfranchised and Unresolved Grief
Inherent in this kind of violence is profound terror, but also layers of profound loss,
unspeakable loss that touches on the most vulnerable parts of being human. According to
Duran (2006), colonial violence devastates the spirit of both the land and the people in its
attempts to destroy the “lifeworld” of Indigenous peoples in our own territories. Duran (2006)
described the consequences of colonialism as “Earth wounding” that contributes, first and
foremost, to “soul wounding.” Due to the soul wounding that occurred over generations,
Indigenous individuals, families, communities, and Nations carry “soul sadness” (Duran,
Firehammer, & Gonzalez, 2008). Duran (2006) explained that, during the time of the wounding
process, our Indigenous Ancestors did not have the time to grieve, let alone heal, due to the
overwhelming demands of trying to survive as a People. The pain, as a result, became
repressed and regressed into the unconscious and was in this manner transmitted to
subsequent generations. Disenfranchised grief is best understood as the “grief that persons
experience when a loss cannot be openly acknowledged or publicly mourned” (Brave Heart &
DeBruyn, 1998, p. 62).
Indigenous peoples were prohibited, by colonial law and by relentless military attack, to grieve
the loss of all of our relations including loved ones, leaders, community members, animals, and
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sacred sites like mountains and rivers. Indigenous individuals were isolated by virtue of being
prohibited to mourn as communities and, by extension, to access social support. This deeply
disrupted community connection and cohesion, caused high rates of social isolation and
withdrawal, another prominent symptom of disenfranchised grief (Duran, 2006). As a result,
individuals suffering from disenfranchised grief experience the intensification of emotional
reactions such as anger, guilt, sadness, hopelessness, and helplessness. However, because our
grieving process was undermined and rendered illegitimate, through social prohibition and
criminalization of collective mourning, the feelings associated with loss become internally
stigmatized. What comes to supplant them, on an individual level, is a deeply held sense of
shame and, underneath that terror and rage (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave Heart & Debruyn, 1998).
Many Indigenous clients that I work with present in session carrying so much pain and so
much grief that has never been witnessed or held in the safety of relationship. It amazes me
and inspires deep respect to see how, if given the chance, the time, the space, and the
consideration, our people know how to grieve. We know how to care, and I have come to
believe that the reason we hold on to such heavy pain is because at the heart of it is love. Deep
and profound love: Love of our relatives; love of the land; love of our cultures and our beliefs;
love of the peace that comes when you live your life with integrity, connected in heart and
soul to the world around you; love that comes when you don’t forget all that really matters
about life as it has been handed down by the generations that preceded you.
I have had the honour of sitting with Indigenous Elders and Matriarchs who tell me, as tears
stream down their faces, that we as a People knew how to mourn before colonization. They
tell me of knowing how to sit in Circle and feel the pain that lives in our hearts when we are
grieving a significant loss. They tell me of the rituals and Ceremonies, the gatherings and the
Medicines, that help to lessen the burden of loss when we engage in them together as a
community, united. And in those moments, when the ways of Condolence Ceremony are
shared with me, I have a sense of what was lost. And I receive a sense of what is being
honoured with their tears and of the value of what these wise Indigenous Elders and
Matriarchs have held onto until it was safe enough to name out loud, until it was safe enough
to be witnessed with the assuredness that it would be heard with the utmost respect and with
the sacredness it deserves.
In these moments, the shame imposed on Indigenous people by the forces of colonization
seems to recede. This is the power of witnessing, as I have been taught by my Elders. It breaks
through the silence and the hiding, and it gives power to the process of revealing, the power
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of revealing truth, the truth of the heart and how it connects us over generations and, at this
point in our history as diverse Indigenous nations and cultures, to each other.
Intergenerational Transmission
Brave Heart and DeBruyn (1998) added to the concept of disenfranchised and unresolved grief
by explaining how such grief is connected to intergenerational transmission.
Intergenerational transmission is the perpetuation and persistence of the influence and
psychological experiencing of major historical events through generations, and it can involve
the past being vividly re-experienced in a present moment (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave Heart &
DeBruyn, 1998; Duran, 2006; Duran, Duran & Brave Heart, 1998; Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, &
Yellow Horse-Davis, 1998). As a result, subsequent generations of Indigenous people
experience a “pervasive sense of pain from what happened to their ancestors and incomplete
mourning of those losses” (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998, p. 64). According to Duran (2006),
many Indigenous clients expressed that there is a pain in their heart that will not go away, and
that the pain has been there as long as they can remember.
An ongoing sense of dread and helplessness is also common for many Indigenous individuals,
families, and communities (Duran, 2006). In addition to intrusive visions of genocidal imagery,
unresolved grief that has been passed on to the present generation is experienced as ongoing
fear, terror, and sadness. When explored further in session, with the supportiveness of a
culturally-relevant Indigenous space, Indigenous clients are able to connect to the roots of
their pain. Experiences that are otherwise “best” described as “paranoia,” by an Indigenous
man with feminist commitments, are connected to the horrific white supremacist violence a
grandmother survived generations ago.
A sense of inferiority and deflation is traced back, in the safety of a therapy session, by a brave
and committed Indigenous client, to the time a grandfather negotiated a treaty on behalf of
his people with integrity and good faith, only to be fated to starve in a “prisoner of war” camp
once he had signed. What was seemingly a “run of the mill” issue of “low self-esteem” on the
surface, when engaged with in Indigenous-led decolonizing therapy, revealed itself to be the
intergenerational vestiges of the deep betrayal faced by this particular community and family.
Additionally, Indigenous intergenerational survivors of residential school have repeatedly
shared that they re-experience the cold, the loneliness, the terror and the suffering of their
relatives as if they were actually there. What I have learned over the last decade, however, is
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that no matter how initially painful it is to reconnect to our Ancestors and relatives through
such horrific experiences, it does allow for a deeper sense of connection to our Indigenous
selves and a reclaiming of a sense of belonging that is often otherwise lost through
colonization.
Acculturative Stress
Acculturative stress, a branch of the Indigenous historical trauma response, is understood by
Indigenous scholars as a continuous process caused by ongoing pressure to assimilate to the
“lifeworld” of settler society through perpetual acts of domination. The stressors of
acculturation have their source in the process of assimilation which is, in and of itself,
fundamentally genocidal in nature. Acculturative stress involves the tension, frustration,
anger, sense of betrayal, feelings of alienation and marginality, deep sorrow, low self-esteem,
confusion, and rage that connect to a sense of overwhelm related to our dehumanization as
Indigenous people and the desecration of our ways of life. Forced assimilation causes the
stress of having to live in two worlds: one that is out to annihilate you, one way or another,
and the other, which can be disappeared and devalued by the first. The stress of forced
assimilation is an ongoing struggle for each of the clients I have seen.
Internalized Oppression
According to Fanon (1963), Freire (1990), and Duran and Duran (1995), the brutality of
colonization harms the integrity of our beings as Indigenous people. We are often required to
manage internal states and feelings of overwhelm, disorientation, helplessness, and
hopelessness without much understanding or support. In our attempts to strike the
impossible balance between staying safe and being connected to ourselves, to our actual lived
experience, and to others under the conditions of colonialism, our consciousness can become
relatively fragmented. Parts of our selves remain in touch with the pain of colonial oppression,
while other parts of ourselves identify with the colonial aggressor. Identification with the
colonial aggressor can take on many forms, including fear-based patterns of behaviour. For
example, going “one up” or “one down” in our interactions in community or engaging in the
“trauma triangle” where work, family, and community relationships are overdetermined by
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“rescuer–victim–persecutor” dynamics. These are some of the ways that the terror and
helplessness that we have been made to feel lead us to access a hierarchical and colonial form
of power and to infuse it into our patterns of relating to one another.
Underlying these defenses, Duran (2006) theorized that, in the case of Indigenous individuals,
there is a core desire to gain the aggressor’s power and eventually turn that power on the
aggressor. At a deep psychic level, the acquisition of the aggressor’s power has the ultimate
goal of destroying the colonial system and restoring the community to a pre-colonial
lifeworld. Because removal of the colonial forces is not realized, the repressed rage and
otherwise healthy protective impulses have no safe place for expression and positive
integration; healthy rage and related impulses are connected to a need for the restoration of a
just social order. In the absence of a safe place to process the righteous rage caused by our
human reactions to colonial injustice, the rage is turned inward or is directed toward our
loved ones.
Brave Heart (2003) explained that internalized oppression exists in a context overdetermined
by colonial domination, a context in which it is dangerous to express anger and outrage
toward the dominant society or state. Accordingly, anger and outrage are redirected toward
more vulnerable and accessible targets: oneself or members of one’s own oppressed
community. This is often referred to as lateral violence, but is, in its essence, the
re-enactment of colonial violence: It does not originate in Indigenous culture or ways of
relating, collectively or interpersonally. The re-enactment of colonial violence within
ourselves and in our relationships with others is a devastatingly painful, destructive, and
alienating outcome of centuries of colonization.
High rates of suicide, intimate partner and family violence, homicide, substance abuse, and
deaths where alcohol and drugs are involved are considered symptoms of internalized colonial
violence and oppression (Big Foot, 2009; Brave Heart, 2003; Duran, 2006; Duran & Duran,
1995; Duran et al., 2008). The abuse of political and economic power by Band Council
leadership, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and by others in positions of authority at the
community level is another way that the violence of 500+ years of colonialism is re-enacted.
Tragically, this type of violence is perpetrated by people who are charged with protecting and
caring for the community. This violation of community trust serves to further alienate people
from the collectivity, causing yet another level of social isolation (Duran, 2006).
These occurrences, which are in themselves traumatic (both as isolated events and in virtue of
their frequency in the life of a community), occur in a social context that is overdetermined by
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multiple losses caused by ongoing colonial violence. A consequence of these contemporary
manifestations of internalized oppression and historical trauma is that they compound and
complicate historical grief. In other words, the numerous psychosocial problems that plague
Indigenous individuals and communities are a consequence of historical trauma, but they also
fuel the anguish, psychological numbing, and destructive coping mechanisms related to
disenfranchised, unresolved, and traumatic grief (Brave Heart, 2003; Brave Heart & DeBruyn,
1998; Duran & Duran, 1995).
Indigenous Historical Trauma Response: A Case in Point
Dakota, an Anishnaabe man arrives late for a session after previously discussing the
importance of showing up for the work. Recognizing his high stress levels and ultimate
commitment to therapy, I engage Dakota about what was happening for him around his
“lateness.” Dakota begins by opening up about a sense of internalized blame and
incompetence, a feeling of overwhelm and dread. He reflects on how much responsibility he
had as a teenager to upkeep and maintain the family farm. He speaks of the way instructions
were communicated to him by his father, a direct survivor of a residential school, with
frustration, intolerance, anger, and disappointment. Dakota shares of the history of the
residential school in his family and how it ultimately connected to the imposition of the
reservation and “farm life” on his great grandfather, who had fought the Canadian government
to protect the nomadic hunting and trapping life of his people.
By opening up time and space in session, by directly naming the forces of colonization on
Turtle Island, and by honouring the value of his traditional culture, Dakota is able to connect
to the pain around the signing of the treaty and the division it caused in his community. He
talks about how these divisions, caused by divide and conquer tactics of the Canadian
government, are still exploited on a regular basis by the Department of Indigenous Affairs.
What began as an exploration of the reasons Dakota was late, ends up being a major reframe
of his own sense of incompetence and “dysfunction.” In widening the frame to include an
acknowledgement of the impact of colonization, Dakota affirms the skills needed to hunt and
trap and empathizes with the stress of forced assimilation passed down through the
generations. Dakota connects his “anxiety” and “depression” to the injustice of the treaties, to
the imposition of reserve system and the Indian Act, which forced farming as a way of life on
Indigenous communities across the Plains.
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The imposition of a farming lifestyle, the reserve system, and residential schools attacked not
only our relationship to our own territory, but also how we exist on that territory. Residential
school disrupted our own knowledge of how to teach each other, like we did traditionally with
patience, understanding, presence, and love, and replaced it with a sense of disorientation and
overwhelm that has disconnected us from ourselves, our sense of competence, and our
capacity to create safe, stable relations with each other. Thanks to his own courage, love of his
family and commitment to decolonizing therapeutic work, this particular Indigenous client is
able to reach through all of that to connect with his father. Dakota is able to speak with his
father and to acknowledge this history and how it had disconnected them in the past. In turn,
his father is able to name the influence of the residential school and how traditionally their
family were hunters and trappers. Dakota’s father speaks of the decimation of the Buffalo and
the communities forced relocation onto the reserve. He honours his son’s act of courage and
says that his great grandfather would be proud. This moment was hard earned, because over
one hundred years of colonization had to be acknowledged and contained for the power to be
taken out of it to allow for the love between father and son to be the thing that mattered most
in that significant healing moment.
The Inadequacies of the DSM as a Diagnostic Tool in Work with
Indigenous Clients
Over the last decade of my work in decolonizing practice with Indigenous adults, I have
observed the over-psychiatrization of Indigenous clients by the non-Indigenous mental
health system. Time and time again, I have had Indigenous clients report to me their
diagnoses of bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective
disorder, ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Utilizing a historically and politically informed
perspective grounded in Indigenous worldview and culture, I have come to see how
misrepresented and undermined Indigenous clients are by non-Indigenous approaches to
diagnosis and treatment. In failing to address the sociohistorical factors that contribute to
Indigenous clients’ distress, the non-Indigenous counselling profession is further
pathologizing Indigenous individuals and communities for harms done to them by the colonial
state and settler society.
As such, I have witnessed over the years that neither the brutality of what Indigenous clients
have survived in their own lifetimes, nor what they carry ancestrally, is recognized or
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honoured. Their strength and resilience is for the most part ignored in mainstream mental
health systems. What is foregrounded is a dominating pathologizing and medicalizing
perspective on Indigenous clients that diagnoses symptoms and erases our Indigenous selves
and lives. Non-Indigenous assessment systematically ignores and erases the history of how
Canada has come to be and how the violence toward Indigenous People, which is at its
foundation, overdetermines our lives at present. In light of this pattern, the DSM, in my
opinion, is an inadequate tool to diagnose the issues facing Indigenous clients.
The fact that chronic interpersonal and structural forms of societal violence are so prevalent
in US society motivated some non-Indigenous psychiatrists to lobby the American Psychiatric
Association (APA) for the inclusion of “complex posttraumatic stress disorder” in the
DSM-V-TR (Curran, 2010; Herman 1992a; Herman, 1992b). These efforts have not yet
culminated in the APA’s official recognition of this condition (Hyland et al., 2017). However in
June 2018 the World Health Organization added this disorder to its newest version
International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). See the definition of complex posttraumatic
stress CPTS) in the glossary. In a review of recent research internationally, Karatzias and
colleagues (2017) concluded that there is a distinction between CPTS and PTS, and CPTS is
actually more common for victims of trauma than PTS. The profession’s acknowledgement of
the violence and abuse that contribute to CPTS would constitute one step toward
understanding the phenomenon of Indigenous historical trauma; the main criteria originally
proposed for a diagnosis of CPTS is a history of subjugation to “totalitarian control” over a
period ranging from months to years (Briere, 2005; Briere, 2006; Herman, 1992b), reflected in
the ICD-11 characterizing of traumatic events “from which escape is difficult or impossible”
(6B41).
These international evolutions in understanding of trauma are an initial step in validating
earlier assertions by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers. In the 1990s, for example, Judith
Herman (1992b), a leading non-Indigenous trauma specialist, asserted that uncovering the
“underground history” of trauma is important, because the study of trauma has been
systematically marginalized within the discipline of psychiatry and psychology. She explains:
Denial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level. The
study of psychological trauma has an “underground” history. Like traumatized people, we
have been cut off from the knowledge of our past. Like traumatized people, we need to
understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future. Therefore, an
understanding of psychological trauma begins with rediscovering history. (p. ii)
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The ongoing lack of recognition of the trauma of colonialism in the DSM attests to the
invisibility of the violence that Duran (2006) asserted is at the very foundation of this nation.
And insofar as the DSM lacks a definition of complex trauma, it cannot comprehend the reality
of Indigenous historical trauma, which includes some features of complex trauma transmitted
intergenerationally and compounded by proximal causes (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998). The
individualistic framework of the DSM has been critiqued as being of limited usefulness for
Indigenous peoples, because it does not acknowledge the layers of trauma caused by
“centuries of exposure to racism, warfare, violence and catastrophic disease” (Big Foot, 2009,
p. 19), and it perpetuates a medicalized model that may “marginalize family and community
resources, and divert attention from social injustice” (Timimi, 2014, p. 212).
Decolonizing Responses to Indigenous Historical Trauma
To name Indigenous historical trauma is to give important acknowledgement of the ongoing
attempted genocide against Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island and to give voice to the
impacts of this violence, which often are relegated to the realm of the unspeakable, the place
of societal denial. Recognition of this form of state-based violence and collective injury is the
first step in providing the kind of therapeutic support that is relevant for Indigenous clients. In
this next section, I will do my best to describe how I have come to engage with the impact of
genocide and colonization by using Indigenous-centred and decolonizing individual and
group therapy and safe Indigenous Elder-led Ceremony.
The main steps to addressing Indigenous historical trauma requires Indigenous therapists
working with Indigenous clients to strike a fine balance between contextualizing the
symptoms of Indigenous historical trauma in the sociopolitical reality of genocide and
colonization, while working clinically in a culturally relevant and relationally attuned way. Only
then will we, as Indigenous therapists, truly be able to facilitate the good work of Indigenous
clients by externalizing the burdens that colonization places on our hearts, minds, spirits, and
bodies in order to facilitate a connection or reconnection with a positive sense of who they
are as Indigenous individuals in relation to our People.
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Conscientization and Reclamation: A First Step in Decolonizing
Therapy
Indigenous methods of healing historical trauma require that we, Indigenous therapists
working with Indigenous clients, actively engage in conscientization and recognize that
“symptoms of trauma” (e.g., alcoholism, depression, and suicidality) are consequences of
colonialism as opposed to individual pathology. The very concept of Indigenous historical
trauma recognizes that the trauma is suffered not by an isolated individual, but by whole
communities and nations, and over many generations. The antidote to these afflictions and
struggles, in my humble opinion, is relational. As Indigenous peoples, it is vital to our healing
and to our well-being that we reconnect to Indigenous culture, in order to promote a positive
sense of self, connectedness, and cultural revitalization that contribute to the political goal of
decolonization.
Healing from Indigenous historical trauma goes far deeper than the amelioration of personal
distress and the promotion of individual coping or functioning within the confines of colonial
capitalism. An integrated and decolonized Indigenous identity, attained in part through the
contemporary reclamation of Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices, is a means to remedy
the shared legacy of historical trauma. The development of this Indigenous identity is
grounded in a larger community-based decolonization agenda. Decolonization may be defined
as the intentional, collective, and reflective self-examination undertaken by Indigenous people
that results in collective remedial action. In short, the aim of decolonization is community
emancipation from the hegemony of outside colonial interests and actors (Big Foot & Schmidt,
2010; Brave Heart, 1998; Duran, 1990; Duran et al., 2008; Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, Yellow
Horse-Davis, 1998; Evans-Campbell, 2008).
Supporting Indigenous clients in becoming aware of how colonization impacts our lives, our
sense of self, and our relationships with others can help us “free ourselves,” in the words of
our Musqu’eam Elders, from the traumatic and oppressive conditions that characterize our
present situation. In contrast to non-Indigenous counselling practices, which have limited this
sort of deconstruction to personal or intrapsychic issues, Indigenous and decolonizing
therapy focuses on the sociohistorical context of distress and views cultural history as of
paramount importance to Indigenous clients’ healing from the very personal and relational
impacts of colonization.
Contextualizing the etiology of current symptoms of depression, alcoholism, violence, and
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suicidality in colonialism empowers Indigenous clients to trace the problems they are
experiencing to the historical and political events where the problem originated: dislocation
from land, relations, culture, language; residential schools; the Sixties Scoop; imposition of the
reserve system; the intentional flooding of reservations with alcohol; the environmental
destruction and social disruptions of industrial development projects; criminalization and
imprisonment; homelessness and poverty; and so forth.
Individual Therapy and Indigenous Historical Trauma
Working with suicidality: An example of decolonizing therapy
Rain, a Coast Salish woman in her late fifties, presents in session highly distressed from a
racist comment made to her at work by her non-Indigenous supervisor. In delving deeper into
the nature of the distress that she is feeling, Rain opens up about “how hard it is to want to
live right now.” At this point, I attune to the energetic and “unconscious” information being
communicated in the moment and assess, based on the high levels of nervous system
activation combined with my historical knowledge of the client, that the state of suicidality is
connected to overwhelm originating in childhood.
Riel: I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for that little girl to survive an abusive
non-Indigenous foster home.
Rain (after a long inward-looking pause): I blame myself for what happened to me a lot. That I
was bad.
In this moment, there is an opportunity to reframe the feelings of guilt and shame that
accompany her experience of suicidality by naming colonization and placing the experience of
guilt, shame, and suicidality in its sociohistorical context.
Riel: You are a survivor of an attempted and ongoing genocide against our People. You survived
the Sixties Scoop which, like the residential schools, tried to “kill the Indian in the child” with
colonial practices and beliefs, like Christianity, being forced on you. There is nothing about
attempted genocide and political torture that is at all the fault of a child.
In my experience, this decolonizing therapeutic response almost immediately lifts the burden
of guilt that weighs down on Indigenous clients, like Rain, in the moment. Speaking the truth
of the breadth and depth of colonization’s impact allows for the sense of shame and pathology
Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma | 294
about what has happened to us, in our families and in our communities, to lessen. No longer is
the darkness of this legacy our own but is recognized as something that has been perpetrated
by the State and by different religious institutions.
Discernment, grounding in adult self, and orienting to the relative
safety of the present
At the same time, I have found that it is important to work therapeutically to support
Indigenous clients in grounding in their adult selves by awakening their discernment skills and
ability to orient to the relative safety of the present. In this way, I make a point of
differentiating the racism that Rain faces now, as an adult in her place of work, from the
racism she experienced as a child as a result of her forced removal from her community to a
non-Indigenous foster home.
Riel: The thing about the racism that you are facing at work is that it is not life or death. Being
taken out of your community and away from your family, as a child, was. What you are going
through now is highly stressful and very painful, and I do not want to take away from that. But it
is important to differentiate what you went through in the past from what you are going through
now. It is also important to acknowledge that the racism that you faced as a little girl, growing
up in a racist foster home, did leave you fighting for survival. What you went through as a child
in the Sixties Scoop was a life or death form of racism.
Rain: I just remember always thinking that it was my fault how people treated me as a kid. That I
was bad or that I was a mistake or that there was something very wrong about where I come
from and my family.
Often when we are working with Indigenous clients presenting with symptoms of Indigenous
historical trauma, the developmental trauma that they have survived also presents itself. It is
important, in these instances, to remain as present and relational as possible, being able to
witness, hold, and support the overwhelm and distress they experienced as a child, while
providing new information to the client that supports them in orienting and connecting to
their adult capacity. In so doing, I provide Rain with information about the vulnerability of
being a child, the needs for care and protection at that stage in our lives, and our limited
ability to respond to overwhelming situations in the absence of it.
Riel: When faced with the kind of cruelty, abuse and neglect you experienced, all we can do, as
children, is to blame ourselves. When we are little, we need adults and caregivers to help us, and
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when they don’t, the only way we have to explain that, based on our developmental stage, is to
blame ourselves.
Riel (emphatically): What’s your sense of it, Rain? Looking back as an adult, what would you
want to do for, or say to, a very young Indigenous girl suffering the abuse you suffered as a child
in a non-Indigenous foster home?
Rain (reflecting deeply sits quietly for some time): I would want that little girl to know that she
was worth it. You know, worth the love and care. That it wasn’t her fault, and then I would want
to hug her and let her cry and comfort her. I would also want to let her know that the problems in
her family and in her community were connected to colonization and racism and were not by
any measure caused by her family and community. That’s what I would want to do and say to
that little girl.
Riel: And to yourself at that time? What would you do for and say to your young self now as an
adult in her fifties?
Rain (holding her heart): I think this is the first time that I am feeling a deep sense of empathy
for myself as a little girl. And self-love. I would want to take my young self to a safe place where I,
at that age, would be cared for and protected and free to be myself and proud of who I am and
where I come from.
At this point, we take the time in session to feel into that safe place through the senses: What
would that safe place look like? Smell like? Feel like? Where would it be? Who would be there?
This kind of initial trauma renegotiation work, otherwise known as resourcing, awakens a
clients’ sense of internal safety, healthy relational imprint, and their own capacity to meet
their needs now as it concerns unmet developmental needs. It is an effective way of
responding to the young states of distress and overwhelm that are more often than not
fundamentally connected to feelings of suicidality.
Often times, true to its cyclical, circular nature and form, the historical trauma that presented
in session at an earlier point re-emerges. As such, in this session, Rain feels a sense of
connectedness and empowerment within herself, which after another long pause, leads her to
continue.
Rain: I feel like I need to do something bigger than what I am doing now. I want to do something
to help a lot of people.
I immediately recognize the intensity behind this statement and frame it in the survivor
complex aspect of the Indigenous historical trauma response.
Riel: Can I share what an Elder said to me once when I was expressing the same kind of
aspiration and desire?
Rain nods.
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Riel: The Elder told me that, as Indigenous people, it is enough for us to heal our selves. And based
on the teachings that I have received, it is Indigenous women who are the heartbeats of our
Nations. And, Rain, you are a Matriarch and a grandmother. It’s a powerful thing to heal yourself,
and interrupting this cycle of blaming yourself for the abuse you suffered as a child in the Sixties
Scoop is a powerful action towards healing our People.
Rain: It’s true what the Elder says! I don’t have to feel guilty about feeling good now. And yes, I am
a Matriarch, and my healing is important. And you know, I have decided that I am not going to
try to take care of my boss emotionally. I am going to let her do her own work and not take on her
stuff . . . (pauses for a while) . . . I think this is the first time that I am okay that someone is upset
with me, especially when she’s my boss! Before, I would run around trying to take care of people,
especially if they have power over me or are an authority figure. I feel more confident about it.
Loving myself gives me the courage to protect myself. And I feel the weight of the self-blame
lifting. This is big.
We end the session by smudging, clearing the energy of self-blame and giving it back to
colonization.
The Power of the Circle: Group Therapy and Indigenous Historical
Trauma
Within the context of our Ceremonies and gatherings being outlawed, the very social
structures that kept us organized, oriented, and healthy as a collective, there are powerful
cultural and collective resonances to name what has been “silenced” with Indigenous
witnesses held in the safety of an Indigenous-led and centred Circle. In working to heal the
impact of colonization and Indigenous historical trauma, I have found that therapeutic Circles
are powerful medicine. I have co-facilitated 10-week therapeutic Circles on grief and loss,
trauma, addictions and suicide from a relational, trauma-informed, and culturally relevant
perspective. In each of these therapeutic Circles, an Indigenous Elder is present, which is
essential to the Circle’s cultural relevance for Indigenous clients and its impactfulness in
confronting the legacy of colonization. Safe Elders are vital to bringing the Circle back
together in a way that honours the wisdom of our traditions and the importance of cultural
and traditional Teachings in the process of healing and reconnecting in recovering from
Indigenous historical trauma. This honouring itself is also vital to the reclamation of a positive
297 | Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma
sense of Indigenous identity in relation to a self-determining Indigenous collective, in these
cases the therapeutic Circle.
In each of these therapeutic Circles, the violence of colonization is named, and the impact
that it has on our Peoples and communities is acknowledged. The collective, historical, and
ongoing losses caused by colonization are honoured, and time and space is given to each
Indigenous group member to process and integrate their experiences of colonization. In other
sessions, the group names all that has been internalized of the colonial oppressor that needs
excavating including shame, guilt, a sense of inferiority, and internalized racism. Other
sessions focus on sources of cultural pride and on what needs to be restored so that we may
have a positive sense of an Indigenous identity. According to Duran et al. (2008), one of the
biggest accomplishments of a client in the therapeutic process is to externalize and rid
oneself of the ways that one has internalized the colonial oppressor by having internalized
one’s own dehumanization. In the program in which I work, we call this giving the burdens of
colonization back to colonization, where they belong.
Reclaiming Safe, Indigenous Elder-Led Ceremony
Indigenous Elder-led Ceremonies can be a deeply attuned way of responding to the legacy of
unresolved grief and historical trauma. In responding to Indigenous historical trauma,
therapeutically, specific grief ceremonies are conducted not only for recent deaths but for
traumatic historical losses including the loss of land, the loss of the right to raise children in
culturally sanctioned ways at home, as well as mourning for the loss of community
connection, cultural and traditional roles, language and health.
In working to heal from the impact of colonization and Indigenous historical trauma, it is
crucial to develop and reclaim an Indigenous spirituality that does not serve as a defense
against experiencing painful affects. Rather, our Elders teach us that a healthy spirituality
embraces the entire range of our feelings (e.g., grief, shame, pain, joy, pride) and fosters our
resolve to maintain balance in order to regain personal wellness and the power of community
self-determination (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998). Furthermore, Indigenous Elder-led healing
Ceremonies that consciously endeavour to decolonize Indigenous spiritual practices are also
essential. Decolonizing Indigenous ceremonies from the domination of colonial institutions
like patriarchy and hierarchical and oppressive religion is paramount in reconnecting
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Indigenous clients to a healthy and safe sense of relational connectedness and belonging in
terms of their relationship to themselves and to safe Indigenous community.
I have attended many Indigenous Elder-led Ceremonies and gatherings and have witnessed
how, in doing the good work of gathering, our Ancestors are present and heal with us in
Circle. Our Elders teach us that each time we gather in a healthy, caring, respectful way as
Indigenous peoples from all parts of Great Turtle Island, we contribute to the healing of our
Ancestors and relatives in the Spirit World. Not only do such Ceremonial and cultural acts
break the isolation that we often find ourselves enduring, but they re-enliven and call back the
traditions and ways of being that have been under relentless attack for centuries now. It may
be the humble action of coming together in a circle, smudging, introducing our names and
nations and joining hands in acknowledgement of the Great Spirit of Creation, the land and
our Ancestors—but it allows for profound truths to be spoken, imposed silences to be broken,
and genuine, safe connections between Indigenous people to be made.
Concluding Thoughts
To name the impact of 500+ years of attempted genocide and ongoing colonization gives voice
to the unspeakable. It begins to break the imposed silences and makes visible how we
Indigenous people are simultaneously targeted and rendered invisible by horrific acts of
state-based violence. To define the Indigenous historical trauma response organizes what
would otherwise remain internal and collective states of chaos and disconnection, deprivation
and pain. In calling on the power of witnessing and speaking truth about oppression, we begin
the long journey back to ourselves and to a sense of connectedness with others. This
remarkable bravery and integrity has been modeled to us by acts of Indigenous leadership by
Elders, residential school Survivors, Sixties Scoop Survivors, the loved ones and advocates for
the rights of the “Missing and Murdered” Indigenous women, Knowledge Keepers, Matriarchs,
and other community members that have consistently resisted our collective disappearance
and annihilation. Likewise, to name Indigenous historical trauma is one way of affirming our
right, as Indigenous people, to exist in our own Homelands.
In this chapter, I have consciously addressed Indigenous therapists in an attempt to affirm and
assert our rightful place, as Indigenous therapists, to work with our own People. It is an act of
decolonization and self-determination to centre Indigenous epistemology, ways of knowing,
299 | Chapter 7. Indigenous Historical Trauma
worldviews, and healing practices such as safe Indigenous Elder-led Ceremony and
therapeutic Circles. It is my hope that this decolonizing and Indigenous therapeutic approach
to the healing of Indigenous historical trauma is an antidote to the dominating, medicalizing,
and pathologizing approach of non-Indigenous mental health practices that are most often
unquestioningly applied to Indigenous clients interacting with these systems.
In articulating an Indigenous and decolonizing approach to working therapeutically with
historical trauma, I have described the different aspects of the Indigenous historical trauma
response by drawing on the existing literature and on my own experience as an Indigenous
therapist working with Indigenous adults. I have found that the cornerstone of safe, effective,
and culturally relevant Indigenous trauma therapy is an acknowledgement of the impact of
attempted genocide and ongoing colonization on Indigenous people. At the same time, it is
vital that we Indigenous therapists also develop the ability to work therapeutically and
relationally to interrupt the cycles of colonial violence that perpetuate themselves in
Indigenous clients’ lives today. Collaborating therapeutically and in culturally relevant ways
with Indigenous clients to renegotiate the impacts of historical trauma is a vital first step in
facilitating a process whereby Indigenous clients can reconnect to a positive sense of
themselves and to safe Indigenous community.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
Indigenous therapists:
• What are some of the ways that colonization has impacted your life and the life
of your community?
• Which Indigenous historical trauma responses do you experience most directly?
• What helps you to remember the greatness of your Indigenous identity and
cultural inheritances?
• What does decolonization mean to you?
• How does Indigenous historical trauma present itself in your work with
Indigenous clients?
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• What cultural teachings might you have that can serve you in your own healing
journey and in your work with Indigenous clients?
• How do you support your Indigenous clients in reconnecting to a positive sense
of their own Indigenous identity?
• How can you work, therapeutically, to name and interrupt the cycles of colonial
violence and internalized oppression that show up in Indigenous clients’ lives
today?
Non-Indigenous therapists:
• What is your own personal history of settling and occupying Indigenous
territories?
• How have you contributed to, or been a benefactor of, Indigenous peoples’
historical trauma?
• How does this settler privilege present itself in your therapeutic practice with
Indigenous clients?
• How can you work to centre Indigenous experiences of colonization while
acknowledging and being accountable to how colonial power is present in the
therapeutic relationship?
• How can you make it safe enough for Indigenous clients to open up to you about
their lived experiences and struggles and access respectful relational
therapeutic support?
• How can you reframe what is often defined as a “mental health symptom” in a
way that affirms the resilience and strength of your Indigenous clients who are
survivors of attempted genocide?
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Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders:
Practice Considerations for the Minority
Counsellor
MATEO HUEZO
As is often the case with Martin, he is wearing a long-sleeved hoodie and black pants on a hot
day. He sits in my office sipping his glass of water and waiting for me to read over a letter he
has written for me. I am getting used to letters from Martin. It is one of the ways he processes
mental and social health concerns between therapy sessions.
Martin is 15 years old and has been my client for six weeks. The teacher leading his school
queer-straight alliance student group (QSA) referred Martin to me when Martin disclosed that
his parents had recently kicked him out of the house. He had, the night before, told them he is
transgender. Over several weeks of working with me, he has explored ways to express
masculinity and to navigate his life and social gender transition in the context of friendships,
school, and accessing appropriate trans healthcare. He is now living in sexual and gender
minority-focused (SGM) youth housing and has a team of professionals who are in regular
contact with me. He is smart and mature, and he has committed to ongoing sessions with me
specifically, because he has heard my name in the transgender community. Often, when I
open Martin’s file just before starting a session with him, I smile at his original consent form
where he crossed out “given name” and scribbled in “chosen name.” “Chosen name” is a way of
differentiating the name “Martin” from the legal/birth name Martin used previously.
The day before this visit, Martin’s teacher let me know that Martin had been asked not to
come to the school QSA for at least a month or until he wrote a formal apology to the group.
Martin had gotten into an argument with some of the other trans youth in the group and
made discriminatory remarks about the other youths’ ethnicities. Afterwards, Martin asked
another teacher to help him set up what he called an “alt-right student group.” When the
teacher tried instead to have conversations about multicultural inclusivity with Martin, Martin
said the school was not being inclusive to his own cultural needs. In Martin’s letter to me, he
expressed a sense of belonging after joining a white supremacy group online. He expressed a
sense of identity and safety in finding ways to live his life based on the values held by that
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group, and he said he was planning to leave his youth home (where he co-habits with youth
who are of nondominant ethnicities) as a first step in his new life. Despite this new affiliation
and new set of values, and despite the fact that I am a visible ethnic minority, Martin wrote
that he wanted to continue seeing me as my client.
Unlike school staff and Martin’s social services team, I will likely always have some peripheral
relationship to Martin as part of the same trans cultural community. I am aware that Martin is
deeply entrenched in the transgender youth community on and off school grounds, where
many younger youth look to him as a peer mentor and friend. As a member of that same
transgender community, I am aware of, and concerned about, recent racial tensions in the
community and how they might be affecting my clients and community members. After
reading his letter, I take a deep breath and consider my options. As Martin’s counsellor, I am
concerned not only about his antiracial turn, but about how alienating himself from his school
and home supports might hurt him. As an ethnic minority counsellor, I am concerned about
why he wants to continue working with me if he embraces white supremacist ideologies. As a
transgender counsellor, I am concerned about how Martin’s actions are affecting the other
trans youth and the community at large. I am also concerned about the lack of trans-affirming
services that will be available to Martin if he loses the support of his QSA and youth housing
services. The intersections of our personal cultural identities, which had previously been a
subtle undertext of our therapeutic relationship, are suddenly brought into sharp relief.
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 306
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
• Advocacy
• Age
• Allyship/solidarity
• Anti-oppressive stance
• Client as cultural knowledge
source
• Client-centred practice
• Codes, principles, standards, and
guidelines
• Cognitive complexity
• Compassion fatigue
• Connection-disconnection
• Contextualized/situational
identities
• Counsellor health and healing
• CRSJ supervision
• Cultural assumptions/biases
• Cultural distance‒similarity
• Cultural humility
• Cultural identity development
• Culture-bound counselling models
• Decolonizing
• Deconstruction
• Dominant discourses
• Dominant/nondominant groups
• Ecological systems theory
• Equity versus equality
• Ethical decision-making
• Ethical practice
• Ethnicity
• Etic (transcultural) versus emic
(minority-centred)
• Expanded counsellor roles
• Gender identity
• Identity management
• Indigenous/cultural knowledge
and teachings
• Institutional/organizational
oppression
• Internalized oppression
• Intersectionality
• Lateral oppression/violence
• Marginalization
• Multiple identities/relationalities
• Negotiating multiple intersecting
identities
• Nondominant cultural identity
development
• Personal is political
• Personal–professional values
conflict
• Power
• Power analysis
• Prejudice
• Privilege
• Professional identity
• Program development and
evaluation
• Racism
• Referral and resource provision
• Reflective practice
• Respect for dignity
• Social determinants of health
• Systemic/structural barriers
• Underserviced populations
• Unintentional oppression
• Within-group differences
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
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synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
The Voices Less Heard
When I first entered the role of a therapist in my counselling practicum, I was hyperaware of
the multiple nondominant groups to which I belong, especially those that I cannot hide. As a
person of colour, as a queer person, as a trans person, I am often seen as multiple layers of
“different” from the status quo in the first impressions people have of me. I was worried when
I entered an official counselling role that the intersections of my identities might serve to
paint a target on my back or otherwise affect my ability to access the same learning and
opportunities as my classmates. For all that I had shaped my life and career around advocating
that our systems and social attitudes be more inclusive to diversity, when it came time to put
those ethics into counselling practice, I was afraid. What if my supervisors had unquestioned
biases against the groups to which I belong? What would I do if a client behaved in a
discriminatory way towards me? I had spent years and money accessing all sorts of
multicultural training and educational opportunities. All of them had taught me ways to
celebrate and work with clients from nondominant cultural identities. None had adequately
taught me how to navigate belonging to these groups.
As my story with Martin depicts, even when it is not your supervisor or client directly
targeting you, their stories, beliefs and attitudes, and behaviours may intersect with the
systemic issues that affect you and the groups of which you are part. These can then
indirectly affect you and your community. My purpose in writing this chapter is to begin a
discussion about what being a counsellor from nondominant groups means for professionals
and how minority counsellors can set ourselves up for success. I’ve written this chapter from
the perspective of the nondominant-identified mental health practitioner and for the
nondominant reader. Writing from this perspective serves two purposes. The first is to
highlight the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are pertinent to nondominant therapists
embedded in systems that were not made with us in mind. The second is to demonstrate what
minority-centred writing looks like. Reading minority-centred work can facilitate a
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comparative critical lens on how the majority of our education, training, and structural
support as therapists in Canada are otherwise based on dominant group centricity.
Discourses in Psychology: There is No Neutral
In 2013, in their most recent diagnostic manual, the American Psychiatric Association
(APA, 2013) released a newly revamped and renamed diagnosis relating to transgender
people. The fourth version of this manual, published in 2000, widely used across North
America and the world as a standard for mental health diagnosis, classified
transgender identities as a mental illness under gender identity disorder. The new
version instead classified the distress we might feel in relation to our bodies and
society, calling it gender dysphoria (APA, 2013; Benson, 2013; Dewey & Gesbeck, 2015).
At the time, I was working as a research and clinical assistant in a mental health clinic.
Both the manager and head psychiatrist took issue with the new diagnosis for gender
dysphoria and brought it up to the team to discuss. The majority opinion in the ensuing
conversation was that the new diagnostic name changed nothing, and that transgender
people were all unwell. From that day forward, I felt unsafe at work and knew I would
never be able to come out to the team.
There is a long history of tension between institutions of mental health and transgender
communities. The dominant discourse in mental health has been that we are, in essence,
ill (Benson, 2013; Dewey & Gesbeck, 2015; Serano, 2016). I was aware of this tension long
before entering the field, and I have been aware that it might affect my livelihood long
before the day we discussed gender dysphoria at my work. Unfortunately, the ignorance I
witnessed that day is not uncommon among professionals, and it was a major
consideration for me in later years when I looked at graduate schools and job prospects.
Would I ever be safe being out as a transgender therapist? Would my colleagues see my
identity as pathological? The dominant discourses in psychology were both my
oppression and my fuel as I trained and began working as a mental health therapist.
Each section in this chapter looks at a different level of consideration, starting from the
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person of the professional and moving outward to the relationship between you and your
clients, then to consideration of the contexts and structures of mental health practice. This
organization is in line with the various levels of intervention (i.e., micro, meso, macro) used in
social justice counselling and is based on systems theory (Rempel, 2017).
Intrapersonal Reflections
Regular and explicit self-reflective moments are crucial to ethical practice, not only for
cross-cultural considerations, but also for understanding the reactions you might have to
clients and how you relate to them. Before I meet again with Martin, it is very important for
me to turn a critical reflective mirror toward myself. Honest self-exploration in light of this
new information about the similarities and differences in our cultural identities and worldview
can help me consider how I might be impacted and how the information could enhance or
constrain my ability to be optimally effective in my work with Martin. I focus in on personal
and professional identity as a starting place before exploring how various layers of power and
privilege might play out in my relationship with Martin.
Awareness of Identity Development
Because our cultural affiliations deeply affect our identity development and our social
determinants of health as members of marginalized populations, it is important to understand
where we are in our own identity development and where each client may be. Awareness of
our own worldviews, clients’ worldviews, and the relationship between those worldviews are
the foundational elements to building a successful multicultural and social justice counselling
practice (Ratts, Singh, Butler, Nassar-McMillan, & McCullough, 2016).
There are various models of identity development that encourage practitioners to consider
not only the internal world of a person but also the person-in-context. At various points in the
identity development process, a person’s attitudes towards dominant and nondominant
cultures and groups shift and evolve. Consider the following questions for reflection:
• To what degree do you believe newcomers and their allies should be advocating for
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changes to receiving countries and societies to better accommodate them?
• When members of nondominant populations are users of public services in Canada, to
what degree is it the responsibility of service providers to actively assess user needs and
to adjust those services to be culturally responsive and socially just?
The answers you and your clients give to these kinds of questions can come with strong
emotions, and they are often tied to how your nondominant cultural identity has developed.
Collins (2018) outlined some common phases in the earlier stage models of nondominant
identity development in her Teaching and Learning Guide, including
1. conformity or unawareness (acceptance of the status quo),
2. dissonance (a stage of possible conflict while trying to decrease self-denial and increase
acceptance of your nondominant cultural group),
3. resistance and immersion/emersion (a state of highly valuing nondominant cultures while
being critical of the status quo),
4. introspection and internalization (a loosening of boundaries between your ingroup and
outgroup affiliations), and
5. integrated or synergistic awareness (feeling affirmed in your nondominant cultural
identity and thoughtful of other cultures).
As Collins (2018) argues, identity development does not necessarily hit all these points, won’t
necessarily come in stages, and is highly dependent on the individual’s situation and lived
experiences. Our cultural identities, as persons with one or multiple nondominant identities,
exist in relation to, and in the context of, the cultures, communities, families, structures and
institutions, societies, laws, and policies that affect us. For example, as a facilitator of
trans-focused supports and mental health in my city, I highly value the input of my own
community in creating relevant services for it. I am also critical of the status quo when
designing services, because the field of mental health has often been a source and site of
oppression for trans people (Mule & Smith, 2014; Serano, 2016). I feel affirmed in my identity as
a trans and queer person of colour within my community, and I focus some of my work
laterally with other marginalized populations. So I might be classified as existing in the
resistance and immersion/emersion phase, or in the integrated and synergistic phase, or in
both.
For many of us who navigate two or more cultures, code switching between the languages,
norms, and ways of relating that are expected in each culture might be how we survive and
navigate our personal and professional lives. In my first session with Martin, for example, I
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automatically introduced my name and pronouns by way of greeting: “My name is Mateo, and
my pronouns are he/him or they/them.” Among trans people, this is a norm and a way of
setting up trans-centred space. With cisgender clients, I have often had to explain the
pronouns I use. Sometimes I do not even announce my pronouns, because it is not a cisgender
norm to introduce them, and in the past, the practice has outed me as trans and otherwise put
me in a place of vulnerability.
Martin’s ties to white supremacy make an updated reflection on my ethnocultural identity
development relevant to our ongoing working relationship. As I prepare for my next session
with Martin, I ask myself the following questions:
• Where do I see myself in the development of my ethnocultural identities as a Latin person
of colour living in Canada?
• What is my relationship to the white majority in Canadian society?
• What are the implications of my minority identity and identity development for my
relationship with Martin as a client?
• What am I most worried about in my therapeutic relationship with Martin, and why?
Professional Identity
Professional identity development is an ongoing process, but may come with unique
challenges for nondominant counsellors. Being personally a part of, and invested in,
nondominant cultural communities means that it can be easier to embody care for these
communities and to live your professional values. It also means you may be closely watched in
demonstrating these values. In other words, the personal is professional in terms of how you
develop your professional identity. Maintaining healthy relationships with your cultural
community becomes an imperative when you live and work within a small nondominant
group. The expectations of you as a counsellor versus you as a community member might
result in you holding multiple roles and relationships with the same people, experiencing
conflicts between the expectations people have of you in each role, having your own
boundaries crossed or potentially crossing boundaries with others, and otherwise meeting
ethical challenges unique to working within small communities (Burns, Fenwick, Schmeid, &
Sheehan, 2012; Carling, Erdal, & Ezzati, 2014). Knowing how and where to draw and maintain
boundaries between what hats you wear in which situations is crucial.
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The most immediate aspect of my own professional identity that could impact my work with
Martin is the fact that I am a transgender therapist working within my own community. My
fidelity is to not only Martin, but also to other trans clients (including the youth he quarrelled
with at school), and to our local trans community as a whole. Professionalism means showing
competence and acting by ethical values across your personal and work lives (Canadian
Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, CCSA, 2017). Any decision I make cannot be made
lightly; there are limits to the current list of known trans therapists in our city, and any
referral outside of Martin’s school might come with barriers to accessibility. Yet committing,
as a person of colour, to ongoing work with a self-declared white supremacist could pose a
more-than-average risk to my physical and emotional health, which could be unusually taxing
on me and affect my work elsewhere. Before deciding what to do next with Martin it is
important for me to ask myself the following questions:
• What are my roles and responsibilities with Martin?
• What are my roles and responsibilities in relation to the other students in the QSA?
• What are my roles and responsibilities to the trans community as a whole?
Intersectionality
As I prepare for my next encounter with Martin, I also reflect critically on the concept of
intersectionality, which means being aware of how different cultural identities and group
memberships like age, race, and gender affect a person’s lived experiences. I ask myself:
• What social groups and locations do I know are salient to my life? To Martin’s life?
• In what ways are our experiences based on group membership and social location the
same? In what ways are they different?
Martin has one known identity that separates him from the status quo: He is trans. He is also
underage, meaning he is vulnerable, because he is not yet given full power to live and make
decisions independently in society. It is important to note that white is not a culture, but a
racial category based on a majority consensus of what counts as white. So, although Martin
might have cultural affiliations to a group that is now considered white, such as Ukrainian or
Irish, groups like Martin’s that promote white supremacy represent political views rather than
ethnocultural traditions. You may notice that this would be vastly different if Martin were
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Black, which is a culture in the Americas based on a diaspora of people who may no longer
have strong cultural ties outside of the Americas. So Black groups with members hailing from
multiple heritages could still claim Black self-determination and culture.
Although being trans gives Martin and I ingroup affiliation with one another, the intersecting
factors of my skin colour and minority ethnicity mean that my own worldviews and
experiences are significantly different from Martin’s. Holding an intersectional lens often
requires cultural humility and understanding that individual lived experiences of various
cultures are unique and idiosyncratic. As a result of these within-group differences, the
values, worldviews, identities and relationalities of any person don’t always line up to
generalized knowledge of each cultural affiliation they have. So, although Martin and I are
both trans, our experience of what that means, personally and interpersonally, are likely to be
different. Oppressions are also not summative, which means your experiences, identity, or
social roles do not always reflect an even combination of all the cultural groups to which you
belong. I do not think my experiences can be captured by giving me a +1 for having
able-bodied privilege, -1 for facing homophobia as a queer person, and so on. A person’s
experiences and understandings of intersectional issues can be ambiguous, fluid, and can
evolve over time. This is why, as counsellors, we must be prepared with the more abstract
knowledge we can access through cultural awareness and training, and we must also be
adaptable and reflexive enough to centre individual client stories and respond to the specific
client in front of us.
Martin’s story illuminates why cultural awareness and intersectionality are concepts relevant
to our work with all people, not only with members of nondominant populations. Martin’s
needs and experiences, and my own considerations for work with him, are definitely about the
fact that he is trans. But they are also heavily intertwined with his relationship to being white.
By virtue of being from a dominant race, whiteness does not make Martin’s experiences any
more difficult. So, up to this point in our therapeutic work, it would have been easy for me to
ignore his race as relevant to care unless he brought it up. Although I live in a white society
and most of the psychological literature in our training teaches to white-centred worldviews,
most of our social structures and systems of knowledge are not explicitly acknowledged as
white (Gazzola, LaMarre, & Smoliak, 2018). And no amount of white dominance in my life or
education has prepared me, as a brown-skinned therapist, to work with a self-identified white
supremacist. After I’ve considered my own personal, professional, and intersectional
identities and cultural factors in relation to Martin I ask myself:
• How do these reflections help me choose what to prioritize in my therapeutic work
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moving forward with Martin?
Intrapersonal reflections are, by and large, the personal work of a therapist committed to
personal accountability and the ongoing refinement of our own practice. Our work, however,
does not stop at cultural self-exploration. In the next section I look at power and ethics in the
therapeutic relationship, with particular emphasis on how they might play out for
nondominant therapists.
Interpersonal Reflections
Understanding my own intrapersonal positions provides a foundation for understanding the
relational context of therapy. Having explicitly examined the foundational aspects of my social
locations and my personal and professional identities, I am able to move to the next level of
ecological systems analysis. This is the interpersonal level, where relationships, communities,
and culturally-influenced attitudes and behaviours affect the therapeutic relationship
between Martin and I. Moving between systems levels in my analysis of the situation with
Martin requires first a grasp on how power flows through each level and assigns privilege and
disprivilege to us in different contexts. Martin has joined a white supremacy group, affecting
those around him and placing me in an ethical dilemma where my responsibilities to Martin
may conflict with multiple considerations: My responsibilities to other clients, especially trans
clients, my responsibilities to my own cultural communities, my duty to care for myself and
maintain boundaries that protect my fitness to practice. In fact, there are specific ethical
considerations that could differ for marginalized counsellors compared to dominant group
counsellors regardless of whether or not an obvious ethical dilemma is at hand.
These two concepts, power and ethics, are discussed separately in this section, but they are
deeply intertwined. As a professional, the ethical considerations I make with Martin have to
do, primarily, with the power I hold as his therapist and the power his actions and groups
assert over my own cultural groups in society generally. Following the discussion of power and
ethics, I look at what risks there are in therapeutic relationships when it comes to
minority-centred work by minority practitioners.
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Critically Analyzing Power
The presence of whiteness in Martin’s case foregrounded for me the ambiguous grey space
minority counsellors hold as trained professionals with power, but who might otherwise be
disprivileged compared to the majority of clients. As persons with nondominant cultural
identities, we are often made aware, even before entering a professional field, of what our
cultural groups face in terms of social and structural barriers to cultural acceptance and
visibility (i.e., comparative justice) and equitable access to opportunities and services (i.e.,
distributive justice). These messages about our groups and their place in society are
transmitted through social interactions, the media, and through our education and training.
As professionals, we can carry this knowledge into our work, as well as the accompanying
emotional and behavioural implications of that knowledge and life experience. It is important
to understand the shift in power between a lay function and a professional role, and what this
means for your responsibility as a clinician to be self-aware and responsive to how your own
experiences and worldviews can affect your work (Burns et al., 2012).
Power in relation
Ratts (2017) introduced a way for counsellors to chart their own social locations in relation to
clients. In essence, this involves a cultural formulation of both your world and that of your
client. Next, you chart where you are in relation to one another on two axes: Counsellor
power (from marginalized to privileged) and client power (from marginalized to privileged).
See Sandra Collins’ Figure 1 in Chapter 6. Although this is useful for understanding how your
experiences might differ within the larger society, in the counselling room clients are typically
seeking help or attempting to address a need. As a therapist, you have a fiduciary
responsibility to them. This means that power in the counselling room is always tipped in your
favour, though the degree to which this is the case is definitely influenced by your social
locations outside the counselling room. I ask myself, “What does this mean for my work with
Martin?” It means that regardless of how I feel, personally, about Martin’s ideologies and
behaviour, I have a professional duty to ensure I act with the ethical professionalism expected
of all psychologists (CCSA, 2017). If I were to analyze power between us based on only how
many dominant and nondominant identities we each had to our name, the summation of these
would give a two-dimensional answer to a three-dimensional problem. In other words, any
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 316
analysis of power cannot assume we hold stagnant positions within a hierarchy of groups, but
must take into account relationships and contexts.
Power in context
The power counsellors hold by virtue of their positions as helping professionals is unique to
the contexts of our work. These positions give us the power of influence: to be heard when we
advocate, honoured when we liaise or refer a client to a resource, and respected when we
speak from a professional podium. As both insiders to nondominant cultural communities and
outsiders representing the institution of psychology, we have both the benefit and the
challenge of being privy to otherwise more closed cultural spaces and knowledge. What marks
you as the “same” to members of your ingroup can signal safety and an assumed know-how for
navigating cultural nuance. But the expectations of you in personal and professional roles may
differ greatly, and it is important to know this distinction and the privileges and
responsibilities that come with the title of therapist. Below, in Figure 1, is a visual of how I
walked through a power analysis of my therapeutic relationship with Martin in the context of
him accessing my services for mental health in the hours after reading his letter.
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Figure 1. Power analysis for the case of Martin. Adapted from “Advocacy in practice: Creating a
culture of social change in the human services” by S. Rempel, 2017, Oxford University Press.
Copyright 2017 by Oxford University Press.
This power analysis is a simple example of how one tool may be used, in conjunction with
clients or on your own, to break down where power lies in a counselling situation and how any
decisions you make moving forward can impact stakeholders. The method above is called the
PCS (i.e., person, culture, systems) model. There are alternative reflective methods one might
use to understand how power is influencing your work. For example, I might ask myself the
following:
• If I were the client and Martin the therapist, how would my feelings and expectations be
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 318
different in light of the fact that Martin has joined a white supremacy group?
• How can I forefront my consciousness of the interplay of personal, cultural, and structural
power as I consider what is best for Martin and what is best for me in this situation?
The answer I give to these questions highlights again how power in counselling is in-relation
and highly context-specific.
Notice that this power analysis is about my relationship to Martin, a client. But what would
happen if I switched my focus on power to myself, a minority practitioner, within dominant
mental health institutions? Minority practitioners come with exceptional vulnerabilities
compared to their dominant group counterparts, due to several factors. First, the relative
power imbalance that privileges dominant group colleagues and clients in general places us at
risk for minority stresses like discrimination and feeling pressured to conceal our identities
(Cabral & Smith, 2011; Viehl, Dispenza, McCullough, & Guvensel, 2017). Second, this power
imbalance translates to the creation of therapeutic practices and relationships not based on
prototypical roles and assumptions. This means they are less defined and supported by the
profession’s literature and practice base, and thus more likely to be flexible and vulnerable
(Cabral & Smith, 2011). Being a minority counsellor means coming from a group or groups less
entitled to certain rights and privileges others might take for granted. It means adjusting to
the power dynamics of professional life from a different starting point than your dominant
group colleagues. It means navigating situations where your teachers, mentors, supervisors,
colleagues, and even clients may be operating on biases or assumptions about you based on
your cultural groups, rather than on your professional titles. Doing power analyses can help
bring into explicit awareness where power sits across counselling and other contexts.
Power Analysis: You Do You
Given your own identities, groups, and social locations, how would you fill out this
power analysis chart for yourself if you were Martin’s therapist?
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Remember, I am intentionally speaking to minority practitioners as well as from a
minority voice in this chapter. If you do not identify with nondominant ethnicity or
other marginalized identities, complete the power analysis and consider the
differences and similarities between your social locations and those of ethnic minority
counsellors.
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Living by Your Ethics
I speak to decolonizing practices below, but I want to mention them here as well, because they
are relevant to understanding how ethics is tied into the fabric of who we are and the work we
do. Decolonizing approaches centre minority voices, apart from the status quo, in order to
provide relevant and tailored care for marginalized groups. They require practitioner buy-in,
because they necessitate committed, active, and ongoing deconstruction of our standards of
practice and education (Adams, Dobles, Gómez, Kurtiş, & Molina, 2015). In other words,
decolonialism requires a commitment to certain professional values. Values, in a professional
setting, are called ethical principles, and it is here where we start our work.
Principle ethics and minority work
In this section, I will give a brief overview of the five foundational ethical principles common
across health and mental health fields. See Figure 2. Although the principles are to some
degree discussed separately here, it is important to note that an overarching framework for
ethically and culturally competent care requires a relational approach. In other words, it
requires taking into account the very real client in front of you, in their personally relevant
contexts, rather than relying entirely on abstract or theoretical understandings of their
cultures, mental health concerns, and other factors (Gergen, 2015). Relational ethics considers
ethical therapeutic relations at all times, rather than waiting for an ethical crisis that would
necessitate decision-making. See the practice illustration on relational ethics by Simon
Nuttgens in Chapter 9.
Ethics and power are inseparable from therapeutic contexts. No matter how collaborative,
how client-centred, or how egalitarian we attempt to be, power is never fully equal between
us and our clients in counselling. We are still responsible for the ethics of our practices in and
outside of the counselling room. Ethics is how we use morality, attitudes, and values in a
professional context (Kitchener & Kitchener, 2012; CCSA, 2017). There are multiple textbooks
that emphasize varying professional values and approaches considered to be the keystones of
multicultural counselling, typically these are empathy, care, and a client-centred approach.
These are rooted in the five foundational ethical principles covered to varying degrees across
all professional ethics codes in counselling and psychology (Kitchener & Kitchener, 2012). See
Figure 2.
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Figure 2. The five foundational ethical principles found across helping disciplines.
Beneficence and non-maleficence
Non-maleficence and beneficence go hand-in-hand in health services. Respectively, these are
the principles of first, do no harm, and then do good (Forester-Miller & Davis, 2016; Kitchener &
Kitchener, 2012). When we consider how to prevent harm and to provide appropriate care for
our clients, we might look to the academic literature and research that can inform our
practices. In mental health, we are encouraged to look to evidence-based practices as the gold
standards for our work. However our existing, empirically-validated treatments and guidelines
for practice are often proven to work with limited, and most often dominant, populations,
and then generalized to groups for whom we have no evidence showing that they can benefit
from these therapies (Kirmayer, 2012). This means our methods of assessing and treating
mental health issues are based, in many ways, on dominant group, colonial perspectives. As a
result, dominant practitioners may impose uncritically the dominant group’s ideology of
healing on marginalized groups for whom these methods may not be relevant. For
nondominant practitioners, this can involve internalizing dominant schemas at the expense of
our cultural ways of knowing. As professionals it is vital that we consider the cultural validity
of the tools we use. Thus we must ask ourselves:
• To what degree have we internalized dominant narratives by and about our professions?
• If we are privy to our own minority perspectives and Indigenous methods of healing, what
must we do to abide by guidelines created by colleagues or researchers outside of our
groups, for clients outside of their groups? How would this impact us?
• What might we need to do to enhance our knowledge of the complexity of how best
practices apply across dominant and nondominant populations?
The answers to these questions can vary, but they are a good starting place for interpersonal
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 322
self-reflection. If the original superimposition of dominant perspectives in the academic
literature and research results in a lack of guidance for relevant and culturally sensitive care
across cultural identities and social locations, then we must look to culturally-relevant and
minority-informed research to fill in the gaps.
To demonstrate how dominant cultural perspectives can negatively affect care, let us go back
to Martin’s case. One of my primary concerns moving forward with Martin is this: If I choose
to refer him to a therapist whose ethnicity is not targeted by his ideological leanings, to what
kind of care am I directing him? Martin is transgender, and he is under government care at an
age when he is not allowed to have full power over his trans-related health files, schooling,
housing, or other aspects of his life. This means that he is especially vulnerable compared to
either the general teenage populace or my adult transgender clients. One example of bias in
our mental health system in Canada is that many practitioners consider the root of mental
health concerns in transgender people to be the fact that they are trans (Benson, 2013;
Simeonov, Steele, Anderson, & Ross, 2015). Although it would be unsettling to find I’d referred
any client to a therapist working from this perspective, it would be especially detrimental to a
client like Martin, who has reduced capacity to self-advocate due to factors like age.
Minority practitioners have a natural advantage, because we may have less of a cultural divide
between us and clients from our own nondominant groups, reducing barriers to care and
allowing us to draw on the social and cultural benefits of ingroup status. With ingroup status,
however, comes a potential for blurred boundaries, countertransference, and overgeneralizing
our own cultural knowledge and lived experiences as if they are the same for clients. It is
important to understand the boundaries between client and counsellor stories, what
self-work we must reserve for our own time apart from clients, and the importance of
bracketing our own experiences enough to centre the story of the client in front of us. For
example, if Martin wanted to access hormone therapy for medical transition, he would not
have to explain to me what transition means or explain why someone would choose that path.
I would, however, still want to know how he, personally, came to that decision on his journey.
If I were to continue my work with Martin, I would be able to integrate my own knowledge of
attachment theory and trans-specific care to inform our next steps. One of the benefits to
joining a white supremacist group, as Martin mentioned in his letter, was a feeling of
belonging. I know from my own research and experience that connection to trans
communities promotes resilience and wellness and offers trans clients a social buffer and a
source of strength from which to draw (Huezo, 2018). I pause at this point to reflect on the
following questions:
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• Would Martin be able to access this feeling of community belonging somewhere besides
his white supremacist group?
• How does Martin’s relationship with whiteness intersect with his relationship to other
factors like being trans?
• What would the consequences be for Martin if joining a white supremacist group means
isolating himself from members of his home, school, and trans community?
• What is happening internally for him that he is attempting to cut ties with his existing
supports?
Justice, autonomy, and fidelity
When considering how the principle of justice applies to therapy, there are two main
considerations. The first is that of comparative justice or fair treatment. This is the idea that
cultural attitudes and interpersonal relations should be inclusive and affirming to all peoples,
which ties closely to the expectation that we respect client dignity and autonomy
(Forester-Miller & Davis, 2016; Kitchener & Kitchener, 2012). As counsellors, we need to be
aware of our own beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews toward certain issues and groups of
people, and we need to be willing to seek out the experience and education we need to ensure
we know how to advance equity with the diverse clients we serve. As minorities, we might
already have first-hand knowledge of how we can go beyond nondiscrimination to seeing and
using minority experiences as sources of strength, identity, and protection for ourselves and
for clients.
Comparative justice also relates heavily to fidelity: our duties, loyalties, and responsibilities
towards clients (Forester-Miller & Davis, 2016). One of my biggest concerns in working with
Martin is that my responsibility is not only to him, but to other trans clients and to my
community as a whole. White supremacy and the lateral racial violence Martin had incited in
his QSA directly and indirectly harm me, my other clients, and our larger trans community.
Some of my responsibilities to these stakeholder groups are in my role as a therapist. Some of
my responsibility is in other roles I hold within my community: leader, volunteer, mentor, and
community member. In such a small community, even in an urban setting, these multiple roles
and responsibilities towards people in my community are somewhat unavoidable. It is my
responsibility, however, to conduct myself always in line with my profession and to be able to
prioritize the standards of my profession over the expectations held of me in other
community roles. For example, if Martin were a more informal mentee and not my therapy
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 324
client, I would not have the same duty to ensure continuity of care with him. Even when I am
not sitting in the therapist chair, however, I might be given certain power and authority within
my own smaller communities, by virtue of my profession, which would require of me a
proportionate level of the care and responsibility to that authority (Burns et al., 2012).
The second consideration for justice in care is distributive justice. This concept has to do with
making sure all clients have equal opportunities to access resources and services
(Forester-Miller & Davis, 2012). This can be difficult for minority counsellors working under an
infrastructure that reinforces the status quo. For example, in a review of policies, laws,
institutional structures, and practitioner preparedness, Mule and Smith (2014) found that
Canadian mental health services often do not address, or do not adequately address,
transgender needs for care. Any regulated health professional operates under legally
enshrined mandates for care. We, as minority counsellors, have specific knowledge and
experience that can facilitate a critical awareness of unequal accessibility to appropriate
mental health care. Where we see the status quo of our professions result in subpar
conditions for our work, and for our clients, we have an opportunity to advocate and
contribute to the evolution of our fields. As I reflect on my professional values of justice,
autonomy, and fidelity, I consider the following questions:
• Of those affected by Martin’s actions, to whom am I responsible as a therapist? To whom
am I responsible in other roles?
• From what I know of comparative and distributive justice in mental health for trans
people, what special considerations might I have moving forward when considering
Martin’s care?
Risks to Minority Practitioners
Without buy-in to professional ethics, minority practitioners may lack the motivation to keep
up sound practice, feel overburdened with their work, or deceive themselves about what they
are able to do. You might also experience a conflict between personal and professional
values. Where stories of marginalization are similar between clients and therapists, there are
risks for transference, countertransference, or simply becoming over-involved in client
stories. Because of the potential for having multiple relationships with the same people across
different roles in a small community, there is also the potential for blurred boundaries, which
325 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
may be crossed or violated. Such close contact between practitioners and community
members, especially across multiple roles and relationships, increases the risks to your own
privacy and to the potential of breeching client confidentiality or privacy (Burns et al., 2012;
Everett, MacFarlane, Reynolds, & Anderson, 2013). Where boundaries are low or your
resources depleted, you are at risk of harm to yourself (e.g., vulnerability, compassion fatigue)
or harm to your client (e.g., neglect, defensiveness) (Pross, 2006; Viehl et al., 2017).
Minority counsellors are at a higher risk for negative health and mental health outcomes than
their dominant group counterparts (Dyrebye et al., 2017; Viehl et al., 2017). This is because of
barriers to equitable social determinants of health and because of the translations of
oppression into our work (Cabral & Smith, 2011). For example, sexual minority counsellors may
find their workplaces inhospitable to sexual minorities and so may feel a lack of support or
even a need to hide their identity at work (Viehl et al., 2017). This means that especially for
minority practitioners invested and working in their own communities, which may involve
high-risk work, it is important to be aware of, and plan to prevent and address, issues
clustered under the phenomenon of compassion fatigue (e.g., burnout, moral distress,
vicarious trauma) (Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project, 2017; Pross, 2006).
Sustaining your practice
Knowing the ethical aspirations of decolonizing practice and the risks especially relevant to
minority practitioners, what then can be done to protect yourself and ensure the long-term
sustainability of your work? At the intrapersonal level, it is important to be self-aware and
monitor yourself for signs of burnout (Pross, 2006). At the interpersonal level, you can ensure
that you have access to supports like team debriefs, supervision, and consultations. At the
structural level, you can engage in self-advocacy for access to health benefits, facilitated
access to ethical research and literature, agency policies in line with your ethics and standards
of practice, facilitated access to consultation and regular debriefs, and institutional
protections for you and your clients (Wood, 2014; Pross, 2006).
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 326
Minority Counsellor Sustainable Practice Starter Pack
Here are some strategies from the professional literature for preventing and mitigating
risks to self in your work (Wood, 2014; Manning-Jones, de Terte, & Stephens, 2015;
Pross, 2006). These suggestions are meant as starting points, not as definitive answers
for what will work for you.
• Manage your self-care. This is especially relevant for those of us who are
personally invested in the communities with whom we work. Self-care means
finding a balance that reflects the values you want to live by. It can include all
aspects of your personal and professional life like managing a workable schedule,
workload, maintaining boundaries, as well as having your basic needs met for
sleep, diet, exercise, social life, and other relevant elements.
• Find meaning in the work you do. Although being personally invested in
minority-centred work can pose greater risks to vulnerability for marginalized
practitioners, it also means we can see and appreciate the relevance of our work
first-hand.
• Celebrate successes in therapy. The flip side of exposure to traumatic stories is
that we also have the privilege of experiencing vicarious successes, growth, and
resilience with our clients.
• Use and build upon your natural supports. Use the personal, environmental,
and social supports available to you to help you manage client care. For example,
do you have the benefit of access to a network of leaders in your cultural
community? How could they help you in your work?
Self-care might be seen as a luxury or addendum that is not required of practitioners.
However self-care need not always be an extracurricular treat. Sometimes self-care is
a prevention measure, such as taking time each day to write in your agenda to save
yourself the stress of forgetting an appointment or assignment. Sometimes it serves
the purpose of rejuvenation or healing. Before continuing to read this chapter, it might
be worthwhile to ask yourself:
327 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
What is one small thing I can add to, or utilize in, my repertoire of what I do each day
to care for myself?
Creative Solutions to the Aloneness of Minority-Centred Work
An unexpected challenge in my own work was that, when it came time for me to practice
minority-centred counselling as a trans person of colour, I could find no supervisors
qualified to oversee my work. In many ways, my work was niche and siloed away from
that of other therapists in my city. There was no available supervisor who could claim
expertise for working in trans-specific care from a within-community perspective. So,
although it was a requirement of my profession that I find a supervisor who was at least
willing to oversee the general aspects of my practice, one of the structural supports I
personally looked for in order to sustain my own fitness to practice and accountability
was a peer support and supervision network. This meant looking to parallel professions
and trans therapists outside of my city to create a network of trans professionals who
could, to some degree, debrief the general aspects of within-community work with me.
For specific client issues like Martin’s, my dominant-identified supervisors have little to
offer me; discussing trans issues has, and could again, put me at risk of marginalizing
experiences. On the other hand, I cannot breech the confidentiality of Martin’s story to
access the wisdom of my trans-affirmative network. I suspect it is a symptom of a
complex array of social and structural barriers that there are currently few visible
minorities represented in counselling psychology in my city and no publicly out trans
psychologists besides me. I look to the literature and research for within-community
perspectives of gender minority counsellors working within their own communities, but
find very little information.
Ethical decision-making models help guide my decision-making process, but in terms of
support for working on this case, I find none. This is perhaps why it is important not only
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 328
to ensure your personal and structural environments best support your success, but also
to work towards breaking the glass ceiling that prohibits the valuing and advancement of
a culturally diverse workforce. Any human services profession should be reflective of the
diversity within the general population of clients we serve. I have to ask myself:
• What does it say about my profession that is it so difficult for me to find
trans-centred information, resources, and supports?
• What needs to happen at the structural or systemic level to change the culture
of the profession so that I, and other minority practitioners, do not continue to
be marginalized ourselves and, therefore, marginalized in our work with our
clients?
Deconstructing Systems and Structures
At the broadest level of ecological systems analysis is the process of deconstructing of how
the dominant laws, policies, and social discourses affect us and our work. A major risk in any
human services field is the predomination of one worldview in the research, literature,
education, training, and practices of service professionals. To operate without questioning the
status quo of our profession risks reinforcing the oppression experienced by our most
vulnerable populations. Attending to the dominant discourses within the profession is
essential.
Decolonizing
However, there are still risks once one acknowledges that diversity renders the generalization
of dominant group practices to minority spaces at best a simplification, and at worst, an act of
harm. To assume difference or sameness, to generalize any knowledge, is a reliance on group
knowledge and risks erasure of individual stories. Decolonizing practice is an approach to
psychology in which one centres the voice and perspectives of marginalized individuals and
329 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
groups (Adams et al., 2015). This means refocusing from the either/or comparison of ingroup/
outgroup dynamics that still to some degree require one to compare nondominant
experiences to the dominant group. The question then becomes: What is the sovereign
knowledge of these specific nondominant individuals or groups?
In the first reflection box of this chapter, I discussed how dominant discourses in psychology
about transgender people affected my workplace experiences. Without being aware of these
discourses, I could refer Martin to another therapist and look for a match based solely on his
presenting mental health and social concerns. Without consideration of which practitioners
would match criteria for trans-affirmative practice, I might be sending Martin into harm’s way
(Bauer et al., 2009). I face a challenging dilemma of being positioned by Martin as the person
he wants to work with, while being marginalized by his values and worldview and being
concerned about the impact of his beliefs and behaviours on the nondominant communities of
which I am a part.
Decolonization requires cultural humility and a level of cognitive complexity that supports
an ability to adapt, to be reflexive, and to handle ambiguity. Without the solid assurance that
the structures of psychology will inevitably help all clients, you may be more open to learning
about how to tailor change processes, but you may also feel somewhat directionless until you
find the research, literature, training, and consultation to support you. Cultural responsivity
means being able to self-reflect and adapt one’s practice to emerging client needs. My own
understanding of the therapeutic relationship I had with Martin was challenged when I
realized our ethnic differences might be an issue for him. It was clear to me how to apply the
principle of centring his voice when our focus was on his particular lived experience as a trans
person. However, when centring his voice has changed from a focus on trans voice to that of
white supremacy, which he has used to harm his peers and potentially himself, how do I
continue to hold a decolonizing space for him? As I move into this new intercultural space
with Martin, I wonder:
• How can I openly invite his reflections on why and how he is relating to white supremacy?
• What are the underlying needs that he is trying to meet by joining such a movement?
• How can we meet those needs with minimal harm to Martin, to me, to his peers and
supports, and to the diverse trans community?
The time it takes to answer these questions requires me to set aside my own personal
concerns and fears until Martin and I can co-construct a new direction for the continuation of
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 330
our therapeutic relationship in which there is minimal harm to all stakeholders, or until we
can collaboratively identify what an appropriate referral would look like.
Decolonizing practice is client-centred care with an emphasis on cultural responsivity. The
point of centring marginalized voice is to be able to provide relevant and responsive care
based on real client needs rather than based solely on counselling theory, which may or may
not apply to the specific client in front of you (Adams et al., 2015; Rempel, 2017). This does not
excuse practitioners from accessing training and knowledge where possible, as it is not
appropriate to tokenize clients or community members by asking for cultural teachings or
free emotional labour that tax clients and communities. Our job is to empower clients and
communities to access coping and healing in themselves (Mental Health Commission of
Canada [MHCC], 2015). For minority practitioners, we might already have the benefit of
approaching all knowledge from a nondominant perspective. For example, as a youth, I was
critical of how Catholicism was practiced in my school and church, because of the differences
between my Spanish-speaking church (which was not in the neighbourhood) and my
English-speaking school and neighborhood church. I wondered:
• Would a child from an English-only family attending only my neighborhood church have
had the same opportunities to access alternative and critical perspectives of their
religious norms?
• What worldviews (e.g., identity narratives, views of health and healing) do I have privileged
access to that offer alternatives to the status quo?
Anti-Oppression and Accountable Work
If, as minorities, we are given a perspective that helps us notice injustice, is it then our
responsibility to challenge unfair structures and policies? In critical race theory, the notion of
the white saviour refers to an ally who notices and addresses injustice and takes it upon
themselves to save ethnoracial minorities. Although the white saviour may have good
intentions, their actions can disempower the very people and peoples they want to help,
because they engage in what they see as justice-doing without consulting or empowering
minorities. How then is injustice to be addressed in a culturally sensitive way?
A useful lens for the design of any structural or systemic change or advocacy is that of
anti-oppression. Anti-oppression here means utilizing the benefit of our critical awareness to
331 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
inform practices that challenge oppressive situations (Rempel, 2017). This means that
nondominant communities should have a stake in advising how services and structures that
impact them will go, and it means that priority must be given to promoting marginalized
voices and empowering minorities by empowering communities to build their capacities.
When minorities are valued and empowered to take charge of their own wellness, they are
less dependent on, and have more capacity to resist, systems that can oppress them (MHCC,
2015; Rempel, 2017).
Anti-oppression is good news to the individual practitioner worried that it is their solitary
responsibility to save marginalized populations. If communities must have a stake in the
services affecting them, then they take on part of the work and responsibility of advising those
services. This means, however, that they must be accommodated in doing so. This is where,
again, minority counsellors may have an advantage: We may already know the histories of
oppression that impact our communities, how to be responsive to them, and how to
accommodate anti-oppressive practices for those same communities.
Accountability
Anti-oppression also requires of service providers more than space for consultation and
advisory bodies. If communities must have a stake in decisions made about them then it is up
to us as professionals to have protocols in place for integrating community input into
program development and refinement. Multiple academic writers outline ideas for
accountability when working closely with community stakeholders. Some ideas include using
transparency of communication, feedback, self-reflection and being responsive to community
needs (Everett et al., 2013; Rempel, 2017; Wood, 2014). If communities are partially responsible
for the design and delivery of the services that impact them, they can also have a say in the
accountability practices used to do well by them. One simple and collaborative method to
establishing accountability may be to establish group rules or norms for meetings or
community consultations and to check in with all participants at each stakeholder meeting to
ensure they believe the group rules are fair and are being followed. It may also be important to
provide transparency about how community feedback will impact your services and to invite a
community member to check to see whether or not your adjustments are appropriate.
Self-reflection can be a powerful tool for monitoring our own ethical practice and
accountability. Before I see Martin again, I honestly ask myself:
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 332
• How can I have accessible methods of community-involved checks and balances on the
work I do with adolescents? In the school setting? With other trans clients? In general
practice?
Bringing it All Together: The Actual Work
A client scenario like Martin’s brings to light the requirement that practitioners maintain both
client-centred care and a responsive lens towards the larger contexts of care. In the pages of a
textbook, it might seem easy to organize considerations for care at each level of ecological
systems separately. But in practice, how would one create a therapy plan with a client like
Martin? When is it our job to call out and remedy harmful behaviour, and when is it our job to
call a client in by exploring the behaviour more deeply? As I mentioned in the Sustaining Your
Practice section, using models of professional ethics in cases like Martin’s can be helpful.
Using ethical decision-making helped me to weigh my roles and responsibilities for
maintaining my own safety and fitness to practice, in relation to Martin, and in relation to the
other transgender clients and community members he had or could affect. My options
essentially became either to continue therapy with Martin or to make a culturally-sensitive
and appropriate referral for him to see another therapist. In this final section, I consider what
I might do in relation to each option, as well as how to be responsive to the larger contexts of
care from a social justice perspective.
Therapeutic Intervention
The goal of any therapeutic endeavour with high risk clients like Martin is to empower them
to make healthy choices and have control over their own health and wellness (MHCC, 2015).
Minority counsellors have privileged access to nuanced internal community knowledge that
can enhance our capacities for relevant services, when used prudently. It may interest you to
know that lateral violence in trans communities, including racism, is not unexpected or
uncommon. In Chapter 6, Collins notes that, within the process of nondominant identity
development, dominant discourses are often taken up in the form of internalized oppression
as individuals navigate both dominant and nondominant cultural spaces. The chronic
333 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
internalized response to external oppressions, coupled with personal and social factors
affecting mental health, make it perhaps unsurprising that gender minorities are at a higher
risk for unhealthy ways of relating within their own communities and diminished
opportunities for mental health (Huezo, 2018). This is part of how minority stress can play out
in transgender communities. Part of decolonizing work with Martin, then, is knowing what
could be undergirding his behaviour and what to do to empower him and promote healthy
choices.
Martin’s social determinants of health have been negative and intersect heavily with his trans
identity. From an attachment and trauma perspective, he experienced a ruptured attachment
with his parents after coming out, a recent major life transition moving into youth housing,
and other possible challenges to wellness such as disempowerment, disturbance to his
support systems, decreased trust in authority and systems, and experiences of discrimination.
From a minority-centred perspective, it is important both for Martin to have access to
relevant trans-affirmative care and for me to prioritize the safety of myself and other trans
community members. It is up to me, as an accountable professional, to signal safety and work
towards justice and accessibility for care, for Martin as well as for other trans community
members.
My roles as a minority therapist continuing care with Martin would be to help him access
personal and social tools for healing, resilience, healthy behaviours, and healthy relationships
both within and outside of the trans community. This might include case management, in
order to maintain continuity of care across Martin’s multiple school and social services
supports. It might require assisting Martin with navigating health and other service systems in
order to access the supports he needs. It might also require being an advocate for Martin in
areas where he faces additional barriers to wellness.
Culturally Responsive Referral
Matching a client to an appropriate referral source requires adequate knowledge of the client
and their needs as well as the competencies of the professional or service to which you are
referring. In a situation like Martin’s, I know enough about Martin and the complexities of his
belief systems and identities to know that the mental health practitioner I might refer him to
would at least need sufficient competencies to work with youth, to be trans affirmative, and to
understand the social determinants of health, such as housing and parental alienation. I might
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 334
also need to assess practical considerations, such as the physical accessibility of the new
therapist and the therapy context or therapist credentials required for Martin’s therapy to be
covered under universal healthcare.
Advocacy
Whether or not I continued working with Martin, part of my work in relation to Martin could
include advocacy within and outside of trans communities. Rempel (2017) listed several types
of advocacy: (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, (c) institutional, (d) community, (e) public
policy, and (f) global/international. Rempel described how to use critical analysis of a person
or problem in context (see the PCS model above in the Power in Context section) to
understand which level of a system might need to be the target of social justice efforts. I
might need to advocate within communities and outside (and for) communities. Some of my
justice-doing might have to be cultural or comparative, which means advocacy aimed at
changing cultural attitudes about a minority. Some might have to be distributive, meaning
advocacy aimed at creating a more equitable and fair distribution of resources. If I decide to
refer Martin to a professional whose skin colour would not be an issue for Martin, given the
shortage of adequately prepared therapists (Bauer et al., 2009), I might need to explore which
level of a system community referral occurs in (the cultural and structural circles of the PCS
model) and find ways to better prepare the local mental health system culture and structures
to accommodate a client like Martin. I ask myself:
• What would I require of a practitioner in order to consider them an appropriate referral
source for Martin?
• In the case that a practitioner does not meet the requirements of an appropriate referral
for Martin, what can be done to remedy this?
335 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
Reflections of an Insider-Outsider
I wrote this chapter, because when I was seeking a piece like this, resources grounded in
minority-centred cultural knowledge were hard to come by. As I mentioned in the
accountability section above, I had little guidance for working within my own
community. As the only person providing the services I do in my city, it is not uncommon
to feel the expectation that I provide free labour, on my own time, without recognition.
Clients may expect me to cross boundaries since we might see one another at community
events or share friends. I might get messages in my social media inbox from service
providers who want me to teach them trans-affirmative practice individually. Some of
these demands on my time and energy are reflective of a genuine desire to learn and be
inclusive. Some mirror the level of need and lack of available services to meet trans
needs. Some might stem from a lack of reflection on the impacts dominant group
members have on nondominant group members when they ask for free labour to learn
about that minority group.
In any case, much of the work I do requires emotional resources beyond those typically
required by counselling, teaching, research, and advocacy, because I am personally
invested in the communities I work with and of which I am a part. This can be a strength
for nondominant counsellors; we can have such passion for our work. But responding to
all the demands is a recipe for burnout. It is my hope that, by taking the time to write this
chapter, another minority counsellor will find something of value. Being a minority, I
have specific motivation for the work that I do. However, part of preserving that drive
has been learning to say, “No,” and to set the boundaries I need.
When working within marginalized and high-needs communities, it can feel like we are
not doing enough. At the end of each day in practice, teaching, research, or advocacy, it is
my hope that we can each feel that we have done our part and know how to continue
that work into the future. Often when we speak of nondominant groups, we use a deficit
model: What are the challenges these people face? What are the barriers to care? A deficit
model is absolutely needed when we are looking for where we can help, but if we are to
take the perspective that mental health work is not only about responding to crises, we
Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders | 336
need a complementary strengths-based model as well. I wrote this chapter based on the
foundational assumption that our identities and experience need not be defined by what
is more difficult for us or what makes us marginalized. Instead I hope that we can begin
conversations about minorities from an assumption that our identities and cultural
groups are valid, valuable, and allowed to exist outside of comparisons to the status quo.
Time Travelling: Questions for Reflection or Discussion
The focus of this chapter has been on the minority helper and the helper-in-relation.
If you are a minority, it is likely you come to the table with learned resilience and
passed down knowledge about how to take care of yourself and your communities.
• If you were to speak to the you of ten years ago, what intra or interpersonal
resources do you have now that could reassure your younger self?
• Now consider your own cultural knowledge and what you’ve just read through in
this chapter. Name one thing you would want to have in place within the next
five years to
◦ structurally support your professional work, and
◦ personally support your wellbeing.
Finally, some aspect of this chapter may have pushed you to emotional extremes.
Perhaps you were uncomfortable or excited. Take a moment to reflect inward and ask
yourself:
• What does this emotion indicate to me about my identity?
• What does this emotion indicate to me about my social location?
337 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
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341 | Chapter 8. Barriers Can Be Stepladders
DOMAIN III. PROFESSIONAL
IDENTITY
“Never retreat, never explain, never apologize–get the thing done and let them howl!”
Nellie McClung
McClung, N. (1915). In Times Like These. Toronto, ON: McLeod & Allen. Nellie McClung was a
political activist who was instrumental in securing the right to vote for Canadian women. See
the Nellie McClung Foundation website.
Domain III. Professional Identity | 342
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural
Responsivity and Social Justice: A
Foundation for Professional Identity
SANDRA COLLINS
The focus of this chapter is on Domain III of the CRSJ counselling model. As you work through
these competencies, pay attention to how the foundation established in Domains I and II
support positioning yourself personally and professionally.
Domain III: Embrace Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice as a Foundation for
Professional Identity
8. Core Competency 8 Cultural Responsivity and Social Change: Embrace cultural
responsivity and assume an anti-oppressive and justice-doing stance that
fosters social change.
9. Core Competency 9 Social Justice Values: Embody social justice values as a
foundation for scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader professional identity.
I am not the person, teacher, therapist, or writer I was four years ago when I began
conceptualizing and writing this e-book, and I have changed dramatically, both
personally and professionally, since I started my academic career over 20 years ago. My
understanding of what it means not only to engage in socially just practice, but also to
embrace social justice at the core of who I am as a person and a professional has evolved
and deepened significantly. I have been challenged by the writing of my colleagues in this
book and elsewhere, as they talked about their own experiences of engaging in culturally
343 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
responsive and socially just counselling, organizational development, community work,
advocacy, and social activism. I have also been affected by the client stories they have
shared that reveal both the depth of distress, shame, and loss resulting from cultural
oppression and marginalization and their cultural pride, resiliency, resistance to
marginalization and colonization, resulting from embracing agency and empowerment
over their own lives.
Yet, I still ask myself about what it means to embody cultural responsivity and social
justice in my daily life and in my professional practice. My own competency is a
reflection of the knowledge and skills I have developed over the years. It is also a result of
the work I have done, and continue to do, to bring into conscious awareness, and to weed
out, lingering attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions that reflect cultural biases grounded in
my own personal cultural identities, social locations, and lived experiences. Now, when I
encounter a new situation, get exposure to a new idea, engage in an uncomfortable
interpersonal interaction, hear a dominant discourse inside my head, or react
emotionally to local, national, and international events, I wonder how to best position
myself, personally and professionally. I try to align myself in solidarity, in a way that
honours the individual and community strengths and the right to self-determination and
sovereignty, with those who continue to be systemically marginalized and oppressed.
Ironically, as my commitment to honouring cultural diversity and calling for social
justice, within and beyond the counselling process, has strengthened and become more
well-informed, my own position of privilege has grown and stabilized. I no longer fear
that sexism and heterosexism will force me to abandon my academic career. Although I
have become less able-bodied over time, I am now more confident that I can make it to
age 60 and retire with a decent pension. I own a home in a great inner-city
neighborhood in Victoria, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish nations. My partner
and I have both established caring relationships with our families over time, in spite of
their earlier rejection of our lesbian identities. I am surrounded by people who know and
love me. I continue to see how my white privilege plays out as I navigate my daily life.
I have been conscious of these many layers of privilege even as I have worked with other
contributors to this book. Many of them have taken time away from paid employment to
share their perspectives with me and with you. Most of them speak from complex
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 344
intersections of marginalization and sociocultural privilege. All of us are conscious of the
risks of speaking for and about the clients whose identity narratives are mirrored in the
composite or anonymous stories we share. It is easy, from my position of relative
privilege, to call myself an advocate for social justice, but what does this really mean?
How do I embrace a social justice identity, personally and professionally? My answer to
this questions shifts and changes over time.
I invite you to ask yourself both if and how you might draw cultural responsivity and
social justice into the core of your being, as a person and as a professional. I hope that
the ideas in this chapter, and those that follow in this section of the book, unsettle,
challenge, empower, and excite you as you ponder this question.
Through Domain I of the CRSJ counselling model, I argue that we have a responsibility to
engage in cultural self-exploration of all aspects of our personal cultural identities so that (a)
we bring into conscious awareness previously unexamined aspects of our cultural selves that
might blind or bias us in our work; (b) we recognize the fluidity, intersectionality, and
contextualized nature of cultural identities and identity narratives so that we hold tentatively
to our self-definition and make space for honouring the personal cultural identities of our
clients; and (c) recognize the subjectivity of our worldview, bring into conscious awareness
our ethnocentric biases and stereotypes, and loosen our grip on them. I hope that the
competencies, conceptual principles and practices, and stories in that section prepare you to
engage with each client you encounter as a unique cultural being and to attend to the
interplay of client and counsellor cultural identities throughout the counselling process.
In Domain II, I invite you into an examination of the social determinants of health as a way of
positioning the identity narratives and lived experiences of clients within the broader
sociocultural contexts of their lives. I examine the ways in which social injustice and inequity
play out based on the relative social location of persons and peoples within society. You may
have found this a heavy section as we examined various *isms and the ways in which cultural
and systemic oppression are embedded within organizational, institutional, and broader
social, economic, and political systems. You had an opportunity, in particular, to consider your
own relationship and the positioning of the professions of counselling and psychology to the
historical and current processes of colonization. Central to this domain is the examination of
privilege, marginalization, and relative power in relationships, both within, and outside of,–
345 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
the counselling context, and in particular, the ways in which social location and sociocultural
discourses are created and maintained within society. My intent in this section of the book is
to prepare you to create space for clients to deconstruct and reconstruct their own cultural
identities, taking into account the complex contexts of their lives, including experiences of
cross-cultural transitioning, cultural oppression, and trauma that may precipitate
acculturative stress, internalized oppression, or posttraumatic stress. As with Domain I, the
thread of continuous attention to, and critical reflection on, your own lived experiences,
cultural identities, and social locations is interlaced in Domain II to remind you that who you
are as a person and as a professional is as important as the competencies you develop.
In this chapter, I invite you to consider what it might mean for you personally and
professionally to embrace cultural responsivity and social justice as part of your personal and
professional identity. There is no prescription or norm for what this should or could look like.
As you continue to read the stories of my colleagues throughout this book, you will resonate
with some of their choices and perspectives and not with others. However you come to define
your relationships, responsibilities, and roles, I hope that the competencies addressed in this
chapter will support you in navigating and optimizing the well-being of the wonderful
diversity of persons and peoples you encounter along the way.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 346
CRSJ Counselling Concepts Illustrated
• Anti-oppressive stance
• Cultural competency
• Cultural humility
• Cultural responsivity
• Codes, principles, standards, and
guidelines
• Cognitive complexity
• Critical thinking
• Equity versus equality
• Ethical practice
• Ethical decision-making
• Human rights
• Inclusivity/diversity
• Justice-doing
• Peace-building
• Personal is political
Core Competency 8
347 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
• Personal-professional values conflict
• Professional identity
• Professional is political
• Professional values
• Reflective practice
• Scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader
model
• Social change
• Social justice
• Social justice identity
• Social justice values
• Unintentional oppression
• Values
• Values-based practice
Back to top of chapter
Fostering Social Change: Assuming an Anti-Oppressive and
Justice-Doing Stance
E-Book Navigation Tip
Remember to link back to Core Competency 8 in the CRSJ counselling model to see
where examples or illustrations of the key concepts are provided in this e-book.
Moving back and forth between the conceptual chapters and those that focus on client
stories and the application of these principles in practice will help to expand and
solidify your learning.
Cultural Humility as a Foundation for Cultural Competency
In recent years there has been a shift towards talking about cultural humility as inextricably
intertwined with, and foundational to, cultural competency. [Please review the glossary
definitions for these important key concepts.] Hook, Davis, Owen, Worthington, and Utsey
(2013) argued that the traditional models of multicultural counselling competency focused on
doing rather than being, which poses a limitation to assessing the development and mastery of
multicultural counselling competency. The CRSJ counselling model speaks more
comprehensively than earlier competency models to the way of being of the counsellor, in
particular to the expression of a set of professional values related to cultural responsivity and
social justice and to the application of those values within a strongly relational practice.
Although the CRSJ counselling model contains essential and foundational competencies
related to multicultural and social justice knowledge and skills, CRSJ also recognized that the
person of the counsellor is intimately integrated into the vision of cultural competency.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 348
Qualifiers of Cultural Humility
The following phrases have been used to describe the meaning of cultural humility by
First Nations and other writers within the health care systems (First Nations Health
Authority, n.d., 2016; Hook et al., 2016; Waters & Asbill, 2013). As you read through the
list of qualifiers of cultural humility, consider how each of them supports you to focus
attention on the values, assumptions, beliefs, knowledge sources, and views of health
and healing of the other person or peoples by setting aside your own cultural lenses.
• Honour truth-telling
• Acknowledge current processes of colonization and psycholonization
• Challenge personal cultural assumptions and biases
• Examine the social determinants of health
• Foster safety and freedom from discrimination
• Celebrate voice and diversity of perspectives
• Respect cultural knowledge about health and healing
• Enhance self-determination
• Invite collaborative partnerships
• Position yourself as a life-long learner
• Hold an open heart and an open mind
• Engage in continuous and critical self-reflection
• Seek out cultural knowledge and consultation
• Acknowledge what you don’t know
• Express genuine curiosity
• Centre relationships in care
• Equalize power
• Enhance mutuality
• Earn trust
• Welcome feedback and accountability
• Advocate for systems level change
349 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Reflect on the following assertion from the First Nations Health Authority (2016) in
terms of its implications for a stance of cultural humility: “We will know that we’ve
achieved cultural safety when the voice of the people receiving our services tells us we
have.”
Cultural humility is fostered through three metacognitive skills, which will be introduced in
this section: critical thinking, reflective practice, and cognitive complexity. These
metacognitive skills will be revisited throughout the book as a foundation for supporting your
continued engagement in self-exploration of your own culturally-embedded perspectives on
what it means to be healthy, how presenting concerns develop, how preferred outcomes are
conceptualized, how change occurs, what types of counselling processes best facilitate that
change, and the possible targets of change. From that position of self-awareness, I invite
forward your critical consciousness of culture as a human being interacting with other human
beings. As you respond, I hope you will move more deeply into other-focused rather than
self-oriented ways of being in the world that encapsulate the concept of cultural humility
(Davis, Worthington, & Hook, 2010; Hook et al., 2013).
Juxtaposing cultural competency with cultural humility ensures that even experienced
counsellors do not assume they now know what to do; rather they continue listening and
learning in their moment-by-moment interactions with clients. The concept of cultural
humility reminds us that (a) cultural competency is an ongoing process, not a destination; (b)
lifelong, continuous learning is required for cultural competency; and (c) openness and an
invitational stance towards each client is essential to appreciate what they each have to teach
us about their unique and idiosyncratic cultural identities and worldviews, and about
ourselves, as cultural beings.
Thinking About Our Thinking and Reflecting on Our Doing
Critical thinking, cognitive complexity, and reflective practice are three metacognitive skills
that are essential to engaging in culturally responsive and socially just counselling. These skills
are not unique to the CRSJ counselling model; in fact, they are considered essential
competencies for all students in graduate programs and for counsellors and psychologists in
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 350
professional practice. In our graduate counselling program at Athabasca University, we thread
these transdisciplinary competencies through all of our graduate courses overtly, so that
students become aware of, and build mastery in, them over the course of their program.
Critical Thinking
You may not have stopped to think about how you think before now, but it is important to take
a moment to do this. Not everyone thinks in the same way. Some people are more cognitively
locked down and use the same lens in all situations. They have difficulty stepping back to see
that the lens itself is shaping their perception and interpretation of what is before them. An
uncritical lens supports the processes of ethnocentrism or stereotyping I highlight in Chapter
3. Review the definition of critical thinking in the glossary, and consider how this way of
thinking about thinking supports both cultural self-awareness and awareness of client cultural
identities.
Questions for Reflection
• How often do you stop to think about your thinking?
• In those moments when you think without thinking about thinking, which
cultural, disciplinary, paradigmatic, or other lenses do you employ
automatically?
• Which underlying assumptions focus these lenses on barriers to you holding an
open, invitational, and nonjudgemental attitude toward client stories, values, and
worldviews?
• What alternative lenses could you employ to help you see yourself and others
from a new perspective?
The CRSJ counselling competencies framework in Chapter 2 illustrates the higher order
learning outcomes that characterize critical thinking. Drawing on Bloom’s taxonomy of
351 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
educational objectives (Bloom, 1956; Krathwohl, Masia, & Bloom, 1965), I use verbs such as:
analyze, appraise, assess, compare and contrast, critique, discriminate, evaluate, investigate, and
reflect critically, to remind you that you cannot acquire competencies for culturally responsive
and socially just practice solely through increasing your basic knowledge about other people
or peoples. The skills targeted in the CRSJ counselling model require active and purposeful
challenging of existing paradigms, theories, practices, and protocols as well as openness to
new ways of thinking, shifts in attitudes and values, and changes in our ways of being with
others.
Cognitive Complexity
One of the goals of education, and graduate education in particular, is to foster students’
development of cognitive complexity (Owen & Lindley, 2010; Wilkinson, 2011). Cognitive
complexity is foundational both to cultural self-awareness and to appreciation of client
cultural identities; it stands in contrast to cognitive rigidity, which most often results in
cultural encapsulation, stereotyping, and buying into various *isms (Paré, 2013). Review the
comparison between cognitively complex and cognitively simple thinking below; then,
consider the limitations of cognitive rigidity for embracing and implementing the concepts
and processes described in this book.
Assess Your Level of Cognitive Complexity
Think about your thinking by comparing and contrasting the characteristics of
cognitive complexity versus cognitive rigidity, below. Honestly appraise your own
cognitive tendencies, and consider how these might be assets or barriers to your
implementation of CRSJ counselling competencies.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 352
Cognitive Complexity
• Able to navigate ambiguity,
paradox, and cognitive dissonance.
• Sees shades of grey and uses both/
and thinking.
• Integrates multiple and broad
frames of reference.
• Acknowledges that some questions
can’t be answered.
• Draws on multiple, interrelated
concepts or constructs.
• Recognizes and values multiple
realities.
• Sees multiple points of entry into,
and solutions for, a problem.
Cognitive Rigidity
• Discounts conflicting or
incongruent information.
• Operates with either/or thinking.
• Relies on a singular and narrow
frame of reference.
• Believes firmly that all questions
are answerable.
• Relies overly on only a few
concepts or constructs that have
simple relationships.
• Holds rigidly to truth claims.
• Thinks in a linear, causal way
Reflective Practice
In the context of CRSJ counselling, the skill of reflectivity requires us to focus the lens of
critical thinking and cognitive complexity on our own values, beliefs, assumptions, worldviews,
and ways of being in the world, and on the way these play out in practice as we interact with
clients from diverse cultural backgrounds (Coulson & Homewood, 2016). As you will see from
the glossary definition, reflective practice occurs both in the moment, as you interact with
clients and others, and as you look back on your own thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours.
Throughout this book, the other writers and I share some of our reflections on each of our
own evolving awareness of ourselves as cultural beings and the raising of our own
consciousness about the influence of culture and social justice on our interactions with, and
understanding of, others. We also deliberately pose questions to encourage your
self-reflection. Consider the following questions for reflection, before you continue to read
this chapter.
353 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Questions for Reflection
• What barriers do you experience to stopping, breathing, and reflecting on, both
your own thinking and your moment-by-moment interactions with others?
• Which practices might you introduce into your personal, educational, or work
life to begin to build the habit of reflectivity?
• Where are your growing edges in terms of your awareness of your own cultural
identities and social locations and those of your clients?
• How might thinking about your thinking, feeling, and behaving support your
continued competency development?
The attitude of cultural humility and the skills of critical thinking, cognitive complexity, and
reflective practice all actively support your ability to engage with clients in a way that is
culturally responsive. Mintz and colleagues (2009) introduced the concepts world travelling
or mobile positioning to support their argument that graduate counselling students must be
willing and able to consider alternative beliefs, values, and worldviews and to hold tentatively
to their own assumptions about how problems develop, what constitutes health and
well-being, and what the possibilities are for change. By doing so, they become able to open to
the cultural information they are receiving from clients and to respond in a way that
demonstrates cultural humility and cultural competence. Cognitive complexity, critical
thinking, and reflective practice develop through exercising your brain, in the same way that
physical flexibility is only possible through regular exercising of your body. My colleagues and
I invite you into an experience of world travelling through the client and counsellor stories in
this book. If you find yourself shutting down or leaning away from the lived experiences or the
perspectives presented, return to these metacognitive skills, and consider exercising your
mind by experimenting with a more critical, complex, reflective, and responsive stance.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 354
Envisioning Social Justice
Cultural competency is about seeing the world around you through the lens of culture and
social justice. Once you apply this lens regularly, it becomes more difficult to remove it and to
un-see the examples of cultural oppression and social injustice that surround you. In my
reflections on the concept of cultural humility earlier in this chapter, I emphasize the
importance of the counsellor’s ways of being as a central component of cultural competency.
However, I do not want to send the message that doing is not equally important. The doing of
social justice inside our counselling offices is challenging work that requires vigilance in terms
of our own tendencies, both personally and professionally, to see the world from
culture-bound perspectives, despite the ever-changing landscape of cultural identities and
social locations of our clients. Domain IV and Domain V of the CRSJ counselling model explore
what culturally responsive and socially just being and doing looks like in the
moment-by-moment interactions with clients. These domains focus on building a therapeutic
relationship, collaborating with clients to understand the nature of their presenting concerns,
and co-constructing counselling goals and a vision for change.
The change processes I envision in Domain VI open the door to engaging in social justice at
various levels of intervention, from individual client work to engaging in social change
activities. The doing of social justice outside of our offices may, at first, be perplexing, and it
will most likely be demanding. There are practical challenges to the doing of social justice,
particularly when they go beyond the scope of direct client work. In some agencies, social
justice work may be seen as outside the mandate of the organization, and you may find
yourself without time, resources, or support from supervisors or colleagues. If you are in
private practice, there may be direct and indirect financial costs to the doing of social justice
work, because it may happen outside of your billable hours. In my collaborative research, some
practitioners even feared losing funding or employment by stepping outside the traditional
boundaries of professional practice (Arthur, Collins, McMahon, & Marshall, 2009; McMahon,
Arthur, & Collins, 2008). However, there are ways to build social justice work into practice that
reduce some of these barriers. Like anything else in life, there will be a learning curve, but
once you have established cultural contacts in your community, identified and built
relationships with referral sources, written a few advocacy letters, and so on, the doing of
social justice at this microlevel becomes more routine in your daily practice of counselling.
Later in this chapter, and in the rest of this section of the book, I and other contributors invite
you to consider expanding your vision for enacting social justice at the meso and macrolevels.
355 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Equity, Equality, and Social Justice
Christian is three months into the fall semester and has fallen behind in most of his courses.
This is his last year in middle school and the grades he obtains will impact his options as he
heads into high school. The one place that he continues to excel is in computer sciences; he
wants to attend university to study computer sciences. When he is not at school, he spends
all his spare time at the public library accessing their free computers. Lately, however, he has
had less and less spare time. His teachers have noted the drop in grades. However, he is
referred to the school counsellor, because he has been involved in several altercations with
other classmates, and his teachers are concerned about his lack of attentiveness and
engagement in class. They describe him as unapproachable, distant, and uncooperative. The
counsellor is responsible for guiding students through the transition to high school and
directing them into appropriate education–career streams. Christian’s teachers are hoping
they will talk with him about selecting a non-academic route.
Consider the following possible approaches to working with Christian.
• Equality: As the school counsellor, you explain how the education–career stream section
works, and you invite Christian to complete several standard career inventories. He
reluctantly agrees, but doesn’t seem to give them his full attention. He says, “What is the
point; we all know what is going to happen to me anyway.” You try to educate him about
the value and potential contribution to society of each of the education–career streams.
In the second session, you review the outcomes of the assessments and Christian’s
current grades with him, explaining the most logical education and career path for him.
Christian storms out of the office, refusing to return.
• Equity: You talk with Christian’s teacher before the session and discover that he is living
in a group home. The group home is small and does not offer high school educational
services, so several young people from that home attend this school. Christian has only
been there since mid-summer. In the first session with Christian, you do not mention his
grades or the conflicts with other students; instead, you invite him to talk about how
things are going in the group home. Christian is silent for a long time, and then he says,
“There is a curfew.” You ask what this means for him. Over the next half hour, he tells you
that the foster family he had lived with for three years moved to another province over
the summer, and the only option available to him within this school district was the group
home. They have no computers, he is expected to do chores around the house after
school, and he is not allowed out in the evening past 7:30. He can have friends over in the
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 356
evenings, but they have been teasing him about “living with a bunch of losers.” Christian is
sad, lonely, and afraid. You offer to meet with him again to talk further about the stress of
this situation. In the meantime, you arrange for him to sign out a laptop from the
computing science lab, and you ask if you can talk with his teachers about make-up
assignments to help him raise his grades. Christian is surprised that he is not in trouble,
and that you are willing to help him in these ways.
• Social justice: You check in with the principal to see which other students are living in
that group home. There seems to be a pattern of poor performance and interpersonal
challenges with these young men. You live in the neighbourhood, but you have not paid
much attention to this group home. You arrange to meet with the director and discover
that she is a previous student of the school who spent time in that group home when she
was a student. She is delighted to see you and to talk about her goals and aspirations for
the young men in her care. She also acknowledges that recent funding cuts have made
making ends meet really difficult, so she has required more of Christian and the others in
the day-to-day task of managing the home. Christian and one of the other adolescents
have asked about new computers, but she doesn’t have the resources. The next time you
visit, you bring the computing sciences teacher with you. Together, the three of you come
up with a plan to raise funds for a small computer lab at the group home. There is a small
unused office on the ground floor where it can be housed. The plan includes opening
access to other students living in that area who don’t have access to computers at home.
You invite Christian to take the lead in researching the most economical but high quality
computer equipment within your budget. He is shocked that the three of you trust him
with this task.
Review the concepts of equity versus equality in the glossary, and then compare these
principles with social justice. The story of Christian illustrates how important it is to apply the
lenses of equity and social justice to the way you conceptualize client problems and envision
possible outcomes and change processes. Engaging in social justice does not always mean
direct action to change the contexts of clients’ lives; this may be neither advisable nor realistic
in some cases. However, this broader perspective opens the door to considering different
possibilities for collaborative change processes with, and on behalf of, clients.
357 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Honouring Inclusivity and Diversity
This a good place to take a pause from talking about social justice and injustice in society to
focus on what is means to honour diversity and inclusivity in society. This book is not just
about righting the sociocultural wrongs committed historically and in the present toward
marginalized populations; it is also about the gift to all of us of living in a culturally diverse
society in which the rights and freedoms of all people and peoples are increasingly embedded
in our national identity. And further, it is a call to not take our strength and resiliency as a
multicultural society for granted.
There is a risk, in writing about multiculturalism and social justice, of inadvertently adopting
an othering lens by focusing on only the challenges faced by clients with multiple,
intersecting, and nondominant identities and social locations. I invite you to take a moment to
reflect on the strength, resiliency, role modelling, leadership, and social, economic, and
political contributions made by many diverse populations in creating the society we now
enjoy. In most cases, the evolution of human rights legislation in Canada came about through
these incredible people.
• Most Canadian history books fail to paint an accurate picture of Indigenous people’s
culture and contribution to the nation we now call Canada. The Great Law of Peace from
the Haudenosaunee Iroquous Confederacy outlined principles for harmony, peace, and
unity across First Nations (Haudenosaunee Iroquous Confederacy, n.d.). This model of
consensus decision-making had significant influence on the evolution of democracy in
the Canadian government and worldwide (Alberta Regional Professional Development
Consortium, n.d.).
• Mary Ann Shadd (1823–1893) was the first Black woman to earn a law degree in Canada.
She came to Ontario with her parents through the underground railroad and contributed
significantly to the evolution of human rights in Canada. She opened a school in Windsor
that was racially inclusive and founded the Provincial Freeman newspaper, an anti-slavery
and Black resiliency publication (Historica Canada, n.d.).
• During the first world war, Japanese immigrants, who at the time were denied the
possibility of citizenship, were also prevented from enlisting in the Canadian military by
the government of British Columbia. Many of these men traveled to Alberta where they
were allowed to fight for their new country. They made significant and costly
contributions to the rights and freedoms we experience today (MacLeod, 2015).
• The fiscal security of Canada is dependent on immigration. If Canada shut its doors on
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immigration, by the year 2040, the real gross domestic product (GDP) would drop to 1.3%
and 26.9% of the population would be 65 or older. The ratio of workers to retirees would
drop from 3.6 to 2.0 with devastating effects on the economy. By the year 2030, 100% of
the population growth in Canada will rely on immigration. Simply raising the immigration
rate to 1.0% of the overall population would have significant fiscal and economic benefits,
with the real GDP at an average rate of 1.9% and the worker to retiree ratio improving.
These projections are based on the assumption that Canada also invests in better labour
market outcomes for immigrants (Conference Board of Canada, 2018).
• In 1980, Pham Thê Trung was granted asylum as a refugee from Vietnam, as one of the
thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia who settled in Canada during the 1970s and
80s (Historica Canada, 2017). Today he is considered one of Canada’s finest artists. His
renowned statue, Refugee Mother and Child, in Ottawa commemorates the fall of Saigon in
1975. He was awarded the Gold Medal for the Arts in 1997 (Cecco & Sakkab, 2017; Pham The
Trung, n.d.)
Canada’s past and future has been and will continue to be dependent on our increasing
appreciation for, and embracing of, the principles and practices of inclusivity and diversity.
Throughout the rest of this chapter, I invite you consider the implications of integrating these
principles as a foundational component of your professional identity.
The Risks of Unintentional Oppression
Unintentional oppression can occur in counselling when we impose our cultural lenses on
clients, when we fail to assess how our relative social locations influence the counselling
relationship and process, when we neglect to consider contextual and systemic factors in
defining problems and setting targets for change, or when we fail to listen carefully enough
for how cultural oppression has played out in clients’ lives and internalized worlds. In some
case, our cultural lenses can be shaped by our misperception that marginalized cultural
identities are the source of client problems or that holding a particular nondominant identity
means that those people necessarily experience psychosocial challenges that bring them into
counselling. Although disproportionately affected negatively by the social determinants of
health, members of nondominant populations in Canada are most often healthy and thriving
members of society.
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When I was coming out to myself and to others about my sexual orientation, I was
working in a community counselling organization. I was so thrilled with my
self-discovery and so ready to be out in the world as my new self that I could hardly
contain myself. I’d been through a very long process to come to that point and had little
concern about the perceptions and reactions of others.
Interestingly, most of my counselling colleagues encouraged me to slow down and not be
too quick to tell others about my emergent identity. I was surprised by this at the time.
What I came to realize later in processing these reactions with them was that, for some,
their only encounter with lesbians was through their clients, who were experiencing
negative personal and social consequences of coming out, or who were struggling with
their own internalized homophobia. My colleagues had little contact with either lesbian
culture, where lesbian identity was celebrated, or with individuals who were happily and
successfully living out their identities in their day-to-day worlds. Hence, they carried
with them a particular bias about lesbian experience and identity.
Unintentional oppression can also emerge through the positions counsellors take outside of
their counselling offices. Although overt acts of discrimination and overt cultural oppression
may be easier to pinpoint and address, harm also derives from, and is perpetuated through,
ethnocentric and dominant discourses in society and within our profession. We have a
responsibility, as practitioners and as members of the profession, to oppose actively these
oppressive discourses and to ensure that they are not inadvertently mirrored in our
professional practices. In effect, we may do harm by choosing to do nothing at all. Consider
the following scenario.
Ana is a school counsellor by day and a track and field competitor and coach in much of her
spare time. As a coach, she interacts regularly with parents. Most of these of these
interactions are positive, but there are a few parents who are highly competitive, and Ana
dreads the times she is cornered by one of them for any length of time. The team she coaches
includes teens from a number of different ethnic backgrounds. She is very proud of the sense
of cohesion, inclusion, and respect these youth exhibit. They are friends within and outside of
the training and competitions. After a recent event, Ana overheard one of the parents
challenge her decision on team structure for the relay race. They were speaking to two other
Caucasian parents and argued that their son was disadvantaged by being placed on a team
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 360
with two “coloured” people. Ana was taken aback by this conversation, but not entirely
surprised. However, she was tired and decided to continue walking rather than engaging
with them.
Several weeks later, one of the students from the team made an appointment to see her
during her school counselling hours. Ana suggested that she see the other counsellor, but
Hazel insisted her issue has to do with the track and field team. Hazel is one of the best
runners on the team. It is clear when she starts to talk that she is quite distressed, and she
says she is considering leaving the team. Ana is stunned. Hazel goes on to explain that she
has been dating one of the guys on team. Last week his father found out. She had wondered
why Paul wanted to keep their relationship secret; he had explained that it might complicate
dynamics on the team. Now she realizes that it is because she is Black. She really cares about
Paul and has never felt any racial tension between them. However, she has had to deal with
racial slurs at larger competitions, and there have been a couple of times she felt uneasy
around other parents at team events. She is in her final year of high school and is busy
applying to universities and focusing on her grades. She doesn’t think she can take on one
more challenge that centres around her race.
Put yourselves in Ana’s shoes, emotionally and cognitively, as Hazel says wearily, “You don’t
know what it is like, Ana, to feel like I am anticipating the next time I’m not quite good enough,
just because of the colour of my skin.” Reflect critically on situations in which you may have
made similar choices, as I have done. Now consider this alternative ending to the story as
Hazel implores, “You must know what it is like, Ana, to feel like you are always anticipating the
next time you aren’t quite good enough, just because of the colour of your skin.” How do your
reactions to this story change? What does this shift, if there is one, suggest about our
collective responsibility for social justice?
Human Rights, Anti-Oppressive Practice, and Justice-Doing
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations [UN], 2015/1948) provides an
overarching framework for conversations about social justice. It makes the clearest and most
broadly accepted statement about the worth and dignity of all persons and peoples. Although
there are explicit ties to human rights in the development of our codes of ethics as
counsellors and psychologists (Gauthier, Pettifor, & Ferrero, 2010; Gauthier & Pettifor, 2012),
there is a lack of in-depth analysis in the literature about how human rights interfaces with
361 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
psychological practice and the professions of counselling and psychology. I am grateful for the
insights of Kirby Huminuik about the interface of human rights and social justice and the
importance of applying a human rights framework to all aspects of professional practice,
individually and collectively, in her chapter in this section. Kirby is the sole Canadian member
of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Human Rights.
The APA Task Force on Human Rights (2017) defined human rights as it relates to psychology
as follows: (a) “Fundamental entitlements,” (b) “derived from the mere fact of being human,” (c)
“to be enjoyed on a non-discriminatory basis,” (d) “universal, inalienable, interdependent, and
interrelated, which means that the enjoyment of one right requires and depends on the
enjoyment of other rights”; and (e) “morally justifiable claims and legally recognized, for the
most part, in international legal documents.” [Note: At the time of my writing, this is not yet an
official position of the APA, because the task force paper has yet to be released.] What is
important in this definition is that human rights exist whether or not you or I recognize their
existence. In this sense, they are indisputable. Take a moment to read through the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 2015/1948). Simply as one human being to another, we must
all respect each other’s fundamental human rights. Entering the professions of counselling
and psychology most often brings you under the authority and responsibility of provincial and
national regulatory bodies and, in some cases, provincial health acts, which have all been
tasked with the protection of the public. This adds another layer of professional accountability
to national and international human rights law and necessitates attention to the ways in which
human rights are infused into ethical practice.
Although human rights apply to everyone, specific attention is paid to the protection of
marginalized groups within society (UN, 2015/1948). Current human rights legislation in
Canada protects the rights and interests of Canadians of all genders, ages, ethnicity,
Indigeneity, sexual orientation, gender identities, abilities, and religions. Quite simply,
discrimination on the basis of these protected identity statuses is illegal. Check out the
Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA, 2018) particularly “Part I: Proscribed Discrimination.”
Noteworthy, is the exclusion of social class, which has become increasingly important in
dialogues about social justice in counselling and psychology. See the reflections on social class
marginalization by Fisher Lavell in this book. Respect for human rights necessitates
nondiscriminatory practice; however, from a social justice perspective, not engaging in or
perpetuating discrimination is a minimalist standard that simply ensures counsellors and
psychologists do no active harm. Health care practitioners, and the professional associations
and regulatory bodies that represent and govern them, have an additional layer of
responsibility in the active protection of human rights, because of their position of authority
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and power within society. Even if you choose not to license with a regulatory body, you most
often assume the privileges associated with the professions in the ways in which you present
yourself to consumers of your services, which means that you also have to assume the
corresponding ethical responsibilities. All consumers of psychological services have a right to
expect equitable, just, and nondiscriminatory practice.
Despite the proscribed forms of discrimination in the CHRA (2018), historically, the public
interests, which takes into account the needs of all persons and peoples, has not always been
well served by legislation, even human rights legislation. There are many examples in
Canadian history of legalized discrimination against Indigenous peoples, immigrants, women,
persons with disabilities, LGBTTQI people, people of Jewish faith, and other marginalized
populations (Audet, 2016). The law itself is subject to past and current sociocultural zeitgeists
and shifts in political climate; as a result, “not all human rights are equally embedded in and or
enforced by law” (Audet, 2016, p. 102). There is evidence that human rights are being rolled
back by the ultraconservative forces in the US and the increased nationalist and anti-human
rights discourses and policies in Canada and other countries. Consider the example of the
top-down decision of Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, and his conservative party to force K-12
educators in that province to revert to the sex education curriculum from 1998 instead of the
2015 curriculum, which is considered by many to be the most up-to-date in the country. The
intent is to eliminate content related to gender identity, diversity in sexual orientation, and
even consent to sexual activity. The Ontario Teachers Federation [OTF] is turning to the
courts to ensure not only protection of the rights of young women and queer youth, but also
to mitigate the potentially devastating ripple effects of erasure of their identities from school
curriculum. Viewing this situation through the lens of human rights highlights the importance
of inclusivity in public education: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the
human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental
freedoms” (UN, 2015/1948, Article 26, para. 2). The response of the OTF is an example of an
active and collective pursuit of social justice at the systemic level.
Through the emphasis on social justice in this book, I invite you to consider adopting this type
of anti-oppressive stance, rather than embracing only a nondiscriminatory position. The
former is about what you do, rather than simply about what you do not do. I join other recent
writers (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015; 2016) in emphasizing the
importance of active positioning on the part of individual practitioners and the professions as
a whole. This requires direct involvement with people and systems and engagement in
advocacy and other forms of social action both within, and outside of, individual, family, and
group counselling processes. Review the definition of social justice once again. Then consider
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the plight of the homeless, the lack of protection for sex workers, the missing and murdered
Indigenous women, the rise of anti-immigration and refugee sentiment, the unequal access to
education, the discourses and acts of hate directed against trans persons, or the children
living in poverty without basic sustenance like food, water, and housing, all these, in Canada.
Clearly, and despite having one of the strongest human rights legislative frameworks in the
world, “we have not delivered on a just society” (Reynolds & polanco, 2012). These are only
some of the many sociopolitical challenges that necessitate an active, anti-oppressive stance
by individual counsellors, psychologists, and by the professions as a whole.
I have had a number of moments in my life where an idea or an experience has suddenly
and dramatically altered my thinking, my values, or my way of viewing the world. It has
been as if a light has turned on, and I can never turn it off again. One of those insights
happened during the culture and gender course in my Masters program. Dr. Kathy
Cairns was talking about the cultural oppression of various nondominant groups. She
made the assertion that in a socially unjust society, not taking a stand equates to
supporting the discriminatory and inequitable status quo. The only way not to contribute
to the continued oppression of others is to speak and act against the oppression and to
engage in social action to effect change in the structures, policies, practices, and systems
that privilege some people and marginalize others. From that moment on, I could no
longer convince myself that I was doing okay by not acting in a discriminatory fashion
toward others. I was compelled, instead, to align myself with a proactive social justice
agenda. She gifted me with lasting learning about the difference between
nondiscriminatory and anti-oppressive stances and practices.
Vikki Reynolds, whose contribution I am delighted to include in this part of the book, speaks
of moving beyond anti-oppression to justice-doing. Be sure to review the definition of this
term in the glossary. Assuming an ethic of justice-doing requires more than cognitive and
emotional opposition to injustice and inequity; it requires direct, purposeful, and collaborative
action to effect social change (Reynolds & Hammoud-Beckett, 2018). The work by Kirby
Huminuik, also featured in this part of the book, is grounded in human rights and reinforces
the role of individual practitioners, and of the professions of counselling and psychology, in
bringing about social change. Both of these women come to their professional roles from an
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activist position. I hope you will find their writing inspiring and motivating, as I do. Shifting
our language from anti-oppression to justice-doing shifts the focus away from simply
deconstructing social injustice and toward working actively to achieve broader social justice
through social change.
A Both/And Perspective on Justice-Doing and Social Change
One of the current dialogues in counselling and psychology centres around the meaning of
social justice in practice and the responsibilities of practitioners and the professions in
enacting social change (Winslade, 2018). On the one hand, some authors hold forth the
aspirational goal of a just society as inextricably intertwined with professional practice,
recognizing the naivety of a utopian vision of absolute justice, but emphasizing our collective
responsibility to do what we can to equalize power and ameliorate negative and
health-compromising social determinants of health. Others argue that social justice in
professional practice is about how to engage moment-by-moment with each person we
encounter. Enacting social justice, from this perspective, plays out in the language we use, the
assumptions we bring, the lenses we apply, the contexts we consider, and the outcomes we
target throughout our work with individuals, families, and groups. You will see both of these
perspectives represented in this book, because I am a both/and thinker, and I hope to provide
you with a range of possibilities for engagement in justice-doing that will enhance our
collective social justice energy and influence.
365 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Figure 1. A both/and perspective on social change. The examples on the far right do not
reflect an exhaustive list of possibilities; others are explored throughout this book.
I argue for a both/and perspective in CRSJ counselling for a number of reasons.
• First, counsellors themselves are positioned along lines of sociocultural privilege and
marginalization, which necessitates consideration of the personal and professional risks
of engagement in social change processes. Unfortunately, in the past, much of the work of
justice-doing has fallen to members of marginalized populations and has not been taken
up, and has often been actively resisted, by those in positions of power and privilege in
society.
• Second, from a systems theory point of view, a perspective upon which the CRSJ
counselling model is founded, change at the microlevel (i.e., individuals, families, and
groups) will bring about change at the mesolevel (i.e., schools, organizations, and
communities) and at the macrolevel (i.e., broader social, economic, and political systems).
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 366
Similarly, social justice action at the broader systems levels has ripple effects at mesolevel
on the direct contexts of clients’ lives and at the microlevel on clients’ health and
well-being.
• Third, the nature of our response as practitioners to social change is intimately connected
to the unique and idiosyncratic needs of our clients. This means that the choice about
how social justice plays out in practice is not, and should not, be entirely or even
predominantly ours! In this sense, social justice is again interconnected with cultural
responsivity to the values, worldviews, and sociocultural contexts of each client.
I concur with Reynolds and polanco (2012, p. 19), who argued that “there are many paths to
justice-doing.” This chapter is not intended to tell you what to do; it is intended to encourage
you to do something and to look out actively for opportunities that may present themselves.
Social Justice as an Ethical Imperative
As counselling and psychology practitioners, and as students of the professions, you are
responsible to the codes of ethics and standards of practice of the Canadian Psychological
Association (CPA 2017) or the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA,
2007). Some provincial regulatory bodies also provide their own practice guidelines and
standards. The imperative to provide culturally responsive and socially just counselling derives
from both the aspirational goal of providing clients with the best services possible, based on
their individual needs (beneficence), and the minimalist goal of ensuring that client‒counsellor
interactions do not become a source of harm (nonmaleficence) (CCPA, 2007; CPA, 2017).
Ethically, higher weight is placed on doing no harm, which is an important bottom line in
terms of nondiscriminatory practice (Cornish, Wade, Tucker, & Post, 2014).
In the 2017 revision of the CPA code of ethics, the extensive review process identified
“diversity and the impact of globalization” as one of five areas for targeted updating of the
code (Sinclair, 2017). As a result, the wording of the code was changed to reflect the
importance of considering peoples instead of just persons (Sinclair, 2017), resulting in, for
example, “Principle I: Respect for the Dignity of Persons and Peoples” (CPA, 2017, p. 4). Peoples
are defined as “a distinct group of persons who are linked by a common identity culture,
history, and collective interests” (CPA, 2017, p. 8). In making this shift, the CPA codes support
the CRSJ counselling assertion that there are groups within society who are more or less
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vulnerable to various forms of cultural and systemic oppression and that ethical practice
necessitates attention to relative privilege and marginalization that derives from one’s social
location. Specifically, the values statement under Principle I confirms the following:
Psychologists acknowledge that all human beings have a moral right to have their innate
worth as human beings appreciated and that this inherent worth is not dependent on a
human being’s culture, nationality, ethnicity, colour, race, religion, sex, gender, marital
status, sexual orientation, physical or mental abilities, age, socio-economic status, or any
other preference or personal characteristic, condition, or status. As such, psychologists
do not engage in unjust discrimination based on such factors and promote
non-discrimination in all of their activities. . . . The nature of their contract with society
demands that their greatest responsibility be to persons and peoples in the most
vulnerable position . . . economic disadvantage, history of discrimination or oppression
due to culture or other factors. . . . Psychologists consider it their responsibility to
increase safeguards to protect and promote the moral rights of the persons or peoples
involved in their activities proportionate to their vulnerability. (CPA, 2017, pp. 11-12)
The CCPA code of ethics has not been revised since 2007. It echoes some of the language of
human rights in section A2. Respect for Rights: “Counsellors participate in only those
practices which are respectful of the legal, civic, and moral rights of others, and act to
safeguard the dignity and rights of their clients, students, and research participants” (p. 3).
Section B9. Respecting Diversity then specifies cultural inclusivity: “Counsellors actively work
to understand the diverse cultural background of the clients with whom they work, and do not
condone or engage in discrimination based on age, colour, culture, ethnicity, disability,
gender, religion, sexual orientation, marital, or socio-economic status” (p. 6).
However, I argue that adopting a human rights and social justice stance requires counsellors
to move beyond doing no harm (nondiscrimination) to engaging actively in justice-doing in
their moment-by-moment interactions with clients as well as in systems level change to
ameliorate the systemic barriers and oppression that do harm to clients on a day-to-day basis.
Our codes of ethics have lagged behind the emergent social justice agenda of the profession in
failing to provide a clearer ethic of anti-oppression and justice-doing model of practice
(Arthur & Collins, 2015; Reynolds & polanco, 2012). The description of Principle I in the CPA
(2017) code of ethics makes explicit reference to “distributive, social and natural justice” (p. 4)
and the definition of moral rights adds that “of particular significance to psychologists are
moral rights to . . . self-determination, and liberty; cultural identity, cultural survival, and
social participation” (p. 10). These references in the CPA (2017) code mirror some elements of
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the CRSJ counselling definitions of social justice and reflect human rights. The CCPA (2007)
code has no such references.
Principle IV in the CPA (2017) code addresses “Responsibility to Society” (p. 31); however, a
cautious and conservative positioning relative to social structures and policies is suggested
unless such elements “seriously ignore or oppose the principles” (p. 31) of the code. Moreover,
responsibility for advocating for change is limited to those psychologists who may be directly
involved with these systems, rather than positioning justice-doing as a responsibility of all
members and of the profession as a whole. Standard IV.22, under Development of Society,
comes a bit closer to advancing social justice: “Speak out, in a manner consistent with the four
principles of this Code, if they possess expert knowledge that bears on important societal
issues being studied or discussed” (p. 33); however, the language falls far short of assuming
responsibility for justice-doing. In addition, the principle of responsibility to society is most
often given less weight or attention than the others (Audet, 2018). The CCPA (2007) code
makes no mention of justice-doing at the systems level. However, the revised Standards of
Practice (SOPs, 2015) make explicit reference to human rights legislation and call on
professional counsellors to enact “principles of social justice and principles of equity in all
their professional activities” (p. 2). The CCPA SOPs also highlight the particular needs of “those
who may be disenfranchised or negatively affected by political, personal, social, economic, or
familial histories” which may include “colonization, poverty, oppression, violence, structural
injustice, war, and discriminatory practices” (p. 2). This is the most explicit reference to social
injustice and social location in the Canadian codes or SOPs. The SOPs are intended to specify
a bottom line for meeting the behavioural expectations of the profession (Nuttgens & Smith,
2016). However, the CCPA SOPs are not explicit about the specific nature of social justice and
equity principles.
The American Counseling Association (ACA, 2014) is more explicit in positioning cultural
responsivity and social justice as core professional values within its code of ethics with
references to “honouring diversity and embracing a multicultural approach in support of the
worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of people within their social and cultural contexts”
and “promoting social justice” (p. 3). There is also an emphasis on advocacy at the systems
level: “When appropriate, counsellors advocate at the individual, group, institutional, and
societal levels to address potential barriers and obstacles that inhibit access and/or the
growth and development of clients” (p. 5).
The most well developed North American justice-doing perspectives are found in the Feminist
Therapy (1999) code of ethics and the Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ, 2011) code of ethics.
369 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
The Feminist Therapy (1999) code of ethics provided a foundation for prioritizing social
change and has influenced feminist practice for many decades. Consider the following
excerpts specific to justice-doing and social change (other parts of the code address
anti-oppressive practices):
Ethical Guidelines for Feminist Therapists
1
I. Cultural Diversities and Oppressions
D. A feminist therapist evaluates her ongoing interactions with her clientele for any
evidence of her biases or discriminatory attitudes and practices. She also monitors her
other interactions, including service delivery, teaching, writing, and all professional
activities. The feminist therapist accepts responsibility for taking action to confront and
change any interfering, oppressing, or devaluing biases she has. (para. 4)
II. Power Differentials
D. A feminist therapist educates her clients regarding power relationships. She informs
clients of their rights as consumers of therapy, including procedures for resolving
differences and filing grievances. She clarifies power in its various forms, as it exists
within other areas of her life, including professional roles, social/governmental
structures, and interpersonal relationships. She assists her clients in finding ways to
protect themselves and, if requested, to seek redress. (para. 4)
V. Social Change
A. A feminist therapist seeks multiple avenues for impacting change, including public
education and advocacy within professional organizations, lobbying for legislative actions,
and other appropriate activities. (para. 1)
B. A feminist therapist actively questions practices in her community that appear harmful
to clients or therapists. She assists clients in intervening on their own behalf. As
appropriate, the feminist therapist herself intervenes, especially when other practitioners
appear to be engaging in harmful, unethical, or illegal behaviors. (para. 2)
E. A feminist therapist, teacher, or researcher recognizes the political is personal in a
world where social change is a constant. (para. 5)
The CSJ (2011) code was developed as an expansion and clarification of social justice principles
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 370
in the ACA (2014) code. The guiding principles of this code provide clear direction for
engagement of counsellors in social change: CSJ support “Social justice, Social action,
Eradication of all forms of abuse and oppression, Dignity and worth of all persons, Embracing
diversity, Integrity and competence” (pp. 6-7). These principles are expressed through an
emphasis on advocacy at the micro, meso, and macrolevels, drawing heavily on the Lewis,
Arnold, House, and Toporek (2003) Advocacy Competencies. The following excerpt from this
code positions justice-doing as central to the responsibility of counsellors who embrace a
social justice identity.
CSJ professionals recognize that not all problems clients/students experience are the
result of intrapsychic factors, but many often emerge from and are sustained by factors in
the environment in which they live. Laws, institutional policies and procedures, and social
environments that are unjust and oppressive can lead to situational and chronic
developmental, social and emotional problems that clients/students experience. CSJ
professionals assume the ethical responsibility to address these factors by providing
counseling and advocacy services either with or on behalf of the clients/students with
whom they work. (p. 8)
Although this has been a long section, I hope that it has provided you with an overall
orientation to the relationship of cultural responsivity and social justice to ethical practice.
Just as the law is subject to social and political climate, professional codes and SOPs are
written for, and from within, the professions, which makes them vulnerable to dominant
discourses and potential neglect of marginalized consumer voices (Arthur & Collins, 2015;
Audet, 2016). My hope is to help support a new generation of professionals with a passion for
social justice who will actively engage in the evolution of these codes in the best interests of
all clients, particularly those whose human rights are often neglected in society.
Appling a Social Justice Lens to Ethical Decision-Making
Most of the codes of ethics noted above contain principles or processes designed to support
ethical decision-making. In Figure 2, I attempt to synthesize content from the North
American codes and then reference which aspects of the CRSJ counselling model would apply
to the various aspects of the code synthesis to enhance cultural responsivity and social
justice. As with other ethical decision-making models, the intent of the questions in Column 1,
the brief explanations in Column 2, and the CRSJ counselling considerations in Column 3 of
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Figure 2 is not to suggest a lock-step or linear decision-making process, but to demonstrate
critical reflection on our decision-making. Reynolds and polanco (2012) warn that enacting an
ethic of justice-doing is messy and imprecise; it cannot be distilled easily into a set of clear
principles. Rather, like counselling, decision-making is most often incremental and recursive.
Nuttgens and Smith (2016) point to the importance of consultation in ethical decision-making,
which becomes even more important within the CRSJ counselling model wherein client and
counsellor cultural identities, social locations, and worldview are considered. The
metatheoretical skills introduced at the outset of this chapter (i.e., critical thinking, cognitive
complexity, and reflective practice) help guard against ethnocentric and egocentric
decision-making; however, it remains important to voice our thinking and invite input from
others including colleagues, cultural knowledge holders or guides, and supervisors. The
person who is most often left out of ethical decision-making, however, is the client; from a
social justice perspective, active collaboration with clients in making joint decisions that affect
the services they receive (Audet, 2016) honours their worldviews, respects their personal
cultural identities, and increases their sense of agency over their own lives.
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Figure 2. Synthesis of ethical decision-making models from the ACA (2014), CCPA (2007), and
CPA (2017) codes of ethics (Columns 1 and 2), including Schulz and Martin (2015), with overlay
of cultural responsivity and social justice (Column 3).
One of the risks of ethical decision-making processes is that they can remain embedded in the
individualist worldviews that characterize and undergird most professional codes of ethics.
This limits both the breadth and cultural responsivity of our ethical decision-making with and
for individual clients, and it makes the principles and standards less relevant to
decision-making processes involving systems at the mesolevel (schools, organizations,
communities) and macrolevel (broader social, economic, and political systems). In the practice
illustration below, Simon Nuttgens highlights relational ethics, which provide a lens for ethical
decision-making embedded within social relationships (Nuttgens & Smith, 2016). The concept
of relational ethics is intimately connected to the notion of the ethic of care, which I address
in Chapter 12.
Practice Illustration 15 Relational Ethics
By Simon Nuttgens
There are many ethical systems, developed over millennia, to help answer questions
regarding morally correct action. One of the lesser known, though no less important,
ethical systems is known as relational ethics. Relational ethics departs from more
common ethical systems that emphasize the rightness and wrongness of moral actions
(normative ethics) and the character of the moral agent (virtue ethics). Instead,
relational ethics can be viewed as a “co-constructed ethical and moral encounter, with
associated relationship experiences and processes, that both influences and in turn is
influenced by the complex multidimensional context in which the relationship occurs”
(Gabriel & Casemore, 2009. p. 1).
Unfortunately, we often come to view ethics as a toolkit that we turn to only upon
realizing that something has gone, or is about to go, ethically awry. The essential
feature of this approach, named many years ago by Pincoffs (1971) as “quandary ethics,”
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 374
involves drawing upon moral rules and principles when confronted with a difficult
ethical situation to arrive at defensible decision. Ethics, so conceived, becomes a
solitary, rationale act, undertaken most often after the fact. In comparison, relational
ethics is much more present-focused, attending to the quality of the client–counsellor
relationships as it unfolds, attuned not only to the instrumental conversation at hand,
but also to the myriad external features that influence and inform how to ethically be
with one’s client. Normative ethics ask the question: “What is the right thing to do?”;
relational ethics asks the question: “How should I be with this other person?” The
table, below, outlines key differences between relational ethics and normative ethics.
Relational Ethics
• Answers the question: How should
I be with the other?
• Reflects continuously on the
quality of the unfolding
relationship
• Is based on interdependency,
relational personhood, dialogue,
and ongoing questioning
• Embraces contingency, humility,
and uncertainty
• Ethical knowledge is developed in,
and through, the relationship
• Promotes ongoing sensitivity to
ethical tensions throughout the
professional relationship
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Normative Ethics
• Answers the question: What is the
right thing to do?
• Examines rightness and wrongness
of actions after the fact
• Is based on principles that tend to
be prescriptive, broad, and abstract
• Seeks universality and certainty
• Ethical knowledge is developed
through prevailing Western ethical
theories
• Focuses on making reasoned and
defendable decisions when
confronted by an ethical problem
or dilemma
Teaching and Learning Guide
Take a few minutes to explore the learning activities in the Collins (2018) Teaching and
Learning Guide for Core Competency 8: Cultural Responsivity and Social Change. You
may be assigned specific activities by a course instructor. If not, choose the concepts
that you are struggling to understanding, or those which evoked an emotional
reaction, or piqued your curiosity, and complete one or more activities to reinforce
your learning.
Back to top of chapter
Core Competency 9
Values-Based Practice
Grounding Counselling Practice in Values
Values are inherent to human nature and to cultural communities. They are part of what
defines us as cultural beings; they are expressed in and through our worldviews and our
beliefs about health and healing, and they undergird our being and our doing. Each of us
brings to the counselling process a set of values, some conscious and some unconscious, that
reflect our personal cultural identities, lived experiences, and social locations. In many cases,
these values have been internalized from both dominant and nondominant discourses and
cultural norms that were part of our socialization. However, values are not truths; they are
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 376
social constructions that have evolved over our lifetime as a result of our sociocultural
embeddedness in particular contexts and relationships.
One of the foundational assumptions of the CRSJ counselling model is that counselling is
values-based. Click here to revisit the relationship of values to the model. We all engage in
values-based practice, whether or not we overtly acknowledge it. The myth of value neutrality
has been advanced by positivist and postpositivist paradigms of psychological thinking and
research that assume a singular, knowable reality in which both practitioners and researcher
aim to engage with clients or participants in an unbiased way and search for singular
explanations for causal relationships (Glesne, 2016; Mertens, 2015). In contrast, the
examination of professional codes of ethics above makes it clear that the professions of
counselling and psychology are solidly embedded in a particular set of values. In each of the
codes of ethics, there are explicit references to particular values that undergird its ethical
principles and decision-making processes. There is consistency across the Canadian and
American codes of ethics in positioning certain values as foundational to ethical practice in
counselling and psychology. Refer to the glossary definition of professional values for a
summary of specific values identified in the ACA (2014), CCPA (2007), and CPA (2017) codes of
ethics. Although there is considerable overlap, emergent social justice values enhance ethical
practice and decision-making, and these values are now slowly making their way into our
codes of ethics in Canada.
Navigating Values Differences or Conflicts
There is also an emergent consensus that it is the responsibility of each counsellor to align
their personal values and beliefs with the values of the professions of counselling and
psychology. Part of the process of professional identity development is addressing actively
personal–professional values conflicts. When you are engaged with clients, you are, in a
sense, an emissary of the professions, so all values conflicts or differences should be critically
analyzed in terms of the relationship of counsellor values to those of the profession. In
particular, the nondiscriminatory and anti-oppressive stance of the profession is considered
nonnegotiable, as you can see in my analysis of the codes of ethics earlier in this chapter. The
ACA (2014) code of ethics states, “Counselors respect the diversity of clients, trainees, and
research participants and seek training in areas in which they are at risk of imposing your
377 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
values on to clients, especially when the counselors values are inconsistent the clients goals or
are discriminatory in nature” (p. 5).
The Sociocultural Construction of Virtue
Before finishing off this section, I feel compelled to address the interpretation of virtue
ethics in the CCPA (2007) code of ethics. CCPA argues that this system of ethical
decision-making is “based on the belief that counsellors are motivated to be virtuous
and caring, because they believe it is the right thing to do” (p. 4). I struggle with this
position, because it fails to take into account many of the core principles of cultural
responsivity and social justice, specifically:
• the subjectivity of counsellor worldview;
• the sociocultural construction of values, assumptions, meaning, and worldview;
• the tendency toward ethnocentrism and cultural encapsulation;
• the fluidity and contextualized nature of our sense of self;
• the importance of relationality to values and identity;
• the sociocultural construction of meaning;
• and so on.
The issues is that virtue ethics is framed within the CCPA code of ethics so that its
focus is on the moral standards of the practitioner. The list of questions provided in
this section of the code (CCPA, 2007), and expanded on in Schulz and Martin (2015),
reinforces this self-oriented lens, which stands in stark contrast to the other-focused
positioning of cultural humility we explored at the beginning of this chapter. Consider
the examples in Column 1, adapted from CCPA (2007) and Schulz and Martin (2015), in
contrast to the alternative CRSJ counselling positionings in Column 2 below. I am not
suggesting that the questions in Column 1 have no place in ethical decision-making;
however, I strongly caution against using them as your primary grounds for ethical
decision-making.
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Virtue Ethics
CRSJ Counselling Lens
• What emotions
do I feel?
• How are they
influencing me?
• What are the
telling me to do?
• How are my personal cultural identities, dominant or
nondominant identity development, or social
location (relative positioning of privilege or
marginalization) influencing my feelings?
• How are these same factors influencing the
emotional responses of the client?
• What do I value?
• How can my
values show
caring for the
client?
• Am I willing to
act on my values?
• In what sociocultural contexts did my values
emerge?
• How are they connected to dominant and
nondominant worldviews?
• What tensions are there between my values and
those of the client?
• How can I avoid imposing my values on the client?
• What tensions are there between my values and
those of the profession? Between my values and
human rights?
• Do these tensions suggest aligning my values with
the profession or taking a social justice stand to
ensure the welfare of my client?
• How will my
decision affect
others?
• What are the
consequences for
each option?
• How does engaging in constructive collaboration
with the client influence my decision-making
process?
• How might assuming a position of cultural humility
and client-centred practice influence my
decision-making?
• How can I honour client worldview, sociocultural
context, and views of health and healing?
• What are the consequences for the client, for the
client–counsellor relationship, and for the
communities in which the client is embedded?
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• What emotional
decision-making
exercises can
help me decide?
• What decision
best defines and
represents me as
a person?
• How might the metacognitive skills of critical
thinking, cognitive complexity, and reflective
practice enhance my understanding of my emotions?
• How does power play into my positioning, both
emotionally and cognitively?
• How do the needs of the client, my needs, the needs
of client–counsellor relationship, the needs of the
community, and so on factor into my decision?
• Would
consultation with
others change my
decision?
• How would I feel
about others
knowing of my
decision?
• What might my hesitation to receive consultation
suggest about my own unresolved cultural
assumptions and biases?
• Which cultural knowledge holders and guides are
best positioned to help me in my decision-making
process?
• To what degree am I comfortable with transparency,
openness, humility, and accountability in my
decision-making?
Although I like to trust in the good intentions of most counsellors and psychologists, I
am skeptical of even my own ability to rely solely or predominantly on my virtue (e.g.,
my emotions, my intuition, my values, my sense of self) to make ethical decisions,
precisely because I am a cultural being, located socioculturally with privileges not
available to many of my clients, and influenced constantly by dominant discourses and
cultural norms. As I have argued elsewhere (Collins & Arthur, 2018), enacting social
justice in ethical decision-making is challenging because it requires us to let go of our
attachment to our own worldview (i.e., to what we think we know, feel, and believe)
and to forefront client values, worldviews, ways of knowing, and lived experiences.
Feminist authors involved in the critique and transformation of virtue ethics have
challenged the traditional focus on individual selfhood that undergirds the CCPA (2017)
conceptualization (MacDonald & Symmonds, 2018). They pay more careful attention to
the social construction and contextual nature of virtue; identify the risks associated
with ethnocentric, community-specific definitions of virtue; point to the ways in
which virtue ethics have contributed to oppression; and position dissent and
resistance as core virtues (MacDonald & Symmonds, 2018; Meara & Day, 2000). I
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strongly encourage this more in-depth critical analysis of virtue as part of ethical
decision-making conversations, particularly given the rise of complicity-based
conscience legal claims in the US. Individual and professional exceptions from
anti-discriminatory laws have been sought, based on the argument that to act in a
non-discriminatory manner would compromise religious values or beliefs (Nejaime &
Siegel, 2015). What makes complicity claims problematic from a professional ethics,
social justice, and human rights perspective, is that accommodating conscience (virtue)
on the basis of religious bias or intolerance, for example, which most often involves a
denial of services to LGBTTQI persons or other marginalized groups, inflicts at
minimum dignitary harm (Nejaime & Siegel, 2015). I quote Louise Penny (2017), who’s
novel Glass Houses I am currently reading, “A conscience is not necessarily a good
thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many
Blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?”
(ch. 11).
Although values are socially constructed, and therefore fluid and contextualized, they
function as core operating principles in our lives. For this reason, critical reflection on values
and engagement in values change can be a painful, distressing, and uncertain process. Even
when counsellors express an intention to embrace cultural responsivity and social justice, it
may take some time and work for deep values changes to occur, particularly for those new to
the professions. In the short-term, many authors advise counsellors to bracket their personal
values (i.e., leave them outside the office door) or overtly prioritize those of the profession in
the ways they interact with clients (Ametrano, 2014; Hancock, 2014; Mintz et al., 2009; Trahan
& Lemberger, 2014). This is challenging personal and professional work that needs to be done
before, or outside of, your direct interactions with clients (as part of your graduate program,
for instance). If you find yourself triggered into a values conflict with a client, it is time to
step back and ask yourself if this conflict is really about tensions with the client’s values,
worldviews, or beliefs about health and healing or if this is a point at which you are struggling
with the values of the profession. The latter is an important opportunity to engage in further
professional development through consultation, supervision, or continued education (Collins
& Arthur, 2018; CSJ, 2011; Hancock, 2014; Whitman & Bidell, 2014).
Let’s return to the codes of ethics for further guidance. The ACA (2014) code of ethics states:
381 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
C.2.a. Boundaries of Competence: . . . Whereas multicultural counseling competency is
required across all counseling specialties, counselors gain knowledge, personal awareness,
sensitivity, dispositions, and skills pertinent to being a culturally competent counselor in
working with a diverse client population. (p. 6)
In other words, competence for professional practice includes cultural competency and the
corresponding professional values. Furthermore, the CPA (2017) code further clarifies as
follows:
Although individual psychologists might specialize and direct their activities to particular
populations, or might decline to engage in activities based on the limits of their
competence . . . psychologists do not exclude persons or peoples on a capricious or
unjustly discriminatory basis. (p. 12)
What this means is that you cannot just decide you will not work with Muslims or trans
persons because of conflicts with your personal values and beliefs. Instead, you are expected
to develop competency to work effectively and ethically with all persons and peoples. The
boundaries of competency apply only to specific presenting concerns, counselling goals, or
intervention processes, not to groups of people, particularly those with protected status
under human rights legislation. This principle is reinforced in the ACA (2014) code:
A.11.b. Values Within Termination and Referral: Counselors refrain from referring
perspective and current clients based solely on the counsellor’s personally held values,
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Counselors respect the diversity of clients and seek
training in areas in which they are at risk of imposing their values on to clients, especially
when the counselor’s values are inconsistent with the client’s goals or discriminatory in
nature. (p. 6)
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Critical Reflection on Values
Review the metacognitive skills, critical thinking, reflective practice, and cognitive
complexity, from the beginning of this chapter. Then apply those competencies as you
reflect on the following questions:
• Where might my personal values diverge from those of the counselling
profession?
• To what degree do I position my values as absolute truths as opposed to social
constructions that reflect my culture and context?
• What rationalizations might I incline toward to justify prioritizing, or holding
onto, my personal values?
• What do I risk, personally or interpersonally, by being willing to loosen my grip
on long-standing personal values or assumptions?
• Where my values diverge from the values of the profession, is there a
higher-order value that I can grab onto to bridge the gap I perceive?
• If, in places, I remain misaligned with the profession, how willing am I to engage
in continued competency development through supervision, consultation, or
training?
• What are the potential benefits of approaching values assessment and
negotiation with humility and openness to change, instead of rigidity and
certainty?
Professional Identity: The Personal is Political
In keeping with the subtitle of this book (Re-Shaping Professional Identity in Counselling
Psychology), my hope is to raise questions about, and to suggest changes to, how professional
identity is conceptualized in counselling and psychology. Although there has been
considerable movement toward expanding our lens on professional practice to include the
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broader contexts and systems that influence the lived experiences of our clients, we have not
settled on a collective sense of professional identity that applies a critical lens to our active
engagement in justice-doing or our role in effecting social change.
Applied originally to women’s shared experiences of gender oppression, the assertion that the
personal is political calls for collective systems level action to address the cultural oppression
experienced by our clients and the dominant discourses that serve to support and preserve
the oppressive status quo, within both the profession and society as a whole. This positioning
stands in direct contrast to the privatization of pain, achieved by applying a pathologizing and
individualist lens to what are clearly sociocultural problems (Reynolds, 2011), which ultimately
serves the purpose of making invisible the existence of both cultural oppression and, to some
extent, the oppressed themselves. The assertion that the personal is political supports an
activist stance of justice-doing. Reynolds (2011) stated, “Activism has taught me to structure
social justice work into my life. Neither a hobby nor an obsession, it is a commitment to a way
of being across my life span in all of my paid and unpaid work (p. 29).” In the practice
illustration below, my colleague, Naida Hyde, reflects on her experience of “always working” as
she makes visible and challenges destructive sociocultural discourses and norms in her
day-to-day interactions with others.
Practice Illustration 16 Splitting Our World Open, One Woman’s Story at a Time*
By Naida D. Hyde
“The personal is political.” It took me years to understand this sentence. I knew it had
gravitas and was central to feminism, but I could not figure out what it meant. Each
time I saw these words in a book, I’d say them over in my mind as if learning a new
language, a language that persisted in being opaque, clouded over. The harder I tried
to unveil its meaning, the more it slipped out of my grasp.
The thing is, no one ever explained feminism to me. My mother was apolitical. She was
a traditional housewife and mother, covered in a miasma of gloom, her agency limited
to walking to the grocery store and making meals. The dreariness of my home growing
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 384
up was thrown into relief as I spoke to a young barista recently about “the personal is
political,” and she lit up, “My mother was always a feminist!” “How marvelous for you,” I
said, seeing what my home mother-world would have looked like transformed into
vibrant shades of passionate engagement, each of us involved in making the world
better for each woman.
I learned feminism one feminist book at a time. I learned to see how invisible the
patriarchy is, how it is made up of diminishments of women and of teaching deference
behaviour to girl children. Boys and men have the last word, while we are shamed for
our supposed inadequacies and made invisible. I learned the revolutionary about face
of “starting always from the position of women” (Helga Jacobson, personal
communication, n.d.). I began to see that not being political, not understanding male
entitlement, not speaking up nor speaking out, supports the patriarchy. Since those
early days, I focus on empowering myself first, then empowering other women, one
woman at a time, one encounter at a time.
If you view growth and change as residing in each of us and believe that these happen
one step at a time, you will perhaps view yourself as a midwife. Accompaniment is your
work, supporting women’s empowerment. Does a woman’s name support her
empowerment or her diminishment? I have recently moved, and each morning early I
walk to my new favourite café to have a latte and write. My day begins with three
treats for me rolled into one experience: walking, writing, and a delicious latte. There I
chat to the young women baristas I am getting to know. A recent conversation went
like this:
What is your name?
My name is Debbie.
Is that your given name? (Feeling sure it isn’t.)
It is short for Deborah.
What would you like me to call you?
You can call me either. Either is OK.
It isn’t what I prefer. What is your preference?
I don’t have a preference.
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It is your name. Tell me what you would like me to call you.
So, I built her a feminist frame. I prefer your whole name. Debbie is a kid’s name,
cute, but young. Do you think so? (Always check with the person).
Yes, I do.
Deborah is a woman’s name, and you are a young woman. But it is your choice what
you call yourself. (Naming choice and knowing we have choice is empowering.)
Then she asked me my name. My mother chose names that could not be turned into
diminutives. Naida is my name.
She was interested, and so I went on.
I have a chosen spiritual daughter in Lesotho, southern Africa, a girl I put through high
school and have now helped with university. I suggested to her that she consider
choosing a Western name for when she goes to graduate school in Europe, because
her own name is beautiful but unpronounceable, with clicks and other rules. So, she
chose DeeDee, having no concept of its being a diminutive. I explained, in my mentor
role, that she needs a strong adult name so she will project the empowered intelligent
professional woman she is. She thought and chose “Rea,” the first three letters of her
name. She loves it, and it is easy to pronounce.
Rea was one of several girls in Lesotho that my then partner and I put through high
school. Few in that country can afford to send children to high school. Food is difficult
to afford, so high school tuition is out of the question. Uneducated girls are at risk of
teen pregnancy and early death from childbirth and or HIV/AIDS. Their empowerment
comes only with education.
Here at home, women are invisible and unappreciated in so many thankless jobs. At
the grocery store I want the cashier checking out my groceries to know that I see her
and appreciate her, not in some smarmy way but a real way that is true to me and to
her. I am a lesbian who likes to wear nail polish, so I often comment on the pretty and
fun nail polish women of all ages wear, and we have a laugh together as we compare
colours. The last time I had a manicure, I noticed the manicurist had one nail done
blue, the others silver, because she had suffered postpartum depression, a way women
sufferers could recognize each other by their one blue nail. Who knew? So that
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 386
launched us into a deep conversation about her postpartum depression and the tough
time she has had.
My work is organic to my life. We all need enlightened witnesses in our lives, at least
one person who sees us, sometimes just for a brief moment in time. I am an
enlightened witness for women. When I am out walking and see a young woman
walking to the bus, her makeup carefully applied and gorgeous, I smile, and if she
smiles back, I tell her how great she looks as I pass her. My mother never mirrored my
intelligence or my looks, so I always felt stupid and never confident in my body. My
most recent, now past, partner reminded me of my mother in this regard. I loved to
tell her how great she looked, she rarely commented on anything about me. Wake up,
Naida! Healing is a lifelong pursuit. We all need mirroring. We all need to be seen and
appreciated, and in intimate relationships we need to be cherished, verbally as well as
in action.
Robin Morgan, feminist poet and writer, said (as cited in Spender, 1985):
Women’s liberation is the first radical movement to base its politics—in fact create
its politics—out of concrete personal experiences. We’ve learned that those
experiences are NOT our private hang-ups. They are shared by every woman and
are therefore political. (p. 69)
*Acknowledgment
I drew the title of this piece from a poem by Muriel Rukeyser called Käthe Kollwitz in
which she stated: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The
world would split open.”
By making the personal political, counsellors and other helping professionals internalize the
values of the profession, particularly its social justice values. They become part of how we
define ourselves, inextricable from our personal values, and influential in the
moment-by-moment ways we interact with others and position ourselves within our
communities and society as a whole. Dollarhide and colleagues (2016) spoke of this
internalization of social justice as the development of a social justice identity. Hoover (2016)
argued that a social justice identity involves moving beyond a sense of personal commitment
to social justice to positioning social justice identity as a “self-constructed process of
embodying social justice as it is integrated with other diverse social locations and cultural
387 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
identities within one’s context ” (p. 384). What is important in this definition is that social
justice identity is fluid, contextualized, and intersectional; it is continually shaped by our
evolution of self-awareness and other awareness in the context of engagement with multiple
and intersecting cultural identities and social locations. There is no one meaning of social
justice identity; no steps to follow, no end point, no singular truth to find. You will see from
the stories of other teachers, counsellors, community workers, and researchers throughout
this book that each positions themselves uniquely within their own sociocultural contexts
(Hoover, 2016). I invite you to consider what embracing and embodying a social justice identity
might look like for you.
I seem to have a passion for social justice in my blood. Although my parents and I hold
some very different values, my social justice roots flow back to my childhood observations
of the way they were, and still are, in the world. As a child, it was not at all unusual to
have people we didn’t know staying over for holidays, because they had no place to be, or
to find my parents’ friends’ homeless teenager at the breakfast table or camped out in the
backyard waiting for the household to wake up. They still spend much of their time in
service of others, largely influenced by their religious beliefs.
Sometimes I fear that this commitment to persons who are poor, disadvantaged, and
marginalized is a generational thing that is disappearing in our culture, perhaps being
handed over to the “professionals” to deal with, as our lives become increasingly busy,
isolated, and preoccupied with our own needs. I noticed, however, a difference when I
moved to a Victoria, British Columbia community within walking distance of downtown,
which is quite diverse in terms of age, social class, gender identity and sexual
orientation, and to an increasing degree, Indigeneity and ethnicity. There is a sense of
community here that I have not experienced in a long time; people seem to look out for
each other in a different way, and opportunities abound to contribute to the basic
subsistence needs of others, equity, and social change.
I feel more strongly a tug back towards community and a resonance with, and evolution
in, my own social justice identity. It is not that the commitment to social justice ever left
me; it is just that I don’t feel quite as alone in it, and as I have interacted with other
contributors to this book, in particular, I have been engaged in a process of
self-construction around the meaning of social justice, personally and professionally. I
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 388
don’t know what lies ahead for me in terms of engagement in justice-doing, but I
recognize the familiar restlessness to move outside of my own comfort zone and to work
from within my position of privilege to ally with, and help support, social justice
initiatives in my local community. I am also resonating with the voices within our
profession that are increasingly, over the past 5 to 10 years, bringing conversations and
calls for engagement in social justice to the fore in our professional discourses.
Social Justice Action: The Professional is Political
A logical extension of the personal is political is the assertion that the profession is political,
particularly in the context of our discussion taking a human rights and social justice position
within the professions. In recent years, I have shifted my attention towards transformation of
the professions of counselling and counselling psychology so that we, collectively, cease to
reinforce the social inequities and injustices inherent in society and, instead, become forces
for social change. I have been part of initiatives by the Social Justice Chapter of the CCPA to
bring attention to issues and decisions within the association that negatively impact
marginalized persons or peoples. I have worked alongside my colleagues at Athabasca
University to continue to transform our curriculum to infuse cultural responsivity and social
justice and to continue to offer accessible entry to the profession. I joined with colleagues
from other CCPA chapters to write a position paper on the interplay of human rights, ethics,
values, and the law within the profession of counselling in Canada. Frustratingly, three years
later, there has be no response or action from the CCPA board of directors to this important
piece of collaborative, social justice work. This book is a further attempt to add my voice to
the growing call for a more socioculturally proactive and political stance by the professions.
One of the challenges I have experienced, and observed in others, is the energy and emotional
stamina required to confront inequities and injustices at the organization, community, and
broader systems levels. Social justice cannot be achieved without conflict, upsetting the status
quo, or stepping on the toes of those in positions of power or dominance. Bemak and Chung
(2008) introduced the concept of the nice counsellor syndrome in their discussion of barriers
to engagement in systems level change. Counsellors may, in fact, believe in the importance of
social justice, but their actions are driven by the more immediate need to preserve the peace,
389 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
mediate among diverse perspectives, and be perceived as nice people. Schullman (2017)
cautioned that this tendency to be “nice” may pose a barrier to systematically testing out the
values of the profession or to pursuing ethical and just decision-making in the face of
conflicting values. The nice counsellor syndrome provides another lens through which virtue
ethics, discussed above, must be considered. Bemak and Chung pointed out that this
syndrome can result not only in their impotence in the face of social injustices, but also in
unintentional oppression and affirmation of the status quo through suppression of the needs
of those who experience social injustices. This is particularly true within a Canadian context,
where activism and sociopolitical engagement is not part of our collective professional
culture.
I have come to recognize a familiar and unpleasant feeling in my gut when I’m
confronted with resistance or backlash as a result of my efforts to promote social justice.
There was a time when I was tired of sticking my neck out and had turned in on myself
in a self-protective stance. What pulled me out of this position was finding others who
held similar values and beliefs; finding both social support and collective energy has
enabled me and similarly-minded others continue to engage with our environments in a
way that promotes social change. I’ve come to realize just how important it is to foster
these relationships and to select carefully individuals and groups who will
counterbalance the fully anticipatable reactions to social justice work from both within
and outside of the professions of psychology and counselling.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 390
Code Pink © Collins, 2013
I completed this painting during a time when I was fighting against harassment in my
workplace. I was feeling isolated and discouraged. I came across a movement referred to
as “code pink” (Health Sciences Association, 2009). In essence, code pink is a signal to
bystanders witnessing bullying in health settings to name the abuse, to physically stand
beside the person under attack, and to stop all work until the harassment ceases. This is
the essence of justice-doing. I chose the elephants to symbolize this activist positioning,
because they are known to gather in a circle with the most vulnerable in the centre in the
face of threats. I have this painting over my desk to remind me of two things: (a) to gather
my support network together when I need them and (b) to speak up and position myself
as an ally when I observe others under threat.
I still get that sick feeling in my gut when I open an email or engage in a dialogue that
challenges the status quo or one which pushes back against my efforts to promote justice.
391 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
But I have now learned not to ignore it, but to simply process it as useful information
about the situation I am facing and about caring for my own needs. In some ways, it is an
unenviable measure of whether I am on track or not. I understand from this place in my
gut the temptation of the nice counsellor syndrome. It would be great to feel respected
and valued all of the time. But I also recognize this as a part of my privilege that I can
choose to set aside in support of the more important goal of eliminating social injustices
and promoting access to services, resources, and other supports necessary if each
member of the Canadian and global community is to achieve their full potential.
Johan Galtung (1969), writing on peace, introduced the concept of structural violence to refer
to the systematic ways in which the political, legal, economic, or sociocultural systems of
power and privilege prevent individuals and groups from achieving their full potential. Stoltz,
Collins, Arthur, and Audet (2009) summarized the essence of Gultung’s arguments by
distinguishing between episodic and structural violence and then, consequently, between
peace-making and peace-building (see below). Social justice action is an essential professional
response to structural violence. Although it is tempting to stay within the safe zone of the nice
counsellor syndrome (Bemak & Chung, 2008), the call to make the personal political and the
professional political engages us, necessarily, in peace-building, which by its very nature may
result in increased tensions, negative reactions from colleagues, supervisors, or powers that
be, or the labelling of social justice-focused counsellors as troublemakers.
Peace-Building
The table below contrast episodic and structural violence and makes transparent the
links between these two types of systemic violence and the processes of
peace-making versus peace-building.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 392
Episodic (Direct Violence)
Structural (Indirect Violence)
• Typically kills or harms people
quickly.
• Intermittently kills or harms
people.
• Acute insult to well-being
• Dramatic; visible.
• Typically kills or harms people
slowly.
• Continuously deprives people of
basic needs.
• Chronic insult to well-being.
• Normalized; invisible.
Peace-making
Peace-building
• Reduces violent episodes.
• Emphasizes nonviolence.
• Seeks to prevent violent episodes.
• Results in intergroup tension
reduction.
• Reduces structural violence.
• Emphasizes social justice.
• Seeks to ameliorate structural
violence.
• Results in intergroup tension
enhancement.
Adapted from “Stories from the field: Integrating social justice awareness and action
into counselling practice” by J. Stolz, S. Collins, C. Audet, and N. Arthur, 2009,
Canadian Counselling Association Annual Conference.
Engagement in social justice work at the micro, meso, and macrolevels is not always easy.
Shifting the status quo requires some individuals and groups to relinquish their hold on
certain unearned privileges in society. Advocates and allies for social justice may be seen as
trouble-makers or agitators. Vikki Reynolds (2010) spoke of the importance of solidarity in
justice-doing as a way of resisting isolation, navigating tensions, and building sustainability.
The concept of solidarity speaks to the intent of justice-doing as grounded in connection
through allyship and collaboration with clients, colleagues, and other committed to the
pursuit of a just, or at least a more just, society (Reynolds & polanco, 2012).
393 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Teaching and Learning Guide
I encourage you to review the key concepts I have focused on in this section.
Self-assess your comfort level with each concept, and identify those about which you
remain curious, questioning, or unsettled. Then, take a few moments to complete
some of the learning activities in the Collins (2018) Teaching and Learning Guide for
Core Competency 9: Social Justice Values related to these key concepts.
Final Reflections:
Calling Forth Scholar-Practitioner-Advocate-Leaders
In this chapter, I position cultural responsivity and social justice as foundational to ethical and
competent professional practice. Further, I invite you to consider adopting a social justice
identity and to embrace the philosophical positions summarized by the personal is political
and the professional is political. Each of you will need to find and define your own personal
and professional roles within the broad landscape of professional practice in counselling and
psychology.
In Figure 3, I attempt a synthesis of the key messages around human rights, social justice,
values, and ethics in this chapter. Please interpret this diagram in light of the overriding
assumption that ethical decision-making and justice-doing are complex, contextualized, and
nonlinear. What I want to encourage is a prioritizing of human rights and social justice values,
without suggesting that this is easy or that there is a right way of engaging in ethical and
culturally responsive practice.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 394
Figure 3. Positioning values and principles to inform culturally responsive and socially just
practice and decision-making.
The CRSJ counselling model is designed to support your development as a
scholar-practitioner-advocate-leader. This conceptualization of professional roles adds
active involvement in systems level change (advocacy) to the traditional conceptualization of
counsellor roles as a recursive interaction between scholarship (research and scholarly
knowledge) and practice (application of that knowledge in applied work with clients,
organizations, or systems). The more recent addition of leadership to this model “places the
focus on counselling psychologists’ responsibility to act, and their willingness and ability to
work . . . with others, to create a collective result with a larger effect then could be created by
any single individual” (Schullman, 2017, p. 912-913).
395 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
I invite you to consider how you might take on a leadership role within the professions as they
continue to evolve in their relationship and response to social injustice in society. Leadership
can take many forms. What seems very important to me in relation to social justice is that
leadership of the profession be assumed not by the older, white, able-bodied, middle-class
men whose voices have traditionally formed the foundation for psychological theory and
practice. It is not that they have nothing important to say; in fact, I have learned a great deal
from some of them, and they have shaped my social justice identity. However, I have been very
deliberate in this book of balancing those voices with those of leaders within our field who are
newer to the professions; navigating multiple, nondominant identities; positioned personally
and professionally in marginalized social locations; standing as allies and advocates; and
speaking alongside clients whose voices we collectively hope to amplify and empower. I view it
as part of my responsibility from my own position of privilege to support these voices, to
advocate for an increase in the diversity of leadership in our field, and to work toward justice
in our professions, and in society, from the inside out.
In the next two chapters Vikki Reynolds and Kirby Huminuik will speak to the ways in which
they enact social justice and human rights in their personal and professional lives. In Chapter
10 Vikki invites settler counsellors, in particular, to consider taking up an activist and
decolonizing stance in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and members of other marginalized
communities. She argues that it is important to move beyond anti-oppression to
justice-doing. In Chapter 11 Kirby introduces current thinking within counselling and
psychology related to human rights and posits a human rights framework for research, theory,
and practice. She positions her perspective within her own work in human rights activism at
the community level both within Canada and internationally.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to my colleague Simon Nuttgens who reviewed this chapter for me and provided
critical feedback based on his knowledge of the professional literature, experience as Chair of
the CCPA Ethics Complaints Committee and the Athabasca University Research Ethics Board,
and his keen sense of the application of professional ethics in practice.
Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice | 396
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Georgetown, ME 04548
403 | Chapter 9. Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for
Decolonizing Practice: Social Justice
Activism in Community Work and
Therapy and Justice-Doing
VIKKI REYNOLDS
The work of this writing is to set an intention for an un-settling and decolonizing practice,
especially for settler workers. I am offering an entrance into a stance where we work to
deliver justice to people and to do more than simply not oppress people. There is an invitation
to take up the activist project to transform the social contexts in which suffering and
oppression occur and to do this in ways led by Indigenous people and accountable to the
communities we serve.
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
• Acts of resistance
• Allyship/solidarity
• Anti-pathologizing lens
• Colonialism/colonization
• Colonial/political violence
• Colonial relationship
• Colonial worldview
• Decolonizing
• Ethical practice
• Global human rights and social
justice
• Justice-doing
• Locus of control/responsibility
• Personal is political
• Psycholonization
• Respect for dignity
• Social change
• Social justice
• Social justice action/activism
• Trauma
• Values-based practice
• Voice
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and
Justice-Doing | 404
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
Decolonizing and Unsettling: Unceded Ancestral Lands and
Territories
I need to start by positioning myself in relationships of accountability to Indigenous people
and the land on which I am standing and where my community work takes place. As an activist
and therapist I work to bridge the worlds of social justice activism with community work. My
people are Irish, Newfoundland, and English folks, and I am a white settler with heterosexual
and cisgender privilege. Although my aim and commitment is to be decolonizing in all of my
paid and unpaid work, I am still immersed in the on-going work of un-settling myself as a
white settler. Tuck and Yang (2012) teach that decolonizing practice is not a metaphor; it
means commitments to Indigenous governance and land return. I aim to be directed in all my
activism, community work, and organizing by Indigenous people (Walia, 2012), and this
practice is informed by activist community teachings and practices (Manuel & Derrickson,
2015).
Indigenous warrior Gord Hill (2010) offers an analysis of colonization as invasion, occupation,
genocide, and assimilation. Recently, yet another Canadian Prime Minister apologized for one
tactic of assimilation, specifically residential schools, offering no acknowledgment of
genocide, “which served the purpose of earth rape/resource extraction and theft, and a land
grab” (C. Richardson, personal communication, June 16, 2018). The Prime Minister delivered
nothing in terms of what Indigenous nations have demanded for accountability. As a nation,
Canada is now lowering the bar from decolonizing to reconciliation, which is more palpable to
power holders as it requires less moral courage, less accountability, and less work in terms of
returning stolen land and resources. Shame. You don’t reconcile genocide: You stop it.
Settlers have to set intentions to stay implicated in the ongoing colonization and genocide of
Indigenous people. As a white settler, my privilege makes it easy to abdicate my collective
405 | Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing
responsibility and to leave or ignore anti-imperial and anticolonial struggles. Accountability
and ethics require that Indigenous activists and scholars are the voices that inform both
settler and other non-Indigenous activists and that we resist centring Eurocentric voices that
speak for, or about, Indigenous knowledges. The critical analysis by Indigenous scholars Glen
Coulthard (2014), who identifies as Yellowknives Dene, and Pam Palmater (2015), who identifies
as Mi’kmaq from the Eel River Bar First Nation, on Indigenous governance and Indigenous
Nationhood provides a crucial frame for a decolonizing praxis. Indigenous Professor Sarah
Hunt (2016), who identifies as Kwagiulth from Tsaxis, has provided an analysis that
encompasses the inter-relatedness of violence, justice, resistance, self-determination, and
decolonization. These Indigenous activists and scholars, and many others, inform and
transform my work and engagement with activism and daily life. I believe the voices of white
settlers like myself are required in the dialogue, but primarily to resist the power of white
supremacists, and at the invitation and direction of Indigenous people, and people who
identify as Black, people of colour, and racialized people. Accountability in these dialogues is
hard work that requires moral courage and is founded on reciprocal relationships across
privilege. As a white activist, I expect to perform my trustworthiness continually, and I do not
assume I am trustworthy based on past solidarity work, though I’m told that it helps.
In relation to community work and therapy, decolonizing praxis refers to an intention for
centring the wisdom and experience of Indigenous people in resistance to the colonial project
of Eurocentric psychology practices that subjugate Indigenous people and reframe their
resistance and responses to oppression as symptoms of mental illness and pathology. Taking
up this work requires a particular ethical and activist stance that obliges us, as community
workers and therapists, not only to resist pathologizing Indigenous people, but also to take
on and transform both psychology itself and the social structures of colonial oppression. This
requires resisting the erasure of the word, violence, in our profession, and naming the violence
of colonization and all structural oppressions, and contesting the depoliticized and
medicalized language of trauma. A decolonizing and justice-doing informed analysis generates
practices of witnessing resistance to violence (Reynolds, ‘Bahman,’ Hammoud-Beckett,
Sanders, & Haworth, 2014; Richardson & Wade, 2008) that demonstrate a commitment to
centring Indigenous peoples in their own healing journeys (Dupuis-Rossi & Reynolds, in press).
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing | 406
Social Justice Activism and Community Work and Therapy:
Precarious Affinities
The possible connections of social justice activism and community work are hopeful yet
precarious. Direct action activism cannot be collapsed onto other kinds of community work
simply because the worker holds an ethic of justice-doing. What matters is how we enact this
ethic, what we do in practice, not what claims we make, which connects to my stance of
hopeful skepticism. When workers tell me they are about justice-doing I am hopeful that they
are, but sceptical that our practices may fall short of the claims to ethics we make.
Therapy is limited as an act of justice-doing. Psychotherapy, in particular, has much to answer
for in terms of siding with oppression and serving as a tool for social control that maintains
oppressive structures of power, imperialist and state power, as well as interpersonal power
(Reynolds & Hammoud-Beckett, 2018). There are certain traditions from the histories of
therapy as a grand public and professional project that cannot be separated from this. The
structure of individualised one-to-one therapy is problematic in terms of the potential and
reality for accommodating people to oppression and contributing to individualism. Also, I
believe that therapists and community workers from many traditions may be too quick to
deconstruct power and name it without taking on the social project of transforming the
societies in which we live. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith said in De-colonizing Methodologies,
deconstruction is a useful idea, “but it does not prevent someone from dying” (1999, p. 3).
We Cannot Fight Oppression with Oppression
Community work is overtly political, and activist practitioners resist neutrality or objectivity
and the dictates of professionalism that could silence our dissent and activism, which aims to
resist and transform the contexts of oppression that promote the horrors of suffering.
Justice-doing resists accommodating people to privatized lives of oppression and suffering. As
workers committed to justice-doing, and taking on oppression on all fronts, we need to
challenge critically our professions’ violent and abusive language, which hides structural
violence under the neutral and outcome-informed language of the usual suspects: addiction,
mental illness, and trauma. This comfortable psychology-speak centres our inquiry on the
407 | Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing
individual’s brokenness, while hiding structural violence, such as: legislative poverty,
developer-created homelessness, on-going colonial violence, racism, white supremacy, the
prison industrial complex (Maynard, 2017), cisnormativity, heteronormativity, and rape
culture. One reflexive question I continually puzzle with is: “How am I attending to power in
this moment, in this interaction, with this person?”
I resist attempts to invisibilize marginalized people by supporting an ethic of belonging, which
requires relationships of dignity and respect that can tether lost others to the planet and to
each other. This requires doing the hard work of resisting the professional imperative to tell
people how to live. Instead we work towards enacting the ethical principle of autonomy,
which means trusting people with their own lives and, often, getting ourselves out of the way.
We cannot fight oppression with oppression (Munro, Reynolds, & Townsend, 2017). As
Crenshaw (1995) taught, we must continually and fluidly attend to the intersectionality of
domains of identity connected to both power and disadvantage. Ideas of diversity and
inclusion, although useful, are also limiting and are being problematized and transformed by
communities of resistance and by activists with marginalized voices (Ahmed, 2012). The
structural inequities that promote suffering demand complex collective responses. Charity
requires rich people to help poor people: Justice requires that we all restructure society,
taking on oppression on all fronts, which will benefit everyone. As trans activist Dean Spade
(2011) suggests with hope, regarding structural challenges facing the trans community: “These
challenges are potential starting points for a trans politics that openly opposes liberal and
neoliberal agendas and finds solidarity with other struggles articulated by the forgotten, the
inconceivable, the spectacularised and the unimaginable” (p. 33).
Trauma, Addiction, and Mental Illness: The “Usual Suspects”
Trauma, as conceptualized and defined by the mainstream field of psychology, is a
medicalized term that obscures violence and human suffering. The language of trauma
invisiblizes the violence of colonialism and other structural oppressions, such as legislative
poverty. It locates our interest as workers in symptoms and diagnoses that are personalized,
individuated, and constructed as the responsibility of the person, as if their personal strengths
or resiliency are the issue, as opposed to structural oppression. This medicalized approach is
grounded in the colonial worldview, which invites a scientific distancing, an objectivity, and a
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing | 408
disconnected professionalism, which stops us from mapping the privileges of practitioners
onto the oppression and suffering of people we hope to serve. This professional distancing
abdicates our collective responsibility both to change the social structures that make these
oppressions and suffering possible and to change the social context in which the privatization
of pain occurs. And by the privatization of pain I mean, for example, the criminalization of
homelessness, and of course, the totalizing pathologizing terminology that constructs
damaged people and spoiled identities (Goffman, 1963) such as: insane, addict, and
traumatized. Experiences defined as trauma are often better understood as exploitation and
oppression rooted in the political inequities of our unjust societies.
The problems people suffer are structural, not located in the person; and the systems are not
just flawed; they’re working perfectly for capitalism and for exploitation. Under capitalism
people say that money makes money; it doesn’t. People labour to make money; and these
labourers are often marginalized and racialized people in the Global South, and they are not
paid their fair share while, often, privileged people in the Global North profit. Sampson (1993),
an anthropologist who informed narrative therapy ideas, took a bold position about this
naming the construction of people from marginalized identities as a means of creating
“serviceable others,” (p. 142) who can be exploited, subjugated, and oppressed to maintain the
power of the dominant classes. Understanding global capitalism and neoliberal politics is
required to resist replicating oppression and for our own sustainability.
Meeting People Where They Are At: Making Sense and
Seeking Safety
Succinctly, I believe our work requires us, no matter our professional qualifications or job
titles, to create relationships of dignity and respect across differences of privilege and to
meet people where they are at in the world. It is the task of the worker to build a bridge across
the differences of power between us and to meet the person where they are at. From this
dignifying relationship, we invite people to take responsibility where they have actual choices
and access to power available to them, but not for the debilitating oppression, violence, and
marginalization they have experienced or the social context that continues and promotes
such suffering. We collaborate with people and assist them in making any changes they prefer
to make to alter their relationship to suffering. As community workers enacting justice-doing
409 | Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing
we are further required to use our specific social locations and access to power to work to
change the social contexts in which suffering and structural violence occurs.
There are two useful assumptions I find imperative in moving an ethical stance of
justice-doing into practice. I believe that if we are able to meet people where they are at in the
world two understandings become available to us:
1. People’s behaviour makes sense.
2. People want safety.
These assumptions invite me to resist diagnosing people’s behaviour and responses as
symptoms of mental illness, and to resist seeing people as being unsafe and not trustworthy
with their own lives. Here I’m informed by Janice Abbott (personal communication, January 3,
2018) the CEO of ATIRA Women’s Resource Society, who says, “There is nothing wrong with
women that not being assaulted, raped and murdered, and not being afraid of being assaulted,
raped and murdered will not cure.” Instead of seeing women as self-defeating and putting
their children at risk, we look for how a woman’s responses make sense and how women are
trying to keep their children safe, especially in ways that aren’t recognizable to agents of the
state, which often structurally holds mothers responsible for men’s violent behaviour. Seeing
women in context also requires we acknowledge that the missing and murdered women in
Canada are disproportionally Indigenous and that this is tied to the rape of the earth as
resource extraction and as an enactment of ongoing colonization (Hunt, 2016). A complex
analysis helps us resist locating political violence as personal poor judgement. It requires that
we do more than respond to this person’s suffering; rather, we engage as activists to work
collectively to transform the structural violence that creates the conditions in which these
horrors occur.
When we create relationships of respect and dignity we truly meet people where they are, and
people’s acts of resistance become visible, inviting a witnessing of their intelligence, strength,
and courage. We don’t diagnose people as mentally ill, and we don’t accuse them of being
self-defeating, but enter their world where their yearning for dignity and safety (Gerlach,
Browne, & Elliot, 2017) become known to us.
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Embracing the Messy and Resisting Perfection and White
Supremacy
I intentionally describe my work as an anti-perfection project. This is partially because we
have not delivered on a just society and can’t envision justice in any quantifiable absolute way.
Language will expand and make more room for possibilities of liberatory practice in response
to ongoing activism and resistance from marginalized communities. Engaging a purposefully
messy and imperfect process is informed by queer theory, anti-authoritarian theory, and
direct action activism, where we aim to respond to all oppression in the moment with
justice-doing. As activists, when a shelter person is being harassed by people with power, or
any arm of institutionalized policing, we do not call for a committee, organise a meeting, and
engage in long discussions about what would be an appropriate and perfect action to take.
Instead, we respond to the oppression, in the moment, with action. This requires a tolerance
for being imperfect, which is a resistance to the perfection held up and required by white
supremacy and our professions’ requirement that we be experts. Later we can reflect on our
actions, make necessary repairs, and strategize about what might be more appropriate actions
for the future. This approach requires community-wide relationships of enough-trust and
moral courage to take action. This is significantly different from responding to transgressions
from a frame of rules; it requires that we collectively resist the perfection that white
supremacy assigns to white folks, which steals from people who are racialized and
marginalized. It requires that we take positions, defy neutrality, and have the moral courage
to face up to some of the consequences of imperfect actions.
An engagement with social justice is imperative for community work, I believe, but never, in
itself, adequate. We need also to embrace activist traditions to resist and transform the
structures of injustice that are rooted in colonial, capitalist, neoliberal, and mean-spirited
politics, all of which create the contexts of people’s suffering and our work.
411 | Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
These reflexive questions work to hold my practice and myself to account, and they
invite me to take responsibility for putting my ethical stance into practice. I never
solve these questions, but puzzle them and hold them close in a useful, unsettled way.
• How can I keep myself implicated as a settler in being accountable for, and in
resistance to, ongoing and past colonial and genocidal violence?
• Who do I need to be accountable to in this moment in this interaction? Where
am I enacting power in this encounter? How am I accountable for my access to
power that is structurally upheld by unearned privilege?
• How can I enact my ethics of collective accountability in this moment and in
ongoing work? Who has the moral courage and critical analysis to offer me
critique in the spirit of active solidarity and collective ethics?
• How can I respond to cultural accountability, creating relationships of dignity
and respect so that I might be invited into the protocols for being in these
unceded ancestral territories in a good way? Which allies can help me to not do
this on the backs of Indigenous peoples, expecting them to do the emotional and
spiritual labour of teaching me?
Acknowledgment
This writing and work took place on the traditional and unceded ancestral lands and
territories of the Coast Salish (xʷməθkwəy̓əm [Musqueam], Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish], and
Səl̓ílwətaʔ [Tsleil-Waututh] nations, which were never surrendered.
Gratitude and revolutionary love to my Solidarity Team, especially the Indigenous people who
continue to mentor, critique, and transform me: Cori Kelly, Cathy Richardson, Riel
Dupuis-Rossi, Allan Lindley, and Fin Gareau; and the good people who shoulder me up: Tara
Chapter 10. Setting an Intention for Decolonizing Practice and Justice-Doing | 412
Danger Taylor, my sisters & sister-cousins, Wendy Wittmack, and Janet Newbury. Tina
Kirshenbaum and Tamaki Kano offered useful critiques. Mr. Peaslee helped again.
References
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Chapter 11. Psychology and Human
Rights: Exploring the Intersections
KIRBY HUMINUIK
I am a counsellor, consultant, researcher, and university instructor who focuses on the
intersection between mental health and human rights. The purpose of this chapter is to
introduce you to some of the current thinking about human rights within counselling and
psychology, to explore the relationship between human rights and social justice, and to give
you a glimpse into how embracing a human rights framework within theory, research, and
practice may serve the professions and our clients in the future. I am currently a member of
the American Psychological Association (APA) task force on human rights, which is charged
with producing a report that will advise APA on strategic directions in its engagement in the
promotion and protection of human rights. In this interview, I draw on my work with the task
force, as well as my research and almost two decades of community-based work. This chapter
is an edited version of an interview conversation with Sandra Collins.
Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights | 416
CRSJ Counselling Key Concepts Illustrated
• Acts of resistance
• Acculturative stress
• Allyship/solidarity
• Anti-pathologizing lens
• Bearing witness
• Colonialism/colonization
• Colonial or political violence
• Colonial relationship
• Consciousness-raising
• Contextualized/systemic lens
• Counsellor education
• Cultural/systemic oppression
• Equity versus equality
• Ethical practice
• Global human rights and social
justice
• Human rights
• Justice-doing
• Locus of control/responsibility
• Organizational development
• Personal is political
• Power
• Privilege
• Professional is political
• Professional practice/theory
change
• Professional values
• Program development and
evaluation
• Refugees
• Relationship to land/place
• Research
• Safety/cultural safety
• Social change
• Social justice
• Social justice action/activism
• Social justice identity
• Systemic/structural barriers
• Structural change/systemic policy
change
• Transforming public perception
• Trauma-informed practice
• Trust
• Underserviced populations
• Values-based practice
• Voice
Note: These terms emerged through Sandra Collins’ book-wide content analysis and
synthesis of key concepts across contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the
positioning of these ideas by the chapter author.
Sandra: How did you get involved in human rights work and research?
Kirby: I’ve been interested in human rights since I was a child, though then I didn’t think about
it in such a formal way. After I finished my undergraduate degree, I was really looking for a
way to immerse myself in work with people who were living according to these values. I was
417 | Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights
inspired by social movements in Latin America and South Africa, but also drawn to eastern
philosophy and spirituality. I lived in India for a few years when I was in my early 20s, and that
was a significant time in my life. I worked at a small school, with educators who were thinking
very deeply about education, culture, social conditioning, and the roots of violence in society.
This experience led me to human rights work.
The first thing I did when I came back to Canada was to volunteer with a small nonprofit
organization that provided psychosocial support for refugees, which then became my
full-time paid work for five years. I interacted with refugees from every part of the world, and
I started learning from people in a really personal way about political violence. It was an
intense political education. It began to be clear that there was an important link between
psychology and human rights. People who had experienced political violence had come here
for safety, to live in exile, either to wait until their political situation changed and they could
go home or to stay and try to recover and build a new life for themselves in a place that felt
safer. The question of how a person recovers from a long and complex experience of political
violence and rebuilds a life is, at least partly, a psychological one. It was from this realization
that I decided counselling psychology was the direction that I wanted to move towards. And
so those two threads, human rights and psychology, have been intertwined from the
beginning of my counselling career.
Sandra: How did this experience shape your research and applied practice interests as you
started into your counselling psychology training?
Kirby: My experience working with refugees shaped my research and practice, but also my
subjective professional identity. I arrived at graduate school strongly influenced by Indian
philosophy, and Latin American psychologists such as Ignacio Martín-Baró (1996), and I had
concerns about social justice and culture and a lot of questions that were not neatly answered
by the readings we were assigned. Eventually, I found a rich vein of social justice literature in
counselling psychology, and I started to feel more at home in the discipline. My Masters
research was a participatory action study focused on rebuilding livelihood for refugee
populations (Huminuik, 2006). I worked with a group of refugees who had been in Canada for
a while, and we tried to understand what people do in the first five years to get themselves
established in this new place. What are the kinds of systemic and personal challenges people
face, and what are the most helpful strategies to overcome them? I think people often think
that refugee mental health is about past trauma, but through this research I found that the
daily struggles to cope with systemic barriers here significantly impacts on people’s sense of
safety and well-being.
Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights | 418
Trauma-Informed Testimony Therapy: A Culturally
Embedded Response to Human Rights Violations
Sandra: I’m curious about the psychosocial human rights project and the community work in
Mexico that you have been involved in.
Kirby: After my Masters, I co-founded a nonprofit organization, called Partners in Rights and
Recovery, to provide a mental health perspective to human rights documentation and defense.
We were invited to work with Indigenous communities and human rights organizations in
Chiapas and Oaxaca over the course of about 5 years. Working in Mexico, where people were
experiencing on-going human rights violations, I had a lot to learn about the social and
political context, but the trauma-informed and systemic perspective I had gained from my
work with refugees in Canada was very relevant. The organizations we partnered with were
strongly influenced by liberation theology, which was familiar to me as the foundation for
liberation psychology, and I found this very inspiring.
The way human rights advocacy work usually happens is that lawyers or human rights
workers will interview a person, take down the facts of their claim, and then try to find local
legal remedies, and when that is unsuccessful, to make submissions to the United Nations. We
addressed the issue of testimony and how to bring psychological knowledge to the human
rights process. Together with our local partners, we articulated a method of receiving
testimony that is trauma-informed, which can elicit psychological evidence for legal purposes
while also supporting the healing and resilience of survivors.
Sandra: What was important, from a cultural perspective, about having human rights workers
embedded within these communities gathering these stories?
Kirby: It is very important that the testimonial process be culturally relevant and congruent.
The human rights defenders that we worked with had a very clear analysis of the social and
political context, and they were often from the communities that were under attack. We spent
time in remote communities and observed how testimony was being used as part of a
community-based process of historical memory. The political violence that was occurring was
mostly to break down the resistance to mining or development projects. We learned that,
within the Indigenous cosmovision, the experience of identity is very emplaced, so collective
actions in defense of the land and to secure justice for human rights violations had a strong
cultural and spiritual foundation. The testimony process needed to fit within that foundation.
419 | Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights
Sandra: Tell me a little bit more about that particular worldview, that emplaced worldview.
Kirby: Like Indigenous communities throughout the Americas, the rural Indigenous
communities in Southern Mexico are neglected by all levels of government and exploited by
resource-extraction industries. However, traditional knowledge and ways of living are rooted
in the land, so place is central to who they are as people and communities. While impacted by
geo-political pressures that cause many to migrate north for work, Indigenous traditions are
maintained in many communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca in particular. So, the way that the
human rights work was happening was very connected to those traditional systems. Both the
organizations that I worked with were very informed by Indigenous cultural concepts. These
organizations had played leading roles in the renaissance of Indigenous political organizing
that has been happening in Southern Mexico over the past 40 years. Canadians may be more
familiar with this part of Mexican history since the beginning of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which precipitated the rise of the Zapatista movement, a rebellion
against corporate globalization, cultural genocide, and misappropriation of Indigenous lands
and resources in Chiapas. However, Indigenous political organizing had been happening for
decades before that. The two organizations that I worked with grew out of this movement.
We worked really consciously within this cultural context, and what we added was a particular
trauma-informed perspective that was inspired by liberation psychology. The particular
method we adapted to use in Mexico was inspired by the Latin American testimony therapy
(Cienfuegos & Monelli, 1983). A lot of the principles come from the community of
psychologists who were working with refugees in the 1980’s during a time of political
repression in Latin America, who were taking testimony within the context of political
repression.
Sandra: How would you articulate some of those principles of testimony therapy?
Kirby: Testimony has a political and therapeutic tradition in Latin America (Bouvard, 1994;
Lira, 2010; Schirmer, 1993). In political contexts characterized by government impunity, when
formal institutions and judicial systems are incapable of guaranteeing rights, testimony is
commonly performed in the public arena (Crosby & Brinton Lykes, 2011; Stephen, 2011).
Broadcast on the radio, at public demonstrations, and through artistic representation,
testimony is used to assert the moral authority of survivors of human rights violations.
Testimony is the act of denouncing and narrating the facts of human rights violations, and it
demonstrates survivors’ refusal to accept silence and marginalization. At times such
testimonial practices have come to symbolize entire segments of society, gain traction within
Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights | 420
a social movement, and force a political reckoning—see for example, the Mothers of the Plaza
de Mayo in Argentina (Bouvard, 1994).
A therapeutic application of testimony grew out of this political tradition. One of the key
people involved in testimony therapy is a Chilean psychologist named Elizabeth Lira (2009),
who was working at the time of the Pinochet dictatorship. She and her colleagues developed
this brief therapeutic method to collect evidence of human rights violations (Lira, 2010). The
objective of testimony therapy is to take a detailed testimony of the abuse, in a safe and
supported manner, which allows a survivor to denounce the violence while facilitating new
insight into their traumatic experiences. Depending on the goals of the survivors, the resulting
document can take the form of a legal submission, psychological assessment, or a lasting
record of historical memory. These Chilean psychologists were enacting justice-doing by
interviewing survivors of torture and delivering their testimony to human rights
organizations, to get the facts about the dictatorship out of Chile, draw international attention
to the crisis, and seek remedies for the survivors. However, as psychologists, they were taking
testimony in a way that was informed by trauma theory, so they were attentive to exposure,
support, and therapeutic intervention at the same time as they created documents for legal
and social purposes. They did this at considerable personal risk, and they were very clearly
situating themselves as human rights activists as well as psychologists.
Testimony therapy has been developed in different geographical regions as part of local
transitional justice processes, and a growing body of literature supports its use with survivors
of torture and refugee populations (Agger, Igreja, Kiehle, & Polatin, 2012; Agger & Jensen, 1990;
McFarlane & Kaplan, 2012). This method has been adapted for use with survivors in various
countries internationally, such as Denmark, the former Yugoslavia, India, and Sri Lanka (Agger,
Ansari, Suresh, & Pulikuthiyil, 2008; Agger et al., 2012; Agger & Jensen, 1990). Testimony
projects are also being used in communities throughout Latin America, sometimes in
conjunction with formal political processes and sometimes as grassroots initiatives
(Riaño-Alcalá & Baines, 2011). All of these uses of testimony work with individual, collective,
and historical memory to transcend the limitations of justice as it is legally and politically
defined.
In collaborating with these organizations in Mexico, we shared a common understanding that
testimony could be an act of political resistance, and that political resistance can be a path
toward healing. We had a common language for the psychological impact of political violence,
and we developed an approach to taking testimony that supports a broader human rights
movement while simultaneously allowing individuals to achieve new insight into, or analysis
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of, their situation and supporting their healing process, so that they’re stronger in their
resistance to political violence. Human rights advocacy undertaken through a lens of a
liberation psychology becomes part of a process of concientización or consciousness-raising
(Brinton Lykes, 2000; Martín-Baró, 1996; Prilleltensky, 2008; Watkins & Shulman, 2008). Our
work together added the psychological piece, a trauma-informed piece, to the existing human
rights work that would also be resonant with the cultural context and the kind of
conversations that they were already having. It was a wonderful synergy and an important
stage in my development as a counsellor.
Challenging Systemic Inequities and Injustice: Creating
Safety for Vulnerable Refugee Claimants
Sandra: As we talk, I notice that all of the pieces of your work have been informed by the
culture and the lived experiences, often including trauma, of the people that you’re working
with. Then in your doctoral research you focused on systems-level barriers that refugees
encounter in the process of applying for asylum, again applying a trauma-informed lens to
that research inquiry.
Kirby: My doctoral research focused on the concept of vulnerability within the refugee
determination system in Canada (Huminuik, 2017b). If we think of Judith Herman’s model of
recovery from trauma, the first stage is safety (Herman, 1997). Through my work with refugee
claimants, I understood that refugees cannot begin to experience safety, either materially or
psychologically, until they have gotten through the refugee claim process. Although these
clients may have experienced significant traumatic events in their country of origin or during
their migration journeys, what we think of as trauma counselling was not the relevant
therapeutic intervention. What refugee claimants needed was help to contain their reactions
to the trauma so that they could give their testimony in a coherent and consistent way and to
effectively navigate their refugee claim. One question I had was: How can mental health
professionals help people speak to their trauma history in a way that is legally relevant, while
avoiding becoming retraumatized? A second question was around how people, within and
around the refugee system, understood and addressed mental health-related issues. For
example, I learned that the decision-makers in the case often did not have the capacity to
really make sense of psychological evidence, which posed a systemic barrier for refugee
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claimants. They would see people who were struggling to testify, and they would question
their credibility rather than seeking to understand the underlying trauma-related issues.
These issues were evident to a mental health professional, but perhaps not so clear to
someone without this training. However, the psychological issues often interfere with the
refugee claimant’s ability to express what they need to express in a way that meets the legal
tests of the process.
It is interesting how my experience working with refugees in Canada informed my work in
Mexico, which then informed new research questions back in Canada: What is it like for
refugees to navigate our asylum system to reach a place that feels safer for them to live? How
is it for them to testify to their experiences of trauma, and what are the conditions
surrounding that testimony? I did not set out to do a phenomenological examination of
individuals’ experiences; rather, I wanted to interrogate the system itself. I saw a larger value
in taking a systemic approach in order to understand: What are the policies? Where did they
come from? Are they informed by psychological principles? Do they function according to
their stated intent? Because I couldn’t find a way to ask these questions within the
Government of Canada, I had to ask around the periphery. I interviewed lawyers who
represent claimants and are present when testimony is given, as well as support workers in
the community, counsellors who provide supports to claimants, and people who had been
claimants themselves. I wanted to understand from all of these diverse perspectives: What
makes people vulnerable? How does the system respond? Is the response effective?
What I discovered through my dissertation was that there is government policy on the books
that allows for accommodations (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 2006), for
example, for persons who have experienced violence or torture; however, the
accommodations are pretty limited and superficial, and they are not particularly well
grounded in psychological principles. The analogy or comparison is to university students
who have health or mental health issues. In providing accommodations, we ask, How can we
help level the playing field so that they can write their exams or otherwise succeed
academically? It is a question of equity in service provision. In terms of the refugee
determination system, the question that needs to be asked is: We have people who may have
different kinds of vulnerabilities, so how can we ensure that our system is fair? My research
suggests that the specific accommodations that are offered do not actually address the
psychological issues refugee claimants face.
Sandra: What are the kinds of accommodations or supports you would recommend?
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Kirby: First, I suggest moving away from the idea that the vulnerabilities are located within the
claimants themselves and toward understanding how the system provokes or exacerbates
various kinds of vulnerabilities. A great number of refugees have experienced trauma and may
have symptoms that make it hard for them to get through the system that we have created.
What I am suggesting is that we flip the traditional model, which locates the problem within
the individual, on its end by assuming an anti-pathologizing lens. The system can be quite
adversarial, and it is perhaps tempting to ask: What are the best kind of boxing gloves we can
give these people, so they can more effectively fight the system? However, if you look at it
from a human rights perspective, you begin to ask: What would it look like if the refugee
determination system was genuinely sensitive to the inherent vulnerabilities involved in
making a refugee claim? What would a trauma-informed system look like?
Sandra: I like that reframe. It mirrors the shift in the social justice conversations away from
focusing on the individual to focusing on the system. Looking at how we create systems,
within psychology and within society as a whole, it would be better to provide equitable and
helpful services, rather than putting our energy into supporting the most vulnerable to cope
with the systems that we have in place. This might required change in systemic policies and
structures.
Kirby: Exactly. It would be a real shift in perspective. The question is whether the Canadian
government has the will to run a humanitarian system based on human rights or whether the
refugee determination process is part of its border control mechanism. Actually, I think these
are co-existing and competing agendas within the government itself.
Advocating for Culturally Responsive and Socially Just
Services: Enhancing Refugee Mental Health
Sandra: So, what do you see as the role of the mental health systems and mental health
practitioners in this whole process? We talk a lot about advocacy as individual practitioners,
but also about advocacy within the professions, so I’m wondering what your sense is of the
role of counselling and psychology in Canada in terms of our current system and the impact
that it has on refugees.
Kirby: Well, that has been another focus of my work in the last number of years. I have been
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trying to advocate for a greater role for mental health in support of refugees, who are
currently underserviced. Currently, one of the major issues is the funding structure. On the
one hand, there is a really important role for psychologists and mental health professionals,
because there are so many parts of the migration experience that are intrinsically
psychological, places where we could provide clinical support as well as advocacy support.
One of the critical issues is recognizing that if we are functioning in a humanitarian way in
Canada, which means supporting the most vulnerable both through government-sponsored
refugee processes and as individual refugee claimants, we need also to be providing
rehabilitation and psychological care as part of our humanitarian obligation.
Comparing notes with international colleagues, there are places where refugee mental health
is extremely well-developed. Australia has a wonderful model in its torture treatment centres
that work with survivors of torture and also, more broadly, other refugees. We have developed
a few centres as part of a movement that started in the mid 1980s; however, we have not been
able to develop a really robust national program. The public health system may be a factor.
There is an assumption that once people get their refugee status, they can access public
health services, but we do not have the capacity within those services to provide the
specialized care that is needed. There is also still a need for a bridge between people’s arrival
in Canada and their ability to access mainstream services. I am currently working on a pilot
research project to connect newly arrived refugees with registered clinical counsellors who
can work in the client’s first language.
In terms of a mental health role, I have written about appropriate assessments for refugee
claimants (Huminuik, 2017a). I see the need for brief counselling interventions to help
claimants get through the refugee determination process. There is a role to make
psychological knowledge available, to inform community-level practices, and to engage in
systems level advocacy, all of which are needed to bring about a shift in the system.
Sandra: So where do we begin, as counsellors and psychologists, to bring about a
humanitarian system within the professions, and specifically, within the refugee claimant
process?
Kirby: First of all, we must ask how counsellors and psychologists can become better
informed about these issues. Refugee mental health work occurs in a highly specialized
psycho-legal context. The kind of diversity training that we offer in our graduate education
does not begin to address this specialized knowledge, and there are very few programs
anywhere that offer training in this kind of competency. Nor do we really prepare
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practitioners to consider the political and systemic dimensions of this type of work. Though I
learned through immersion and mentorship in the field, and through my graduate research, I
also obtained a specialized graduate certificate through the Harvard Refugee Trauma
Program, and this formal training was very helpful. Global mental health and cultural
psychology are two subdisciplines that we in counselling psychology would do well to
integrate into our programs.
Sandra: I am wondering how you would define a trauma-informed approach from your own
experience.
Kirby: A trauma-informed approach is different than a trauma-focused approach in that it is
not all about the story. Trauma-informed practice is about somatic awareness; it is attention
to what happens when somebody is exposed to traumatic memories and how that can really
impact their ability to function from moment-to-moment (Ogden, Minton, & Pain, 2006).
Practitioners can develop the capacity to attend to the experiential and somatic signs that
demonstrate that people are still being affected by traumatic events in their body, their mind,
their emotions, their relationships, and in their capacity to function in the here and now.
Survivors of trauma are often hypervigilant within relationships, and there are implications for
trust. Some practitioners may believe, “We are well-intentioned professionals, so people
should trust us,” but that is not how it works. We are not intrinsically trustworthy. We need to
be consistent in our commitment to human rights in order to be able to demonstrate our
trustworthiness in our relationships with survivors. This, too, is a moment-to-moment
process in the here-and-now relationship.
Sandra: Sometimes new practitioners, in particular, grab on to practice principles like
storying, which certainly has a place in working with individuals who have experienced
trauma, but they fail to position that change process in the context of this type of critical
analysis of what is going on with this particular person and what, in the moment, is
therapeutic for them. And the bigger context of trust is a really important thing to grapple
with. My conversations with Indigenous colleagues about the colonial relationship of many
healthcare practitioners to Indigenous clients, for example, point to the critical importance of
earning or re-earning trust as a foundation for culturally responsive and socially just practice.
Kirby: You raise the example of Indigenous people who may access mental health supports. It
is a really important corollary, because as a profession, we need to consider ourselves located
within the social system of mental health services and within the history of the profession,
rather than just as individuals with good intentions. We need to understand that we are
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joining a profession that has a history of being very coercive, and that our professional
knowledge has been used in the service of power. We do not get to wish that reality away. So,
on the one hand, we must be trauma-informed in our own practice; while on the other hand,
it is important to be trauma-informed from a systemic perspective so we can understand
where we are located and what we might represent.
Sandra: This brings us full circle to what our responsibility then becomes at that systems
level, as you were talking about in your dissertation research.
Kirby: Right, exactly. It was really clear to me with both of my graduate research projects that
I wanted to look at the bigger systems that people are embedded in and to understand the
psychological processes involved and how we, as mental health professionals or as people
within the discipline of psychology, understand those broad social, economic, and political
systems. Instead of pathologizing individuals for somehow not being able to get a good job or
effectively navigate the refugee claims system, we have to look at the socioeconomic and legal
frameworks through which people acquire identities, as workers or as citizens, without which
they cannot become legitimate actors within society, people who are entitled to human rights,
resources, and a sense of belonging.
Adopting a Human Rights Framework: Transforming
Societies by Transforming the Professions
Sandra: This might be a good lead-in to your work with the APA task force on human rights,
because this conversation is not just about us as individual practitioners, but about the
profession as a whole. How do the professions fit into this? I see a contrast between the
predominantly apolitical positioning of the professions of psychology, and particularly
counselling, in Canada and the overtly political positioning of these professions in some other
countries.
Kirby: The aspiration for the human rights movement is not just that states assume
responsibility for protecting rights, but that at every level of society, globally and nationally,
people internalize these values. The human rights framework provides a common set of values
and principles that can unite humanity. So: What is the potential role for our profession and
our scientific associations in helping to advance that kind of consensus? We in the Task Force
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suggest that there are a number of important connections between psychology and human
rights, but one of the most important derives from our ethical obligation to do no harm. We
envision a kind of superstructure of human rights that can scaffold our ethical codes in a
framework that has been developed through a process of international consensus. There are
really compelling reasons to anchor the discipline and the profession in this broader set of
human values.
Sandra: During her career, Jean Pettifor did a lot of work at the international level to try to
create consensus on core values and principles to undergird codes of ethics. She grounded
her work in basic human rights. We need some sort of anchor because our codes of ethics are
vulnerable, just like law is vulnerable, to the tides of sociocultural, political, environment, and
economic changes.
Kirby: The mandate of the APA task force was to review APA’s activities with regard to human
rights. APA has had a very long engagement in human rights. The association has been
motivated by its membership to participate in human rights activities and to think more
broadly about what the discipline can contribute to the human rights movement while at the
same time responding to different political agendas and conceptions of national security. An
important question is: How does psychology situate itself in relationship to power? For
instance, an apolitical position is a political position, because it upholds the status quo. It is a
position that is often taken by people who are proximal to power and who do not want to lose
their privilege by rocking the boat. But the question is: How can we be of greatest service to
our clients and to the populations to which our clients belong? If we proceed from there,
maybe our relationship to power changes.
Sandra: Tell me a little bit more about that. I argue that we have an obligation as practitioners
and as a profession to embrace an identity that includes justice-doing at the political, social,
and economic levels. From a human rights perspective, what would you say to someone who
comes to this conversation as a relatively new member of the professions, saying, “If I focus on
respecting diversity and engaging my clients in a respectful way, why is it important for me to
think about these broader systemic issues from a human rights perspective?”
Kirby: I have had students ask a similar question. That is a hard question for me to answer. For
me, the commitment to human rights came before the commitment to psychology. I think the
question calls for a deep, deep questioning of what psychology is, what counselling is, and
what is it that we are trying to do? Are we here to help people adjust to a profoundly
unhealthy, unequal world? Is that our role? If so, then carry on; I have nothing to suggest.
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[chuckle] But if not, if we begin from a concern about human suffering, then we must think
about violence and deprivation; we must be concerned about human rights, and social justice,
and equity; and then we have to reflect critically on the tools that we have. Are they
sufficient? Have they been part of the problem?
Sandra: And without that critical consciousness of profound social injustice, I do not think the
question actually gets asked about the use of tools (i.e. theories, models, techniques, practice
principles). Because without asking these questions, the tools get used by default to support
the status quo.
Kirby: Yes! I think that one of the hardest things for me is to sit with the fact that my tools are
insufficient, that there are no easy answers, and nor do I necessarily know what to do. It can
feel very demoralizing to encounter injustice on a massive scale, to accept that you are not
completely innocent, and to realize that you do not to have a “plan” for how to create change.
Maybe this is at the core of a certain kind of vicarious trauma or professional burnout. I think
we need to develop the strength to witness the world as it is. When we do that, we can tap
into a profound and perhaps unexpected strength, which comes through a feeling of solidarity
with communities of people who know this truth as part of their lived experience.
Sandra: Adrienne Carter, who is also working with refugees, spent years internationally with
Doctors Without Borders and other human rights organizations, and one of the things that
she talks about in her chapter is the process of bearing witness. Bearing witness in the sense
of holding the space and being present. And the second piece of bearing witness is similar to
what you were talking about earlier with the process of recording people’s stories for the
purpose of testimony to bring those stories to the world to advocate for human rights and
systems-level change.
Kirby: Yes, I think that is the other part. One part is to be able to have the strength to be with
people and to offer relevant tools; the other part is to take on the responsibility to do
something on the systemic level. What is our responsibility, if our clients have entrusted us
with knowledge of injustice? How do we work towards social change?
To be clear, you are not going to get paid to do this, and there might be professional risk
involved. In one of the organizations that I worked with in Mexico, people were doing all of
their human rights advocacy work voluntarily. They refused to accept a salary for that kind of
work. They would say, “Human rights is not a profession; it is an obligation.” It is a matter of
how you function in the world.
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Sandra: Which comes back to the feminist idea, the personal is political. How do we become
agents of social justice? Not simply how do we enact justice-doing in this moment and with
this particular person, but how do we embrace it as who we are as people? Bringing that sort
of political lens into how we operate as people and into the choices that we make, personally
and professionally.
Kirby: Exactly. However, I think that is where we sometimes get confused. It’s not our job to
impose our values or to be politically dogmatic, ours is a clinical role. Human rights and social
justice principles can inform our understanding of how clients are located in the world, but I
would argue that such principles are not synonymous with therapeutic interventions. At the
same time, we are not constrained to the clinical role, we can use our scientific and
experiential knowledge to challenge disciplinary limitations, influence policy, and participate
in social change.
Sandra: Yes, even as we teach emerging practitioners about social justice, multiculturalism,
and the tools that can come into play, it is really important to keep bringing it back to, “This is
the client in your office, in this moment,” and that practice is about listening and creating
space for whatever is happening with that particular person. Social justice and human rights
work involve positioning yourself in a way that you are willing to ruffle feathers, especially by
challenging oppressive dominant discourses that are out there in the profession and in the
broader society. So, how do you navigate that?
Kirby: I do not know what the personal implications necessarily are. I do not tend to think
about that so much. I mean, [laughter] I feel like if these values do not belong in psychology,
then I do not belong in psychology.
Sandra: Hmm. That is a pretty profound statement.
Kirby: Maybe, but more and more I find that the values do belong.
Sandra: But, not everyone would agree that they belong.
Kirby: That may be so, but we haven’t yet fully articulated the connections between human
rights and psychology. People are not accustomed to thinking in this way. In my experience,
the profession is comprised of intelligent and caring people who appreciate a well-articulated
argument. What is interesting is that when I go to the big conferences, there are more and
more talks about social justice and human rights, and in every room I go into, I’m with
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like-minded people. But then I realize that the rest of the conference is not having these
conversations. Maybe I’m in a little bubble, but I do think the bubble is getting bigger.
Sandra: I think this APA initiative is really important, because it is about making that bubble
bigger and bringing about organizational change. It is about trying to position a human rights
lens at the forefront of how decision-making happens.
Kirby: Yeah, we are really pushing it, because we do not want to have a little bubble where the
people who are interested in human rights can come together once in a while. We envision
the bubble as encapsulating the entire profession. We want that to be the frame of reference.
Enacting Human Rights: The Role of the Professions in
Social Justice Activism and Allyship
Sandra: What would it look like for human rights to be the frame that encapsulates, and
hopefully unites, the profession?
Kirby: Well, if we understand human rights as an ongoing, constantly negotiated social
construct, the professions and the scientific disciplines exist between the level of the state
and the level of the individual, and they can mediate a conversation between the two. So,
although the state is ultimately responsible for human rights, our disciplines and scientific
associations can play a role in educating the state, in holding the state accountable, in pushing
consensus-building and prescriptive norms around human rights. And we can do that by
internalizing those values, educating our membership, and engaging in strategic actions that
draw attention to particular human rights issues. We are part of the broader sociopolitical
discourse that helps transform public perception around human rights; we can be part of the
discourse to promote human rights, or we can be co-opted by state power to justify the
infringement of human rights.
In terms of the professions or the discipline of psychology, our ethics first need to be
grounded in human rights, and we need to be accountable for our history and our position in
society. Only then, can we work toward understanding questions such as: What are the ways
in which our research, our theories, and our practices, can promote a greater consensus, a
greater conformity to human rights norms? How can we help understand the impacts of
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human rights violations, for example, and the way we should help people recover from those
kinds of impacts? There is so much that we can offer in terms of our knowledge base and our
tools. Those are some of the things that we are arguing for through the APA task force. We
want our psychological associations and the professions to be really grounded in these human
rights principles.
Sandra: So, what impact do you hope this work that is happening in the US might have in
Canada?
Kirby: I think, as Canadians, we can spend our lives with our noses pressed up against the
glass to see what they are doing in the US, and then forget about what is going on here. Here,
we have our own history and our own challenges. We can easily assume that the human rights
situation is much better here and remain oblivious or complacent about our own realities. I
think that the social justice conversation in counselling right now is a US-centric one, for the
most part. It is a concept that emerged from the civil rights movement, and it is very much
about US racial politics and economic politics. I do not think it actually translates perfectly
well to our Canadian context. So, we’ve borrowed theories that do not quite fit. We have not
developed our own framework. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, but we do need to
understand what a human rights framework could contribute for us and how our own social,
political, and economic realities require a different kind of conversation. For example, we need
to be thinking about migration and Indigenous identities in ways that are quite different and
have their own nuance.
Sandra: This leads back to something I’ve been mulling over in the back of my mind from an
earlier part of our conversation. We are in this odd position in Canada in that we think we are
better than the US on some level, and that makes us feel comfortable and safe and nice.
However, it masks what is actually going on at some fairly fundamental levels, from the
individual experiences of refugee claimants in cross-cultural transition and the lack of
supportive psychosocial services, to the more insidious ways in which racism, sexism,
transphobia, and other forms of cultural oppression are still pretty dominant undercurrents
that are not talked about.
Kirby: Right. There is the racism of our cultural conditioning, and there is the racism of our
systemic structure. And if we are blind to those things, then we just replicate the status quo.
Pam Palmater (2018), a professor at Ryerson University who holds the Chair in Indigenous
Governance, wrote an article recently in Maclean’s entitled, “Indigenous rights are not
conditional on public opinion.” She asserted that it does not matter what non-Indigenous
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Canadians think about Indigenous rights. Things need to change. Indigenous people have
rights, whether “we” like it or not. She cited a recent Angus Reid Institute (2018) poll in which
53% of non-Indigenous Canadians believed there has been too much apologizing for
residential schools. In other words, we want to believe we are nice, and we do not want to be
confronted by the facts. We would just rather move on.
Sandra: And an apology is a nicety, but it has not come with meaningful change.
Kirby: Exactly. Canadians are not willing to hear about the apology anymore, let alone move
into the hard work of actually doing something about it. So, if that is how our society
addresses inequality and historical colonial oppression and violence, then as professions of
counselling and psychology, we have a whole lot of work to do to help bring Canadian human
rights issues to the surface.
Risse and Sikkink (1999) introduced the spiral model to describe how states move towards
becoming consistent in their human rights approach. The model includes five phases: (a)
repression of human rights and activation of transnational advocacy networks; (b)
dissemination of information about human rights violations and subsequent denial by the
norm-violating state; (c) tactical concessions in the form of cosmetic changes by the state and
facilitation of social mobilization of people within the country; (d) prescriptive status in which
human rights norms and principles are validated, but may not be truly operationalized; and (e)
rule-consistent behaviour resulting in sustainable changes to the operationalization of human
rights. This model assumes a social constructivist perspective: What pushes a state or an
organization toward more human rights-conforming stages is the concerted effort of human
rights activists. It takes people who are deeply committed to emerging painful histories or
current human rights violations, so that organizations, states, and cultures wrestle with those
issues and are pressured to make a change. Change doesn’t happen because they just
recognize one day that it would be a good thing to do; they have to be pushed by external and
internal activist and advocacy efforts.
That pushing generates conflict. It generates intense confrontation. That is how change
happens. It happens through that kind of struggle. It is those who have the commitment to
human rights, and often, it is people who are most strongly affected by the issues who take up
those positions, because they have to fight for their survival.
Sandra: This is part of the dilemma I wrestle with. I am hopeful that we can shift the sense of
responsibility from the marginalized to the privileged somehow, so that we embrace the
human rights and social justice agendas in a different way, a way wherein those with power
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and privilege assume the onus to shift our society and shift our profession without having to
rely on the people who feel that oppression to the greatest degree to make it happen.
Kirby: If you take it down to the individual level, we are aware that people who have been hurt
are the ones who have to do the hard work to heal. That may be unfair, but that is reality.
There is nothing that we as therapists can do to take that burden away from the person who
has been hurt, who has to dig deep and wrestle with that. On a systemic level, we similarly
cannot take away that burden of struggle—as if we know the answers—but we can really work
to understand the experiences of cultural oppression so that we can support these struggles
and do not keep getting in the way. The urgency will always come from people who are
suffering and surviving. Our role is to learn from that, to take inspiration from that urgency,
and to allow ourselves to be led into action. That is the work I think we have to do.
Sandra: There is a difference between shouldering the burden and shouldering the
responsibility. I’ve used the terminology allyship.
Kirby: Yes. There is work to do to understand the problems and our locations within them and
to assume our part of the collective responsibility for systems-level change. In concrete ways,
in our own lives, how can we stop fighting to protect our own privilege? Climate change is a
good example. Do we want to continue to fight to maintain our standard of living, or do we
recognize the need to make change in the way we live so that people do not drown?
Human Rights as an Umbrella for Social Justice and
Professional Ethics
Sandra: That is a pretty clear cause-and-effect example. Do you have anything else to say
about the relationship between social justice and human rights?
Kirby: From the perspective of psychology, three movements: social justice, human rights, and
ethics, all evolved somewhat distinctly yet in parallel. So, there are some common elements,
and there are distinctly different elements. What I am starting to understand is that human
rights is an umbrella under which social justice and ethics live and function. It is the bigger,
more universal, consensus-based set of values that have relevance for our ethics codes and
our professional conduct. Social justice focuses more on equity and civil rights; whereas
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human rights extend beyond that towards fundamental freedoms, such as freedom from
violence and basic human dignity. When we talk about social justice only in a way that focuses
on identity-based issues, we do not always link those things to an analysis of sociopolitical
power and the role of the state to provide basic rights to life and equal access to the goods of
society, for example. Human rights form the foundation from which social justice emerges.
Sandra: You made a statement in the APA (2017) video about mainstreaming human rights,
which I think is interesting language. What do you think it would look like to mainstream
human rights within counsellor education?
Kirby: That language definitely comes from the human rights NGO world, but I think there is
relevance for counsellor education. However, I think what it means is just: How does this
become one of the foundational pieces of knowledge that we seek to integrate into all levels of
professional socialization? I think about the way in which ethics is introduced: There is a
dedicated course, and then within every course, and in practica and internships, there is
always attention to ethics. Diversity training has evolved in the same way. At first, it was a
little bit piecemeal; now we have multicultural and diversity courses and instructors are
expected to embody these principles and to infuse them into every interaction with students
within every course. If we now accept the value of a human rights framework, maybe it will
happen in the same way. It starts to be integrated bit-by-bit into courses, and then we start to
include it as part of accreditation criteria, maybe it begins to inform the way we think of ethics
and becomes part of our ethics training, and then it becomes part of our clinical training. But
we are in such a fledgling place in our understanding of the connections between human
rights and psychology. I think we are a long way from mainstreaming human rights in
counsellor education or the profession of psychology more broadly. We are in a germinal
stage.
Sandra: Let’s talk for a moment again about the global picture of human rights and social
justice, in the context of emerging discourses that are very anti-human rights: nationalism,
anti-immigration, anti-refugee.
Kirby: We have to think beyond rights and justice for our little group. As climate change
intensifies and more people are forced to migrate, we will need to embrace global human
rights, such that we recognize that every one of us is equal to every other. We are no more
deserving of a safe and healthy environment than the person who lives in the floodplains in
Bangladesh or on the coast of Florida. That is a contentious position, but it is evident from a
human rights perspective. Some people feel that their responsibility is to their children and
435 | Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights
their group, and they are prepared to fight to keep as much as they can. That feels, to those
people, like a very ethical position and also self-evident. Why would we extend any of our
privilege to those outside of that circle? That is why, within the profession and as citizens
generally, I think we need to develop renewed sense of internationalism, which is quite
distinct from corporate globalization.
Sandra: It raises a number of questions. What is the responsibility of the profession to our
own, as in, our own clients? What is the responsibility of the profession to those who are not
our clients, and are not within our own “domain”?
Kirby: Well, the human rights framework encourages us to think about the right to equal
access to the benefits of science and our responsibility to address health disparities. There are
the people who are sitting across from us in the office, and if we are providing services for a
fee, then our population of concern is limited to those who can pay. But there are also the
populations of people with untreated mental illness who are marginalized from society, the
people who have been traumatized by war and violence, people who have lived generations of
oppression, surely those are also “our own.” We can advocate for greater access to mental
health services, but we can also use our science in the service of understanding the
psychological causes and effects of human rights violations and developing appropriate
interventions, and we can use our knowledge and experience to influence policy and hold
states accountable. All of this is our “domain.”
Sandra: I think this is a good place to end our conversation. You have invited readers into a
thoughtful and challenging dialogue. Thank you for your important contribution.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
• How would you locate the professions of counselling and psychology in relation
to social power structures? What are the implications of this positioning for the
responsibility of the professions for social justice and human rights?
• Considering the role of the counsellor, what are some ethical and human rights
Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights | 436
implications of helping individual clients adjust to their circumstances or,
alternatively, facilitating the development of a critical analysis of the social
conditions that contribute to their suffering?
• What might it look like for you, personally and professionally, to embrace a
human rights framework? How might this change how you define your
professional identity?
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439 | Chapter 11. Psychology and Human Rights
DOMAIN IV. COUNSELLING AS
RELATIONSHIP
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship
between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the
darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Pema Chödrön
Chödrön. P. (2002). The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.
Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications. Pema Chödrön is a leader in Tibetan Buddhism in
Canada and the US. A brief story of her life is available on the Gampo Abbey website.
Domain IV. Counselling as Relationship | 440
Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and
Socially Just Relational Practices:
Facilitating Transformation Through
Connection
SANDRA COLLINS
Domain IV: Centralize Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices
10. Core Competency 10 Transformative Relationship: Optimize the transformative
nature of the client–counsellor relationship.
11. Core Competency 11 Salience of Cultural and Social Location: Assess the
salience and the interplay of client–counsellor cultural identities and social
locations.
12. Core Competency 12 Constructive Collaboration: Nurture collaborative and
egalitarian relationships with clients.
In Chapters 3 and Chapter 6, I build a case for the importance of awareness of client and
counsellor cultural identities and social locations. I argue that all counselling is multicultural
in nature, in the sense that each person brings to the process complex, multifaceted, and
intersecting lived experiences of being in the world as a cultural being. Both counsellor and
client also carry into the counselling relationship their relative position within society as
privileged or marginalized, the contextualized experiences of each, and the resultant power
differentials. As counsellors, I encourage you to come to your interaction with each client with
a high level of self-awareness and a consciousness of these important lenses for appreciating
clients’ lived experiences and presenting concerns. Then in Chapter 9, I explore what it might
441 | Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational
Practices
mean for you personally and professionally to position your practice in the context of basic
human rights and social justice values. I challenge you to frame your approach to ethical
decision-making as part of justice-doing and to consider how adopting a social justice identity
might position your work within the landscape of counselling and psychology and the broader
national and international context of human suffering, resiliency, and healing.
However, until you walk into the room with a particular client or engage directly with a
cultural community, these factors are all hypothetical. It is in relationship with other human
beings that your cultural identities and social locations become most meaningful. It is also in
the context of these relationships that you will need to grapple with your professional identity
and role in supporting human rights and social justice. What happens in those first few
minutes of each interpersonal encounter as you each read the cues about one another to get a
sense of what the other person is like? For the client, questions of cultural safety may be
quickly assessed. Or they may be curious about who you are as a person and as a counsellor.
As the counsellor, you may be running through an initial checklist of the client’s emotional and
psychological state or assessing what cultural factors may be at play. All of this becomes clear
only in and through relationship. The client–counsellor relationship begins in those first few
minutes and continues through, and sometimes beyond, the ending of your formal work
together.
One of my critiques of the earlier models of multicultural counselling competency (Arredondo
et al., 1996; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; Sue et al., 1982) is that they did not emphasize
the relationship as foundational to cultural competency (see Collins & Arthur, 2010b for a
more detailed analysis). Those models followed a tripartite organization of competencies into
(a) ‘‘counsellor awareness of own assumptions, values, and biases’’; (b) ‘‘understanding the
worldview of the culturally different client’’; and (c) ‘‘developing appropriate intervention
strategies and techniques’’ (Sue at al., 1992, p. 481). However, one of the most consistent
messages in the counselling literature is that the client‒counsellor relationship is central to
counselling outcomes; in fact, common factors research confirms that it plays a more
significant role in the efficacy of counselling than theory or any specific intervention
strategies (Duncan, 2014; Feinstein, Heiman, & Yager, 2015). In my previous collaborative work,
I responded to the calls in the literature to prioritize the client–counsellor relationship by
positioning it as central to our multicultural counselling competency model (Collins & Arthur,
2005, 2010a, 2010b). However, it was not until recently that the American Counselling
Association endorsed a new model for multicultural counselling competencies that includes
the counselling relationship as one of the core domains (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler,
& McCullough, 2015).
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CRSJ Counselling Concepts Illustrated
• Alliance ruptures
• Authenticity
• Bearing witness
• Client as expert
• Client-centred practice
• Client–counsellor relationship
• Clients as cultural knowledge
source
• Co-construction of meaning/
language
• Common factors
• Compassion fatigue
• Connection–disconnection
• Constructive collaboration
• Counselling conventions
• Counselling skills
• Counselling style
• Counsellor credibility
• Counsellor health and healing
• Cultural blindness–cultural
hyperconsciousness
• Cultural countertransference
• Cultural empathy
• Cultural hypotheses
• Cultural inquiry
• Cultural transference
• Culturally sensitive space
• Curiosity/not-knowing stance
443 | Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices
• Decolonizing therapeutic
relationship
• Egalitarian relationships
• Ethic of care
• First language facilitation
• Informed consent
• Just conversations
• Meaning-making
• Microaggression
• Mutual cultural empathy
• Nonjudgement
• Power-over/expert positioning
• Relational practice
• Resistance
• Safety/cultural safety
• Salience of culture
• Self-disclosure
• Stigma of counselling and mental
health issues
• Tentativeness
• Thickening client narratives
• Transformative/healing
relationship
• Transparency/openness
• Trust
• Underserviced populations
• Underutilization of services
• Values differences/conflicts
• Values imposition
• Ways of being
E-Book Navigation Tip
Remember to review the definitions for each of the key concepts in Domain IV in the
Enhanced Glossary as you work your way through this chapter to gain a full
appreciation of the importance of these ideas to culturally responsive and socially just
counselling practice and to see how these concepts are grounded in the current
professional literature.
Core Competency 10
Back to top of chapter
The Transformative Nature of the Client–Counsellor
Relationship
Review the definitions in the glossary for each of the key terms above as you read through this
chapter, starting with how I describe the client–counsellor relationship. In earlier
collaborative work, I chose to use the term, working alliance, rather than relationship, because
it connoted a more intentional and change-focused process, which makes it clear that
something qualitatively different occurs (or should occur) in counselling as opposed to other
relationships in our day-to-day lives. However, this language carried with it a flavour of
instrumentality and lacked the emotional and visceral depth that are evidenced in the
client–counsellor interactions storied throughout this book. The term working alliance, in
Canada, has also been rooted in educational psychology, and I am attempting to broaden the
lens in this book by speaking more inclusively from within the wider health disciplines. Many
authors use these terms interchangeably. In this chapter, I argue that establishing a culturally
Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices | 444
responsive and socially just client–counsellor relationship creates a bridge between
counsellor and client cultural identities and social locations. The relationship between
counsellor and client itself becomes a transformative, and in some cases, decolonizing
experience through the foundational processes of mutual cultural empathy, constructive
collaboration, and cultural inquiry.
Before continuing to read the rest of this chapter, I encourage you to revisit the
conceptualization of the CRSJ counselling model in Chapter 1. You will notice that the three
main themes for this chapter (mutual cultural empathy, cultural inquiry, and constructive
collaboration) all support the umbrella of an anti-oppressive, culturally responsive, and
socially just client–counsellor relationship. Because this chapter focuses on building a
relationship as a foundation for understanding client problems and preferred outcomes, I hold
off on talking explicitly about case conceptualization until Chapter 15 and do not discuss
interventions explicitly until Chapter 18. However, reframing the client–counsellor
relationship as a process of mutual empathy and constructive collaboration opens the door to
viewing the relationship itself as a process of change. In this next section, I argue that change
occurs in and through relationship in predictable, and sometimes unpredictable, ways.
Counselling as a Relational Practice
The first thing I do when I encounter a new client is to reflect on how I will make
connection and build relationship with this unique cultural being. I’m not thinking about
what they hope to get out of the counselling process or how I will go about supporting
them to make the changes they desire. If I fail to make a connection with this person, then
the rest of these questions become irrelevant. I will not be perceived as trustworthy, and
they will not feel or see the potential to be knowable or acceptable or safe.
Having said that, I also have a practice principle that, whatever happens in the first
session with the client, at the least, I aim to instill in the client some sense of hope and
belief that change is possible. So, I am not looking for relational bridges related to our
preferred vacation destinations or the types of movies we like. I am looking for ways in
445 | Chapter 12. Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Relational Practices
which I can make myself present to them, communicate cultural safety, create a
welcoming space in which they can open small windows into their lived experience.
I know that most often I am being tested, and good for them. I overtly empower them to
make an informed choice about whether I am the best person with whom to work. Most
often, they are not making this assessment based on my credentials; they have already
reviewed those before they come. They are making a judgement about me as a person and
the relational fit for them. I honour this, and I do not charge them for this initial time.
Viewing counselling as a relational practice shifts our lens as counsellors from a singular
focus on what we do in counselling to who we are in relation to, and in relationship with, our
clients. Reflecting back on my critique of the way in which virtue ethics is presented within
the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA, 2007) code of ethics in
Chapter 9, I want to reiterate that I am not talking about a list of fixed personality or character
qualities that determine whether or not you or I will be an effective counsellor, consultant,
advocate, and so on. If it was possible to create such a checklist, it would be part of the
application process for counsellor education and other training programs. The reason this is
not possible is that who I am in any given moment is only helpful in relation to the person and
the context in which I find myself. Sometimes, for example, it is important for a client to see
my outrage at the ways in which they have experienced cultural oppression and
marginalization. However, the ability to express anger might seem quite odd on our
“personality traits for counsellors” checklist. This approach also assumes that my identity is
somehow fixed and immutable, which goes against the assertions throughout this book that
even my fundamental values and beliefs about myself and others are fluid, contextualized, and
socially constructed.
I want to return to my earlier caution about treating the client–counsellor relationship as
instrumental as opposed to relational, because this warrants more nuanced discussion. The
relationship is not a tool that we apply to people; it is