My Own Beliefs And Values

To provide competent care to a client, the therapist has to be culturally prepared to work with the client. To be culturally competent as a therapist I have to be aware of my own bias, my identity, and my values in regards of my culture. I also need to be aware of the judgments that I have about the client’s cultural identity. In order to know the client’s culture, I would inquire about the identity during the intake. I would use the Addressing model by Pamela Hays to inquire the cultural identity of my clients. The addressing model helps to consider the various social categories that a client belongs to. Also, providing culturally competent services is to be aware of the population surrounding the therapist’s office or agency in order to

Based on my past experience and a review of this week’s reading, I believe the theories that best fit with my personal philosophies are the Person-centered therapy and Existential therapy. As Experiential and Relationship-Oriented Therapies, these theories share some key concepts that really fit with how I see my role in the therapeutic relationship and what I believe about personal power and change.

My beliefs about human life are intricate. We are complex individuals that are shaped not only by our genes, but also by our environments, our experiences and interactions with others. Surely, the way that people behave can be due to psychological disorders that we are not at fault for, however, I also believe that issues involving anxiety, stress and depression are often perpetuated by our own thinking processes and how we feel about ourselves in comparison to the beliefs of others. Often times, I feel that having someone to listen, validate, empathize and care for us is what it takes for change to take place. As social beings, I believe that through interactions with a person who we care about and a person that cares about us, improvements can be made. In this paper, I will discuss how my philosophy of life relates to that of person-centered therapy, as described by Sharf (2016).

Engaging into the importance of multicultural competence, awareness of such competency has become a significant necessity in the area of mental health, and various fields of psychology (Hayes, 2008). It is essential for a counselor to be multicultural competent in order to develop a therapeutic alliance with a client, while understanding their cultural identity. Therefore, culturally competent knowledge, attitudes, and skills of diverse culture, is necessary, in proper treatment and diagnosis. Nonetheless, the complexity of cultural diversity can contribute to challenges in assessment, diagnosis and or treatment. It is further understood; by understanding one’s social history, psychosocial history, presenting problems, along with other pertinent information regarding a cultural responsiveness in a diagnosis, and how it would be beneficial to individuals of various social, ethnic, and other minority groups in order to make a treatment plan based on the findings of a cultural assessment (Sue & Sue, 2013). Nonetheless, cultural influences, often neglected, are needed to incorporate the challenges cultural groups face when seeking treatment. Therefore, I have found it applicable to use “ADDRESSING,” framework in therapy as a resource for developing cultural and relevant assessments in addition to the onset symptoms presented in the client in the case study of Mrs. Hudson. The use of “ADDRESSING” acronym is designed to obtain age, developmental and physical disabilities

Human beings are seen has having capacity to strive for fulfilment and growth. Rogers referred this capacity as the ‘ideal self’. Enabling a person to move in the direction of their self defined ideals is major aim of the person centred therapy. Human beings are viewed as fully functioning persons who are open to experience and able to live existentially, trusting in own organism, expresses feelings freely, acts independently, are creative and lives a richer life which involve a process and a direction, and not a destination (Rogers, 1961, p.186).Therapy can develop and psychologically change those who do not have an optimal childhood in order restore the organismic valuing process (Rogers, 1959).This idea portrays an importance strand contrast to psychoanalysis whose orientation of their theory as reflected by Freud was towards understanding and explaining pathology or illness.

Personal values, beliefs, and principles are important for individuals to know about themselves. However, when asked the question, “what are your personal values, beliefs, and principles?” The first response is often a laundry list of characteristics with the assumption that those three words are synonymous. From my experience when posed this question the laundry list became long and in retrospect, I began to wonder what the differences were between each of these terms. As a teacher, employee, mother, and Christian knowing these differences and how to answer the question is an important component of determining how I make decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas. Hence, began the investigation of how the terms relate, their meaning and what my answer is to this question. Since my laundry list was quite long for this essay, I will share and explain the top two elements for each category, how they relate to one another and how the knowledge influences tough decisions.

Different counseling theories, such as psychoanalytic, Adlerian, client-centered therapy, existential psychotherapy, gestalt therapy, and reality therapy can be applied to different clinical settings and populations by a counselor or therapist (Rayner & Vitali, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to apply a counseling theory, existential therapy, to the provided case study of Paul, a 34-year-old male with work inhibition, but yearns for more in his life. Essentially, counseling theories can be used a foundation for counselor’s or therapist’s work with clients. It is one of the most unique forms of counseling theories that aims at exploring the psychological and emotional challenges faced by a client from a philosophical perspective, particularly

Among these therapeutic approaches are the psychodynamic approach and the existential approach. An example of existential approach psychotherapy is the person-centred therapy that was introduced by Carl Rogers in the 1940s. Person-centred therapy (PCT) focuses on the quality of the person-to-person therapeutic relationship; it places faith and gives responsibility to the client in dealing with problems and concerns (Corey, 2009, p. 30). On the other hand, for the psychodynamic approach, Sigmund Freud, the core founder of this approach developed psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a therapy aimed to treat mental disorder. It is a set of techniques for treating the unconscious causes of mental disorders; as well as to explain the underlying factors of how human personality and abnormality develop from childhood (Corey, 2009, p. 30). This paper examines the similarities and differences between psychoanalytic therapy and

Existential psychotherapy is a dynamic, philosophical approach to therapy that is based on the premise that an individual’s conflict within is due to their concerns with the givens of existence (Yalom, 1980). These givens, or ultimate concerns as noted by Yalom (1980), are inescapable properties that are part of the human existence in the world: meaninglessness, freedom (and its associated responsibility), isolation, and the inevitability of death. Confrontation with these givens can result in existential anxiety (Corey, 2009).

The biblical creed and doctrine in which my core religious beliefs are founded upon originates from the message of the Gospel of the good news of Jesus Christ, which is rooted in the significance of the life of Jesus Christ. In Scripture, doctrine refers to the entire body of essential theological truths that define and describe the message of our soon coming King's core beliefs. For instance, the word of God declares, “Those who accept Jesus Christ will live for eternity with him after they die”(John 11:25, 26; 2 Corinthians 5:6). Further clarification of the word states, "Christians will be raised from the dead when Jesus returns" (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17), and lastly, "God will create a new heaven and a new earth" (2Peter 3:13). Specifically,

My counseling approach is mainly taken from the existential viewpoint, but incorporates two other approaches (e.g. client-centered and behavioral). First, I would like to discuss existential therapy and the reasons why I like this approach as a counselor in training. There are always dialectics or conflicting forces that continue to interact with each other in our lives and many individuals do not think of this concept often. I believe nothing is fixed, everything changes or evolves over time. I think this is true even though many do not like the idea of change. There are always two opposite sides interacting, like the concept of yin and yang, which is something I truly believe in. We must see the good in the bad or the bad

Zunker informs us that Sue, Ivey and Pederson recognized that a theory for multicultural counseling was necessary; the premise of this theory is that learning occurs within a cultural context, that cultural identity changes and that culture is both inclusive and broad (Sue, Ivey & Pederson 1996; Zunker, 2006).The sociopolitical

A key concept of existential therapy is the relationship between freedom and responsibility. In contrast

Additionally, current research continues to support its efficacy. In a study spanning five years, 697 individuals effectively benefited from person-centered therapy for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression (Gibbard & Hanley, 2008). In an article that dissected three major schools of psychotherapy, students were asked to the video series, the Three Approaches to Psychotherapy Shostrom, 1965). Each therapist interviewed the same client, Gloria, each using a different technique from their school of psychotherapy. Carl Rogers presented using his client-centered counseling, Fritz Perls utilized Gestalt therapy and Albert Ellis gives his example of rational emotive therapy. Through the sample of 97 students, from both graduate and undergraduate programs, Rogers theory received the most positive reaction (Reilly & Jacobus, 2007). Therefore, it comes to no surprise that this theory has been given the support of more than 200 organizations around the world “dedicated to researching and applying the principles developed by Rogers (Kirschenbaum & Jourdan,

In terms of sadness and depression, comparisons and contrasts can be made between CBT and existential therapy. Heidegger and Boss understood sadness or depression as a mood invoked by feelings of being closed off from an aspect of our freedom. They suggest that depression is a consequence of this restricted way of thinking and not the result of inner psychological conflict. Contrastingly, through Beck’s pivotal cognitive theory of emotion, CBT considers sadness or depression to be a common negative emotional response or disorder associated with thoughts and mental images from the past brought about by a viscous cycle of negative patterns of interpretation and dysfunctional reactions which further compound a negative mood. It further suggests that feelings of sadness or even depression are associated with a perception that something has been lost, actually or conceptually.