Therapist Strengths

Cultural competence and ethical responsibility of counselors is an issue that holds increasing importance. To be both multicultural and ethical is increasingly challenging. The population of the United States is changing quickly from a predominately white Caucasian society to an ethnically diverse society`. The Hispanic population, which represented only 9% of the population in 1990, is projected to increase to about 25% of the population by 2050. The number of African Americans, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, and American Indians/Eskimos/Aleuts will continue to increase as well (Aponte & Wohl, 2000). It has been predicted that Whites, who made up three fourths of the U.S. population in 1990, will no longer be in the majority by the

A counselor must be self-aware of their own culture and how their cultural views, biases, assumptions, beliefs, and prejudices can affect the counseling relationship (Corey, Corey, & Corey, 2014). However, through self-awareness counselors are able to not impose their worldview onto clients (Corey, Corey, & Corey, 2014). In general, counselors can improve their self-awareness through such things as reflecting on personal cultural views and the differences between those views and others' cultural views, reading journal articles and books about different cultures, and seeking out different cultural experiences to participate in such as going to a religious service or a cultural festival (Corey, Corey, & Corey, 2014). By expanding

Strengths and Weaknesses: My strengths include experience and tradition. These allow me to consider multiple views and see exactly what is going on with the situation. This also lets me know exactly what to do to make people happy. I also have the gift of free will and compassion. This lets me have empathy for everyone. I do have weaknesses as well. Failure and confusion are a part of my weakness. I will eventually confront the loss of my center if I do not develop the practice of mindfulness and reflection. I do have compassion for all people. It says that my vice is becoming greedy or hard hearted. I personally do not see myself doing that. My conscience would not let me be greedy or hard hearted.

When it comes to my strengths and weaknesses I can always give more weaknesses then strengths but I find that is always good to think of a lot of weaknesses as then you are always developing, Below I have put some of my strengths and weaknesses

My strengths would be self-motivation, organization and great patient care. I am very self-motivated and I like to stay on top of my assignments. I tend to set goals for myself to achieve throughout the day. I also like to stay organized and know where everything I need is at just in case of an emergency or an issue. Patient care is another of my strengths, I like to make sure my patients are doing well and have no further needs. That would lean towards my weakness which is spending a lot of time making sure my patient is doing well and falling a little behind, but I am working to improve that.

One of my strengths is that if I enjoy a class I learn and focus a great deal better. If I can find something I like about each class I will most likely learn better. I can also organize when I choose to. Organization will help me keep things in order and keep my things from being lost. Another strength is being good at relaxation. Most people wouldn’t think of relaxation as a strength but I think it is. I can use relaxation to keep myself from getting overly stressed. When I get super stressed it’s almost as if my brain shuts down. In addition to my strengths, I have some weaknesses.

It is important to understand the needs and self of a therapist in order to ensure they are inline with what you have to offer. There is also a risk associated with not showing a connectedness between your needs and the needs of the job. Therapists must have a balanced self being emotional, physical, social, intellectual and spiritual self. An effective therapist is one who has the ability to balance the self and recognizing a lacking part of the self and having capability to surmount the deficiency. An important need of a therapist is a self-care strategy which includes

With my strengths also comes some weaknesses. One of my biggest weakness will probably be my client to professional relationship. Many people enter the field of social work to help others grow and improve their life circumstances. Sometimes, when working with clients, social workers gain connections. As a professional I must maintain clear boundaries to assure professional integrity and responsibility is being met. I personally feel this to be a weakness because I tend to form a bond with someone I am helping through something especially if I have been through a similar

As a counselor it is essential to have cultural awareness for groups that differ from your culture. To become an effective counselor one must deal with their biases, stereotypes and judgments. Also, it is equally important to challenge ones thoughts and opinions on particular populations that you have prejudgments about. Dealing with these stereotypes and prejudgments allows oneself to effectively provide services to the client. If biases go undealt with, this may become evident in therapy. In order to face these biases it is important to put one in situations that may be uncomfortable to gain understanding and insight on the population.

It is very important for counselors to understand that moving their program toward cultural competence requires a personal commitment and significant involvement from the entire staff. Cultural competence is an ongoing process of examination and change, it’s, not a goal to be attained all at once (McLeod, S. 2008). To move toward cultural competence, counselors must contemplate on an ongoing basis of what life is like for people different from themselves. Counselors should encourage each other to adopt an open-minded attitude toward other cultures and not to throw their own belief system on others.

As I studied the 31 multicultural counseling competencies (Hays and Erford, 2014), I have been able to assess my areas of strength and weakness in order to become a more culturally competent counselor. Understanding a client’s worldview and being able to address all of the cultural identities of a person will help me to be a more effective counselor to each client that I see on a daily basis. In each of the three areas of the MCC’s I have definitive attitudes, knowledge and skills that I feel very comfortable with but also areas that need growth.

Some of the strengths I believed I demonstrated were active listening, empathy, coordination and organization. I listened carefully, asked pertinent questions and retained verbally transmitted information that was vital to the counseling aspect of my position. That established trust and opened doors to discover valuable details about the individuals who were seeking our help in understanding their unique circumstances. Active listening goes beyond just listening. Active listening means being attentive to what someone else is saying. To be a get active listener you have to understand the feelings and views of the other person. With most of the cases, I was able to empathize with. Empathizing is both an intellectual and emotional process that

My main strengths are organisation skills, patience and ability split focus. There was always need to be organise in my previous jobs and patience to deal with customers and complains. But it was my greatly active daughter who learn me cooking, washing dishes and watching her playing at the same time 

It is important for everyone especially counselors to become more culturally competent. There are many different ways that one can practice on becoming more culturally competent. One can emerge themselves into an environment that is culturally different from theirs, or they can engage in conversations, interview, etc. with people who has a different ethnic background from them. One of the ways that I chose to expand my culturally competencies is by interviewing someone that culturally different from myself. I asked questions about their culture, family, background and racial and spiritual views. I interviewed a forty -three-year-old female Thai-Italian American. Her name shall remain unanimous. Her father is Italian and her mother is Thai. She was born in America which is why she considers herself as a Thai-Italian American. She is married and has two sons, in which one is her stepson. Her stepson is twenty-four years old and her biological son is three years old. She defines culture as a geographical feature, meaning that one culture is stem from their environment, and she defines family as the people who are loyal, loving and caring to her. In her eyes

My personal strengths are open-minded, patience, honesty, communication, problem solving, persistence, independent, planning and organization. My weaknesses are not able to accept the