Cultural Humility in Counseling

Course overview

The American population is extremely diverse and in the upcoming years diversity in the US will continue to increase. Professionals engaged in counseling must become increasingly self-aware and must understand both how their own unique individual experiences influence their worldviews and values and how the unique individual experiences of their clients influence each client's worldviews and values. This course discusses intersectionality and the ways that various ethnic and racial groups may have a diversity of beliefs, social structures, interactional patterns, and expectations, and how each individual client has various intersecting dimensions of diversity that include socioeconomic class, sexuality, gender identification, and dis/ability. Moreover, the course provides information necessary for the counselor to recognize the roles that power, privilege, and oppression play in both the counseling relationship and the experiences of clients. Although the perspective of this course is influenced by the author's own unique facets of diversity, it is likely that clinicians of various backgrounds will benefit and find applicability to their practices. This intermediate-level course presents an introduction to cultural humility and offers tools for social workers, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and psychologists to use in working with diverse clients in a culturally humble manner