Hey everyone.
I am working on my masters in clinical mental health counseling, and I want to be multiculturally sensitive, including regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
I am a straight, cisgender male, and I have only had a handful of gay and trans friends/acquaintances. Multicultural awareness is certainly part of my education, but I don’t believe it is close to enough. I want to hear from communities themselves, not just textbooks.
If you feel comfortable, I would really appreciate your feedback to make me a more effective counselor working with people in your demographic.
How can I best serve you?
What have you wished a past counselor could have understood?
What really pissed you off in a therapy session?
What is the most important thing for me to try to understand?
I hope this is received well. I genuinely want to be able to effectively serve all people.
Be accepting of plural and otherkin patients.
I fully believe in non-judgmental care. I’m not going to judge someone for their identity.
And as far as I’m aware, the general modern consensus in psychology is not to pathologize such identities as the medical model likes to do.
That’s not to say that counselors don’t bring their own implicit biases into practice though…
Great answer. You’re right. See, the thing is, the DSM only describes disorders. Some doctors have a tendency to understand the world through sickness only, and don’t have adequate knowledge of health. Imagine if you told your therapist “I enjoy reggae music and woodwork in my spare time”, and the doctor started looking in the DSM for what mental disorder that is. That’s how some patients feel when a doctor tries to define their plurality in disordered terms.
One of the reasons I trust psychologists better than psychiatrists is I don’t trust people with a medical background to accept something as healthy. You tell a psychologist you have a religious problem, and their training probably has some basic information on religion. You tell a psychiatrist you have a religious problem, and what does their training tell them to do? Prescribe antipsychotics.