Barriers to CrossCultural Counseling Counseling Psychology iResearchNet (2014)

Barriers to Cross-Cultural Counseling

When counseling culturally diverse clients, counselors will often
encounter many obstacles or barriers.These barriers can stem from the
counselors lack of cultural knowledge to language differences between
the counselor and client. Barriers to cross-cultural counseling can
negatively inuence the counseling relationship as well as the outcome of
counseling. The literature has even linked these cultural barriers to the
underutilization and premature termination of counseling services by
ethnic minorities and low-income persons. An increasing awareness of
these barriers has led to changes in counselor preparation and the
delivery of counseling services to culturally diverse populations. In this
entry, seven barriers to cross-cultural
counseling are described.
Lack of Counselor Cultural Self-Awareness
A major barrier to effective cross-cultural counseling is the counselors lack of
cultural self-awareness. Cultural selfawareness refers to the counselors awareness
and acknowledgment of his or her own cultural beliefs, attitudes, and values as well
as an awareness of his or her biases and faulty assumptions about other groups.
Essentially, a counselor with a heightened sense of cultural self-awareness
acknowledges and recognizes when his or her culture is contradictory to a clients
culture. When a counselor does not recognize that he or she has biased views and
stereotypical beliefs about other groups, he or she will likely provide ineffective
counseling services and experience high rates of client dropout. Also, a culturally
aware counselor is able to recognize when he or she is conceptualizing a clients
case based on prejudiced and/or stereotypical beliefs about a particular group of
people.

Lack of Counselor Cultural Knowledge

In many cases, the counselors lack of cultural knowledge can serve as a
barrier to effective cross-cultural counseling. Cultural knowledge includes the
counselors understanding and knowledge of other cultural groups behaviors,
norms, beliefs, and attitudes. Both counselors and clients bring to counseling a set of
cultural norms that have been reinforced for long periods of time. These norms then
inuence the way in which the counselor and client perceive their world, each other,
and their approach to counseling. Counselors who are knowledgeable of their clients
cultural preferences and norms are better equipped to make appropriate clinical
decisions. For example, in some cultures, passivity rather than assertiveness is
revered. A counselor adhering to the Western culture may have great dif1culty
understanding a Chinese clients unwillingness to demand more from others.
However, after learning more about the clients culture, the counselor introduces
counseling interventions that take into account Chinese cultural norms.
When counselors lack knowledge of varying cultural groups, they will often
rely on stereotypes to better understand clients from different cultural backgrounds.
Stereotypes are often negative, based on faulty perceptions, and are of unspeci1ed
validity. Many argue, however, that some stereotypes or generalizations can be
helpful in the process of learning to understand other cultures. African Americans are
an example of an entire ethnic minority group that has been subject to historical and
contemporary stereotyping. African American stereotypes have ranged from
portrayals of African Americans being lazy and intellectually inferior to being violent
and poor. For example, a White career counselor might assume that an African
American client is not able to pay for a series of career-exploration courses. The
counselor, therefore, fails to share information about the workshops with the African
American client but she shares the information with a White client. Her faulty
assumption is based on the stereotype that all African Americans are poor, from lowincome backgrounds, or both.

Counselors are often ineffective with culturally diverse clients because they
view cultural differences as de1cits rather than strengths. In addition, counselors will
often neglect to discuss a clients problems in the context of current social issues
facing the client. Counseling professionals create barriers in counseling when they
do not consider clients problems in the context of educational, economic, social,
political, legal, and cultural systems. The de1cit perspective, coupled with a neglect
to address social contextual issues, can hinder the cross-cultural counseling
process.
Because of the vast number of cultures that clients may ascribe to, it is
impossible for a counselor or therapist to know everything about every culture.
Working together with a counselor, healer, or helper from an unknown culture can
vastly improve a counselors ability to be effective and the probability of success in
implementing appropriate interventions
.
Lack of Culturally Appropriate Counseling Skills
Distinctions can be made between general counseling skills, which may
include active listening, empathy, and illustrating genuineness, and the speci1c skills
that are central to working with a client who is culturally different. Counselors who
lack multicultural counseling skills are at risk of providing culturally insensitive
counseling. Examples of skill requirements speci1c to cultural competency are (a)
determining effective ways to communicate with a client that may use a different
style of thinking, information processing, and communication; (b) discussing race
and racial differences early in the counseling process; (c) engaging in multiple verbal
and nonverbal helping responses, recognizing responses that may be appropriate or
inappropriate within a cultural context; (d) using resources outside of the 1eld of
psychology, such as traditional cultural healers; and (e) modifying conventional forms
of treatment to be responsive to the cultural needs of the client. Some counseling
professionals have indicated that there is no simple methodology or approach that
can easily de1ne the how-to in the counseling session with the culturally diverse
client. One of the greatest dilemmas in the area of cultural competency is
determining what counseling strategies and interventions are most effective with
different cultural groups.

Language Barriers
Language may be a barrier in the cross-cultural counseling process.
Language differences in counseling can lead to miscommunications, misdiagnoses,
and misinterpretations. A lack of language or communication skills often emerges as
a major stressor for clients who are bilingual, immigrant, or both. It is also important
to consider immigrant clients level of acculturation, which might be linked to their
command of their native and English languages. Bilingual clients may have the
ability to express themselves in English in a rudimentary way but may need to use
their native language to discuss more emotional subjects. Because of language
barriers, many immigrants will avoid counseling services fo of being unable to
communicate with counselors. Likewise, counselors may avoid immigrant clients
because the language barrier frustrates them.
Because counseling is a process of interpersonal interaction, communication is
paramount to the counseling process. Both parties in counseling interpret the
information transmitted between them, and if interpreted inaccurately, the counseling
process and outcomes can be negatively inuenced. The dif1culties
related to communication are most prevalent when interpreting nonverbal patterns
because nonverbal communication is highly inuenced by culture. Types of
nonverbal communication that are important in cross-cultural counseling include
proxemics,

kinesics,

paralanguage,

high-low

context

communication,

and

kinesthetic. Proxemics is the use of personal space and appropriate distance in

social interactions. For example, Latinos/as tend to stand close, touch, and avoid
eye contact, whereas White Americans ascribe to greater physical distance between
individuals, avoid touching, and maintain eye contact. Kinesics are bodily
movements such as facial expressions, gestures, posture, and eye contact. Different
cultures have different meanings attached to these bodily movements and
expressions. Paralanguage refers to vocal cues that are used to communicate, such
as volume and intensity of speech and turn taking. For example, in some cultures,
speaking loudly may not indicate anger, hostility, or poor self-control and speaking
softly may not be a sign of weakness, lack of con1dence, shyness, or depression.
Highlow context communication refers to an individuals primary communication
style. For example, high-context communicators rely on nonverbal cues and
behaviors, whereas low-context communicators rely on the verbal part of the

interaction or the spoken word. Kinesthetic refers to touching. Touching in some

cultures indicates a very personal and intimate gesture, whereas in other cultures
extensive touching is commonplace and expected.
Client Distrust and Fears
When counseling ethnically and culturally diverse clients, counselors might
encounter clients whose past experiences with oppression will hinder the
development of a trusting relationship. It is not uncommon for clients of marginalized
and historically oppressed groups to approach counseling with feelings associated
with past experiences of discrimination and oppression. These clients might come to
counseling with a great deal of healthy suspicion and distrust based on racial and
cultural biases in the larger society. This unconscious process of bringing past
conicts into counseling is called transference. For example, an African American
client may have dif1culty trusting a White counselor because of African Americans
history of oppression in the United States. Understanding sociopolitical events and
forces in the larger society is critical for counselors of culturally diverse clients.
Counselor countertransference can also create a barrier to effective crosscultural counseling. Counselor countertransference is de1ned as those responses to
the client that are based on the counselors past signicant relationships and
experiences with persons in the clients cultural group. For example, a heterosexual
male counselor may respond angrily to a homosexual male client based on the
counselors disappointment and anger with his homosexual brother. Effective crosscultural counselors must then recognize transference and countertransference, as
both are important to understanding the feelings, behaviors, and attitudes in the
cross-cultural counseling relationship.
Many persons from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds have little or
no prior understanding of counseling. Therefore, when they do come to counseling,
they may be distrustful of the process. Fear of being labeled crazy, fear of
deportation, and fear of disclosing family issues and secrets may all be
experienced by culturally and ethnically different clients. Because of distrust and
fears regarding the counseling process, counselors may experience clients who
make an appointment but do not show for the 1rst appointment or come to their 1rst
appointment and never return. For instance, a doctor has referred a Latina client with

very little English pro1ciency to counseling. Without any prior information about the
nature of counseling, the client is frightened by the paperwork and extensive intake
procedures at the counseling agency, and she does not return for her next
counseling appointment.

Racial Identity Development

Racial identity has been identi1ed as an important concept when examining
cross-cultural relationship development. Racial identity theory refers to an
individuals racial self-conception as well as his or her beliefs, attitudes, and values
relative to other racial groups. Racial identity development is a maturational process
in which an individual uses more complex cognitive-affective ego statuses to
perceive of herself or himself as a racial being. It is also assumed that the individual
is also developing racial meanings about members of his or her own af1liated and
reference racial groups. There is a relationship between racial identity and the quality
of the client-counselor relationship. In particular, a difference in the counselors and
the clients racial identities might become a barrier to effective cross-cultural
counseling. It is even possible that the psychological meaning that individuals
attribute to their race and racial group af1liation can determine how a client and
counselor will interact with each other. For instance, an African American counselor
who harbors anger and self-hatred about her racial group may transmit her anger
and frustration in counseling sessions with an African American adolescent who is
immersed and exploring racial meaning. The adolescent terminates counseling after
one session because she states that she cant relate to the counselors views on
Black people. Clients and counselors of the same cultural group may experience
tension or lack of rapport as a result of differing levels of racial identity development.

Lack of Multicultural Counseling Training

There is extensive literature suggesting that traditional and culturally
insensitive counselor training leads to ineffective cross-cultural counseling. As such,
one barrier to effective cross-cultural counseling is the lack of multicultural
counseling training among counseling professionals. Despite the fact that many
counselor training programs have revised their curricula to include issues pertaining
to race, culture, and ethnicity, there are still counselors who have not received
adequate multicultural counseling training to effectively counsel clients of culturally
different backgrounds.
References:
1. Baruth, L., & Manning, M. L. (2006). Multicultural counseling and psychotherapy:
A lifespan perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2. Ponterotto, J. G., Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A., & Alexander, C. M. (2001).
Handbook of multicultural counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
3. Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (2008). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and
practice (5th ed.). New York: Wiley.