Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence 1
Mid-Course Reflection Assignment:
Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence
Alisa Starks-East
School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University
Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence 2
People who seek pastoral counseling, come for many different reasons. It is the
pastoral counselor’s task while attentively listening, to find out the counselee’s position
(Kollar, 2011), they have come inn. The pastoral counselor will see people from many
different cultures and walks of life. Due to this fact, a pastoral counselor must have the
awareness, knowledge and skills to provide a multicultural counseling approach through
the client’s worldview, and not a biased personal view of their own cultural values. (Sue,
et al., 2019). Even if the pastoral counselor has the competencies to counsel from a
multicultural standpoint, there are still barriers that sometimes, get in the way of
effective counseling occurring.
When counseling culturally diverse clients, counselors will often encounter many
obstacles or barriers. These barriers can stem from the counselor’s lack of cultural
knowledge to language differences between the counselor and client. Barriers to cross-
cultural counseling can negatively influence the counseling relationship as well as the
outcome to counseling. (OCP, 2020).
A lack of cultural self-awareness is a major barrier. All therapist and counselors,
regardless of race, culture, gender, and sexual orientation, need to (a) become aware of
their own worldviews and their biases, values, and assumptions about human behavior.
Counselors must move from being culturally unaware to being aware and sensitive to
their own cultural heritage and to valuing and respecting differences. Counselors who
are aware of their own values and biases will know how they may affect diverse clients.
(Sue, et al., 2019).
Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence 3
A counselor’s lack of cultural knowledge can serve as a barrier to effective cross-
cultural counseling. Counselors must understand the worldview of their culturally
diverse clients. A counselor must be knowledgeable and informed on a number of
culturally diverse groups, especially groups with whom the therapist works. They must
also be knowledgeable about the sociopolitical system’s operation in the United States
with respect to its treatment of marginalized groups in society. (Sue, et al., 2019). It is of
great importance the counselor has this cultural knowledge. This includes the
counselor’s understanding and knowledge that both counselors and clients bring to
counseling a set of cultural norms that have been reinforced for long periods of time.
These norms influence the way in which the counselor and client perceive their world,
each other, and their approach to counseling. When counselors lack knowledge of
varying cultural groups, they will often rely on stereotypes to better understand clients
from different cultural backgrounds. (Psychology, 2021)
Language maybe a barrier in cultural counseling. Language difference in
counseling can lead to miscommunication, misdiagnosis, and misinterpretations. A lack
of language or communication skills often emerges as a major stressor for clients who
are bilingual, immigrant, or both. Because of language barriers, many immigrants will
avoid counseling services for fear 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. (Psychology, 2021). A
counselor must be able to generate a wide variety of verbal and nonverbal helping
Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence 4
responses. Being able to communicate means sending and receiving both verbal and
nonverbal messages accurately and appropriately. (Sue, et al., 2019)
Counselors must be prepared to face client distrust and fear when counseling
ethnically and culturally diverse clients. Marginalized group members are not immune
from having biases and prejudices toward majority group members and one another.
Because all oppression is damaging and serves to separate rather than unify, playing the
“who’s more oppressed?” game is destructive to group unity and counterproductive to
combating racism. In order to improve interracial and interethnic counseling
relationships, we must face the fact that there is also much misunderstanding and bias
among and between groups of color. (Sue, et al., 2019).
Lastly, culturally competent helping professionals must develop culturally
appropriate intervention strategies in working with culturally diverse clients. The lack of
multicultural counseling training will be a barrier to effective counseling. The counselor
must be able to exercise institutional intervention skills on behalf of clients, when
appropriate. They must also be able to anticipate the impact of one’s helping styles and
of their limitations on culturally diverse clients. When working with multicultural
groups the counselor must be sensitive and humble. A counselor having these two
characteristics will strengthen the therapeutic alliance. (Sue, et al., 2019)
The world has always been a diverse place. It is only now, in all professions that
we have become more culturally aware of its multicultural diverseness because of the
barriers we face when interacting with other marginalized groups than our own. Jobs
have sent employees to diversity and sensitivity training for years, as more conflicts
Barriers of Multicultural Sensitivity and Competence 5
arose on the job. The counseling profession is no different. It is ever so more of
importance that we are aware, knowledgeable and have the skills to help our
multiculturally diverse clients and not let any barriers get in the way of being the “hope
givers,” we were called and chosen to be.
Reference
2U, Inc. (2020, April 5). 10 Multicultural Factors to Consider in Counseling.
Multicultural Counseling and the RESPECTFUL Model.
https://onlinecounselingprograms.com
Barriers to Cross-Cultural Counseling. (2021). Psychology: IResearchnet.com
Sue, D.W., Sue, D., Neville, H., Smith. L. (2019). Counseling the Culturally Diverse:
Theoryand Practice. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
