Challenge personal issues, fears and prejudices

When talking about prejudices, I noticed how the culture shaped my understanding about the LGBTQ community. And I believe that might be one of my obstacles when I have a chance to work with helpee from this background. I was grown up in a society that mixed with Chinese & Western culture. But in areas related to marriage and sexual orientation, most of the people are heavily affected by Chinese culture. I think that’s because my hometown is a monoethnicity society and most of elder family member shared the same culture, thus it’s quite difficult for people to build another point of view about this topic. Generally speaking, Chinese culture encourage heterosexuality and people that prefer homosexuality are always belongs to minority.  Since the culture is not very friendly to homosexuality and homosexual are always stigmatize by the society, I can only hear comments about homosexuality from the mainstream social values and I rarely met people that are willing to admit they are homosexual. Because of the above culture influence, I’m not sure if I can ignore the prejudices completely if the helpee wish to talk about issue about their sexual orientation. I’m not saying I cannot demonstrate good listening skills or non-verbal communication, but I think the prejudice may affect how I assist helpee to achieve desired outcome based on his/her preferred way. In my point of view, it’s uneasy to change my underneath prejudice, but it’s good that I’m aware of this when I do this self-reflection, so that it won’t become unconscious bias. 

After talking about the prejudices that I obtain from the culture, I’d like to further discuss how it will affect me when having helping sessions. During last week’s triad, we are required to deal with a case regarding a gay helpee that faced family pressure, friends’ rejection and perllexed about the relationship with a charming male. When that’s my turn to act as a helper, I fully respect his freedom of choice about focusing on which aspects, and I worked with helpee to talk about rejection from his friend, which is his preference,  throughout the whole session. Although both helpee and observer mentioned that I handle the case very professionally, I noticed that I intended not to mention the sexual orientation topic unless helpee actively propose he wish to discuss about that area. When I rethink this, I think I’m afraid that I cannot remain neutral, thus I prefer to stand back from this area. It seems like I prevent myself to bring my own agenda to the helping session, which is a good thing. But in some sense, I might pass over the potential advantage of talking about why helpee think a male is his potential target. Considering the scenario did not provide too many information about this, that might be area worth further discussion. After this triad, I have more awareness about how my preference about sexual orientation may hinder myself to work with helpee that wish to talk about this. What I need to work on will be how to work on this area with helpee neutrality but still maintain my own preference about this topic. 

Work within personal limits of ability

We did a triad last week, trying to be a helper to help an asylum seeker that is under difficult situation. In that scenario, the helpee mentioned that he is going to end his life because he faced financial difficulty, uncertainty about his entitlement to stay in UK and lost of his partner. During that triad, both the classmates and myself noticed that my performance is quite different from my previous triad. In my point of view, that’s a rare case because I’ve never faced similar experience before. When I look back, I think the case provoked my memory of leaving my hometown and move to UK.  I noticed that the situation of the helpee triggered some of my emotions, thus I cannot apply skills learned. Instead, I shared and trapped under the same hopelessness and cannot provide appropriate assistance to the helpee.  I think that’s a really important discovery because I didn’t realized that the act of leaving my hometown still affect my emotion underneath. I thought I’ve already spent sufficient effort to deal with those emotions, but didn’t noticed that I still have a fear that I may not able to obtain settled status in UK. In a logical way of thinking, that case is very unlikely to happen, but it seems that’s a fear that I’m not aware during the last two years. I’m delighted to have this finding, so that I know that I have limits when working with helpees that are asylum seekers or still struggled to stay in UK legally, and it’d better to pass these cases to other helpers to handle, and I can then work on other cases. I’m not sure if this limit can be improved, I will review again once I obtain settled status a few years later. 

Apart from the self-discovery, last week’s triad was a great chance for me to re-think the importance of providing suitable referral to helpee in case he/she need wider support that other than the helper can provide. Although I’ve had some counselling training and can provide some emotional support, that doesn’t mean that I am the only source to offer all kinds of help. Take the scenario that mentioned in the above paragraph as example, the helpee faced issues related to financial situation, asylum application and potential conflicts between helpee and his partner. Since it’s a complicated situation and involved multiple factors, it’s beyond my ability to help solely. Given that the civil society in UK is very mature and the many support from the government is available, I think I need to understand my limit and learn how I can seek support from various sources if helpee’s case is complicated. For example, if the helpee need emergency good, food bank and local church probably can offer some help immediately. Moreover, if helpee need additional advise about how to appeal against the asylum decision, charity that can offer profession legal advise might be able to provide some help to the helpee. From this triad, I learned the importance to identify what kind of support is available in UK. Besides gaining more knowledge about counselling and psychology theories, I think one of the things that I need to work on in the future is to check how to do referral properly, so that it fulfils the ethical standard that helper should follow. Moreover, it’s also essential for me to learn how to propose referral in a wise way, so that the act will not bring negative feeling to helpee.