Wellington Rd 14 copy

The speaker discusses the challenges of dealing with super conservative politics, particularly Christian nationalism, in their counseling practice. They express personal concerns about how to navigate differing beliefs with clients while maintaining ethical and clinical competence. The speaker emphasizes the importance of client welfare, integrating religion/spirituality, and seeking out expert guidance to improve their skills in handling such situations. They acknowledge the need for self-awareness, curiosity, empathy, and separating ideology from the person to effectively help clients while upholding personal values. The speaker recognizes the ongoing nature of this learning process and the value of seeking support and mentorship in their journey. bullet points. The thing that still challenges me is super conservative politics, especially if it's Christian nationalism. The context is, besides being the way that our country works in 2025 and the way that we got here, the other part of it would be my own personal context. I just have a lot of people I care about who are targeted by that kind of conservatism. It's not just a – it's not like a cut-and-dry moral or ethical reaction. Then it's also seeped in this like, mama bear, how dare you? Those are my people. That really kind of makes it so much worse. It just really amplifies it, I think. The ethical implications of it are, you know, client welfare comes first. We have research that tells us that being open and integrating or adapting to client religion or spirituality when applicable or when requested can have a really good effect on the therapeutic relationship and a really good effect on client outcomes and treatment outcomes. Not only is it a matter of ethics because we don't want to discriminate. We want to be inclusive. It is cultural and cultural competence is competence, right? But we also have clinical competence at play here because we know that engaging on such topics and doing so well, doing it the right way, can be really productive. So doing the opposite of that, that's incompetent, unethical, right? Bad choice. Bad choice. Finding some more literature on the topic of this kind of conflict, this kind of maybe not conflict, maybe that's not the right word for it, but like this kind of difference between counselor and client and how it has been managed when it's come up because it's not just me, right? It's happened to people before. I really like watching the micro-training associates of those types of videos where we get to watch an expert practice. I think it could be really helpful to me to engage with some of that kind of content, seek out that kind of content and see how other people do it. Because right now when I imagine it, I'm picturing myself either completely shutting down while somebody is trying to seek help or just micro-addressing at somebody about their beliefs or maybe even as implicit as just allowing my biases around my politics, their politics, to color the way that I see them as a client, right? Like to damage or misconstrue case conceptualization because of feelings, because of my own feelings, because of counter-transference. Instead of seeing that, instead of imagining these worst case scenarios where I'm ruining people in the therapy room, we're watching some experts do it and getting some expert information that's like a little bit less, I mean, like obviously the code of ethics and the acerbic literature was really interesting to read too, like obviously those are very valuable. The MSJCC obviously is invaluable, but those are all very abstract and I think where I need to take it is going to be concrete because otherwise it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and scarier and scarier in my brain. I think in the future when this applies to field work, when I could be having these like actual experiences with actual clients, right? Supervision and consultation, seeking out help deliberately and sort of not being too proud to say this is something that I still struggle with. I think that while a strength of mine clearly is not, really I'm a little self-righteous, a little self-indulgent, but I do think a strength here is that I'm willing to be like this is something that I'm still bad at, this is something that I need to get better at, this is something I'm doing wrong. But what I need to do is actually like take positive steps to address it instead of sort of like spiraling and worrying about what it's going to look like, right? Another thing that I was thinking could be helpful is just generally being mindful, right? Like slowing down, working on reactivity, noticing what comes up and letting it be noticed, right? Accepting that it's happening instead of like running headlong in the other direction or denying it or letting it propel me into an emotional response. I mean, I don't, it's hard to imagine because I don't have any field work experience, but thinking about like really difficult conversations I've had with people I care about, like the interval conversations, difficult conversations, the thing that really comes in handy is if you can like notice and recognize what's coming up and acknowledge it and accept that it's there and not let it steal your brain and hijack the whole situation, right? I think that I need to also work on separating the ideology from the person. And my instinct is like to protect people who I think are, you know, being harmed by belief systems like this. And first of all, there's a, you know, there's tinges of white savior complex in there as it is. But second of all, that's really a barrier to be able to connect with the person I'm actually talking to, right? To empathize with them. And I think attending to this sort of like moral superiority here, right? Like on their end and by they, I mean like really socially conservative people on their end, they're doing, they're morally superior too, right? Like they're more evolved, like they're acting with better morality than I am, right? So like it's laughable because if we're both thinking the same thing, we're on completely opposite sides. Then what it's really about is like ego, not, you know, the opposite of cultural humility, basically. And I think, you know, I can dig as deeply as I want in trying to figure out like, am I, you know, categorizing people as unreachable or like not worth help or unsafe? Like, are they dangerous? I can examine that all at once, but thinking it to death isn't what's going to ultimately help me rise above this challenge, right? To grow past it. That's what my grandpa would call navel-gazing. I feel like if I just navel-gaze about it forever, how am I actually going to do the opposite of growing, right? Okay. So I'm looking over my notes to make sure that I've talked about most, some of the things I want to talk about and make sure that I've covered here. Okay. So reconciling social justice advocacy with clinical neutrality. So that's the tension, right? Like that's like, there's a moral tension for me personally there because I'm like, I want, not only am I like obligated, but I want to help a person who's in, you know, my office, right? Like I want to help a counseling client. I want to dismantle systems of oppression. What if what they believe in perpetuates those systems of oppression? Like where, like that's the ethical tension that I think will, that I need to attend to and work on indefinitely, but absolutely. So I think curiosity may be helpful here if it's not navel-gazing. Sort of asking myself like, what does this belief system, what, what, like, how does it serve them, right? Is there like a need that's being fulfilled? Is there like a fear or a stressor that they're coping with by adopting this belief system that I disagree with? Maybe, you know, that can take you from being judgmental to more empathetic because then it's, you know, Dr. Hunt said in our slide discussion, like everybody, everybody has feelings. Feelings, we all have feelings in common. It's the experiences that the feelings happen in that are the different parts, right? So if we can get to the feelings, if I can sort of find empathy and compassion and sort of respect the client's humanity and do that at the same time as, you know, I'm not endorsing it, I'm not agreeing with it, um, I'm still like holding my own personal standards true. It sounds hard, um, but I think developing, you know, like working on my ability to sort of like stay present and self-regulate and be curious when part of me wants to be really black and white about it because it's a, you know, it's triggering for me, right? Um, the awareness of that, I think, is a big step and then the getting help from experts, getting help from people who know what they're doing, getting, you know, modeling and mentorship and supervision, consultation, all of that, um, is going to be really essential, I think, especially, uh, at the beginning. Um, and I think, you know, it's just like any other multicultural competence, cultural humility, any kind of learning and unlearning that we need to do. It's not something that's not something that I can give an endpoint to, right? Like it's not a discrete process. It is something that I am going to do and redo and address and readdress and, um, I think it's, I think it's really valuable to be, to be given the opportunity to sort of pick that out now, um, and sort of have the opportunity to be self-aware and explore this in a, in a safe way that's not going to harm anybody. So, yeah, that's what I struggle with. That's what I'm still struggling with. Um, those are my thoughts on what I can do about it and I appreciate the opportunity to sort of just talk, just to talk it at, who knows who, Dr. Hunt and anyone else who's listening. I appreciate you listening to my thoughts on this. Um, yeah, and I thank you. I thank you for this opportunity. Bye.