Personal Filters and Family Counseling - Research Paper Example

?Personal Filters and Family Counseling Personally for me, family is people among whom I feel at home. There is no questioning the role of family in the well-being of an individual. But the personal definition given above is too broad to be useful in the given context. Gordon and Browne (2010) have said that “two people can be defined as a family (p.269). But they (Gordon and Browne, 2010) have also added that, “so can those that include, half- and step-siblings, close friends and gays and lesbians” (p.269). But usually majority of people have a heterosexual, husband-wife-and child/ren family image in their minds. This is because of our history and culture that have always given prominence to such a family structure and also because “televisions, movies, magazines, greeting cards, literature, theatre, and children’s games all reflect heterosexual family images (Slater and Mencher, 1991, p.373). Over the last fifty years or so, it can be seen that the definition of family has been drastically changed. The nuclear family that comprise of “a father, mother, and two children, has become blended, mixed and extended”, as Gordon and Browne (2010) have pointed out (p.269). Zallo (2006) has defined a traditionl family as “made up of everal generations with many children” (p.69). A modern family on the other hand is “where the number of children has reduced and relationships are based on freely exercised relationships” (Zallo, 2006, p.69). Traditional families are patriarchal, have many children, in which women work do not work outside the family, where the gender-assumed position of the woman is well-defined, and where the family is the basic financial unit (Zallo, 2006, p.69). On the other hand, a modern family is more “democratic”, it has only very few children, its women work outside their homes, in which the gender roles of men and women are not fixed with rigidity, and where family is considered as the basic “unit of consumption” (Zallo, 2006, p.69). Whatever the definition and the structural changes that have happened in a family, it is a place where its “members develop preferred, predictable patterns for interacting and defining their relationships to one another” (Wilcoxon, 1985, p.495). That is to say that it is the family in which a person’s identity is molded in relation with other human beings and this will be the model for applying in the wider society. According to Barnhill (as cited in Wilcoxon, 1985) the eight dimensions of a healthy family are, individuation, mutuality, flexibility, stability, clear perceptions, clear communications, role reciprocity, and distinct generational boundaries (p.496). Going back to the definitions given above, it is the modern family that stands closer to an ideal healthy family. It has been observed that “a counselor’s awareness of healthy family characteristics could be quite valuable in providing assurance that healthy family processes are not completely eroded, but rather are undergoing adjustment and change” (Wilcoxon, 1985, p.498). Another aspect of family counseling is also that it has take into account the numerous personal filters that the counselor have, which may impact the outcome of the counseling (LaBay, 2004, p.62). Personal filters are a system developed by our brain that “selects only necessary or desired information to reach the conscious mind” (LaBay, 2004, p.62). This definition shows how double-edged the personal filters can be. They can either help you by picking only the “necessary” information or deceive you by picking only the “desired” information (LaBay, 2004, p.62). It is in this backdrop that a counselor has to be deeply aware of his/her own personal filters. My family has been a hetero-sexual family until my parents divorced. Being brought up by a single mother and living with her two close friends who were just like family members was a transition for me from a traditional family to a modern one and this experience taught be the meaning and beauty of modern family. But I have some personal filters which could become obstacles in my working with families, as a counselor. For example, I have a personal filter that murmurs deep inside my mind that there is something wrong with a lesbian couple or a gay couple. In dealing with such families, I think neither the traditional family theories nor this specific personal filter of mine would be helpful. But being aware of this personal filter, I can avoid it creating a bias in my viewpoints and approaches towards a lesbian or gay couple. This involves acknowledging to me myself that it is natural for homosexual couples to have children, it is normal for them to have them playing out all other normal traditional family rituals between them. As Slater and Mencher (1991) have pointed out, I will have to accept a family life cycle that is full of diversity (p.374). And I try to realize that a homosexual couple would have to look forward to a totally different kind of family life cycle, which can also deviate from the traditional child-centered family life cycle (Slater and Mencher, 1991, p.379). Another personal filter that I have found in me is a belief that there is no interpersonal issue that I cannot understand. This has come partially out of my vast and diverse experiences of different family situations within my family, in my friends’ families and in the families of the clients who come to me. This personal filter might lead me to arrive at preconceived conclusions regarding what a particular client’s problem is, even before he/she has told me everything that they have to tell. But this personal filter has a positive aspect as well. It will give me confidence in attending to complex family issues. To prevent this filter from becoming an obstacle in my counseling practice, before starting each counseling session, I tell myself to keep an open unbiased mind, and I try not to start comparing the case of a client with what I have seen before, until a general picture emerges from his/her own words. The trickiest personal filter I have is a tendency to always tell myself not to be carried away by a wave of empathy, and instead express sympathy and keep my head straight, in every counseling session. This might have developed in me through my years’ effort to reshape my identity of being a very emotionally sensitive child. This personal filter has helped me to give my clients moral support and strength when they need it because I have experienced the sense of weakness that one feels when one break into uncontrollable tears even as trying hard to resist them. But this personal filter has also led me in some instances into assuming a detached position, when the client needs some emotional support. It has sometimes led me to making a mistake in judging the need of the clients. One gesture of personal empathy, one touch in such instances could have given the client immense relief but I did not do that sometimes because of this personal filter that goes on telling me don’t give way to emotions. To tackle this personal filter, I have developed a practice of making a decision after the firt session with a client, on whether to be emotionally free or restricted with this client. This decision would be taken based on my understanding of the emotional needs of this particular client. Personal filters are so important to a therapy session that “without a conscious collaborative effort to look at what personal filters may be at play in the therapeutic” relationship between the counselor and the client, success in counseling is not at all possible (Gutman, 2002, p.124). While working with couples and families, in this period of revolutionary transformations in the concepts on family, a counselor has to redefine his/her own personal filters and even reshape them. References Gutman, V. (2002) Ethics in mental health and deafness, Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. LaBay, M.L. (2004) Past life regression: a guide for practitioners, Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing. Slater, S. and Mencher, J. (1991) The lesbian family life cycle: a contextual approach, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol.61, No.3, pp.372-382. Wilcoxon, S.A. (1985) Healthy family functioning: the other side of family pathology, Journal of Counseling and Development, Vol.63, pp.495-499. Zallo, R. (2006) Basques, today: culture, history and society in the age of diversity and knowledge, Guipuzcoa: Alberdania. Read More