I remember before starting the Psychosexual and\nRelationship Diploma and during the first lecture I questioned whether I was\ndoing the right thing, and if coming from a different cultural and religious background\nwould affect me fitting in with the rest of my colleagues or affect my\nframework. Graduallythis fear has diminished and I started feel more\ncomfortable on the course. Being in a diverse group particularly and seeing\nthat there are lecturers from different ethnic and\ncultural backgrounds helped to build up\nmy confidence and feel at ease. Also this diversity in the group, and my coming from a different\nbackground made me conscious about the importance of learning about others\ncultures, faiths and groups and the input it has\nin the psychosexualand relationship work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the first day, as we were discussing cultural diversity, I was\nconfused and questioning whether being from a different background and\ndifferent religion would affect my development in this new career or if other\npeople would judge me. I remember when my tutor asked who of us are not part of\nthe Church of England, and no-one raised their hands, I was apprehensive about\nraising mine and saying I’m Muslim. I was thinking if I am the only one here\nfrom different religion? I was hoping to see diversity and not assuming that I\nam the only odd one in this group, I gathered my strength and raised my hand,\nand I asked my tutor if he means from different religion and after he clarified\nthis I said “yes I am from different religion, I am Muslim”, he was\nso kind and though I cannot remember his exact words, he was very professional.\nSurprisingly, after I said that I am from a different religion, most of the\nclass started to raise their hand and they talked about their religions or those with no faith, so I was not the only\ndifferent one, we were a big diverse group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Talking about\ncultural diversity made me realize how important is to learn about differences\nin various cultures. Prior to me embarking upon this course, my perception was\nwholly different culturally to how I see things now. I am fully aware that it\nis of the utmost importance to embrace the multitude of cultures in relation to\npsychosexual therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it is vitally important to be aware of cultural differences\nin psychosexual therapy especially that we are currently living in a multicultural\nsociety that exists within the United Kingdom, we psychosexual therapists cannot\nafford to make assumptions about the social and sexual development of our\nclients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need to be aware\nof social, racial and ethnic factors, religion, and personal values in order to\nbe fully prepared to understand and support any\nclient group, also we need to understand that there is no ‘normality’ in psychosexual\ntherapy, Soans & Stevenson (2003) defined normality as ‘state of being\nusual, typical or expected’, with the diverse culture we are living in at\npresent there is nothing usual, typical or expected and we psychosexual\ntherapists need to think of normality as a fluid concept open to change as\nwe always face new excited cases,\ndifferent people with interesting stories that take us far away from\n\u2018normality\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is important to\nlook at cultural factors and their influence on our clients, and the way they\nseek help or they present a problem, these cultural factors should not be seen\nas an obstacle in the way of therapy for a client from different culture, I can use myself and my work as an example\nhere, coming from different culture and background made me just aware of the\ndifferences people bring to therapy, ironically all my clients are mixed, from\ndifferent cultures, until now I don’t have a couple from the same cultural\nbackground as me, and I can say this differences only bring healthy and certainly \nrewarding challenges to therapy whether in their communications or their\nperception of an issue. De Silva (1999)\ndiscussed the importance of being knowledgeable, sensitive, flexible and\nresourceful in working with these clients, and take into consideration cultural\nfactors’obvious and not-so-obvious’, and make it part of the assessment as well\nas of the formulation in our work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To summarise: when working with clients from different cultures or if we are ourselves are from different culture, we need to be mindful that in spite of our different cultures, backgrounds and religions, these differences in fact will enable us brainstorm, enriched our relationship, and learn about each other\u2019s\u2019 cultures and traditions can bring us closer together. We have our differences but we arguably share more commonalities. We HUMAN share the same losses and we often have the same goals, which will allow us to support and understand each other. I always put in my mind that I have a crucial role in the process of therapy because if I can convey to the client that there is no need to be worried or embarrassed, they will hopefully be liberated from hesitations or restrictions as they had to talk about this important and sensitive aspect of their life and relieved from the taboo of talking openly about any intimate part of their life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\nNariman Al-Aloosi\n<\/br>\nLDPRT graduate\n<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Padmal De Silva (1999) Culture and sex therapy, Sexual and Marital Therapy, 14:2, 105-107, DOI: 10.1080\/02674659908405396 I remember before starting the Psychosexual and Relationship Diploma and during the first lecture I questioned whether I was doing the right thing, and if coming from a different cultural and religious background would affect me fitting in with the rest of my colleagues or affect my framework. Graduallythis fear has diminished and I started … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Soans, C. & Stevenson, A. (2003). Oxford dictionary of English, Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"