Cross-Cultural Counseling
Case Study - Japheth felt that with interpersonal skills he acquired at the university, he could easily counsel with the people in his government office. However, as the weeks rolled into months, he became embroiled in a controversial relationship with one of the girls in the office. Even though Japeth was well intentioned, the girl mistook his efforts to counsel her about spiritual matters as a sexual advance. It troubled Japeth that he could not seem to off advise in this strange cultural environment without causing offense. Japeth wondered why his advise was misinterpreted. He believed that through Christ he had unique freedoms from certain human regulations. Japeth was not used to meeting with such rejection. It seemed that nearly everyone in his urban office looked at him with suspicion. Finally, Japeth concluded that his office colleagues were prejudiced against his own Gbagyi cultural background.
Even though God has created us all in His image, we are born and raised in a variety of cultures. It is within these cultural environs that social values and reactions are shaped. We all experience a conditioning of our approaches to people and problems. Despite peoples’ unique cultural background they are still more alike through their Creator than different because of their cultural influences. It is for this primary reason that we first of all want to learn a few counseling universal guidelines. After we are equipped through our knowledge, beliefs, and skills in counseling then we are ready to approach the intricacies of counseling over the complex bridges of culture.
First of all, each culture gives us unique insights into how people view life. Culture has a way of affecting what is important to us; what forces seem most powerful; how we learn to react to people; how we view our self worth; how we view the supernatural world; how we determine our priority values; and even how we approach God and the greater questions of eternity. Therefore, a cross-cultural counselor needs to understand others’ world views. Each person’s perspectives is made of their basic outlooks of their reality (Basic allegiances), truths, experiences, values, beliefs, emotions, and acceptable and non-acceptable behavior. Each culture contains its unique set of socialized norms that are kept to consciously and unconsciously. Through these norms of belief, knowledge, and behavior people are deemed acceptable or unacceptable. When a person wants to counsel another, one should learn how to approach people through the normal gates of that individual’s cultural emotions, behaviors, beliefs, values, truths, and realities. Otherwise, the counseling will lack a contextualized edge of effectiveness.
Various rites of passages are included in each cultural hierarchy to show a gradation of maturity in terms of each culture. When a boy is ready, for example, to assume manhood, many cultures expect him to take a wife, start a family, and assume full responsibilities as a household head. Furthermore, a good cross-cultural counselor will understand what gives people their primary meaning, security, goals, and sense of balance. Through relationships with people from other cultures, counselors should try to build bridges of understanding and trust. By comparing and contrasting these factors with those of our own cultural backgrounds we are given clarity into how to counsel to those with distant or similar cultural backgrounds. For example, when I first came to Nigeria thirteen years ago, I learned the importance of going through mediators in counseling. This seemed like an invasion of one’s right to privacy at first, but most Africans implicitly trust the role of the mediator as one intercedes, clarifies, and serves as an advocate for another’s problems. This has helped to bridge many gaps of understanding in working through difficult cross-cultural counseling problems through my years at the seminary.
Recent anthropological studies have emphasized four different types of cultures - Western guilt related culture which puts emphasis on one’s individual responsibility to God. The second type is the animistic fear culture which points out the importance of subscribing to as many supernatural powers for protection. In this cultural perspective, people are often afraid of retribution from the ancestors, spirits, or outside forces. Thirdly, the tribal shame culture which urges individuals to give respect to elders less they find themselves rejected, shamed, and disgraced by fellow villagers. Fourthly, the synthesis of the three emphasis - guilt, shame, and fear which is displayed for example in African who have acculturated to urban life and western education. (Kasdorf, Christian Conversion in Context, p. 113)
Some psychologists see cross-cultural counseling more in terms of where the responsibility and control centers lie. Derald W. Sue make the distinctions in four categories:
1. Internal control & Internal responsibility - He sees this person as a more western oriented individualist. This person controls his decisions and who is responsible for his actions. When counseling with this person, one should aim to show him how he can control his actions, attitudes, and beliefs through the power of the Holy Spirit as directed by the scriptures. Intense private counseling with this person should emphasize one’s individual responsibilities and decision-making controls.
2. Internal Control & External Responsibility - This person sees himself in control of his decisions, but is responsible to one’s society, family, or an organization. This individual feels a deep responsibility to the people of his original family and tribe. Often this is true for governmental workers who like the freedom of designing their programs, but allow the government to supply the resources to carry out projects to their conclusions. Somehow this person needs to find a better balance between his internal control and in his related internal responsibilities. Through reliance on others for his answers and resources, he may become resigned to blaming his problems on the society, family, or the organization that one is associated with.
3. External Control & Internal Responsibility - This person believes that his society, culture, organization, of family is controlling his major decisions, but he is still responsible for his own well-being. This person has a great interest in relieving oneself from the oppression of external controls. Many of the youth are in this category throughout Africa. They are struggling to see change but are often frustrated with their inability to control the flow of power, authority, and resources. This person needs to see that how to balance the internal controls of one’s life and the controlling ministry of the Holy Spirit.
4. External Control & External Responsibility - This person grows up in a culture where feels controlled externally, but also resigned to look to others for his care, provisions, and answers. He believes that there is little that an individual can do without the consent of the group and the higher authorities. This group minded person is often best counseled in groups with others who have a significant say in his control and responsibilities. However, he needs to see how we are all individually responsible and able to control our lives through the discovering of the will of God in all matters of life.
Another helpful grid in understanding how to counsel across cultures comes to us from David Hesselgrave, a long time reputed scholar of missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield Illinois. He makes the distinction between a collectivistic-dependency cultural background versus as individualistic-independence cultural perspective. Here is a brief adaptation of his chart from Cross-Cultural Counseling, p.214,215:
Most people you will counsel with will resemble certain characteristics of the above four classifications, but some will not. The exceptional cases will probably include various combinations of the collectivistic-dependency cultures and the individualistic-independence cultures. For example some married couples may struggle in their relationships over differences in values. The wife may come from a more intuitional individualistic-independent cultural background where the husband may assume a traditional perspective. These two individuals need to be schooled in conflict resolution techniques so that they can learn how to appreciate one another’s perspective through consensus decision-making. Gradually, as the marriage develops the man and the woman will tend to become closer together in their perspectives towards goals, examples to follow, and certain errors to avoid in raising children. Through love, understanding, and patience we can see this couple become one in the essential areas of life and thinking.
Children who have come out of multiple cultural backgrounds, experiences, or environment have both advantages and disadvantages that they must deal with in counseling. For example, a child whose mother comes from an objective father and a peer group mother will have had the advantage of living in a collectivistic and individualistic home. If the child grows up in a village school setting, he will have the benefits of being exposed to the traditional system of values. If he then moves to the university he may well encounter several professors or colleagues that imbibe the intuitional individualistic cultural perspective. For some young people this may proved to be a real asset, but others it may tend to confuse. I had a friend who resembled this pilgrimage through various cultural mazes and continues to struggle with his self-image up to this day. He cannot seem to find who he really is in Christ. His cultural backgrounds has affectively given him a psychophrenic personality and cultural identity. Without the navigating mooring of balanced Christian counselors, many people are in danger of misunderstanding their self-identity.
Wise counselors will analyze the backgrounds of their counselees to know which cultural background and perspective they are coming from. When the counselee is firmly from the objective individualistic cultural background, for instance, it is often best to present the scriptures as direct commands for right actions, thinking, and beliefs. This individual often responds favorably to objective truth as his conscience is sensitive to guilt. A guilt- sensitive person obeys for the sake of inner peace. Clear cut instructions should be given to this person who finds that obedience often leads to untold benefits. The counselor would be advised to present himself as a prophet, a teacher, and as dispenser of God’s laws to the guilt sensitive individual. Through homework assignments the counselor can help the counselee develop his own knowledge of the objective truths from the scriptures that apply to his situation. When the counselor shows the counselee how to counsel others using the same objective truth, a cautionary word must be noted. The objective counselee generally assumes that most people respond to objective truth as he does. He must be shown how to assess other people’s cultural perspective before trying to apply the same approach to truth as he finds acceptable. Knowledge of the truth and the best processes for communicating ideals is the key to effective counseling!
To explore the counselees’ background may sometimes not be enough. Counselors also need to look into the root causes of various problems as they are colored by the cultural experiences of the counselee. For example, in Nigeria, if a man is suffering from hyper-tension and high blood pressure, we need to look at the physical, emotional, cultural, religious, mental, social, and spiritual causes integratively. Since, the man may be suffering from acute anxiety, he may have intense fear that his ancestors are punishing him for known or unknown acts of disrespect or negligence. He may say to himself, "Part of the reason that I am suffering financially and failing to succeed with my farming is that the ancestors are hindering the growth of my maize plants. I need to make several chicken and goat sacrifices to the local diviner in order to appease the ancestral anger against me." Studies have shown that traditional healers and doctors throughout Africa affect their patience with more holistic approaches to medicine than trained medical doctors. Counselors need to see the value and the wisdom in approaching counselees problems from a holistic perspective. This will include integrating the physical, spiritual, emotional, social, with the cultural considerations of the person’s problems.
It is for many of the above factors that counselors need to train lay people in how to effectively counsel their friends and family members. Throughout my years under Professor Norman Wright as Talbot Seminary in Los Angeles, California, he always reminded us that the best counselors were someone’s best friend. Friends provide support, encouragement, and the vital ingredient called rapport. Rapport is a word that implies trust and an ear to hear the nuances of what another is saying. When a counselor has a rapport with another they implicitly and explicitly hear both the connotative and denotative meanings behind what their counselees is saying. A friend who has established rapport with a counselor is a person who can communicate effectively through the many filters of language, culture, experiences, personality, education, and spiritual maturity. Naturally, the Holy Spirit is best at communicating to one’s soul and spirit, but friends are the often the best catalysts for that deeper spiritual communication and healing process to occur. Provide training in friendship counseling to aid in the healing, reconciling, and growth processes for your congregations, families, and associates.
Different cultures experience different kinds and degrees of stress. The more collectivistic-dependent one’s cultural background, the more pressure tends to affect one. The more individualistic-independent one’s culture and customs are the more stress comes internally. This is one of reason why some cultures experience more tension through social relations while others experience more individual depressions. One study suggests that only when counselors are able to recognize the social-cultural forces on counselees they will have a diagnostic key to unlocking the doors of most mental and emotional problems of people. For example, I just talked to a visiting Pastor from a Lutheran church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has pastored his church for 14 years and has only had his neighbors in his house six times over that period. He has a hard time organizing home Bible studies, because of the importance placed on family and individual privacy. He was not even aware of Professor Harvie Conn from Westminster Seminary, two miles away from his home who could offer him advise on urban church growth. However, in Nigeria, within the course of one hour, it is common for six different neighbors and friends to visit one’s home. A Nigerian Pastor would not only be aware of the people who are familiar with urban church planting in his denomination, but also in many others. While, the Lutheran Pastor reports a high degree of depression and mental loneliness in his congregation, he does not sense a lot of community hostility and antipathy. His people are usually content to deal with their own business and family problems. However, in the Nigeria scenario, a Pastor may sense little depression or loneliness in his congregation, but he may see great hostility and bitterness between tribes and social groups. He may also be free to interact with men and their ideas from a number of sources. His world revolves around open relationships. One man’s meat may appear to be another’s poison. One’s approach to counseling depends on one’s cultural perspectives and environment.
The degree of change is also an important consideration in cross-cultural counseling. A counselor should be able to integrate the process of change into his cross-cultural communications. For instance, a counselor who is working with someone who making the transition from the rural to the urban environment or visa versa is faced with a series of difficult adaptations of values, world views, and experiences. He should basically follow something similar to the prescribe formula for effecting positive changes:
HOW TO USE THE SIX STEPS OF INNOVATION
RELATIONSHIPS, DIAGNOSIS, ACQUIRE RESOURCES,
SOLUTIONS, ACCEPTANCE, STABILITY (R.D.A.S.A.S)
1. Build a relationship with those you are trying to help
a. Relate to the leaders, the influencers, the catalysts, opinion leaders, authorities, the gatekeepers (those people who control the flow of ideas, people, and information) insiders, outsiders, innovators, early adapters, as well as the key solution givers inside the group.
b. Identify with the people by proving your that your major motivations are to help, love, assist, support and not to destroy. Provide involvement throughout the change
c. Build trust with the people by asking them their perceptions of the situation before sharing your own. Learn the language, beliefs, and norms of the people.
d. Use mediators to help establish bridges of trust, communication, and truth.
e. Provide adequate rewards (Both of the carrot and stick variety)
f. Practice openness, reciprocity, oneness of purpose, power sharing, proper organization, expectations of results, and minimum threats in the change process
2. Diagnosis the pains, problems, and opportunities in change
a. Diagnosis is a systematic attempt to understand a present situation including the symptoms, the root causes, the history, the proponents, opponents, cultural factors, theological, personality, subjective, and objective factors.
b. Learn how to skillfully ask information, analytical, descriptive, evaluative, applicational, enabling, reflective, confrontational, Biblical, cultural, empathetic, and historical questions
c. Identify the problems, opportunities, key opponents or proponents, prejudices, fire fighting attempts, advantages, disadvantages, causes, effects, solutions, historical attempts to change, implications of change, routes of change, capacities for change, possible interpretations of the change, obstacles for effective diagnosis, present systems for change, contextual factors, goals for change, or potential positive & negative rewards.
3. Acquire Relevant, Appropriate, & Contextual Resources
a. Resources can appear in the form of people, ideas, materials, programs, time, money, land, media, public relations, positions, or products.
b. Acquire resources for the following purposes:
1). To gain better insights into the change process, the people you are trying to assist, and the problems revolving around the innovation
2). Build awareness of the range of possibilities available. This may mean that you search the library, consult key leaders, or conduct field research
3). Evaluate intelligently the validity, urgency, credibility, legitimacy, needfulness, reliability, appropriateness, and potential effectiveness of the change
4). Help in assessing the potential success of a change based on experimentation, a sample, a model, or a demonstration of the change
5). Provide proof of how the innovation will assist people in solving their own problems and meeting some of their own perceived, felt, real, or Biblical needs
6). Assistance in showing how to install, implement, and perpetuate change
7). Measuring the long term costs, maintenance, and benefits of change
c. Use local mediators as informants of all the possible available resources
d. Consult experts in various facets of the change (Administrators, mechanics, teachers, builders, pastors, public relations men, women, or workers)
e. Conduct group interviews with the people listening for what is said as well as what is not said
f. Make observations, interpretations, and correlations of the innovation in other contexts by comparing and contrasting the best means of change
g. Use networks of meetings, visits, solicitations, research, media services, literature searches, phone calls, letter writing, file searching, and advertising to gain as much information about the available resources as possible
4. Choose the Solutions
a. Pick your solution after you have drawn the implications from your diagnosis, generated a range of possible solutions, weighed the advantages and disadvantages of all the solutions, consulted and involved the key people in the change process, conducted preliminary feasibility or workability tests, diffusability, contextualization, and adjust your solutions to fit the context, culture, timing, capacities, and people involved
b. Ask key leaders in the innovation to summarize the costs, benefits, and potential difficulties in the potential change
c. Solicit the support of authorities who will back you if something begins to stymie the process of change otherwise the change agent may be blamed
d. Anticipate some of the hindrances, hazards, costs, complaints, difficulties, and negative effects of the change. Prepare contingency plans to overcome each
5. Gain Acceptance for the Innovation
a. Seek the public and private support of key local, state, federal, and international leaders, organizations, and groups who can serve as advocates, buffers, and implementors of the change. Remember that Christ was the most misunderstood person in history
b. Try to get your change written down in a policy format for permanence
c. Build in a degree of flexibility into the change for adaptations
d. Spotlight model programs that are successful in the innovations
e. Promote the benefits, rewards, and positive effects of the change
6. Stabilize the Innovation & Promote Self-Renewal & Recycling of the Process
a. Insure the people of continual support, assistance, and self-generating benefits from the change
b. Set up systems of habit formation. Habits, both good and bad ones, are formed by repeated practice, once they are formed they are hard to break
c. Provide for some kind of continual assessment, evaluation, and feedback
d. Build in systems of maintenance, support, adaption, and renewal
e. Promote a positive attitude toward the innovation on the inside & outside of your organization
f. Learn how to gracefully, culturally, respectfully, and effectively disengage without causing a disruption of the successful innovations
g. Wisely delegate the tasks of innovation to faithful, reliable, and men of character who can teach others the best processes of progressive changes
h. Pray for God’s continual enablement, guidance, protection, and effectiveness in your efforts to contribute the qualitative and quantitative growth of His Kingdom! Matthew 6:33 says, "But, seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you!"
For example, if someone is suffering from problems related to his financee’s family disagreement over a bride price, he should learn to integrate the steps of change through his knowledge of their cultural viewpoints. Whereas another family may see the bride price as something that affords them financial advantage, an effective cross-cultural change agent can help navigate his way through the process of relationship, diagnosis, acquiring relevant resources, choosing solutions together, gaining acceptance, and bringing stability for the change. The problems must always be understood within each context in order to effect the longest lasting changes. Learn to include and integrate the essentials of scripture and culture from the non-essentials.
Ideas for the above came from Ron Havelock’s The Change Agent’s Guide to Innovation in Education, Ed. Tech. Publications, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 82
