Tag Archives: Newcomers

Helping – Doing It For Them Or For Me? Part 1

Posted by: Guest on April 29, 2011 10:29 am
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In my work with non-mainstream clients, I’ve often thought that being an immigrant is a crucial advantage in counselling other immigrants and refugees. But it is not enough. Although once being an immigrant has helped me understand common issues brought by this population, I don’t believe it provides automatic credentials to help other newcomers.

As counselors we need to have knowledge of ourselves and important issues in our own biography, so we can not only use our strengths in session but also navigate wisely through the muddy waters of our traumas. And it is particularly within such waters that we need to look closely when trying to figure why we decided to help in the first place.

I remember vividly Dr. Alfried Langle’s lecture in which he explained how help must come from a free place within ourselves. By ‘free’ he meant that help must be a conscious decision, one in which we are not feeling obligated or compelled to help. If I feel so overruled by impulse that I can’t resist (“I can’t help it”) but to throw myself into assisting someone, there is a great danger I am feeling triggered to fix it. When in a place of trigger, I am more susceptible to reacting automatically and not fully being there for my client.

I take every experience of being triggered as an opportunity for exploration of my muddy waters. These are usually clients that I feel either very compelled to help or that I feel tremendous difficulty in helping – the common factor being that I feel the work as extremely easy or difficult.

If I am unaware of my motivations to help newcomers, I could be perpetually triggered into helping, seeing only my suffering in the client and, in fact, treating my own. The impulse to help gains an element of compulsion: I must always offer my hand in order to avoid the greater task of healing myself first.

This posting will be continued…

 

Bianca Buteri, M.A., M.Ed., is a Child and Youth Mental Health counsellor, working with diverse and mainstream clients in Metro Vancouver, BC. She became a Canadian citizen and busy mom in 2010 and shares her time with her husband and 11-month-old daughter.




*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

The Sink in the Counselling Room

Posted by: Guest on April 13, 2011 1:57 pm
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We are exposed to a high level of helplessness in the therapeutic profession. A counsellor not only must witness but also bear her client’s suffering when they feel the most exposed, lonely, ashamed, and scared. In cross-cultural counselling, feelings of loss of the homeland and ambiguity about starting out in Canada permeate the lives of newcomers in profound ways. I remember a recently immigrated family when they had their first appointment with me. At that time, I had a very small office with a sink in it – I would try not to pay attention to it as I was slightly ashamed I had a sink in my office. It was, after all, the sink in the counselling room.

Soon after they arrived, the father glanced at the sink, then back at me and by the time he sat down, we were all laughing about this displaced item in my office.

Sometime during the session, the father said he missed having a good laugh. In the midst of trying to settle into the new life in Canada, he had become really busy and there was no space or friends yet to share a good belly laugh with. He asked if I knew what he was talking about. I shared with him that I remember it being a while after I came to live here that I had that kind of experience. I was not only consumed with trying to understand how things worked most of the time, but was also dealing with my own feelings of loss.

I find there is something very touching about a family who unties from their cultural context and sets out to start over in a new country. As they go about everyday tasks, the ‘everyday’ is so foreign that all that is left are the ‘tasks’ – the space of leisure may become forgotten or delayed until things get organized. As I sit with such clients, I am always reminded of how delicate the work of re-planting a whole family in new soil is. But it is the powerful, resilient force of life they bring that will fertilize it and bring the laughter back.

Bianca Buteri, M.A., M.Ed., is a Child and Youth Mental Health counsellor, working with diverse and mainstream clients in Metro Vancouver, BC. She became a Canadian citizen and busy mom in 2010 and shares her time with her husband and 11-month-old daughter.




*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA