Identities
Personal identity is formed and influenced throughout life by the cultures we live within, and well-being is affected by relationship with, or outside of, dominant cultural values and beliefs. The most important and salient identity shared by the interviewee was the Family Man Identity, which includes being the father or rather the “head of the household” and an expecting father. Socioeconomic status, which to Mario encompasses occupation, job title, income from job, business attire, and future potential income opportunities, is the second most important identity to Mario. The third most important identity is Mario’s belief in God and the organized religion of Roman Catholicism.
Family Life
Costa Rica is a collectivistic culture and can be defined as a culture that places emphasis on the group’s wants, needs, and desires much more than their own. The people of Costa Rica form a culture that is defined by their familial and personal relationships ( ). Although the males are given distinct individual privileges and authority over the household, the whole culture of Costa Rica embraces more of a collective approach to family and community. Costa Rican men are expected to be strong and to smoke, drink, and pursue women regardless of their marital status.
Mario mostly identifies as a member of a close and loving family that is not afraid to show affection in public. Additionally, he has expressed his concern and desire to establish that type of identity in America and in his home with his new family. Mario has very traditional expectations regarding gender roles within a marriage and the family, as is typical of most families from Costa Rica; however his American wife has other, more egalitarian ideas about what a marriage should look like. She is winning that battle. Mario feels that he has lost a big chunk of his ethnic identity by assimilating himself within the culture of his wife’s immediate family.
Acculturation is the cultural interaction between an immigrating person or family and the new host country that the person or family is immigrating to (Castro, 2003). This interaction is felt both on a societal level, such as the effect on the host country, and the immigrating individual. Assimilation is the process of the acculturating group forgoing their traditional customs and immersing themselves in the culture of the host country. Integration represents those persons who have an interest in maintaining their original cultures throughout their daily interactions and at the same time seek to participate in the larger social culture. It is Mario’s wish to integrate into the American culture.
Socioeconomic Identity
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Spiritual Identity
In Costa Rica, the church has a great influence over all aspects of daily life. Mario is a Roman Catholic and his faith is very important to him and his family of origin. 2016. His grandmother continues to be the greatest familial and generational influence in his life.
Worldview
. “understanding of one’s own and a client’s self (Arredondo, Toporek, Brown,Jones, Locke, Sanchez, & Stadler, 1996) in relation to the ADDRESSING framework (Hayes, 2016) as individual or multiple influences provides the therapist with expanded multicultural conceptualization of the client and presenting issues. Sensitivity to the ADDRESSING framework provides the therapist with a structure for positive interaction with the diverse client (Hayes, 2016).
Recommendations for Improvement
The United States is a multicultural mosaic founded on the acknowledgement that cultural diversity is how we began as a nation. The cultural, individual, and role differences that are related to age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, national origin, and socioeconomic status of a client must be considered if one is to provide appropriate counseling services to a culturally diverse population (Sue & Sue, 2016). As service providers, counselors are legally obligated to avoid both overt and systemic discrimination against clients and should be increasing in tolerance for differences among dominant and non-dominant populations (Hayes, 2016).
Implications for future counseling interactions
To work effectively with clients from another culture one needs to have knowledge of the history, values, and socialization of that person’s cultural group (Nuttgens & Campbell, ). Counseling culturally diverse clients insists that one must first start with an exploration of the client’s worldview and belief systems within the context of the client’s culture before developing theories or intervention strategies. Careful and thoughtful case conceptualization is in direct opposition to the pervasive belief that the majority of American counselors hold which is that Western counseling theories can be adapted to fit any specific culture.
In keeping with the multicultural perspective that values and respects diversity in all forms, no assumption should be made as to the correctness, overarching validity, or effectiveness of one perspective of healing over the other. Attaining multicultural competence requires that the counselor chooses only the interventions that are respectful of a cultural group’s intact beliefs and values regarding health and healing. The acceptance of counseling and its credibility to members of a culture is directly related to the cultural beliefs that those members hold and the degree to which the counselor can provide services that are sensitive to and congruent with those beliefs.