Online Custom «Multicultural Awareness» Essay Sample

While emigrating, people face some difficulties in communication process, culture familiarization, and new environmental adaptation. To facilitate adaptation to new circumstances they should use multicultural awareness - the integral part of cultural competence that helps to acquire skills, knowledge in order to better understand history; lifestyles of people differing in race, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, religion affiliation, and physical abilities (Multicultural Awareness (n.d.). This paper explores the importance of multicultural self-assessment and cultural competence.

Multicultural self-assessment explore the understanding of one’s culture, treatment of others, the ways for people who are diverse in terms of race, gender, culture, religion. According to the results of my cultural self-assessment, my behavior does not differ from the behavior of other persons. Very often, I easily interact with elder people. Having strong features of my character, I pay attention to my speech which helps me to avoid offending others, listening to their opinion before making proper decision. I am eligible to new situations, and accept the people positively. The results of my cultural self-assessment progress towards equity, make me initiative, and provide opportunities for improvement. It affords me to learn more about the community. It helps me to achieve the desired aim, to realize that my culture has a great influence on my thoughts and everyday actions. Expressing interest and credibility, I contact with people and group of other cultures. It fulfills my knowledge in prevention improper behaviors of the society. Thanks to it, I easily work with the individuals of different characters (Multicultural Competency, n.d.).

However, when I realized I was other, it had brought me some difficulties in communication with other nationality, in confident and culture awareness of the place where I lived. The people around me spoke another language and I must have used to communicate with them on their mother tongue. I took the dictionary and learned the language they were using to talk with one another. I adapted very quickly, as I liked “people watching” and did all my best to understand interpersonal interactions. Also new cuisine helped me to fulfill my knowledge about other traditions that were different from ours. People behaved well and I accepted them with their likes and dislikes. I listened to the others with interest even when their ideas were not the same as mine. It was the real keys in communication process and I made new friends very fast. Being other meant for me to adapt to new situation as soon as possible and liked the people for who they were.

If to speak about my reactions, they happened to both the self-assessment and my realization of being “other.” I felt stress reaction in communication with people who were not my age, race, or gender. I realized they had different points of view, but later I understood that speaking with them could fulfill my knowledge about the residents of different countries. Showing interest and respect were two main keys that kept me calm with them. At first, my behavior was stressed and pressured. I bit my nails, scratched my head, and bounced the legs. When I felt nervous and have the difficulties I ate too much. Nevertheless, my reactions to self-assessment were shown to be purposeful in asking assistance, being attentive to the others, comfortable interactions with people who are not my age, nationality, or race. While my reactions to realization of being “other” give stress for my health, I should have taken stronger control over the situation. I tried to get used to other traditions that were difficult to cover and made a conscious effort to recognize when I stereotyped (Multicultural Competency, n.d.).

As result of self-assessment, I plan to take such actions as planning process, situation assessment, implementing, and evaluating comprehensive initiative. Regarding planning process, I will receive the modern day interest, ensure my goals, strengthen my professional development, and engage the others in taking such initiative. I will concentrate on current activities, capacity to act, and learn relevant risk factors in situation assessment. Implementing comprehensive initiative will help me to cultivate school climate for everything that will lead to positive health promoting, maintaining, and preparing relevant policies. Evaluating my initiative will appear in conducting initiative in a process of evaluation, achieving the desired results, accounting in costs that were associated with my initiative (Planning, 2014).

My own Statement of Counseling Identity defines a core set of beliefs, values, and assumptions about those unique characteristics that refer to me and differentiates them from other. I do not neglect ethics, and it helps me in my everyday interactions with other residents. I use comprehensive statements of ethics. Concentrating on the purpose of study in education provides a purpose to succeed. Strengthening the knowledge in profession’s history unite people and make them act as a whole. There should be provided understanding and knowledge of advocacy, history, and philosophy, functions and roles, and ethical standards of credentials and professional organizations. Professional engagement will be fulfilled and lack of it will be eliminated. Properly created strong base will lead to high results. The communication will have other advantages and people will cover all the difficulties connected with it (Woo, 2013).

Multicultural awareness and cultural competency play a very important role in practice of clinical mental health counseling as well. It helps people to know better behavior manners of other nationalities. Knowing the key features will help to cover difficulties in communication and lead to faster adaptation to new environment. The stress will not bring harm to health in such case, as people will be aware of cuisine, tradition, culture, routine of life. Cultural knowledge consists of attitudes, skills, and specific knowledge that function as a whole to provide an appropriate culturally sensitive and individualized treatment. Regarding clinical mental health counseling, knowledge about cultural specifics is less important than awareness of culture, race, gender, nationality, and can affect mental health treatment and psychosocial functioning. There should be used tools to overcome barriers in ethnic discrimination and racial bias (Qureshi, 2005).