Reflect on positionality

START HERE

The essential idea

Positionality describes how your experiences and social location can influence what you notice, what you miss, and how others experience you. Reflection is useful when it leads to different behavior, not simply a statement that everyone has bias.

After a practice conversation, identify a moment when you moved quickly toward an interpretation. What evidence supported it? What alternatives did you overlook? Consider discussing the pattern with a supervisor or instructor.

Reflection does not require sharing personal history with a client. Decide how to respond in ways that serve the client’s goals and preserve appropriate boundaries.

BUILD THE REASONING · 01

Move beyond an inventory of identities

A list of social identities describes position but does not show its effect on counseling. Select an encounter, identify your automatic interpretation, locate the experience or power relation that may shape it, and compare the interpretation with client evidence. Shared identity can support recognition and also produce overidentification. Different identity can create blind spots and also motivate useful questions. Neither similarity nor difference proves competence.

Use an intersectional lens: social class, race, gender, disability, age, religion, and institutional role interact within a particular context. Avoid adding fixed quantities of privilege as though identity were a score. A trainee can be marginalized in one setting and still hold institutional authority over a client's record. Ask who can disagree, who defines success, and whose account is presumed credible in this encounter.

BUILD THE REASONING · 02

Make the reflection testable

Write: observation → interpretation → alternative → action → feedback. Observation might be 'I interrupted twice when the client discussed family obligations.' Interpretation might be 'I treated independence as evidence of health.' An alternative is that interdependence is chosen and the actual conflict concerns privacy. Action is to ask a non-leading question and let the client define the goal. Feedback is whether the summary fits and whether your next recording shows fewer steering interruptions.

Use supervision to examine patterns without depositing the emotional burden on the client. Self-disclosure is not required to prove sincerity. If disclosure is considered, specify the client benefit, likely burden, alternatives, and effect on the relationship. Reflection succeeds when it changes a consequential behavior or formulation; confession, guilt, or an elegant autobiography alone does not demonstrate improved care.

FROM CONCEPT TO DECISION

Shared identity became an assumption

1. 1

   Identify the leap

   Shared first-generation status led to an untested transfer of the counselor's own story. The client supplied contrary evidence.

2. 2

   Repair and reformulate

   Acknowledge the assumption briefly and ask about the housing barrier. The relevant target moves from separation feelings to access, belonging, and practical response.

3. 3

   Check a behavior

   In supervision, review moments of 'I know' statements and practice summaries grounded in the client's words. Ask the client whether the revised understanding fits.

MAKE THE REASONING YOURS

Work through a new situation

READ WITH A PURPOSE

Best references

These readings deepen the specific models, evidence, and decisions in this lesson.

1. 01
   Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies

   Connect counselor self-awareness, client worldview, the relationship, and action at individual and systemic levels.

2. 02
   APA — Multicultural Guidelines: Context, Identity, and Intersectionality (2017)

   Trace how identity changes with context and power across time; these psychology guidelines supplement, rather than replace, counseling-specific standards.

3. 03
   American Psychiatric Association — Supplementary CFI modules

   Consult the spirituality, older-adult, social-network, or clinician-relationship module appropriate to the case; use the questions selectively.