Assessment of a Provider’s Values, Beliefs, and Biases

Effective counseling or psychotherapy is based on a provider’s ability to know the client’s worldview and his lived experience. A precursor to knowing the client’s worldview is the provider’s ability to know her worldview. However, binary thinking and ethnocentrism (e.g., asymmetric perception) prevent the provider from knowing her worldview. The chapter focuses on a holistic perspective to access inner experience through writing, conscious raising, listening to the body, integrating personal inquiry (subjective, first-person inquiry) with scientific inquiry (objective, third-person inquiry), and learning to shift thinking (from binary to holistic) and learning (from conceptual to transformative). Reflective experiential learning activities are provided for the readers to identify their values, beliefs, and biases. Concrete strategies are inserted immediately after concepts for readers to connect to their lived experience.