Counselling psychologists’ anti-discriminatory awareness and practice in the UK: Exploring the relationship between self-awareness of beliefs and attitudes in relation to difference and diversity and therapeutic practice

Abstract

Research suggests that a therapist who works dynamically with their own explicit and implicit beliefs and attitudes, sourced in their own multilayered lived experience, may be better able to appreciate, and more accurately perceive, a clients’ lived experience. This study aims to explore counselling psychologists’ narratives around anti-discriminatory practice and to examine how counselling psychologists utilise self-awareness to make meaning of and to address the influence of potentially biasing explicit and implicit beliefs, on the therapeutic process in relation to difference and diversity.Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six qualified counselling psychologists who graduated from UK-based counselling psychology doctoral programmes within five years previous to the study. Verbatim transcripts of the interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).The analysis produced three master themes: ‘Views toward anti-discriminatory practice’; ‘Reflections on self-awareness of beliefs and attitudes in relation to difference and diversity’; and ‘Actively working with difference and diversity in the therapy room’.The findings substantiate counselling psychologist’s multifaceted and critical stance on anti-discriminatory practice. Participants were conscious of and sensitive to the relationship between self-awareness of potentially biasing beliefs and attitudes in relation to difference and diversity and therapeutic practice. Moreover, the findings suggest that core humanistic therapeutic skills, when aided by self-awareness and a reflective practice, can monitor potentially biasing and prejudicial attitudes in Counselling Psychology practice, thus providing a foundation for ADP from a counselling psychology perspective.