Читать книгу Counseling the Contemporary Woman - Suzanne Degges-White - Страница 30

The goal of this exercise is to allow a client to explore the ways culturally messaged beliefs about gender and broader social issues have influenced her life, choices, and behaviors. There are four steps involved in this intervention:

1 Invite your client to reflect on the overt and covert gender role expectations that she recalls having received over her life.

2 Ask your client to explore both the positive and negative results that these messages have had on her life. Work with her to brainstorm how she has internalized these messages.

3 Next, explore these messages with your client and help her decide which of these internalized messages she would like to change.

4 Lastly, work with your client to co-construct a plan that will move her forward to make the changes she feels necessary for her well-being.

For women who have grown up in homes in which women were expected to forgo careers in order to care for their families, imagining a different life can create both excitement and anxiety. By helping a client break down her own gender/family-instilled psychological limitations, therapists can help her begin to imagine a life path of her own choosing. It is also important for counselors to validate a client’s fears related to breaking new ground as well as the courage exhibited in her desire to do so.

Related to the gender role analysis is the gender role intervention (Brown, 2018; Worell & Remer, 2003). This involves a more general, less personal exploration of the ways gender role or social identity expectations play out. The goal is to help clients recognize the strengths and abilities they possess that can be used to confront or contradict the negative stereotypes they might face. This type of analysis may be especially useful for clients who are currently experiencing a sense of failure or shame related to past decisions that were made based on societal gender role expectations. For example, a midlife client longing for a career in engineering after a life spent caring for others may feel ashamed of her earlier decision to drop out of college when she chose to get married before the end of her senior year. By inviting the client to reflect on the ways society downplays or disregards women’s scientific expertise, she can discuss the variety of ways gender informs cultural norms. Counselors can help clients recognize their lives are microcosms of the greater cultural macrocosm. This intervention allows a client to externalize problems they have experienced, which moves the “problem” outside of themselves and frees them up to begin to develop a workable solution to their problematic situation.