As a caring professional, it is necessary to prepare ourselves of all the necessary characteristics involved to be able to provide effectively to our clients and their family. Our degree of self-awareness impacts our mental and emotional capacity; our own knowledge of our own beliefs, values, attitude, and perceptions in relation to our relationships and our communication; understanding of cultural differences in the process of care; and our practice of skill in mindfulness. All of these components reflect on our knowledge, skills, and attitude in relation to our processes of relationships and communication with our clients.
Self-Awareness
Communication is the key. This statement is one of the primary lessons I have learned in my relationships. Communication affects all other characteristics and serves as a media in expressing these characteristics. Trust in relationship involves being confident with each other, from words to actions. Communicating trust to someone involves being honest, meeting expectations, and doing your talk. Thus, breaking someone’s trust involves doing the opposite.
Furthermore, communication both serves as the cause and solution in conflicts. Most conflicts arise from misunderstanding and miscommunication; thus conflict resolution comprises of understanding each other via a healthy and positive communication. Lastly, communication of ones needs, boundaries, and expectation are important tasks in relationship processes as it sets out its guidelines and serves as a tool in determining processes, including our words and actions, in the course of relationship. These can be difficult, especially for me, as it needs openness and participation from both parties, even in simply communicating these intents. Statements like “I want you to be there for me when I am sad.” can be difficult to say to another person, but it ultimately helps in the future as it sets out expectations from each other.
My expectations from other people varies and fluctuates from different factors and determinants, such as their abilities, values, strengths, and weaknesses. But as our relationship goes further, so does my expectations from them, which tends to grow higher. In contrast, my expectations of myself varies accordingly as well. At work or at school, I have higher expectations of myself since this is a place where professionalism and responsibility is necessary.
Thus, I seldomly have issues with my relationships amongst my school and work peers. In contrast, Whenever I am with people I am comfortable with, such as my family and friends I tend to lower my self-expectations since I show who I am as a person, and I expect them to accept me, as much as possible. This in turn can have negative connotations since I overstep certain boundaries and limitations in the process. For example, I tend to hurt somebody with my humour and joke that can be offensive. As a goal, in relation to expectations and relationships, it is necessary for myself to be mindful of my responses and actions as to not step on limits and boundaries of our relationship. This, in turn, can allow me to give more of myself to people close to my heart, i.e., family and friends.
Being a realistic person, I a more likely to think in ways that are aligned with the truth and evidences. But as an emotional person, my feelings and emotions tend to interfere on my thinking and mentality, as in cognitive distortion. Statements such as “No one loves me”, “I’m very difficult to understand”, and “No one cares about me” affects me, especially with relationships, both with intra- and interpersonal connections. This kind of negative self-talk furthermore expands as a self-fulfilling prophecy as it affects my behaviour and actions towards myself and to other people around me. Self-fulfilling prophecies are beliefs or expectations that a person holds about a future event that ultimately impacts their outcomes and manifestations. (Ackerman, 2020) Thus, it is necessary to avoid negativity as a whole, including in self-talk and self-fulfilling prophecy, to allow more positive outcomes and relationships in life.
Listening skills are characterized by various caring components that helps the listener connect and empathize with the speaker. One essential characteristic is patience. Being patient provides the capacity to tolerate and delay: in exercising silence in the conversation, in practicing waiting to talk and listen, or in cases when the speaker is not ready to divulge certain aspects of their life or even the willingness to show change if necessary. Additionally, being non-judgmental is necessary to avoid bias and unhelpful assumptions. Our capability to defer judgment of our client goes to our cognitive and even emotional capacity as a listener. Lastly, of all the traits necessary for listening, our empathic abilities is one of the most essential as it provides a multidimensional perspective for the listener from the speaker, including mental and emotional journey. One example from my experience was when a friend relied on me on his issues on his relationships, familial and intimate. He needed an ear to talk to, I listened. He needed someone to feel his pain, I was there. He needed an eyes to see his point of view, I understood him. In addition, I deferred from giving judgment nor advice, rather I provided myself as a support and as a person he relies on for his problems. Empathy in listening provides a deeper connection between us, and thus our relationship grew further mainly characterized by trust and understanding.
I believe, from my own experiences and challenges in life, I have developed an empathic ability in regard to communication and relationships. Although it is still a skill I wish to improve on, since my judgment and perspectives in life can easily affect my empathic abilities, in terms of communication and relationships. Thus, as goal, I need to be mindful of perspective and values that I encounter throughout my journey as to maintain the optimal level of empathy necessary in more than understanding the people around me.
Values, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Perception
Barriers in our relationships come from our sets of values and beliefs, our maintained attitude, and our self- and global perspective. My principles and values in life in relation to honesty and integrity can be a barrier to a healthy communication. In addition, the differences in my perspective of myself as compared to others’, and my abilities in moral judgment can be a hindrance into a healthy and optimal relationships and communications.
Truth is one of the important concepts I value in life. Whenever I read or hear something, I always put it on “fact-check” box before I believe them. This becomes a barrier in my listening capabilities since I always want to validate information and knowledge that comes into me as I value and truth in my life. It can affect both the communication and relationship I have with the other person since truth comes with honesty, which comes with trust. I am a type of person that acts and speaks what is on my mind. My ability to filter and control my actions and words come to a degree of fault. But as far as perspective of myself is concerned, people know me for who I actually am. Of course, it is not up to a 100% accuracy.
Certain differences might include as to how behave and respond to other people. As an example, my mom would see me differently as how my manager would see me: lazy vs hardworking. Both perspectives are right as ii tend to behave differently at home. Another difference would be to a degree or extent of a characteristic defined. For example, I see myself as a regular alcohol drinker. But in some of my friend’s point of view, I am considered alcoholic. There comes the difference in the definition of each characteristic since we may have different point of view of what is what and how much is how much. These small differences of my self-perspective and other’s perspective of myself goes around as how I value honesty in my life.
Blaming is a moral judgment that are rooted from cognitive and social contexts; from processes of that leads to judgment of blame to action of social blaming, both of which can be intentional or unintentional (Malle, Guglielmo, & Monroe, 2012) Being blamed by someone for an action that I may or may have not done can have negative implication to myself and to our relationship. Being blamed constantly can feel like an emotional abuse since it is not a health and helpful component of relationship, communication, or even conflict resolution. Furthermore, it affects my ability to be in control of my own mistakes as being called out will lose capability to manage the wrongdoing done. This is one of the reasons why I seldom blame people around me as I tend to always blame myself first. Consequently, it takes a toll on my intrapersonal relationship (my relationship with myself) as it affects my self-esteem, self-acceptance, and conflict resolution. As a conclusion, blaming negatively affects, not just the relationship of the blamer and the victim, but as well individually.
Cultural Differences
As a Filipino immigrant living in Canada, I belong to the ethnic subculture of Filipino. Filipinos have values and beliefs that are combinations and adaptations of various cultures of our own and of our colonizers. As a start, our family characteristics are defined by its strength and stability as a support for each member. It is common for intergeneration of families to live under the same dwelling: from grandparents to their grand-children-in-law, and to second-degree cousins as example. Additionally, religion and spirituality is a huge part of our values and every day living (Christianity is the biggest religion, second by Islam). Respect for others is highly practiced: use of “po” in sentences (similar to how Canadians add “eh” in their statements, but for the purposes of showing respect), asking for blessing (“mano”) from older generation of family members upon meeting, and use of “ma’am/sir” to people with power (e.g., teachers, managers, and customers. Camaraderie and love for the neighbors is as well given importance in our culture and society, e.g. giving food to your neighbors when you are having a party in your house if they are not invited, which usually should be. In summary, these cultures and norms as Filipinos revolve around how we show love and respect for others. (Capuno, Mendoza, et. al., 2013).
Much of my own values are derived from my culture as a Filipino: love and respect. We are often told to treat others as how we treat our family: serve your customers at work by how you would serve your family, love your friend like they’re your actual siblings, or show respect to your bus driver by how you show respect to your grandparents. Furthermore, in relation to our religious beliefs, our actions and behaviour are as well guided, even more than by the laws of our society, but by the laws of our God. Similar to that is the importance of giving pride to our family (and to all Filipinos). Thus, we are always guided by our values and tradition to be on our best behaviour at all times.
“Who would you be if the world never gave you a label?” (OWN, 2016) As a human being, it can be difficult to see way past our races. I wish to see myself define race as just names; no meanings behind it, no judgements, and no biases. Races are a way of collectively defining a set of people, which can have negative implications. Someone can be anything or anyone they wanted to be: a Filipino can be atheist, a Canadian have brown in color, or a Russian can be gay. Since even people of the same culture can be different as everyone else in their culture, that’s one part of culture difference. As a As CYCs, it is necessary to recognize and understand cultural differences in our workplace. In our process of care, from assessment to evaluation, understanding these diversity and distinction will help us avoid mistakes in our implementations and to be an effective caring professional. In the stage of assessment and interview of our client, it is necessary to further understand the behaviour and values of our client in relation to their culture: what is the reason behind their hygienic habits, their dependence to family, their diet, or the way talk to other people. In addition, our own biases, assumptions, and labels can significantly lead to unintentional, but ignorant, discriminatory practices. Additionally, our judgmental potential can hinder the relationship between us the professionals and our clients.
Blindness towards these cultures and traditions can lead to an ineffective, and even offensive, implementations and interventions. As such, it is our responsibility to cater to everyone’s needs in designing our strategies for care with cultural accommodation, inclusivity, and respect.
Mindfulness
Our mental and emotional capacity are the determinant of our responses and reactions to different faces in our life. Awareness of our skills in relation to these two are essential in creating an effective coping mechanisms, in our relationships and communications, and our connection to our mind, body, and environment.
Mindful listening is a variant of active listening wherein you demonstrate skills such as silence, attunement, reading body cues, reflection, and summarization. From these skills, I have decided to practice the last two of the mentioned. Reflection is the ability to interpret feelings and emotion shown and said of the speaker. As a listener, it is essential to understand given cues and words from the speaker, from key words to body language; to be able to interpret accordingly. Reflection is done to remind the speaker themselves what they are characterizing or saying, a form of awareness. Furthermore, the skill of summarization comes after the fact of attentive listening. Summarization provides purpose both for the speaker and listener, to allow both parties and to hear and remind themselves of what had just been discussed and shared; in addition to evidence of effective listening skills of the listener.
One of the many, many things I have learned from this course is all about reacting vs. responding to feelings. One component of emotional regulation is the ability to manage and control emotions and feelings that comes to us. Reacting to feelings, mostly unconscious, is a survival instinct based on our defense mechanism, which most of the times leads to actions that are regretful in the end. Responding, meanwhile, is both a result of our conscious and unconscious mind that allows us to process information and create actions based on our core values, rather than our emotions and feelings This can be done by self-awareness, breathing and pausing techniques, and reconnection with the unconscious mind. (James, 2016). As an emotional person, this is a goal to be recognized and implement as part of my emotional regulation, and coping mechanism in challenges and adversities in life.
Mindfulness comprises of various technique in self-care which involves doing special sets of exercises to notice (or be mindful) of what is currently in the present moment: from the mind, body, and environment (Mind, 2018). One skill I want to partake into is the skill in emotional regulation, to help myself respond to such appropriately, in accordance to a better coping mechanism. One exercise sampled by Ackerman (2020) were the Self-Compassion Pause, an exercise about self-compassion and its effects in bringing awareness to and staying in the moment with our emotions; and the Observer Meditation, a part of Acceptance and Commitment therapy, these exercises allows detachment from our internal thoughts and feelings.
Conclusion
We as CYCs are expected to reflect our core domains of practices, with the three of the most important aspects including our aspect of self, communication, and relationships. With such, it is highly necessary to be aware of the characteristics and values we possess, to address the barriers in maintaining their optimality, and to practice necessary skills and techniques beneficial to the people around us, and to our well-being: from our mind, body, and soul.
References
Ackerman, C. E. (2020, April 17). Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Psychology: 10 Examples and Definition (+PDF). https://positivepsychology.com/self-fulfilling-prophecy/
Ackerman, C. E. (2020, June 23). 22 Mindfulness Exercises, Techniques & Activities for Adults
(+PDF). https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-exercises-techniques-activities/
Canadian Red Cross. (undated). Healthy Relationships Toolkit [Booklet].
https://www.gov.mb.ca/healthychild/healthybaby/kits/healthy_relationships.pdf
Capuno, J. J., Mendoza, A. Jr., Morillo, H. (2013). View and Values on Family among Filipinos: An Empirical Exploration. Asian Journal of Social Science 41, pp. 5-28.
https://www.academia.edu/24257256/Views_and_Values_on_Family_among_Filipinos_An_Empirical_Exploration
James, M. (2016, September 01). React vs Respond. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/focus-forgiveness/201609/react-vs-respond
Malle, B. F., Guglielmo, S., Monroe A. E. (2012) Moral, Cognitive, and Social: The Nature of Blame. Social thinking and interpersonal behaviour, 311-329. Psychology Press.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260403836_Moral_Cognitive_and_Social_The_Nature_of_Blame
Mind. (2018). Mindfulness. https://www.mind.org.uk/media-a/2891/mindfulness-2018.pdf
OWN. (2016, March 13). SuperSoul Short: Prince Ea’s Powerful Message on Lables | SuperSoul Sunday | Oprah Winfrey Network [Video].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilS58_eVvl0&feature=emb_logo
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