Counselor Privilege: Awareness and Reduction

Professional Experience Article

Full disclosure: I am a white, middle-class male who grew up in a middle-class suburbia family with divorced parents and the youngest sibling of 5. I imagine all kinds of conclusions can be drawn from that information and would most likely be considered counselor privilege. And this is precisely the reason this topic has interested me for so long. But it hadn’t touched me so deeply until this year's FMHCA conference when a presenter talked about diversity in counseling services. I was struck (again) by the lack of diversity in therapy and therapists and how that could affect counselor privilege.

Definitions could help to level the understanding field of these two words before moving forward:

Counselor- a reoccurring theme that came from research about a definition included listening and giving advice or advices. I was struck by the listening part as it relates to counselor privilege and how that might reduce it if I am to listen. Instead of interrupt, evaluate, or even advise.

Privilege- one explanation that struck me was how it was described as the opposite of privilege, “disadvantage, disbenefit, handicap (a word used less these days), and drawback”. I wondered if these words could describe sometimes how the client might feel if I am imposing counselor privilege, unknowingly of course. For our purposes here to combine with the definition of counselor privilege is, “a special right or advantage granted only to a particular person or group” (Merriam Dict)

So, combining these definitions into a working model going forward in my own words it could be; a person who listens/advises others from a place of privilege or advantage that appears to exclude others. While there are many understood, and not so understood, types of privilege I want to narrow that down to some of the areas that apply to counseling; race, color, gender, culture, identity, education, and spirituality. Many others include visible and invisible privilege but for the purpose of our time here I am interested in awareness and reduction. What do I mean by that?

Awareness is how I respond to my surroundings, both physically and humanly. This is a skill that constantly needs attention and fine-tuning and unfortunately with social media and phones this has become a lost art but so vital to healthy interactions. As therapists, we typically have mastered this trait with client gestures, mannerisms, and how the client is responding to their surroundings and sometimes pointing out when this may need to change.

This quote from an article speaks to some of my intent, “As counselor educators and students in counseling training programs, we have observed that conversations about privilege and oppression are common in training but that they generally occur in two ways. First, the conversations typically use a lens that looks outward into societal structures while neglecting to use a lens that looks inward and focuses on how our own educational and professional structures create disparities. Second, such conversations most frequently center on advantages given to a person on the basis of sex, race, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or age, while ignoring socio-economic class”. (Counseling Today, Feb 2021). This inward scope is how I want to approach privilege in the counseling field so that we can be more aware of, and reduce, this in our field.

Also a warning, that is possible that I may step on emotional toes related to privilege due to a blind spot or disagreement from your own lens of life. I too carry these and ask that we be less dismissive of perspective, and maybe even facts, about privilege and how those influences my practice along with present/future clients. They deserve the best version of us as a therapist and as a human.

Future topics related to this include: Education privilege, Social privilege, Socioeconomic privilege or economic capital, Gender privilege, Race privilege, Immigration status, Religious privilege

An interesting fact about educational privilege that I will discuss in the next article is the nine students that crossed the stage of Harvard in 1642 not by grades buy by rank their families held in society. More about that next time.

Written By: Scott Jones, LMHC

Scott has a private practice in Orlando since 2015 and has recently taught the Qualified Supervisor course at the FMHCA 2022 conference where some of this article was adapted from. He relies on interaction and uses questions along with group scenarios to guide and train and looks for input from the class. He recently is certified as a Florida Supreme Court Mediator/Arbitrator and is currently supervising 10 interns and has a 100% passing rate of the LMHC exam due to training during the internship.