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ADDRESSING-GSA Self-Assessment As counselors, our cultural identity is one of the most crucial parts to being a competent, well-rounded, and ethical counselor. Being a multicultural counselor allows us to become and stay enlightened on the different backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, etc. that our clients may walk in the door with. Being multiculturally competent allows our clients to feel more comfortable, safe, and understood in therapy and creates the opportunity for real counseling to begin. Becoming a multicultural counselor does not come easy and it is up to us to be culturally curious every day. When completing my ADDRESSING-GSA Self-Assessment, I was considering my society in Tampa, Florida because I have lived here for the past 5 years. The dominant/more privileged groups in my society according to my pie chart were size, age, social class, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. I identify with some of these dominant/more privileged groups in my society solely because I have been trained to live this way because of the society around me. First, I do identify with size. As I talked about in my video assignment, Tampa pressures its people with this active and “healthy” lifestyle where working out and staying thin is the social norm. The pressures to be active and fit are brutal in my society because it is frowned upon to be “overweight”, “unhealthy”, or uninterested in physical activity. Because I have been immersed in this society for so long, I have adopted this “fit” lifestyle somewhat. I am someone who works out to stay healthy and not necessarily to work on my physique but when your environment is filled with skinny, active, models who just came from Pilates, it’s hard not to adopt this mindset! I am still able to recognize that society is putting these pressures on its people, but I have definitely become more acquainted with the dominant size group in society.

Size is the only dominant group that I personally identify with at this time, but I can see how it is easy to slip into the social norms of society the longer you reside there. The longer that I reside in Tampa, the more I discover about the cultural identities that are present here. As I discussed previously, the dominant groups in Tampa have an upper hand, more advantages, and more opportunities than the more marginalized groups. The non-dominant groups that my ADDRESSING-GSA pie chart revealed were assigned sex at birth, disability, religion/spirituality, ethnic/racial identity, indigenous background, and national origin. As I reviewed the results of the chart, I thought it was interesting that the non-dominant groups in my chart were most of the things we see as “typical” cultural aspects. Things like religion, ethnic background, and national origin are some of the first cultural qualities that we think of when first thinking of culture. I identify with my ethnic and racial identity because I have an interesting ethnic background and it has made me who I am today. I am of Italian, Irish, French, and Chinese descent and I identify with them all in some way. Both sets of my grandparents were 100% of their nationality and so both my parents were 50/50 each. As it trickles down, my brother and I are split a quarter everything; 25% all 4 ethnicities. I have always been proud of this and interested in learning more from my grandparents and parents. I didn’t get the opportunity to learn about our background from my dad’s parents, but I was blessed to learn so much from my mom’s parents. I continue to learn about my ethnic background and find new ways to identify with it. Ethnic and racial identities are still recognized in Tampa in certain areas and communities; it is just one of the less dominant identities in my immediate environment. I don’t identify as much with the other identities in the less dominant group but this just reiterates why they are less dominant in my society. These different parts of my identity impact my worldviews in numerous ways. The things that I identify with culturally, socially, religiously, etc.

allow me the opportunity to recognize the arenas that I am comfortable with and the areas that I am less comfortable with. Because of this, I can stay open minded and step out of my comfort zone to become educated on things that I otherwise wouldn’t learn about. My worldview remains positive, open minded, and curious which I believe are important traits for all counselors to obtain. Racial/Ethnic Identity Development As I previously discussed, I identify strongly with my ethnic background and my heritage and so, it is extremely important to me to understand my clients cultural and ethnic background. Although I celebrate and apply my cultural customs to my life today, I generally identify as a White American. Because of this, I chose to apply the White Racial Identity development model to myself. The White Racial Identity model addresses various racial identities and attitudes including White privilege, social power, and racial ideation. White Racial Identity models based themselves on Black racial identity models in order to see similar stages that Caucasians can experience in order to successfully develop a nonracist identity (Leach, 2006). The current stages of White Racial Identity development model translate through 2 different levels. The first level is Abandonment of Racism. Abandonment of Racism includes 3 steps: contact, disintegration, and reintegration. Contact is when an individual does not think of themselves as white but rather, they’re just “normal.” This individual might be unaware of their stereotypes and may not recognize their white privilege. Next step is disintegration which introduces awareness of racism and white privilege. An individual in this stage may feel conflicted between racial realities. Last in this stage is reintegration. Reintegration is when an individual experiences feelings of fear and anger towards people of color because the issue of racism makes them feel bad about themselves. In this stage the individual may try to avoid the topic of racism all together. The second tier of

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this model is Defining a Non-Racist White Identity. This stage consists of pseudo-independence which is when an individual abandons all beliefs in white supremacy. They begin to understand the inequalities in white privilege and may begin taking responsibility for racism. I personally identify with this stage because I remember my involvement in experiencing this stage. I remember thinking I understood what other races have been through because I have acknowledged white supremacy and sought out education on racism. I often asked my Black friends to better help me understand racism and tell me what I was doing wrong. Although this stage is a step in the right direction, it hasn’t quite reached the end goal of a completely non- racist identity. Next stage in this level is immersion/emersion. Immersion/emersion is when an individual is actively trying to reconstruct whiteness. The individual may be trying to redefine what “white” means to them. This individual will take pride in being an active anti-racist and will start taking responsibility. Lastly in the second tier, is autonomy. Autonomy is when the individual begins to appreciate not just skin colors but the cultural differences that accompany it. This individual understands that racism is systemic and will not be changed overnight. This step resonates with me as well because I also remember entering this stage. It is when I finally realized that skin color is just the tip of the iceberg in understanding the cultural, ethnic, and social differences between people. I experienced this stage as I was deep in my undergrad years. I went to a very diverse high school and thought that I had a full grasp on my white identity and how it affected others but when I came to college, my horizons were widened. I remember entering the autonomy stage because I was less worried about talking to my Black friends about what I can do better and was more concerned with the true meaning of cultural differences and finding out what those were.

By applying this model to myself, I realized that it could take years to fully complete the model. Initially, I thought that this was something that could start when an individual first sparked curiosity about white privilege. As I applied to model to my life, I realized that I may have started this development in high school and just completed it in recent years. The process will be different for every individual, but this is just my personal experience with it. I see my own racial and ethnic identity in a different light now because although I come from a unique ethnic background, I still considered myself White and it is important as a Caucasian individual to enter the last stage of this model in order to fully understand racism in the world around us. After reading this model fully and applying it to myself, I also learned that the last stage of the model has no end. We should continue to learn, seek feedback, and ask questions to further our cultural education. Other Cultural Identity Development My ADDRESSING-GSA self-assessment gave me insight into what groups were dominant and not-dominant in myself and my society. After reading and researching the various different identity development models, I resonated with the article written by Katz-Wise (2013). This article talks about sexual fluidity in young adults and the associations that accompany sexual orientation and sexual identity development. Sexual orientation was one of my more dominant groups in my pie chart and one that I find myself interested in learning more about. I identify as a cisgendered, heterosexual female with she/her pronouns. Sexual identity development will vary from individual to individual but one of the universal models used to understand sexual identity development is the Cass Identity Model. The Cass identity model is a 6-stage model that has been fundamental in understanding LGBTQ+ development. The first stage is identity confusion where an individual begins to question who they are. They are in

disbelief that they could be a queer person. This stage often brings frustration and fear for the future. The second stage of this model is denial. In the denial stage, the individual does not believe they could be homosexual. They deny all feelings and try to ignore any thoughts, urges, or ideas pertaining to the LGBTQ+ community. One of the reasons that this developmental model resonated with me is because two of my closest friends are members of the LGBTQ+ community. I witnessed both of these friends struggle with their sexual identity for years before they were 100% comfortable with their sexuality and themselves. My friend Joe had thoughts of experimenting with men when we were in high school that he told me about but had quickly entered the stage of denial when he met the thought of telling his parents. He was in the denial stage for months and I had to watch him struggle with this until he finally built of the confidence to be truly who he is. The third stage is identity comparison. Identity comparison is when the individual partially accepts the idea of being homosexual/bisexual and is more curious of the wider implications that come with it. The individual begins making their own definitions and creating ideologies of a life without the things/people that they may lose. The next stage is identity tolerance, and this is where the individual understands that they are not “the only one.” They gain a sense of community and will begin to seek out other homosexual/bisexual people. There is also heightened thoughts and talk about the details of being a member of the LGBTQ+. The next stage is identity acceptance. The individual accepts themselves and now is comfortable talking about who they are with their loved ones. My other friend, Tyler, entered this stage and I had never seen him happier with himself and with life. The stage of acceptance is refreshing because you can see an individual finally feel like themselves and begin to fully live their life as their true self. The next stage is identity pride. Identity pride is a spin-off of identity acceptance but in a louder and prouder way. Acceptance can be only within yourself and/or with one or two

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close people but identity pride is letting the world know who you are. An individual often splits their world into gay = good and straight = bad in this stage and they really begin to find their niche. The last stage is identity synthesis, and this is where an individual begins to combine their sexual identity with all of areas of their life. They integrate their sexuality into every aspect of their life because it is who they are now, and they are proud of it. Hostility can still be felt towards straight people but that will subside with time. I have gained insights about my own cultural identity after applying this model to my life because although I have had a heterosexual sexual identity my whole life, I got to see the model through a different lens when applying it to two of my best friends. This is the first experience that I have with this model and so, prior to the model I didn’t know the steps it took to become comfortable with our sexual identity. I now know the various steps that this process takes and how it can affect an individual every day. After applying this model to my two close friends’ life for reference, I learned that my own cultural identity is dependent on sexual orientation. Because I have such close friends who are members of the LGBTQ+ community and I have the utmost respect for them, I try to immerse myself into a culture that accepts LGBTQ+ lifestyles. I learned that a huge part of my cultural identity surrounds the acceptance and respect of homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, and all other LGBTQ+ members. This part of my cultural identity effects my worldview because it makes me open to all sexual orientations and gender identities. It also makes me eager to educate people who are against freedom of sexual orientation and gender expression in order to expand knowledge and respect of the LGBTQ+ community. These aspects of my identity intersect with all other parts of my life because being open minded to all different people, whether its their sexuality, religion, national origin, etc., has helped me become more knowledgeable, culturally aware, empathetic, and socially competent in different aspects of

my life. I plan to keep being an activist for social change as well as keep educating myself on social and cultural issues in order to be a well-rounded person and counselor.

References Leach, M. (2006). White racial identity. Links to an external site. In Y. Jackson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of multicultural psychology (pp. 473–474). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Sabra L. Katz-Wise (2015) Sexual fluidity in young adult women and men: associations with sexual orientation and sexual identity development, Psychology & Sexuality, 6:2, 189- 208, DOI: 10.1080/19419899.2013.876445 University of Wisconsin. (n.d.). Cass identity development - UW-super . UWSuper. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.uwsuper.edu/genderequity/ally/upload/Identity- Development-Stages.pdf.

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