Examining Microaggressions and Building Cultural Empathy

An essential part of embracing human potential entails recognizing the dignity of all people in their wholeness—Mind, Body and Soul. The wherewithal to recognize the totality of human dignity to the extent of unconditionally embracing the human potential regardless of status or marginalized groups is oft-time thwarted because of microaggressions. Chester Pierce first coined the term racial microaggressions in 1978 to refer to the everyday subtle and often automatic put-downs and insults directed toward Black Americans (Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Willis, 1978). While Pierce’s theory focused solely on racial microaggressions, it is clear that microaggressions can be expressed toward any marginalized group in our society. These actions can be gender-based, sexual orientation-based, class-based, or disability-based (Sue & Capodilupo, 2008). Cultural empathy is defined as the ability to understand and communicate the thoughts and feelings of another person given the other person's cultural context. Because of the diversity of today's client population, it is imperative that psychotherapy be predicated on an understanding of the importance of cultural empathy. Cross-cultural empathy helps provide the therapist with a coherent and familiar means of maintaining affective receptivity in the therapeutic encounter with clients while making use of a repository of information about clients' cultures (Dyche & Zayas, 2001). This presentation examines the intersection of microaggressions with cultural empathy with particularly consideration for the lived experiences of people experiencing microaggressions and how to work with these issues in the therapy setting.

CE Information

The Rocky Mountain Humanistic Counseling and Psychological Association (RMHCPA) has a collaborative agreement with the Society for Humanistic Psychology to provide Continuing Education Certificates for approved training events. Division 32 (Society for Humanistic Psychology) of the American Psychological Association is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 32 (Society for Humanistic Psychology) of the American Psychological Association maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

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Please reach out to Louis Hoffman for disability accommodations and for additional questions regarding continuing education programming. Email [email protected] (please note this is a shared email) or call at (855) 764-2721.

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