BRAND-NEW!

Law & Ethics, Health Equity, and/or

Cultural Competence CEs

Cultural Humility in Working with Immigrant Clients

Part Two of a Two-Part Series

(though you don’t need to be registered for both to attend either)

Part One, From Immigration to Homecoming: Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Immigrant Clients, is on Friday, May 1st. Learn more and register here >>>

Presented by: Dr. Gitika Talwar

When: Friday, June 12th, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 12:15 PM, Pacific Time

Where: Live on Zoom. You will receive your Zoom link/invitation the week of the workshop.

Continuing Education Credit Hours: 3 Law & Ethics, Health Equity, and/or Cultural Competence CEs | $99.00

This course builds on material from the Part One course about Immigration and Mental Health on Friday, May 1st (more here).

Though this course can be taken independently, it will discuss how therapy is a site of acculturation for the therapeutic dyad (therapist and client/ therapist and couple/ therapist and family). Recognizing values alignment and values misalignment can be an opportunity for a deep and sincere therapeutic encounter. Cultural humility can be a practice to navigate this therapeutic encounter in helpful ways.

Cultural humility can help the therapist be an effective steward of the therapeutic space because it focuses on continuous self-reflection, discovery, and fostering honest, trustworthy relationships with clients (Yeager & Bauer-Wu, 2013). It represents a shift from cultural competence, which emphasizes “knowing” about various cultural groups, to an ongoing process of “understanding” and “being” with the client (Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998; Lekas et al., 2020).

Key aspects and principles of cultural humility include:

• Lifelong self-exploration and learning: continuous commitment to self-reflection and a willingness to learn from clients’ experiences (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Acknowledging power dynamics and biases: Therapists are invited to recognize their own biases and the inherent power imbalances within the therapeutic relationship (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Respect for diverse identities and cultural capital: It entails showing respect for clients’ various identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, ability) and acknowledging their strengths and resources (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Trust and belief in client reports: Culturally humble practitioners trust clients’ accounts of harassment, discrimination, and oppression, rather than seeking alternative explanations for presenting problems (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Not being the expert: Therapists understand that they are not the experts when clients have lived experiences different from their own (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Openness, curiosity, and flexibility: This approach encourages therapists to be open, curious, flexible, and empathetic to better understand clients’ needs (Summers & Nelson, 2022).
• Advocacy: It includes advocating to dismantle systemic barriers that impact clients (Summers & Nelson, 2022).

Mosher et al. (2017) report that the impact of cultural humility in therapy includes:

• Deeper therapeutic alliances
• Opportunities to communicate respect for the client’s cultural identity
• Better therapy outcomes
• Opportunities for meaningful engagement and repair of cultural mistakes

Research indicates that common humanity, a component of self-compassion, can increase cultural humility in counseling students (Rikard, 2022). Cultural humility is considered a desirable trait in therapists and is significantly related to a strong working alliance and client improvement (Hook et al., 2013). Given how religious and spiritual beliefs can be entwined with cultural beliefs, cultural humility can be expanded to include humility towards spiritual and religious beliefs in order to serve our racially, ethnically, and spiritually diverse clients.

Workshop Objectives

1. Learn about cultural humility
   1. Define and differentiate cultural humility from cultural competence, recognizing it as a lifelong process of self-reflection and learning.
   2. Demonstrate respect for diverse client identities and cultural capital, acknowledging clients’ strengths and resources
   3. Recognize the role of history, sociology, and current events on the culture of communities
   4. Recognize how immigration influences the experience of culture. How pre- and post-migration factors influence the practice of culture
   5. Define spirituality expansively, reflect on the role of spirituality in our culturally diverse clients, and recognize how this impacts therapy.
2. Identify and analyze their own biases and the power dynamics present in therapeutic relationships.
3. Adopt a non-expert stance in therapeutic interactions, particularly when clients have lived experiences different from their own.
4. Explain the positive impact of cultural humility on therapeutic alliances, client outcomes, and the repair of cultural mistakes
5. Recognize the role of cultural humility in supporting the client’s experience of acculturating to therapy.
6. Reflect on ways to incorporate spirituality into our therapeutic work
7. Cultivate trust in clients’ reports of experiences, including harassment, discrimination, and oppression.
8. Identify specific strategies to integrate in your practice to foster a culturally humble healing environment
9. Identify ethical considerations that challenge the therapist’s capacity to be open, curious, flexible, and empathic in responding to clients’ needs.
10. Identify common clinical conceptualizations that can create cultural tensions within this therapeutic space, especially when there are cultural or spiritual values that challenge the therapist’s own value system
11. Identify alternatives to common clinical conceptualizations that can foster greater cultural humility in the therapeutic space
12. Discuss how spirituality may impact the therapeutic space
13. Recognize the importance of advocacy in dismantling systemic barriers that impact clients.