My Ethical Stance

This is not the first time that I declare my ethical position, but still believe that I need to review it after 10 years of clinical practice. To review my ethical stance, I need to go back to my core belief and motivation to do this social justice work—my abusive childhood. To date, I can still remember when adults in the street saw the scars and bruises on my and my siblings’ bodies; the first question they asked was “Who hit you so severely? Then, once our answer was our mother, they asked the second question “Is she your biological mother?” When the answer was yes, their answer was “You must be very bad children because no biological mother would beat up their children like this.” Those strangers’ confirmation just granted my mother’s abusive right to basically mentally and emotionally ruin three of her children’s self-esteem and self-worth because their conclusion re-confirmed my mother’s mental abuse that we were the devils. I call it secondary abuse because its impact was way worse than my mother’s physical abuse. Yes, social justice is my ethical stance that motivates me to do the work. My position is to advocate and protect the vulnerable including children, youth, adults, seniors and the disable.

What do I value in this justice work? I believe that I need to be honest to myself and my work at all times. In clinical practice, I need to be honestly reflective what I am doing with my clients and answer difficult questions to myself after a challenging session. When I am in the session, I need to be present and genuinely alive. Being present is taken from Dan Siegel’s idea of COAL–being curious about the experience, open to the present experience, accepting what is happening and loving myself and the experience. This state of mind can truly bring me to be present and alive, meaning genuinely love what is happening with my experience with a client.

Another value I hold is to be transparent to my work with clients, supervisors and colleagues. Being transparent means that when I am contemplating an idea in the session, I will let my clients know or even I really can’t recall some information, I am going to be honest. I believe that being real and realistic is a division of being honest. Thus, if there is a challenge in accomplishing my job, I need to assess my limits in advance in order to not disappoint others. When I am calling a professional for a family, not only did I get the consent first, but I also let the family know the result of my conversation with the professional as soon as I can. I need to update my work, so let my clients know the progress that I promise them. Another transparency is like what Vikki Reynolds said, she “leans in” to other professionals to let them know she understands that all the professionals are there for the clients and we all have the same goal to help the clients. By leaning in to other professionals can help the family get what they need in a better manner because I am there only for the sake of my clients.

According to Dan Siegel’s brain integration, the visible, natural outcome of brain integration is kindness and compassion. Kindness is involved “honoring and supporting the vulnerability of others and the self” and compassion is “to take actions to reduce the suffering of others”. After decades of working with families and children, I realized that my core belief is based upon being kind and compassionate. Interestingly, recently I just re-read one of my favorite books “Life Will Never End”, a great Chinese book that I read 20 years ago. It is full of stories about reincarnation telling us that we are not living this one life and we will come back to resolve problems that we did not find a solution for. It says the only thing to resolve conflicts, hatred and wars among people is to be kind and compassionate. I am amazed about the same theory between the east and the west, but also strongly believe that kindness and compassion is the foundation of my ethical practice.

References:

Family Worker Training + Development Programme Inc. (July 9, 2016). Reflections by Vikki Reynolds. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1iu4KdgTM4

Reynolds, V. (2016). Workshop notes: An ethical stance for therapy. June 25, 2016. Vancouver, British Columbia: Canada.

Siegel, D. (2012). Pocket guide to interpersonal neurobiology: An integrative handbook of the mind. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.