Culture and counselling

When we think about culture it is probably about the practises of other groups. However, when we think about it we all have cultural practises, for example giving up seats on buses. The cultural rule is simple, give up your seat for the less able to stand. 

Cultural rules are generally easy to follow and hard to resist. If you do not believe that, get on a full bus and ask someone who has greater need to sit than you do to give up their seat. 

Ok, we can live with a whole lot of cultural niceties, but what about our particular rules for life which may or may not be helpful. For example, being brought up to never disagree, this may mean we are pleasant, but agree with everything! Ultimately loss would come.

As we have seen culture is hard to resist and how entrenched it is will depend on the cultural conditioning from any particular sphere. For example, society, groups, family and friends. Let us consider family - the message to not disagree may have been repeatedly reinforced by various means and so later in life it is hard to resist.

The identifying and challenging of such rules (patterns, habits) is something that can be carried out in counselling. It is not easy to undo internalised rules but it is also not impossible.