D. REQUIREMENTS FOR RE-EVALUATION COUNSELING TEACHERS
D.5. Overcoming Culturally Enforced Distress Patterns[67]
Teachers are expected to help students learn to counsel on culturally enforced distress patterns, especially those of the dominant culture. Each community is encouraged to challenge its dominant cultural distress recordings and actively seek input from people in non-dominant cultures. Examples of culturally enforced distress recordings include the pull to assimilate into the dominant culture, oppressor recordings, feelings and behaviors of victimization, and the suppression of discharge.
REASON
Any distress can be contradicted and discharged with persistent counseling. However, patterns never disappear by themselves. Oppression works by requiring assimilation into the dominant culture. (For example, society expects that individuals will look, speak, and behave as the dominant group does.) Therefore, ending oppression requires discharging culturally imposed distress recordings. These recordings are often so pervasive that they cannot easily be identified. Our experience is that intentional and persistent counseling is needed to discharge them.
[67] Culturally enforced distress patterns are distress patterns enforced by a group’s culture.