"She walked into the room with a polite smile, placing her backpack carefully beside the chair as if not to disturb anything. When I asked how her week had been, she answered promptly: "It was fine. Just busy. Nothing special." Her tone was steady. Her posture upright. But she gripped the zipper of her jacket so tightly that her knuckles had turned pale."
"In her cultural context, offering a smooth, contained answer was not avoidance. It was courtesy. It was dignity. It was how one maintains relational balance. Yet beneath that carefully managed composure, there was a current of emotion she struggled to hold. When I said softly, "I'm sensing something heavier beneath your words," she looked down, and a single tear slipped out before she could stop it."
Soft outward expression can conceal intense inner emotion; restraint often reflects care, dignity, and preserving relational balance rather than avoidance. Clients from collectivistic contexts may present with steady tone and composed posture while exhibiting subtle somatic or behavioral signs of distress. Western-trained clinicians risk mislabeling such presentations as minimizing or people-pleasing when cultural norms prioritize not burdening others. Accurate clinical attunement requires attention to content, process, and relationship (C-P-R): what is said, how it is expressed, and the relational context. Applying C-P-R reduces misinterpretation and supports culturally respectful, accurate assessment and care.
Read at Psychology Today
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