I received an email in November of 2022 :
Hi there! I am an associate level social work student and I am putting together a resource guide of queer-friendly, multilingual counselors in Texas. I wanted to clarify- on your Psychology Today profile, it states you speak Urdu and Hindi, but there is no mention of multilingual services on your website. Do you offer counseling in Urdu or Hindi?
Thank you so much!
Thanks,
[name], AAS - Social Work
That's a great question with sort of a complicated answer. As a native speaker of Urdu/Hindi, I understand both languages as they are spoken (with limited reading for Urdu, neither reading or writing for Hindi, and my spoken language proficiency is a pretty solid mix with English). I write them on my profiles as a marker of my cultural understanding, especially with common idioms used by first generation immigrant households.
However, I don't describe myself as a multilingual counselor because I was not trained to do counseling in a language other than English. There are words and concepts that I use regularly in my work that I do not know how to translate in an equal way to Urdu/Hindi. Unfortunately, if I met a potential client who only spoke Urdu/Hindi with no English, it would feel unethical to work with them and I would want to refer them to a more comfortable Urdu/Hindi speaker.
Multilingual counseling accessibility also includes translated paperwork and assessments, which is an added barrier (especially for native speakers of non-English languages). Sometimes, speakers may not know how to write professionally in a language they can speak. Most of the time, it's difficult to translate assessments and maintain validity and reliability of the measure. I would not feel comfortable displaying that I offer "multilingual services" unless I was able to provide equitable services to non-English speakers.
I was looking through old drafts of blogs and decided to pull this one from four years ago. This one stuck out because I realize I still have complicated feelings about this. Four years later, I’m still not sure if I represent myself completely accurately on the internet. Is that even a real thing? Is it more harmful to be unavailable for my assumptions of “multilingual services” instead of taking the risk and showing up even if I can’t meet the need?
I’ve been fortunate to reach therapy participants that fall under my niche and connect with me and my experiences. These clients often come from South Asian backgrounds, and share my experience of being first or 1.5 gen immigrants who primarily speak English. (Even my personal therapist shares my South Asian background, but we don’t often communicate in Hindi/Urdu.) However, there’s a moment of comfort we’ve experienced with each other, all therapy participants, when we can refer to a dessert our moms make or “log kya kahenge” or just. go. off. in Urdu/Hindi (because cussing in Hindi/Urdu really hits different).
It’s not multilingual services in the most colonized sense of the term. But it is multicultural services. I can’t translate the paperwork required by my licensing boards, but I worry about my hijabi client who goes to protests to defend others. I don’t know how to say emotion words beyond happy, sad, and mad, but I connect with the frustrations and joys of being raised in a community of desi aunties who have so much love and shit to give young women.
How do I explain that on a counseling directory? There’s no section for “specific cultural experiences that your clients might relate with” (and if there was, oof, I can imagine how inauthentic that would get real fast in hopes of drawing people in). I compromise by nodding emphatically, filling in the blanks of conversations, and saying “ugh, aunties” once the algorithms decide we should meet. I know. I can’t explain it well, and I definitely can’t explain it in Urdu or Hindi, but I do know.