Engaging in Self-Awareness: How Not to Judge When Helping Others

Social worker Zander Keig’s first job after earning his MSW was working in health care for homeless veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Keig had interacted with people experiencing homelessness when he worked in an urban park in San Diego, but he knew he had to learn to work with them as a clinician. 

“Getting that trauma-informed perspective, that basic lens of looking at why people are in the predicaments that they’re in and why they might be struggling or resisting, taking all those things into account is going to be really helpful,” said Keig, LCSW, who is the National Association of Social Workers’ 2020 Social Worker of the Year.  

Keig credits the VA for providing training programs, including one through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which offers resources on working with people who are homeless from a trauma-informed lens. 

Recognizing another’s circumstances, or looking at the world through their lens, is part of engaging in self-awareness. Self-awareness allows anyone providing assistance to do so in a nonjudgmental way that acknowledges every individual’s unique situation.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of self-awareness is “an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality.” Self-awareness is also a core competency area of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). SEL skills can empower people to help others thrive, according to the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL).   

“You cannot make a genuine, authentic connection if you are judgmental, critical and you have bias.”

—Mary Pender Green

Social workers and others in helping professions benefit from being self-aware because “there’s multiple perspectives we’re going to be bringing to and gaining from our education,” Keig said.

“Depending on what school you go to and which professors you have, there may end up being a conflict between your worldview and the lens you’re being taught to see your clients through.”

According to Keig, perspectives may be influenced by:

Life experience: Cultural background, religion and relationships.

Current situation: Financial obligations, health and family responsibilities.

Educational institution/program: University values, curriculum and affiliations. 

Teachers/mentors/bosses: Philosophies, methods of practice and expectations.

Colleagues: Personalities, politics and interests.

To be better helpers, clinicians should understand what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors because “part of knowing where other people are coming from is also having a pretty firm understanding of where we’re coming from,” Keig said.

Helping professionals need to connect with their clients. Those connections are built on the ability to relate. “For social workers to be successful, self-awareness is the most important element because without being aware of how you’re feeling, it’s absolutely impossible to address the feelings of other people,” said Mary Pender Greene, LCSW-R, CGP, president and CEO of MPG Consulting in New York.

“You cannot make a genuine, authentic connection if you are judgmental, critical and you have bias,” Pender Greene said, adding that social workers and other helpers who have self-awareness are less likely to harm others because of stereotypical thinking.

However, she warned there can be a danger of oversimplifying the need for professional self-awareness, which should focus on the person who needs help, rather than their ethnicity or cultural background. 

“I don’t like the idea of saying ‘cultural competence’ because in essence that is grouping people and saying all of one group is alike,” she said. “It’s about being aware and connected to the individual in front of you.”

To nurture self-awareness and cultural sensitivity, professionals should explore their attitudes and assumptions with intention, Keig said. To facilitate their development in this area, they can consider these questions and what they address: 

“If our goal is to work with people in their environment, to treat every person with dignity and from a trauma-informed lens, and we can’t even get past some of these core value issues, we’re going to be expecting our clients and our patients to conform to our expectation of their life for them, and that takes away their agency,” Keig said. 

Pender Greene said people in the helping professions would benefit from exploring resources to learn everything they can to develop self-awareness skills.

Because social workers help solve other people’s problems, they have to juggle and anticipate all factors that impact potential solutions. 

In addition to perspectives and their impact on self-awareness, social workers also must consider:

Keig and Pender Greene recommend social workers find support from peers by joining professional groups and organizations and actively seeking feedback from others.

“There are benefits to connecting with colleagues who are further along their social work journey than you,” Pender Greene said. 

Social workers understand the benefits of sharing experiences. 

“It’s part of the ethics that we agree upon as social workers that we need to be attentive to our colleagues because they’re the ones, ultimately, that are going to have a positive or negative impact on our clients, on our patients, on the consumers,” Keig explained. “So, we need to be attentive to each other, support each other, share resources with each other and educate each other.”