How to Recognise and Challenge Your Own Prejudices in Counselling

Learn how to recognise and challenge your own prejudices in counselling. Guidance for CPCAB Level 2 students on blind spots and self-awareness work.

If you're training, you'll face something uncomfortable: you have prejudices, fears, and personal issues that affect your helping work.

Not the obvious ones you already know about. The hidden ones. The ones slightly out of sight. The ones that will impact the helping relationship.

This isn't about being a bad person. It's about being human. And it's about the ongoing work of what's being evoked in you that you need to better understand.

Let's explore why this is so hard to face, what prejudices and fears actually look like in practice, and how to do the difficult work of exploring and challenging them.

Why This Is So Hard to Face

The "I Treat Everyone the Same" Trap

It's not uncommon for students to start by saying: "Well, I treat everyone the same because we're all human beings."

Whilst that feels like best intentions, and you hear some generosity in that (equality is prized, opportunities provided to everyone without barrier), it's noble. However, what you lose is everything about the individual. What you lose is their unique experiencing.

When you begin to look at your prejudices, fears, and issues, you're not looking for the ones you know about. You're looking for the ones that are slightly out of sight. The ones that are hidden. The ones that will impact the helping relationship.

We Don't Want to Feel Like Bad People

It's challenging for students to start looking into those difficult spaces.

You don't want to feel like you're a bad person. You don't feel that you're judging other people. You don't like to acknowledge those out-of-awareness judgements that penetrate your lives.

How you view someone who opens the door for you. Or how you perceive someone who works in a sandwich bar or coffee shop. Or how you see someone stepping out of an expensive car.

All these little things add up and contribute to a sense of how you perceive another person and how they inform yourself to another person.

How they show up in a helping session might be the clothes people wear. How they dress. The manner in which they present themselves. All these elements are unconscious information you pick up. Yet it's information you make judgements over.

We're Biologically Wired for Judgement

When you begin these conversations, you have to explain: you are biologically wired for judgement.

You're biologically wired for comparison and risk assessment. It's within your nature to seek out safety and avoid danger and threat.

Whilst these are mammalian instincts, they're still prevalent in your present. You make comparisons. You assign status. You decode the environment to establish where is safe and where is unsafe.

You spend a lot of time making a safe enough space for these conversations, recognising how these things come up. Recognising you're wired for judgement and that's okay, but you work with it to better understand yourself.

The Push Back Against Looking

Sometimes there's pushback against this because people want to feel they're good people, that they're nice, that they don't dislike people or hate particular types of people.

There's already that internal judgement going on in you before you've even got to discussing it further.

It's difficult to face those prejudices because not only will you feel maybe some shame about things you hold onto, embarrassment, but you may feel you're also judged by others or even isolated because of how you express yourself.

In a world where there is much oppression and dominance of authority, students don't want to be associated with those types of institutions.

The Shame and Embarrassment

There's embarrassment about someone who may have reduced barriers to life. Who have fewer restrictions in accessing resources and opportunities. That speaks to the shame you often feel.

There's difficulty in looking at how your environment growing up has formed some of that too. How that little comment from family members about something, some shaming that was done within the family, or isolation that was done in the family, may feel embarrassing. Something you wish to distance yourself from. So it's hard to look into those spaces.

Blind Spots Are Hard to See

This comes back to looking at the difficult thing in looking at your blind spots. The difficulty looking at those areas where you don't realise how you're coming across or how you're communicating.

And yet such valuable work to be spending time looking into that.

It varies with everyone starting on different levels of the courses about their preconceived ideas of what they understand as their blind spots or not.

Defensive Reactions

Overall, what's most difficult is people get defensive. Or have defensive reactions. Therefore don't look in those spaces or justify certain things or stay silent in shame.

If they're unable to bring or share what is a genuine experience or genuine feeling for them, and you're thinking about your own very intimate learning environment (a training environment where you're looking at human emotions and feelings, being vulnerable, maybe even showing those hurt parts of yourself), bringing that into the group space may feel daunting if not scary.

Yet the student that's able to do that, to bring parts of that, is really trusting and leaning into the trusting of the group that they will hold them. That takes courage.

Equally, you may find yourself corrected on how you see yourself or see a situation. That may feel difficult to bear, in that you're somehow perceiving yourself as being wrong.

Again, the judgement words around that evoke a lot. You have to be mindful: this is a learning process, a development, not a final piece. Things aren't right or wrong. There's an evolution of learning.

Why Online Courses Are Amazing

That's why the courses are so amazing. When delivered online, you have access to a variety of individuals with various backgrounds from not only across the UK but internationally as well. You're able to learn. You're able to listen. You're able to evolve your understanding of others.

This feels really exposing, this whole process of bringing this.

The Fear You're Not Good Enough

If you're looking at the entry level for counselling qualifications, it may feel your requirement is to love everybody, admire everybody, think everybody's doing amazingly, and have a very non-judgemental all-pervading approach.

Any hint that maybe there's some underlying assumptions, presuppositions, or prejudices means you're not good practitioners.

What you develop early on is very much the idea that looking at your blind spots, looking at parts of yourself, is actually the work.

It's actually noticing you have them. That only makes you better counsellors in the long run.

But until that's realised, it will feel very exposing.

You may feel challenged by the belief that you're just as vulnerable to comparison as anyone else is.

At least you don't act on it. You identify it, understand it, disseminate it to better understand yourself and connect with your clients.

What Prejudices, Fears, and Issues Actually Look Like

There are a lot of personal issues that come up.

There are certainly judgements regarding sex, gender, money, social media, class. Just some examples of what people talk about.

Gender

Commonly at the moment, there's greater discussion regarding gender and how that's become redefined in many ways. Some students may find that challenging to re-conceptualise or recalibrate for this new language and what it means.

Addiction

Addiction is another part. Often addiction is seen as typically bad, harmful. There's a lot of judgement around those who are in active addiction in whatever form that is.

Abuse

Abuse too is something that polarises students in whatever form that may be.

This is not about approval by any means or disapproval. It's about that some clear moral boundary lines start to appear. The differences in people's principles, morals, and ethical behaviour come more and more to the surface.

Education and Personal Histories

Assumptions around education and personal histories all show up in the conversations.

Access to Resources

There's also pain for those who have access to greater opportunities and resources in recognising that for other students who don't have that access or have reduced access, there's an aspect of the other person's life they won't have access to.

There's only so much they could ever understand. At certain points, they can never empathise completely.

That feels like failure sometimes. And yet it's also recognition you have limitations to your experiences. That's okay. That's an area you take away and say: well, maybe I need to go and learn a bit more about that separately.

Links to Your Own Material

This links back to the post about realising your own material, what gets in the way. This is exactly what those things are. This links profoundly: what other things are getting in the way? Prejudice and assumptions hugely come up and will hugely get in the way.

Looking at Blind Spots

Ultimately, what you're looking to do is look at your blind spots. Notice what about yourself you're slightly unaware of. Not the stuff you are aware of, but the things you're trying to keep out of sight.

Look at those and say: these will show up. The version of you that sits in your personal or professional life will show up in your practitioner relationships, your therapeutic relationships.

How do you begin to notice that so you address it, put it to one side, then deal with it in self-reflection or through personal therapy?

The idea is that with that moved to one side, you develop a greater level of connection and empathic understanding with the other.

This is the primary role you're trying to do here: how do you actually create greater empathy? How do you actually increase your respect and that unconditional positive regard you talk about?

It's not about simply offering it to the other. It's about being able to offer it to the other by removing those blocks from that happening.

You have to look in these particular spaces, these parts of yourself which are uncomfortable: assumptions and prejudices. Through that process, you have a deeper relational experience with the other. Being able to connect further.

Even in the congruence of saying that there are parts of those other experiences that are out of your access. You're not able to experience what it's like to be in those situations. But stating that is honest and very real.

How to Actually Work With This

The Whole Trajectory of the Course

In terms of how to actually work with this, a lot of the whole trajectory of the course is very much thematic around this. How do you look at yourself further? Where do you start looking?

The first thing to say on these courses is very much: with curiosity, generosity, and compassion. Not with judgement or disrespect, but simply inquisitiveness about yourself.

To explore it, simply begin to look and notice how often maybe you're holding onto common assumptions. Where you're holding onto some prejudice you'd maybe have felt some shame over.

Notice that and think: okay, well, how might I deal with that?

Personal Therapy

One aspect, though it's not a requirement on the foundational courses, is personal therapy. A space to explore those bits of feelings and issues that come up and how you might work through them.

This is also replicated on the Level 4 course in supervision: seeing the patterns that come up with clients, because they certainly will there too, and giving information about what other things you're holding onto as practitioners that you need to deal with and address.

After Skill Sessions: Notice What Made You Uncomfortable

One of the most powerful things students at any level do is after skill sessions or after client work: simply note down any aspect that made them feel uncomfortable. What sensation did they notice about themselves? What was going on for them?

This draws attention to some things. The line that maybe you draw, some threads together as they are. There's something here to explore in either supervision or personal therapy.

But it's about the continuous self-inquiry.

Accepting We Don't Have Objective Reality

Where this starts, though, a step back from this: accepting that you do not have access to objective reality.

Therefore, if you accept you don't have access to objective reality, you then have to accept you can only see things through your own experiencing. Your own filters, your own lenses, your own preferences.

This informs your interpretation.

Suffice to say, this defines that you're missing a lot of information.

You can liken it to a dog whistle. Humans can't hear the dog whistle. It's another frequency only dogs or other animals can hear. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's perceived and is there.

The same way is that just because you don't hear it or don't see it within yourself (things you're bringing to a conversation or therapeutic space or helping interaction) doesn't mean they aren't there.

You have to pay attention to what you notice. Not with reprimand or telling off or punishment, but to inquire about what may be happening that you need to pay attention to.

This may not be in every single instance or occurrence, but it may be that after a while you're noticing some pattern emerging that you need to dig into a bit further.

Understanding Your Filters

If you understand you don't have access to objective truth, and it's all through your subjective filters, you need to know what those filters are. Because they're going to block you.

It's about that philosophy of mind that helps you achieve that.

Plato reporting on Socrates said: "The unexamined life is not worth living." He said that at a time when he was inciting questions around the gods and their purpose and who they were. This caused a trial in which he was tried, convicted, and killed.

The underlying principle behind this example is that he knew you must challenge these things. Not because they must be destroyed, but because they must be understood and recognised.

To recognise you don't know everything all of the time. You don't have access to all of that. So you have to keep a more open mind about the unknown and the unseen. The out of sight.

This process, building upon your own material, building upon this in terms of your prejudices, is crucial to that.

What assumptions do you bring? What beliefs do you hold that are so common for you, they're so automatic, that you now need to pay attention to because they may begin to show up in your practitioner work, your therapeutic work, your helping work?

The Work Continues Forever

This work continues and is never done, never finished. Qualified counsellors continue to look at themselves and what they're bringing, what's happening for them. What are these judgements, feelings, all of this?

This isn't simply about naming and shaming or identifying prejudices or assumptions. This is about the ongoing work of what is being evoked in you that you need to better understand in order to bridge this communication with another.

The Feedback Loop

The feedback loop you have in skill sessions is crucial for this. Bits are offered. Bits are shed. Things you don't see.

It's not about right or wrong. It's about learning. Increasing your knowledge of self.

You do that through skill sessions. You do that through written work. You do that through focus group work about understanding the bits which are unseen and the bits you share. Look at both.

Willingness to Not Know Everything

There needs to be a willingness to believe you don't know everything. That in the feedback, in comments, in something you're hearing back, you entertain (because it's favourable to entertain) that there's a grain of truth in the feedback being offered.

The question is: what could it be that I am not seeing that this is drawing to my attention? How might I become more aware of this?

As a frame of thinking, this is far more useful than any defensive approach which says: "Well, that's awful. They're a terrible person for thinking that about me." Or rejecting it.

It's feedback. It's telling you something. It's communicating something. What might be true about it?

It's entertaining the question rather than building the brick wall.

This is uncomfortable and difficult, yet necessary in terms of progressing through the courses, but in terms of your career as a counsellor.

Expanding Your Capacity

That only allows you to expand your capacity to work with the majority of people.

Whilst you may find you're looking at what you perceive as faults about yourself, at the end of the day, it's by addressing them, identifying them, working through them, you're able to become better counsellors.

You need to entertain this. To be less afraid. To bring courage to those difficult conversations, those real conversations that are important to have.

Not About Switching Off

This is not simply about switching off something, a prejudice or an assumption. It's about identification and working through it. Challenging the assumptions. Looking at where they're coming from.

Checking validity. At the same time, checking that maybe that sits in a past that isn't present any longer. There are things you let go. Or, as you said, work through in supervision or personal therapy.

The Sharp Ridge of Training

This is the sharp ridge of training: the self-exploration. Not looking at the nice stuff, but looking at the tough stuff too.

Where you're looking to better understand yourself in order to put it to one side, work through it, but importantly to create a deeper, empathic, respectful connection with the other. To really hear and step into their shoes. To really be alongside them on their journey.

This very much is your ongoing work.

If anyone asks what qualifies you to be a counsellor or not, it will be this quality, amongst others: to look at oneself in order to be closer to another.

Ready to Progress Your Training?

If you're navigating CPCAB Level 2 and learning to notice your blind spots, acknowledge your prejudices without shame, and recognise that this ongoing self-inquiry is the work (not a failure), you're developing the courage and humility that distinguishes great counsellors.

When you're ready to progress to CPCAB Level 3, where you'll continue this self-exploration through personal therapy and supervision, working with deeper patterns and challenges, we'd love to support your journey. Our approach values the willingness to examine yourself, entertain feedback, and recognise that looking at your uncomfortable parts is what allows you to create deeper empathic connections with others.

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About The School of Counselling

The School of Counselling is a CPCAB-approved training centre and BACP member organisation, specialising in person-centred counselling training. We support students through their journey from Level 2 helper skills through to qualified practice, with experienced tutors who understand that exploring your prejudices and blind spots isn't about being a bad person, it's about being a better counsellor. We're committed to creating safe, non-judgemental spaces where you can bring honest, real conversations about the difficult parts of yourself.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does having prejudices mean I can't be a good counsellor?

No. What makes you a good counsellor is your willingness to look at those prejudices, identify them, and work through them. The version of you that sits in your personal or professional life will show up in your therapeutic relationships. The work is noticing that, addressing it, putting it to one side, then dealing with it in self-reflection or personal therapy. You're biologically wired for judgement and comparison. That's okay. But you work with it to better understand yourself and create deeper empathic connections.

How do I know what my blind spots are if they're hidden from me?

After skill sessions or client work, note down any aspect that made you feel uncomfortable. What sensations did you notice? What was going on for you? The feedback loop in skill sessions is crucial. Observers see things you don't. When you receive feedback, instead of getting defensive, ask: "What could it be that I'm not seeing that this is drawing to my attention?" Entertain that there's a grain of truth. Personal therapy also helps uncover patterns you miss.

What if I feel ashamed about my prejudices?

Approach this with curiosity, generosity, and compassion. Not with judgement or reprimand, but simply inquisitiveness about yourself. This is a learning process, a development, not a final piece. Things aren't right or wrong. There's an evolution of learning. Looking at your blind spots and uncomfortable parts is actually the work. It's noticing you have them that makes you a better counsellor in the long run. The shame comes from thinking prejudices make you bad, but actually addressing them is what qualifies you.

How do I work with prejudices I can't just switch off?

It's not about switching off. It's about identification and working through it. Challenging the assumptions. Looking at where they're coming from. Checking validity. Checking if that sits in a past that isn't present any longer. You don't have access to objective reality. You see things through your own filters. You need to know what those filters are because they'll block you. Work through them in supervision or personal therapy. Move them to one side so you can develop greater empathic understanding.

What does "entertaining the question" mean in practice?

When you receive feedback that feels uncomfortable or wrong, instead of building a brick wall ("That's awful, they're terrible for thinking that"), ask yourself: "What might be true about this?" You don't have to agree completely, but entertain that there's something you're not seeing. This frame of thinking is far more useful than defensive reactions. The feedback is telling you something, communicating something. What could it be? How might you become more aware? This willingness to not know everything, to believe there's a grain of truth in feedback, is what allows growth.