The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 2 148 experiences of microaggressions. Dogan-Dixon has experienced gendered racial microaggressions from clients, peers, and supervisors in various counseling settings across her training. She initially struggled to address microaggressions in the moment because of potential rejection and backlash; with practice, however, she has learned to address microaggressions in multiple ways, including caring confrontation. She now educates others on how to navigate microaggressions in personal and professional settings. In harnessing the interpretive nature of van Manen’s (2016) approach, instead of bracketing these biases, we embraced them as part of the process (Prosek & Gibson, 2021). Participants Participants included six CITs from CACREP-accredited counselor education programs in the United States. Sampling was purposive for the phenomenon under investigation (Prosek & Gibson, 2021), and all participants met the eligibility criteria of being enrolled in a CACREP-accredited master’s program with a specialty in clinical mental health or school counseling, being enrolled in or completed practicum or internship in their program, and having lived experience of microaggressions from clients in the counseling process. Constructivist qualitative studies tend to have smaller sample sizes that allow for more depth of understanding and intriguing findings (Boddy, 2016). Though we recruited from across the United States, our resulting sample consisted of participants from the Southern region of counselor education programs. Participant ages ranged from 26–30 years. Self-named gender identity included one female, two cisgender female, two cisgender male, and one participant who did not specify gender. Selfnamed sexual orientation included one straight, one lesbian, two bisexual, and two who did not specify. Participants self-identified their racial/ethnic identities as Hispanic (one), Hispanic/Latina (one), Black/ Afro Latino (one), Caucasian (one), and White (two). Those who answered the question of other relevant identities named student or partnership status. Participants were entered into a drawing for one of three $15 Starbucks gift cards after completion of the second interview as a token of appreciation for their time. Participant Recruitment Sackett obtained human subjects research approval from her university of employment’s IRB. Sackett then recruited participants by sending two rounds of emails explaining the purpose of the study to contacts from 387 CACREP-accredited master’s programs in the United States with specialty areas in clinical mental health and school counseling. The email requested the faculty member send the recruitment email with the purpose of the study and a note about what participation entailed to their master’s students who were currently enrolled in, or had completed, practicum or internship in their program. Inclusion criteria included the experience of a microaggression from a client, regardless of marginalized identity(ies) of the CIT. The email asked CITs to contact Sackett if interested in participation. When participants contacted Sackett, she completed the informed consent process and referred them to Mack to schedule the first interview. Ten individuals contacted Sackett with interest in participating in the study. However, four of the initial 10 individuals reported not having experiences of microaggressions to share after hearing the definition of a microaggression from Mack (see Data Collection below). Data Collection Mack conducted two interviews over Zoom with each participant. Two interviews per participant allowed for sustained engagement with the phenomenon, and interviews were spaced from 1 to 3 weeks apart per participant to allow time for reflection between the interviews. This resulted in 12 interviews. Each participant answered demographic questions during the first interview that requested gender, age, race/ethnicity, any other relevant identities, and pseudonym. To begin each interview, Mack broached her identities with participants (Day-Vines et al., 2007) and verbally gave participants a definition of microaggressions as intentional or unintentional ongoing verbal or nonverbal offensives experienced by individuals of a marginalized group (Ratts et al., 2016). Interview questions were centered on
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