In Erickson's Stages of Psychosocial Development, his fifth stage of Identity vs. Role Confusion, truly defines what's going on during this time in a person's life. In adolescence, we begin to develop different identities other than the identities of our family members, and try to understand our true sense of self, who we are, what we stand for, and what we want to do with our lives. As we experience different things we learn something new about ourselves that helps us better understand our identity. This is a lifetime process in learning who we are or as Erickson says, is a "forever-to-be-revised" sense of self.
Growing up I always wanted to have and/or do things that was different from everybody else. I was the first person in my school to get their navel pierced when my mom took me at the young age of 13. Followed by the peircing of my tongue at 14. By getting peircings I was in my own way expressing myself. I never followed a particular crowd and got along with all kinds of different people and personalities. I don't remember ever spending that much time withdrawing into my bedroom which I guess is a common habit performed by teens. During my teenage years I was extremely angry and I'm very thankful I found a way to channel that anger through sports. If I didn't have my school soccer and track teams I really doubt I would have graduated high school because I wouldn't of had to maintain a certain GPA in order to participate in any extracurricular event.
I feel every teenager should participate on some sort of team whether it be a sports team or math olympiad. By doing this we have to trust the people around us and accept our peers as people we can have faith in, which all adolescents look for and need during these crucial years of puberty and in finding their own identities. By performing on a team I believe it will make the path towards finding the identity we all look for as a teenager somewhat easier and also more fullfilling.
No comments:
Post a Comment