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Blog: UB Co-Owner Gives Consultation to Student on Teen Identity Development

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Note: As part of UB's continuing commitment to community education on issues around counseling, recently UB's Joyce Marter helped a local Chicago student with a paper on the developing identities of teenagers. Additionally, UB provides adolescent counseling to Chicago area students, and has made children, adolescent, and family therapy an integral part of UB's practice.)

by Tess Thompson

As human beings, people are constantly changing and adapting to fit new surroundings and understandings of the world. Some of the changes viewed by many as the most important in life are those undergone when a person learns about themselves and who they truly are. This process is commonly known as finding yourself, but its connotations, effects, and causes are not always completely clear in general use.

“The phrase ‘finding yourself’ would be about getting in touch with your authentic self, who you truly are on a deeper level,” Joyce Marter, a psychotherapist and cofounder of the counseling group practice Urban Balance, www.urbanbalance.org, said. “We all have false selves or facades that we put on in various roles in our lives, and our authentic self is a deeper, more consistent, more true version of ourselves.

For teens, there can be many reasons for fabricating a false self.

“Sometimes the desire to please others, whether it is parents or teachers or friends, [can cause teens to] behave or think in a way that they believe will gain approval from others, rather than being true to how they are really feeling on their own,” Marter said.

However, pressure from people close to a teen can also cause positive effects that may aid a teen in self understanding.

“When I was a freshman, I was really shy and reserved, and I was really afraid to try new things,” Karen Li, Adv. 018, said. “But I started making friends and they encouraged me to try new things and I tried new things with them, and I discovered that I have really good leadership abilities that I kept building on. I am definitely more confident now.”

Society can also play a role in dissuading teens from remaining true to their authentic selves.

“There are expectations that are placed by our culture and media and community that may give teens an idea of how they should be,” Marter said.

Even so, outside influences might not be able to completely alter who a person becomes.

“I think you naturally have a set of morals and you are not going to lose them,” Andreas Kavouras, Adv. 012, said, “and if you have certain interests and certain likes, you are not going to lose them [either].”

The feedback a teen gets from people who are close to them can also affect how true they remain to themselves.

“Part of how we all figure out who we are is by people who are close to us mirroring back to us how they see us and understand us,” Marter said.

The presence or absence of this feedback can change how aware teens are of themselves.

“If a teen has parents or friends or family or teachers who are positively mirroring back to [him or her] how they see [him or her], and what they see that their strengths are, that is going to help the teen develop a better sense of identity,” Marter said. “If a teen is lacking that, then [he or she] may struggle to try to figure out what they are good at, what their personality style is.”

However, Marter does not believe that the teenage years are the most difficult to deal with when attempting to understand oneself.

“In the mid 20’s, I think that is a time where people are assuming more responsibility,” Marter said. “They may have finished college, they may be working their first nine-to-five real job, they may be dealing with financial responsibility and having to manage more aspects of their daily life, like paying bills, and doing laundry, and having real adult relationships. So I would say that perhaps that time might be a really challenging time.”

Still, the teenage years do play an important role in self discovery.

An article on social.jrank.org describes this role and how it relates to the other developmental stages of identity. In the adolescent years, it says, there are changes and opportunities that allow teens to think about their future and develop an identity that will be a basis for the rest of their lives.

Lack of a fully developed understanding of one’s self can lead to difficulties in every aspect of life.

“Say, for example, if [people who do not fully understand themselves] are going off to college and they have to pick a major, they might not know what they are good at or know what they like or know what they want to do when they are older,” Marter said.

According to Marter, the remedy to an insufficient understanding of oneself is to develop a better vision of one’s life and make any necessary changes so that it is congruent with one’s true self. Northside students, as well as all other teens, must understand that nobody is perfect and everyone is a work in progress.

“A person who does not understand [himself] well, it is just because they have not had enough time yet, because it [self understanding] all just grows through time and experience,” Kavouras said.

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Blog: UB Co-Owner Gives Consultation to Student on Teen Identity Development