Running head: adolescent paper

Adolescent Paper
SW 3510
November 17, 2013
Lindsay Britcher
DY5085

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Throughout my adolescent years I experienced many life changing events. When I was
around the age of thirteen years old, I had a hard time finding where I fit in with my peers. I
wanted to be friends with many different people in school but I would always find myself
alienating myself from others. As a teen, I was bullied because I did not fit the ideal teenager
appearance; I was very awkward, overweight, short, and clumsy. I always found myself pushing
myself away from the people I thought were my friends. When I entered middle school, I was
able to find a group of people that were more like me. These students identified themselves as
the gothic style of people meaning they dressed in mostly black, listened to a rock style of music,
and didnt show much emotion. Although I didnt find myself to be gothic per say, I chose to
start dressing in the all black attire that my friends were wearing and began to listen to the music
that was popular with this group of people. Our group was made up of boys and girls of the same
age as I was.
As I started to be friends with this group, I was also going through some depressive times
in my life. In order to deal with these difficult times, I found myself starting to self-mutilate. This
was something that I was never exposed to before until I met my new group of friends. One of
the girls that I became friends with was cutting herself and when I asked why, she explained to
me how it made her feel. She told me that it was a release of anger for her and a way to feel in
control, she was not doing this to commit suicide nor was she suicidal. This sounded like
something that could help me find myself and experience this self-control that I was lacking at
the time. I began cutting myself without anyones knowledge. I decided that if I was going to go
through with this, I would have to cut in places where I was able to hide, such as my inner thighs
and my shoulders and I also could not let my family know and I only allowed a few of my
friends to know about this.

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As time progressed, I found myself spending more time alone in my room, away from
my family, cutting myself. After months of doing this I decided that I needed to get help because
this was becoming a problem as well as an addiction. I sought the help of our school counselor
and she was able to help me though my self-mutilation without needed to inform my family. As I
look back on this today, I see that my self-mutilation was a form of Erick Ericksons Theory of
Identity Development (Alfonso, 2007). According to this theory, identity diffusion can lead to
suicide or suicide attempts, but once personal identity is found, the person can move on from this
stage which is what I did. Since I faced my battle with cutting, I have not thought about going
back to doing this. This is a very hard issue to solve and more on from but it has made me
stronger in my life.
Later in my adolescent years around the age of sixteen, my parents separated. According
to the United States Census of 2000, 27% of households in the United States were made up of a
single parent with children. My parents separated when I was a young child around six years old,
but I knew in my heart this time was different. My mother moved out of our house and my sister
and I continued to live in our childhood home with our father. This time in my life was very
difficult because I was torn between my two parents. My family eventually revealed that my
mother realized she was a lesbian and left my father to pursue her life as a lesbian. This was a
very difficult life changing event for my sister and me. At the time, this was a very diverse
situation that I did not understand and neither did my friends. I had not known any adult lesbians
who were living successful a live, causing great anxiety for myself. I had a very hard time
attempting to figure out what had happened between my mother and father, and what I could
have done to change this. As I found out more about my mother and how she cheated on my

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father with a woman, I was very resentful towards her. I felt that my mother could have chosen to
stay with my father at least until we were grown enough to understand better.
During this time I felt that my mother should have been around to support me in
my life decisions, such as who I dated, where I was living, who my friends were, but she was not
around. I felt as if she abandoned me. As odd as it sounds, I was a teenager asking for the very
strict lifestyle that my mother had raised my sister and I in until she left us. I felt that I needed
support and rules in order to life my life by. Although I was living with my father, he began to
date other woman shortly after my parents separation. I understood why my father wanted to
date and more on with his life but he was gone all of the time leaving me to tend to my sister
who was two years younger than me. I was the main care taker of the house at sixteen years old.
Along with caring for the home, I was managing my fathers money and paying the bills because
this was something he did not know how to do, since my mother had always done the finances.
Since I was forced to grow up so fast and become a young adult on the spot I became a very
independent person who learned to rely upon myself. My independence was the cause of me
moving out of my family home at the age of eighteen being fully self-sufficient.
I found that the learning theory most related with what I had to deal with being the
product of a divorce. According to Watson and Greeff ,(2004)when adolescents were able to
relate to their mothers, their adjustment was better than those who were unable to relate. I found
this rather interesting because I had a very difficult time adjusting to the fact that my parents
were now divorced and my mother was a lesbian. I also believe that my mother had a difficult
time adjusting to her own personal decision because her family and many of her friends turned
against her because of how she left my sister and I to fend for ourselves.

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References
Alfonso, Moya L., "The tip of the blade: Self-injury among early adolescents" (2007). Graduate
School Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/597
Census. (2000) Marriage and divorce rates by country: 1800 to 2008.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1337.pdf
Watson, N.M. & Greeff, A.P. (2004) An analysis of schema theory and learning theory as
explanations for variance in adolescent adjustment to divorce. The American Journal of
Family Therapy, Volume 32, Issue 5. Doi: 10.1080/01926180490455484