Troubled Adolescence: Myth Or Reality?

All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, go through a troubled adolescence. When I talk about troubled I don’t mean that it was bad or unpleasant. There are people who like troubled things.

Adolescence is considered a period of development between childhood and adulthood and undoubtedly constitutes a difficult stage in people’s development.

The adolescence phase is long. It starts a little before age 13 and ends a little after age 19, although this period varies according to the authors. This is a transitional phase, as we will see later.

What seems clear is that, without being children, and without being considered adults by society, young people face a period of constant change. These changes occur in the physical, social and psychological spheres.

Adolescence is a transition phase to adulthood

There are many ways to consider the concept of transition. The fact that adolescence is a universal experience leads to the position that calling it a transition is sensible.

Transitions have several characteristics and involve:

• An enthusiastic anticipation of the future.
• Feeling of regret for the phase left behind.
• A feeling of anxiety about the future.
• A significant psychological readjustment.
• Ambiguity of social status during transition.

All of these characteristics are curiously true in adolescence. Adulthood attracts and with it come the freedoms that seem very interesting. However, there is also sadness for what he went through.

This is because within every teenager there is a child struggling to get out. Young people worry about what is to come, perhaps now more than ever. Therefore, this article was entitled “troubled adolescence”.

When jobs, housing, and relationships seem uncertain, it’s not surprising that teenagers fear the future. Over the course of the teen years, substantial psychological readjustment is required.

This psychological readjustment manifests itself in all spheres: in the family, with friends, with adults and, certainly, in the relationship with the very sense of identity.

So I think it makes sense to consider adolescence as a transition. I also recognize that within this phase there are many milestones that have important meanings for further adaptation.

Troubled Adolescence: The Self and Identity

How young people understand and perceive themselves has a powerful effect on their later reactions to various life events. There is in them an essential dilemma between playing the proper roles and the “I”.

Troubled adolescence is a time when a person struggles to determine the exact nature of his or her self. She needs to consolidate a series of choices into a coherent whole that constitutes her essence as a person. This essence is clearly different from parents and other formative influences.

Without this process towards individuality, the young person can experience depersonalization. In this socialization process, the various adults with whom the teenager interacts are role models for him. Also important are the functions of the “I”, the perceived competence and the coherent identity.

The teenager and his immature thinking

In some ways, teenage thinking is strangely immature. They can be rude to adults, have trouble deciding what to wear, and often act as if the whole world revolves around them.

According to psychologist David Elkind, this immaturity of thought manifests itself in at least six characteristic ways. Let’s see what they are:

• Idealism and critical character. As teenagers imagine an ideal world, they realize how far the real world is from that idea.
• Tendency to discuss. Teenagers are constantly looking for the opportunity to test and demonstrate their new formal reasoning skills.

• Indecision. Teenagers can keep many alternatives in mind at the same time. Due to their inexperience, they lack effective strategies to choose between them.
• Apparent hypocrisy. Young adolescents often do not recognize the difference between the expression of an ideal and the sacrifices that are necessary to live up to it.
• Self-awareness. Now they are able to reason about thinking, theirs and other people’s. However, they often assume that others are thinking the same thing they are.
• Assumption to be special and invulnerable. Teenagers feel that they are special, that their experience is unique, and that they are not subject to the rules that govern the rest of the world.

In light of this information, therefore, it is not difficult to understand why adolescence can become troubled. Troubled adolescence is a reality, not a myth. It is a period of transition to adulthood, with all the uncertainty involved. Furthermore, the thinking is not yet mature and young people need to establish their identity.