It is important to look at and know the different life stages that a person will go through if you plan to be a social worker. This is because each client will be different and knowing yourself and where you have been and where you are going will help you to work better with them. It is also important to know the different theories because they can be applied to each person that you will meet. Knowing about the theories allows you to be able to gain more insight as to why a person may be going through or doing some things. This paper will work to explain my personal self, going through the different life stages and then the application of theories and how they have played a role in life experiences.
The stage I have most recently gone through was the stage of Early Adolescence. During this stage the developmental tasks include the following physical maturation, formal operations, emotional development, membership in the peer group and romantic and sexual relationships. I feel that during this stage of my life I was able to complete many of the different developmental tasks. During early adolescence I was going through my high school years so I was learning how to deal with new friend groups and how to work through so many different emotions. It was also the time I had my first real boyfriend so I was learning what a relationship was like and what it meant to gravitate my way through a relationship. I feel like I did well going through these different task. (Newman)
The current stage in which I am going through is Later Adolescence, the developmental tasks of this stage are autonomy from parents, gender identity, internalized morality, career choice. This stage is happening now and going through my college years and the first few years I will spend outside of college. Coming to college for me was a time to step away from the views of my parents and learn to see things for myself and create my own ideas about what are right and wrong. Career choice is also an important developmental task that I am currently going through. At the start of college, I had other plans for my life, now that I have matured and had more time to find my niche I realized that the younger me was not correct about career choice. So during this stage I do feel that I was able complete most all of the developmental tasks, however I have not decided exactly where I want to go with my career but I know that I want to be a social worker. (Newman)
The stages that I will be going through in the coming years are Early, Middle and Later Adulthood and also Elder hood. During Early Adulthood the developmental tasks include exploring intimate relationships, childbearing, work, lifestyle. Next, there is the Middle adulthood stage, this is the time where a person will be managing a career, nurturing an intimate relationship, expanding caring relationships and also managing a household. There is also Later Adulthood which entails that a person is accepting of their life, learning to move toward a new role or activity, intellectual vigor and thinking more about death and what that entails. Lastly, there is the stage of Elder hood, this is the time that someone is learning to handle physical stages of aging, gaining a psych historical perspective and you are moving through a time you have not experienced. (Newman)
When going through the different stages of life it is almost impossible to not hit some roadblocks along the way. I think that as I was going through Early Adolescence I had a hard time finding my spot in different peer groups. I did not follow along with the crowd that I once hang out with in middle school. This was difficult for me because I had to learn that it was okay to not always follow the crowd and fit in with everyone else. The barriers that I face in the stage I am currently going through, Later Adolescence, has been autonomy from my parents. This is because I was always held at close reigns to my parents so it was hard for me to navigate my way through life without having to look to them for all of their opinions and approval of every little thing that I did.
I am still working with a few of the developmental tasks that are a part of the stage that I am currently going through. Autonomy from my parents is something that I think I will continue to go through. They still fund all of the things that I do so it is important for me to feel as if I have their approval of the things that I do. I also am working on career choice and where in the field of social work I want to go. I know certain things about myself such as I like to work with kids, however, I also enjoy something that is changing and fast paced. I want to find my niche and where I belong as a social worker.
When starting this theory paper I looked at the Social Learning Theory and the Cultural Theory and how they could be applied to suicide in adolescents. The Social Learning Theory focuses on how a person learns many things from watching and interacting with others, they begin to imitate the actions of those around them. The Cultural Theory looks at the behavior that groups have in common. Also, it looks at the culture in which a person is in shapes who they become. (Newman) It is interesting to look back into my life and use these different sources to look at some of the things that I went through. When I was in high school I had to learn a hard truth about my life long best friend. She had been dealing with self-harm and this was something that I never thought I would have to deal with so closely.
One of the articles that I looked at was about how adults could learn to deal with this issue. I think the article helped me because I was having to learn at a young age how to take on these feelings knowing that someone that I cared so deeply for was doing such a thing. (LeCloux)
Another article that I looked at was focused on how the personal relations that a person has can change the way that they will feel about self-injurious behaviors. I think that this article was completely right in what they said because as I learned this about the actions that that my friend was committing I was able to see a change in her once we began to talk more openly about them. She was able to use me as her backbone so to this day she will still text me to get validation that she is okay and that she does not have to keep going down the path of self-injurious behaviors. This article differed from my friend and I’s relationship because it said that typically people will distance themselves when they do this act. However, at first this is true for my friend but eventually once I knew about it, it only brought us together more because she comes to me in her times of distress and I can be that person that is always there for her. (Trepal)
Looking deeper into the idea of suicide and how it correlates to a person’s self-efficacy, it was interesting to see how I had witnessed this in my life. My friend had been rejected from her number one college and this was detrimental to her life because she felt that she could not reach her goals for her life. An article by Valois showed how this idea can be proven true in many cases. (Valios) Another interesting article I looked at focused on how the culture a person in can play a role in suicide. This was interesting when looking into my life because I come from a place that is focused heavy on religious aspects of life so suicide is not commonly mentioned. Like the article mentioned sometime it is the culture that frames how a person thinks about suicide. (Abrutyn) For me this was true because since suicide was not something ever really mentioned in my life when I hear about it or even self-injury I do not really know how to deal with the situations and how to help someone work through these feelings.
In conclusion, I feel like the life stages apply to social work in so many different ways because it is important to know the different stages and how to deal with people going through them. As a social worker it is imperative that you know how to help someone going through different stages and that you can work to help them maneuver their way through all of the different developmental tasks. I also think that the theories I looked at are revelant to the social work profession, clients and even myself because they focus on how a person learns through what they see in the social world and also how a person becomes who they are through the culture they enter into. All of these aspects are important as a social worker because knowing that each person is different and comes from a walk of like unlike yours will make you better able to serve them.