Identity, self esteem and adolescence

One of the interesting aspect of adolescence is that during this phase of life, the journey to explore one’s identity begins. Adolescents starts exploring their identity beyond their parents, things that are told to them or are expected out of them; it might lead to struggles, conflicts and lot of questioning which can be a great thing if they are engaged in conversations with open mind. With this thought, we began our gender, sexuality and reproductive health program with adolescent boys and girls of Choti Si Khushi in Dwarka.

The session on ‘Who am I?’ started with pass the ball game and sharing ‘one crazy thing you have done’. Since it was beginning, the participants were little hesitant in opening up so the answers were ‘I like reading books’ ‘I love studying’ ‘I enjoy watching TV’ which is very normal as for any individual as they wanted to give their best first impression. However with little heads up – the real answers started pouring in-

‘I love troubling my elder brother’

‘I don’t really like cooking food so when someone asks me to cook food, I purposely add more spices in it’

‘When someone shouts at me or scolds me – I feel like hitting them’

‘I don’t like teachers’

‘I have bunked classes, it’s fun to sneak out’

In the next part, the participants were asked to fill pre assessment forms which made them curious, conscious, worried and in a way piqued their interests for coming sessions.

Post this, the participants were invited to created their identity maps- it was surreal to see them so focused on the points that they associate with themselves. While sharing their identity maps, their enthusiasm was enticing – some of them wanted to become doctor, teachers, scientists, dancer etc while their hobbies were dancing, singing, performing – it was like this immense pool of talent ready to be harnessed, the energy was captivating as it inspiring you to do more.

Almost everyone got a partner with shared identity! On asking how does it feel to have common identity points, one of the participants shared, “It’s good to have common thoughts, someone thinks in the same way as me. We enjoy same interests.”

We then engaged on understanding how our identities change over course of time- while few aspects may remain same but part of it is dynamic and mobile.

In the next activity, a story encompassing the journey of a girl from her adolescence to adulthood was shared. The idea was to understand the importance of the values that we learn during adolescence and to carry them for cementing our identity and may be a successful future self.

Do you remember the last time someone praised you or said something good about you? Do you remember someone appreciating you just like that without you doing anything for that person? Do you remember being praised for who you really are? Have you appreciated yourself in past few days? I am sure it will take a good deal of time to answer these questions and may be the answer is in negative! And though we would never acknowledge but good genuine words really do impact us. So in our last activity we invited participants to write ‘the good they see in themselves’ – to make the process easier we listed the qualities on a chart paper.

I was so happy to see the participants writing numerous qualities, inquiring about them, wondering about what can more be added! One thing that surprised me was when one of the participants wrote a quality for himself that wasn’t there on the chart paper – these moments are proof that such spaces are so needed for adolescents to spread their horizon, understand and increase their capacities and pave way to become more reasonable individuals.