The 6 great challenges of adolescence that shape our personality

When we reach adolescence, with the bodily and psychological changes of puberty that we experience, we simply can no longer maintain the same identity than when we were children. At that moment the ability to distinguish our own self, our identity, and the idea we have of ourselves enters into crisis.

And, as if that were not enough, the others begin to treat us differently. And as adolescents we have to clarify ourselves in the midst of the complex tasks that the adult world imposes on us today.

Changes, pressures, intense emotions, fights and other events typical of age put even our elaborative mechanisms in crisis, the way we have to face conflicts, pressures and losses.

The 6 most transformative challenges: from child to adolescent

The child-today-growing-up must face six fundamental tasks. Some are more difficult to solve than others and some are only typical of our western society. Knowing and understanding the six challenges that our young people go through can surely help us understand and support them in this vital phase of their growth.

1. First task: achieve an identity

It is undoubtedly the most complex and fundamental. Because the end of adolescence means, above all, on a psychological level, having acquired, built and structured the permanent foundations of our own personality.

2. Second task: the dependency-autonomy relationship

It is necessary to take a position in the face of the constant conflict between dependency and autonomy: how much, to what extent and on whom to be dependent. And to what degree and in what situations to be autonomous.

Many teenagers fail at this second task. The current social and political crisis does not help. There are boys and girls who remain anchored in excessive dependence.

The ninis of a few years ago were a good example of this. Postadolescents who do not study, work, or create an independent family, are a more modern version. However, most young people try to act and seek independence. And that they don’t have it easy.

3. Third task: a new relationship with the body

The body is changing during these years and, in a society so dominated by the importance of body aesthetics and that values ​​it much more than emotional aesthetics and ethics, this is a difficult challenge.

It supposes for the adolescent, and those around him, doubts and suffering: Will I grow enough? When will the pimples go away? Will my breasts, my penis, my shoulders, my hips be big or harmonious enough?

The aches and pains of growing up accelerated body that usually occurs at some point in those years have just complicated the task.

4. Fourth task: another form of psycho-sexuality

Integrating with the new body also implies integrating sexualitydo, rather, a new form of psycho-sexuality, because sexuality is lived from the beginning.

And that happens with stages and conflicts: psycho-sexuality and sex can become more urgent and unpredictable, although they end up evolving towards a personalized attitude. The final result is a psycho-sexuality less marked by urgency and exhibitionism or aggressiveness, more adult.

5. Fifth task: a lifestyle of your own

The adolescent seeks, gropes and tries a new way of relating and living. You need to clarify and integrate a lifestyle that is your own, with which to identify during adolescence and adult life.

Hence the importance of “urban tribes” and youth organizations: goths, gangs, squatters, soccer players, skating and surfing groups, environmentalism or politics…, which tend to become, not just ideas, but ways of life; not only in gangs, but in families.

6. Sixth task: choosing a partner

It is not necessary to consume and establish a relationship. But yes, at least, a certain personal tendency with respect to how that couple should be. Or regarding misogyny, isolation and loneliness.

And what about the neurological process?

If all goes well, between the ages of 19 and 22 the adolescent will have overcome all these situations. The personality will already be almost formed, although it can be reshaped by important events in the future.

The integration of the personality also coincides with the end of key neurological processes such as massive neural apoptosis of adolescence: ldeath of millions of nerve cells.

And also for the latest neurogenesis (growth of neurons and brain nuclei), produced in key circuits of the central nervous system.

The way to face pleasures, conflicts and losses, the way of reacting and relating, and the defense mechanisms will have been structured in a certain way and will tend to remain stable throughout life. Also at the brain level.

Families and society at the fore

This entire process almost always works fine. But that it works well and, above all, that this set of processes ends well, does not mean there are no problemsconflicts, suffering… How else could it be, given the complex tasks and processes we have described?

For this reason, family or social disruption is an enormous complication for adolescents. Hence, the support capacities of society and the family are so important at this stage.

Hence also the importance that society understands the complex psychosocial transition that is also for adults, the adolescence of their minors.

Overcoming the conflicts, challenges and suffering of adolescence represents a true “postgraduate” that, as parents, we should all go through.