Reflection

Writing this blog was hard as I had to think a lot about my past, things that I have tried to forget. It has helped me to see some of the reasons behind my thought patterns that I was previously unaware of. It was very time consuming as well as I had to think about how each thing related to my life. I find it difficult to reveal things about my life especially on a public blog but for the most part I have been able to overcome that. I've been thinking about my life more and more as I have been writing the blog and the impact that my childhood and events that are currently happening have had on the way I think and feel. It was really difficult writing this, going over everything in my head. I don't think I would be able to do this again, apart from being so time consuming it also refreshed too many memories that I never want to have think about again.



Jess

Autobiography

I was born in 1991, being the first child I was a happy and content child. I was loved and cared for and I felt secure. My brother was born when I was 15months old and I began to feel left out. He used to cry most of the day whereas I was quite a good baby and I slept about 15hours a day! Nothing much happened during the first 3 years of my life, that I remember at least. I spent a lot of time with a babysitter when I was around 2 years old because my mum has gone back to work part time.

When I was four my uncle died. My cousin and I were 10days apart in age and we were (and still are) closer than sisters. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. Being so young it didn't affect me quite as much as it would if it had happened now but it affected my cousin a great deal. Her sister was 18 months old at the time and doesn't remember him.

Between the ages of four and eight my life was relatively uneventful. My sister was born just before I turned six and I remember feeling more and more left out. Being the oldest of the family I was basically left alone, even though at that time I craved my parents attention. At the age of eight I moved house and schools. I remember being petrified on my first day of school, not sure what to expect. I actually enjoyed it much more than my previous school and made lots of friends.

At the age of 11, just before moving to highschool things started to go wrong at home. My parents were arguing a lot. It started to affect me quite a lot, if anyone shouted at me or around me it would really upset me. I couldn't stand being told off at school. I used to bang my head against the wall in frustration.

At high school I fit in relatively well and had a lot of friends, I was still struggling with stuff at home but only my closest friend at school knew what was going on. I started shutting people out and finding it difficult to trust anyone. Things got worse at home and another family member started to physically abuse me. I was petrified of going home at night. I used to stay out for as long as possible if there were people at home or if I knew there was going to be noone home I would go there just to have peace and quite for a couple of hours.

One of the best experiences of my life happened at the end of year 9 (grade 8) when I went with the youth group from my church to a Christian youth festival called soul survivor. It was 5 days spent camping in freezing cold tents on lumpy ground with 11,000 other young people. We had to queue for half an hour for the showers and they were usually cold by that time! It was an amazing experience though, there were two meetings everydays which were like going to church. I met loads of new people and made new friends and really connected with the people in my youth group
A month after returning from soul survior, I had gone back to school and started my GCSE's. One day my mum said that she wanted to take me and my sister out for a coffee, which is something we'd never done before. It was over the coffee that she told us we were moving to India. I remember being in absolute shock and sitting there with tears streaming down my face. I couldn't accept the fact that I was moving away from everything I had ever known. My friends, my family, my boyfriend.

After that life continued as normal, I attended school, I hung out with my friends but there was like this big shadow hanging over me that I couldn't escape. I would be constantly thinking 'Is this the last time I'm going to this with this friend'. In May we left school even though school didn't end until July. That week was half term week so I spent a lot of time with my friends. At the end of the week we sent the container off with all our things and moved out of out house. We spent two weeks in Florida as a family as a last holiday before we moved. I was emailing and talking to my boyfriend a lot during that time and found it very hard to enjoy myself knowing that I would be moving to India very soon. After getting back to England we had exactly two weeks before we left for India. The time was spent saying goodbyes to all our friends and family. That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do and I cried so much those two weeks. I couldn't stand saying goodbye to all these people knowing that I wouldn't see them again for at least another year.

On arriving in India I hated it. I was desperate to leave and I just couldn't settle. I was struggling to make friends, something that I'd never had a problem with before, and I was so homesick it was just like a constant ache. Gradually it got better and I almost began to consider this as a home. I still refer to England as home and I still get homesick but it is nowhere near as accute as it was before.

We visited England for three weeks last summer and it flew by. We were travelling up and down the country visiting relatives and friends, trying to make time for everyone. It was really hard coming back but it was better knowing that I had friends to come back to. I wasn't going into the unknown.

This year has been quite difficult especially with all the health problems I have had. I had to have around 3 weeks off school which made my school work suffer. The same happened this semester and whilst I'm not doing as badly this semester as I was last time I am still struggling which maks me very stressed. As stress is a sort of trigger for my illness it's almost like a vicious circle!

Phenomenological perspective

The phenomenological perspective, and particularly the humanistic perspectives, sees humankind as being intrinsically good and self-perfecting. People are seen as being drawn towards growth, health, self-sufficiency, and maturity. This is a very OPTIMISTIC perspective which focuses on people’s POTENTIAL. People are seen as growing and evolving naturally towards greater beauty and more completeness.
The major themes and underlying assumptions of this perspective are:
There is a ‘self’ which has beautiful and unique form.
It is changing and growing. Everyone’s self is unique.
Once we provide a nurturing outer and inner environment, growth towards our higher selves occurs naturally.
We have enormous potential, possibility, and choice.
Uniqueness of Individuals: we view the world from our own unique perspective and our subjective experience of reality is very important. Phenomenology means “the subjective experience of individuals”.
We can and must exercise our free will. Some people think that they don’t have the capacity or ability to make life HAPPEN for themselves. Or they believe that past problems are insurmountable. Or they spend so much time regretting the past that they are blinded to the possibilities of the here and now and the future. This perspective takes the view that this is due to people losing sight of the free will they possess and not recognizing their own potential for change and growth.

It's amazingly hard sometimes to see past everything that has happened in the past and look towards the future. It feels like my past controls me and dictates who I am today, almost like it has some sort of hold on me. I know that this is not true when you look at it logically but thats how it feels. I know that if I want to move forward in my life then I need to let go of the past and not let it dictate my life but that is easier said than done a lot of the time. I'm not as tied to my past as I was before and I am able to look to the future and see what lies ahead. It's not easy but it's getting easier.

bibliography

"Introduction to Phenomenological Perspectives on Personality." 14 Oct 2003. 7 Apr 2008 http://wilderdom.com/personality/L10-0PhenomenologicalPerspectivesPersonality.html

Rogers conditional and unconditional positive regards

Unconditional Positive Regard: According to Carl Rogers, unconditional positive regard is when one person is completely accepting toward another person. This is not just a show of acceptance, but is an attitude that is then demonstrated through behaviour. Rogers indicated that for humanistic type of therapy to work, the therapist had to have this for the client

I think my parents showed my unconditional positive regard when I was a baby but as I grew older I stopped feeling like they loved me. I believe that they do they just don't know how to express that, they do not demonstrate their love and acceptance through their behaviour. I have a need to be loved yet because I don't feel that from my parents I feel deprived. I get jealous of other people's relationship with their parents, wanting to have that realtionship with mine.

Getting positive regard on "on conditions". Rogers calls conditional positive regard. Because we do indeed need positive regard, these conditions are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a shape determined, not by our organismic valuing or our actualizing tendency, but by a society that may or may not truly have our best interests at heart. A "good little boy or girl" may not be a healthy or happy boy or girl!
Over time, this "conditioning" leads us to have conditional positive self-regard as well. We begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with the standards others have applied to us, rather than if we are truly actualizing our potentials. And since these standards were created without keeping each individual in mind, more often than not we find ourselves unable to meet them, and therefore unable to maintain any sense of self-esteem.

I think the was I think has been determined by the fact that a lot of the time I was given conditional positive regard not unconditional positive regard. I wasn't always rewarded for being good but I was always punished for doing something wrong. I often feel like I can't meet the standards that other people have told me I should meet and that makes me feel like a failure in a lot of ways.

Bibliography

"The psychology students best friend." Alleydog.com. 6 Apr 2008 http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Unconditional%20Positive%20Regard.

Boeree, George. "Carl Rogers." 5 Apr 2008 http://www.crystalinks.com/rogers.html.

Maslow's heirachy of needs

Maslow has set up a hierarchy of five levels of basic needs. Beyond these needs, higher levels of needs exist. These include needs for understanding, esthetic appreciation and purely spiritual needs. In the levels of the five basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied, nor the third until the second has been satisfied, and so on. Maslow's basic needs are as follows:
Physiological Needs
These are biological needs. They consist of needs for oxygen, food, water, and a relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if a person were deprived of all needs, the physiological ones would come first in the person's search for satisfaction.
Safety Needs
When all physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure (such as widespread rioting). Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.
Needs for Love, Affection and Belongingness
When the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.
Needs for Esteem
When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.
Needs for Self-Actualization
When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.

Maslow says that you cannot go to the next level on the pyramid without achieving the previous one first. I don't think that, that is necessarily true. In my life I think that the majority is true though. I don't think that I have gone past the second level because I do not feel like I have a safe environment around me. I do think that I have perhaps achieved the third level though as I am able to love and I feel loved by my friends and some family memebers. I struggle to feel like I belong anywere, either to a particular group of friends or even a country. I do not have a very high self-esteem and I have certainly not achieved self-actualisation.

bibliography

Simons, Janet A. "Maslow's hierachy of needs." 1987. 4 Apr 2008 http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/maslow.htm.

Finkelstein, J. "Image:Maslow's hierarchy of needs.svg." 27 Oct 2006. 7 Apr 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs.svg.

Horney's basic evils

Horney's 10 basic evils

Indifference toward the child
Rejection of the child
Hostility toward the child
Obvious preferences for a sibling
Unfair punishment
Ridicule
Humiliation
Erratic behavior
Unkept promises
Isolation of the child from others

In my family I have a brother and a sister who always take priority over me. My sister is six years younger than me and so my parents believe that she needs a lot of attention being the baby of the family. However when I was here age I had a five year old sister who again needed more care and attention than me. They also pay a lot of attention to my brother because he constantly gets into trouble etc. I'm more of the 'good girl' who they never have to remind to do homework or anything so they almost just forgot about me. I used to be naughty deliberately just to get some attention.

Another thing is they would punish me for something my brother or sister did simply because I'm the oldest and I didn't stop the situation before it happened. That made me feel bad because I was being given someone else's punishment, when I was trying to be well behaved myself.

My parents have never been so good at keeping promises but it was mostly the small things they broke. For example if we wanted to stay up and watch a tv programme they would say you can stay up tomorrow night instead but we would be sent to bed at the same time. Not major things though, they've always been relatively good at keeping promises.

My parents have never rejected me, its more that they just pushed me to one side a little bit. My parents are not bad people and I do think they love me, they just don't know how to show it so often it doesn't feel like they love me at all.

One thing my parents have done is point out all my mistakes to people who visit the house and that is kind of humiliating sometimes. For example: I made a chocolate cake once that I've made a thousand times before and instead of putting coco powder in the icing I put coffee powder in! Now I know that this is funny but telling everyone who walks through the door can be humiliating especially seeing as I often cook for my family and thats the first mistake I have made!

bibliography

Sharma, Mataji. "Karen Horney." 2 Apr 2008

Boeree, George. "Karen Horney." 2006. 3 Apr 2008 http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/horney.jpg.

Adler's inferiority/superiority complex and compensation

Adlerian psychology assumes a central personality dynamic reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an ideal goal of significance, mastery, success or completion. Children start their lives smaller, weaker, and less socially and intellectually competent than the adults around them. They have the desire to grow up, to become a capable adult, and as they gradually acquire skills and demonstrate their competence, they gain in confidence and self esteem. This natural striving for perfection may however be held back if their self-image is degraded by failures in physical, intellectual and social development or of they suffer from the criticisms of parents, teachers and peers.
If we are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, we can afford to think of others. If we are not, if life is getting the best of us, then our attentions become increasingly focussed on ourself; we may develop an inferiority complex: become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on.
The inferiority complex is a form of neurosis and as such it may become all-consuming. A person with an inferiority complex tends to lack social interest; instead they are self-interested: focused on themselves and what they believe to be their deficiencies. They may compensate by working hard to improve in the skills at which they lack, or they may try to become competent at something else, but otherwise retaining their sense of inferiority. Since self esteem is based on competence, those who have not succeeded in recovering from this neurosis may find it hard to develop any self esteem at all and are left with the feeling that other people will always be better than they are

I have self-esteem issues. I do not think very highly of myself at all. I believe that is a mindset that has been created for me having grown up with people telling me that I am worthless. I never think myself as, as good as anyone else, I always think people are better than me. I find it very hard to accept compliments. I do, however, think of others, I have several friends and I always try to put their needs before mine.

We may also develop a superiority complex, which involves covering up our inferiority by pretending to be superior. If we feel small, one way to feel big is to make everyone else feel even smaller! Bullies, big-heads, and petty dictators everywhere are the prime example. More subtle examples are the people who are given to attention-getting dramatics, the ones who feel powerful when they commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc. Some resort to hiding their feelings of worthlessness in the delusions of power afforded by alcohol and drugs.

I've never developed a superiority complex. I've never believed myself to be superior to anyone.

bibliography
Mitchell, Gregory. "ALFRED ADLER & ADLERIAN INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY." 3 Apr. 2008 .

Ronald, Meyer. MODULE 2 DYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY. 1 Apr. 2006. 3 Apr. 2008 .