By: Diana García
Sometimes you may wonder what is normal during adolescence, if the things you feel or are going through your mind happen to others. In order to know if the things that are happening to you are normal or not, let’s summarize some of the especial characteristics of adolescence:
• Search of yourself and your identity
Introspection. Now you search deeper inside your inner self. To find yourself means knowing that you have control of yourself. One of the main tasks is to develop a self-concept that gradually incorporates to the conceptions others have from you. It also implies to incorporate your values, the past and your life experience.
• Tendency to Groups
It is normal, during adolescence to look for a group that offers you security and self-esteem. During this stage you tend to be in fashion, to follow habits, vocabulary and other things that are used in your group of friends.
• Need to have fantasies
To dream awake is a special characteristic of adolescence; it will allow you to have an emotional readjustment, it means, to accommodate your feelings and emotions. It is also a defense mechanism, when you do not know what to do or you feel you are going through a critical experience, the best thing to do is to escape from reality.
• Religious Crisis
During this period you tend to rationalize everything that happens, so you question all religious values, you can even think that God does not exist, and you feel attracted to all the ideologies that seem to be modern or advanced.
• Temporary Confusion
During adolescence it is normal to live in the present time, everything is urgent; NOTHING can be left for tomorrow. For this reason it is important to develop the capacity to wait and above all, create a life project.
• The awakening of sexual instinct
When you discover or accept your genitality you will start looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or at least you will be more interested in people from the opposite sex. The so called “LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT” also appears, but it is just a simple attraction to the opposite sex.
All these things are normal, it means that it is common these things happen to most of the adolescents, so you are not A STRANGE BEING, you are only changing.
Bibliography
ABERASTURY. “La adolescencia normal”. PAIDOS.
