Confessions of a Teenager About Growing Up. “I’m Not Accepted”

In most responses, areas related to attitudes towards oneself and others come to the fore. This is a change in the perception of social relationships: of oneself in contact with peers and with the adult world. Growing up involves the gradual separation from parents and the search for one’s own place among people of the same age, who are the most important point of reference for an adolescent. This is accompanied by ambivalent feelings towards oneself and others.

The respondents’ answers indicated a strong need for close contact with other people, friendship and romantic love, with a simultaneous fear of rejection and being hurt, as well as the emergence of negative feelings towards others. Most of the respondents expressed the desire to be accepted by their peers. At the same time, half of the respondents felt misunderstood and unacceptable. The need for friendship, closeness between peers and, at the same time, the changes occurring in relationships between them were also emphasized by the girls tested. “We are disconnecting [rówieśników]our consciousness changes, new experiences appear, new people appear and our character changes, we no longer want to be like others. We start to think differently” (Iza, 14 years old).

Ania (14 years old) commented in a similar tone: “Now friendships are changing a lot, they are not so childish anymore, they are starting to be bilateral. I used to be very close, but now it is no longer possible “I know I don’t want to have friends who don’t give me anything anymore”. Weronika (13 years old) observes: “In the early grades it was easier to feel accepted, now I feel more and more that I am not accepted by others because I have different interests and like different things. I have to understand my emotions”.

Experiencing ambivalence in relationships with other people can be a source of much emotional tension and frustration. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that young people are redefining their self-perception – they are no longer children and their mature identity is only just beginning to take shape. This is, of course, part of the developmental process that

EH Erikson called it a moratorium period, a time when young people can freely seek answers to questions about their own identity and experiment, without committing to who and what they should be. This is a time of great excitement, but also of a range of fears, anxieties and ambivalent feelings.

Iza put it perfectly: “I don’t want to be the same. My mom says I’m a typical teenager. I don’t have to be special.” On the one hand, teenagers have a sense of their own uniqueness and uniqueness, while at the same time consciously controlling thoughts about their uniqueness. Young people on the threshold of adolescence say things like this about their self-image: “undefined,” “very unhappy,” “hiding,” “empty,” “I don’t know.” Uncertainty about oneself and one’s own identity is accompanied by difficulties in regulating emotions.

Most respondents perceive their own nerves as: “uncontrollable”, “delicate”, “messy”, “very weak”, “sometimes can’t handle it”, “dying”, “difficult to control” or “very tense”.

Making self-esteem more realistic

The search for one’s own identity, which coexists with emotional lability, is difficult for teenagers, but also for parents. Ania expressed this perfectly in her testimony: “Crying, sensitivity – it’s exhausting. However, the fact that I show emotions doesn’t mean that I can’t handle it, it just means that I’m going through something very difficult. And I’ve heard that I’m hypersensitive and maybe I should see a psychologist.” In turn, Iza says that growing up is: “It’s a mess, you don’t know what’s going on. I’m calm, and suddenly I get emotional with an advertisement with children, but sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks about who I am and why I exist.”

The change in perception of oneself and others is also associated with fear and concern that adolescents will not be able to maintain the role of so-called good students. Most of the interviewees indicated an increase in school demands and a change in teachers’ attitudes towards their results. Young people stated that they were overloaded with studies and that their parents, teachers and themselves had high expectations regarding their academic performance. By losing the previous childhood perception of themselves as students, young people gain the ability to self-reflect and develop new patterns of behavior. This allows them to “adapt to school expectations”.

Teenagers also begin to recognize their weaknesses and to compare their peers’ skills and abilities. They become more realistic in their self-esteem. How they will be perceived by their environment and whether they will find their place in the changing peer group and in the face of new demands from adults can be another potential source of conflict, emotional tension and fear.

Changes in self-perception are accompanied by changes in relationships with parents. They are also evaluated ambivalently: they are wonderful and good and/or desperate and do not understand anything: “My mother sometimes irritates me, sometimes makes me happy”, “My father is very nice or very bad”. Parents fall from their pedestal of knowing everything and being right, and are increasingly subjected to critical judgments by adolescents. Separation from parents is one of the main tasks of growing up, so the adolescent must devalue the adult in order to be able to oppose him or her and separate himself or herself from him or her.

Ania put it this way: “My dad is disgusting now, I see his inconsistency. How can he forbid me from using the phone when he himself is glued to it all day or playing on the computer. We look at the children and see the mistakes and stupid things they do.

Iza emphasizes: “I want to decide about being close to my parents. If I need their help, I will definitely let them know. And when I lock myself in my room, it means I want to be alone and I can handle it. Parents should finally understand that if they want something, it doesn’t mean I want it too.”

Weronika notes: “I feel like I’m not little anymore, but I also feel like I’m far from being an adult. I want to be alone. It’s driving me crazy. It’s hard for my mother to understand “that sometimes I need to be alone, just give me a break.” Kasia repeats: “My parents don’t understand that I’m not a child anymore and I can handle the situation on my own. I don’t like it when I’m treated like a child because I’m not a child anymore.”

The difficulties described are only a small part of how young people perceive themselves and the process of change that is occurring within them. Experiencing ambivalence, strong emotions and instability in the search for answers to the question of who I am and how I am is associated with feelings of tension, frustration and fear. In the interviewees’ opinion, the puberty process is a long and difficult period: “We change much earlier. This whole process of maturation is not a radical process, we realize it little by little, our bodies change, our view of others changes a little. A lot changes when we start using social media, then the world opens up to us, we can see everything, not just what is at school and in the backyard” (Iza, 14 years old).

Weronika (13 years old) says: “I would like to stay hidden in my room until my late teens. Even if it’s just for a few years”, Kasia (13 years old) in turn emphasizes that: “Teenagers are very different, but the most annoying thing about growing up is definitely the parents who don’t understand much.

What do teenagers need from adults? “Nothing by force, give us space, understand the change, take us seriously” (Ania), “Give us more freedom, we have to learn from our own mistakes and experiences. How do we like it?” If they don’t allow something, will we be tempted to do it? Maybe it’s better to explain it to us and then give us the opportunity to choose what’s good for us. But we have to check and find out” (Iza). “Freedom and caring for the child with supervision” (Kasia), “Notice that I’m not a child anymore, let me be a child sometimes” (Weronika). So, we can say that, like every big change and transformation, we need space and, at the same time, calm and firm supervision and safe control.