Being you
This page is all about helping you to work out who are as a person as you go through adolescence which is a time of enormous change both physically and emotionally. While this can be really exciting, it can also be confusing, stressful, scary and frustrating. We can worry about being accepted, about finding others who are like us, about being true to who we are and want to be.
Working out your identity is the main job of adolescence and a lot of it is working out your social self. Your social self is all about expressing who you you are. It’s all about putting yourself out there in front of your peers in the way that you would like to be seen by other people. Your sense of self stems from thinking about how you are seen by others, and you might worry about how you appear to other people and how they might judge you. And because teens usually place a high priority on these peer judgements, you might try on different selves and identities before you find the one that fits the best. Click the pic above to find out more.
The most obvious part of your identity is how you see yourself in terms of gender.
While this might seem
straight forward it isn't like that for everyone.
Find out more here.
Cultural identity is really important too. Click on the pic to find out more about it.
Identity is also about who you are attracted to. Click the flag for more info.
Working out your values is at the heart of knowing who you are. Our values help us to decide what kind of person we want to be in the world, how we decide what is right or wrong,
and what decisions to make. Click the pic above for more info.
Becoming a young adult involves lots of changes to your body and mind and sometimes it can be
just a bit too weird to
ask about it. Click here for great info on what you're going through.
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
self-acceptance differs from
self-esteem, which measures
how worthy we see ourselves.
Self-acceptance recognises
you're a complex person who is OK as you are, with weaknesses and flaws,
and that you're doing the best you can. It's often a challenge,
because we tend to be self-critical. Practice self-acceptance
by being compassionate toward yourself and living in the
present, not the future or the past.
SELF-COMPASSION
Instead of judging and
criticising yourself for your mistakes or shortcomings,
self-compassion means you are kind
and understanding when confronted with personal
failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed
to be perfect? With self-compassion you can stop punishing
yourself and simply try to do better, or different, next time. Click the pic below for more advice.
Try this 5-minute self-compassion meditation. Just click the pic.
Flexible Thinking: The ability to think about something in a new way.
Inflexible Thinking: Only thinking about something one way and not willing or able to listen to other points of view.
Being able to think flexibly is really important to having good relationships, manage change and cope with disagreements. Click the pic above for more info.
Your self-confidence is important to working out who you are, but it doesn't come easily to everyone. Click the pic for ideas on how to build yours.
Good self-esteem and self-confidence are important if you want to be true to who you are and are meant to be. Click the pic for an app that can absolutely help.
ADHD can make staying focused on what you are doing or need to be paying attention to much harder, but there ways to make living with it easier. Click the pic for more info.
NEURODIVERSITY: describes the idea that we all experience and interact
with the world around us in many different ways; there is no one "right" way of thinking, learning, and behaving. Neurodiversity is a combination of traits that are seen as both strengths and challenges. Depending on the neurodiverse variation and its intensity, individuals can display strengths in different areas. Neurodiversity includes things like ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, etc.
Autism can make reading others and being in social situations difficult. Click here for more info on austim spectrum disorder.
Oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) can make staying calm much harder but there are ways you can help yourself. Click the pic for more info.