Major life events can be positive and negative and can be unpleasant, frightening, confusing and unsafe at times. Unpleasant stuff happens to all of us wether its predictable or unpredictable by feeling in control and able to organise, learning to cope with changes in life, coping with a physical changes. Predicted events of a teenager: When a child is born they are predicted to move on with their life and live it the best possible way they can. Any major changes can influence development positively within their life, as they grow.
When they start secondary school they would want to make new friends and cope with the changes that would come ahead of them, which is known as positive learning. However, there could be risks of stress because no-one might let him/her hang around with them or he/she don’t fit in with any group which is painful and makes them feel lonely and anxious; sometimes worthless. Perhaps no one listens to them – then he/she feel that no one cares. This may not really be happening but it feels that way and it hurts.
They may feel angry at the world and even stay away from the people you know which lowers their self-esteem and confidence in talking to other people again their anger would lead them to end up criticising themself. Thinking too much about it – which a lot of people do – can confuse the child as well, which is not healthy. Another positive learning, during a predicted event, can be when the teen has now become old enough to leave home and has achieved independence and to control thier own personal enviroment, but coping on your own isn’t easy.
Suddenly the teen don’t feel that smart anymore. He/she can become anxious and handling daily stress can become very difficult for them. And if they have had bad experiences in the past (such as abuse), leaving home can be a ‘last straw’ and tip themselves over into difficulties in handling fears. Some even experience loss of family support depending on the reason leaving home. Unpredicted event of an adult: One of the down side of life is things that happen are sometimes not expected and are really hard to go through but some surprises happen for several reasons.
Abuse can be one of them and for people that are really brave can easily develop a positive view of themselves and overcome emotional damage. Personal abuse (like rape) is a devastating experience. It’s them being seriously put down. This is one of the more obvious experiences; there are others that can wear down their coping skills or block them from learning new ones. The most damage is done when difficulties happen in a relationship that is very important to them.
Another positive learning, during an unpredicted event, can be when and adult is going through an unhappy divorce and now have to learn how to cope, with a new lifestyle, being single again after a very long marriage. The stress of doing this could lead them to depression form thinking too much about the whole situation; he/she might find it hard to move on without their ex-partner, which leads to loss of social activites and self-confidence-there is no-one to reassure them.