How Puberty Experience Affects Personal Identity and Well-being

Puberty is a natural process that everyone goes through in their life. Although natural, not all children and teens will go through puberty at the same time and rate, with puberty coming with its own challenges for children and adolescents as they try to understand the changes that are happening to their minds and bodies, the feelings they are feeling, how to cope with them alongside everyday life pressures. I will describe puberty experience in this essay, its effects in children and youth, especially how it changes their self-esteem, body-image and whole well-being. 

Girls tend to start puberty earlier than boys, with the average age being 11 but can be as early as 7, with the average age for boys being 12 with the earliest being 9. Although puberty can begin at a young age, the brain is still not fully developed until the early twenties. This is when puberty can cause mental changes with the body becoming more mature and the urge to show their independence because they are growing up , but the brain still has not being developed enough to be able to cope with the mood changes that puberty brings which can lead to anger, pushing boundaries and challenging behaviour in adolescents. Moods can also be affected due to the change in sleep patterns that puberty brings due to hormones. Teens tend to sleep less but become more tired and frustrated due to the increasing demands at school. Changes to the body can also lead to anxiety in how an individual look and feels and how their peers see them. Due to the wide age range that puberty can occur individuals may feel self-conscious because they are developing before their friends or are behind. Both can lead to bullying among peers.

Impact of Puberty Experience on Person's Identity, Self-Esteem and Body Image

Identity: Identity is who you are, what makes you unique or what makes you similar to others. What you believe in, the clothes you wear and the music you like can all attribute to your identity. When we are children, we start to learn who we are by the things around us as we learn and grow. But it is not until our teenage years that we start to think how achievements, failings, beliefs and illness may affect our identity.

Having a negative outlook on how you see yourself can cause anxiety and depression in an individual and is more noticeable in adolescent years. How someone looks may not fit in with their peer group anymore. An individual might be very clever but does not want to be branded a geek by their friends or where an individual sees themselves as worthless. Adolescents can sometimes try too hard to conform instead of developing their own identity due to fear of rejection. This in turn to can lead to the development of mental health problems. Having a positive outlook on self-worth and identity can be detrimental to positive mental health.

Self-esteem: How a person feels about themselves and how they view themselves has an impact on their self-esteem. People with a negative self-esteem could be more at risk of suffering mental ill health. If they don’t like how they look, if they don’t see them selves as very clever or aren’t a nice person can all impact on a person’s self-esteem. Also, how someone can receive feedback can impact on a person. If you receive negative feedback it can impact how you feel about yourself, like you are not good or clever enough compared to the feeling you get when you received positive feedback for what you have done.

Self-esteem can be linked with identity, and as with identity, puberty and the changes that go with it can impact how teens see them selves and how others see them, with the individual rate at what each teenager develops being a big impact. Those developing early feeling different to the rest and late developers feeling like a failure and still a child.

Body image: How one views their physical self is called body image. How a person feels about their body, whether that be positive or negative, can be impacted by how the individual sees themselves and external factors like the media. Magazines and social media such as Instagram, have been blamed for giving young people an unrealistic expectation of how they need to look, in a world of photoshopping and extreme editing. These unrealistic expectations can have even more of a negative impact as children and adolescents go through puberty and their bodies change in a way they are not wanting or expecting. Acne, body shape changes, weight gain, and body and facial hair, are all signs of puberty. On top of these changes and the media, adolescents are sadly under pressure to look right to fit in with friends and to avoid bullies. Not ‘looking right’ can lead to isolation, anxiety and depression and may lead individuals to extremes just to ‘fit it’. This can include dieting extremes leading to anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and extreme exercise to build muscle. On the flip side, if how someone feels about their body and how they look as positive, this can lead to positive mental health and wellbeing.

Conclusion

As the body develops, teenagers start to form stronger relationships, find their sexuality and may experience sexual feelings. These relationships and the effects if a relationship does not work out, can be amplified due to not experiencing these feelings before. In conclusion, the experience of puberty has a profound impact on a person's identity, self-esteem, and body image. Throughout this essay, we have explored the various ways in which this transformative phase shapes an individual's sense of self and their perception of their body. Puberty is not just a biological process but also a psychological and social one, intertwining physical changes with emotional and cognitive development.

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