How To Use The Workbook.

For an adolescent; family, friends, school, and work, along with the transitions that occur during each of these areas serve as the backdrop to where thought processes ripen and thus identity, autonomy, intimacy and achievement take shape. Using Gil’s self-assessment as an example, the goal is for you to create a profile of your own adolescent development.  Upon gaining an understanding of how you experienced each component, the takeaway will be to realize how it shaped who you are and why you act the way you do. Development.

Gil’s Self Assessment.

Gil had family members; however, he had no family life.  His relationships with his father, mother, and sister were all independent of one another and at arm’s length.  He had no true connection with any of them and was constantly in the middle of the conflict between all three. Divorce was uncommon fifty years ago and so Gil felt shame and a social outcast.  Consequently, he was unable to make lasting and enduring friendships and experience so many childhood rites of passage.  He essentially grew up an only child and didn’t have the benefit of a sibling as a friend and the network of their friends.  He wasn’t a part of the neighborhood.  Gil’s community was such that he was expected to attend a prestigious college, however, he was given no guidance and accordingly no accountability to do as such and wandered through school unremarkably.  He had some odd jobs that didn’t fulfill voids and lead to productive feelings.  Rather, it was the missed opportunity of an internship that played a pivotal role.  Gil did not experience milestones as redefinitions of himself or as anything out of the ordinary for that matter.  His parents’ conflict along with its triangulation of his sister always took centerstage and no celebrations existed to provide self-worth.

Consequently, Gil never developed a healthy thought process.  He was constantly preoccupied with stressors in his life and steeped in doubt.  Early on, he felt the need to keep his thoughts to himself and lie so as to please others with a version of himself they needed. He kept his thoughts to himself and was afraid to share them and experience true relationships.  Gil’s identity is always attached to whoever would be in a relationship with, even though these relationships were never truly authentic. He never has the time and space to decide for himself who he wants to be.  If anything, as much as Gil hated his father he idolized him and wanted to be like him.  It would have served Gil well to break free from both his parents, however, he never developed the courage or bravery to step out on his own and be autonomous, be his own man, the man he fantasized about being in the secret life he kept to himself.  Without truth, there was no possibility of true intimacy, and so while Gil experienced relationships, he was lonely in them always trying to hide his flaws while trying to be who he thought he was rather than who he was in his desperate need to belong to a we or an us.  He finds his self-worth in doing for others but is haunted by it as he regularly finds himself at crossroads, where his compass, a desperate desire to belong, as its true north, leaves him vulnerable.  He is extremely sensitive which positively allows him to develop a strong sense of empathy which caused him to be well liked, though it leaves him constantly disappointed he doesn’t experience reciprocity. Gil never learns to do for himself and achieve what he is capable of.

Gil took all this into adult relationships and therefore didn’t have healthy ones, be they friendships, in business, or marriages. This led to more chaos which led to more unhealthy relationships and so on.  He picked partners who either seemed perfect because that’s what he longed for and he couldn’t keep up or partners that were as imperfect as him which led to him being hurt.  His family dynamics continued to wreak havoc; however, the salient point is that he never developed the wherewithal to effectively navigate this in a way that propelled him forward rather than continually set him back.  Too late, Gil learned…...