Emotional Developmental Transitions from Youth to Adulthood (VCE SSCE Health and Human Development): Revision Notes
Emotional Developmental Transitions from Youth to Adulthood
Understanding emotional development
Emotional development is a lifelong process where you experience many different emotions and learn how to express them in healthy, appropriate ways. As you develop emotionally, you build important skills that help you navigate life's challenges and understand yourself better.
Emotional development happens when you experience the full range of emotions throughout your life and learn appropriate ways to express these feelings. It's closely linked to emotional health and wellbeing, but focuses specifically on the skills you develop over time as you encounter different situations and emotional states.
There are four main components of emotional development:
- Developing self-concept – how you see yourself as a person
- Experiencing the full range of emotions – from basic feelings to complex emotional states
- Learning appropriate ways of expressing emotions – communicating feelings in healthy, mature ways
- Building resilience – developing the ability to cope with challenges and setbacks
Resilience refers to your ability to effectively deal with adverse or negative events that occur throughout life.
Components of emotional development
Developing self-concept
Self-concept is how you see yourself as a person. This understanding develops gradually over time as you experience different aspects of life.
In infancy, babies don't see themselves as separate from other people. As children grow, they begin to develop a sense of self. Your self-concept becomes more complex as you form different views about various aspects of yourself, including:
- Your academic abilities
- Your social skills
- Your physical capabilities
Self-concept plays an important role in forming your identity. Once you develop a clear sense of who you are as a person, your self-concept becomes stronger and more stable.
Identity formation
Identity is the establishment of a unique personality. It encompasses aspects of both social and emotional development and refers to how you define yourself based on your personal values and beliefs.
There are various aspects of identity, including:
- Physical identity
- Sexual identity
- Political identity
- Religious identity
- Ethnic identity
These different aspects may develop at different times in your life. While your identity will generally be firmly formed by the later stages of youth, certain aspects of it will continue to be modified throughout your entire life.
Identity development in youth
In early youth, your identity is often based on your parents' expectations. This happens without you actively exploring alternatives. As you develop, you may begin to question this identity and actively experiment with different options to find an identity that truly suits you.
During this exploration process, you might:
- Change hobbies quickly
- Explore various possibilities for future careers
- Sample different clothing and hairstyles
- Try out different musical genres
- Move between different friendship groups
This experimentation is a normal and healthy part of identity development.
Spirituality and religion
As your ability to think abstractly develops, many young people explore their spirituality. Spirituality is an aspect of identity that means different things to different people. Common associations include:
- Searching for meaning in life
- Finding your place in the world, where the greater good of the universe and those in it is important
- Seeing yourself as a small part of a bigger universe
- Acknowledging forces that are separate from the physical and mental functioning of living things
Religion is an organised form of spirituality based on culturally and historically based guidelines (or doctrine). As part of their search for spirituality, some people explore different religions, whilst others may turn away from the religion in which they were raised.
Factors contributing to identity formation
Many factors contribute to how your identity forms:
- Culture and ethnicity
- Parents
- Siblings
- Friends
- School
- Society
Understanding these influences helps you recognise the various forces that shape who you become as a person.
Once you commit to an identity, you typically feel more comfortable about yourself. This can contribute to increased self-esteem and help guide your moral decisions.
Experiencing the full range of emotions
As you develop, you experience a greater range of emotions. The progression typically follows this pattern:
In infancy: The first emotions that babies can recognise include joy, anger, sadness and fear.
In early childhood: As children develop a sense of self, they experience more complex emotions such as shyness, surprise, embarrassment, shame, guilt and pride.
Progression through childhood: Young children often experience basic emotions like happiness and anger, usually experiencing only one emotion at a time. As they develop emotionally, children realise they can experience multiple emotions simultaneously. For example, feeling both happy and sad when school holidays come to an end.
Later childhood and youth: Older children begin to identify different emotions more accurately and learn appropriate ways of responding to them. This is a process that continues through youth and into adulthood.
The ability to experience and recognise complex emotions is a key milestone in emotional development. It shows growing emotional maturity and self-awareness.
Learning appropriate ways of expressing emotions
As you develop emotionally, you become better equipped to express emotions in appropriate ways. Those who are more emotionally developed can control how they express their feelings more effectively. This explains why toddlers, rather than adults, are more likely to throw temper tantrums when they don't get their own way.
Developmental Differences in Expressing Emotions
Toddler response: When not selected for an activity, a toddler might cry, scream, or throw a tantrum on the floor.
Adult response: When not selected for a job promotion, an adult typically processes the disappointment internally and may choose to discuss their feelings calmly or use the experience as motivation to improve their skills for future opportunities.
This difference illustrates how emotional expression matures over time as you develop better coping mechanisms.
Desire, guilt and jealousy are common emotions that people express in various ways. A significant achievement in emotional development is learning to accept the things you cannot change and focusing your energy on the things you can change. This influences how you express the emotions you experience.
For example, instead of crying at not being selected for the football team, you can direct this energy into training harder to have a better chance of selection next time. It takes time to develop appropriate ways of responding to emotions.
Building resilience
Resilience is your ability to effectively deal with adverse or negative events that occur throughout life. Such events include:
- The death of a loved one
- Relationship breakdown
- Financial stress
- Conflict with family and friends
- Losing an important sporting match
- Job loss and job insecurity
You will use a variety of coping strategies to deal with challenging events. These strategies will vary depending on the type and extent of the situation you're exposed to.
Developing coping strategies to build resilience
Five Key Coping Strategies for Building Resilience:
Taking time out for relaxation: Leisure activities such as exercise, socialising and resting are important. They help provide clarity, energy and focus when issues require your attention.
Meditation: Meditation works to calm the mind and helps with refocusing thoughts. It can also assist in reducing stress, which allows energy to be applied to important issues.
Setting goals: Setting manageable goals allows you to achieve success and work towards dealing with aspects of life that may sometimes seem overwhelming.
Talking to others: Other people are a great resource for putting issues in perspective and providing alternative ways of viewing life events. Talking to others also allows you to express how you're feeling.
Maintaining positive self-talk: Self-talk relates to the inner voice in your mind that says things you don't necessarily say out loud. Self-talk can be positive or negative. Positive self-talk has been shown to promote resilience.
Learning the skills necessary to become resilient is a key component of emotional development. People who have good levels of resilience experience better emotional health and wellbeing.
Emotional development vs emotional health and wellbeing
Emotional health and wellbeing and emotional development are closely related concepts, but there are specific differences between them.
Understanding the Distinction:
Emotional development includes:
- Experiencing the full range of emotions
- The acquisition of knowledge and skills that assist in expressing emotions effectively
- The development of self-concept
- Building resilience
All these characteristics develop over time and increase in complexity. As you develop emotionally, you learn ways of expressing your emotions in a more mature manner.
Emotional health and wellbeing, on the other hand, relates to how you're using these skills and abilities at a given point in time. Emotional health and wellbeing includes:
- Recognising, understanding and experiencing appropriate emotions in a given scenario
- Being able to effectively respond to and manage emotions
- The level of resilience experienced at a particular point in time
Distinguishing Development from Health and Wellbeing
Scenario: An infant may not manage their emotions effectively and throw a tantrum (emotional health and wellbeing) because they don't have the skills to express their emotions in a more appropriate way (emotional development). As a result, this behaviour is considered normal for most infants.
Adults generally don't throw tantrums (emotional health and wellbeing) because they usually have the skills to express these emotions in a more positive way (emotional development).
How they interrelate
Emotional health and wellbeing and emotional development are interrelated and therefore affect one another. A range of factors such as stress, illness and various life events (such as relationship breakdown, changing schools, experiencing conflict with loved ones or moving out of home) can influence your ability to effectively use your emotional skills and abilities in every scenario.
Consider the following:
- You may have experienced the full range of emotions (emotional development) but this doesn't mean you'll always accurately recognise emotions in every situation (emotional health and wellbeing)
- You may have acquired the skills to express emotions effectively (emotional development) but feel overwhelmed in a particular scenario and struggle to appropriately respond to the emotions you feel (emotional health and wellbeing). For example, a heated argument with a work colleague may overcome you and you may not respond to your emotions in your usual calm and mature manner
Emotional changes as youth transition to adulthood
The emotional changes that occur during youth are significant. Because of all the changes young people go through as they transition to adulthood, the way they view themselves and how they deal with their feelings may also change.
Changes in self-concept
As young people transition to adulthood and explore different values and beliefs, they develop a deeper understanding of who they are as people. This influences their emotional development and sense of identity.
If young people are satisfied with the person they've become, they may enter adulthood with a great sense of pride and achievement not experienced previously. As self-concept develops, individuals often become more comfortable with themselves. As a result, they generally become less concerned with what others think and more concerned with who they are as a person.
Changes in experiencing the full range of emotions
As the body matures, so does the mind. Youth might seek emotional independence. For example, they might try to solve their own problems instead of consulting their parents. This may lead to feelings of satisfaction if they succeed or despair if they fail.
Experiencing these emotions can encourage young people to take more responsibility for their actions. It also provides ways to accept emotions – both positive and negative – that occur as a result of this responsibility. These emotions include guilt, remorse, happiness and fulfilment.
As the nature of relationships changes, young people may also seek intimacy and affection within those relationships. They might experience emotions such as love and lust and learn ways to express them appropriately.
Changes in learning appropriate ways of expressing emotions
Towards the end of the youth stage, you will have been exposed to a range of emotions and will generally be able to recognise them accurately when they arise. Most older youth will also have an understanding of appropriate ways of expressing those emotions and be able to adequately express their feelings in words, which helps to regulate their emotions.
Improved Emotional Expression in Youth
When experiencing anger, youth have a greater ability to deal with this emotion in a calm manner and discuss why they're feeling this way with others. This is a marked improvement from childhood responses, where anger might have been expressed through shouting, hitting, or withdrawal.
Changes in building resilience
As life experiences and knowledge develop, the transition to adulthood is often marked by greater resilience. The coping strategies that are first developed early in life are built upon, contributing to the greater level of resilience experienced by most adults compared with children.
For example, a young person may be able to use positive self-talk to help them overcome their disappointment at not getting the first part-time job they've applied for. The level of resilience will usually continue to develop throughout adulthood.
Key Points to Remember:
- Emotional development involves four key components: developing self-concept, experiencing the full range of emotions, learning appropriate ways of expressing emotions, and building resilience
- Identity formation is a crucial part of emotional development during youth, involving exploration of values, beliefs, spirituality and various aspects of who you are as a person
- Emotional development refers to the skills you acquire over time, whilst emotional health and wellbeing refers to how you use those skills at any given point in time
- As youth transition to adulthood, they develop a deeper sense of self, greater emotional independence, better ability to express emotions appropriately, and stronger resilience through life experience
- Building resilience involves developing coping strategies such as relaxation, meditation, setting goals, talking to others and maintaining positive self-talk