Navigating Social Dynamics, Emotional Health, and Personal Growth

Understanding Social & Emotional Development

Social Skills and Communication

• Social Skills: Support, confidence, positive self-image, proactive assertiveness.
• Communication: Active listening, empathy, openness, awareness.

Effective social behavior and communication, therefore, tend to decrease adjustment conflict.

Personal Boundaries and Self-Knowledge

• Personal Boundaries: Authenticity, validation, support, physical and emotional affection.
• Self-Knowledge and Expression Boundaries: Authenticity, assertiveness, detachment.

Emotional Reactions and Mental Health

Adjustment Reactions

• Motivated Reaction: A reversible, short-lived response to stressful circumstances and their underlying reasons.
• Brief Depressive Reaction: Transient depressive symptoms, not qualifying as major depression, closely related in time and content to a stressful event.
• Brief Anxious Reaction: States satisfying adjustment reaction criteria, with primary emotional symptoms including anxiety, fear, and worry.

Childhood Anxiety

Childhood Anxiety (Part I)

• Acute Episodes: Night Terrors, risk behavior.
• Hypochondriac Manifestations: Permanent concern for health, widespread pain, fatigue.

Childhood Anxiety (Part II)

• Phobic Behavior: Fears, archaic pregenital and oedipal phobias.
• Obsessive Behaviors: Obsessions, rituals, tics.
• Hysterical Behavior: Conversions, acute crises, personality changes.

Types of Depression

• Endogenous Depressions: Unipolar affective psychosis or bipolar disorder.
• Psychogenic Depressions: Reactive depression.
• Somatogenic Depressions: Due to traumatic brain injury, infections, epilepsy.

Developmental Stages

Adolescence

Psychological Characteristics

• Self-affirmation.
• Self-reliance in ideas.
• Outbreaks of egocentrism in behavior.

Personal Identity

• Self-seeking, narcissism.
• Discovery of values.
• Oscillation between feelings of superiority and inferiority.

Memory

Memory increases significantly. Enhanced ability to apply critical knowledge, even to non-functional areas.

Social Characteristics

• Independence: Emancipation and progress towards independence, the need to be free.
• Peer Groups: Emergence of heterosexual peer groups, forming many friendships.
• Personality Development: Personality becomes fragile, vulnerable physically and socially.
• Insulation: Adopting an attitude of detachment from surroundings, engaging only when personal interests are affected. Reduced interest, seeking refuge in the past.

Adulthood

Common Emotions

• Fear.
• Anger.
• Tenderness.