A Clinical Approach To Identity Formation: A Comprehensive Guide

Understand the clinical approach of identity formation and its role in shaping identities during various stages of personal growth.

Introduction

Many individuals deal with musculoskeletal, autoimmune, gut, or body issues that can affect their daily routine and how they perceive themselves when getting checked out by their doctors. Many healthcare professionals can help assess individuals with these pain-like symptoms causing overlapping risk profiles by creating a safe and positive experience with a clinical approach. By creating a secure environment, many individuals can have good experiences when pain-like issues are affecting their bodies. By delving into today’s article, we are going to look into identity formation, the four identity statuses, and the various areas of identity development.

 

Theories & Types of Identity Formation

Many people have an identity, but have they always had one? Identity is a combination of qualities, beliefs, and traits everyone deems important and uses to describe who they are. Identities aren’t imposed onto people; they are formed as many individuals grow and learn about the world. The first time people see a major shift towards self-exploration and identity formation is during adolescence.

 

Theories of adolescent development often focus on identity formation as a central issue. For example, in Erikson’s 1968 classic theory of developmental stages, identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence. Role confusion may occur if a teen cannot form their identity, indicating a need for more self-discovery and unsure where they fit in.

 

The Four Identity Statuses

Many healthcare providers will hear their patients describe identity formation during adolescence as it involves decision points and commitments regarding belief systems (e.g., religion, politics) and occupations. The four modes of reacting to late identity crises during the adolescent phase were described, measured, and validated so that individuals could figure out their identity status. (Marcia, 1966)  The four described identity statuses are:

• Foreclosure: An individual commits to an identity without exploring options.
• Identity diffusion: When individuals neither explore nor commit to any identities.
• Moratorium: A state in which individuals actively explore options but have not made commitments.
• Identity achievement: When individuals have explored different options and made identity commitments.

For example, teens may commit to an identity without exploring if they are content with the values, culture, and religion they were raised in. Teens in foreclosure status may adopt large parts of their parents’ identities or the identity parents have put them on. However, when teens achieve identity, they can explore the world for themselves and decide how they identify due to those experiences. This causes them to relinquish their claims of infantile sources of gratification, thus renouncing lingering fantasies of competence. (Marcia, 1967) At the same time, many people have experienced things that led to a crisis. The thing is that a crisis doesn’t necessarily mean a negative event; it’s simply branching out from what’s comfortable to discover who they are.

 

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Various Areas of Identity Development

As a stage in the adolescent life cycle, identity development happens to many people. For many, the search for identity begins in the teenage years. During these years, adolescents are more open to taking on different behaviors and appearances to discover who they are. In an attempt to find their own identity and discover who they are, adolescents tend to cycle through several identities to find one that suits them best. Multiple factors like family life, environment, and social status can make it difficult to develop and maintain an identity. Some studies suggest that this process might be more accurate to identity development rather than formation but confirm this is a typical change process in people’s thoughts about themselves.

 

Several different areas of identity development are described:

• Religious identity: Teens’ religious views are similar to those of their families. Many may question specific customs, practices, or ideas in their parents’ faith, but a few may completely reject their families’ religion. This is due to the dynamic of the parent-adolescent relationship with religion and exerts positive effects on adolescent adjustments. (Kim-Spoon et al., 2012)
• Political identity: Adolescents’ political identity is influenced by their parents’ political beliefs. In the 21st century, a new trend shows decreased political affiliation among young adults. However, many adolescents tend to be more liberal than their elders on social issues. This is due to many adolescents encountering events that trigger their civic interest and challenge their beliefs and moralities. (Stattin et al., 2017) Like in other aspects of identity formation, adolescent individuals are predicted by their parents’ involvement and current events when there is an interest in politics.
• Vocational identity: Adolescents in earlier generations envisioned themselves working in a particular job and often worked as apprentices or part-time in such occupations. This is a rare case for many people in today’s world. Vocational identity is also related to ego identity by correlating with a successful transition from school to work, allowing individuals to be more confident in their decision-making ability, especially in environmental ambiguities. (Koo & Kim, 2016) Still, vocational identity takes a bit longer to develop since many workplaces require specific skills and knowledge that require additional education or are acquired on the job. Additionally, many job opportunities held by teens are not in occupations many will seek as adults.
• Ethnic identity: Ethnic identity refers to how many individuals come to terms with who they are based on ethnicity or racial ancestry. According to the U.S. Census 2012, Americans under 18 are from historically marginalized ethnic groups. Many people who identify under BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) have discovered their ethnoracial identity as an important part of their identity formation as teens.
• Gender identity: Gender identity involves an individual’s sense of gender and can be similar to or different from their biological sex regardless of age group. Gender identity greatly influences many adolescents during these years of self-discovery and can impact other areas of identity, like religion and politics.

 

Self-Concept

Regarding identity development, two main aspects are self-concept and self-esteem. The main idea of self-concept is the person’s ability to have opinions and beliefs defined confidently, consistently, and with stability throughout their life span. In early adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, thinking about abstract future possibilities, and considering multiple options simultaneously. As a result, many adolescents will shift from simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions when they are young. As children, they define themselves by physical traits such as their gender, hair color, or if they’re fast.

 

Many adolescents can conceptualize multiple “possible selves” they could become, while their choices’ can become long-term possibilities or consequences. When people are exploring these possibilities, it may result in abrupt changes within self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors. At the same time, both males and females have significant positive correlations when combining their combinational operation with their degree of identity. (Wagner, 1987) This, in turn, refers to guiding the actual self towards the ideal self. A person’s perfect self varies from person to person, as many want to be who they want to be, while the feared self is what many people do not want to be. This can make many uncomfortable, but it can also be motivational through consistent behavior with the ideas and distinction from the feared possible selves.

 

The exploration and discovery of our ideal and feared selves can happen simultaneously. Many young people will see traits from their peers, family members, or other members of the community and start to think about what they like and don’t like simultaneously so they can form their own identity.  A further distinction in self-concept called differentiation occurs as adolescents start to recognize the influences on their behavior and the perceptions of others and thus begin their traits when asked about themselves. Around mid-adolescence, differentiation appears fully developed and peaking when they start 7th – 9th grade. Recognizing inconsistent content in the self-concept is a common source of distress these years. Still, it can benefit many adolescents by encouraging them to explore and develop.

 

Self-Esteem

The other aspect of identity formation is self-esteem. Self-esteem, by definition, is one’s thoughts and feelings about one’s self-concept and identity. Many theories often theorize that self-esteem encompasses a grand desire to maintain, protect, and enhance. However, contrary to popular belief, no evidence has supported these theories, showing a significant drop in adolescent self-esteem. In males and females, self-esteem is different between the two genders, as females enjoy high self-esteem when they engage in supportive relationships with friends. However, when females can’t find someone with common interests and activities or fail to win a friend’s approval, they suffer low self-esteem.

 

Self-esteem in males is different. Regarding self-esteem, males are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and defining authority. This, in turn, allows males to have high self-esteem through the influence of their friends and peers successfully. However, when there is a lack of romantic skills or even failure to maintain the affection of another person romantically, it can become a major contributor to low self-esteem for males.

 

Conclusion

By looking at identity formation in a clinical approach, many healthcare professionals can provide a safe space and a positive experience for individuals when assessing the pain-like symptoms affecting their bodies. At the same time, understanding the importance of identity formation can help provide a great relationship with patients by providing various solutions in their customized treatment plans to better their health and well-being.

 

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Injury Medical & Functional Medicine Clinic

We associate with certified medical providers who understand the importance of identity formation when assessing individuals dealing with various pain-like symptoms within their bodies. When asking important questions to our associated medical providers, we advise patients to implement small changes to their daily routine to reduce the pain-like symptoms associated with body pains. Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., utilizes this information as an academic service. Disclaimer.

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References

Kim-Spoon, J., Longo, G. S., & McCullough, M. E. (2012). Parent-adolescent relationship quality as a moderator for the influences of parents’ religiousness on adolescents’ religiousness and adjustment. J Youth Adolesc, 41(12), 1576-1587. doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9796-1

Koo, H.-Y., & Kim, E.-J. (2016). Vocational Identity and Ego Identity Status in Korean Nursing Students. Asian Nursing Research, 10(1), 68-74. doi.org/10.1016/j.anr.2015.11.001

Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. J Pers Soc Psychol, 3(5), 551-558. doi.org/10.1037/h0023281

Marcia, J. E. (1967). Ego identity status: relationship to change in self-esteem, “general maladjustment,” and authoritarianism. J Pers, 35(1), 118-133. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1967.tb01419.x

Stattin, H., Hussein, O., Ozdemir, M., & Russo, S. (2017). Why do some adolescents encounter everyday events that increase their civic interest whereas others do not? Dev Psychol, 53(2), 306-318. doi.org/10.1037/dev0000192

Wagner, J. A. (1987). Formal operations and ego identity in adolescence. Adolescence, 22(85), 23-35. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3591499

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