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Module 3: Identity is so confusing

Writing this blog post 3 weeks left in this semester, I am honestly SO proud of myself. I think I managed to do the impossible. Impossible, that’s how I would describe Module 3 :D (that’s a sarcastic smiley face, clearly I’m still recovering from that long test)

Often mentioning the theories of identity formation in Module 2, this module offered a more relational perspective on identity. Describing identity as also a product of socio-cultural factors including ones peer and parental relationships the and deepening this with 

This module was very relevant, especially in its discussion and dissection of gender stereotypes and the importance of consent and proper use of the internet, so even if I think I did not do well in my test I know that I learned something. 

The first topic was on identity development in family relationships. With this in mind, I will be constructing my own individuation timeline as well as posting a picture of me as a child and now not just to highlight how transient or alive identity is. 

Me as a child: 

Me now: 

From my choice of photos alone, you’ll see how much has changed. When I was a child, it was easy to think of my self as just an extension of my parents who needed to eat, walk, talk, go to school, and look cute. Now, it’s hard to think of myself without thinking of my family, my friends, my interests and more as I truly adapt different identities when I am with each of these. 

Next is my individuation timeline as seen below. 

In infancy, my parents saw me as their biggest responsibility and  they could not part from me especially as they had all the resources and means needed to keep me safe and alive. With that, I saw my parents as my sources of life and survival while I, on the other hand, had no coherent sense of self yet— just someone attached to my parents especially my mother. In toddlerhood, I experienced my first individuation. Here, I began to let go of my infantile attachments. I still saw my my parents as great sources of love, support, knowledge, and protection but I knew I did not need them to survive as I could feed myself, use the toilet by myself, and more. With that, I saw myself as the little angel of my parents who always made them happy and I think my parents saw me in that way too. Childhood was no different as I deeply idealised my parents, I saw them as my superheroes, my greatest sources of information, and wanted to be just like my dad. They saw me as their carbon copy often saying things like “just like mommy/daddy.” Thus, I saw myself as an extension of my parents who I needed to obey so I could be rewarded and be perfect just like them. Come adolescence, my second individuation began to unfold. At around 11 years old, I de-idealised my parents and no longer saw them as perfect. With that, I saw myself as unique not just from my parents but also from my siblings. I had different talents, different interests, and values from them so I think my parents were beginning to see me as an individual and not just their puppet. Lastly, as this individuation still continues I am now beginning to see my parents, specifically my mom, as my friend and myself as a work in progress. In terms of how my parents see me, I think my mom sees me as a friend too as she is not afraid to confide in me and I am able to see her vulnerabilities. Together, we talk about boys, school, the past, woes, failures, doubts— stuff I cannot talk to about with my dad, which my mom also says she cannot do sometimes. As my dad is less expressive, I think he still sees me as his baby but I still respect him even if I cannot see him as an equal yet. Thus from this exercise, I saw clearly that I am not my parents. In fact, a healthy parent-child relationship is one where the parent nurtures and supports the child into becoming his or her own person while still humbling them and reminding them to be good. With this in mind, I am willingly going to continue to reconnect and renew my relationship with my parents, talk to them more, and work towards equality so we can have even more meaningful and deep interactions. 

The next topic was on identity construction in peer relationships and digital spaces. With this being said, the best way for me to express all I have learned is through memes :> 

First, my friends. My friends are so important to me and I am so thankful to have them in my life as they never cease to put a smile on my face. Moving to a co-ed school in senior high, my group of friends expanded but I still kept my friends from Woodrose close to me. In these two settings, the common denominator about myself is that I’m the funny one in my friend group as well as the butt of the joke. My girl squad in Woodrose was full of intelligent and supportive girls, we often traded books, had deep conversations, and confided in each other about our doubts, pressures, and failures. They formed the part of my identity that is hardworking, introspective, and empathetic. In Beacon, I met new people who loosened me up a bit and introduced me to different kinds of fun like parties, spontaneous dinners, and odd conversations at Denny’s until 3 AM. There, I could goof around in class especially because of the boys who were always rowdy. With the girls, they introduced me to fashion, boy talk, makeup, and fun self care luxuries like getting a facial while still reminding me that I could be real with them and show sadness, fear, and guilt. They made me the online shopping addict today as well a go-to person for advice, ranting and a hug. They made me see that doing things that were conventionally girly did not mean you were conceited or an airhead and I have become an open-minded and less judgemental person because of them. Now, in college, I brought a lot of my high school friends with me. So these two crowds, the brains and the international school kids (we have all bonded over this) are who I still affiliate with. I have yet to find a new crowd here but I don’t think I would stray from each type of crowd as I do not really wanna step out of my comfort zone. To put this into words, here is a meme: 

With the first meme out of the way, I can proudly post these three low-budget but very accurate memes about my online and offline identity. 

Here, you practically hear me proclaim that I am somewhat of a comedian myself on Facebook where I share the FUNNIEST memes.

Here, I expose what a mess I am on another social media site. On twitter, I am either really really sad or really really ready to preach, be inspirational, and make a change. Nonetheless, my followers are my closest friends and they are endlessly supportive, ready to either cheer me on or cheer me up. Here, I’m more comfortable to reveal my vulnerabilities because my parents and relatives are not on it and I would hate for them to get worried about me. 

To sum this all up, here is a meme on my online vs offline identity:  

Online, I am more unrestrained, showing more of my cheeky and makulit personality, and vocal about a lot of things. Offline, I’m like a sponge that likes to observe, more refined and mahinhin. This describes the shy side of myself when in social situations so I’m thankful for social media as it gives me an avenue to share the side of myself that is loud and crazy but funny to watch. 

The last topic was on gender and sexuality. First, I was able to discover the different facets and faces of my gender through filling out the Genderbread Person. My worksheet is attached below: 

Easily, I can conclude that I am not either/or just like gender. Filling this out, I struggled in the element of gender expression. I suddenly remembered that when I was in Woodrose, my teachers always told me that I slouch like a man and sit like a man. Out of their eyesight, I would respond by assuming an even more male-like stance and I could not help it because I was comfortable that way. When I dress up, my expression depends on my mood. Sometimes I wanna be a girly girl and feel the swing of my dress when I walk and sometimes, I do not care at all and find it more comfortable to dress like a man- I even use my brothers clothes a lot, especially to sleep. These examples alone point to a very important understanding on gender and even sexual orientation  which is that there are truly infinite possibilities. Moreover, being one does not relate to being another so we cannot judge a person on simplistic norms such as how they express themselves. 

I recognize in myself that I am not just one or the other so with this, I know that I have the right to respect all even if society tells me different or I have a hard time understanding. In fact, gender shouldn’t even be something one dissects so much because it is so flexible and has many facets that are independent of eachother. I can even relate this understanding to sex and sexuality.  In gender,  we are conditioned to think that it is always either/or and this extends even to sexuality where as a woman you are either a virgin who is uptight or a slut who is cheap. In both situations, you cannot win and it is hard for me to believe that there are still some people that cannot accept that humans are so complicated and unfit to be reduced to 2 extremes. However, I cannot say that my views are perfect either. I have always adapted a broader view on sexuality, recognizing the plight of the LGBTQ+ community but even then I was scared to question if I was more male than female. In my mind, it was hard to imagine myself or allow myself to be more male-like because of my socialization. When it came to sex, this was even more skewed.  A touchy subject, I came from an Opus Dei exclusive for girls school so sex equaled taboo. Before this class, I never even had an in-depth discussion on sex that attacked all sides, especially one that dared to say that a womqns sexuality is not to be hidden, but instead explored. Before this class, I always succumbed to the women who have sex are sluts belief while still agreeing with the “men are trash” statement. How could I blame the male while clearly perpetrating the culture of victim blaming? Clearly, I had some internalized misogyny and cognitive dissonance that I was able to tap into with the discussion. I now see another side of it, which is that I have been conditioned and socialized to punish women and glorify men for sexual behaviour and expression. In its own nature, there is nothing wrong about and nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to sex. In fact, most of the bad things associated with sex come from a lack of awareness so I know now that it is important to ask the right questions. Such include: what birth control method is best, how to respond to the spread of private nude pics online, what is consent, how do I give consent and more. In terms of self-expression then, I can do whatever I want within the limits of my own comfort. If I think wearing shorts to school is but if I refuse to wear a lace bralette to a bar, that is fine too. It doesn’t mean that if other women do not express themselves, such as in the way they dress, the same way as I do that they are “sluts” or not worthy of the same respect. Simply, this just means we have different modes on self-expression and levels of comfort. 

With all of this being said, I was clearly able to explore the inner nuances of my identity given this module. Nearing the end of the semester, I am so exhausted but am going to try my best to power through it. I think this is the second to the last if not last blog post I have to write before passing the final project. I look forward to reading my past blog posts and see how far I’ve come (including the likely grammatical errors I’ve made as I never proofread these. again, I’m sorry) and if I’ve made any meaningful connections and observations about myself. 

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“I” before “We”

Module 2 introduced me to some of the famous and infamous names in Psychology including Erikson and Freud. With evolving and contrasting views and theories on identity and development, I could only conclude that identity is dynamic and unique to the person which is why it is so difficult to explain or understand in less theoretical terms. Nonetheless, each has taught me something about myself and about those around me. 

In Freud’s psychodynamic perspective, he emphasizes the three structures of personality: id, ego, and superego and occurrence of development in sequential psychosexual stages. With the impetus of all his writing supporting psychoanalysis, all these simply reveal that we are motivated by hidden and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This was the most memorable and relevant learning to me, aside from the obvious fascination or more accurately disturbance to his ideas on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. This idea of the unconscious leaking out elsewhere when repressed was hauntingly but also accurately portrayed in “Ghosts in the Nursery” which used two case studies to prove that the occurrence of repression of emotion and identification only continues the cycle of childhood trauma and abuse. One of these defense mechanisms, repression, was so accurate that it seemed to be mocking me. I even found myself muttering “lol, me” in class. As someone who has never had an “id” personality, my conflicts tend to be between the ego and the superego. Obeying my perfectionist personality, the superego always seems to win out. Again, I am no stranger to the defense mechanism of repression, and I have used it to the point where I have harmed my own mental health. Enter my intrapsychic conflict: asking for help. With my ego telling me that it is okay to be humble and accept that I cannot carry the burden of pain and past traumas alone and my superego telling me I have to conform to the notion of perfection I have where I have to hide pain and not burden others with it, I always seem to repress any negative emotion I have. I’ve done this since I was a little kid, never telling my parents about a bully in school, how I felt when my my mom had a miscarriage, and even recently when I have intrusions about the day I found out my boyfriend took his own life. When it comes to the latter, I admit that sometimes I still have to push these thoughts to the dark just so I can function normally in school and smile. Freudian psychology begged me to look deep and see that I was identifying with my parents who never talked to me about pain or problems even though they could never shield it from me. I saw that I was trapped in a cycle of silence and “you’ll get over it eventually.” All of this pain that I have been uncovering and releasing in therapy has been a relief and made me understand a lot about myself, the most clear being that I’m a “tagasalo” and have this need to fix everyone before I can even feel anything for myself. Looking at the person I am now, although such can be considered as a facet of kindness, this approach to life and problems has harmed me and come to the point where I have hurt others. Recognizing this cycle, I want to be able to say “it ends with me” because I now know how important it is to not let it get to the point where your mind festers and the black dog resides. Reminding myself that it is ok to feel and that something will blossom out of my vulnerability, I vow to go easy on myself first and then other people too as they are also hurting and healing from traumas that they keep in the dark and disguise with defense mechanisms. 

Erikson’s psychosocial perspective, on the other hand, stresses the ego and the eight stages of development where there is a crisis that must be resolved in order to learn a new trait. Here, I could not help but be in awe of the accuracy of how Erikson described the stage I believe myself to be in which is the identity vs role confusion/fidelty stage. He completely understands the thirst, the incessant questions, the strong opinions, the sparks of inspiration, and the noisy confusion that teenage life is married with. I am currently testing the worldviews and causes that I have previously identified with and introjected and selecting which is a best fit for me to create a version of myself that is “based on but more than or different from the sum of these individual parts.” I think the latter is a beautiful metaphor, almost suggesting that we are like a painting or sculpture touched by many but ultimately portraying a unique picture with previous and clumsy markings covered by new ones. I’m the type of person who likes to have a plan for everything, but with all that has happened I am finding that my plan went off track and that is okay because I am still finding myself. It is okay that I ended up in a different college than I expected because of the circumstance and it is okay if I am still feeling out. It’s okay if I don’t end up finishing this course and taking Psychology instead, and it’s okay if I try out a completely different path. I feel like I’ve always been in such a rush to grow up and have always put myself down for falling short and staying in this period of not knowing what I want yet. I know now that I should look at this period with grace and excitement as it will prepare me and bring me closer to the version of “I” that is prepared to shift to a “we”. After this stage is intimacy vs love/isolation where Erikson defined intimacy as the ability to fuse identities with someone without fearing the loss of a part of ourselves. I’ll always remember this. I honestly wish I had been told this before entering a relationship in high school but now I know that I am not yet ready for the type relationship I always wanted. Lastly, to supplement Erikson’s theory James Marcia provided Four Statuses of Identity. Of course, consistent with the psychosocial stage that I am in, I am currently in a psychological moratorium. I am currently testing different views, perspectives, ideas, and identities without making commitments and as I said previously, this status is ok and can delay my progression into succeeding stages because the “I” that emerges will be one that I am proud of and worthy to care for and be a part of a collective “we”. 

Lastly, I will talk about what I have discovered upon self-reflecting beyond the looking glass self and dramaturgy. First, it was difficult and confusing to accept that we do play different roles in our lives. The very notion of such scared me into thinking that I, someone who is very much rooted on the looking glass self and seeks validation from others, could lose myself upon being so invested in a role that I play to simply please others. Nonetheless, I trusted in the affirmation that I made to myself before starting college which is that I have a strong sense of self and others who cannot see the truth, with the ugly, about myself do not deserve that part of me. With that, I think I have set out manageable performances that I take on in life. First is that of a student and a classmate, where I have to be focused, reliable, and studious. Second is that of a daughter and a friend, someone funny, strong, compassionate and now, sad and mopey (wow, they must think I’m a handful). My friends and family are the people who i can be unapologetically me around and knowing that i have people within my reach who accept me for who I am relieves the constant strain to seek validation and praise from everybody else. I resolve to take note of things that I was able to accomplish with pride because it is time that I recognize how I have dealt with the pain and honestly done the impossible while mourning a  loss and feeling like I have lost a great part of myself given his permanent physical absence. 

Inserting this low-budget meme because my blockmates think I’m masungit HAHAHAHA: 

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i’m trying my best and that is enough

You probably don’t know me that well but I’m Bianca and I sit in the second row, 4th seat from the left. I often struggle talking about myself but I want and need to give this a shot, it’s honestly like this subject was a reaffirmation of words spoken to me in this tough time and yet, I still fail to hear and struggle to put these into action. I apologize, I’m stubborn like that. 

This is my context: I somehow ended up here in Ateneo, just a few months after my boyfriend’s suicide. Everyday, it feels as if I am a spectator in my own body, struggling to connect with people and feeling displaced wanting nothing more to wear my experiences like a badge for everyone to see but I cannot do that because everyone is struggling as well. Our SocSci class began with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s study on Patterns of Thinking which was not unfamiliar to me as I came from an International Baccalaureate School and we discussed this during our Psychology class.  The very memory of learning this back in high school before my life was honestly destroyed hurt me. But again, like a silent reminder to keep going, which are what have been the impetus of my life so far, I understood myself and my negative thinking patterns in terms of The Thinking Self and The Feeling Self. Whenever I looked back at my relationship, I could only see it in terms of the end, the cathartic episode when I came to school the next day to discover that he would be gone forever. Every reminder as I moved forward taking it one day at a time, would make me hate my relationship. I’d say “I wish I never transferred schools” and “he ruined my life.” Little did I know I was thinking in terms of my Remembering Self, shamelessly exemplifying the peak-end rule when I was only judging the experience based on the tragic end as this is the self that keeps track and makes decisions. The introduction of the Thinking Self that begs us to answer “does it hurt now?” To answer this, of course it does but I remembered the advice of my therapist that I have to remember the blessings  and graces our relationship brought to my life and how I have to trust in this experience teaching me the lesson that is not usually taught to people my age: sometimes, we are powerless and cannot control the choices of others thus, we must be humble enough to accept this. Moreover, I should be grateful that I can give him the highest form of love, the kind where he doesn’t need to be physically present just like how I love God. From my experience of thinking with the Remembering Self, it was evident that I was living life especially in Ateneo with the anchoring and adjustment. I used my bad experiences in high school as a starting point, thus compromising the way I could form relationships and function as a student here in college. I told myself that I have been going through the worst experience of my life so how could college be any different. Learning about this bias, I told myself that I should not judge an experience based on the past and that I should not compromise what is new for the old. Thus, every time it became too difficult to breathe I reminded myself that to stop, take it easy, and remember the facts. Reciting it as a mantra in my head I said, “My responsibility in this world is to take care of myself first, he chose to do it, and I am here and I am in touch with my authentic self.”

The next modules namely The Feeling Self and Emotional Regulation and Self-Care were of even more importance to me. I remember in the day of class where we discussed the study of depression, I had just come from therapy discussing the possibility of taking a gap year, something that I am still so scared to do because of my pride and how it might seem like I am letting this destroy my life even more. In class and in the reading it was stressed that we cannot problem solve our negative emotions as the doing mode is not applicable for external problems and we should instead adapt the being mode which acknowledges our emotions. I could not help but remember what was stressed to me which was that I have spent my whole life alone psychologically, looking at negative emotions as something that I should not even feel because I am so blessed. Continuing on she said that it’s time to let your body take control and that I have to make my soul catch up to my body. From this, I looked at my context in terms of the ABC model of basic emotions. Using the lens of sadness, the usual antecedent could simply scoring low in a quiz making me believe I was worthless and thus numb behaviourally and tense physiologically, I always describe this as feeling like someone is choking me. Knowing this then has made me realize that even in my daily life I let my negative emotions dictate all my experiences and thus, I can do something to actively reduce the effects of this. In terms of emotional regulation, then, I always am guilty of situational selection. I have missed General Assemblies, course gimmicks, and block hangouts as I am afraid that such may trigger my anxiety and compromise my mental health. Of course, this is positive on the surface but it has limited my experiences as a freshman that others usually enjoy and find helpful. Lastly, in terms of self-care mindfulness has been introduced to me in therapy. Here, we do meditation and breathing exercises as well taking daily walks as trauma is often stored in the body. I look forward to continuing to live though the grief and trauma are present. Again, I am trying my best and know that there is so much worth in remaining true to my authentic self. 

One day at a time, I will continue living intentionally :’)