Nonnormative Events In My Life
My fourth listed life event is the epitome of a nonnormative event, which randomly occurred, and was most likely meant to be harmless. This was a very specific incident that would have lasting consequences on my personality type. When I was 15 years old, and even though I had begun drinking and using drugs, I still maintained a very high level in school. One day, I brought home a test from class in which I scored 100% on and showed it to my father. He looked at it, and handed it back to me, and said, “couldn’t you have gotten any extra credit?” While, as an adult, I believe that it was my dad’s way of saying “wow, good job,” all I heard was that nothing is ever good enough and only perfection is acceptable. In retrospect, this demonstrates
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Being raised in a non-religious household, my definition of spirituality involved God. That has since changed dramatically. My introduction to spirituality was through the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). Polein and Zemore (2004) noted:
The 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous emphasizes a fellowship of recovering persons where participants help each other in a variety of ways… the twelfth step of AA suggests that when members ‘‘carry the message forward’’ to help other alcoholics, they also strengthen their own recovery (p. 579) Carl Jung, who was an earlier collaborator with the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, believed that “religion and spirituality are expressions of an innate need to find meaning in life, to create a sense of wholeness or completeness, and to connect with something larger than the individual self,” (as cited in Broderick in Blewitt, 2015, p. 534). This belief in something greater than myself was the biggest impetus to development and current identity. No longer do my days consist of figuring out what I can do for myself; instead, they are filled with ways that I can be of service to others. This has dramatically addressed my issues with self-image and concept, and feelings of guilt. It has also given me the ability to communicate with others and have healthy
Being raised in a non-religious household, my definition of spirituality involved God. That has since changed dramatically. My introduction to spirituality was through the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). Polein and Zemore (2004) noted:
The 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous emphasizes a fellowship of recovering persons where participants help each other in a variety of ways… the twelfth step of AA suggests that when members ‘‘carry the message forward’’ to help other alcoholics, they also strengthen their own recovery (p. 579) Carl Jung, who was an earlier collaborator with the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, believed that “religion and spirituality are expressions of an innate need to find meaning in life, to create a sense of wholeness or completeness, and to connect with something larger than the individual self,” (as cited in Broderick in Blewitt, 2015, p. 534). This belief in something greater than myself was the biggest impetus to development and current identity. No longer do my days consist of figuring out what I can do for myself; instead, they are filled with ways that I can be of service to others. This has dramatically addressed my issues with self-image and concept, and feelings of guilt. It has also given me the ability to communicate with others and have healthy