Personal Development: Journey to Self-Awareness

“Personal development is the conscious choice to improve one’s life to become a better person and to grow as an individual” (author unknown, n. d.). As a future counselor, self-awareness and personal development are essential components in understanding how to help others. Without such knowledge, it may be impossible to facilitate change in clients because of one’s own lack of self-awareness. One cannot help others if he or she lacks self-knowledge and fail to achieve his or her own developmental milestones. Therefore, through personal self-reflection, my adult attachment style, racial identity, and moral development will be dissected and explored to gain an understanding of my own personal development.
Adult Attachment Development
As a 27

Born to a mother from a small town in Georgia who desired to explore the world, I was exposed to an array of cultures through different arts. Although I have always lived in a predominantly inner city Black environment, I was never consciously aware of my racial identity until about the age of five years old. During this time, I wanted a Caucasian baby doll that was constantly being advertised on my favorite cartoon station. For weeks, I begged my mother to buy me the doll, but she refused to do so. Interestingly, she said that she would buy the Black version of the doll, but I refused. I recall commercials advertising the kids playing with the White dolls; and the Black dolls would appear at the very end of the commercial. Subconsciously, I created a negative schema about being African American. One study discussed how supremacy may produce implicit attitudes in Black youth and exert a power on them at the subconscious level (Craemer, 2015). After my mother realized how distraught I had become over not being able to have the White doll, she bought African American dolls, books, toys, etc. She would constantly remind me of my African American heritage and culture, while trying to instill dignity and pride in my racial

Based on Kohlberg and Piaget’s stages of moral development, I experienced the various levels of ethical behaviors throughout my life. First, exploring Piaget’s heteronomous morality and Kohlberg’s stage one of the preconventional level, I can recall being the model child of good behavior. My behavior was shaped by my mother and other authoritative figures. I possessed a strong fear of being punished if I broke any rules. When I was about seven years old, I vividly remember my afterschool friends trying to decide if we should walk to the corner store on the other street, or walk to the store that was a couple of houses away from us. We were not supposed to leave our street ever; but that day, my friends wanted to try something different. I tried to convince them that we should stay with our store out of fear of getting in trouble by my mother and babysitter. Needless to say, we walked to the next street’s corner store, and I felt extremely guilty in doing so. My guilt was so strong that I actually told on all of us because I felt that we needed to be punished. I was the follower of all rules, with no questions asked. Furthermore, Kohlberg’s individualistic orientation delves into the best interest of the child, at the limited expense of helping others. In other words, the child may reason how he or she will benefit from meeting the needs of others (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015).