The Impact of Significant Life Events on Human Development

Running head: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Human development
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The human development and growth is affected by different life factors. For this reason,
research into significant life event has increased because many incidents and adversities in life
have a significant impact on physical and mental health outcomes of people (Kail & Cavanaugh,
2018). Hence, human development for different individuals differs based on their life
experiences and theories of human development can help to explore complexities in life of an
individual and how these complexities affect their behaviour, performance and attitude in life.
This essay will reflect on a significant event that I have experienced in life and the impact of
these experiences on my development through the lens of two theories on human development.
One significant event that had a huge impact on my life and affected my self-esteem and
behaviour towards life included my experience of being bullied in school because of obesity.
When I was 15 years old, I was very fat. My weight and my overall appearance were not like
other children in my school as I was suffering from obesity. I was very fat and stout compared to
other children in my class. Although I personally never felt bad about my look, however the
attitude of my peers in school made me feel dejected and bad about my body image. This
happened after I started noticing that my relatives or other people in the community made fun of
me based on my look. They called me with weird names. I was subjected to weight based
victimization and discrimination as everyone bullied me in school. Repeated experience of
bullying generated negative thought in my mind. I began to question my appearance and felt bad
that why I am like this. This experience is not new for me. Obesity is common for all children
with obesity. Bullying in children and adolescent is widespread across the world and being
obese is one of the most common reasons for being bullied at school (Bacchini et al., 2015).
() gives the evidence weight based bullying lead to negative emotional response,
academic failure and peer rejection. I also faced these consequences when I was subjected to

2HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
verbal abuse from my classmates. I developed negative feeling and feelings of poor self-esteem.
My response at that time can be understood from the review of Erik Erikson’s theory of human
development. Erikson’s theory is relevant with my life situation as the theory describes social
development of human being through different stages of life. The theory is based on the
assumption that human development occurs through the stage of infancy to late adulthood and in
each stage, individuals confronts new challenges and overcome it to move to the next stage of
life. In this way he defined eight stages and based on my age when I experienced bullying, my
situation matches with fifth stage (adolescent between 12-18 years) when there is conflict
between ego-identity versus role-confusion. Significant relation for an individual at this stage
includes their peers and their response significantly influences psychosocial virtues and mal-
adaptation in a person (Zhang, 2015). Hence, my relationship with peer influenced had an impact
on psychosocial outcome and led to maladaptive patterns of poor self-esteem and emotional
distress.
After being bullied at school, I began to question who I am and why I am like this. I feel
I responded to the event in this way because of the stage at which I was in my life at that time.
According to Erikson’s theory, adolescents between 12 to 18 years experience conflict between
ego identity and role confusion. Ego identity related to development of sense of self through new
experiences and daily interactions with others. It is common for children at this stage to develop
conflict related to identity versus confusion. The common question in their mind is who I am?.
This question emerges based on experience in society (Kroger, 2015). In my mind also, the same
question emerged because of my interaction with peers. As their verbal abuse made me confused
and insecure about my appearance, I also developed identity crisis. Hence, this defines that why I
developed identity crisis and which event in life lead to such response for me. DeSmet et al.