Enhancing the spiritual development of adolescent girls

Professional School Counseling, June, 2004 by Mary Alice Bruce, Debbie Cockreham

Discovering the Authentic Self: The First Step of the Spiritual Journey

The road to spiritual development begins with each adolescent girl being able to answer the question "Who am I?" in a safe and inviting environment (Pipher, 1994). An adolescent girl needs to be guided in a process involving looking within to find a true core of self, acknowledging unique gifts, accepting all feelings, and making deep and firm decisions about values and meaning. The activities that follow lead to an outcome for each girl understanding the difference between thinking and feeling, between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and between hearing her voice and the voice of others.

Activity #1. The girls are encouraged to search within themselves to begin the process of uncovering their authentic selves through a reflective discussion of guided questions (Harris, 1989) including:

What are my values?
How would I describe myself to myself?
How do I see myself in the future?
When do I feel most like my true self?
What kinds of people do I respect?
How am I similar to and different from my mother?
How am I similar to and different from my father?
What goals do I have for myself as a person?
What would I be proud of on my deathbed?

Additional processing of this first activity may occur with "Was it easy or hard to answer these questions?" "Did it make you uncomfortable?" and "Did you hear another person's voice other than your own when answering the questions?"

Activity #2. Since behaviors often reflect self beliefs (McGee, 1992), the girls can consider how they live their lives and respond to the following unfinished sentences:

What you talk about
Places you go
People with whom you spend time
Your dreams for your rife
How you spend your time and money
How you manage conflicts

Subsequently, each girl can be challenged to examine whether the authentic self, identified in the exercise in the first activity, is congruent with the behavior she exhibits on a daily basis as exposed by the second activity. "Are you meeting your own sense of who you really are? Or have you rejected your own truth and been riving someone else's truth for you?" The idea of incongruence or disequilibrium can be discussed and "journaled" about as a catalyst for spiritual growth. Each student may begin to identify her authentic self and discover congruence between her behavior and her authentic self. She can begin to unveil this authentic self to others in the group.

Activity #3. These questions (Harris, 1989) and accompanying group discussion may help each girl better understand her unique belief of spirituality:

When you say the word spirituality, what other words come to your mind? When did the word spirituality start to mean something to you?

What specific childhood experiences and people have been involved with your spirituality?

Imagine that you continue to search and uncover more about your spirituality; how are you responding?

Gradually, you uncover what you have found. What is it?

Now imagine yourself returning from your search. How are you different?