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Social Identity Analysis

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Throughout high school, and even to this day, I have always struggled with identifying who I am as a person. The process of inwardly examining who you are is known as introspection (Branscombe & Baron, 2017). High school was a period in time, where I constantly struggled with the idea of personal identity versus social identity. I was so bent on fitting in with my friend group that I lost sense of who I really was. According to Branscombe and Baron (2017), personal identity is who we believe ourselves to be. On the other hand, social identity is who we perceive ourselves to be in a social context, based on group membership (Branscombe & Baron, 2017). I often abandoned my personal identity during high school because I was afraid of being treated …show more content…
I thought to myself, if I was disliked for what I looked like, how would showing who I was have helped the matter? At an early age, I had learned the idea that physical attractiveness was what was important to people. The idea of self-concept was a joke. The pattern was the same from middle school. So, when I got into high school, I hid who I was from the rest of the world, in fear of being judged and treated differently. I was treated poorly and made fun of for what I looked like. During this time, I had lost my sense of self-identity and purpose. It was not until college, that I really started to explore the idea of self-concept. I took on the social role of being a student and really started to explore what that meant. Additionally, I started to explore all my possible selves. According to Branscombe and Baron (2017), possible selves are potential possibilities of who we might want to become. Thinking back to what I had experienced growing up, I never thought I was worthy of college; however, I did not let that stop me from pursuing my dreams. I often turn to my mother, who I consider to be my role model, as inspiration for achieving my

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