Question: Your Personal Lifeline

Read the Discussion Participation Scoring Guide to learn how the instructor will evaluate your discussion participation throughout this course.

For your own reflection, prepare a personal lifeline that charts nodal events from your date of birth to the present. Notice both vertical and horizontal stressors (McGoldrick, Garcia Preto, & Carter, 2016, p. 38). The vertical stressors might include cultural and societal history, such as poverty and experiences of racism and classism; family myths; family secrets; and privilege or oppression as related to gender, race, sexual orientation, class, age, or religion. The horizontal stressors might include life-cycle transitions, death, traumatic experiences, natural disasters, physical and mental health, life skills (education, career), and family structure. This exploration is intended to give you an intergenerational perspective on the relationship of your individual development to your family's development through time.

After reflecting on your personal lifeline, choose one vertical and one horizontal stressor from your past that intersect with each other. In your discussion, you do not need to indicate all events on the lifeline, only the two that meet the noted criteria. Write about how these stressors interacted and how they impacted you and your family. For example, one of you may notice that when you were preparing to leave home and go away to school, one of your parents became seriously ill and you stayed at home. Perhaps a critical family event stalled your transition to establishing your individuality.

Discuss what you learned from your experience and how it is or will be enhancing your professional role as a therapist or counselor.

Note: You need to share only information about yourself that you are comfortable sharing. You are also welcome to write in first person about your personal experiences, though reference concepts should be cited accordingly. Try to connect your personal experiences to concepts in the literature.