Christine Relos
Psychology 11
12/20/2011
Maslow and Misty
Misty is a 23 year old woman who has been misdiagnosed with Bipolar Type II disorder in June of 2011. She is single and live with her parents. She was born and lived in the Philippines for 13 years until her family migrated to the United States in 2001. Misty is currently in college right now and is working to get her degree and is undergoing treatment for her disorder.
In her childhood, Misty’s parents were almost never around as they worked hard. They would give her everything she needed financially though and sent her to an all-girl private Catholic School. She grew up surrounded by friends and family who were caring and supportive for most of the time.
She grew up feeling inferior to her mom as she was always in the spotlight, working in TV and radio. She was always compared to her mom. Her mom was the epitome of beauty in Manila while Misty was the complete opposite.
Misty grew up learning to cut her wrists when feeling sad and overdosing on over-the-counter drugs. When there are problems, she runs away from it. When she is confronted, she freezes up.
Her parents’ way of teaching discipline when they were in the Philippines were pinching her skin really hard, making her stand in the corner until she fell asleep, hitting her on the buttocks with a belt, and making her kneel in front of an altar at home with her arms up, shoulder height on both sides for hours.
When Misty moved to America, she did not like it and was home-sick for a whole year. She did make friends but quickly moved to another state in less than a year. For that first year there, she lost a lot of weight and started feeling good about herself a little bit but still had a bad self-image. She was also culture shocked and trying to adjust to a life without any helpers as she had to do all the household chores by herself because her parents had to work and her siblings were too young.
When Misty was 14, she had her first job and started to feel the life of being independent although at home, her parents were still strict. She had her first real boyfriend at age 15 but her parents hated him as he was part of a gang. Misty was in love though and did everything for her boyfriend. He took her virginity and when Misty’s mom found out by reading her diary one day while she was at school, her mom sent her away to Tennessee to break them apart.
When Misty came back, she tried to go back to her boyfriend but he found another girl at that point. Misty then tried to focus on her studies but soon found a new crowd to hang out with. She started drinking and smoking pot along with these friends. She felt like she belonged.
When she became unhappy and had knowledge that her family was moving to California soon, she and her mom decided that it may be best for her to just leave earlier as she was always fighting with her mom. This has been a trend since she was a child as well, sometimes really happy and caring and loving and sometimes really withdrawn and sullen to the point of isolation and despair.
Misty moved to California and graduated high school from there. She made new friends but that didn’t last long as she moved again to where her family settled when they moved to California.
She met a guy where she started working at and became a part of a group of tight knit friends. For a while there, she was on top of the world. Very much in love, had friends who she was really close to and hung out all the time with and good grades in school and getting along with her family fine.
Things started turning sour when her boyfriend said they couldn’t be together as his family had arranged a marriage for him. This caused him to go back and forth between her and his family, pretty much torturing her. One time, she even overdosed on 300 sleeping pills and almost killed herself if not for being rushed to the hospital. Her parents then decided to send her to the Philippines so she can get over her boyfriend and start a new life.
When she was there, she started to become better and accept life again. But her boyfriend went back to her parents and talked to them and told them he wanted her in her life, that he was ready to give his family up to be with her. She then came home and they started making plans to live together and even got an apartment for themselves. A week later after she came back, he changed his mind and went back to his family because his mom threatened suicide.
His cycle went on back and forth and even culminated with Misty moving to Long Beach to get away again. She only lasted a while there as he kept on luring her back.
This continued for years. But always ending up with him going back to his family.
Misty lost her mind and once again decided on committing suicide. She left the state, hoping to spend all her money before she did it. She dropped her job, left her family without even saying anything to anyone. She couldn’t talk to her family as they weren’t comforting or just didn’t know what to do or say and she didn’t really have close friends as everyone moved to different cities or the old friends that she had were still stuck in their partying ways.
During this time, she suffered a lot of panic attacks and anxiety. In the end, her mom coaxed her to come back home and she did. She agreed to start seeing a doctor for her condition and has been in therapy since though it is hard for her to do anything these days.
Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs. This theory states that if the lower needs are not met, one is not able to satisfy higher level of needs. If one does not satisfy this, you will not be able to realize your full potential. There are 5 levels in the Hierarchy of Needs, starting with the lowest: 1. Physiological, 2. Safety, 3. Belonging and Love, 4. Esteem, 5. Self-actualization.
Physiological needs are your basic needs for the body to survive, like thirst and hunger, oxygen and sleep. If these needs are not met, it can lead to illness and even death. If one is not able to satisfy these needs completely, it will result in him always trying to meet this demand and not pursuing anything else in life.
Safety needs are the feelings of being secure and stable, of not having to stress about things going out of control and into chaos. We need structure and order in our lives, something that is constant and predictable so as to not cause us anxiety and uncertainty about our well-being and safety. Without this, we would always be focused on finding stability in life.
Belonging and love needs are our innate desire to feel like we belong to a group, like friends or family. We strive to seek close relationships with those around us and be able to communicate our thought and feelings. If this isn’t met, we may feel as if we are isolated and so continually seek out to strengthen this area.
Esteem needs is our desire to feel like we are able to do things ourselves. It makes us focus on personal achievements. We want to feel respected by others and acknowledgement and recognition for the things we have accomplished. When these needs aren’t met, we may feel as if we aren’t good enough and feel helpless.
When these four needs are successfully met, we move on to the last stage which is self-actualization. This is where we want to be. This is where we reach out beyond ourselves and strive to be the best we can be. This is the stage where we take full advantage of our talents to become better than what we are now. You have your food, your comfortable home, you feel loved, your accomplishments are recognized, so you are free to do what it is that your heart truly desires, your dreams and your goals.
Maslow believes that there are things that hinder the growth of an individual which are negative events that happened in one’s life that causes to develop bad habits, giving in to peer pressure or what society thinks we should do even if it is against what we believe in, and defense mechanisms much like Freud’s repression, denial, rationalization, reaction formation, projection, isolation, regression, and sublimation but adding desacralization and the Jonah complex.
I believe that Misty’s issues regarding relationships, anxiety, mood swings, depression and suicide ideations generally stem from these lower needs not being met as well as developing bad habits based on past experiences and applying the defense mechanisms when she feels threatened.
We see that Misty always runs away when faced with a confrontation. When she is pushed, she pulls away and isolates herself. When she encounters a problem, instead of dealing with it, she chooses to just let it go and never solve it. This came from past experiences where her fear has caused her to react this way towards problems. This came from her moving around so much when problems come. By choosing to not fix it, she forges on and it does make it go away but it’s like you just turned your back on it and it’s still there. This bad habit is a problem as it causes her to not be able to overcome the obstacles in life. This is a hinder to her growth as a person and being able to learn things about the world and herself.
Misty always chooses things that do not require much of her and only do the bare minimum possible. She is using the defense mechanism: the Jonah complex. This type of defense mechanism, introduced by Maslow, is intentionally not being the best you can be. Even if you know you can do better, you stick with what you think will ask the least of you so you can avoid having to have too much responsibility. This is a hindrance to one’s growth as it leads us to not use our capabilities to the fullest.
There are times though when she feels like she has everything. That all her needs are met. In comes metamotivation which is actions that are brought about by a desire for growth.
There are also times when she is able to be in the process of self-actualization. We call it the process as it is not a permanent situation. You have to constantly work on it to be able to stay there. Make sure all your needs are met, then you have the ability to work on things to better yourself.
She has also experienced peak experiences which are moments in our life where we stand in awe at everything, where we feel satisfied in all areas of our life.
I’m sorry. I tried really hard.