Autobiography for Grad School

Autobiography Paper Assignment

Candace Marie Butler
SWRK 602-DH1: Human Service Behavior in the Social Environment I
Lyndelia Wynn, M.A., M.S.W.
Fayetteville State University

Autobiography for Social Behaviors and Environments
Candace M. Butler

Part I
A quote from Wonder Woman sums up the mantra of my life, “I fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. I speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.” Life is not easy for anyone; we all navigate our way through it the best we can. It seems we all want the same things from life. To have love, to help one another; to put good out in the world, and to remove the bad. That being said, it would be a mistake to underestimate me. Through all the trials I have faced, I have always come out on top. This is but one more trial in my life. How do I reconcile the two very different ideas? I don’t know. All I know is that my life has been a constant battle of balancing the two. I will use different psychological theories to examine my life from childhood to the present.
There’s a lot of things that have influenced my life from my grandmother’s cancer death, to the election of former president Barrack Obama to my own cancer fight. Many factors in my life have helped me evolve and develop into the person I am today. Many different areas are vital to a person’s development including physical, social, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and political.
I was born on Wednesday, November the 9th of 1983 at Roberson Memorial Hospital at 3:22 pm to Mark Leon and Gayle Singletary Butler, with a head full of dark, curly hair. In attendance was my paternal grandmother Mary “Helen’ Hester Butler. I was the first granddaughter born to Leon and Helen Butler. I was preceded in birth by three older cousins: all boys. My father was out to sea in the Navy at the time of my birth. I was their first child. Interestingly enough, I was born with a head full of hair and didn’t scream or cry as most babies do. I was a Caucasian female of the working class. My parents were high school graduates as were my grandparents. I had an aunt and her husband that had graduate degrees, but education wasn’t very important in my family.
My parents married shortly before my birth and they divorced when I was seven years old and in the first grade. Since my father was in the Navy and out to sea a lot, I don’t think his leaving actually affected me much however, his absence would. I had a brother that was younger than me by five years. I remember that my mother taped her ring to his car when she found his car at a bar with a note. I know that he cheated on her and broke up our family. I was much closer to my mother than my father since he had been gone so much. I have faint members of going to see Disney on Ice, and of a birthday party at Chucky Cheese’s but those are vague and blurry.
As an infant, my mother who was a stay at home mother and wife, read to me and I never tore the pages of a book but paid attention. At two months, I was smiling by two months and I could hold my head up by the same milestone. I was able to hold my head up by four months, meeting that milestone. Even though I had colic, once that was dealt with, I was frequently a happy infant. I was always playing with other children and parents and never knew a stranger, mostly my cousins who were only a few years older than me. They ranged between two years older than me to one year younger than me. When I was three, I got a younger cousin and played with her as well. Yes, I was no longer the only girl.
At five months I was sitting up by myself. The developmental milestone for this was six months. I began talking at five months old and the developmental milestone for that is at nine months. I was speaking in phrases and words like dada and able to follow directions and understand no. This falls within the developmental metrics of nine months. I was never afraid of strangers and never knew a stranger as a young child. I was always going up to strangers and talking to them. My favorite toy as a child was the Teddy Ruxpin talking teddy bear. This falls within the developmental metrics of nine months.
Even though I stood at eleven months, I seemed reluctant to take my first steps and didn’t start walking until I was thirteen months old. According to the developmental milestones’ infants should start standing at nine months, so I was a little behind there, and ahead of the milestone of walking since that should be done by eighteen months.
My height got up to 5’2 by the time I graduated high school, at the same time I weighed ninety-five pounds. Before I started chemo treatment at thirty-five years old, I weighed one-thirty. After cancer treatment, I weigh one seventy. I am now obese according to the body mass index. Due to this, I have been entered into a clinical trial for obese women who underwent breast cancer treatment. My body mass index is now thirty-one. Anything over thirty is considered obese. Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I was able to use the treadmill for half an hour and swim. Since my treatment has ended, I’m lucky if I can manage five minutes. I was prescribed many medications during cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, Claritin for bone pain, and many nausea medications for the chemo treatment. I was also given six steroid pills and a Benadryl weekly prior to chemotherapy treatments. I have no history of substance abuse. I may drink one martini on holidays or birthdays, but I’ve never been an avid drinker, and I have stayed away from illegal substances.
Many members of my family were diagnosed with cancer. Starting with breast cancer which I was diagnosed with, my paternal aunt, Rhonda, was diagnosed with it in the early stages and only had to undergo a lumpectomy, radiation, and hormone therapy. She was in her sixties. It concerned my oncologists that I was diagnosed with this so young. My great-aunt, Virginia, also had breast cancer. They were both survivors. My paternal grandmother, Helen, died from lung cancer in 1992. She had chemotherapy treatment before succumbing to the fatal disease. My paternal great grandfather, Norman, had liver cancer. He also went through chemotherapy treatment. He was in the hospital undergoing treatment when in 1980 during the Reagan/Carter election. He took off his oxygen and died rather than live in a Reagan presidency. My paternal grandfather, Leon, was diagnosed with skin cancer. I remember that he had pieces of skin taken out. In 2017, my maternal grandfather, Terry, died from lung cancer related to his work at the shipyard.
I have always been an empathic person, putting the needs of others ahead of my own. I seem to be an even-tempered person, especially when compared to other members of my family. Like my maternal grandmother, I take a lot before I blow, but when I do it’s usually not pretty because I hold so much in. I have found a lot of solace in video games as far as coping skills. I have found it much healthier to put on a Mortal Kombat game rather than to unleash my anger on people I love and care about. I also enjoy swimming and walking as a form of de-stressing. My mother dated and married a very mean person, who was very harsh with us. He was always putting me down and making me feel very stupid and irrelevant. He made me feel like I was always in the way, and my self-esteem was just recovering before my cancer diagnosis. My cancer diagnosis definitely put a damper on my self-esteem. It’s difficult to have good self-esteem when you look in the mirror and you see an overweight, bald, scarred woman looking back at you. There are times that I still don’t recognize my own reflection. My maternal grandmother was very anti-social and had some depression issues, my mother was prescribed medication for depression, and my maternal great-grandmother had dementia at ninety. My brother has a chemical imbalance and needs some kind of mental evaluation.
My father was a Baptist and my mother was a Methodist when I was born. Since my father was away at sea, we didn’t go to church until after my parents got divorced. When my mother moved back to North Carolina and in with her adopted parents we started going to a Baptist church and later went to a Methodist church. When I was nine, I was baptized as a Methodist and later reaffirmed my faith at thirty.
Since the election of Donald Trump and the support of the evangelical community, not to mention how the paster encouraged and supported Donald Trump and his policies, I found myself re-evaluating that faith. I found myself questioning the truth of Christianity and the Bible in general. The more I questioned the more I came to realize that most of the stories in the bible are parables and they are anonymous hearsay accounts. There is no archeological or historical evidence that backs up the events told. We know that virgins give birth and that all the animals in the world could not fit on one boat. The time frame on one hundred and fifty days with no food for Noah, his family, or the animals on board is a big plot hole. We also know that there was no global flood as many civilizations existed and documented their cultures in this time period. I believe in things that I can verify empirically. I would like to think that there is a heaven and that I will be reunited with deceased family members, but I see no evidence that this is the case. Regardless, they still have a place in my heart. When I have prayed, I have done so by asking one of my deceased family members for advice.
My philosophical ideas tend to be more realist. I trust empirical evidence and what we can prove. That being said I consider myself a humanist. I think if humans are going to survive, we have to take control of our own survival, we have to fight for one another. We are in charge of our own survival and destruction, and I have seen both the best of humanity and the worst of it. Everything I have seen convinces me that we have an inherent goodness and a desire to help one another. We possess immense empathy for the suffering of others.
Until I got cancer, I always went to work, even sick. In the wake, of coronavirus, I think this has changed for many people. People in the United States experience sick care, not health care. If it hadn’t been for Obamacare, I probably wouldn’t be here to write this paper now. Having cancer definitely changed my perspective on health. I have always come in when called, and I consider myself a dependable and hard worker. I have a good relationship with my mother. She is my best friend. I lost many friends over my political and religious views and my refusal to accept the action of Donald Trump as normal. They are not. I have never seen a president throw so many tantrums and act worse than any toddler. We should not normalize this. It’s not normal.
My father has been absent most of my life. He cheated on my mother, and he remarried and had another family. When I told him I had cancer, he wanted to know why I told him and blocked me on Facebook shortly after. My brother divorced his first wife and ended up with a woman who liked to drink and party a lot. He was keeping my niece out all hours of the night. She even spanked my niece. When I expressed displeasure in this, she made him choose between Mom and me and her, and he choose her. My niece is my entire world. I have a good relationship with her mother and visit her every couple of weeks. We facetime her a couple of times a week.
I also have a maternal uncle who is married to a man in the CIA. He has a home in Arlington, Virginia, although he also has a home near his job as dean of student affairs at a university in Connecticut. We have Thanksgiving up there annually with them along with his ex-boyfriend, Chris, his mother, Shirley, and Chris’s new boyfriend, Chad. We usually play Scattergories and we have a wonderful time up there. It’s the highlight of my year. I also have many friends from other countries that I have met online.
I have always taken my civic duties seriously even though neither of my parents was very political. I have voted in every single election since I turned eighteen. Knowledge of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our civil rights have always been important to me. I have always voted in every election. I remember when I turned eighteen which and was deciding which party to register with. At the time, I agreed with some policies that the republicans did, and some that the democrats did. I have never voted for Republicans. The very first election that I was able to vote for was when Bush ran for re-election in 2004. I voted for Kerry and Edwards. I remember that the Edwards sex scandal came out around that time, which secured the re-election for George W. Bush. The next election I was able to vote in was a life-changing event, the election of 2008 was a historical milestone for the United States. The election of former Senator Barrack Obama who became the first black President of the United States against the late Senator John McCain whom if he had won would have been the oldest president ever elected. He also picked a woman as his running mate, which was pretty historic. She was the first female vice president endorsed by a major political party.
The first major event that I can remember was the O.J trial in 1995. I was in junior high school, and they let us watch in class, instead of doing schoolwork since it was such a major issue. In 1998, I remember the Clinton impeachment. This was my first year of high school. It would be eighteen years before another president was impeached. I also remember many natural disasters that I survived, mostly hurricanes. All of these major events have helped shape the person I am today.
Part II
A person in an environment approach describes human behavior in relation to their interaction with their environment. This includes many aspects, from global and national events to biological, emotional, spiritual, social, and psychological issues. “Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development incorporates many of the basic tenets of Freudian theory, although it places greater emphasis on development.” (HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: perspectives on development, the life course, and macro contexts 2020)
According to this theory, stage one is trust versus mistrust and lasts from birth until eighteen months old. Everyone that I have spoken to describes me as a happy baby when I didn’t have colic that is. It seemed I really enjoyed people and displayed the characteristics of trust. This may still be a flaw of mine even today, as I tend to believe that most people are basically good and hold them to the same standards that I hold myself to. I was a pretty social person for most of my childhood. I seemed to have withdrawn after my parents’ divorce and the death of my beloved grandmother from her battle with lung cancer.
Stage two is autonomy versus shame and doubt and begins at eighteen months and lasts until three years old. I would say that I had a mixture of these feelings, as I was quite hesitant to. Take my first step and was more of a follower being the only girl of my cousins and being the youngest until my younger cousin was born at three. I always doubt myself; I know that I overthink things and always wonder if I’m making a complete fool of myself and failing. I’m extremely nervous about this paper and wonder if I’m doing this correctly, or entirely wrong. My mother also over worries, so it may be a genetic predisposition instead of a milestone.
Stage three of Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development last from three to six years of age and is the initiative versus guilt stage. When I was young, I enjoyed drawing a lot. I used to spend time with my maternal adopted grandfather doodling and watching some kind of church program on the television in his study. I think he would draw bad on purpose. I also enjoyed reading very much. To me, reading is one of the most essential skills anyone could have. When reading, you can visit a hundred thousand places that you can never visit in reality. You can visit places that exist and that do not.
The fourth stage of Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development is Industry versus Inferiority and starts at age six and lasts until twelve years of age. It was around this age that I was given chores such as washing dishes, cleaning my room, and setting the table. It was also around this age that my parents split up, and my beloved grandmother died. This has a high impact on my life. I experienced some of the worst tragedies of my life during this time period. I think that I developed feelings of inferiority during this time as well. It was doing this time that my mother began dating that horrible man that would become my stepfather. He was constantly putting the lot of us down and I’m sure that I developed feelings of inferiority here. I was always comparing myself to others and coming up short. It has only been in the last few years before my cancer diagnosis that I was able to overcome most of these feelings. However, with my battle with cancer, it brought a lot of those feelings that I had thought I had overcome back. Some of these issues that I have gone through in these stages have reverberated even to this day.
Stage five is Identity versus Identity Confusion and it takes place in adolescence. I think this is a big part of teenagers acting out and trying to discover their own values and beliefs. This is how they discover the person they are and they person that they want to become. Teenagers and their parents go through a lot of power-struggles as they figure out who they are in terms of their independence and navigating a more adult world.
The sixth stage is Intimacy versus Isolation and it takes place in young adulthood. I have had many troubled relationships and I take a lot of time to heal between relationships. I have never been married, and I’m ambivalent about entering into that kind of arrangement myself. What I have witnessed from others is a dissolution of marriage, and those that you think are happy are just hiding their problems. This sounds cynical, but I really would love to meet someone that would change my mind. I think most people are at war between their head and their heart and wondering which one to follow and to listen to. I think relationships are a constant battle between the two, trying to find the right compromise. I’m not sure whom I would consider the love of my life, other than my niece. She is my entire world. My first relationship was at eighteen and didn’t last but a few months.
Stage seven is Generativity versus Isolation which occurs in Adulthood. This has to do with marriage and families. I have never been married or had children. I would say based on that they I was unable to meet the requirements of this stage and am labeled isolated. Though I do fight for many causes and see past my own limited lifestyle, I am unable to form lasting relationships that would see me through life. I have volunteered at a domestic abuse shelter and I take interest in many different issues such as BLM, women’s rights, and LGBT rights.
The final stage occurs in old age and is Integrity versus Despair. Though I haven’t reached this in accordance to age, I frequently feel despair about the length of my lifespan. I have been advised by doctors that if cancer comes back, I may die. The hormone pills that I am on that can prevent breast cancer from re-occurring can also cause a different type of cancer. It is hard to be satisfied with the very little that I feel that I have accomplished and prepare for the eventual end of my life. No matter what happens, because of the toxins that were pushed to all my organs, I know that they will shut down ahead of time. I have already been told that taking the hormone pills may cause problems with my vision. I know that the reason that people die is because of organ failure. There is no other reason. Organs fail and people die, and mine are more likely to fail than normal and healthy people my age.
Part III
Some of the influences in my life have been my gender, political allegiances, the LGBT status of family members, as well as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. My Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is INFJ-T which is the turbulent advocate. NFJ is an acronym for the personality traits of Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Judging. The INFJ type is also called the “Counselor” and is described as idealistic, compassionate, and sensitive.
The MBTI had this to say about Advocates, “The Advocate personality type is very rare, making up less than one percent of the population, but they nonetheless leave their mark on the world. Advocates have an inborn sense of idealism and morality, but what sets them apart is that they are not idle dreamers. These individuals are capable of taking concrete steps to realize their goals and make a lasting positive impact. People with this personality type tend to see helping others as their purpose in life. Advocates can often be found engaging in rescue efforts and doing charity work. However, their real passion is to get to the heart of the issue so that people need not be rescued at all.” This describes me more than I would have thought taking a personality test would. I have always tried to hold people to the same standards that I hold myself to. I am constantly disappointed because everyone does not hold themselves to the same standards that I do. Even if I do stray from my morals, it’s not for long, and I always come back to my innate sense of right and wrong. Advocates indeed share a unique combination of traits.
Myers states about the advocate, “Though soft-spoken, they have very strong opinions and will fight tirelessly for an idea they believe in. They are decisive and strong-willed but will rarely use that energy for personal gain. Advocates will act with creativity, imagination, conviction, and sensitivity not to create an advantage, but to create balance. Egalitarianism and karma are very attractive ideas to Advocate personalities. These types tend to believe that nothing would help the world so much as using love and compassion to soften the hearts of tyrants.” This definitely describes my tireless fight for the rights of the black community as well as the LGBT. I recently read books The New Jim Crow and Just Mercy, and they have really opened my eyes to the caste system that still exists today, and how unjust the prison system actually is. I have always thought that Martin Luther King got it right when he stated that Hate could not drive out the darkness only love can do that. Love is stronger than hatred, and it will be through love and acceptance that we end many of the injustices that we face in this country today. Hatred only breeds hatred and intolerance.
Myers further says, “It makes sense that their friends and colleagues will come to think of them as quiet Extraverted personality types. However, they would all do well to remember that Advocates need time alone to decompress and recharge, and not to become too alarmed when they suddenly withdraw. Advocates take great care of others’ feelings, and they expect the favor to be returned — sometimes that means giving them the space they need for a few days.” I never realized how close this is to the truth. I have often been told that I talk too much and loudly, but I do find myself craving both the city and the lights and the solace of my own company. I like the term quiet extraverted and it sums up many of my feelings over the years.
My identity was further influenced by the cultural awareness of how people of different demographics have been treated. I have always been a person that has been ambitious, but I never set out to harm anyone else. If anything, my expectations of the actions of others is too high, and I expect others to act with the same integrity I do and to treat people as they would like to be treated. With the election of Donald Trump, I was forced to see that many people that I respected and admired were not the people I thought they were. They supported these racist ideals that to me, are intolerable. I have done everything in my power to educate first myself on the injustices that I was ignorant of, and others as well. I always thought that people were pretty much treated the same and never realized that I had so many people within my own circle that saw people based on superficial ascribed statuses instead of who people are on the inside. This knowledge has led to a lot of cognitive growth and toward me seeing reality as it is.
In conclusion, the person in environment approach has led me to examine Erikson’s psychosocial development stages in regard to my own life as well as the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of conceptualization in regard to my own life and my immediate personal relationships and experiences to larger macro events such as the election of Barrack Obama as well as the OJ Simpson trial and the impeachment of presidents Clinton and Trump. The medical theory took me through different medical diagnosis of my mental health as well as the mental health of those around me as listed in the DMV IV. The systems theory allowed me to understand my interactions with friends and family members within my environment. Ecological theory allowed me to examine my strengths and weaknesses and to assess my own development through Erikson’s stages. The strengths perspective allowed me to examine my self-esteem throughout different stages of my life and how my self-esteem was effected throughout these challenges.

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