Ecological Model Competency

FHS 328 Final Paper

Kimberly Owens

University of Oregon

7 December 2010

Introduction

     In the book, Transparent, Christina faced certain risks within her microsystem that negatively affected her perspective on life.  In this paper, Christina’s mircosystem is observed from a human services outlook.  Growing up as a transgender teenager, Christina encountered obstacles that placed her outside of societal norms.  Christina’s journey to find happiness as the woman she knew she always was lead her to have a resilient behavior that helped her conquer those obstacles placed within her microsystem.  Her microsystem was the culprit for the lack of love in her life and she continually dealt with the drawbacks of the love deficiency. 

Microsystem

     Within Christina’s biological family, she missed out on feeling loved by her mother Gloria.  This was a risk that directly affected her personal relationships and indirectly impacted other areas of her microsystem.  Christina struggled to find consistent from intimate relationships.  Although she was usually upfront with the guys she dated, she attached herself and became dependent too quickly on men.  The ones who devoted themselves to her like Francisco were too nice for Christina to maintain interest and men like Loco who Christina attached to early on, left her soon after their relationship ignited.  Beam quotes, “Christina’s boyfriends often mirrored her mother’s behavior: short bursts of decency followed by long stretches of denial, which were spotted with outright cruelty,” (p. 202).  Gloria’s demeanor towards Christina caused her to seek external validation from men in an unhealthy manner.  Her resilient behavior and ability to fill that void with a faulty relationship allowed Christina to numb her true pain. Christina’s lack of love she received when growing up was a risk.  However, her proactive behavior to understand what she was missing and to take it upon herself to seek out love proved her resilience.  Christina’s microsystem was unstable and thus influenced Christina to broaden her external validation from men to drugs.  This led to Christina’s expulsion from an alternative school after getting into a fistfight and thus left her reliant on Robin and Cris.  Although not biological, Cris and Robin were family nonetheless.  They were there to support Christina and thus improved Christina’s resiliency ability.  Cris quoted to Christina, “The point is, Robin and I aren’t going anywhere—we’re still your family.  We’re still here to support you with everything—getting jobs, school, homes, just like always,” (p. 207).  The support they offered Christina was unfamiliar to her and often left her rejecting their love because she had yet to experience that unconditional love from someone, let alone two people. Christina’s microsystem was negative because of the love her biological mother refused to provide.  Although Christina had a strong bond with Robin and Cris and she knew she could rely on them, Cris did not allow Christina to move in with them.  Beam said to the reader, “But the truth was that Christina was a train wreck.  She was on drugs and on a self-destructive, self-hating spin. If she couldn’t do well staying with Andrea, I didn’t know how she’d do better with us,” (p. 204).  Even though Christina had a stable support system via Robin and Cris, they were not there to rescue her and therefore did not provide Christina with the sense of escape she had hoped for.  Cris and Robin planned ahead for Christina to be able to rely on herself rather than turn back to Cris and Robin. 

Theory of Family Systems

     The film “Becoming Ayden” portrayed what it was like for Ayden to grow up as a female teenager but internally a male.  The book Transparent and the movie “Becoming Ayden” offered two different perspectives of teenagers living in a straight world as transgender individuals.  Ayden’s parents faced interdisciplinary issues with Ayden and her father often recalled her misbehaving and needing therapy.  Although her parents were supportive of her, a divorce separated her family and she was struggling for that supportive community that eventually she found within the transgender community.  Comparing Ayden’s situation to Christina’s, they both were labeled as troubled and difficult teens.  The two different perspectives proved that although two people may seem to have similar experiences, they differ vastly, just as two straight people would differ from each other.  Hence, why it is imperative for a human services provider to treat each client as an individual without preconceived notions (Alltucker, personal communication, Nov. 11, 2010).

     In a Theories of Family Systems lecture, the “Gender Gumby” handout and presentation focused on the different ways gender affects a person.  They included the assigned sex at birth, the legal sex, gender identity, gender socialization, gender expression, and perceived gender expression.  Comparing Christina’s life to the themes, she encountered difficulties with how people perceived her gender expression.  In her intimate relationships, she felt it was important to express her transgender status with a person when they first met.  This allowed for people to judge her based on her gender expression rather than any other quality that makes up Christina’s genetic make up.  She was stereotypically feminine and attracted men who were straight men. In class, the students were taught the differences that gender can play in one’s life. The decision on what information a person chooses to share with others is a personal matter and should be left to the individual’s discretion.  Students also learned about the barriers of interacting with someone who is transgender and how to be culturally sensitive.  Human service professionals should be aware of the importance to recognize the sensitivity around the transgender population and approach clients with a strength-based approach (Alltucker, personal communication, Nov. 18, 2010).

Strength-based Approach

     Strength based support would focus on Christina’s question, “How can I find love?” (p. 270). The professional would focus in on this question as it pertains to Christina’s love life and relate it back to self-love.  To help Christina understand others she must first love herself unconditionally.  Once Christina has a strong and durable foundation built on self-love then she can direct her way through relationships in a positive and healthy manner.  This is a strength-based approach because as Beam mentions how a person’s life purpose is directed back to how they were raised and a person can usually depict if they will have a positive or negative life path based on their question.  For Domineque, her question was, “I wanted to know what could be so good about a drug that could make my mom give up her kids for it,” (Beam, page 270).  Beam continues that Domineque’s question almost ended her life.  For Christina to have a positive question in which her purpose is to find love, well the love she is searching for is inside herself.  Christina also mentions that she wants to find a mate who is on a mission and then will continue on to another mission once the first is accomplished.  Allowing Christina to conquer her mission to find the love she has been searching for within herself then she can create a new mission to work for  (Beam, 2007). Christina can use the lack of love in her life to move positively in the direction to develop self-love and then seek out intimate relationships that reflect how Francisco treated her.

Conclusion

      As Christina navigated through her life, self-love was the one component that all of her struggles related back to.  She had to learn how to define herself the way she intended meanwhile figuring out how to accept that she could not control how others perceived her.  Letting go of the need of acceptance and love from her biological mother would allow her to build her own self-love foundation.  Since Christina is a loving being, the knowledge of self-love would help her seek out relationships like Francisco that she actually deserves and learn how to turn away from relationships like Loco’s.  Loco turned his back on Christina, meanwhile Francisco accepted her and showed her off to his family, the love that Christina deserved.  However, the love that her mother deprived her of taught Christina to believe she deserved a guy like Loco in her life (Beam, 2007). Using a strength-based approach to teach Christina the self-love necessary to thrive would enhance Christina’s microsystem as she embraced her true identity.  Christina could then attract more loving people into her life once she learned to love herself unconditionally.