Encouraging varying perspectives and debate among team members.
They enjoy a robust discussion and sometimes this is how the best ideas are formed, plus everyone feels heard and meetings are rarely boring! which they grew up to determine what suits them best in preparation for their adult years.
“In adolescence, the need for autonomy is a focus of development again,” she says. “This time it is about questioning parental values and questioning the world around them. For most people, if a sense of personal autonomy and validation is experienced, the need to rebel disappears in adulthood. Adolescents reject their parents’ values, experiment with other lifestyles, and by 25 years old, more than 90 per cent will have taken on their parents’ values, but out of choice, not coercion.”
So why doesn’t everyone grow out of it after their teenage years? According to Rosewarne, it depends on what the person’s main motivation is for choosing to defy expectations. “Not everyone who is a ‘rebel’ is doing it merely to defy their parents. For some people, choosing to go against the grain – to follow a set of beliefs that differ from the majority – makes that person a rebel.”
Mill says for some individuals, rebelling is a way to divert attention away from their insecurities and avoid the pain of not measuring up to society’s standards, whether this shortfall is real or perceived. In other words, they are rejecting the world before it can reject them.
In other cases, this lifelong desire to stick it to society is a reaction to past oppression or abuse, whether by their family, at school, from their government or other authority figure. “If a child was repressed, dominated or abused, they never develop an authentic, validated self,” says Mill. “They define themselves in opposition to the dominator.”
A further possibility is that a person’s rebellious impulses can be caused by certain conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Children and adults with these diagnoses can be impulsive, wilful and contrary beyond the occasional bull-headed moment we all experience from time to time. These individuals may struggle to follow rules and control their emotions, displaying a short fuse and unstable mood.
These conditions are relatively common – ODD affects around one in 10 children, while ADHD affects two to five per cent of children, with boys heavily outnumbering girls in both cases. A number of treatments such as mindfood.com/lady-gaga-mental-health