Dr Manju Antil (Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist)

Sometime we often heard proclamations that “somebody doesn’t adjust to circumstance” or “somebody faces a crisis in adjustment”. So often, a question arising to mind, what is an adjustment and how the adjustment affects life? Adjustment is an essential characteristic required to live peacefully on this planet. In other words, we can say that adjustment is the procedure of arriving at an equitable state among the need of individual and their satisfaction. School and home play a crucial role in the adjustment of an individual.

Originally the concept of Adjustment was taken from biology and the concept of adjustment was a cornerstone in Darwin’s theory of evolution. But in biology the term usually employed was adaptation. According to biologists, only those organisms can survive who adopts to the hazards of the physical world. Richard S . Lazarus narrates that the concept of adaption has been borrowed by the psychologist and renamed as adjustment.

1. Adjustment is a continuous process: Adjustment attained in the current state becomes stable is not true, as the condition and state of affairs modified, the person has to make conscious attempts e.g. in the preliminary phase of marriage, the husband and wife acquired identical habits and tendencies of adjustment but when the child arrives in the family, they have to transform their old habits of adjustment. For example, there are a lot of conflicted situations after the marriage, especially fear of separation in the mind of parents and in such changing situation if members of the family do not adopt. There would be quarrels in the family.

2. Adjustment is not one-sided process: It is not believable that the person always adopts with the environment and situations like a bunch of dust. As the environment makes changes in the person, the person also makes changes in his social, physical, and psychological environment.  As the conditions change, our behaviour undergoes change and such changes in behaviour affect our environment. Thus we can say that adjustment is not a one-sided process.

3. Adjustment is self-perception: Adjustment is not a passive process of adapt to the factors affecting ourselves. It is the individual development of his ways of interpreting. It is an attempt to get consistency and organization by maintaining goal, reason and individuals peculiarities. It is a creative adjustment. An Individual’s emotional maturity develops through it and he behaves properly according to his abilities and interest.

4. Adjustment is a developmental process: In the period of human development, the person passes through various stages. With the change of age, the situation also changes. There are different problems in different stages of life. As the individual’s adjustment and priorities of adjustment also changes in childhood, the child has to make adjustments with parents, elders and siblings. In their later childhood, he goes to despite and has to adjust with teachers and other factors of the school world. After the competition of education, he joins some profession and has to establish proper relations with professional persons. When the married life begins, the need arises to adjust with life partners and other factors. I

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD ADJUSTIVE PERSON:

Even though it is tremendously tough to conclude an acceptable criteria across the globe for adjustment as a concept of adjustment varies from nation to nation and personality to personality depending upon social-cultural circumstances but, in recent years psychologists have evolved certain criteria to evaluate the pertinence of adjustment of an individual in his environment. The characteristics of satisfactory adjustment are:

I.    Self awareness: Satisfactorily adjusted person is well conscious of his predominance and boundaries. He is mindful of his basic capabilities. He is acquainted with his achievement and failures. As a result, he makes obligatory changes in himself according to the need.

II.     Self-Sufficiency: Such individuals primarily succumb upon him rather than others. He is self-dependent and not a sponger. He recognizes what he is capable of undertaking, as a result he takes initiative instead of waiting for others and attempts to achieve goal.

III.    Self-confidence: The self-confidence of an individual achieves flourishing adjustment. Self-confident the person is not frightened of any kind or he is not mystified. He gets on in the direction of his goals without becoming the hunt for inferiority. Self-confidence is not ego. Ego is perfunctory while self-confidence is hard and deep. Elders, family members, peer groups and teachers should try to develop self-confidence in a child from childhood.

IV.    Acceptance: Well adjusted persons should admit his and others personality. He endures his and others blunders and limitations with a smiling face. He appreciates the significance of affection.

V.      Sense of security and responsibility: The well-adjusted individual has a sense of security and responsibility after every type of behaviour. Such folks do not run away from the amenability assigned to him. He upholds amenabilities consciously carry it out. He is the spy of the Meaningfulness of whatever he does. He is attentive of his own actions and others activities.

VI.      Goal directedness: Satisfactorily adjusted being has a full intellect of instate his goal, he can attain it. The person who is inclinable towards his goal can make attempts to accomplish a goal in the right way. Goal directedness is a predictable condition of making progressive academic field achievement, installing good interpersonal relations, achieving success in marital life, resolving conflicts or mounting frustration tolerance.

VII.    Balance in all tenses: Satisfactory adjustment anticipated balance from person in past, present and future. One should take advantage of successful experience of past and uses that experiences in present for upcoming bright future.

VIII.   Physical Health: An individual should be free from physical illness like fever, nuisance, sores, digestive disorders and destruction of hunger for satisfied adjustment. These indications in an individual have sometimes psychological origin and many damages his physical competence.

IX.      Psychological comfort: Well adjusted people do not have any psychological disorders such as depression, stress, obsession, coercion and nervousness. These psychological disorders if happened exceptionally causes one to look for specialized opinions.

X.         Social Acceptance: It is the desire of everyone that he would be accepted by other peoples. If a person obeys societal norms, beliefs and values we may call him well/highly adjusted but if he satisfies his needs in an unethical and antisocial way then he is called mal-adjusted.

XI.     Flexibility in Behaviour: Flexibility in behaviour is shown by well adjusted individual. He adjusts himself in varying conditions by making changes in his behaviour.