The last and biggest factor for the detriments of our personal self is due to the structure and operation of most workplace environments. The policies, rules, promotions regulate and promote the behaviour of a person in the act of being objectionable and rational. On the other hand, any personal constructive criticism is taken as criticism that is not constructive. Furthermore, management will demoralize the individual. Anyone who expresses in the workforce more about their personal demands will be put in probation or be expelled. Many did that just to integrate their personal life with their workplace or their values and beliefs (that have some true merit which the rest of the workforce might be blind of it) with their work projects. Due to the habits of the workforce having a response to the above, people inherit a fear from acts of such personal nature and teach next generation to not act on personal matters within the workforce in order to not experience the same hardships they experienced itself (this is usually referred as to "being professional"). That is why many people take constructive criticism as a distraction or harsh criticism because acceptance will result learning how constructive criticism works. Thus, they will attain the ability for them to also express constructive criticism to others as well. Because of that, they will prefer instead to not learn constructive criticism at all costs so they can never express it in the work environment (once they learn it, it can become a habit that will be hard to suppress it). However, without constructive criticism, these individuals will make them most of the time as indecisive with themselves and will also receive usually indecisive responses from others. The reason the individual will get from others indecisive response from others is due not about the individual itself not knowing the direction of his decision, but due to the fact that it incorporates constructive criticism within his decision which the recipient detests. When an individual knows the reaction of constructive criticism of the other being of detest, the individual will have less motivation to fully express itself because his full expression will create huge detest to the recipient. In addition, it may or may not be, but there is high chances that social norms, cultural elements that were recently added are due to the shift of the workforce and workplace to be more demanding and competitive. Most friendships and how better you are marketing yourself to other people is by being yourself the most non-personal way you can. Of course, being non-personal, and not involving yourself at things, definitely helps dramatically to solve problems that in the past would not have been possible. However, the workplace and general lifestyle norms have focused too much on the non-personal (all for the goal of some objective which definitely will bring some good for the well being of the world, however...) that we can see the effects today with the rate of people having more psychological problems that are of complete different nature from the ones on the past. The problems today is more about people not being able to express themselves, and when they do, their expression is in the wrong context. In the past, the problems where most of physical abuse and their limitations of what they could do in the external world (limited rights or no freedom). Now anybody can make a lot of money, but how much of their own individuality have these individuals explored? For most of them, it was not much. Let us see the symptoms of what most of these individuals contain:
Issue Point 1: They take any criticism as non-constructive: Instead, they take it as an offence and demoralize the individual. In the workforce, most of the time, criticism is avoided and following regulations and policies is all that matters. Correction of someone due to regulations and policies does not feel as a form of criticism as it is a rule all must follow whether right or not. It is not personal, it is effective, but it may not be the most effective in all situations. That is why most workplaces have a hard time to change their own cultural organization. That is because all changes require constructive criticism. I really get angry about policies and rules. Many people follow them even when sometimes it may not be the most effective way. The most that I get angry of it is how it made those workplaces more non-personal. Those rules and policies have been in "such a way" that nobody can give their opinion as everything is worded out in the rules and policies of the organization. That in result does not allow people in the workplace to be more personal to themselves! I love rules and policies, but only when they have the ability to be changed every day, every week, every month, by the opinions of all the people who work there who have ideas on how to improve those guidelines.
Issue Point 2: They take any counter argument of constructive criticism as someone that does not accept criticism or they take the counter argument as offensive: This is when people want their criticism to be as solid as "ice" even if it has flaws in it. However, the criticism they give, it is already accepted by the individual, as he finds it has a part with a right merit, but the other partial part of it may have flaws, which ensues the listener to bring a counter argument on that flaw. Rather than believing from your own self perception that the criticism was not accepted, see if the future actions of that individual follows a part of your criticism. Does it follow it? If yes, which part he does not follow? Can you think of any flaw on that part? Wrong perceptions and thinking they are offensive due to some counter argument on your criticism can translate that you have poor expression on personal matters. For people with poor expression on the personal self, they can lose easily confidence because they lack the skills of expressing themselves in a personal way. It may require you minutes or hours to create a structure of your personal flaws. It is very common in this world for people to lack the skill of expressing their personal self. That is because people find incomprehensible on any matters or subjects of points that have no solid ground in the non-personal world (what mainstream values is the non-personal usually and always changes on each generation). We are very proficient on expressing in non-personal ways, but very poor on the personal matter. On schools, most writings are out of a limited subjects you may or may not really want to write. The writing we learn these days is writing less words on pointing stuff and more words on backing up stuff from our main points. Backing up main points is regarded in academic levels more credible if it is expressed by sources of people with "credible" status or of "expertise" level. Those are essential, but it also shows how much in doubt we have on people when we read articles. The reason we are like that is because accepting words is always done in a personal level (when you read an article, you always will ask subconsciously "how does it apply to me?"). Since our personal level is of poor nature in skill, it will accept anything it reads. That is why, for this danger, people will read only sources that are of credible nature due to its incapability to filter out and organize them in the right place. If we try to back up our main points with personal experiences, it will be a huge length of effort. In addition, more personal experiences are required to make a point valid, since as we have mentioned, personal experiences have of less value compared to statistics and facts.
A person has so many points in his mind that he may not have the time to express and analyse them within a structured form. In addition, academic writing restricts the individual to think and write in only points he can easily back up. It seems that on average, the individual main points are most of the non-personal as they are the most easiest to back up. Schools are that way because they work hand in hand with the demands of the workforce. The schools are sometimes funded from companies with huge workforces. In addition, the main objective of schools is for students to get a job after they graduate (this is especially true with the current economy being a bottleneck). What better lecture in writing should be given to students other than what the present workforce requires employees to ideally be (more in a non personal instead of a personal level). In order for a person to be able to express his own individuality better, the individual should either practice in his mind with his own imagination about what he, his own self, will make him more happy instead of how to blend well with society in order to feel good for being "part of something" (even at the sake of losing "me"). The other way is through writing. It is more concrete after all. Imagination is even more worse than speaking. If we see the article why writing is more important than speaking (Blog Activity April 2014), we can see how more effective writing is. However, if you do not have the time for it, you can use your imagination (at least) to explore your own individuality.
Issue Point 3: Does not express his personal self in social groups, social organizations, workplace: That is due to the social norms and workplace environments not encouraging such acts. This is not possible (to express the personal) for the individual because he does not know how to express it well due to the schools and childhood environments inhibiting such act. Once the person knows how to express himself, he has to bridge what he feels to express instead of repressing it in all the environments the individual lives. But since society in most part punishes this form of act, even if expressed in small forms relatively to the tasks that are non-personal,we can see that it is not possible to resolve this issue point in reality (except if your income is not based on a job).
Issue Point 4: Expresses feelings in wrong context. Generalizes the feeling, exaggerates the feelings that it goes out of scope: That is when feelings are not expressed well. Feelings become agitated due to repression from other environments where the persona of the individual is most of the time in a non-personal state. Due to "Issue Point 3", it can create the individual's reactions of "Issue Point 1 & 2" to be of detrimental nature. More specifically: Within an environment where the individual's feelings are not repressed to express itself, the individual can make its feelings invade on other parts beyond the personal self. This is done by the use of generalizations which can lead to the wrong direction. It usually goes to the wrong direction because the logic does not validate those generalizations any more. The feelings have taken control over the logic. Thus, generalizations can manifest up to the imagination of the individual (it will not be true, it will be fabricated, it will be to show "status"). There will be gossip, blame, and expectations on the wrong source of the problem. The original feelings, the original individuality the individual wanted to attain has no much importance as much as a materialistic gratification that they are right in all matters. It may sound crazy what I am describing right now, but that is how feelings work when they are suppressed for so long. That is how they express on those situations. Logic does not help to align the situation of their own feelings on the right context because it is absent.
I think all of us to some degree will feel that way due to the society we live has not set a correct balance to spend more time in some way, even on our job at least, with our own individuality. I can agree that some jobs and social groups promote individuality, but for the most part, the rest of the social groups and jobs have a huge negligence and detest for the environment to incorporate the individuality of the person (they will instead put plans on how to prevent that more from happening). The best way to control or express your feelings in the right way is to start using your imagination or writing on matters of your own individuality. This in result will have less suppression of the personal. It will also support your own will to accept the personal. That way, criticism will be accepted as constructive no matter how the form it is. First, your feelings will not be more controlling of the environment because it already expresses itself in some form. Furthermore, your determination on that effort will make yourself to be able to accept behaviour that relates on the personal (you will not be in denial and have withdrawal symptoms, such as blame, anger, depression and other psychological problems with it). You will not condemn criticism any more as immoral (no matter how the form is, you should perceive it as constructive) just because your workplace places it as immoral. With the practice of expressing your own feelings in some form, you are more fluent in debating others and to be more calm when you receive counter arguments of your constructive criticism. Lastly, although you cannot control how you express for most of the part on environments that influence on how you have to act, you will at least have more control of your personal feelings to not go out of haywire. In addition, you will be able to negotiate in some form on how your demands will meet those expectations of your personal self to become real in some form. This is how feelings should be and allowed to be expressed instead in a way that it feels hopeless due to the assumption that there will never be an environment /society that will be different from the ones that are non-personal, or to the assumption that they will never learn how to express their feelings or have a balance with their feelings. This hopelessness may result either in an act of revenge or "creating noise" (wrong generalizations, lies) in order to protect itself (for some people, this is usually an automatic brain defence mechanism, and when triggered, it is hard to 'consciously' control it) from the humiliation and embarrassment of how naked and not skilful the individual's feelings are in terms of expression and enlightenment. This act is more prevalent in societies where people should show their own self with no weaknesses and to be competitive. In reality, we all have weaknesses that we have to deal them in some way or another.
In conclusion, most people are weak in feelings (some are even terrible at managing it). Problems and solutions have been discussed in this article. How we express our feelings is more important than tools that measure our emotional intelligence. Besides the causes already mentioned that detriments the individuality of an individual, there are other factors that detriment it with its huge influence, such as the habit of people being limited to reading, watching, listening to work of contributions of only 0.1% or less of the whole population. Although mainstream is okay to follow, we should seek other forms of sources as input for a better general picture of how our life is. For instance, if you believe in the words of what mainstream expresses, compare it with a dozen of random samples that are not in the mainstream to validate its accuracy.
Lastly, it is up to the individual's determination and its own ability to grow expressing their own individuality. Researchers have found that the lack of childhood feelings can make the individual to not have the ability any more to express feelings correctly. Furthermore, if a kid does not learn a language, as an adult, he will not be able to learn any language no matter how much he wants. It seems that expressing feelings and learning a language are part of brain development. If they are left inactive at points of brain development, they will never activate themselves. Once the kid turns adult, the brain does not develop any more. Thus, there will never be a chance for the adult to learn expressions or a form of language. Compared to language, an adult with the disability to express feelings will find his life easier (due to how society is formed today). However, can you call it a full life with no individuality? If the person has hopefully the ability to express feelings, it is the best for him to develop his individuality. That is all for the hopes to become a better, transparent, calm person in order to have harmony with his own self and with others.
Since emotionally weak people are plenty in this world and because it is a huge problem, this is Part 1 of the essay. There will be more parts due to how serious, complex, and difficult this case problem is. Other essays I want to talk about which are relevant to this topic:
- Don't always spend/follow your time/dedication to mainstream
- Start to use more your imagination instead of just believing what you see in real life
- Understanding communication styles
- Most people are emotionally weak Part X