Humiliation, emotional upsets, self-doubt, inferiority complex

SolitaryRoad.com

Website owner:  James Miller

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Info ] [ Mail ]

The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a man six

feet high.

Japanese proverb

A wound from the tongue is worse than a wound from a sword; for

the latter affects only the body, the former the spirit.

Pythagoras

There are some people (malicious people) who are very adept at wounding with their tongue. From my childhood I have had reasons to believe that my memory is substantially poorer than that of most people, however, I have noted that there is one type of thing I never forget: words that hurt. The words may be true but they hurt and are never forgotten. What is behind this art of cutting people where it hurts most? It is words that strike at the ego, at one’s sense of self-worth. We are talking about words that criticize, ridicule, disrespect, humiliate, belittle, embarrass, etc. If you say something to me that hurts me I will be upset and will stay upset for a while, perhaps 15 or 20 minutes, perhaps much longer than that. It is a thing that will upset my entire system for a period of time. There are many marriages where one spouse or the other or both use hurting words all the time. (With their words they create an evil spirit in their homes, enemies in their homes, hells in their homes.) My wife and I never use hurting words on each other. We are both very polite, courteous, considerate with each other. ( I am married to a very special person.) I am a loner and since I retired from my job 24 years ago about the only person I ever talk to is my wife and, as a consequence, I never experience this type of emotional upset.

So I make this point: a person’s ego, his basic sense of self-worth is the most sensitive thing about him. Anything bruising that hurts.

I said all of the above because I am leading into something. Question: What kind of things can cause a person to become upset and remain upset for a period of time? One thing is words that hurt. There are many other things that can do it also: A stroke of bad luck. Death of a loved one. But an important category are things closely connected to the ego, to one’s basic sense of self-worth. For the most of my life I have been on a very even emotional keel. However, in my younger years that wasn’t the case. Why? Well, our bodies (or minds) can be cause for embarrassing, humiliating experiences for us. When I was a young boy just starting out in school I had a very difficult time in the first two years. I seemed to be totally dumb, stupid, unable to learn. My parents were totally frustrated in their attempts to teach me to count — or to read. And for me, my total inability to learn was deeply embarrassing, humiliating. I felt just dumb, stupid. Those first two years of school contained a lot of emotional trauma for me. Personal humiliation is traumatic. Then in my third year in that small one room country school a new teacher came that I liked and my grades almost immediately went from near failing to A’s and B’s. After that I did well. However, I learned at an early age that I had my peculiarities. For example, I simply couldn’t perform under pressure. I would freeze and lock up under pressure. I learned to avoid letting other people try to help me. I had to do things myself. I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder. I didn’t want help.

I would say that on some things I do compare poorly with most people. I think my memory is poor compared with that of most people. My wife has lots of clothes and she can tell me just when and where she bought a dress that she bought years ago. I couldn’t do that. I have sat in total amazement hearing a person talk in great detail about events of his childhood. I couldn’t do that. I don’t have a memory for that kind of detail. I remember some things but most is lost. Some people are good at doing arithmetic in their heads. I am not. I usually need to use pencil and paper. Perhaps most of all, I am abnormally slow. It is a personality trait. I am just slow in everything I do. My wife eats much faster than I do. She washes dishes much faster than I do. I am just different in that way. That teacher that I liked (and that liked me) once told me that I was as “slow a molasses in January”. If one takes how fast one can do a thing as a measure of intelligence (as modern educational psychologists do), I am definitely in the stupid, moron category. (That is one reason I don’t like modern psychology and its IQ ideas).

Because of these things I as a boy became victim to different forms of fear. Lacking confidence in yourself is a kind of fear. Self-doubt is about fear. An inferiority complex is all about fear. Feelings of insecurity are forms of fear. Fear has a big detrimental effect on the mind. There is world of difference between the self-confident mind and a mind held back and tormented by fear. Now I have a self-confident mind. In my younger days I had a mind plagued by fear. Now if I make a mistake I simply note that I made a mistake, acknowledge that it was my fault, take responsibility for it, hope I have learned something from it and won’t make the same mistake again, and forget it. I don’t torment myself over it, put myself down over it. It doesn’t cause one of these emotional upset type incidents where I interpret it as just another proof of my stupidity, another big putdown for me. Back then I was always trying to prove I wasn’t inferior. I had a mental hangup with regard to my mental ability. I was always trying to prove something that I wasn’t able to prove. Mental hangups are very dangerous psychologically. They are dangerous because they hog thought time and prevent a broad outlook ( seeing life and things with perspective and balance). So I was always trying to prove that I wasn’t inferior, like I was trying to prove some mathematical theorem. And life was always presenting me with all kinds of evidence that I could use against myself. I was in a box and couldn’t get out. I was upset a lot of the time because of this incident and that. I did eventually get out. How did I do it. I discovered that the entire problem was all about wrong outlook and attitude. All that was needed was a change in my attitude about personal ability / intelligence. I came to understand that what is important in life is goodness and virtue — not mental ability (or “intelligence”).

How can fear hurt you intellectually? Let me give one example. A person who lacks confidence in himself doesn’t like asking questions of other people. He is afraid he won’t understand and is afraid he will be made to look stupid. So he avoids asking questions. And if he is a proud, arrogant type person he doesn’t like asking questions because he feels that involves lowering himself. (He is just too proud to admit that someone else may know things he doesn’t.) Now I personally ask questions of others often and it is a very important way of getting information. I think about the phrasing of my questions and ask them of people who I feel will certainly know the answers. (If you ask the wrong person, instead of telling you he doesn’t know, he is likely to give you a bad answer.) I ask myself who has practical knowledge in the area and I ask them. The person I ask might be a lawyer, a doctor, a plumber, or someone in some other profession or trade. It is very important to one’s mental development in life to be willing to ask questions. Most of what one knows comes from other people. (In this age of the internet you can find the answer to a great many questions on the internet so now I usually try the internet before asking people.)

A person who lacks confidence in himself tends to wrongly interpret everything against himself. It is like he is biased against himself. He is just critical of himself. For example, if someone explains something to him and he doesn’t understand it he just assumes that the problem is him. That it is due to his stupidity. Well, to assume that is a big mistake. It just doesn’t follow. The chances are it is not him. It is the explanation. It is the person doing the explanation. Some things are just difficult to explain well. Doing good explanations is an art that may require a bit of thought and creativity. They may require some diagrams or drawings. When I was in school studying from textbooks in the fields of mathematics, physics, etc. I had the problem of often “hanging up” in reading some exposition or proof. I would be carefully following an author’s line of thought and reasoning and suddenly I would “hang up”. He said something that just didn’t make sense to me. Or he was trying to say something but I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. I couldn’t get his meaning. He thought he was being clear, he knew what he was trying to say, but I didn’t think he was being clear, I didn’t know what he was trying to say. Or I was following the steps in some mathematical proof and I hung up at, say, step 5. I just didn’t see how he got from step 5 to step 6. I, being a very conscientious, thorough, tenacious person might remain hung up for hours there trying to figure it out. When I did finally figure it out I might end up writing a long detailed explanation on what he meant — or how Step 6 followed from Step 5. Well, I encountered a lot of very poor textbooks when I was in college and in many of the subjects I ended up finding other textbooks that were much better written to study from. By the time I finished college I was of the sentiment that most technical authors do a very poor job and that about one author in 20 does a really good, conscientious job. Good technical exposition takes thought, reflection, care, conscientiousness, and creativity. It requires careful choice of words, careful wording. It requires good judgment, common sense. And in this highly technical world that we live in many concepts require an entire vocabulary of specialized terms just to explain them. You can’t expect to be able to explain difficult concepts in advanced physics to someone who has never studied physics.

I have written many things on this general topic. Some are:

A momentous occurrence in my life

Cause of inferiority feelings and lack of confidence

Lack of confidence, the inferiority complex --- the causes

Nature predisposes some children to shyness, lack of confidence

Walking away from an inferiority complex

21 Nov 2020