Great chapter, well-worth reading, I found today, while reading Psycho-Cybernetics, written by Maxwell Maltz. If you like it, you can buy yourself a copy of this book here.
Much mischief results from our taking a “moral” position on matters which are not basically moral matters at all.
For example, self-expression, or lack of it, is not basically an ethical question, aside from the fact that it is our “duty” to use the talents which our Creator gave us.
Yet, self-expression may become morally “wrong” as far as your conscience is concerned, if you were squelched, shut-up, shamed, humiliated, or perhaps punished as a child for speaking up, expressing your ideas, “showing off.” Such a child “learns” that it is “wrong” to express himself, to hold himself out as having any worthwhile ideas, or perhaps to speak at all.
If a child is punished for showing anger, or shamed too much for showing fear, or perhaps made fun of for showing love, he learns that expressing his real feelings is “wrong.” Some children learn that it is sinful or wrong only to express the “bad emotions”—anger and fear. But, when you inhibit bad emotions, you also inhibit the expression of good emotions. And the yardstick for judging emotions is not “goodness” or “badness,” as such, but appropriateness and inappropriateness. It is appropriate for the man who meets with the bear on the trail to experience fear. It is appropriate to experience anger if there is a legitimate need to destroy an obstacle by sheer force and destructiveness. Properly directed and controlled, anger is an important element of courage.
If every time a child comes up with an opinion, he is squelched and put in his place, he learns that it is “right” for him to be a nobody, and wrong to want to be a somebody.
Such a distorted and unrealistic conscience does indeed make cowards of us all. We can become overly sensitive, and become too carefully concerned with whether we “have a right” to succeed in even a worthwhile endeavor. We become too carefully concerned about whether or not “I deserve this.” Many people, inhibited by the wrong kind of conscience, “hold back,” or “take a back seat” in any kind of endeavor, even in church activities. They secretly feel it would not be “right” for them to “hold themselves out” as a leader, or “presume to be somebody,” or they are overly concerned with whether other people might think they were “showing off.”
Stage fright is a common and universal phenomenon. It becomes understandable when seen as excessive negative feedback coming from a “declinated conscience.” Stage fright is the fear that we will be punished for speaking up, expressing our own opinion, presuming to “be somebody,” or “showing off”—things which most of us learned were “wrong” and punishable as children. Stage fright illustrates how universal is the suppression and inhibition of self-expression.
…from Psyco-Cybernetics by Maxwel Maltz
Tags: behavior, expression
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