INFERIORITY COMPLEX OR SENSITIVE EGO?
Ego Sensitivity
Reginald's comment for my post on inferiority complex stimulated a lot of thinking and the result is this post on ego sensitivity.
Sweaty hands in social situations indicating slight anxiety, inability to tolerate authority, extreme anxiety while being interviewed resulting in stammering, getting hurt even by an innocent negative comment are some of the symptoms of ego sensitiveness. People with extremely sensitive ego don’t tolerate a dog barking at them.
With this easy bruisability of the ego, the prime task of these people become preventing it from hurt. Since hurt can come from every social situation, they refuse to participate in the society. They become extremely lonely because most often these people become target of bullies. They also suffer being reprimanded regularly by the parents who fail to understand the problem with the person.
As they have to confront an authoritative person in any time of job situation, they try to avoid any type of job instead they pursue music and creative writing etc, but as success in those endeavors favors the person with a healthy ego, they fail to taste any success even in their chosen fields.
They read a lot, observe a lot, know a lot and cultivate a sense of superiority. This sense of superiority worsens the problem because they ability to accept authority decreases further. Even if they get a job, they might quit the job in a fortnight because for them even their boss looks stupid.
The life becomes miserable for them in places like India because of the “kiss up and kick down” attitude is prevalent in every type of organization something which has resulted from British Raj. So the inability feel at ease in any type of social situation results in complete failure in achieving professional and personal goals.
These people cannot tolerate rejection and do not approach anyone from the opposite sex. At the extreme, they opt for drugs and pornography and live a life of failure. On the positive side, these people are good observers, great readers with a tremendous knowledge base, good in music and writing; they are good in logic and analyzing behaviors of other people. They are very empathetic and try to help others. But with all these positive qualities they achieve absolutely nothing because of the sensitive ego.
Meditation and interest in spirituality with a goal of egolessness helps a lot. The realization that there is no one superior or inferior to him helps the person a lot in curing his problem. Spirituality also cultivates a sense of universal love in us which also helps. Love makes you blind to the authoritative behavior of the other person.
The knowledge of your sensitive ego also helps. Once you know that you have a totally unreasonable ego, you can consciously teach it to behave. Once you know every person in the world will be superior to in some aspects and inferior in some. The authoritative boss is in a superior position because he is superior as for your job is concerned, though he may not have other knowledge that you have.
Involving yourself more in social situations, meeting more people, taking every small insults easily, training your ego how not to take itself seriously would liberate you from the clutches of your over sensitive ego with this freedom you start enjoying the life as it should be enjoyed.
