We arrived back where we had begun: fear. That word, feeling, idea has started us on this question of self, and we had returned to it rather spontaneously. Self-awareness feels threatening to the meaning perspectives we feel about our identity and thus self awareness feels quite threatening to us if not our actual becoming self. Very few of us will admit that we do not like ourselves very much even when that belief or feeling rings quite true. Perhaps we are not willing to identify that we don't like ourselves even or especially if we really don't like ourselves very much. It occurred to me many times in my career that this self-dislike or, at least, a fear of self-awareness forcing us to face our ugly, dislikeable self formed part of almost everyone with whom I worked and whom I had gotten to know. That includes the most confident appearing people I have known. It included me. That dislike drives the fear that makes interviews difficult for most and nearly impossible for some. We feel the fear and the dislike of self-discovery, but it's very hard to make that fear apparent ourselves. We feel it, but we don't know it. As with any other meaning perspective, we find it difficult to become aware enough to critically reflect on that perspective even though the process might help liberate us from the limits such a perspective causes us. We live with it and inside it. Until we question it, we feel there's no escape. We feel the fear and the unspoken dislike are both true and deserved.
Aside from the fear brought on by the interview, another situation occurred to me wherein the fear and self-dislike meaning perspective springs, un-summoned and unwanted to mind. I decided to experiment and find out if my intuition held true.
I wondered aloud in class if what we resolved about self-awareness were true. Did we feel some fear of self-exposure? I asked the class generally about how would someone feel if I told that person I was about to tell them the truth about themselves. Would that person want to hear the next thing I had to say? Most students answered vociferously, "No!" in one form or another. A few answered that they could take constructive criticism, so I could go right ahead. They could take it. I pointed out that I hadn't given them any indication of what I was going to say, so why did they make the assumption about what I would say in such a clearly negatively critical way.[37]
I offered to try it in class with someone, and I asked if Susan would mind the attempt. She agreed, perhaps with some exhibition of nervousness, and I got to it. I looked at Susan and said, "Susan, I have gotten to know you a little while we worked together, and there are some things about yourself, some truths about yourself you may well want to know." I paused and said, "Do you want to hear what I will say," and she laughed and said, "No." We agreed that she felt something negative, indeed, something quite bad was about to happen to her if she heard what I was going to say. It would cause her pain of some sort.
"What if I was about to say something like this? 'Susan, you have shown a great deal of courage for your entire life. You have lived through some very hard times, and you still are in this class and in this school striving to make life better for you and your children. No matter how hard things have gotten, you have cared for your children as best you could. Indeed, you have shown yourself a caring person in general which is part of why you are studying for a medical assistant's certificate. Altogether, from what I know about you, I find you and what you have done entirely admirable.'"
Susan and most others breathed a sigh of what I took as relief.
"How come that didn't occur to you as the truth about yourself? It certainly is from what I do know about you." Susan seemed quite pleased with this unexpected turn of events, this form of truth. Why do most of us, if not all, of us expect bad news in terms of the truth about ourselves? We just don’t feel very confident in ourselves. Even more, we just don't like ourselves all that much or all that securely. We feel that we live with some essential flaw in our self, and that will get exposed. In terms of the class, I would get exposed, to our detriment, in an interview. That's where the fear comes from, from that limiting, restrictive, meaning perspective of self. It's not just that all judgment finds us guilty. We simply feel guilty most if not all of the time. We're just waiting to be found out. We actually think what's wrong with us is what's true about us.