How much is much? The other side of the coin

Today, I could finally submitted the first draft of what will be my PhD. dissertation to my Professor :D. I am looking forward for his comments ... anyway, since I am done at least for today, I felt enough inspired to blog.

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Have you ever had to hide your feelings and emotions to the point they eat you from inside? or even worst, to pretend the opposite? Well, I am sure you have, at least I have.

A couple of months ago, I had an interesting conversation with Harriet and one of her friends (whose name I forgot, sorry!). I was telling them that from my own perception Japanese people are the most self-controlled and empathic people I have ever known, at least in comparison to Mexicans. We Mexicans tend to express our (good and bad) feelings using various gestures. Japanese people have much less gestures, in fact it is difficult to say or to guess what they are thinking or feeling, and the process of understanding this is not exactly a fast one (in my own experience). Japanese people also control their emotions much more than Mexicans do. From Harriet's friend point of view, Japanese auto-control was way too much, since they do not show their true feelings quite easily, understanding them was impossible for him.

I should point out that this person had little contact with the Japanese community, which, from my own opinion, was the main factor that made him think this way, although I tried to explain this, he insisted that his few interaction with the Japanese community was not the reason of his standpoint, but the other way around. Sadly, we could not come to an agreement, however a couple of interesting questions came up to our discussion:


Is it that, in the looking for self-control and empathizing with others, we have to hide our true feelings? to which extent can this be considered healthy? How much can we control our selves, without being unhappy and feeling prisoners of our own thinking brain?


(To be continued) :)