There seems to exists a Personal Status that is governed by rules according to our internal programming. Whether from predisposition or birth, or from developmental environmental factors, we seem to arrive at internal programming that determines personal self-satisfaction, or personal integrity. Like a plant or tree we realize our boundaries, and to grow we must grow within and along those boundaries. Gains made within those boundaries give rise to Personal Status: The things that make us personally proud of ourselves.
We spend much time trying to find groups whose status markers align with our own more intrinsic personal status markers of Self-Esteem. We feel harmony when the groups we associate ourselves with align with Personal Status Goals: We feel a sense of belonging through common shared goals or interests. If the groups status markers, the things they value most, do not align with our own status markers, we feel a sense of not belonging and not feeling valued, as our status within the group diminishes. As social beings who need and want to feel valued, we feel threatened as we are pushed along the edges of the herd.
Our relationships with ourselves, our internal programming, as well as with others as social beings, governs that we must feel valued. The feeling of being valued, or having social status, in a group context it conveys an underlying feeling of safety, believing we will have the favor and support of others. Feeling self-value, or having personal status, ensures a feeling of stability within, living in accordance to our inner-programming, within the boundaries we have established as individual organisms. We live in a reality that features both the Internal and the External. To be "well-adjusted" is to find some semblance of harmony and balance between the two. Personal Integrity and values and Group Integrity and values may or may not align, and that is the reality we must live with in this thing we call human life.
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