This text is a personal interim report on my journey toward becoming a professional of humanity. It outlines the direction I want to grow in: to harness human attentiveness and inner strength to build spaces where people can grow as human beings – not merely as performers. I write reflectively but also critically, because my experience of the social and educational fields so far has revealed serious shortcomings in how they treat humanity. I raise questions and challenge myself and the reader to look beneath the surface.
For context: I have studied social work, youth work, and educational science, and have earned a teaching qualification, as well as a trainer in emotional skills and body awareness. I also have a background in master’s studies in human-centered technology, which could be summarized with terms like cognitive psychology and service design.
In parallel, I have worked on my own inner world—first in therapy, then within the framework of the Diamond Approach, which provides tools for accessing one’s personal resources of presence.
In my experience, the educational and social systems do support performance, but hardly support presence or actual inner growth. Professionals easily drift into institutionalized roles in which real encounter is pushed aside. Meanwhile, young people are left alone with life’s fundamental questions.
For real change to be possible, we need adults who do their inner work and show up as authentic human beings, not merely as professional roles. We need cultures that support honest self-encounter – where presence, emotional intelligence and inner strength are not the exception but the starting point. This text is an invitation to that work.
Background: Challenges in the Social and Educational Systems
Social work professionals can only support clients to the extent that they have cultivated their own capacity for growth and to the degree that the institutions they work in support. My aim is to start building a contextual foundation for larger discussions on how to nurture inner growth in individuals and communities. What kind of growth environments and communities do we want to build for the future?
People need cultures and environments in which growth at a personal level is possible. To some extent the educational system and, for example, the meeting places offered by youth work can serve as such. I have experienced, however, that youth work systems lack sufficient awareness of the deeper phenomena of humanity, and so almost inevitably end up reproducing the behavioral patterns of earlier generations, negative ones included.
On the other hand, the surrounding culture is so individualistic that the system cannot serve the needs of those who long to meet themselves more deeply. The therapy system is one answer, but as a form focused on individuals it cannot in itself create a culture of healthy connection between people.
Through my own inner work I have come into contact with inner resources that I feel are the key to growth. These resources are in all of us, but for most of us they remain largely unused. Through fairly everyday presence work, however, they can be brought into use in a whole new way. Resources with which I see contact as rather weak throughout the system include the following:
- inner support, self-confidence, trust,
- compassion,
- curiosity and creativity and the ability to let go of the old,
- inner strength, aliveness, and
- clarity of mind and piercing seeing of the truth.
Against this background, it is clear to me that the educational system and social sector are still in their infancy. I am seeking answers on how to bring these critically important tools for human growth into these fields.
Without expanding our connection to humanity’s real capacities, I don’t believe we can progress as individuals or as societies, despite the obvious crises of humanity and our systems. Almaas’s book Spacecruiser Inquiry illustrates these qualities or resources in practical ways.
(I feel it offers a minimal theoretical framework from which to draw direction for further growth. At the same time, the book has a lot of material that is too lofty for wide distribution, and it isn’t quite suited, as it stands, to challenging mainstream culture. Ready, save for the refining.)
This reflection doesn’t draw from any single source but instead seeks to create an initial framework for bigger conversations.
My observations are necessarily situated and incomplete. I try to distinguish between what I have experienced directly, what I have observed in others, and the explanations I suspect might connect these experiences to broader institutional patterns. I do not claim that these explanations are exhaustive or always correct. I am interested in identifying patterns that deserve closer attention, not in reducing complex human situations to a single cause. At this stage, the value of the argument lies partly in the questions it makes possible.
It also hints at which cultural currents deserve amplification within the mainstream social work narrative. The target group for this text is intentionally broad and at this point I don’t provide any ready made answers. I hope this text challenges you, the reader, to ask questions—and, if you feel moved, to send those questions to me.
On a more practical level, this is an interim report. After a year of studying youth work, I’m beginning to understand the types of challenges present in the social and educational fields. I’ll also share preliminary thoughts on the kind of reform needed in social systems to help students in these institutions awaken into life and enable schools to truly fulfill their purpose.
Background: My Own Path
Sensitivity in the workplace
And I listened because I hadn’t found my own voice yet
So all I could hear was the noise that
People make when they don’t know shit
But I didn’t know that yetI grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill
Shoes that were not made for running up that hill
And I need to run up that hill
I need to run up that hill, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will- Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Sensitivity has been part of my identity for as long as I can remember. About ten years ago, I encountered the term “highly sensitive,” which helped me connect with this trait. Yet, only recently has its meaning begun to fully integrate into my consciousness.
A workplace from several years ago was a turning point for me. There, I learned how unfamiliar sensitivity can be for many. I was labeled “too sensitive,” even though the real issue lay in the organization’s structure and leadership culture. Burnout was a heavy experience, but it forced me to examine my sensitivity more deeply. I realized that sensitivity is sharp perception, not weakness.
This experience also taught me the importance of creating safe spaces for others who are sensitive. These individuals often bear the brunt of society’s harshness. Sensitivity is the capacity to see deeply and clearly, not merely react.
Because I lacked a concrete understanding of young people’s lives, I turned to youth work after my teacher training and workplace experiences. I wanted to learn directly how young people experience life.
I’m proud to have done something authentic. It has been incredible to be part of an adult group in youth work studies, where participants show up honestly from their own starting points and are willing to be challenged to be vulnerable. I feel I’ve made progress in my personal growth.
“You’re a sensitive guy - you don’t notice that conflict is harsh liquor.” — Zen Café, translated freely from Finnish
I sometimes get feedback that I am demanding of myself. I suspect there’s a connection between being “demanding” and being sensitive. Seeing things that others don’t—or that they have closed their eyes to—gives you a different sense of urgency about the need for change.
Balancing Sensitivity and Strength
Youth work studies have been a significant step in my life. They’ve challenged me to examine my sensitivity and my ability to embody clarity and strength.
Although the term “sensitivity” initially helped me identify something essential about myself, I’ve only recently started to see sensitivity as a strength, not a weakness.
Overlooking sensitivity and pushing past my internal guidance has been a significant wound for me. This is why I find it critically important to be a safe figure for other sensitive and introverted individuals.
At the same time, I have the skills to challenge people to embrace their strength, understand their boundaries, and view their experiences honestly. Sensitivity doesn’t mean drama or victimhood—it’s precise observation.
Furthermore, victimhood can be an important defense mechanism for many. Handling it gently but honestly is work that requires sharp perception. At the end of the day it would be crucial to meet the entirety of the humanity of both the student and the teacher in an accepting way, so that life could begin to move.
See also: Background: What I Learned in Tuva (Preparatory Education)
About ways in which sensitivity and precision in me want to challenge the system
In my social work placements, my sensitivity has shown itself in how I feel compassion for both the workers and the students in the system. The appearance is often that both seem powerless against the structures. What remains to change is oneself.
Personal transformation may be the most immediately available form of agency, but it cannot replace structural change. Teachers cannot resolve inadequate resources, contradictory institutional demands, or inflexible administrative practices simply by becoming more aware. At the same time, structures are reproduced through everyday decisions, interpretations, and habits. The interesting question is where personal agency remains possible within institutional constraints, and how that agency might eventually become collective rather than merely individual.
This text is a space where I allow myself to fully ruminate and also project problems outside myself. Challenges need to be named so they can be addressed. To set a direction, one must allow for even seemingly idealistic critique.
It seems to me that teachers in the educational system often become performers lost in their heads, and system operators. Supporting actual learning and growth as a person takes a backseat. My claim is the system incentivises taking on the roles it needs to function, and this dynamic becomes normalized and hard to perceive from inside.
I am not saying professional roles are inherently a problem. They provide continuity, predictability, and protection, particularly in environments where young people need reliable adults. What interests me is the point at which a role ceases to be something a person consciously inhabits and becomes something they can no longer easily step outside of. At that point, professional adaptation may begin to narrow the individual’s capacity to respond freely to what is actually happening.
In other words, the problem is not restraint, but the loss of freedom to choose whether restraint is appropriate.
I don’t blame the teachers—it’s the system that creates this.
The understanding of how to be present as a teacher, both physically and holistically as a human being, has been forgotten on the level of the entire culture.
By presence, I do not mean emotional expressiveness for its own sake. I mean the capacity to remain in contact with one’s own experience while attending to another person’s reality, without automatically retreating into habitual reactions or prescribed responses. A quiet, restrained teacher may be deeply present, just as an expressive one may be disconnected from what is happening. The distinction is not primarily one of outward behavior, but of awareness, responsiveness, and the freedom to act from them.
Young people are partially disengaged on a mental level because the teacher’s pedagogical expertise does not guarantee that the teacher is truly alive and present as a person.
Students, too, thus learn to model a rather frozen world of experience. And vice versa.
Young people respond to their environments in different ways, and I cannot know how deeply such patterns affect any particular student. Still, the emotional and relational habits of adults communicate something beyond the explicit curriculum: what kinds of expression are welcome, how uncertainty is handled, and whether one’s own experience can be trusted. I wonder whether some of the passivity we encounter in educational settings is partly a response to the environment itself, rather than simply a characteristic of the students. The patterns may reinforce each other without anyone consciously intending them to.
Amongst my class of youth worker students I’ve also seen that there is sometimes confusion about whether hiding oneself is actually seen as a professional advantage.
So it seems teachers themselves seem to have become a bit institutionalized.
I suspect that the reproduction of inherited institutional patterns may contribute to the psychological difficulties we see in Finland, particularly where expectations about obedience, achievement, emotional restraint, and adulthood conflict with people’s developmental needs. I cannot establish how significant this contribution is, but I believe the relationship deserves closer examination. The question is less about assigning responsibility to a particular generation than understanding why certain patterns survive even when their consequences have become questionable.
What the System Lacks: an Understanding of Humanity
While studying pedagogy at university, I experienced what could be described as a spiritual insight—meaning that, based on my personal experience, what was being taught resonated deeply as authentic. What I mean is that, based on my personal experience, what was being taught felt profoundly honest, not just intellectually evaluated.
Educational science or Finnish teachers do not subscribe to hollow behaviorism, the so-called Pavlovian approach. It led to the thought that perhaps academia, in addition to critical scientific evaluation, also harbors a profound love for human growth. Social constructivism and phenomenon-based learning, in my view, quite accurately describe how learning can occur in a healthy way.
The education system seems to me to lack a sufficiently developed understanding of humanity’s deeper dimensions—not simply emotions and embodiment as subjects of study, but the direct cultivation of qualities such as presence, strength, compassion, clarity, and the capacity to be honest and upright. Academic psychology and educational science investigate many related phenomena, but describing these capacities conceptually and developing experiential access to them are different achievements.
Through the Diamond Approach, I have encountered ways of recognizing and cultivating these qualities that seem to me considerably more direct and precise than what I have experienced in mainstream educational practice or therapy. This is an experiential judgment rather than a demonstrated comparison of effectiveness. Nevertheless, I find the distinction too significant to dismiss simply because it does not fit neatly into existing academic categories.
I suspect that this gap contributes to the difficulty of realizing the humanistic aspirations of academic pedagogy. The separation of these capacities into therapeutic or spiritual domains seems to me partly cultural and ideological, even though the capacities themselves are profoundly human and need not depend on any particular belief system.
Are Clients Really Met in the Social Sector and the Education System?
I feel that professionals in the social and educational fields possess a great deal of intuition and wisdom, gained through experience, for meeting young people where they are mentally, although this is inevitably influenced by their individual personalities and values. The culture in preparatory education is fundamentally very accepting and gentle, though boundaries are available for those who challenge them.
The biggest challenge, as I see it, is that young people are not necessarily engaged on the rich, multi-dimensional levels of their being, and I suspect that despite the gentleness, there is a great deal of unspoken loneliness and confusion in their experience.
In the outside world, culture is undergoing a transformation, and I see no indication that the older generations—who inevitably make up the staff—even fully grasp the magnitude of this change from the perspective of young people.
I am not entirely convinced that the education system helps students confront the real world or if it mainly prepares them for a construct of the world that the system itself wants to believe in. This tension, as I understand it, is reflected in the undeniable intergenerational inheritance of education, which remains deeply entrenched despite society’s efforts to change it.
During my training, I’ve met young people and helped them recognize their emotions and potential. I feel this work has shown me how much untapped strength exists when people are given the space to be present and use their potential.
Observations on My Own and (Other) Learners’ Experience
The skills of those who focus on more artistic self-expression, or their social richness and vitality, often go unnoticed in a system that prioritizes academic achievements.
What seems insufficiently recognized amidst the daily bustle is the relationship between meaningful, sustainable development and a person’s growing contact with their own inner resources. Learning and achievement are certainly possible through external structure, discipline, and encouragement. But I believe something important changes when people begin to experience their actions as expressions of their own capacities rather than primarily as responses to external expectations.
Human growth is slow, of course, so sometimes the situation may be better than it looks at first glance. Teenagers’ withdrawal is often seen as a normal state.
I nevertheless believe that something of a person’s vitality and presence can become perceptible in an encounter. There are moments when someone seems to come more fully into contact with themselves. Their curiosity, strength, or spontaneity becomes visible in a way that is readily distinguishable from simply following the teacher’s instructions.
These impressions are not definitive judgments about anyone’s inner life, but they can offer meaningful guidance in how we meet and support one another.
Especially with young people in Tuva (preparatory education, comparable to a 10th grade), supporting them in finding a zest for life should be the number one focus – since that is typically where self-confidence, the missing motivation to move forward and face challenges, and curiosity are also found.
This does not mean that vitality should become another ideal students are expected to perform. Not everyone expresses engagement through enthusiasm or visible initiative, and not everyone wants to explore their inner experience in an educational setting. The task is to make room for different ways of being while helping students develop the capacities they need to pursue their own directions. A genuinely human-centered approach must leave room for the possibility that a young person’s understanding of what matters differs from the educator’s.
I did not feel safe bringing out my most authentic self either. It was a new experience for me that the communication culture of the environment did not feel direct enough for me to meet young people from my own strength and heart.
The protective parts of my personality began to suspect that there must be some reason why everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells. Even though there was clearly a need to model aliveness and real presence, I did not feel able to.
I feared that if I brought directness or strength into the room, people would start reacting to this new-feeling phenomenon from their shadows, unconsciously.
I recognize that this fear also tells me something about my own history. I cannot know in advance how others would have responded, or whether their caution arose from unconscious defenses, legitimate professional concerns, or simply different ways of understanding the situation. My task is therefore not to establish that my interpretation was correct, but to become sufficiently grounded that I can test these assumptions through actual encounters. Strength, in this sense, also means remaining open to the possibility that I have misunderstood what is happening.
Staff and young people alike. People are often used to old ways of doing things, and even as these make them rigid, they are familiar and therefore safe.
This gives me plenty of integration work for the coming months: with what attitudes and expectations would it be useful to show up, so that set-ups that seemed stuck could be moved, gently, even a little?
I feel that structural problems in systems often block real growth. Apparent efficiency and rigid rules institutionalize students, leaving no time for processes that would genuinely support their well-being. The processes that would genuinely support their growth as human beings receive far too little attention.
Much would be possible, but the system continues to replicate the old patterns of the culture.
Bringing out potential would require actively dismantling the conditioning built by the system itself. I am not immune to this either—as someone who has spent a long time within the education system, I notice how unconscious patterns and assumptions about what is acceptable and what is not can quickly take hold. The school system has created its own distorting reward system, and it is also the system’s responsibility to dismantle it if the goal is to raise fully developed adults.
How could we find a connection to humanity in youth work?
During my training in a Tuva group, I observed a great deal of untapped potential and, I believe, frustration stemming from the fact that no one truly sees or reflects back what is possible within humanity.
Much could be achieved, but the system continues to replicate the old patterns of culture. The system claims to be based on science, but in practice, it seems to perpetuate an oral tradition of Finnishness, with all its harshness and brilliance.
In my own experience, I have learned from sensitivity and boundaries that there is a reason why I lack a stronger willingness to push people or challenge them in the way that might often be deemed useful within the system’s narrative.
In my personal relationships, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern of bypassing my sensitivity. Teachers and others in the system have often guided me toward institutionalization. They have claimed to “know better,” without truly understanding. Because these people failed to see me — my precision and sensitivity — they ended up pushing me toward dissociation, a blind compliance.
As I’ve grown toward middle age, I’ve come to see that pushiness is more a bias of Finnish culture – a distortion of perspective – than any particularly well-justified choice. It’s understandable that extroverted traits are valued in a world where they often lead to success.
However, this often comes at the cost of labeling normal personality traits as abnormal, with the expectation that one must push through them. A professional’s discernment and, most importantly, awareness of their own conditioning and emotional reactions are critically important here.
On deeper encounter
It seems to me that a certain level of emotional absence on the part of teachers is often considered normal in the social sector. I feel it’s important to say out loud, as a fact, a claim that may sound harsh: in practice, people are being trained to become institutionalized cogs in the system, accepting the conditions in which they operate as a given, with little energy in their daily work to question the true meaningfulness of their actions.
The working world actually needs individuals who can act independently and enjoy their work enough to have the strength to continue. Institutionalization is an emergent property and a result of teachers’ lack of awareness, not a deliberate or intentional goal. As it stands, young people are not given the resources they need to move forward as human beings—beyond the surface level, at least.
In my experience, students are left alone as humans with their actual experience, and begin to hide themselves. It feels like the entire process is a game where teachers sometimes project weakness or one-dimensionality onto the students, and the students, in turn, go along with the game, feeling that this is what is expected of them.
Best moments in my practice period have come when I’ve seen teachers fully immerse themselves in genuine interaction. These moments have reminded me of how much authenticity and courage can open doors and empower students to move forward.
Finding a New Direction
My core message to the system seems to be this: Presence for the group, alive acknowledgment of the group’s atmosphere, and genuine, honest, living interaction are possible! It is possible to create a space where people do not overtly retreat behind the roles of “professionalism” but instead show up authentically and openly as human beings - while simultaneously maintaining adulthood and healthy boundaries.
Of course, authenticity does not mean expressing everything one feels. It means remaining sufficiently connected to one’s experience to respond with discernment rather than automatically following habitual patterns. Sometimes this calls for directness, sometimes restraint, and sometimes simply allowing another person the space to discover their own response. The professional’s strength lies partly in being able to recognize the difference.
Not only is this possible, but it is also the only thing that genuinely creates the kind of movement within people that embodies the true spirit of social work.
This, however, requires deliberate work in the direction of teachers taking on a much more determined role as adults. By “adult,” I mean a fully embodied, emotional, real human being—not just a hollow story passed down through generations about what it means to be a professional in the education system, endlessly repeating empty patterns. Building the capacity for this kind of presence demands personal, inner work on the part of the teachers. Unfortunately, the system offers little to no support for this.
There is a danger here, too, of turning personal development into another demand placed on already overburdened professionals. A teacher who is exhausted by working conditions should not be told that the problem is insufficient awareness or inner work. Psychological development cannot compensate for every structural deficiency. What I would like to see is a culture in which reflection, emotional awareness, and professional growth are genuinely supported, without becoming new standards by which individuals are judged or blamed for institutional failures.
This is why the work must draw from outside the system. The situation cannot be changed with the same tools that created it.
I have studied within the framework of the Diamond Approach, but it is not the only framework that provides guidance on presence and honest connection with oneself. In my experience, other approaches that aim to connect people with their deeper resources include
- Circling (Authentic Relating/Surrendered Leadership),
- Internal Family Systems,
- Focusing,
- Humanistic Psychology,
and many others.
It speaks volumes about society that excluding only Circling, these approaches are still easiest for modern individuals to view as “therapeutic methods,” rather than as self-evident and essential aspects of everyday life from the perspective of full humanity.
The Path Forward
In the future, I want to combine my sensitivity and strength to create spaces where people can grow. The union of sensitivity and strength can, at its best, produce something that serves society on a profound level.
The challenge I decided to take on through youth work studies a little over a year ago has proven worthwhile. I have gained confidence that sensitivity and strength are complementary elements. At their best, they can together lead to remarkable experiences and capacities in humanity, which can be of great help on a larger scale.
My studies in youth work, practicing group facilitation, and planning camps have given me critical skills to lead initiatives where people come together in a way that truly begins with presence and moves toward genuine well-being and responsibility.
The Challenge
We still have many good, healthy structures in our schools. They are upheld by strong people with a lot of genuine understanding of learning, of activities that suit different groups, and of healthy boundaries.
These strong people would just need to be woken up now. The structures won’t last forever unless the people who are meant to uphold them in the future are given a genuine chance to grow into their own humanity.
One of the challenges in the educational and social fields seems to be a rigid system-centeredness. Interaction is constrained by tight timeframes that do not allow for a genuine interest in real, inner movement within individuals. These movements usually occur more slowly and require humane, unhurried presence.
I am not arguing against institutions, professional roles, or the structures that make education possible. My concern is with the psychological adaptations that institutions encourage, sometimes without recognizing their consequences. Some adaptations help people develop discipline, responsibility, and the capacity to work together. Others may gradually narrow their sense of agency, their trust in their own experience, or their freedom to respond to others.
These effects are not uniform, and their causes cannot be reduced to a single explanation. But if education is genuinely concerned with human growth, it must remain willing to examine not only what its structures accomplish, but also what kinds of people they encourage us to become.
For any new direction to emerge, the focus must shift toward authentic engagement. This demands not only systemic change but also a deep commitment to fostering genuine connection and presence among all involved.
Besides presence, though, what is needed is LIFE. Teachers meeting students as whole human beings, who have other passions than trying to figure out what skills the school system or “working life” imagines they need. Honesty about the fact that the world is changing, and no one really knows.
This is not about beliefs. It is about concrete acts that bring a person face to face with themselves. This mess created by minds can be cleared up, if we want it to be. The methods are fairly everyday and using them takes commitment, but at times they can be earth-shaking too.
I offer emotional skills coaching that guides each person’s humanity toward a more direct, clearer place that owns its strength. Read more and book an introductory session at ollisavolainen.fi.