There is a moment that is all too familiar to us. It’s that rush of warmth that starts in your chest and quickly escalates into a stinging sensation that reddens your face. You get the sweats in your hands, and your vision has a quick shift, focusing like middle school me “artistically” adding a vignette to the blurriest photo known to man. That, my friend, is what embarrassment is. It’s a moment I’ve definitely had many times over in my life, from meaning to send a text to a close friends group chat but accidentally sending it to a two-year old birthday party groupchat, to hitting up my crush only to be ignored for a month.

But here’s where it gets important: I sought out those opportunities because I had a goal in mind which was to confront that hot, sinking feeling and get past it. None of those were accidental; those were all designed to be social mess ups in my own “rejection therapy.” I’m talking about actual, premeditated embarrassment: approaching a group of people waiting outside a club and just calling out to them in a high-pitched, dweebish voice and saying “Hey ☝￿ ” then launching into a made-up scenario about me informing a random group that my partner of five years turned out to be my second cousin twice removed. 

Another instance involved me getting up and singing my heart out to “Rose’s Turn” (Glee Version) in a karaoke bar and then passionately dueting “Careless Whisper” with my friend right after. The joke and song didn’t matter; it was all about taking that chance that came with embarrassment and realizing that the exercise itself was the point.

Embarrassment can actually be reduced to a moment of excessive self-consciousness. The truth is, you think about yourself far more than you really need to. Nobody has enough time in their life to spend hours dwelling on you and your perceived socializing abilities (or lack thereof). You’re experiencing the “Spotlight Effect,” that common psychological belief that others are watching us much more closely than they actually are. The embarrassment you experience as a function of a social faux pas will often provide a brief moment that you will look back on and laugh. Something I remember is this dude squatting in front of his car. Not paying much mind, I was intently discussing a crazy occurrence with my friend and laughed, only to be met with this squatting guy exclaiming: “I’m not normally like this.” The reason that it sticks out is that if I wasn’t made aware of him through his exclamation, I would have never known he was shitting on the street and wiping with a newspaper. The absurdity of the scenario is what keeps it fresh, and hey man, emergencies happen. The camaraderie people share as a function of witnessing embarrassment in others is that it can, in many instances, provide a laugh for those people.

But let’s examine this more closely, because this physiological response itself is a hidden power. It is a Self-Conscious Emotion (SCE), a kind of affective experience that is essentially involved in generating socially adaptive behaviors (Jankowski & Takahashi, 2014). That rush of warmth and need to apologize or retreat is actually your brain’s adaptive power for social behavior. It is your cue to others that says, “Whoops! I knew better. I blew it.” By exhibiting overt signs of embarrassment, you are proving that you are in tune enough to value and follow society’s rules that you just broke, which serves to prevent others from clutching their pearls at you. It is your emotional inner compass pointing you toward making better social choices. In truth, this emotion is a vital component in self-esteem development (Seidner et al., 1988). The blushing experience itself is how you discover your identity in a group setting. 

Here’s the secret: you get what you want when you ask for it. Do you want a raise? A date? To ask a random question to a random stranger? The trick is to risk that moment of embarrassment. But let’s say you go out, ask, and blow it. You get rejected. So what? This is where the real value begins. Rejection is a great experience that will go a long way in helping to develop your ego and courage. The largest obstacle that will stand between you and your goals is the fear of failure. Deep down, this fear is rooted in the fear of experiencing shame and embarrassment (Sagar & Stoeber, 2009). That fear will make you shut your mouth and sit quiet and cozy in your comfort zone. The power of overcoming this is not only the key to conquering that obstacle but is actually the whole point of rejection therapy. By pushing past this moment of embarrassment, you are freeing yourself and proving that you will get out of it okay, whether or not you succeed in what you wanted. For instance, research on athletes found that those who focused on achieving high personal standards reported less fear of experiencing shame and embarrassment (Sagar & Stoeber, 2009). This means that the more serious you are about success and consciously overcome your limits by taking these small social risks, the less that deep-seated fear of looking silly will restrict you.

With that, when you experience your palms sweating, your chest tightening with anxiety, and your neck flushing with embarrassment, just remember that you are actually doing your body a HUGE favor in helping you to have a better life. You are doing a job that is essential to society and is resulting in your self-esteem growing and you being a more resilient individual. Do not shy away from embarrassment, but enjoy its power.

Citations

Jankowski, Kathryn F., and Hidehiko Takahashi. “Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Emotions and Implications for Psychopathology: Examining Embarrassment, Guilt, Envy, and Schadenfreude.” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, vol. 68, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 83-93. Wiley Online Library.

Sagar, Sam S., and Joachim Stoeber. “Perfectionism, Fear of Failure, and Affective Responses to Success and Failure: The Central Role of Fear of Experiencing Shame and Embarrassment.” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, vol. 31, no. 5, 2009, pp. 602–627. Human Kinetics.

Seidner, Laura Beizer, et al. “A Developmental Analysis of Elementary School-Aged Children’s Concepts of Pride and Embarrassment.” Child Development, vol. 59, no. 2, Apr. 1988, pp. 367–377. JSTOR.

Featured image courtesy of Albert Ritzberger via the Wikimedia Commons.

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