Socially Embarrassing Situations

I’m sure we’ve all had an experience of saying something we regret or doing something we are ashamed to admit. Some people have the ability to take these mishaps and suddenly change them into something that “saves” themselves or stops outside criticism. On the other hand, other people seem to experience similar embarrassing situations but always end up feeling robbed and hurt. What is the difference between the two?

Need to “Redeem” Yourself?

It is important that we all bring more awareness to the “mistakes” and embarrassing situations we make and have the courage to bring them closer to us. It may just be our desperation for approval from others that make us trying and find a way to “save” ourselves in embarrassing situations. When we don’t, it hurts that much more when we leave empty handed. We are too afraid to heal shame because it is something we’re trying to push away. At the same time, someone else can find a way to thrive from the experience and not suffer the same pain. Why? Well check out this video I made about this topic:

Both situations are valuable because they reveal deeper internal perceptions of ourselves. If you are desperately looking for a way to compensate or save yourself after making some kind of mistake, then perhaps it is in your best interests to not find a solution but instead sink deeper into that void. Perhaps it is a time to put yourself first and not put your own feeling of happiness and pride into doing a specific action that magically saves you or redeems yourself. You may just not trust yourself and so when you make these mistakes, they are there to reveal your own self hatred and shame patterns. Are you sure you want to constantly try to escape that in order to get temporary approval from others? Perhaps the solution or redemption lies in that vulnerability; not in escaping it by “doing” something.

Finding the Root Fear

There are an infinite number of ways to make mistakes and trigger past shame and fear; so is it really useful to give you a way to escape that shame by doing something that gets approval from others? I don’t think so. I think the real problem is not putting yourself first by honoring what you did, even though you feel like it wasn’t good enough. You should try to stop trying to escape your years of feeling inadequate by trying to figure out what the “right” thing is to say or rebuttal. You will remain an inferior slave that way.