Learn Not to Be a Self-Inflicted Victim of Embarrassment

Embarrassment can arise from innocent mistakes and can be intensified by harsh self-recrimination. Unrealistically high personal standards and the habit of assuming others are judging you can make embarrassment more likely and more severe. A personal example involves mistaking a chrysalis for a rock, causing it to be damaged and leading to painful self-blame and fear that others would know. The chrysalis is the protective covering of a caterpillar during metamorphosis, and if detached it may not survive. Embarrassment serves no useful purpose, and the patterns that produce it are learned behaviors that can be changed.

"Many people are conditioned to be their own harshest critics. This leads to easily becoming embarrased. Embarrassment serves no useful purpose and can be overcome."

"In general, embarrassment is an emotional response to an innocent mistake. Some of us are especially embarrassment-prone because we've been conditioned to set unrealistically high standards for ourselves and then judge ourselves harshly when we can't possibly meet them. Many of us have been taught to evaluate ourselves based on how we assume (often erroneously) other people are evaluating us."

"A chrysalis is the hard skin covering a caterpillar as it metamorphoses into a butterfly. If it becomes detached from the silk spun by the caterpillar, but is handled gently, it can be reattached and still become a butterfly. This one would not. I'd seen to that."

"But what crime had I committed? I'd accidentally mistaken a chrysalis for a rock. For years, whenever I recalled that incident, I'd suffer embarrassment all over again. What is embarrassment? In general, embarrassment is an emotional response to an innocent mistake."

Read at Psychology Today