A Brief Interlude (#2)

This post started out as an elaboration of what I meant by "dreams", in The Prologue (Part 2): Of Lighthouses, Maps, and Dreams. After two hours of writing, I thought I had exactly what I wanted. Then I decided to put it aside, and returned to it after dinner, intent on polishing it up. Nearly three hours have passed. In that time, I realized I needed to work through a few ideas before I could fully explain my "dreams". And that has required me to work through my thoughts on “embarrassment” and “humiliation”.

That is why I am doing all this, to unravel truths, even the uncomfortable ones. While this may all seem meandering and long, please remember, it took me forty-two years to get here.

 “And a rock feels no pain

And an island never cries.”

              ~Simon and Garfunkel, “I am a Rock”

If someone ever decided to turn my life into a television series, gave each stage of growth a season, and identified each season with a theme song, from age fourteen to about twenty-eight, the song would be Simon and Garfunkel’s “I am a Rock”.

I wanted to be alone, away from people, so I could avoid making mistakes in front of them.

Throughout my teenage years, well into early adulthood, I hated people. Well, no, not hated them, but feared them. That fear stemmed from another one: fear of embarrassment. Everyone makes mistakes in front of other people. We usually end up embarrassed, and feel stupid. How we carry that memory forward will depend on how we and others react to it. We can control one, but not the other. And the one that we can control, depends a lot on our internal thought processes, prior embarrassing experiences, our emotional well-being, and the coping skills we have learned.

In the end, feeling embarrassed should pass with little incident, and should, after awhile, either be put aside, or laughed about. It should not be mocked at or punished. For most people, embarrassing memories become something to smile or roll one’s eyes at, especially among friends.

However, for other people, being embarrassed can trigger another feeling.

Embarrassment can lead to feeling humiliated. That is when we feel we have lost our standing among other people, and are unable to show our faces to them. We are social animals, and most humans want to belong. At times, humiliation can be worse than death. For now, I am putting aside whether the humiliation is deserved or justified. What matters for my discussion, is that it is an awful feeling, one that we avoid at great lengths.

And that is why I never wanted to be embarrassed: in my mind, embarrassment equaled humiliation. That fear led to social anxiety: I did not want to put myself in situations where I would do something wrong, or say something awkward. So, I avoided people as much as I could. When I had to interact with them, I was shy and introverted.

So what if you feel humiliated instead of embarrassed when you make mistakes? Well, instead of navigating the experience with an apology, humor, and goodwill, and learning something of value, a humiliated person begins to lie, lash out, and hate. Have it happen enough times, these reactions becomes habit, which initiates a positive feedback loop.

(This is why we need to be more kind and supportive, less judgmental and dismissive.)

Also, a lot of this is context driven; most of it is subjective. If someone walks in on you while taking a shower, how you feel will depend on a lot of factors. Is the person your spouse, friend, or stranger? How do you feel about your body? How does the other person react at the moment? What do they say or do after? All of these things will determine if being discovered naked in the shower is just an embarrassing memory to be laughed at later, or an humiliating experience that could paralyze you for life. More importantly, some of these factors you can control; others you cannot not.

What if you become tired of being a rock, living alone on an island, because of your fears? How do you break free of a cycle that has kept you there for so many years? You have to figure a way to replace old habits with new ones.

What does any of that have to with fears, social anxiety, and habits? Simple. Work on the things you can control, acknowledge the things you cannot, and put them aside for now. Learn to accept your vulnerabilities, your nakedness. Teach yourself that you deserve your dignity. Separate your dignity from false expectations. Surround yourself with people who will laugh with you and not at you, who will listen to your life stories, and respect you. Let go of the ones who won’t. And should you be humiliated? Don’t bury it, but confront it. Analyze it, and, if necessary, leave it behind you, and let other figure it out.

None of this is easy to do, and will take time. Friendships are not born completed, but require effort. Some need more attention than others. Also, some life situations are far more complicated, and their solutions may have far-reaching consequences. Nor will anything change overnight. Or in a week. It will take years to build better habits, and create new ones.

And this is where my “dreams” play an important part. A habit needs to be identified. That is what a lighthouse does, it exposes what needs to be changed. Changing something effectively, requires directions and instructions, and that is where a good map becomes essential. But a habit takes time to form, and needs constant attention. In fact, it needs positive reinforcement in order to take hold. That is why you need a dream: that person or thing to inspire you to continue when building a habit becomes too difficult.

Back in my third post, I wrote the following:

“Dreaming is what I do best. It arises from my daily interactions with people and things. Catching a smile on a beautiful face as I enter a room. Seeing dancers leaping across stage, hearing singers chanting catchy show tunes. Watching a series of folk and pop songs from foreign lands on YouTube. Reading a collection of multi-colored Post-It notes from classmates. Witnessing children take interest in your own past hobbies. Finding inspiring documentaries about hiking, dancing, poetry, and sushi. And searching for clues hidden away in boxes scattered across rooms.

They all revealed the way, and I chose to embrace them.”

It was these dreams, and many more, that played a valuable part in my overcoming a debilitating and self-destructive social anxiety.

For those people and their actions, I am eternally grateful.

And with all this written out, including the stuff I wrote these past two days, but did not publish, I am better able to explain how my social anxiety formed, the damage it wrought, and the lighthouses, maps, and dreams that helped me to identify this struggle, and the habits necessary to work on it. 

(to be continued…)