On Feeling Embarrassed
What exactly is “embarrassment?”
“It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.”
- Leonard Cohen
I am 38 years old, yet I do not feel 38 years old. I don’t feel any age, really. It’s all been one continuous stream of consciousness, ever since consciousness became a thing I was conscious of, somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. Since then I’ve spent most of my time listening to myself carry on and on, all day and all afternoon, all the way into the evening until I mercifully fall asleep. Once I’m finally under, my brain generously fills the time with symbol-laden infomercials. This overnight brain cinema is apparently there to give me clues about what my subconscious yearns for.
What a near perfect system of self-actualization, getting to see the inner workings of your mind on a nightly basis. This process should have me waking each day with a renewed sense of purpose and a clear path toward “finding my true self.” The only problem is that - allegedly - my brain speaks a different language than I do. While it would be easy for me to unlock a dream in which a younger version of myself stands before me and says “you feel trapped by the choices of your past,” instead I get a 3-hour slog featuring a confusing conversation with my dead Uncle Joe, who halfway through turns into Mr. Owl from the old Tootsie Pop commercial. Upon waking I may muse at the fact that I didn’t really notice the change from Uncle Joe to Mr. Owl, and - in some archaic way - they sort of occupy the same space in my mind. As far as what insight I might pluck from that, so far I can make no conclusions.
Who cares. Honestly, what’s the point of trying to figure out these somnolent riddles anymore? There was an adolescent in me at one point who did things like keep sleep journals and train myself to lucid dream. Nowadays I’m mainly focused on trying to get to bed and wake up at relatively the same time each day. Besides, the symbology of the subconscious mind always has an ineffability problem; even if I understand the symbols of my dreams on some atavistic level, I still can’t articulate them in any meaningful way, nor can I convert them to any meaningful action.
I used to have night terrors. I would dream about something big and loud racing toward me like the concrete boulder from Indiana Jones. I remember the scale of it would be so terrifying to me, the sound of it would rise like blood boiling in my ears until the somatic affect of this terror would rouse me from sleep, carrying over to my waking life the scream that I started in REM. There are many books written on night terrors and how to treat them, but I humbly recommend the treatment that worked for me: I had three older brothers who would yell at me to shut the fuck up and go back to bed until I felt so humiliated and embarrassed that I just thought it better to keep my terror to myself than holler about it. The nightmares didn’t stop, the terror didn’t stop, I just stopped screaming about it.
As above, so below. As asleep, so awake.
The worst thing about dreams as I’ve gotten older is not that I have more nightmares, but instead that my nightmares don’t really scare me anymore. Nothing is hidden, nothing is obscured, there is nothing occult out there that I’m afraid of. What sort of monsters could appear before me that I wouldn’t just invite inside my house for coffee? I realized a long time ago that “monsters” are just shorthand for the stuff that’s already inside of you. No point to resist them, better to invite them in and put on a pot of half-caff.
When did this happen? When did my fear of monsters get sublimated into my fear of being annoying? The urgent shock of terror provoked by a nightmare used to demand an outburst - a scream, a cold sweat, a pissing of the sheets. Yet the compulsion to externalize my fear was outweighed by the freezing cold pain of embarrassment, the feeling that I have come to understand is a much more powerful force than fear.
Fear is certainly part of embarrassment, but I cannot say more than that. Try as I might, I cannot actually tell you what embarrassment truly is. Over the last few weeks, as I have considered this essay, I have attempted to throw a definition onto it without looking it up. It has been a bit of a puzzle, but here is what I have come up with:
Embarrassment is a reaction to hidden parts of yourself being made suddenly public without your permission.
Embarrassment is a feeling of social vulnerability too intense to navigate through a normative social exchange.
Embarrassment is a sensation that arises from a sense of emotional nakedness in the gaze of others.
Embarrassment is a reaction that arises from the resistance to having others witness you in a way that does not align with the vision of yourself that you would like others to have.
None of these fully get at the feeling. They capture a part of it, but they don’t get at the actual internal sensorium of embarrassment. The more I thought about this unique feeling, the more I realized that it is one of my rarest emotions. Not because there are few moments of embarrassment in my life - there are many - but simply because it is an emotion that I flee faster than any other.
There are many bad feelings. Sadness, anger, jealousy, despair, envy, grief, remorse, shame, etc. I have wallowed in all of these, I have even come to appreciate the aesthetic experience of some of them. Some of these feelings I might even be responsible for courting into my life. I suffer, for instance, the feeling of alienation as a failed attempt at assembling a personal identity. Yet there is no feeling that I retreat from faster than embarrassment. I do not wallow. As soon as I feel it in the water I hop out of the pool as fast as I can.
Embarrassment is not an emotion that one basks in. Or maybe some people do. Who knows, actually. Now that I think of it, there are some men who like to watch other men fuck their wives and get off on the humiliation, so I’m certain there are some people who seek out artisanal sources of embarrassment as well. But as far as my own preferences, I can think of nothing more awful than embarrassment.
I hate the idea of my blood involuntarily surging forward to my cheeks. I hate the idea of my body betraying me, small tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, the strange swirling sensation that surrounds my penis like dirty water circling a drain after a bath. All of it is my worst nightmare. In fact, it is likely that those early dreams were the closest I’ve come to “living in” the feeling of embarrassment for more than a few seconds. The smallness of me, the blood rushing in my ears, the feeling of urgency, the desire to flee - this is embarrassment. Embarrassment is an impossibly large boulder barreling toward me. I will not stand around to see if it crushes me. I run.
I have done battle with the other emotions. Through many tragedies, injuries, and malfunctions, I have become quite a connoisseur of painful feelings. My body has been destroyed through several major surgeries. I have been betrayed by those who I thought loved me. I have betrayed those who I thought I loved. I have made mistakes and lost friends that I can never get back. I have made choices that I can never undo. In short, I have lived and I have understood the weight of being alive.
I mention this not as a way to boast nor to conjure sympathy - I know that all who are reading this have similar pain points. Rather, I say this only to establish that I am no pussy. I have faced fears, I have gone to the places that scare me, I have stood up to bullies real and imagined. Yet there is one dragon I cannot slay. In fact, embarrassment is so terrifying to me that I will not even venture into its cave.
One of the problems with facing down my aversion to this feeling is that it arises so unexpectedly. It is harder to conjure freely in my brain. Right now, I can summon many sensations in my mind. I can think of what a strawberry tastes like. I can imagine what warm sun feels like on my face on the first warm day of Spring. I can remember how I felt having sex for the first time. I can think of something that makes me feel sad, angry, resentful, jealous, and helpless. But I can scarcely think of what it feels like to be embarrassed.
Not only are embarrassing situations hard to predict, they also cannot be predicted by their very definition. Embarrassment arises when we are in a state of unpreparedness; if we have a good rejoinder then we don’t feel embarrassed, we feel triumphant.
Embarrassment comes when we have no tools to save ourselves, no weapons with which we might defend. It is walking up the stairs to the post office and missing the third step, hearing the small snap of your shoe as it whiffs on the ledge of the stair, the crunch of your patella as it slams into the concrete ledge, the horrendous vocalization you make when your brain catches up to the injury (“aww fuuuuck man dammit good god what the fuck!”), the pathetic laugh and small impotent quip you speak to the person next to you as you stand and dust yourself off; “looks like I missed a step! Hehe…hehehe…”
They do not laugh. Instead, they look so concerned that you feel a strange urge to slap them in the face for noticing you. Nevertheless, throughout it all, you smile. Even as you realize that you likely tore not only your pants but also maybe your ACL, you still have this awful shit-eating grin plastered on your face. It’s not until you open the front door and feel the stifling climate of the post office heating system that you finally encounter this horror inside of you:
You are embarrassed.
You move quickly. Your body knows that you must show precision, competence, and efficiency. Demonstrate to the onlookers how not embarrassed you. Show all the gawkers who stare at your khakis as they slowly start to absorb the blood spilling out of your knee that you are in fact the least embarrassing person on the planet. Slip your letter into the wrong mailbox, wave at the worker behind the counter even though you don’t know her. Drop your chin and nod at her, clock her disdain for you, breeze out the door, gallop down the steps, drive to the Emergency Room.
Diagnosis: Embarrassment.
Prognosis: Terminal.
What the hell is going on here? Why does one deal with embarrassment in the most absolutely incorrect way possible? Why do I not tap into the empathy and support being broadcast by the faces of those around me? Why don’t I check in with my body and make sure I’m okay? Why don’t I verbalize the sounds I wish to verbalize in response to this terrible injury to my knee? Why must I run away? Why must I hide?
I’m not a person who has a hard time asking for help. Yet usually I get to plan my approach. Embarrassment creates a need for help that one cannot plan for. I suddenly become acutely aware of how much I care about the opinions of strangers. My embarrassment is heightened by the concurrent realization of just how much of a little twat I am, how self-conscious I am about how I appear to others, how weak I look in my attempts to hide my weakness.
In this weakness, one may come to the conclusion that things ought to be dealt with more progressively. That I should replace my stupid quip with an earnest expression of pain or a request for assistance. That I should unabashedly put my weakness on display and somehow find strength in just how unbothered I am to be so pathetic. This is what I might call a “positive psychology” reaction to weakness.
But this is a lie. A fabrication that has asserted itself as objective truth, much like quantum physics. The cat in the box is not both alive and dead, it is either dead or alive. You know cats, you have seen cats, you have never seen a cat that is suspended in the limbo between existence and non-existence. You also have never actually seen an expression of weakness that makes one appear stronger. This is a self hand-jobbing cope that is employed to justify a lack of courage.
Courage, or lack of it, is the culprit I find behind most moral failings. The longer I spend trying to figure out a course of action that requires less courage, the more certain I become that I am not making the right choice. It does not take courage to cry like a baby in front of a stranger. All it takes to do that is a lack of self-respect. No matter how much billboards and stupid painted quotes on the side of buildings tell us, no one really wants to hear about your bullshit, and no one really has time to think about your problems. I’m sorry if you’re one of the dopes who actually believed the “You Are Beautiful” painted in big letters on the side of that Foot Locker. The truth is you might be a real uggo.
The choice is actually not about how you react to stumbling on the steps. The choice comes much earlier than that. The choice comes throughout each and every day when we decide what kind of person we are. The endless babbling inside of our head - does that voice like you? Does it respect you? Does it understand if you can’t be perfect all the time? Or does it think that you’re a reprehensible piece of shit.
Each flight from embarrassment is a flight from the humiliation not of others, but from the voice inside of your own head. If the voice in your head loves and cares about you, if it thinks you are moral and good, then it shows care and concern when you are hurt. It does not look to others for rescue, but instead focuses on the navigation of the feelings immediately in front of it. Paradoxically, such a reaction is more likely to bring about help from others than a pleading whiny face that begs for help.
The reason none of my previous definitions worked is because they all focused on other people. They were about hiding yourself from being seen, noticed, disrobed before the crowd. Think about that crowd for even a few seconds and you’ll realize they don’t care and don’t really matter; of all the people who I have fallen down in front of, I’ve never seen any of them again. If I did, neither of us knew it. Embarrassment doesn’t have anything to do with the onlooker. It is all about looking in.
Embarrassment (noun): the feeling caused by actions that seem to confirm all of the bad things you already think about yourself. See also: failure.
That painting of the Night Mare was on Jeopardy this week, had no idea that it had roots in a horse as I just never thought of it. Probably obvious to everyone but me, now I am embarrassed.