Your embarrassment is limiting you

And frankly, it’s embarrassing

I’ll admit it — I hate feeling embarrassed. I hate when I walk into a lecture hall a few minutes late, tripping (but ultimately recovering) and knowing everyone's eyes are slowly making their way towards me. I hate listening to music with a group of people, eyes closed with my leg tapping and head bobbing, only to open my eyes and realize no one else is as into the scratchy record as I am. I hate going to a themed event with the outfit I had meticulously planned, only to find that no one else took the theme as seriously as I did, and I look a little out of place.

I don’t know if it's the post-pandemic adjustment from months of living in incognito mode, or if it's the anxiety we feel from living in an increasingly surveillant society, but at some point we let the embarrassment get to us. We let the tiny pit in our stomach supersede the feeling of excitement and the thrill of doing something you’ve never done before. Somewhere along the way, we decided that living our lives to the fullest was unimportant enough to sacrifice for avoidance of that short-lived feeling of uncertainty and discomfort.

If you’ve been on the Internet, you’ve probably heard the saying “To be cringe is to be free,” and unfortunately, I couldn't have said it better myself. Embarrassment is an emotion entirely dictated by the amount of weight you place on the opinions of others — something that, whether we like it or not, we can learn to control.

The rise of social media, the intense curation of feeds, vibes and ultimately, the surveillance of every inch of our lives has caused immense damage to our ability to not care (I say immense, not irreparable, because we can, in fact, save ourselves before we become embarrassment-ridden zombies.) We’ve become conditioned to constantly search the room to desperately confirm that no one is staring at us, out of fear that we may not look the exact way we want to be perceived.

I’ve lost track of the amount of times a conversation proposing a new experience immediately goes south once the speaker realizes it may require them to give up the tiniest bit of their pride. A new party suddenly morphs into a social nightmare when you realize no one else is dancing and you desperately want to. Surely it’d be too embarrassing to be the only person showcasing enjoyment. An excursion to the roller-skating rink turns into an extra hour of screentime as you idle in the corner, hoping no one realizes you haven’t been on wheels since you were 12. Everyone else at the rink definitely skates every weekend and surely views those who don’t as lazy and unskilled.

From curious encounters to new adventures, embarrassment stops it all: it stops the slight possibility of someone you don’t know judging you. It stops the potential for you to exist for just a second not as a perfectly curated person, but as a real-life one — someone with flaws who makes mistakes. Ultimately, it stops you from experiencing life and from learning to take your emotions with ease, rather than hide from them.

On social media, there’s been a proliferation of content which attempts to “normalize” this feeling of embarrassment — all hopping on the bandwagon of Austin Butler's “Subway Takes” video where he states that "embarrassment is an under-explored emotion — go out there and make a fool of yourself.”

In the short 60-second video posted to Instagram, Butler explains that the issue isn’t feeling the embarrassment, but acting on it.

We must learn to feel our emotions, to validate them and to act anyway: to do things we’re scared of and things that embarrass us. 99% of the time, I doubt you’ll ever regret trying something new, even if it does result in a few seconds of embarrassment.

I’ve begun to place embarrassment not on the side of the emotion wheel with anxiety, fear or sadness, but instead sit it with happiness, courage and hope. If I haven’t accomplished (or even attempted to accomplish) a single act that might be embarrassing — something that requires me to swallow my pride and take a leap of faith purely for the enjoyment of it — then I haven’t done enough that day. I haven't experienced all that life has to offer.

Truly, there’s nothing embarrassing about enjoying your own company over lunch or practicing a new language with a native speaker. When did the learning process, being passionate or being content in yourself become synonymous with embarrassment?

At what point will we all realize that the extraordinary value we place on this emotion we can control not only holds no innate positives, but is constantly holding us back?

Written by: Amber Duhs — alduhs@ucdavis.edu

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