You don’t always know when you’re being humiliated. The problem is that our minds are very good at protecting us from pain. There’s a great video that explains this concept in detail.
In it, a man is having a discussion with a psychologist about his habit of eating dirt. The psychologist is trying to get him to acknowledge that his dirt-eating is a result of his emotional pain. But the man is oblivious.
He sees his dirt-eating as a way to calm himself down. That’s why sometimes we don’t know when we are being humiliated. It just feels like it’s our normal way of dealing with things.
The problem with humiliation
Humiliation takes a huge toll on your emotional, psychological, and physical health. It puts stress on your body by reducing the flow of oxygen to your brain. It also lowers the volume of blood going to your heart, causing it to beat slower.
Next, it causes brain chemicals to flood your body, causing negative changes to the neurotransmitter levels. And the most dramatic thing that it causes, is a change to your DNA. This is what’s commonly referred to as the “humiliation bulge”. It’s a line of fat between your abdomen and your hips. This is the fat that can be seen when your pants fit correctly.
The fat you can’t see, but that you can feel. Your brain also becomes more active when you are being humiliated.
How do we know when we're being humiliated?
There are a couple of signs that can help you identify when you're being humiliated. One of them is when you cry for no good reason, or you get angry and storm off when someone tries to help you out.
The other is when you are in such an emotionally vulnerable state that you can’t even speak. If you’re not familiar with what shame and humiliation feel like, watch the video below.
Every time you get overwhelmed by shame and embarrassment, go to a quiet place.
Don’t say anything. Don’t cry. Don’t run away. But do listen to your heart. It will tell you exactly what you’re feeling.
The two types of humiliation
There are two different types of humiliations:
Victimization Rejection
When we experience humiliation from a victimization, our emotions are not being intentionally manipulated. We aren’t being subjected to psychological abuse or over-controlling behavior. As a result, we don’t always recognize that we’re being treated unfairly.
Victimization is an emotional form of bullying. It happens when someone doesn’t treat you in the way that you expect them to. It’s like an everyday joke that you don’t find funny. You feel bad about it and want to talk to them about it. But they don’t want to hear it. So you end up feeling embarrassed.
Rejection
Rejection, on the other hand, involves someone deliberately pushing you away. As a result, your feelings of rejection are a lot more intentional.
How to prevent humiliation
The first thing you need to do is recognize when humiliation is going on. Once you figure this out, it’s time to put a stop to it. This means remembering that humiliation is an emotional pain that’s hard to face.
It’s something that people don’t normally talk about. Here are some things to watch out for that might help you put a stop to humiliation:
You are embarrassed to talk about your humiliation, you feel guilty when you are humiliated, people make fun of you when you are humiliated, you act like you want to escape when you are humiliated, you might be reluctant to share humiliating stories with others, you feel bad about your humiliation. But there’s a good news.
You don’t have to live with humiliating situations forever. I know this may not be the perfect methods to prevent humiliation but sometimes you don't see it coming. It just hit you on the spot light.
How do we deal with humiliation?
To know how to deal with it, we need to understand what it is and how it happens.
An Example of thing that haunt your mind without you realizing it is:
The memory of hurting someone else.
When you hurt someone else, you usually don’t think about it in the moment. You’re not actually thinking about it, you’re just reacting to it. You feel out of control, you get angry, you get hurt, you get scared, you get aggressive. But after the moment, you don’t think about what you did, you don’t think about what you said, you don’t think about what you were feeling.
The memory of hurting them stays in your mind and you act on it out of spite, out of anger, out of fear, out of ignorance. You never actually deal with the reason you hurt them. You never apologize.
Humiliation is actually a good thing
We can learn a lot about ourselves by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and watching how they deal with the world.
Think of the 10,000 hours rule of doing things over and over again until you get it right. It’s the same idea when it comes to experiencing humiliation. It’s not about being perfect at everything. It’s about getting as close to perfect as possible. One thing you may be able to do to improve your life is to pick up a new hobby.
Whether it’s knitting, painting, or improv comedy. Anything that you do that allows you to be more comfortable in a new social situation is a great way to improve your personal growth.
I’ve personally found that making fun videos has been an incredibly useful way to learn how to deal with challenging social situations.
My Verdict
We all get embarrassed from time to time, but what about humiliation? You really shouldn’t take humiliation personally. That’s what you want your mind to do for you. And you don’t want it to go off half-cocked and destroy your life.
When you recognize humiliation as a waste of time, your emotional pain becomes much less painful. It also makes it much easier to respond to humiliation without allowing it to hold you back.
Images - credits = unsplash
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