There’s two things the human being is afraid of in life, of death of course, and of public humiliation. Some are more afraid of the latter than of death e.g. samurais. Fearing of being in embarrassing and humiliating situation before our breedmates is genetically coded in each and every one of us. I’m not sure about the reason of this, but I know this is why the most people are very bad in handling conflict. For most of my life I strived to be better in this field simply by blocking this genetic code before it could block me. We have no reason to worry, knowing that the most people struggle with the same, even those who get in conflict with you. This is a mental game, which has nothing to do with physical strength.
The Stoic approach is not caring what others think of us. Sounds easy but disconnecting from judgement of others can be very tough. I have now reached the level of caring for the opinions of others causes same stress than walking next to snail or hedgehog. How did I achieve this?
With mental exercise against my own ego. Do not get me wrong. Having ego plays very important role in our mental health, but letting it excess certain point is no longer considered healthy. The importance is finding a balance. The appropriate ego helps us to handle conflict, but having too much already achieves the opposite effect. I don’t know about you, but I no longer want to impress anyone. Striving to impress anyone violates the freedom of soul, because we become a slaves of judgement of others that way. For me there’s no social mask can be light enough to not to be too heavy to wear. The social mask or persona belongs to society not to us. It seriously prevents us from connecting with ourselves. The persona is pure vanity and egocentrism, or simply cowardice. If you want to be truly free never let the people make you feel shame. The best way to get rid of this feeling, think yourself in the most shameful situation that you can imagine, and be okay with it. Practice this exercise until you reach the Stoic mental toughness, and no public humiliation will effects on you anymore.
Shame is control like physical pain in a mental sense. It can increase your awareness or destroy you, but as the body’s ability to tolerate pain can be increased natural feeling shame can also be blocked at the same way. All this is because man is a social being, and the slogan that your fellow man is your reflection is very true, even if it is necessarily distorted. Because of mirror neurons.
Shame alienates you not only from your fellow human beings, but also from yourself, your better self. Shame like a demon, causes a mental torment, sticks with you, growing bigger and bigger if you don’t handle it. It is absolutely true that there are many kinds of reality, what’s more, there are as many realities as there are people, but there are not many kinds of truth. There is one truth, but it has many sides. This means that you can hide from the world, you can hide from everyone, but you cannot hide from yourself.
If you do something that no one else can see, but you feel embarrassed to tell anyone about it, it is a clear sign that you have done something that is not good for you. Let’s not forget that shame is like pain, a control that was built into the genes for a reason during evolution, warning you not to cross a line because it’s not good for you. If you feel safe from other people’s value judgments, because you don’t do publicly what you feel ashamed of, but your subconscious judges you instead of other people, faster than you would think. Ignoring this is a fatal mistake.
This is especially true for certain addictions, and entertaining these brings relief in the short term, but in the long term it consumes you entirely. Stop doing this, because it is more devastating than you can imagine.
So shame is a necessary evil, but what if we feel it for no apparent reason? And how do we know that there is no real reason for shame? As I have already said, each person has his own reality, so a reality is the subjective perception of the objective truth. We still feel shame in our own subjective reality, but because it is subjective, it is still a reality. We always feel shame because of ourselves, because it affects our ego, unlike the guilt we feel because of others. So the question is always how close our subjective reality is to the objective truth.
The other question after this is how close the subjective reality of others is to the objective truth. Which reality is closer to the truth, yours or others? If you feel shame because others have shamed, humiliated you, but it was for nefarious reasons on the part of others, injustice has come upon you.
However, this is not to be considered shame without cause, no matter how unjust and mean intention others have to trigger it, and it is in no way to be confused with those imaginings when we only suspect that we have something to be ashamed of in front of others, but we have no proof of this. In this case, the real reason for the feeling of shame is that we feel that we were too weak or too cowardly to defend ourselves against the injustice and humiliation that has been inflicted on us.
So, in fact, we are ashamed of our own weakness and cowardice, and above all in front of ourselves, it only adds to the problem if others are also witnesses. But the causes of shame are not the others, because others have their own reality, but we are still the cause. And if we start from this, shame can never be without a reason. Shame is an indicator, it indicates if something is not good for you. Shame is a teacher, teaches you to not to harm yourself.
How to get rid of shame? Simple. Never give yourself a reason to be ashamed. Always do and say what makes you strong, not what makes you weak, and the demon will leave you alone forever.
Live with union with your own judgement on yourself, and you won’t alienate from others’ as side effect.
Thanks for reading!