Being humiliated is a rather unfortunate experience, unwelcome to most people. To recover from the mortifications suffered or from a series of difficulties, it is necessary to have a lot of strength and self-love. Fortunately, by learning to love yourself, you can safeguard your happiness and become more persistent when life and people discourage you. Follow the tips in this article to be more forgiving of yourself, no matter what circumstances you may find yourself in.
Steps
Part 1 of 2: Dealing with the Aftermath of Mortification
Step 1. React gently
To face the most humiliating situations it is important to learn to be assertive and act delicately in the face of offensive behavior and destructive criticism, adopting an affable and positive attitude. Find the strength to defend yourself and change the situation so that you don't get humiliated anymore.
- Being assertive doesn't mean being aggressive. Try to speak clearly and look your interlocutor in the eye as you continue to listen.
- By communicating assertively, you will be able to build self-confidence, gain respect from others, improve your decision-making skills and resolve conflict situations.
Step 2. Accept the reality
Often people are too different to get along. Surely you will come across many people whose presence creates some discomfort and others will think the same about you. The key is to understand that while not everyone is meant to be friends, it doesn't make you or others bad. Incompatibility is only one aspect of life that we can learn to manage with elegance or a defensive and cruel attitude. When a person discourages you, their words reflect who said them, not who received them. Here are the main reasons why someone might mortify you:
- He feels threatened by your skills, your charm and other qualities, so he tries to get even
- Fears where your motivation, skills, performance or collaboration might take you
- He thinks you're not busy or that you don't like teamwork
- Experience an unbridgeable dissatisfaction
- He needs to check and take care of everything
- He thinks he has the right to a special treatment or condition and feels that he is being denied it
- He wants to put you in a bad light so that he can improve his position or curry favor with the boss
- He feels insecure and tries to neutralize this feeling in an exaggerated way
- He thinks you are discrediting him in the eyes of others
Step 3. Carefully consider your choices
When you feel bad or humiliated, you can easily fall into victimhood and assume there is nothing you can do to stave off this unpleasant feeling. Since there are always different alternatives to improve the situation, try to think about how you can react and what approach to take to move forward.
- For example, if your schoolmate humiliates you all the time, remember that you can always choose to ignore them altogether. If you feel that this is not the best way to handle the problem, think about who you can involve to help you enforce your decision to distance yourself.
- In a meeting between people, such as a meeting, you should defend the importance of your decisions or your work and correct any misunderstandings.
- As a family or with friends, you should make it clear that you intend to understand their problems, but that you will not always be of the same opinion. Depending on the situation, you could put it this way: "We agree that there is no agreement between us."
- With an aggressive child or teenager, you might admit that what they are feeling is legitimate, but also think that they need to learn to interact with more respect.
Step 4. Learn to frame your situation from another point of view
Once humiliated, you will likely feel embarrassed, agitated, or overwhelmed by a sense of injustice. While you shouldn't dismiss these feelings, keep in mind that, besides feeling bogged down in a certain situation, they offer you other avenues. Look at the humiliation you endured as a learning experience that is teaching you to be more persistent in the face of various life events.
- After all, life is full of situations we would gladly fail to find ourselves in, and the way we react under these circumstances makes the difference between ruminating and lulling ourselves into sadness and serenely accepting the fact that pain teaches us to overcome this state of affairs.
- Try to understand what happened. Based on your personal values, ask yourself what went right and what went wrong, but also what you can improve next time.
- Try practicing mindful meditation to stay grounded in the present. This technique will help you get rid of the feeling of being hurt and take the time to understand what the humiliations you endured reveal about the other person.
Step 5. Watch out for enemy mind traps
If we leave aside the thoughts that lead us to see a situation in an excessively negative way, it is much easier to realistically analyze what has happened to us and understand how far we can go. Here are some mental attitudes that prevent us from seeing things as they are:
- Foretelling the future: it happens when it is taken for granted that things will go wrong without having any real basis on which to base this forecast.
- Thinking in a Manichean way: it occurs when we observe the situation and judge it with extreme rigidity. The Manichean attitude prompts us to see it in terms of exclusion: either it is all white or all black (even if reality tells us that things are too complicated to be judged in such a simplistic way).
- Reading minds: This happens when we are convinced that we know what others are thinking (and we usually believe that they are thinking the worst of us!). In fact, we cannot know.
- Labeling: This happens when we choose a definition, such as "stupid" or "ugly", to describe a conduct, a situation or a person too complex to be summed up in one word. Generally, the labels are negative and make us forget that there are other aspects to be taken into account.
Step 6. Try to understand the meaning of humiliation
In the most complicated situations it is easy to ask: "Why me?". Struggling about this question, it is hard to learn from difficulties. Then, it makes sense by changing the aforementioned question to another question: "What do I see right now that some people feel entitled to denigrate others?" or "What can I do to help stop the numbness experienced on my skin?".
The most persistent people are able to find meaning in their suffering and to treasure the teachings they receive between one obstacle and another in life. This means that even the most difficult situations are full of meaning, despite the discomfort they cause
Step 7. Play it down with a laugh
Many times the humiliation you experience has very little to do with you or what actually happened. In these cases it is not even worth making serious considerations about what happened or what you could have done as an alternative.
- Reflect on the absurdity of judging yourself by taking into account an isolated case. It doesn't make much sense to think that a single misunderstanding or opinion about you is so decisive that it affects the perception of who you are, isn't it?
- Try to laugh thinking that your personality is much more multifaceted than what an offensive phrase can represent.
Step 8. Turn your attention to what you can control
There are so many things we cannot control, including the decisions that are up to others. Therefore, it is easier to find serenity by rediscovering the ability to positively influence something. Focus on what you can control, such as an art project, a work mission of some complexity, a difficult task at school. Watch yourself carry out what you have set out to do to remember that you do not lack the ability to make a huge contribution to the world around you.
Step 9. Seek support
If you want to recover from the humiliations suffered, friends, family and all those who support you in life are very important figures. Try to surround yourself with people who can listen to you without making judgments when you share your most painful experiences with them.
Maintain contact with your support network, even when loved ones are not physically present. When you feel abused by the whole world, think about them. What do they do to show you the best sides of your character? How do you feel when you are with them? Don't forget that you can be yourself in their company, but also in their absence
Step 10. Know when to seek outside help
If you are always mortified by the same person or by the same group of people, you will probably be bullied. Bullying is a serious crime and, therefore, in these cases it is important to inform the teachers, your parents or your therapist, because they can help solve this problem. Below, you will find some warning signs that tell you if you are being bullied and if you need to seek help:
- The oppressive and oppressive behavior involves threats, gossip, physical or verbal assaults and deliberate exclusion of the victim.
- The perpetrator exerts some power over the victim through physical force, their popularity, or access to information that they could use to harm or embarrass them.
- This kind of behavior occurs more than once and may recur.
Part 2 of 2: Feeding Self-love
Step 1. Don't feel ashamed
If you are trying to love yourself, know that shame is one of your worst enemies, because it makes you think that being yourself is fundamentally wrong. Since shame mostly acts on the sides of the personality you try to hide, noting your deepest feelings (even those that make you feel embarrassed or disgusted), you can come to understand that there is nothing wrong with you.. As you write, report the hardships and pain you went through throughout the day, including personal considerations that directly affect you.
- In any more painful moment or circumstance, try to analyze what happened with a more understanding attitude. Reflect on what you have learned from a certain situation and be indulgent with yourself when observing your behaviors, even knowing that you could have reacted in a thousand different ways.
- Try keeping a journal and updating it daily for a couple of weeks to familiarize yourself with your thoughts. You will be surprised when you go and reread what you have written: observe with what sensitivity and curiosity the author has investigated his soul!
Step 2. Learn to accept yourself
In a world so focused on progress and development it is easy to forget how important it is to accept the sides of one's character that we cannot change. Keep in mind that your strengths and weaknesses make you who you are. Therefore, by accepting yourself and everything you feel, instead of categorically rejecting it, you will be able to exploit your resources. This way you will discover who you are and what you are truly capable of doing (and not just what you feel you should be able to do).
- It has been shown that by accepting ourselves for who we are we nurture our self-love and alleviate the sense of shame that leads us to believe that we are not capable enough or that we would be better people if we could think and act differently.
- One thing that everyone must accept is that it is not possible to change or rewrite the past. Therefore, it is preferable to focus on the future: what you have control over is the way you draw a lesson and react in various situations.
Step 3. Define your values
If one's values are solid, they can contribute to giving life a very personal meaning. This is why, by becoming aware of your values, you have the right tools to understand what is happening to you. You will also be able to see the humiliations undergone under a broader perspective and know when to consider these obstacles as unimportant negative aspects that do not deserve your attention.
For example, suppose, based on your values, you are inclined to celebrate your achievements and invite friends out to dinner to celebrate a promotion. If you see a few eye-rolls from neighboring tables because you made them wear hats and sequins, what does it matter? Behave by following what you think is right and not what others think is the correct behavior to assume at a party
Step 4. Take care of your personal well-being
Are you sure you have healthy habits that don't harm your lifestyle? Pay attention to the things that are really important, but can easily get out of your control, and take care of yourself as you would a person you love (because that's who you are!).
- Do you not follow a correct diet? Ask yourself if you are able to meet your dietary needs by consuming foods rich in the nutrients your body needs.
- How long do you sleep? Do you often feel tired during the day because you don't have regular hours?
- Do you practice physical activity? By doing half an hour of cardiovascular exercise a day, you will improve mood, body functions and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
Step 5. Focus on your interests
Spend some time alone to figure out what you enjoy doing or to pursue interests you already have. Try to identify your passions and your talents and dedicate a few hours of the week to what you prefer. Maybe you love writing short stories or cooking the dishes your mother prepared when you were a child. Just try your hand at your favorite activities to make the world around you a place more suited to your most important needs, which you will easily overlook when work, school and other duties stress you out.
Step 6. Learn to relax
In this fast-paced world, it's hard to find time to relax, but it's important as it rarely happens. When you organize yourself to enjoy a moment of rest, know that you are giving yourself a great gift and at the same time you are telling yourself that you deserve this break. Below, you will find some methods you can take to be able to relax whenever you feel the need:
- Mindful meditation;
- Yoga;
- Deep breathing;
- Progressive muscle relaxation.
