Humiliation is a painful feeling that we all know. It arises when we feel devalued for something we have done or been done to us. Sometimes we are mortified when we make a mistake, but since no one deserves such treatment, humiliation is not an effective method of correcting others' behavior. Learn to deal with the sorrow that comes from humiliating experiences and resume the normal course of your life.
Steps
Part 1 of 4: Accept Yourself and Move Forward
Step 1. Take your responsibilities at the right time
It is painful to be humiliated because it seems that personal worth and dignity are being diminished. However, you must accept your responsibilities in case of errors. In situations where one feels humiliated, usually, the first reaction is to deny any kind of implication, discharging the problem onto others. Don't get defensive, preventing yourself from facing the circumstances and moving on.
Apologize if you made a mistake that caused problems, for example in the workplace
Step 2. Give yourself the chance to be wrong
Humiliation largely depends on one's performance expectations, i.e. the supposed ability to perform a certain task correctly. The higher they are, the stricter the judgment that follows when a particular job is not completed. So it is important to have some balance in expectations regarding results. Mistakes are part of the learning process, so don't be too demanding of yourself and don't let other people push you.
Step 3. Forgive yourself
It's important to have some mental resilience and forgive yourself after making a mistake. If on the one hand the sense of guilt can be useful to understand where we went wrong, on the other we can become aware of our mistakes without being devoured by humiliation. Ask yourself if you would make the same mistake again. If the answer is no, it means that you are truly sorry.
Remember that making mistakes is human and try to behave in the right way
Step 4. Realize that you are not alone
Some people define the age we live in as the age of humiliation. It can happen to anyone to suffer mortification, especially today, due to the resonance to which the most intimate details of their life are subject, once they are published on social media. Humiliation is a very common phenomenon, even if it shouldn't diminish your feelings or the uniqueness of your experience.
Step 5. Learn to rely on your awareness
If you cannot forget a humiliating experience and are in great pain, try using the principles and techniques of mindfulness meditation to heal your wounds and move on with your life.
More often than not, painful emotions and memories continue to hurt us because we are unable to express them. Learn to deal with what you are feeling without running away or hiding. Consider emotions as a wave that comes and goes, observing it without interfering in its movements. By doing this, you can distance yourself from the power of emotions without denying them
Part 2 of 4: Defending Against Humiliation
Step 1. Avoid deleterious situations
Sometimes it's not that hard to avoid humiliation - you just need to understand which situations and people undermine your self-esteem. Identify these triggers and eliminate them from your life. It could be an overly strict friend who always mortifies you, a disheartening work environment where no one is ever happy with the contribution you make, or a family that continually tries to despise you.
Step 2. Be humble
Humility is the quality of those who learn to accept their strengths and limitations, evaluating them objectively. If you look realistically at your character, you will be able to defend yourself from the humiliations you may suffer. Those who are humble do not allow themselves to be deceived by the sense of helplessness that demoralizing experiences try to instill in them.
List your strengths and difficulties. Ask a friend or loved one to review what you wrote and discuss it together. Invite him to give you an honest opinion and listen to his advice
Step 3. Increase your self-esteem
According to some research, self-esteem can be a powerful defense against the sense of humiliation resulting from failure. Follow these tips to fuel your self-love.
- Avoid comparing yourself to others. Your only confrontation has to be with yourself. The reason you should avoid this is that you cannot know what is really going on in people's lives. The comparisons that you can establish will be based only on the external image and not on the actual personality of the people.
- Try to be more positive. Replace negative thoughts - for example, those characterized by a sense of personal helplessness - with statements of hope, such as "It's hard, but I can get over it." Avoid demanding unreasonable things from yourself by thinking about what you "should" do.
Step 4. Seek help if you have a mood disorder
Certain pathologies of the psyche can make you more vulnerable to humiliation. Social phobia, narcissistic personality disorder, and major depression can expose you to humiliating situations much more than those who do not experience this kind of difficulty. If you have been diagnosed with one of these disorders, ask for help to defend yourself from the sense of humiliation before it inoculates your soul.
- Social phobia is the intense and pervasive fear of being judged by others. It involves symptoms such as anxiety among people, severe embarrassment and difficulty in getting to know each other.
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by unrealistic self-perception (e.g. believing that you are the best cook in the world, despite not having attended a cooking school and not possessing any skills), a form of deep selfishness and a lack of empathy towards others.
- Major depression manifests as a continuous sense of sadness, frustration, and other negative emotions that sometimes last for weeks and interfere with daily life.
Part 3 of 4: Using Self-Help Techniques
Step 1. Learn about the self-help techniques contemplated in cognitive-behavioral therapy
If you find it hard to forget a humiliating experience, you can put it behind you by using some techniques that will help you shift your focus, relax and expose yourself to the same situation several times.
Step 2. Shift your focus to change your emotional reactions
This technique allows you to manage the memory of a humiliating situation through a certain way of thinking or acting. For example, when it comes to your mind, you can debunk it by saying, "This has only happened once in my entire life." It has been shown that by shifting attention, we can reduce anxiety in certain situations, because we put ourselves in a position to freely choose where to focus our attention, instead of brooding over negative thoughts and feelings.
Whenever a humiliating memory comes to mind, try saying to yourself, "Anyone can suffer a mortification in life. I know I have the strength to recover from this experience."
Step 3. Try relaxation techniques to let yourself go
Progressive muscle relaxation is a method that allows you to contract and relax muscles one after the other. Start at your toes, curving them towards the floor. Do this for a couple of seconds, then straighten them, then straighten your foot and leg. Continue through the whole body until you reach the forehead.
- You can try other methods, such as guided imagery. As soon as the memory of the humiliating experience begins to bother you, imagine that you are in one of your favorite places. It could be the living room with lighted candles, a soccer field or a sunny beach.
- By relaxing, you will be less likely to mull over the situation in which you felt humiliated. Furthermore, you will be able to re-elaborate the lived experience and manage the memory, as soon as it comes back to your mind. Normally this kind of thinking is accompanied by strong anxiety. Relaxation techniques will help you reduce it and dispel the memory.
Step 4. Try the repeated exposure technique
It is a method that allows you to gradually expose yourself to situations in order to induce you to become aware of their harmlessness. You could practice this by reliving the situation in which you felt humiliated - for example on the stage of a school play or in a room at home - so that the feeling of panic or discomfort disappears.
This type of therapy requires spending a certain amount of time in a stressful environment so that the mind adjusts to the fact that there is no danger. If, walking into the place where you have suffered a humiliation, you start to feel upset and leave after a while, the exposure will probably not have any effect. Instead, try to reconstruct the scene or deal with the situation by slowly relaxing your body. Deep breathing can also help you calm down and settle in
Part 4 of 4: Understanding a Humiliating Experience
Step 1. Try to understand where your sense of humiliation comes from
The first step in leaving behind a humiliating experience is to grasp the emotions that characterize it and to understand why they arise. In a humiliating situation, you may feel like you are losing some of your personal dignity. Such devaluation could have negative consequences in life, as personal dignity, in turn, affects what you think is possible. Strong humiliation risks making you change your mind about what you think you can do in life, such as earning a degree or pursuing the career you want. Among the most humiliating experiences are:
- Being mortified, mocked or made fun of publicly.
- Seeing basic needs, such as food and clothing, denied.
Step 2. Recognize the consequences of a humiliating gesture
According to some research, humiliation can have powerful negative effects on self-esteem and quality of life. It can cause depression and PTSD symptoms, including a high level of anxiety and a desire to commit suicide. If you feel that a humiliating experience may be affecting your mental well-being, contact your doctor or psychologist for help.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy can allow you to restructure your thoughts and gain an understanding of the situation in a more balanced and realistic way. It can also help you regain confidence in yourself and your abilities after an unpleasant experience that has seen you humiliated.
- Find a psychotherapist in your city by consulting this page.
Step 3. Determine to what extent you are responsible for a situation
It may happen that someone tries to humiliate you, despite your extraneousness to the facts; for example, he may envy you for what you have achieved so far and wants to hurt you. Maybe his behavior has nothing to do with you. Before admitting your share of responsibility (which is quite different from accepting being humiliated), make sure you are actually wrong.
Step 4. Contextualize the humiliation received
Many of us feel humiliated for truly negligible reasons. Failures can seem disastrous and lead us to believe that people will judge us rather harshly, but when viewed from a broader perspective they probably don't deserve all this importance. Avoid focusing on small accidents.
For example, failing at a job interview or making a bad impression while playing live can be embarrassing, but it shouldn't involve any kind of humiliation
Step 5. Don't accept humiliation
Even if you make a mistake, realize that humiliation is not an effective tool for correcting the behavior of others. It is a form of punishment, not an educational method. There is no justification for mortifying someone, even if they are a criminal, so avoid giving in to the tactics of those who mortify you by accepting their humiliations.
