Dealing with Humiliation
There is dignity in every one of us. When we feel we have been humiliated, our emotions are assaulted.
We feel hurt and shame. Anger grabs our heart. And there can be an overwhelming sadness and grief. For some, after the wounds are the unfading scars like low self image/low self esteem, social isolation and even depression.
There are different kinds of humiliation, some much worse than others. In another post, we will examine these.
When dealing with mental illness in particular, its stigma and discrimination can even lead to humiliation, excerbating the challenge of mental illness. Do we lash out back, or coil under a bed never to see daylight again when we have therefore be humiliated?
The good news is that you can recover from humiliation. Here’s how:
##1 Keep calm
The first thing to do is to be cool, calm and collected. It may sound hard especially when you want to deliver a well aimed punch especially if it has been another party that has caused you to be humiliated. Retaliating can reproduce the incident again and again, driving deep the wounds of the first incident much deeper. Retaliating can get explosive and just invites the other party to give it back to you even further. The fact that you are calm, does not mean you are stupid. Someone wants to demean you because of your apparent lack of education, your challenge with bipolar, your race, or whatever, keep cool. Turn the other cheek. If a change is required, you can do this in a better way. And who would look more dignified? Of course, you!
##2 It may not be as bad as it seems
We can be hard on ourselves sometimes. Sometimes, we think everyone has noticed something that is embarassing or shameful about something we did and so on. But the truth is that often times, the only person who took noticed was YOU. And ok, in some cases, a couple of others. The fact you wore your shirt inside out and only noticed when you got home, does not mean everyone was laughing at you all the while. I have developed the mindset to think the best of people rather than automatically assuming the worst. I can tell you, it is a good mindset because you keep sane and have less to fuss about!
If someone has tried to undermine you at work, evaluate the situation first. This is why you need to be level headed as seen in step one. Are you over-reacting? Are your feelings justified? Sound it out with an independent person before taking any decisions.
3 Know your worth
If you have been following us for a while on Defying Mental Illness, by now you know that we often say our self worth, the things we say about ourselves and to ourselves has a lot more value to our progress, recovery and our mental/emotional well being. If you see yourself as priceless, a slight flaw will not affect your value. An isolated incident does not make you stupid or worthless. A defect on a Rolls Royce does not make the car a bad production. It takes a lot more than that to tarnish the image of a Rolls Royce. How much more you?
##4 People often don’t remember
Unless we make them to! We are living in the Information Age, where we are bombarded with so much information every millisecond of the day. Your embarassing moment trending on Twitter, say, won’t last forever. Check back in a few hours or worse a few days, it’s off the radar and at the bottom of the list of everyone’s tweets! A year from now, people will struggle to remember the incident, or will not find it half as amusing as they did at the heat of the moment.
##5 You won’t remember
When writing this post, I tried to think of the times when I have felt humilated to use as practical examples. Could I think of one? Not a single one.
The fact is as long as we don’t breed, nurture and nurse the emotions, as long as we keep our cool, I can promise you, by the end of the week, all that humiliation would have all come out in the proverbial wash. The stains would have disappeared and it would all be forgotten. No one would be sharing it on Facebook, it would be so last week’s! In fact, you may probably find yourself laughing over the incident.
##6 Revenge is not sweet
Especially if you are a Christian. Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, “I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the LORD. (Romans 12:9) Revenge often leads to bitterness, feuds, malice and war! That does not sound sweet to me. From the scripture above, it says, God is the one to repay. Now, that does not mean you go around quoting that, and raining down fire and brimstones either in your prayers! Those prayers will not even elevate let alone get past the ceiling.
##7 What can you learn from it?
Fine, everyone knows you now as Mr. Mistake or Mrs. Hopeless. You are the guy that caused the company to make a big loss and you have the fired letter in your hands as your trophy. Remember, you are neither hopeless, a mistake or anything that others may think. That is why we said earlier to know your worth. Set your own price tag.
Fine, maybe people may remember this incident for years. Google may be very unforgiving in bringing up the incident with any search on your name. Rather than sulk and send out the invites for the pity party, or worse or even drastic, contemplate ending it all, STOP!
Evaluate the situation! Take responsibility if you did something wrong. Don’t make it worse by being dismissive.
What can you learn from the incident to prevent another of its kind happening again? Success is not about never ‘failing’ but learning from our mistakes.
Thomas Edison, the guy who created the lightbulb took several thousand attempts before he got it right. Did he feel humilated when asked about his failed attempts? No. He said I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Edison found opportunities of what to do right next time rather than feel he was a failure or allow others to name him as such.
##8 Remember humiliation is a feeling
Our feelings can lie to us. Let me explain. It may be 12 degrees Celsius out there. I may feel really cold. Another may feel it is very mild. Who is right? Who is wrong?
This same scenario can happen to someone else and be just water off a duck’s back. Humiliation itself is not about the situation or circumstance, but often how we feel or react to what has happened. If we train ourselves to be less critical or demeaning about the whole experience or about reading too much into things, the feelings surrounding will comply too. Of course, this does not apply to violation of human rights like abuse and rape!
##9 Move on
Give yourself time to recover from what has happened depending on its severity. But don’t stay there. Don’t stay in the rot. Forgive yourself. Don’t be hard on yourself. Get out of the pit, dust yourself, and carry on living. If someone has violated your rights, set things right by the law of the land, or bring in the change required. Get relevant counsel. Do you need counseling? A friend to pray for you? Turn a negative into a positive situation. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it – Chuck Swindoll. Never become a victim of any situation no matter how terrible. You have that winner mentality inside you. Your life is precious to you and the rest of the world, so never let others make you think otherwise because of their humiliation.
Please re-pin, share and tweet this important post. There are many people hurting out there because of humiliation. Lets reach out to them. Thank you!
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