Top 10 Most Embarrassing Personal Moments: Healing Shame

All social anxiety disorder sufferers experience intense amounts of shame. For many varying reasons, we all believe that the “stupid” things that we do are for some reason much worse than the mistakes that other people make. I decided to look back on my own experience with social anxiety disorder and figure out which experiences were the most embarrassing for me. Without further delay, here they are:

1. In a junior varsity football game I recall getting totally burned when playing defensive back. The guy I was defending was much quicker than I anticipated and he got right by me for a long touchdown pass. My coach screamed, “DANNY!” as he saw the guy run by me and the quarterback deliver a perfect pass to the receiver for a touchdown. After this, I was completely destroyed and was constantly nervous, looking only at every little mistake that I made in my brief athletic career and evaluating myself accordingly. It still even bothers me a little bit at times today, 11 years later.
   
2. In college, I remember going out to eat with a classmate at a fast food restaurant. I became so anxious about having to face the cashier and say what I needed that when the cashier asked my classmate what he wanted, I blurted out what I wanted. The classmate said, “I’m not ordering for you!” and that was horrendously embarrassing, although it never was brought up again.
   
3. My grandmother passed away when I was in about fourth grade. At the funeral, we had to take a picture. Since you smile for pictures and this was my first funeral, I smiled, just like I did with any other picture. When the picture was developed and returned, my mom saw it and said, “You’re smiling at a funeral! You goof!”
   
4. When playing basketball in high school, I became a bench warmer because of social anxiety disorder’s effect on me by the time I was a senior. I finally was put in for a few minutes at the end of a game, and I threw away three passes, causing turnovers, which are the worst thing you can do if you are a reserve. I remember my coach hanging his head in his hands on the sidelines.
   
5. In class one day, the teacher’s voice was barely audible (we later learned she was suffering from a brain tumor) from where I was sitting. While taking attendance, she called what sounded like my name, and I responded, “Here!” To my horror, I found out she had called “Danielle,” not “Daniel.” I recall the confused and irritated looks of some of my classmates that day.
   
6. When working one of my first jobs as a young teen, I misheard my boss. I was always on edge at this job in the first place, and sometimes when I get so far on edge from social anxiety, I am so distracted by the anxiety level that I cannot process what others are saying. I did completely the opposite of what he asked, and he responded, “JESUS F------ CHRIST! CAN YOU BELIEVE DAN DID THAT?”
   
7. At one of my first jobs in the computer industry, my boss had asked me to write something up for him on a website. I wrote what I thought that he had said, but unfortunately, it was not what he said. He asked me read what I wrote to him, and so I did. “NO THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID!” he boomed as he pounded the desk with his fist. It was pretty difficult to deal with at the time.
   
8. At the same job, I recall taking a phone call, and because I was working nearby many other coworkers, my social anxiety was running at a pretty high level most of the time. As a result, I would tend to think things over too much and make mistakes on routine tasks. I recall my boss, who sat next to me, slamming his fist on his desk as I made many mistakes on the phone calls.
   
9. I was about to have hernia surgery at a local hospital, and since I was a single college student, I was directed to the hospital’s “advocate,” who was in charge of helping me find a way to pay for the surgery. I called her and explained my situation, and she promptly snapped, “Because you are single, male, and a college student, there is nothing that can be done for you! I’ll transfer you to billing!” I was very anxious and felt stupid for making the call for the next couple days.
   
10. I was taking my car tire in for a repair to the local auto shop. I was told to bring the tire into the shop, where I found a bunch of people shouting at me. This caused my social anxiety to really flare up, so I was moving around and away from the direction of the shouting. Suddenly, one of the workers was up and screaming at me right in front of my face, and I had no idea for what. Unwittingly, while carrying the tire in, I had accidentally bumped his $100,000 car and made a quarter-inch scratch in the paint! I eventually worked it out with him and paid him $250 for the damage and moved on, but it took me two to three days before I was over the brunt of the anxiety.

So, why did I choose to write this list? For me, it is an incredibly powerful method of healing shame. The real power of any anxiety disorder is created when someone chooses to hide the anxious feelings inside and not discuss them with other people. When things are kept inside, they continue to eat away at me, actually increasing my anxiety. The moment that I tell someone that I am anxious or embarrassed about something, and if that person responds in a supportive manner (see ASN’s Supportive Friends to learn how to identify people like this), the anxiety leaves. This is exactly how healing shame occurs.

Now that I am actually publishing these anxious fears on the internet, where thousands of people can see them and who could possibly evaluate me in a negative light, I feel absolutely no fear at all. Why? In some cases, I have thought over the events again and again and have talked about them to others, which decreased their power. In all cases, however, I have learned that even though other people made these “mistakes” out to be a big deal, they in fact are not a big deal at all! Sure, some of them are annoying, but none of them really inflicted any great damage in anyone’s life. And, the same people who decided to give me a rough time for making mistakes make hundreds of similar mistakes in their own lives because their human!

This method of healing shame can work for anyone who tries it, but you do not have to post up your most embarrassing moments on the internet. The important thing is that they are disclosed to a trusted source who will reassure you that the mistakes you have made are not nearly as earth-shattering as you or others might believe. Now that the process of healing shame has begun, you can relax and be free of many of the petrifying anxieties that have plagued you in your life!

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