How do i overcome humiliation

If the humiliation occurs at a time when one is also feeling generally despondent about their life, the predisposition to depression , anger and rage is even greater.

Humiliation may create a higher risk of suicide[ v ], which we witnessed during The Great Recession. When previously employed men and women suffered the humiliation of losing their jobs , incomes, and much of their assets, they would commit suicide at higher rates. Suffering deep humiliation, in the absence of sufficient resilience and social support, can increase impulses to kill oneself.

Have you been knocked down many times in your life, and have you endured many painful and cutting blows that leave you filled with despair, fury and degradation? Have some of the cuts and blows been delivered as others were watching? Has it left you feeling humiliated? How deeply rooted is it in your emotional makeup, and how is it affecting your current relationships with others and yourself?

What are the various causes that lead to struggling with deep feelings of humiliation? Why is this dynamic important to recognize, prevent, and treat? To begin to understand the root causes of humiliation in an effort to help you untangle your life, we will begin with childhood experiences.

Broadly speaking there are two types of stress that predispose to depression and anxiety — learned helplessness and social defeat stress. Learned helplessness is where one repeatedly experiences emotionally painful events that one is unable to predict or halt, and social defeat stress is where one is repeatedly dominated or bullied in one or more important relationships.

Feeling bad about our actions can help us discover insight into problems with our behavior, but you can keep the insight and drop the humiliation.

Ask yourself if you would repeat your actions a second time around. Learn to let go with mindfulness. If the humiliating experience is lingering in your mind and causing you a lot of pain, use principles and techniques from mindfulness meditation to help you let go of the emotional wound and move on with your life. Practice facing your emotions without running or shrinking away. Think of the emotion like a wave that comes and goes. Try to observe the wave without interfering with the way it moves.

This will help you create distance between yourself and the emotion without denying it. Part 2. Avoid putting yourself in toxic situations. Sometimes protecting yourself from humiliation is as simple as figuring out which situations and people are likely to humiliate you.

Identify these triggers for humiliation and extinguish them from your life. This could be an overly negative friend who always puts you down, a demoralizing workplace that is never happy with your contributions, or a family that tries to shame you at every turn. Cultivate humility. Humility is about learning to accept and realistically assess your strengths and limitations. Being realistic about your character is a great way to protect yourself from humiliation, which tries to degrade you.

Make a list of your strengths and challenges. Have a close friend or loved one look over the list and discuss it with you. Improve your self-esteem.

Research shows that self-esteem can be a powerful defense against the humiliation associated with failure. Your only competition should be with yourself.

You may be comparing yourself to the way they are presenting themselves rather than their true identity. Get help for other mental health issues.

Certain mental health conditions can make you more vulnerable to humiliation. Social phobia is a strong fear of being judged by others, with symptoms like anxiety around people, feeling self-conscious, and having a hard time meeting people. Go to source Narcissistic personality disorder is marked by having a tendency to hold an unrealistic view of self-importance such as thinking you're the best cook in the entire world even though you have never attended cooking school and have no practice in cooking , being preoccupied with yourself, and lacking empathy for others.

Part 3. Research self-help techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy. If you have a hard time forgetting about the humiliating experience, use techniques like attention shifting, relaxation, and repeated exposure to help you move past the memory. Use attention shifting to rewire your emotional reactions. Attention shifting is where you use a particular phrase or action to help you deal with the memory, such as thinking "this is just one experience in my entire life" whenever it comes up.

Attention shifting has been shown to help reduce anxiety in situations, because it allows you to freely choose what you pay attention to, rather than being compelled to focus on negative thoughts and feelings. National Institutes of Health Go to source Whenever the humiliating memory pops up, say to yourself, "everyone feels humiliated at some point in their life.

I know I can recover from this experience. Experiment with relaxation techniques to help yourself let go. Progressive muscle relaxation is where you tense and then relax your muscles one area at a time.

Start with your toes, curling them downward. Do this for a couple seconds and release. Next, tense your foot and lower leg.

Keep doing this, moving up your body all the way to your forehead. You can try other methods as well, such as guided imagery. Picture one of your favorite places to be when the humiliating experience starts to bother you. This could be your living room with candles lit, a football field, or a sunny beach.

It will also help you process and cope with the humiliating experience when it does come up in your memory.

Usually, this memory will show up with a lot of anxiety. Relaxation techniques will help you reduce this anxiety and extinguish the memory. Try the technique of repeated exposure. Repeated exposure is a technique for exposing yourself to situations so that you gradually begin to realize they aren't that dangerous. You can do this with the humiliating experience, for example, if it happened on a stage at your school, or in a specific room of your house.

Spend time in these places and let the panic or discomfort subside. This kind of exposure therapy requires that you spend enough time in the stressful environment for your mind to adapt to the fact that there's no danger present.

According to Guy Winch, Ph. Chronic shame also damages health and can lead to heart disease, digestive illnesses, immune disorders, and migraines, as well as a host of mental and mood disorders. Recognize your personal shame response and identify your triggers. A trigger for me is not necessarily a trigger to you. For some of us appearance is a trigger, for others guilt around parenting. Know in advance what stirs up shame for you.

Reach out to someone you trust. This is one of the most important shame resilience tools we have because empathy heals shame. So, make a list of the people whose opinions you value and trust and carry this list with you.

The next time your shame sneaks up on you and takes your breath and your confidence away, call someone on the list, as soon as possible. Get a bear hug. Why a bear hug? Repeat a mantra to yourself. Shame and humiliation trigger a primal survival response and when this happens, the rational part of our brain usually shuts down. A mantra refocuses your mind, reminding you to act instead of react.

Pick a mantra that resonates with you. Here are a few of my favorite mantras:. Mantras are easy to use. Carry one with you in your wallet or purse or record it on your phone.

Choose one as a screen saver for your computer. Type a mantra on pretty paper and frame it for your office desk. Turn a mantra into your laptop password. The important thing is to keep it readily available so you can see it when needed.

Peter A. Levine, Ph. Create a vision board for your goals and dreams. Though shame and humiliation hurt in the moment, you and your life still going places!