Stop Feeling Embarrassed

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about how to stop feeling embarrassed. Oh my goodness. Embarrassment. It's the worst. And what is actually the worst about it is not the sensation of embarrassment or that experience. It's actually all the meaning that you give it. The being trapped in it, lost in it, almost like in a nightmare. And it can feel really painful. I mean, embarrassment can range from very mild, a little bit of self conscious, to full on humiliation. I was mortified. And this can be really painful. Not just in the moment, but I mean people can feel the pain about it for months, years or even decades later. I remember when I did this experience and I was seven and I sat in front of the class and I had to do a math problem and I couldn't do it and they all laughed at me. I'm so embarrassed. I was so mortified, I was humiliated. And now flash forward 32 years and they don't speak up at work or they don't ever have never given a public presentation before. They don't give a toast at their best friend's wedding because when I was seven, I was embarrassed and it's extremely limiting. And then we live in fear of embarrassment now too and in the future. Well, what if that happens? Well, if I spoke up there be so embarrassing if that person, I wouldn't ask them out and they said no to me. How embarrassed. Oh, I'd be so I could never see them again. What if I, what if I saw them again at another party or oh my gosh, worse. Let's someone that's a friend of a friend or I'm in a community with them and I see them again and they went out with me once and they didn't want to go out with me again. I'm so embarrassed. Oh, and we can live our lives in this very fearful, restricted state and we're afraid of embarrassment. So guess what? You can stop feeling embarrassed. Hooray. And we're gonna talk about that today. And it starts with you becoming really, really curious. Because the problem is with embarrassment is that we forget that it's something that we're buying into, that we have power around and that we can liberate ourselves from. And we forget that power, give away that power, and almost defend our right to feel embarrassed. So that's crazy. Why would I do that? Well, you'll see. You'll see. So what would make you feel embarrassed? Let's make this very real for you in your life. What would make you feel embarrassed, self conscious? Oh, my God, people are looking at me. What would it take? What about skipping down the street in a public place, on the sidewalk, Skipping, Flailing your arms as you skip? Would that do it for you? How about dancing down the street? Dancing on a street corner? How about singing out loud? Maybe not even on a street corner where everyone can hear you. How about just singing around your friends, around your partner? Maybe it's sharing something, sharing your music, sharing your art, right? What. What could trigger that for you? And of course, there's all kinds of different circumstances in your personal life. Whether it's speaking up or sharing or asking or whatever it is you want to, however you want to express yourself, maybe even just expressing yourself. Laughter. Does the volume of your laugh, how much you show your teeth when you laugh. I know people who laugh and right after they laugh, they feel embarrassed because too much of their teeth showed and they're all embarrassed of this tooth over here. It's dark. I don't want anyone to see it. Right? So where is it for you? Okay, what is going on here? I'm going to pick a few things that are kind of general because I don't know exactly what's happening in your life at this moment, but let's just say dancing on a street corner or singing on a street corner, right? For most people, that would trigger a lot of embarrassment. And that's why most people, if you said, hey, you want to go sing on the street corner? They'd say, no, no. Are you crazy? I don't want to do that. What, are you afraid? I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. Get away from me. I'm not afraid. But they are very afraid. What are they afraid of? Well, I don't know what country you're in. Perhaps it's illegal to dance on the street corner where you are, but most places that's not the case here. I live in the United States. I could dance On a street corner today. Am I gonna get arrested? Is there a law against that? No, of course. I mean, you could dance on a street corner all day long if you wanted. No. No one's gonna come arrest you. No one's gonna come take you away. So what am I afraid? Afraid of then? What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of being embarrassed. Okay, let's break this down. What is that? What is embarrassment? Well, basically, it means people are looking at me, okay? Right. And I'm. I'm doing something wrong. Right. They're not looking at me saying, wow, he is amazing. Right. You know, think about you two playing a concert and everyone is cheering, bono, you're the greatest. We love you, Bono. It's not that kind of attention. It's, oh, look at you, and you're doing something weird or bad or wrong. Right? Because think about it. Let's say someone was an opera singer, professionally trained, and they went to a street corner and they just started to sing this beautiful song, this beautiful opera piece. What would happen? Well, people would actually start to gather around and listen. Maybe when the person was done, they'd give them a round of applause, maybe give them some money. That's great. You're amazing. Right? So that's not what we're afraid of. We're afraid of people looking at us and judging us and saying, you're doing something wrong. You with me so far? Right. Does that seem to map on to your experience? So what we're describing here is something. I learned the term from Donny Epstein, and I use it all the time now. It's called the cultural field. Right. And the feel a field is an invisible force that influences things around it. Magnetic field, gravitational field. There's a cultural field, a human cultural field, that only a human feels. By the way, your dog doesn't feel the human cultural field, but humans do. And we're all tuned to it, and we pick up on what is right and wrong and good and bad and allowed and not allowed. And when we defy that invisible force, we feel discomfort. We feel. You will physiologically feel it in your body. So if I were to say, go dance on this now, in the cultural field, depending on where you're from, I mean, some places, dancing on a street corner might be no big deal. Maybe all the time in Brazil or maybe just during Carnival or something, right? It's. No one's gonna care if you're dancing on a street corner. You're gonna be celebrated. People are gonna come dance with you. I remember I had that Experience at Burning Man. When I went there, I went there. Man, was it nine years in a row. I think through pretty much all of my 20s, probably aged 21 to 29, I think I went to Burning man every year. And the first year I saw this and the second year I really was actually able to participate in it. But I remember the first or the second year I was there. And you have these streets which are all dirt, kind of just dirt roads that are in between all the tents. And there's all these strange mutant vehicles, they call them. People have spent the whole year creating this extraordinary art piece that moves on a vehicle. And there's this giant octopus thing that had a platform on the top of it and these big metal arms. It would even shoot fire out of the top of it at night. It's pretty extraordinary. But it was. It was moving during the day here, and so it was not shooting fire. And there are some people on top. And of course, it has massive speakers. Why would not a giant metal octopus have massive speakers at Burning Man? And so it has these massive speakers and it's playing this bass song. And there's this, you know, two or three people on the top of this thing dancing around as the. As the music plays. And the octopus slowly crawls its way across the road. And then it stops at this corner, and these people are dancing. And then there's these people that come biking by on their. Their bikes. And then they. They stop. There's about four of them. They put their bikes down, and then they go stand near the octopus on the ground about, you know, 20ft below the people that are on this platform. And then they start dancing. And then they're looking up at the people on the platform, and, like, the people on the platform are looking down at them, and there's this moment and they're dancing, and they're just, like, totally energetically connected with each other. And I was watching this, and this was mind blowing for me because I lived in a severe cage that was the bounds of which were created by the cultural field. And so, I mean, the very first Burning Man I went to, I don't think I danced at all. I don't think I danced up until that point in my life, really. It was just so restricted, so fearful of, oh, my God, what are they gonna think of me? And then I said, wait a minute. You could be in a place. There could be a different cultural field where someone is celebrating for expressing themselves as opposed to judged. Wow. So this is a cool place. Well, it's too Bad. The real world isn't like that. I know what would happen in the real world if I did this in the real world. I'd be judged, I'd be ridiculed, I'd be honked at. I'd be yelled at. I'd be. People would be disgusted with me. Maybe so, maybe so, maybe not. But when we're really trapped in the cultural field, we don't really investigate what happens. We're like the person who's got agoraphobia who says, I'm not gonna go out to my mailbox. Are you freaking kidding me? I could die out there. Like, is that maybe. I mean, I guess technically we could all die at any time. You know, a truck could smack you on the sidewalk as you're getting your mail. But probably not, right? Maybe not. You're probably gonna be fine. But I don't want to test it. I'm too fearful. We're so afraid of embarrassment. And so after about another year of investigation, growth, challenging my edge, getting curious, I started to really wonder about this thing because I would, you know, I'd worked up my courage to go ask someone out or worked up my courage to speak up and. But I was always overcoming fear of embarrassment. And it was kind of like, well, I don't want to live my life in the cage. At that point in my life, I was ready. I'd begun my liberation journey and was like, okay, I'm going to speak up. I'm going to take risks. But, man, I was like, pushing through this force field of the, you know, like, any field. Imagine the gravitational field, gravitational pull. It was like I was trying to break out of this gravitational pull of the cultural field. And it took a lot of effort, and it was scary, and I did feel embarrassed, but I learned to just sort of withstand it. And then. And then something really started to shift, but not until I began to actively, on purpose, seek out the embarrassment. You see, we can spend much of our lives, you know, either totally avoiding risk because we don't want to fail, we don't want to get rejected, we don't want to be embarrassed. Or we can realize, hey, that's not much of a life at all. I gotta take some risks. But then we're still really, really hoping that everything goes the way that we want. And if it doesn't, I'm gonna feel rejected, a failure and embarrassed. It's a very stressful way to go about it. And that's what I had done for about a year at this point. And then I realized, wait, A minute. What if I actually go for getting embarrassed? And I learned a lot about this from David Burns and Matt maybe, and this cognitive therapy group I was a part of for a couple of years. And they would call it shame attacking, where you actually go out and attempt to get embarrassed. I thought, what a fascinating, like, exposure therapy to not just go out and do something you're scared of, but go try to be embarrassed. And so it's like, okay, go dance on a street corner. That would just utterly mortify me, the past. Which is probably why I attuned to that experience at Burning man and watched that little exchange happen. I bet there was hundreds of people around who didn't even notice that. Like, who cares? People dancing at Burning Man. What's the big deal? And me, I was awestruck. Oh, my God, really? You can do that, right? Because it was a part of me, that hunger to be free, that even saw that moment and gave it such meaning. That's when I realized, wait a minute. Instead of waiting for the cultural field to give me permission, what if I claimed more and just walked over to the street corner and started to dance? And so I did mocked over, and my heart's beating out of my chest, oh, my God, what's gonna happen? So there I go to the corner, and no music, by the way. And I just start to bounce around. I'm not a great dancer, you know, so I don't have any moves, per se. I just, you know, my only dancing experience is like, hippie, rave festival kind of thing. So, you know, wiggling my arms, jumping up and down, moving around. There's no fancy form to it. And that's what I'm doing on the street corner. And as I begin, it's like, oh, my gosh, my face flushes. I'm hot. I'm so uncomfortable. There's this. If you doubt this idea of the cultural field, just go do this experiment and you will feel is undeniable. It is not just a thought. It is a physiological experience. You will feel it in your body. That's the cultural field. And so I'm sweating and stressing and pushing against this field, but I keep doing it. And something really interesting happens after about a minute or so is that I'm looking around and there's people walking by. And some people look at me and some people don't. But it's this really fascinating experience that I'm sure you can intellectually imagine, but until it happens to you, you don't really get a shift. And the experience is that Life goes on. Life with a capital L. All around you is happening and within you. And it's not this show stopping, record skipping, oh, my God moment where the world stops and looks at you. Nope. The world just keeps going. People just keep doing their thing. The irritated person continues to be irritated as they walk past. The scared person continues to be scared. The smiling person smiles at you because they smile at everybody. Right. Just like everyone's doing what they're doing. Wow. Fascinating, huh? And you kind of pierce through the cultural field for a minute and you're like, whoa, oh, oh. It's not. On one level, it's very real. And then on another level, I mean, it's real, but it has no power. Wow. And another thing I learned from Donny Epstein, which is the cultural field is a weak field. It only appears strong when I am weak. And that's very true in my experience. So the more I'm in my head and, oh, my gosh, other people are going to think this, I'm going to that, and they give a lot of reality to it, then it's very terrifying. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. People's judgments are totally, 100% real, and they mean something about me. So if someone judges me as strange, that means I'm really messed up. And if someone judges me as beautiful, then I'm really attractive, and I give all this energy to people's passing thoughts, make it very real. And then I am very weak. I'm trapped in this weak field and it feels strong. And after those first few experiences, I got hooked. I mean, hooked in the kind of way that, I mean, I'd never done any sort of cold immersion back then in my life. Now I do. I do a cold plunge or a cold shower every day, and I'm hooked to that. And just, like, facing the embarrassment, people ask me like, oh, how is it? You know, how is the cold plunge? I'm like, it's the worst and it's the best. Just ask me when it's the worst right before I do it. It's the best right after I do it. And that's how challenging the edge of the cultural field is. It's the worst right before when you're walking up to go do some embarrassment thing. It's like, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, this is going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And then you do it, and then you're like, wow, oh, My God, I'm free. Wow. Wow. And so what? First of all, I'm describing, you know, practicing it and doing it, which is the biggest step to freedom. But what's happening here? Why does that create so much freedom other than just simply observing that life goes on and people's judgments don't really do anything to you? What also shows you that the embarrassment only exists as long as you buy into it and that you can buy into it. You have a right to do that. I don't like that. I'm embarrassed. Oh, I don't feel comfortable doing that. Oh, I don't like that people dance. I don't like singing. I'm not a dancer. I don't want to dance. I don't want to do that thing. That's not how I am. You have a right to do all of that. Life is a choose your own adventure, and you get to live it however you want. But it gets more and more and more restricting and confined. And then the very thing that you thought was not you is not okay to do. Oh, my God. Making a silly voice. Oh, my God. Telling a joke. Oh, my God. Doing that really silly movement with your body that's so embarrassing that those very things, you can do them. And you can not only not feel embarrassed, you can feel joyful, you can feel more alive than ever. You can feel silly and free. And all it takes is this challenging of that unconscious cultural field's control over you, that order. And in many ways it's just a sort of an unquestioning conformity. Why do you want to not want to dance in the street corner? Well, because no one else is. That's why it's not allowed, because no one else is doing it. What if you decided to be a leader in your life? A leader is someone who looks around and says what? What seems like what's possible here? What do I want to do here? What do I want to create here? Not what is everyone else doing. And I'll make sure I do it so I can fit in. And that way of life is usually very fearful. A lot of suffering. So it's time for something different. Wanna talk about action? How we're gonna do it? Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today. I mean, you guessed it. You probably saw it coming from the beginning. You probably saw it from the title of this episode. It's going to be embarrassment, inoculation. That's where you on purpose do something that embarrasses you. I've given you a few examples here. I'M sure you could think of your own. There's a hundred. In fact, when I do this at events and we have people go practice this stuff, one of my favorite things is hearing what people come up with. All kinds of strange, odd, fun, humorous things. Now, one caveat for this is I encourage people, don't do anything socially aggressive. Right. So it's going to embarrass me to go slap somebody in the face. Okay, well, don't do it. That's. That's not the. The ethos of what we're doing here. No. You know, it could be strange, it could be playful, it could be funny, it could be odd. Now, some people are so nice. They're like, oh, my God, Me doing something odd is gonna hurt someone else's feelings. Like, what if I ask someone a strange question, like, do you want to change shoes? Do you want to swap shoes for a minute with me? Which I've done before. I've actually had people say yes to that question before. I was a friend dared me. I was like, well, sure. Walked up to this person. I said, excuse me? He's like, yeah. I was like, you know, I gotta tell you, those shoes look extremely comfortable. And he kind of lit up. He's like, oh, yeah, they're amazing. I was like, wow. You know, I've been looking for some new. New shoes that I'm trying to see if they're comfortable. Do you mind. Do you mind if we just could try your shoe on for a minute? Just. Just to see if I can. The guy's like, oh, yeah, sure, yeah. He was all excited, and I was like, okay, great. And I took off my shoe and I put it on, and the dare was to have him swap shoes with me. So now I'm. I got my foot in this guy's shoe, and it's. You know, and it was all warm, and I'm like, okay, how am I gonna get him to get my shoe on? I said, uh, yeah. Wow, this is really comfortable. Hey, have you ever worn these? And I pointed at one of the shoe that I took off, and he's like, no. And I was like, hey, what? I'm just so curious. Why don't you get. Why don't you try mine on for a second? We can compare which one's more comfortable. And he kind of hesitated. And then he's like, oh, okay, all right. And he grabbed my shoe and he put it on, and we talked about it, and we looked at him side by side and pros and cons, and then swapped back and on with our day. These are just small, trivial examples, aren't they? But what in your life is now off limits because of embarrassment? And what extraordinary could open to you if you gave yourself the freedom to be fully you and to be free from embarrassment? Absolutely possible and something well worth practicing and building the muscle of that freedom. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.