Thought for today:
"They say that the rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the degree of embarrassment they are able to tolerate. I am sure that there have been occasions in all our lives when the only response we could make was, 'Oh my God! Did I really say/do that?'
Embarrassment you know, does not become such a big thing in the life of the average person. When it occasionally occurs, it is apologised for and is subsequently quickly forgotten. Not for all folk though, I am sorry to say.
Many years ago when I worked as a Probation Officer, I worked with about seven groups of people weekly who displayed a wide range of problem behaviours. The most difficult behaviours to change wasn't aggression, theft, sexual deviance or any manner of addiction etc. Strangely enough, the hardest behaviour to change was always a part of the Non-Assertive person's response pattern; how not to fall apart with 'embarrassment' in the execution of everyday social events which most people take for granted or if they said something wrong.
I refer not to those situations which command confidence, like the giving of public speeches or being the first to take to the dance floor in a crowded room, or returning shoddy goods to the sales person.
During the 1970s, I was pleased to come across the work of Arnold Allan Lazarus, a South African psychologist who worked in America, and who became world respected in his field. Arnold Lazarus sadly died in 2013. Lazurus became renown for his contribution towards 'Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.' He was particularly good in developing methods for working with very shy people who found it hard to cope with shame and embarrassment.
His prime method, whenever confronted with an extremely non-assertive and shy person was to 'desensitise' them to their sense of shame with his 'shame attacking exercises'. 'Desensitisation' works by familiarising the person with the thing they fear or which embarrasses them most, until the time comes when they get so used to it, that what initially frightened or embarrassed them, no longer does! This is why our eyes and ears no longer respond with the same degree of disgust as they once did whenever we hear and see sex, war, violence, starvation and swearing these days on the television; not because we no longer disapprove, but because we have grown accustomed to hearing, reading and seeing it every day of the week.
The homework exercises Lazarus would set his group members were designed to saturate them with their greatest fear; namely shame and embarrassment. He would teach them to actively work against their high embarrassment levels, by deliberately doing things in public which engendered so much shame for them, that eventually they felt little or no shame at all. His goal was to get his group members to introduce themselves into 'shameful situations,' but instead of running away from the shame felt, they had to practise staying with it, becoming desensitised by it, and thereby, finally managing it!
Lazarus would set them personal home work exercises between one week's group session and the next. One person, who might find speaking to strangers embarrassing would be asked to deliberately approach ten people they passed on the street daily and ask them the time of day, whilst conspicuously wearing a flashy functional wristwatch. The following week, after successfully completing the previous week's task, they might be required to carry a pen and clip pad, and after pretending to be working on a their PHD thesis, they would stop strangers on the high street and ask them a range of the most personal questions about their sex life and toilet behaviours while smiling reassuringly.
In another situation, Lazarus would set the following homework task to his embarrassed group clients. He would ask them to walk up and down 2nd Avenue at the busiest time of day on a Friday afternoon, wearing pink shorts with a pansy flower design on the seat of their pants, one red sock and one yellow sock and a big witch's hat on their head with a two-foot-high purple feather plume poking out; pulling faces at people as they passed by, before bursting into a raucous belly laugh.
When the group members provided feedback to the group about their 'shame attacking' homework exercises the following week and were asked, 'What happened?' their answers were invariably surprising: 'Oh, I made lots of friends!'
Lazarus effectively taught them that the world is too busy a place to notice what others say and do half the time. He reminded them that providing you don't go overboard and break the law, like making love to your wife in the shop-front window of Macy's Store on a busy Friday afternoon or publicly urinating during rush hour in a crowded street of New York, nobody was going to come and lock you up and throw away the keys!
After fifteen years of research into responses which engendered the most anxiety, I was able to select a few social tasks which incorporated elements of all social situations that created stress and embarrassment. These were, 'the giving and receiving of compliments', along with 'making requests' and 'refusing the request of another, without the provision of an explanation.' Through the repeated daily practise of these social situations, anyone who is non-assertive or embarrasses easily can become much less so.
So bear in mind that 'embarrassment' is a normal reaction to things you never meant to say and do, and is no more than a relatively harmless emotion which is quickly forgotten by the observer as they go about their own busy life. Oh, and by the way, the next time you find yourself farting in a public crowded area, like an elevator; smile, own it and politely leave the scene after sweetening the air with the small can of air freshener you always carry around in your pocket with you." William Forde: August 3rd, 2016.
"They say that the rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the degree of embarrassment they are able to tolerate. I am sure that there have been occasions in all our lives when the only response we could make was, 'Oh my God! Did I really say/do that?'
Embarrassment you know, does not become such a big thing in the life of the average person. When it occasionally occurs, it is apologised for and is subsequently quickly forgotten. Not for all folk though, I am sorry to say.
Many years ago when I worked as a Probation Officer, I worked with about seven groups of people weekly who displayed a wide range of problem behaviours. The most difficult behaviours to change wasn't aggression, theft, sexual deviance or any manner of addiction etc. Strangely enough, the hardest behaviour to change was always a part of the Non-Assertive person's response pattern; how not to fall apart with 'embarrassment' in the execution of everyday social events which most people take for granted or if they said something wrong.
I refer not to those situations which command confidence, like the giving of public speeches or being the first to take to the dance floor in a crowded room, or returning shoddy goods to the sales person.
During the 1970s, I was pleased to come across the work of Arnold Allan Lazarus, a South African psychologist who worked in America, and who became world respected in his field. Arnold Lazarus sadly died in 2013. Lazurus became renown for his contribution towards 'Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.' He was particularly good in developing methods for working with very shy people who found it hard to cope with shame and embarrassment.
His prime method, whenever confronted with an extremely non-assertive and shy person was to 'desensitise' them to their sense of shame with his 'shame attacking exercises'. 'Desensitisation' works by familiarising the person with the thing they fear or which embarrasses them most, until the time comes when they get so used to it, that what initially frightened or embarrassed them, no longer does! This is why our eyes and ears no longer respond with the same degree of disgust as they once did whenever we hear and see sex, war, violence, starvation and swearing these days on the television; not because we no longer disapprove, but because we have grown accustomed to hearing, reading and seeing it every day of the week.
The homework exercises Lazarus would set his group members were designed to saturate them with their greatest fear; namely shame and embarrassment. He would teach them to actively work against their high embarrassment levels, by deliberately doing things in public which engendered so much shame for them, that eventually they felt little or no shame at all. His goal was to get his group members to introduce themselves into 'shameful situations,' but instead of running away from the shame felt, they had to practise staying with it, becoming desensitised by it, and thereby, finally managing it!
Lazarus would set them personal home work exercises between one week's group session and the next. One person, who might find speaking to strangers embarrassing would be asked to deliberately approach ten people they passed on the street daily and ask them the time of day, whilst conspicuously wearing a flashy functional wristwatch. The following week, after successfully completing the previous week's task, they might be required to carry a pen and clip pad, and after pretending to be working on a their PHD thesis, they would stop strangers on the high street and ask them a range of the most personal questions about their sex life and toilet behaviours while smiling reassuringly.
In another situation, Lazarus would set the following homework task to his embarrassed group clients. He would ask them to walk up and down 2nd Avenue at the busiest time of day on a Friday afternoon, wearing pink shorts with a pansy flower design on the seat of their pants, one red sock and one yellow sock and a big witch's hat on their head with a two-foot-high purple feather plume poking out; pulling faces at people as they passed by, before bursting into a raucous belly laugh.
When the group members provided feedback to the group about their 'shame attacking' homework exercises the following week and were asked, 'What happened?' their answers were invariably surprising: 'Oh, I made lots of friends!'
Lazarus effectively taught them that the world is too busy a place to notice what others say and do half the time. He reminded them that providing you don't go overboard and break the law, like making love to your wife in the shop-front window of Macy's Store on a busy Friday afternoon or publicly urinating during rush hour in a crowded street of New York, nobody was going to come and lock you up and throw away the keys!
After fifteen years of research into responses which engendered the most anxiety, I was able to select a few social tasks which incorporated elements of all social situations that created stress and embarrassment. These were, 'the giving and receiving of compliments', along with 'making requests' and 'refusing the request of another, without the provision of an explanation.' Through the repeated daily practise of these social situations, anyone who is non-assertive or embarrasses easily can become much less so.
So bear in mind that 'embarrassment' is a normal reaction to things you never meant to say and do, and is no more than a relatively harmless emotion which is quickly forgotten by the observer as they go about their own busy life. Oh, and by the way, the next time you find yourself farting in a public crowded area, like an elevator; smile, own it and politely leave the scene after sweetening the air with the small can of air freshener you always carry around in your pocket with you." William Forde: August 3rd, 2016.
