Arthur* is a smart, thoughtful, and generally well-liked graduate student, so he was stunned when one of his professors responded to a question he asked in a seminar by telling him he was a complete idiot. “I turned bright red,” he said. “And for what was maybe the first time in my life, I couldn’t say a word or even think a coherent thought. It was like my brain completely shut down.”
Theresa*, a nurse, had a similar reaction when the head nurse at her agency yelled at her for a minor mistake on her time sheet. “I wasn’t denying that I was at fault,” Theresa said, “but it was about my time, not about a patient. I hadn’t hurt anyone but myself, but the way she acted, it was like I was the most horrible, stupid, idiotic person alive for having done it. And I couldn’t respond. All I could do was stand there. I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to cry. That was all I could think about. But of course, I did cry, and then I was furious with myself.”
Research on shame shows that shame and guilt, while sometimes connected, are very different emotions. In the best of circumstances, guilt, or an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, can lead to positive change in a person’s behavior. Shame is a way of closing a person down, and research shows that shame, humiliation, and emotional and physical abuse are often closely connected.
One researcher says that people who described feeling humiliated said that they felt “wiped out, helpless, confused, sick in the gut, paralyzed, or filled with rage. It was as if they were made small, stabbed in the heart, or hit in the solar plexus. Usually they felt themselves flushing and wished they could disappear. No matter how many years have passed, the experience remains vivid and fresh in their minds.” (Klein, 1991). Humiliated patients in a study of doctor-patient relationships felt exposed or stigmatized, diminished, deficient, and degraded.
A common response to being humiliated is to want to hide, to sink into the ground, or to disappear. And often, when we’re humiliated, we lose all ability to take action.
If this has ever happened to you, you know about these feelings. And you might even still sometimes think about what you could have done at the time, or after, to protect yourself.
It’s hard to go back to an old injury and make it right, but sometimes, as we’re seeing in the media right now, it does happen. But it’s not a bad idea to think about what you might do to protect yourself if it ever happens again, since in the moment that you are humiliated, you probably aren’t able to think about anything except how to get away.
Here are 7 suggestions, based on my work as a therapist, my understanding of the dynamics involved, and current research on the topic.
1. Take your time to respond.
This isn’t so easy, especially when your brain is frozen in horror and you just want to disappear. But if you can get your brain to start to work again, you can often discover a way to respond.
You don't have to apologize, take the blame, or counter-attack, all of which can backfire in the moment. Bella De Paolo has written a terrific blog about this issue, in which she describes both the dangers of standing up to someone who humiliates you: she says “Victims can easily become re-victimized in the nastiest ways—even when they are totally right about their complaints.”
2. Don’t take it personally.
First, take your mind off of yourself and try to silently understand what caused this person to say this humiliating thing to you in this moment. Take as long as you need. Stare at the person with your mouth hanging open if you need to. They may try to humiliate you further, but that reaction, more than any words you can possibly come up with, shows how stunned you are that this person could beave in this way.
Sometimes the person who is humiliating you is not doing it on purpose, and when they see your reaction, they will be horrified and apologetic, although they may not always be able to let you know (maybe because now they’re ashamed!).
When you think it’s possible that your boss didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your team, for instance, a simple, direct response, in private, might be best. You could say, “Can I get on your calendar for five minutes today?”
and then, when you meet, say something like “I know you didn’t mean to do it, but when you criticized me in front of the team, I was really distressed. I want to hear your critiques. You always have a really good perspective on things. But I’d really appreciate it if you could give me your criticism in private.” You might get a genuine apology, but remember, no one, including your boss, likes to be told they’ve done something wrong, so you might just get a grunt or even another criticism. Don’t take it to heart. If your boss genuinely didn’t mean to shame you, your point will have been made.
Even if a humiliator wants you to be embarrassed or ashamed, be clear – no matter what you’ve done wrong, you don’t deserve to be shamed or humiliated. Certainly, take responsibility for any mistakes you might have made, but don’t accept that making a mistake means that you’re an unworthy person who should be ashamed of yourself or denigrated by someone else.
Researchers tell us that it is important to recognize that when someone is trying to make you feel bad about yourself, it is generally because they have a problem, not because you’ve done something so terrible.
3. Get out of the situation.
Neuroscientists tell us that you only have about 20 minutes to make an emotional conversation change directions; after that, you and the other person will be locked into a neurologically based pattern that only has the possibility of shifting after a period of separation. So don’t hang around trying to make things better. Get some distance, and then, if you’re so inclined, revisit it with the other person. You can say something like, "I'm really not ready to discuss this with you right now," or "I'm sorry you feel that way," or you can even say nothing at all. Just leave as quickly as you can.
4. Understand the other person’s motivation.
Once you're out of harm's way, you can think about what might be going on. Understanding does not mean forgiving, feeling sorry for, or being nice to the other person. It simply is a tool for helping you to move out of the shadow of their behavior. It is also often a way of helping you not to take their actions personally – a way of seeing more clearly that it’s about them, not about you.
One possibility is that they’re angry, perhaps because you shamed them in some way? It may not be something you’re even aware of, but if you search your mind, you may figure out that you did something recently that seemed insignificant to you, but that somehow embarrassed or shamed them. So now they’re getting you back, even though you didn’t do it on purpose and certainly didn’t do anything that even slightly matched what they’ve done to you.
Another possibility is that someone has threatened their sense of their own power – and showing that they can hurt someone is a way of asserting their strength. Sometimes this power play has a direct connection to the person being hurt – as when the humiliator is retaliating for something you said or didn’t say, did or didn’t do; but sometimes it has more to do with a general feeling of powerlessness or impotence. Research has shown that sexual abusers and harassers, for instance, often feel unattractive and/or powerless (not necessarily consciously, however), so they “prove” their power over employees and vulnerable women by harassing and abusing them.
And then?
5. Know that you are not alone.
DePaolo writes, “I doubt that anyone gets through life without ever feeling utterly humiliated.” She encourages readers to find and talk to others who have experienced the same thing, and also to use their support network to get over the feelings. Furthermore, as we are seeing with the Harvey Weinstein situation and other highly visible cases of sexual harassment and abuse, if this person does something to you, he or she has very likely done it to others.
The news is full of the "me too" syndrome right now, in which once someone admits that they have been mistreated, others acknowledge it as well; but in far too many cases it is hard to find out that others are or have been in your same situation. But part of not taking it personally is knowing that you are the victim, not the cause of the problem.
6.Be careful about retaliating.
Humiliation, according to research, is a mixture of anger and shame, so retaliation or revenge can feel like a good way to get your self esteem back. But again, the danger is that someone who humiliates others in order to make themselves feel powerful is very likely to turn even nastier and strike back. Not retaliating, however, does not have to mean that you are being weak.
Strength can sometimes come from standing up for others in a similar situation, when it’s possible; but it’s important not to criticize yourself if you are not ready to take that kind of open stand against something that has hurt or damaged you.
7.Find a way to move forward with your life.
You might not strike back directly, but you might find that not letting the person have a continued effect on you can be its own form of revenge. You are not who they want you to be, or who they see you as. You have strengths and the capacity to live a full life without them, whether that means leaving a relationship or a job, changing supervisors, or simply not having anything to do with a particular person anymore.
Arthur was lucky. The professor who humiliated him was a good guy who, when he saw Arthur’s reaction, immediately apologized in front of the entire class. But that’s not what always happens.
Because the person who did the humiliating often has power over the person they humiliate, you might not be able to get any real sense of closure with that person.
Theresa’s head nurse was known for taking out her anger on everyone who worked for her. Theresa had to get closure from the support of her colleagues. “Everybody knows she’s a real bitch,” Theresa said. “There’s no standing up to her. You take her nastiness and you put your head down and keep going. It’s a really good job, so nobody wants to leave. So we just put up with her. And we support each other and give each other lots of positive feedback. It’s the best we can do.”
The real work in such a case is not to allow the person to damage your self-esteem. Support from others, like colleagues, friends, teachers, and mentors, is crucial. It also doesn’t hurt to keep a log of what has happened. Don’t do it if it makes you feel worse to revisit the experience, of course; but sometimes writing down what happened can get it out of your head. And as we’re seeing with the Weinstein case, one day your notes could be helpful; you just might get a chance to be heard.
* names and identifying info changed to protect privacy
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