I have this method of applying to at least three jobs per day to keep my skills sharp and prepare myself for a career change if it happens. You know the old saying, âIf you stay ready, you donât have to get ready.â
So, as usual, I opened LinkedIn to see what jobs I could Easy Apply to this morning. And because Iâm nosy, I scrolled my feed to see what other people were up to and what was causing a ruckus in the ad world. Then I saw a post with the notorious green Open to Work banner, and the opening line read, âThis is embarrassing, but I was laid offâŠâ
I immediately said, âGirl, why are you embarrassed?! Your employer should be embarrassed that they couldnât keep you because their C-Suite members needed to pay their boat slips this summer.â
Then I thought about how embarrassment over any misfortune has become so deeply ingrained in us that asking for a link to helpdesk causes a mental spiral.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, however you see it), I survived several layoffs from my current and former employers. The former only kept me employed because I was the most junior and the ONLY Black employee following the summer of BLM protests, so yeahâŠ, it would not have been a good look on them if they did fire me then.
But I couldnât help but think about how everyone is so embarrassed and ashamed to say they were a casualty of the economy when the true villains are the C-Suite and executives who have mismanaged funds or overestimated company growth and tossed dead weight instead of cutting their take-home pay.
When someone is clipped by a city bus or hit by a Walmart truck, they donât blame the pedestrian or innocent driver; they call all threes, nines, eights, twos, or whatever number takes them to a big settlement attorney.
Embarrassment plagues every facet of our lives, though.
When we go through a breakup, we donât talk about it and pretend everything is fine. Revenge bodies were all the craze a few summers ago. People post new photos of their ripped bodies and apologize for their absence with captions about working on themselves.
When facing financial hardships, we jet to Europe and ignore text messages and phone calls (from family and creditors) for months because weâre too busy living a life of luxury.
Even when some people have an unexpected pregnancy (with the man they said theyâd never see again), they stop posting, stop talking to everyone, and pop out with a fresh baby two weeks after their delivery date like weâre all supposed to ignore the smell of Lâoreal Kids Extra Gentle 2-in-1 shampoo and a Burberry Black in the room.
So, I raise the question again.
WHY THE FUCK ARE WE SO SCARED OF BEING EMBARRASED?!
My Gemini mind couldnât rest until I got to the bottom of it, so here we are.
Some people have such a fear of embarrassment that it stops them in their tracks. Itâs called katagelophobia, and itâs more common than you might think.
â Phillip Perry
Trust me, I understand anxiety and embarrassment to the nth degree.
Whenever I get ready, Iâm always making myself late because I donât like how I look in an outfit, or I get this incredible dread that today/tonight will be the day the seams fail me, and I wind up naked and afraid during this event.
Or I think about how my ex might be there with a friend. Or how someone who saw my nudes on Tumblr five years ago will pop up in the crowd, follow me home, and Iâll be next weekâs episode of Black and Missing.
I overthink so much that I overthink overthinking. But on the outside, I seem calm and collected. This is a skill I hope you never possessâcompartmentalizing is not cool.
Part of this comes from years of leaping into discomfort because, letâs face it, sometimes you have to do the big, scary things to get to your dream life.
Sometimes, those leaps land, like Simone Biles nailing a Yurchenko Double Pike vault routine. And sometimes, they are epic fails, like adult gymnast Danae Bucci's.
Either way, you TRIED, and thatâs all that matters in my book.
How do we overcome embarrassment?
Like anything else, to solve the problem, you have to admit there is a problem.
Once you accept that, okay, I might feel uncomfortable doing this thing, and I might make a fool of myself, and people might hate me; youâve made a step in the right direction.
I know confronting the beast head-on sounds impossible, but truth be told, I do it every dayâŠin the reverse way.
I work in advertising, so I am guilty of preying on weaknesses, exploiting peopleâs fears, and channeling their embarrassment into every headline. Do I feel terrible about it? Every dayâso much so that I contemplate quitting my job.
But once againâŠwe go back to the embarrassment bit.
I could quit my job, move back in with my parents, try to restart my life at almost 30 years old and throw the towel in on being a city girl. Or I could admit things have not gone as planned, and thatâs totally okay.
Not to get biblical, but a two-thousand-year-old text says, âThe truth will set you free.â And it will.
The sooner we admit our faults and flaws, the sooner we can abandon (or gradually move past) our fear of not living up to the great expectations weâve set for ourselves or that others have set for us.
Sometimes, we fall short (or flat on our faces), but the good thing is we get up and try again. If every failure held us back or every ânoâ crushed our dreams, we wouldnât have laptops to write our newsletters or screens to glue our eyes to.
Okay, now what? Time to conquer the world?
You could see it that way. Or you could take small steps to lean into discomfort and slowly chip away at the fear of embarrassing yourself.
Ask for help at work or in lifeâyou donât have to do it alone.
Pick up the phone and call (yes, actually call) that friend youâve been avoiding because you think their life is so much more glamorous than yours. Chances are they donât have it together, either.
Go to that cool and trendy coffee shop. Order the drink or entree you canât pronounce. Get the extra scoop of ice cream or dairy-free gelato.
Block the number and move on with your life. I promise there will be so much better for you in the future.
Make the post and promote yourself, your work, or your lifeâyou only get one chance.
Your life might get 10% better if you do the thing holding you back, even if you do it while crying, screaming, and throwing up.
this was a WORD!!!!