How to deal with feelings of embarrassment and shame?
After developing a self-perception and the realisation that others would judge his behaviour, embarrassment develops. Shame, guilt, and pride, which are founded on self-awareness, are more complex than wrath, surprise, and fear, which arise instantly.
A person must analyse and examine oneself to feel these emotions.
When ashamed, people act particular ways. A lady who calls a new friend by the wrong name may look down, stop smiling, turn her head, and look away. While blushing is prevalent, Harris emphasised that it is not universal.
Looking at the basis of these evident reactions shows that secondary emotions involve a distinct physiological process than basic emotions.
The heart rate and blood pressure increase suddenly during basic emotions like anger and fear, but during embarrassment, Harris found that the heart rate returns to normal while the blood pressure continues to rise. "This dual connection may be a unique sign of embarrassment," he suggested.
Embarrassment comes from where in the brain? Virginia Sturm, Associate Professor of Neurology at UCSF, and her team found that grey matter in a specific brain location contributes to embarrassment creation.
Sturm found that patients with frontotemporal dementia, a brain disease that causes profound changes in personality and behaviour, who made socially inappropriate statements and behaviours but never felt embarrassed or humiliated had a smaller pregenual anterior cingulate cortex than healthy people.
In healthy persons, this brain region may also cause humiliation. In fact, Sturm and his team found that healthy participants who did not feel embarrassed watching videos of themselves singing the 1964 hit song “My Girl” had less grey matter in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex than those who did.
Psychologists stress the stark difference between shame and embarrassment. According to George Mason University psychology professor June Tangney, “Many people believe that there is a connection between shame and embarrassment, and that embarrassment can even be thought of as ‘mild shame,’” although the two emotions are separate.
Tangney defines shame as a stronger emotion associated with a moral infraction or crime. Although many people feel shame with others, many also feel shame alone.
However, since humiliation is linked to social wrongdoings, it normally diminishes when a person quits a social community.