Humiliation

Relationships with Others

In the course of doing my sweeping breath meditation, I'm taking a look at my close relationships with people around me. You know, family and friends and whatnot.As I discussed in Relationships with Others, as a result of this increased attention, I'm starting to see things that I hadn't noticed before. This relates to the concept of fake humility, where our behavior is motivated by external pressures rather than genuine self-awareness. Let me give an example: my relationship with my mother when I was very young.

My Mother

Now that I've taken a look at all my accessible memories I can see that my mother wanted to control me. In fact to a large degree she perhaps didn't control me. But when she did, I can see some of her techniques now that I couldn't see before. For instance, she used guilt to control me. She used to try to make me feel guilty about things or make me not do things so that I would not feel guilty. She also used to use the excitement and adventure themes to make me want to do things.

Making Mistakes

But I actually learned how to cope with that when I was young. One of my more vulnerable areas was making mistakes. This relates to my past feelings of superiority, where I felt threatened by others' flaws or weaknesses. As I discussed in My Superiority, this relates to how our past feelings of superiority can shape our interactions with others. This is closely tied to the concept of humiliation, where we may feel vulnerable to being controlled or manipulated by others. This brings up the big topic of this blog: humiliation. If I don't like making mistakes, and if or when I make a mistake, then somebody could use that against me.

Make it Public

All they have to do is point out publicly what my mistake is and they have humiliated me. Now you could do this just for the simple pleasure of turning the screws on me and making me feel discomfort or pain. or, you could use this to try and change my behaviour. for instance if I am forgetful, and I forget something and then you humiliate me about that forgotten thing. You might want me to not forget in the future. To that extent you are controlling my behaviour.

Poor Motivator

Now needless to say this is a pretty weak motivator. First, it comes from outside me, not inside me. What I mean is, if I forgot something it obviously wasn't important enough to me to remember it. This relates to the concept of fake humility, where our behavior is motivated by external pressures rather than genuine self-awareness. As I discussed in Fake Humility, this can lead to superficial changes in behavior without true personal growth. This relates to the concept of breaking free from the self-pity trap, where we focus on our own perceived suffering rather than taking responsibility for our actions. As I wrote about in Breaking Free from the Self-Pity Trap: A Journey to Emotional Freedom, this can lead to unhealthy patterns and relationships. Humiliation is a short-term power tactic to change behaviour. But it draws down on the bank of trust and creates bad feelings between the two people so it's better not to use it. Having said that, some people continue using it.

What To Do?

It will continue to be effective against me as long as I feel that humiliation. On the other hand if I can accept my errors, then I gain in two ways. Number one I won't feel humiliated anymore so that source of pain is gone. Number two if I accept my error I become humble, and humility is a very, very valuable asset. You can only gain humility at great personal cost with lots of pain along the way. This is closely tied to breaking free from the self-pity trap, where we focus on our own perceived suffering rather than taking responsibility for our actions. Building on ideas from Breaking Free from the Self-Pity Trap: A Journey to Emotional Freedom, humility allows us to transcend this pattern of thinking and become more authentic.

Searching for these humiliating situations is now one of my focuses in my sweeping breath meditation practice. Of course I can't remember them all at once. It kind of makes me a hunter. I'm hunting my old memories. When I find them I can extract as much value as I can out of them to become a better human and at the same time get rid of old emotional baggage. The only problem is hunting is hard work.