The Albatross of Embarrassment

The albatross has come to stand for a psychological burden that feels like a curse, probably dating from the publication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (c. 1797-98). Embarrassment can be a kind of albatross, a curse that keeps us isolated, first from ourselves and secondarily from others.

Most of us have areas of our lives of which we are less than proud. Of course, we don’t have to share every detail of our past. But placing embarrassing facts in context nurtures self-acceptance and diminishes the obstacle of self-hate.

The degree of embarrassment or feeling ashamed does not necessarily reflect responsibility for the underlying event. A victim of abuse, for instance, may hesitate to identify the perpetrator because she feels embarrassed.

In a  New York Times article titled “Great Betrayals” (October 6), the psychiatrist Anna Fels writes about people who have been deluded by others;  they discover that  they have been lied to, and in a sense, regard their lives as a lie. “The betrayal leaves them feeling “embarrassment, a sense of having been naïve or blind, alienation from those who knew the truth all along.” “Like a computer file corrupted by a virus,” Fels writes, “their life narrative has been invaded.”

A story corrupted coupled with embarrassment isolates them from themselves and others. They have to review the past to understand and accept what happened  and put the story in its proper context. Moving forward in life is hard- at times even impossible-without owning a narrative of one’s past. Isak Dinesen has been quoted as saying “All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them.”

What seems inconsequential objectively may cause a person shame.  For example, an accomplished man in his seventies felt ashamed that he did not choose his profession but was instead coerced into a vocation by his parents. He actually led a productive life and had little reason to apologize for himself.

Doris Lessing  provides a counterexample. The prize-winning author, who recently died at age 94 (“Author who Swept Aside Convention,” The New York Times, November 18, 2013) bore two children and abandoned them. While many of us would be embarrassed by this behavior, Lessing neither dwelled on this detail nor suffered shame. Instead, she connected her behavior to her early history: she had disappointed her parents who wanted a son and her mother reiterated that she had sacrificed a great deal to raise her.  Her father recounted stories of WWI, which imbued her with a sense of fatalism. She recognized that she carried within her the sense of doom “like a defective gene” and she believed that she would do her children more damage by staying with them.

In addition to understanding and placing an event in its proper context, embarrassment may be alleviated through the natural acts of aging. If we’ve allowed ourselves to be out in the world, we realize other people have their foibles, too, and we learn that we’re more alike than different in our human flaws.

Conclusion:  Embarrassment is like an albatross around our necks when it alienates us from our own story/history and in turn, isolates and alienates us from others.

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