With the beginning of August, fall is upon us, and for many it is the beginning of a new school year. Recently, I read a quote that had me thinking about my earlier school days and how I’ve grown since then. I was always a quiet kid and rarely spoke in class. Even when I knew the right answer, I would never raise my hand or volunteer to be the center of attention. I think a lot of that anxiety came from a fear of being wrong or being humiliated. And I was reminded of this when I read this quote by the late Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, about the continuous presence of humiliation in childhood, usually brought on by the adults in our lives:
“One of the strongest feelings I remember from my childhood is, precisely, of being humiliated; of being knocked about by words, acts, or situations. Isn’t it a fact that children are always feeling deeply humiliated in their relations with grown-ups and each other? I have a feeling children spend a good deal of their time humiliating one another. Our whole education is just one long humiliation, and it was even more so when I was a child. One of the wounds I’ve found hardest to bear in my adult life has been the fear of humiliation, and the sense of being humiliated. Every time I read a review, for instance – whether laudatory or not – this feeling awakes. To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure.”
When we are young, from our earliest ability to reason and comprehend, we are taught about being wrong, and how it is something we should avoid at all costs. Our parents, grandparents, or guardians, those who raise us teach us how to behave, they’ll teach us about manners; when to apologize, when to say thank you, etc. We learn about shame and embarrassment, that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach the second you make a mistake. When you’re a kid there is always someone around to correct you, to remind you that you’ve made a mistake and that you’ve done something wrong. And I don’t know about you, but I still remember how small adults made me feel when I was a kid and made a mistake. Even now that I’m an adult I still have that fear of being wrong, of being humiliated or shamed for making a mistake. I would agree with Ingmar Bergman, it’s one of those wounds that can be the hardest to heal or move past.
I know that I’m not the same little quiet, insecure kid I was once. I mean I am by no means a social butterfly or anything. I am still an introvert and I still struggle with anxiety, especially in social situations, but as I’ve grown older, I have built up my self-esteem and confidence. Yet, sometimes, when I make a mistake, it’s like I’m a child all over again. I am frozen and embarrassed waiting for an adult to humiliate me and tell me all my faults. I feel like everyone is staring at me and laughing. While it doesn’t always happen, I do feel like it happens more often than I’d like to admit. Personally, I feel like I would’ve been more comfortable being wrong and making mistakes if there wasn’t usually a humiliation factor involved. We can either wallow in our mistakes or we can move forward and learn from them. But when you’re a kid constantly surrounded by adults who continuously shame you for your mistakes, it’s harder to move forward. It just becomes easier to stay quiet than to make a mistake and be humiliated.
And now, with social media a person can’t even trip, mispronounce a word, or drive their car in almost any fashion imaginable without someone out there documenting the whole thing and sharing it online, where everyone has an opinion on how wrong you’ve done something. It can be easy to let shame and fear take over. These feelings can trigger us to close ourselves off from the world. That fear of being humiliated can silence us, preventing you from speaking out because you’re scared of being wrong. Which is why I think it’s important that we not only teach children but also as adults learn that being wrong or making a mistake is something independent from shame, which is not always related to bad or inferior. Making a mistake or being wrong is the most human thing there is, and we need to stop shaming and humiliating people, especially children, for it. We make mistakes so we can learn. And we grow from learning. After all, it’s only after we fall that we learn how to get back up again.