21/10/2022
The need to belong to a social group is one of the basic human needs. To satisfy it, we try to constantly control our behavior, vigilantly monitoring how others react to us, what they think of us. Negative attitudes (real or perceived) damage our self-esteem.
This has a very strong effect on our psychological state, since low self-esteem is, almost, a direct road to depression.
Most often, we make mistakes in tense or uncertain (new to us) social situations. They can be unforeseen (for example, we accidentally dropped or spilled something) and expected, when we anticipate that some event is fraught with embarrassment (for example, many participants attributed meeting their partner's parents to such events).
In general, Clegg notes, the less clearly we imagine the coming event, the more we fear that we will have to go through awkward moments. For all that, if we feel happy, unpleasant predictions most often do not come true.
The feeling of awkwardness increases sharply if our oversight is noticed by those present and we find ourselves in the center of general attention. It seems to us that time stretches endlessly or has stopped altogether, we feel excitement and confusion, someone at such moments has a rapid heartbeat and sweaty palms. With the exception of narcissists who like to be the center of attention, everyone else at such moments painfully experiences this intense interest in their person.
We can laugh unnaturally, speak too loudly, blush or stutter - in general, look rather unattractive. Meanwhile, people around us may themselves feel uncomfortable empathizing with us and imagining themselves in a similar situation. And it will seem to someone that our stupid behavior casts a shadow on them.
Options for getting out of an awkward situation:
Avoidance (I act as if nothing happened, or I try to leave the “accident scene” as soon as possible) is an obvious self-deception: no matter how much we convince ourselves that nothing unpleasant happened, the incident will still remain in the memory of witnesses .
Acknowledgment of what happened. Humor works best here, as Clegg's research has shown. If you openly and with a smile admit your mistake or bad luck, both you and those around you will feel relief. They may even admire your courage. It doesn't even require sophisticated wit. A simple phrase like “Looks like today is not my day!” will work great too.
Alas, nothing will help us insure against embarrassment, but we can learn to get out of awkward situations with minimal losses, so that neither our image in the eyes of others, nor our own self-esteem is damaged. Take care of your psyche, you will still need it!)
