As I get older, I realize that puberty is not limited to teenage years. I thought that after the raging hormones and dental appliances ceased, life could reach a gorgeous plateau. But, as I sit here writing this as a 20-year-old, with acute cystic acne and hormone swings that could either make me mayor or the top patient at a psychiatric hospital, I find that previous train of thought a misconception. More recently, I have noticed a revival in embarrassment. Thinking it was put to death after my senior year of high school, I have been all but excited at its return. Whether that is doing a late-night re-run of my social interactions that day or saying something embarrassing during sex, I find myself getting hung up by a particular emotion that I sometimes wish died with the acne I had in middle school.
Embarrassment is an emotion we often associate with adolescence, which makes it 100 times worse when you experience the emotion as an adult. Along with a lot of emotions felt during college, many of us feel like babies with student loans. We might even interact with a parent or sibling in a way that only occurred when we were 15. We now more than ever have a right to explore the more adult sides of things, drinking, social outings, sex, and initiative, only seen in adults. But unlike turning 18, our brains don’t just become mature; they have to work for said maturity. Experiencing embarrassment, an emotion that is adolescent in nature, seems like a setback in one’s journey to maturity. However, viewing the emotion as negative is actually a setback in itself.
Embarrassment is such an under-explored emotion, and I’m sure you would agree if you have seen that clip of Austin Butler on Subway Takes. If you haven’t here it is:
Austin Butler, an actor I haven’t really paid attention to, highlights a problem in our societal way of thinking. Bulter goes on to talk about how embarrassment holds us back from experiencing so much. It creates an imaginary club bouncer that keeps us from getting into spaces we would like to be in fear of coming off as “cringe”. Butler ends his mini- speech by saying “go out there and make a fool out of yourself” which is a wonderful way to articular the affirmative action you can take to be more comfortable with embarrassment as an emotion.
Although going through a second puberty is the pits, you laugh one second and cry the next, you aquire a new skin condition, you go from being incredibly open to sexual encounters to shutting yourself off completely, and you get embarrassed easily. Here’s the good news: you have already done this before. The puberty you have already gone through, however tender in its growing pains, should be a lesson to you that you made it through the first one; you will more easily make it through the second, or third, or fourth.
Feeling embarrassed is all a part of the process, and the more experience you have with the emotion, the more you will come to learn and love about yourself.