What if feeling cringe is just an unconscious identity crisis? – How to conquer embarrassment

Feeling cringe is such a huge part of the digital world we live in, where everyone is perceived at any time and where everything we post is constantly accessible to anyone. You post something on Instagram that is a little different from what you usually post and a second after hitting the button, you anxiously wait for the post to load just so you can take it down again as fast as possible. But even though the word “cringe” is so commonly used nowadays, we don’t often talk about what it is, why we even feel that way and most importantly: How to overcome that feeling and be less afraid of judgment in order to make our dreams happen.

The fear of being cast out

What we first need to understand is that we feel cringe when we publicly behave in a new way that is not aligned with your current identity or with social standards. Something that we are not yet known for and that makes us stand out.

And the reason why we feel like that in those situations is quite simply because our brains are still wired for a life in the wild. Humans have been living on this earth for millions of years, but our lifestyle has changed so rapidly in the last few hundred years and even in the last few decades that our brain just hasn’t had time to adapt yet.

If you go from there, it all becomes much more logical: Standing out, not conforming to social standards means that you could be rejected or cast-out of a community in an extreme sense. Way back in the day, that would have meant death. This set-up leads to us having – as Ellen Hendricksen calls it in her article “3 Ways to Cope with Cringe Attacks” – an “Inner Rulebook” with rules like ” ‘I should always be dignified.’ ‘I should always do the right thing.’ ‘I should always have good judgment.’ ‘I should never make a fool out of myself.’“. If we break any of these rules, we are going against social standards and thereby trigger our fear of being cast out.

Identity-based fear

Aside from the social factor, there is also something called “identity-based fear”, which essentially means that acting in a new way feels threatening because it does not align with your current self-image. If you have read ‘The Laws of Human Nature’ by Robert Greene, you will know that a secure self-image is what gives us inner validation and what makes us less dependent on external validation and attention from other people. That also means that you become more sensitive to other peoples reactions when that perception of yourself is challenged, which then results in the cringe feeling. Putting it into a more positive light, you can also say that the feeling of cringe is a sign that you are growing. When you repeat something that first feels cringe to you more often, it slowly becomes part of who you are and your inner validation is thereby re-established.

How to get around the cringe feeling

Something that I personally find very useful to speed up the process is to try and integrate the new behaviour into my identity while I am still starting out. I do this by affirming my new identity aloud or in my head. If I say for example “I want to write” or “I want to become a writer”, that means that I am not a writer. And people who are not writers don’t write. So instead, I say to myself “I am a writer”. If I am a writer, I am obviously going to sit down and write, because that is just what writers do. You can do the same with smoking. Don’t say “I’m trying to quit”. Say “I don’t smoke/I am a non smoker”. Integrating the new behaviour into your identity is going to make it feel almost natural.

Aside from that, you can also do more embarrassing things in general and live a little more on the edges of your comfort zone. This will heighten your tolerance for embarrassment and you will become more resilient.

Even though all of these things stabilise your internal validation, there is still the relatively high probability or even certainty that other people are judging you. And in all honesty, you can’t really do anything about that. But you can always chose your response. Jennifer L Keluskar says in her article ‘Dealing with the Fear of Looking Dumb’: “Be honest with yourself about who you are trying to impress.”. There are far to many people with far to many different opinions in the world to care about them all. So what you can do is choosing a few people (I would say at least 3 and no more than 5) whose opinions really matter to you. That is your podium. And in the future, those people’s opinions are all you are going to focus on. They don’t have to be people you actually know personally, you can also pick your role-models, you can even choose fictional characters or your future or past self. Of course you cannot ask those people for their actual opinion, but you can imagine what they would tell you to do. I think it might still be useful to have at least one person who you actually know personally on your podium, just to have someone who you can ask for advice if you would need to.

To really get over the cringe feeling, you can also talk about it with someone non-judgmental who you know will support you.

Some more things to remember

Last – but definitely not least – you need to remember that the feeling of cringe is temporary, but regret is not. The fear of embarrassment only becomes dangerous when it is bigger than the desire to create. But in this modern world that is so driven by Social Media, connection and visibility, everyone is perceived and you will always be judged by someone. So you might as well just be judged for doing what you love.

Now I hope this post has been helpful to some of you and I hope you will still have a lot of cringe moments in the future that make you grow and that take you wherever it is that you want to go.

See you next time!