What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?
For some of us, that question might be hard to answer, because with each passing year, there is more opportunity to get embarrassed by something.
So maybe a more realistic question would be, “What is one of the most embarrassing things that have ever happened to you?”
However the question is asked, and however many embarrassing incidents come to mind, one research study has discovered an interesting element in the process of remembering.
A group of psychologists focused their research on adults who had been socially awkward in their teens. They found that the participants who were instructed to report negative incidents from that time in the first person, as opposed to the third person, tended to be more negatively affected by recalling those events.
On the other hand, the participants who were asked to talk about those events as if they were telling a story about someone else, seemed to be less negatively affected by the memories.
For instance, if a participant, Bill, recalled, “When I was 16, I finally got the courage to ask a girl out, and she turned me down,” he was more likely to view himself as still shy and socially inept.
But if he recalled, “When Bill was 16, he finally got the courage to ask a girl out, and she turned him down,” he was more likely to see himself as having progressed beyond that shyness and social awkwardness.
These differences seemed to have an immediate effect on the participants’ current social behaviors as well. Those who recalled their socially embarrassing events in the third person were more likely to exhibit confidence when making conversation with a stranger immediately after the study.
Findings like these are encouraging, because they suggest one small thing we can try, which may have a large effect on the way we feel about ourselves.
Next time you find yourself mulling over some negative experience in your past, try stepping back and telling yourself the story in the third person. Whether you are mulling over that rejection from years ago, or obsessing about that comment you wish you hadn’t made to someone yesterday, try telling yourself what happened in the third person.
Give yourself a name – your own will do, or you might want to borrow another one. Then tell yourself about what happened to that person. Or you might decide to tell a friend, or hide the story in your computer, or write it in a notebook that is nobody else’s business unless you decide to share it.
Your story doesn’t have to be perfect. No literary critics will be seeing it anyway. And it doesn’t have to be very long, unless you want it to be. Just a few sentences might do. It’s up to you, because it’s your story and you have the right to tell it however you like.
There’s no guarantee that this will help.
But research suggests that it might.
Julia Cochran is a licensed professional counselor in Rincon, a psychology instructor at Armstrong State University, and a published poet and storyteller (in the third person). She can be reached at 912-772-3072 or by email at JCochranPhD@GileadCounseling.com. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Armstrong State University.