# Humiliating Yourself everyday challenge



## Pete55 (Oct 13, 2018)

I am going to start humiliating myself in front of groups of people to get rid of my social anxiety.
Activities such as:
- laying down on a sidewalk while others pass me
- Stretching my hands up to the air while passing other people
- Doing a little dance in front of people
- Barking by saying "WOOOF" while walking past people
- doing the Naruto run while running past people or running to the other side of the street

I tried doing it today but it was HAAAARRRRDD. I was only able to stretch my hands to the air while passing ONE person but felt so ****ing good after I did it. Doing these things everyday WILL GET RID OF YOUR SOCIAL ANXIETY! So I challenge you :grin2:


----------



## funnynihilist (Jul 29, 2014)

Doing some of that **** will get you on social media for the rest of your life :/


----------



## Pete55 (Oct 13, 2018)

funnynihilist said:


> Doing some of that **** will get you on social media for the rest of your life :/


Becoming viral is rare bud :/, plus you have the choice, would you rather be in someone's snapchat story for a day then have everyone forget you exist when they move onto the next story or would you rather live a long life in fear killing every single chance in your life. I've made up my choice man , can't take this **** no more.


----------



## funnynihilist (Jul 29, 2014)

Pete55 said:


> Becoming viral is rare bud :/, plus you have the choice, would you rather be in someone's snapchat story for a day then have everyone forget you exist when they move onto the next story or would you rather live a long life in fear killing every single chance in your life. I've made up my choice man , can't take this **** no more.


I hope it works for you, just be careful


----------



## Pete55 (Oct 13, 2018)

Thanks man


----------



## SplendidBob (May 28, 2014)

Yeh, social mishap therapy. Eh, its like hardcore exposure therapy. 

I think with this stuff its fine, and it probably helps, but you need to be able to convert it into life stuff at some point, I think starting with exposure therapy and building up to the things you want to achieve in life makes more sense, because "curing" SA is almost a dangerous mindset (cos it likely wont happen and there needs to be acceptance of that at some point).


----------



## rabidfoxes (Apr 17, 2016)

I like dragging limbs, sniffing air and growling at people in supermarkets. You know, playing a crowd scene in the Walking Dead. 

A friend of mine (now deceased) used to do that thing from a movie where he would stick his head out the window and shout: "I am mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!". I liked that too.

I like your ideas, but be careful about barking at people as you pass them - some people do that thing where they make a sudden noise/shout when passing people to intimidate and have a laugh out of it. It's not cool and you could get punched. Bark at a distance!


Edit to add: I wouldn't call it humiliating yourself. I think of it as fun and horsing around!


----------



## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

Tbh I think this is just another form of avoidance. You do these crazy things to humiliate yourself because it would be more painful for you to be a real person interacting with real people in a real way. You do this _instead_ of doing what you fear.

"I'll do this crazy thing and when nobody reacts I'll realize that it's fine to just be myself." Except this crazy thing that you're doing is not an authentic expression of yourself. It's just the mirror image of your anxiety. Your real self is still safely tucked away behind your crazy antics. And you know that, which is why you can get yourself to do these crazy things but you can't get yourself to do something normal, like smile and say hello to a stranger. You can always think: "Well, who cares if they had a bad reaction? That's not the real me anyway. That's was just me humiliating myself, so their opinion doesn't really matter." But it does still matter, otherwise you would stop doing crazy things and just be real.

Being a real person is much _much_ harder than humiliating yourself in public. Maybe this kind of thing helps some people, but I suspect you could spend the rest of your life acting like a maniac and never overcome your fear of the opinions of others. Acting strange isn't loving yourself, it's concealing yourself and protecting it from harm.

I think the real solution is to love yourself no matter what. Every time you screw up, every time you fail, every time you embarrass yourself, every time someone gives you a dirty look, every time someone rejects you, tell yourself it's okay. It's okay to be a person who screws up, fails, does embarrassing things, isn't liked, and gets rejected. You don't have to be perfect. No one has to be perfect. Isn't that the goal of all this public humiliation? To convince yourself that it's okay to screw up? So why not skip the antics and just start giving yourself that permission?

If you're doing this to prove that other people aren't going to freak out just because you're acting like a weirdo, you're still making it all about other people's opinions. You're still making it all about the other person's tolerance and acceptance. And it seems to me that that's the whole problem. The problem is that you have no tolerance or acceptance for yourself. You make your self-worth, your freedom to be yourself, depend on other people's opinion. When other people give you permission by not reacting, then you give yourself permission. You still need reassurance from other people that it's okay to be you. And I don't think this kind of exposure therapy is necessarily going to give you that. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.

What you have to learn is that no one else can give you that reassurance. It has to come from yourself. You have to forgive yourself for being who you are. And when you do that, you can start getting better.


----------



## scooby (Jun 24, 2009)

Pete55 said:


> Doing these things everyday WILL GET RID OF YOUR SOCIAL ANXIETY! So I challenge you :grin2:


It's more likely to fasttrack the likelihood of me offing myself, so I'll have to pass for rationality's sake.


----------



## Maslow (Dec 24, 2003)

If making a fool of yourself gets rid of social anxiety, I should have been cured a long time ago! :lol

I guess that if your fear comes from being a perfectionist, it could work. But I don't think that's the case with a lot of people with SAD. The problem is low self-esteem, and making a fool of yourself -- intentionally or not -- is not going to make you feel better about yourself. It may actually have the opposite effect.

What we need to feel is dignity -- not embarrassment.


----------



## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

Maslow said:


> *If making a fool of yourself gets rid of social anxiety, I should have been cured a long time ago! :lol*
> 
> I guess that if your fear comes from being a perfectionist, it could work. But I don't think that's the case with a lot of people with SAD. The problem is low self-esteem, and making a fool of yourself -- intentionally or not -- is not going to make you feel better about yourself. It may actually have the opposite effect.
> 
> What we need to feel is dignity -- not embarrassment.


Nicely summed up - I was thinking much the same.


----------



## Musicfan (Mar 4, 2017)

My teens and 20s in a nutshell.


----------



## AffinityWing (Aug 11, 2013)

I used to think it may help with my SA, but now I think it would just make it worse. I've already been half-aware at times that other people really don't seem to notice or care about alot of strange/weird things happening around them or things that I've done, to the point I joked to my friend "I could walk in class naked and it seems nobody would care at this point." LOL

But I still realize that's a pretty glaringly odd kind of situation, so they definitely will. Maybe the odd things around me I have been noticing and wondering why they haven't been noticed by others have just been due to a reflection of my own SA. (Making myself be judgmental, ironically.)

I can only see that also having a negative effect on your social life. If you were the withdrawn, lonely person that kept to themselves, then you will just be the loud, really weird person that people think there is something seriously wrong with. Like @truant mentioned, how is either of that being yourself? If people do start flocking to you then, it will probably be only out of some shallow interest because you are on a viral Youtube video now, and they want to show themselves to their friends with you because "That's the weird guy who dances naked in public" or something. If you think becoming a clown for people makes you feel any less alienated in society, then do it by all means, but I think you will only get the tears of one. Others will eventually get bored of you and move on to the next entertaining thing. A sincere character leaves the most highly valued one. If you are throwing sincerity in that behavior, or showing people your true self behind that character (Like George Miller's Filthy Frank for example) you will get much more respect.


----------



## tea111red (Nov 8, 2005)

posting my thoughts on here is humiliating.


----------



## Rains (Jan 20, 2016)

I think this is called shame attacking but i don't believe it works for actually daily functioning. You'll get better at lying down on pavements in public but you won't get better at doing job interviews, dating or just having conversations with people.


----------



## 3stacks (Sep 27, 2014)

I'm humiliated just being me


----------



## Memories of Silence (May 15, 2015)

truant said:


> Tbh I think this is just another form of avoidance. You do these crazy things to humiliate yourself because it would be more painful for you to be a real person interacting with real people in a real way. You do this _instead_ of doing what you fear.
> 
> "I'll do this crazy thing and when nobody reacts I'll realize that it's fine to just be myself." Except this crazy thing that you're doing is not an authentic expression of yourself. It's just the mirror image of your anxiety. Your real self is still safely tucked away behind your crazy antics. And you know that, which is why you can get yourself to do these crazy things but you can't get yourself to do something normal, like smile and say hello to a stranger. You can always think: "Well, who cares if they had a bad reaction? That's not the real me anyway. That's was just me humiliating myself, so their opinion doesn't really matter." But it does still matter, otherwise you would stop doing crazy things and just be real.
> 
> ...


I agree with this.

It sounds like a fun challenge, and it could be helpful, but you'll be expecting people to look at you weirdly or react badly, and it won't be a problem to you because it's not the real you and you don't usually behave like that. When you're being yourself, you wouldn't be expecting anyone to look at you weirdly or react badly, so it would hurt you more if they do. You need to work on being less anxious about how people will react to the real version of yourself, not the one where people think you're drunk or are being the way you are on purpose.

This is a list I made and posted on here once of similar things you could do to what you've mentioned. I like thinking of ideas like this, but I would never do any of them:



> * Walk down a street with a bag of real or fake spiders, and start throwing them at everyone you see.
> 
> * Jump up and down in elevators.
> 
> ...


----------



## WillYouStopDave (Jul 14, 2013)

Humiliating myself isn't something I have to work very hard at. :lol


----------



## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

sorry but that sounds really annoying to be around... good for you to challenge yourself but if I was walking by I'd probably give you the stink eye.

I think more reasonable challenges are probably where it's at. Like engaging with people you normally wouldn't engage with. For me, it might be go to a local meet up and try to make small talk with people there. Or go into a live chat room and talk for 30 minutes. Message someone that I've ghosted and try to reconnect.

obviously everyone is different though and has different sources of anxiety, so if breaking social norms is your greatest cause of anxiety then yeah, I guess go for it??


----------



## Tetragammon (Jun 2, 2015)

Is this a real thing? It sounds like a terrible idea. Wouldn't being humiliated on a regular basis just make your anxiety worse?


----------



## Galen (Nov 20, 2018)

kinda sounds like a troll thread, jus sayin


----------

