I Was Publicly Humiliated for Complimenting Someone's Work—And It Reopened a Childhood Wound

What Happened When I Finally Stopped Letting Criticism Control My Body's Response

I had an instance today where a childhood wound came to the surface, and I was forced to look at it as the adult version of myself that has done a respectable amount of work in the trauma and healing space.

The Original Wound

The original wound happened when I was a teenager in school. I began to share my opinions openly and ask questions in class just like everyone else was doing. The difference is that when I asked a question or brought up an opinion, I was met with responses from my classmates like,

Do you really believe that?

How could you be so stupid?

But it didn’t stop there. My classmates would make sure that everyone around them understood how stupid I was by trying to humiliate me. They would say,

“Hey everyone, can you believe what Nick just said?” and everyone around them would laugh at me and proceed to distance themselves from me like I was some sort of reject.

This didn’t just go on for a year. It went on for seven to eight years, and it really shaped my childhood in a way where I thought that my opinions didn’t matter, that I didn’t matter, and that I should stay silent to avoid future moments of being attacked.

This also happened again in my later teenage years with some family members. I would open up and express myself vulnerably, only to be met with insults:

“Well, the reason why you feel this way is because you have a problem not being perfect”

or

“It’s because you care too much about what others think—it’s a weakness.”

Even when I tried to clarify and let those people know that I was just trying to share a human moment and connect with them, they just couldn’t meet me with anything else except dismissing the point and further insult.

This reinforced the behavior that I shouldn’t say any of my opinions out in the open. Instead of asking questions when I didn’t understand something, I found myself researching quietly behind closed doors to protect myself from future harm.

Stepping Back Out Into the Open

Since those days, I’ve done a great deal of work on myself, and I’ve again become comfortable with stepping back out into the open to share my opinions and beliefs, which have inspired many people to continue their growth in certain ways. But occasionally, I come into contact with some of the same unfortunate comments that I received during childhood.

One of the more recent ones was when I shared a post online about chivalry relating to men and how good values have become a thing of the past. My opinion was that men stuck to their values and integrity more in older generations than they do today—you see less men holding the doors for women, picking up the check at dinner, and focusing on abstaining from pornography and giving their love to the woman they’re with.

After reposting this excerpt from an article I had read, I was surprisingly met by the author saying that she was being sarcastic.

The way that they said it was more attack-based. The comment actually read,

Clearly, no I didn’t know and they knew I didn’t because it was quite obvious from what I said from the way I complimented the post (see below)

So why bait someone then, talk down to them and try to shame them in the public eye?

I could’ve thought of five to ten other ways to reframe that question that would have actually started a conversation instead of just slamming the other person for misunderstanding their content.

I didn’t attack them initially in reposting the message. I just simply stated that it was a really good point and that men should consider focusing on the core values that were mentioned in the piece.

The author then took this initial compliment from me and made it public to her audience showing that I clearly made a mistake in interpreting their content.

The real question is, why would you do that?

Why do you feel the need to post this to your entire audience—the people who support you and will probably assist you in shaming the other person (me).

They then went on to change that article so it could only be viewed by paid subscribers.

Instead they could have simply messaged me and started a conversation to explain what they meant.

This is what reopened that initial childhood wound for me.

The Refusal to Communicate

I then decided to reach out again because I’m a communicator. I said, “Perhaps I misunderstood your initial context. Would you be willing to explain your meaning?”

Again we could have had a private discussion about it, actually communicated, and maybe even become friends over it since we’re in the same mental health space.

What I’ve realized in the past is that when you just shut someone down and act in a defensive manner, you’re refusing to communicate, which means you’re refusing to connect with your fellow humans and have a conversation.

What’s Really Going On Here In Society

We have become too sensitive as a species to our own opinions, and we expect to be understood and agreed with by just about everyone. In the event that anyone has a question about something that you say or—God forbid—disagrees with you, we immediately go into defense mode and try to shut them down or humiliate them, block them, and prevent them from attacking us. It’s a fight-or-flight response, and it happens so much in today’s society.

The problem is that when we act this way and we refuse to communicate, what we’re really doing is going back to a moment in early childhood where we raised our hand in class to answer a question, got it wrong, and were laughed at by our classmates or harshly corrected by the teacher in front of everyone. We learned in that moment that speaking up meant being humiliated, so we decided it was safer to never risk being wrong again.

What Changed for Me

There was a time where I would react the same way and snap at somebody that disagreed with me or try to insult them and put them down. After seeing this behavior come up over and over again, I finally realized it never made me feel good at the end of the day. I just ended up feeling resentful for the rest of my day or even a week afterwards, and I took this feeling in me as a sign that I was not working through this correctly.

I’ve since approached things differently, and now I’m always open to having conversations with people, especially when I misunderstand them or disagree with them, because sometimes those people end up becoming friends. If at the end of a discussion you still don’t agree with them, you can agree to disagree. There’s no reason to attack them or condemn them or ship them off to the ends of the earth so that you never have to see them or deal with them again.

Tuning Into My Inner Energy

I remember as a child when my fellow classmates would try to shame me or humiliate me, I would immediately blush and my body temperature would rise and I would start to shake. My heart would start to race and I would feel incredibly uncomfortable, like I was being attacked—only with words. This even carried far into my adulthood.

But when I really started to dig deep and do the inner trauma work and attend workshops, group meetings and therapy, I realized that I actually was able to work through these things and have a different feeling. These feelings were a result of me projecting those beliefs onto myself—that I was unworthy, and that I was stupid, and that I didn’t matter. Once I started to believe differently and believe that I was actually worthy of an opinion just like everybody else, worthy of love just like everybody else, and worthy of acceptance, these feelings started to diminish. I started to grow into my own power.

With this most recent example, as I was reading this author’s comment in real time, I remember tuning into my inner energy and realizing that there was an initial shock when I read this person’s comment. Normally following that shock is when I would feel all of those other changes happening in my body, but this time it didn’t happen. I was able to sit there and breathe through it and understand that my self-worth hadn’t changed. The love that I feel for myself hasn’t changed. Even if I was humiliated in front of a hundred people, it would still remain the same.

Instead of blocking this person and deleting my comment, I left everything up for everyone to see. Even if no one agrees with it, I’m comfortable with myself.

Notice how I’m keeping them anonymous, there’s no need to shame them and if you happen to find out who this person is, I ask that you not attack them because that’s not what I want. This behavior is childish and wrong and that’s not what this Substack is all about. It’s about highlighting real world examples of behavior to supplement change so we can adopt stronger values and ways of dealing with situations in life that from healthy angles, not harmful ones.

The Work That Actually Matters

I think that this is a great example of the work that we all need to focus on, because when we empower ourselves and remind ourselves that we’re just as important as anybody else, that we matter—it doesn’t just make you feel better and more understood. You actually feel less suffering through these moments.

This isn’t the last time that something like this is going to happen in my life. I’m happy to show that the work actually does matter and that you should always be willing to communicate with people and not avoid, unless the other person is just refusing to communicate and just wants to fling insults in your direction. Then by all means withdraw for your own sanity.

There also is no point in attacking that person and trying to harm them, even if they’ve done that to you, because again, this is the behavior that we’re trying to avoid. Hate breeds hate. Being willing to have a civil discussion is a more mature approach to actually loving yourself better and loving others better, and you can safely do that even if after the discussion, you decide you’re best off not communicating with that person further.

There is always a mature and an immature way to do things, and I feel like this story proves that point perfectly.

I’m curious if you can relate to any of these feelings?

Does this essay bring up anything that happened during your childhood?