The perks of being easily embarrassed
David Robson
A few days into my first job, a colleague walked into my teams office to complain about a situation with the toilet. I wont go into the messy details; lets just say that someones potty-training must have been a little askew. I have no idea why (I still dont know who had done the deed) but in the middle of her rant, I felt as if a small flame had kindled under my skin. Soon, waves of fire were rising from my chest to the crown of my head; my throat and my cheeks soon became mottled with a livid pink, while my ears were as red as radishes. No one actually accused me of the misdemeanour but their eyes said everything. They werent to know that I could flare up at the drop of a hat. In fact, looking back, it feels that I spent the whole of my teens and my 20s in a state of permanent embarrassment. Feelings of excruciating embarrassment may be crucial for your wellbeing in the long term Why do these feelings afflict us so acutely? And why did human beings evolve to display our discomfort so visibly? In my case, my reddening cheeks only caused me to seem guilty when I was actually innocent. Why did our cheeks evolve to redden in such a visible way to others? Even Darwin was perplexed (Credit: Getty Images) Charles Darwin was at a loss to find any silver lining to our embarrassment. It makes the blusher suffer and the beholder uncomfortable, without being of the least service to either of them, he wrote. BBC
