Why You Can Feel Ashamed of Something Someone Did to You

Being humiliated can leave you feeling as if you’ve done something wrong. Suppose a friend shares something you told him in confidence. When the subject comes up later, you want to disappear. The people who heard the story may have learned a private fact about you. The embarrassment you feel is a separate matter from who chose to make it public.

Start by separating the choices. What did you tell him, and what reason did you have to trust him at the time? What did he agree to keep private? Who decided to repeat it? If he’d kept similar things in confidence before, your trust may have been well founded. If you now see a warning you missed, that may change whom you trust next time. You still get to judge his choice to disclose it on its own terms. The choices deserve separate judgments.

You may also feel embarrassed about the private thing itself. You can examine that honestly. Maybe it concerns a mistake you already had reason to put right. Maybe it was something ordinary that became painful because you lost the right to decide who heard it. An audience can make a matter feel more serious without supplying any new facts about your character.

Justice applies to the account you give yourself. You can say, “I trusted him with it, and he told other people.” There may be more to the story. Let any additional responsibility follow from what you actually chose. Feeling exposed is painful enough without giving it authority to assign blame.