Episode Highlights:
- Michelle explains the etymology of "mortified" comes from the Latin word for death, describing it as "I did something so bad, so disgusting, that I just died a little," and notes the mortifying feeling makes you want to curl up small to avoid others' judgment
- The hosts reflect on how life experience reduces mortification, with Michelle noting she hasn't felt truly mortified since her teenage years when identity is still forming and stakes seem higher, raising her empathy for young people navigating this intense emotion
- Heather distinguishes mortification from embarrassment by noting intentionality - getting caught cheating on a test in high school created mortification because she knew she "was better than that" and had acted against her own integrity
- Tina shares being mortified in her early twenties when a manager's "joke" led her to ask restaurant customers to leave, resulting in complaints and feeling she'd "ruined their night," describing the classic response of going into the walk-in cooler to cry
- The conversation emphasizes curiosity as a resilience mindset for mortification and highlights self-soothing techniques like comfortable blankets, favorite tea, pleasant scents, or showers - small sensory experiences that bring you into the present with pleasant sensations when you don't have "your mommy to come and snuggle you"
Podcast theme music by Dubush Miaw from Pixabay
This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
This episode is sponsored by
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/
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Episode Transcript
Do you have trouble talking about your feelings.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You're not alone.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's a topic that can make even the most.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Powerful people somewhat squeamish.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
You're listening to Feelings Matter, where our mission is to
demystify everything about emotions so that we can all get
more comfortable in talking about them. Joining Heather, Tina and
Michelle as we unpack a new angle on emotions and
the psychology of human nature.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Feelings Matter. Welcome to Feelings Matter. I'm Michelle Stinconerellas.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I'm a teena Schwegger, and I'm Pather Hampton.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The emotion I have is mortified, and it actually lives
in the same family with revulsion. They both live in disgust.
One of the things that came up for me when
I was thinking about mortification, and I'll get to the
definition in just a moment, is that sense of embarrassment
(01:14):
and shame in that Usually something like embarrassment, mortification and
those sorts of things show up because of something I did.
I'm feeling this because of a choice that I made,
whereas in the case of revulsion, I'm feeling that because
of some outside stimulus. If I could make that distinction,
(01:36):
so In the case of mortified, the definition here is
feeling so incredibly humiliated that you may have lost your dignity.
Questions to ask, have you noticed a significant impact on
your self esteem or your self confidence as a result
of a particular event or experience, Again that sense of, Oh,
(01:57):
I just really damaged myself self my sense of self
in some way. Are there basic triggers or reminders that
constantly bring back feelings of shame or embarrassment? Have you
recently experienced a situation where you felt extreme embarrassment or humiliation?
(02:19):
And because mortification, feeling mortified lives in disgust, a lot
of the same techniques are applicable to mortified, that sense
of needing to distract yourself or soothe yourself, or reframe
or get curious. I was thinking about this, and, like
(02:40):
I said, I went completely word nerd on this emotion.
Because the word mortified is its etymology is Latin mort f.
So the root of this word, at least within the
(03:00):
English language, it comes from that sense of I did
something so bad, so disgusting that I just died a
little is really what mortification is. And I got to
think about it, that one's one of those that again,
I would feel so intense if I really went beyond
(03:21):
just being embarrassed to the point that I couldn't laugh
at off, then my next option, at least in my mind,
is to just curl up and make myself tiny so
that I'm no longer exposed to other people's judgment. I'm
judging myself as really poorly if I'm mortified, But I
(03:44):
also don't want to be exposed to other people's judgment
at that point. And I brought up the life experience
thing because I've sat here for several minutes thinking when
was the last time I actually felt mortified, And in
all honesty, I would have to say probably not since
(04:07):
I was a teenager when I didn't have as much
life experience, when it seemed like the stakes of life
just overall are much higher, and honestly, our sense of
identity in our teenage years it's still forming. And so
when you're not entirely certain of who you are, yeah,
(04:30):
I can understand why you might feel mortified at something
that you did or something that happened to you, because
oh my god, what does this mean for who I
am as a human being? Or you're still trying to
suss that out. It was an interesting check on just
me and my life history to think, oh my gosh,
(04:52):
I haven't felt mortified in everything time. But it also
raises my level of empathy for my children, my nieces
and nephews and my friend's kids who have not had
that life experience yet and need extra support that yes,
(05:19):
there are things that you can do and say, and
maybe as a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year old, the toilet
paper sticking to your clothes or whatever could be mortifying.
Oh my god, everybody just saw that. Now everybody thinks
I'm an idiot and just going down that path of
(05:40):
killing yourself. There's a degree of when you experience mortification,
yourself talk becomes so killing that you're actually you kill
your own soul to try and work your way through it.
And I have so much empathy and I definitely would
(06:02):
be like, you know what, I see you. I can
understand why you feel that way, and let's just sit
and talk about that, because life experience tells me that
the stakes aren't that high.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Feelings matter is brought to you by feel wise.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Most people can identify three emotions sad, mad, and glad,
but there are over one hundred and.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Fifty six ways to truly express how you feel. Feel
Wise tools help you.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Build your emotional vocabulary and transform understanding into action. Discover
the language of emotions on the feel wise website at
bitley slash feel wise that b it dot l y
slash f e E l w s see feel wise.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Turn emotional awareness into your superpower. Yeah, what do you think, ladies?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
For me, the word mortified has like an intentionality around
the behavior that caused that feeling. So here's my feeling
is if you don't step on toilet paper in the
bathroom and you don't notice, you didn't intend to do that,
that's embarrassing, right, and you could feel a shame. I
(07:35):
have a pretty healthier relationship around shame, so I don't
feel shame very evilly. It has to be pretty bad.
But for me, mortified is that marriage of shame and embarrassment.
And to feel shame for me, I have to have
done something intentionally like that. I thought maybe I was
going to get away with and then I'm caught, and
(07:58):
so then I I'm ashamed of myself and embarrassed of
my behavior, and like you and sh I'd reflect on
this the last time I remember feeling that was when
I was a junior in high school and I got
caught cheating on the test where everyone in the class
had gotten the answers. I actually had studied the material
(08:20):
and didn't need the answers, but I had them, and
I panicked on one question and I peeked at an answer,
and I got caught, and no one else in the
class where everyone had the answers, got caught. And I
was mortified in that moment because I knew I was
better than that. I knew I could have passed that
(08:41):
test without having the answers, and I did it anyway,
and shame on me. And there was a huge cost
to me for doing that, having to face my parents
and all those kinds of things. But I haven't. I
don't feel like I act negatively with intention in my
(09:02):
life now these days, which is great. So mortification is
not something that I'm happy to say that I experience
very often.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Oh my gosh, goes to the twenties, like my kind
of early twenties. But it was behavior that I was
tricked into doing that could have been seen as intentional.
So I think you're onto something with that. I was
a waiter at a restaurant and there was a table
(09:34):
camping and just like staying there for a really long time,
and there was a huge party that had been waiting
forever and ever. And the manager came up to me
and he said, would you go and ask that table
if they wouldn't mind paying out because we have this
group of forty that's been waiting for a while. And
(09:56):
I was like okay, and I went over and I
was like, Hey, we have this party of forty that's
been waiting for a long time. Would you guys mind
paying out? And they got really pissed and then they
complained to the manager about me, and then the manager says.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I was just joking.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
You should never say that to a customer. Eh. It's
one of those moments that like if you've ever been
a waiter and like you go into the walk in
and you're just crying, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So yeah, it was mortifying, and it.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
Was like I felt so bad because like that table
was just like they thought I had gone in there
and just tried to ruin their night by asking them
to leave basically, And it was I'm sure that the
manager probably like looking back, he could have been serious
and then just was trying to pass the buck when
(10:51):
I was like, I'm they're pissed. Yeah, mortified in my twenties.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, there's a lot of energy in that word, right,
a lot of challenging, negative energy that can spiral really easily.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
That there is that sense of a little bit of dying,
a little piece of be just shriveled up and we're
just wilted. It's interesting things about a mindset of curiosity
is what you need to be resilient when it comes
to you being mortified, and you know what, it's okay
(11:30):
to soothe yourself. That's one of the options that you
can take, a mindfulness technique where you just take some
time because that level of disgust and shame, that little
bit of like personal death, that's pain. You're hurting, and
it is perfectly all right to step away and just
(11:51):
soothe yourself for a little bit, find some way to
remind yourself that you know what, that was horrible. Yes,
not gonna lie, but at the same time, it didn't
kill you. You're gonna get through this. It's gonna be okay.
The sun's still gonna come up tomorrow. I think soothing
(12:15):
in relation to mortified is extremely helpful.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, I think for me it was a really important lesson.
Is horrible as it felt in the moment, but the
fact that I felt so bad in violating my own integrity,
I think was a key learning moment for me that
my integrity means everything to me, and when I work
(12:44):
in opposition, I don't feel right in my heart and soul,
and whether if anyone knows about it or not, and
so I just need to continue to work to be
my word and or that in myself.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
I love that tying it into integrity is very poignant.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I love it that Tina like just grabbed a blanky
when I mentioned sooth. Yeah, since I brought it up, Tina,
what are some practical things you can do to soothe yourself?
I obviously the tactile of the blanket, but what are
some other options for soothing?
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Yeah, that's a good question. It's similar to like when
you're in grief, and then that soothing is tied to
like self compassion, So when it comes compassion to yourself
and when you're in a time of grief, sometimes it's
what can I do in the next five minutes that
will help myself feel better? And They can be very small,
(13:50):
very simple things like lighting a candle to enjoy the scent.
It could be getting in a shower. For me, sometimes
soothing is just making sure my body temperature is the
way that I like it, making sure that I'm under
a very comfortable blanket, or I have a nice cup
of my favorite tea. It's the small, simple things that
(14:14):
can bring you into the present with a small, pleasant
sensation that can be very soothing. Especially as an adult
when you don't have your mom your mommy to come
and snuggle you up and tell you it's all going
to be.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Okay, you can find little moments to yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Thank you so much for expanding on that.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
A little bit.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, I love it that soothe is one of those
that it requires some sort of physical sense, whether it's
smell or touch, or like you said, the temperature, the
experience of the shower. I love it that all of
it's very much tuned into our senses. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
Yeah, that's a mindfulness component of soothing, being.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Present to that those sensations.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
We can end it on a positive note.
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