A few months ago, I embarked on a month of loving my former self. Ever since leaving med school, I have experienced a boatload of guilt and/or shame on a semi-regular basis. Even after working through a lot of the issues that lead to my breakdown multiple times over, I still retained a cacophony of unpleasant emotional noise from the past. My diagnosis was that I held bitterness at this earlier version of myself and my prescription was basically an elaborate self-forgiveness challenge.

I learned and grew a lot from the challenge. I unpacked most of the various threads that lead to my unraveling and the unpleasant current emotions that had glommed onto each thread. However, at the end of the process, although I gained an enormous amount of context and compassion for myself, I still felt like the whole mess was largely unresolved.

My eventual epiphany was that the root of my emotional turmoil was not guilt, anger, anxiety, or bitterness (even though these were close outgrowths), but rather deep embarrassment. I think one reason this is the case is that with most of the other uncomfortable emotions, I feel a sense of familiarity and confidence in dealing with them, even if it is painful and difficult work.

A podcast episode I listened to recently (either from Modern Wisdom or Ten Percent Happier) challenged the well-known idea that all growth comes when we get out of our comfort zone. The guest coined the phrase ‘uncertainty zone’ and proposed this to be the place where the rubber really meets the road in terms of learning about oneself and accomplishing not just personal growth but radical transformation.

Embarrassment is one emotion I feel deep and abiding uncertainty in navigating. In fact, it was this emotion more than any other that led to my general feeling withdrawal when I was a teenager. It induces in me a sense of panic, of unworthiness, and a host of downstream emotional ripples. It turns on my fight/flight/freeze/fawn reflex to full capacity.

I’m struggling to even write this blog post, because just contemplating the concept of embarrassment unleashes a cascade of moments and sensations from the past that causes my panic level to start rising. This is the zone of not just discomfort for me, but an abiding and almost existential aura of uncertainty.

I would love to say that this understanding opened up some sense of release and acceptance towards myself and the past, but that is not the case. If anything, I feel like I have regressed to the age of 13 and am struggling to breathe through the murky and toxic fog of an adolescent brain.

However, one positive thing I have experienced very recently is a feeling of resilience. This has been cultured through my firm commitment to middle path in all situations, developing a daily practice of intrapersonal validation, and my trust in the meta-narrative into which my life fits.

It is from this newfound sense of resilience and optimism that I write this post. I’m not sure how I will learn to sit with and accept my Achilles’ Heel, but I do know that being honest about it is the right action for me in this moment. All life is a series of moments and I trust I will be able to take the small action necessary at each juncture.

Namaste.