Embracing the Cringe
on embarrassment, shame spirals, and accepting your cringe
The thing about being alive and actively choosing to live is that you learn there is no escaping “cringe” behavior. I have been cringing at myself since I was 2. My first memory of “the cringe” was while I’d been in church playing around the huge brown pews, my playful mother surprised me and I screamed in the middle of the mass. I remember the disapproving eyes of the church mamas and felt my stomach drop “how embarrassing.”
The cringe has haunted me for about as far back as I can remember. It boils down to the human need to be accepted by their community. In a way, I do think there is a purpose for wanting to integrate into the community. To a certain extent, we all learn acceptable behavior from places that allow those behaviors to flourish. On the flip side, we then face some form of outcasting due to behaviors dubbed odd or weird (or in more recent times cringe). This leads to what I’ve learned to dub as the shame spiral.
The shame spiral starts with one suggestive voice that tempts you to take a closer look at a part of yourself you cringe at. If you follow it down the first flight of stairs, it hooks you in your chest and drags you down a million more steps. You find that you are then left gripping your chest, lying in a fetal position, sobbing at all your perceived failures. Shame is a killer, one of the more potent ones. You should learn not to listen to its voice.
I’ve always been a little weird. I spoke in the ways my favorite characters spoke. I struggle with sounding relatable and tend to be more book character than an actual fleshed-out person. I saw manic pixie dream girls and felt an intense kinship. I have floated about in life as a fairy dressing up as a human and this has caused discomfort within communities that did not fit me. This experience of being othered used to cause me shame. I used to think this meant that I would never find myself belonging anywhere.
Enter embracing the cringe.
One of the wonderfully beautiful things about being alive is growing and finding communities that accept and celebrate you and your “cringe” behavior. I first learned that friends could be kind and uplifting when I was a freshman in college and I met one of the warmest human beings on this earth. She was my first college friend and she made space for my weird in a way that made me feel celebrated. She thought I was cool. I have never been cool before. Then through her and meeting her, doors of potential, previously shrouded by darkness were revealed to me. One of those doors led me to poetry, which opened more doors and eventually led me here.
So here’s a fun little exercise, write down a cringe list. It could be anywhere, a scrap of paper, the back of a receipt, your journal, or a notes app. But write it down, what are the things that you consider cringe-y about you or just general things that make you cringe a bit. As a show of faith, here’s a copy of mine.
I’m gonna be real with you, I winced so much thinking about these things. I physically felt the embarrassment and shame sink in. In the last few years, I’ve done my absolute best not to cringe as much. I’m proud to say that many things I used to feel deep shame about I have now made peace with and do with almost pride (see: performing songs I’ve written). I can also recognize that there are things I still need to work on as evidenced by my current cringe list.
My cringe-free list this week (things I enjoy that may be a bit cringe):
I’ve been watching Marry My Husband every week on Mondays and Tuesdays. It’s about this woman who has been a people pleaser all her life to the point of her demise. She gets another shot at life and this time around she learns to fight for herself and win. You can check it out on Prime Video.
I made a playlist of music that reminds me of being 17 again. This playlist is just full of nostalgia hits from a decade or so ago. And I may be aging myself, but we’re not gonna cringe about that.
I finally caved and started reading Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I have never annotated a book so much before even reaching page 50. This is a gorgeously written compilation of essays and stories deconstructing fairytales within the premise of finding the Wild Woman archetype.
I started watching Hazbin Hotel on Prime and I am loving it. This show centers on Lucifer and Lilith’s (yes, Adam’s first wife Lilith) kid Charlie. She’s trying to rehabilitate demons because Hell has an overpopulation problem and Heaven’s response to it is doing an annual extermination of demons. Cue musical hijinks, chaotic evil characters, and so much dark humor all told in pretty 2D goodness and you get Hazbin Hotel.
I hope this week’s newsletter inspires you to face and embrace the cringe. We cringe because acceptance is a craving we all have. And the cure to cringing is embracing the aspects of yourself that make you self-conscious. So embrace the weird things that make you, well you. We’re all a little cringe-y anyway.
Stay Cringe-y,
Dhan
working on my cringe list tonight <3