by Elissa Habinsky, M.A., M.S.
For a while now I have been wanting to do a particular shame attack exercise, but I haven’t. I thought that by writing about it, it would help me process what has been getting in my way, and by doing so publicly, it would further compel me to complete the exercise. In general, shame attack assignments are valuable as they challenge our desire to conform to social standards, as well as our need for the approval of others. Often when others express their disapproval of our behavior, we engage in catastrophic thinking, and ultimately question our self-worth. Thus, shame attacks help us discriminate between our engaging in a specific behavior, and our worth as a human being.
Personally, a pet peeve of mine is receiving and/or sending emails with typos. I become especially concerned when I think about sending an email to a person I respect that is replete with typos and grammatical errors. Therefore, my shame attack assignment is to purposefully craft such an email, and send it to a respected colleague or mentor of mine. However, just thinking about doing so results in my feeling very uncomfortable, and leads to a flurry of irrational thinking. I worry that the person receiving the email will notice all the errors and think poorly of me. I am not only concerned that the individual will think that I am poor writer, but rather that I am globally an unintelligent individual. This is surely an irrational leap. First, it is very likely that the person on the other end will not notice my errors. Even if they do, and somehow conclude that based on one email I am completely devoid of intelligence, I would be able to tolerate it. I clearly would not be happy, but I have experienced embarrassment before and will again.
With all this said, in order to help complete this assignment, it would be helpful to set a deadline and outline the specifics of the assignment, such as to whom I am going to send it, rather than leaving things open-ended. Furthermore, if this blog inspires you to try a shame attack assignment of your own, here are some famous exercises often used in REBT:
- Tie a long red ribbon around a banana and “walk” it down a busy street
- Ride a crowded elevator standing backward (facing the rear)
- Yell out five successive stops in the subway or on the bus
- Find a restaurant that offers “two eggs any style” and ask your waiter for one fried and one scrambled
