By: Isabella De La Cruz
November 5, 2026
Have you ever avoided doing something because you were afraid of messing up or embarrassing yourself? If you have, don’t feel like you’re the only one! A lot of people have described me as an energetic and outgoing person, but sometimes I get INSANELY scared to do something. An example is perhaps giving a presentation; I get so nervous to the point I start to shake. Suddenly, after my presentation, people come up to me and say I did an amazing job on my presentation. I always tell myself to be as confident as I can, so what if I embarrass myself? Life happens. In this article, I will be giving you a couple of tips on how to overcome your fear of being embarrassed.
I ALWAYS get the fear of embarrassing myself. I overthink and believe that everyone who saw or heard me will remember it for the next fifteen years. I know that’s very dramatic, but you never know! A saying I love to say is “If you avoid embarrassment too much, you might even avoid joy.” This has less of a meaning without context, I know. So let me explain it! What I mean by avoiding embarrassment is COMPLETELY avoiding doing a task. Say you’re SUPER into singing, so you decide to volunteer to sing at a karaoke open mic. But then, you start to overthink. You get afraid of messing up the lyrics or your voice cracking; now you don’t even want to go up there anymore! This is an example of what I'm saying.
A tip about how to actually OVERCOME embarrassment is going with the flow. I also like to think of embarrassing myself as a sort of “so what?” situation. Embarrassment is going to be a thing you can’t really prevent. In some situations you can, but an overthinking mind can also get in the way of that. An example of this is when you start to hesitate doing something you love! Say you’re amped to go up and pitch for Baseball/Softball, then you start to overthink as they call your name. “What if I miss the ball all three times? What if I don’t make the home run? I am probably going to knock the ball into the foul, I suck,” your mind might think. Don’t believe that! Overthinking is confidence's enemy. I say this because I believe overthinking diminishes human confidence.
“Embarrassment is an underexplored emotion - go out there and make a fool of yourself,” says actor Austin Butler. Holy moly, this quote hit hard. This is also absolutely true! I know I was mostly talking about how embarrassment affects one, but sometimes it needs to happen! What I mean by this is that even if embarrassment doesn’t feel good, it can also be a good thing to feel. Going back to the avoidance of embarrassment, this sort of connects. You can also look back and laugh when you remember…or scream from reminiscing.
This article is FULL of embarrassment! Seriously though, embarrassment is a real thing people struggle with in public settings. My examples for my statement show how we can overcome embarrassment and how it can cause good, but awkward, memories. Don’t be afraid to be human; put yourself out there. See you next time, Pandas!
