"We were outside by the courts waiting to play netball, she says. Somebody commented that I had hairy arms, one of the boys. Her voice wobbles. The incident was clearly juvenile; rationally, she knows that. Yet 25 years on, her embarrassment is still visceral, with the power to cause instant physical discomfort."
"After that pub outing, she started cleaning her house obsessively to such an extreme that it became one of the symptoms leading to her diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I've been known to spend four or five hours cleaning my bathroom, she says."
"Her chest again became tight; she was struggling to breathe. I thought I was dying, she says. The shame of receiving the email actually caused me to ring the GP and say, I need to come in – I'm having an asthma attack.' She managed to get to the surgery, breathless. They took my oxygen reading and it was fine, she says. It was a panic attack."
Jenna Turnbull, a 36-year-old civil servant, experiences intense physical and emotional reactions to perceived criticism and past incidents of teasing. A childhood comment about her arm hair and a casual remark at a pub gathering continue to cause visceral shame 25 years and six years later respectively. These shame responses have manifested in obsessive-compulsive behaviors, including spending hours cleaning her bathroom, and have triggered severe panic attacks. A work email containing an error, when corrected publicly, caused such extreme anxiety that she believed she was dying and sought emergency medical care. Her shame responses have occasionally led to self-harm, demonstrating the profound psychological impact of perceived social judgment on her mental health and daily life.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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