Feeling ashamed about past social blunders

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At youth, I don't seem to have a sense of shame. As I grow older and more aware, I end up being more self-conscious.

Then afterwards, the social blunders reminds me that I can't be them. My sister asserts I'm not the only one who gets to have mistakes. But really, unlike me, theirs is short-term. Sometimes down right beneficial. They learn from social blunders, I couldn't. Or at least not yet. If I forced myself, it'll only give me an urge to slap myself.

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I also have flashbacks like this. They come out of blue, without any reason. They involve my past embarrassing moments. I can for example simply sit in my room and read but suddenly I see in front of my eyes a clear memory of how I did something really stupid. It makes me feel awful. I want to hit myself or hide under ground. That's a weird feeling. I know past is in the past and I can't fix what happened years ago and I even know everything worked out and people forgave me. But the feeling I experience falls outside logic and is unendurable.

I have a method to get rid of it as soon as it appears but unfortunately the method is similar to tics, or maybe those are tics triggered by the flashbacks? Can tics be voluntary?
As soon as I start feeling that way I either squeeze my eyes, shake my head, hiss or meow once. Any of those is enough to make the feeling go away, together with the whole memory. And after the tic I have trouble remembering what exactly the memory was about. All I know is that it was so intensive it made me tic and the tic gave me relieve. I can remember if I focus enough but I don't do it because I don't want the feeling back.

Fortunately it doesn't happen too often. Maybe a few times a year.

There are two social blunders that have stuck with me through the years. One was the incident that I've told my entire Grade 7 music in a very loud voice that the teacher was Gay, because I didn't know what to make of my own gender issues. The other incident was when I've told a science teacher at my high school that I really liked his shorts, because I thought his new haircut suited him.

In 12th grade I went to sleep during class while there was a guest speaker talking to our class. I seriously did not think it was big deal at all, considering what he was talking about didn't really apply to me anyway. But after the bell rang, the teacher said, "Can I talk to you in the hallway?" I still had no idea anything was wrong, and when we got out into the hallway he told me, "I am just livid." I was shocked because he didn't look mad at all. I almost asked, "Why?" But I was so confused that I just stared at him. He proceeded to tell me I was the most disrespectful student he'd ever seen. I was still genuinely confused, but I didn't want to make it worse by asking what the big deal was, so I just continued to say nothing. It wasn't until he actually told me, "He took time out of his day and came here to talk to you guys, and you just sleep through the whole thing." He proceeded to tell me more about how "livid" he was, and that he just could not believe I would do something so disrespectful. I just stared. Then he told me to go to my next class.

I was kind of mad, because I was still thinking, "Nothing he was talking about even applied to me, I'm not taking the AP test." But now I realize, it's not like he would have known that. And even if he did, I guess it is pretty disrespectful to sleep through someone's presentation that they specifically made for our small class. When I asked others about it they all said it made sense that he was mad.

Somewhat ironically, he was the psychology teacher. He was also the baseball coach, who told me after I went to one tryout, "You have about as much of a chance of getting on the team as I do becoming president tomorrow." No no, don't sugarcoat it at all, tell me what you really think I didn't really want to play anyway, I just wanted to be able to say I tried.

Yes, all the time. Especially when i think back about my time on school.

I do feel embarrassed by some stupid weird things I done in the past.

I'm not sure I'd call it shame, but I definitely feel extremely embarrassed about my past social blunders, and it hasn't got any less over time. None of it should matter any more. It's all a long way in the past, I've learned from my mistakes and I'm a lot more careful (and reclusive) these days, but I can't think of my blunders without feeling bad all over again, as if it were yesterday. I'm not going to give any examples.

I guess it's no great mystery. If we were robots then we would simply be glad of the information and use it to improve our performance, but for a human being to fail socially, that really feels upsetting. It's only to be expected that humans are programmed to take their social successes and failures very seriously, given the importance of co-operation to the survival of the species.

But if I get the feeling that somebody is just being plain rotten (taking pleasure from hurting others, or selfishly helping themselves to way more than their fair share of the cake), then as far as I'm concerned they are enemies, and if I hurt their feelings or weird them out, I see that as a good thing.....we're not going to like each other, so there's nothing to lose. I still wonder why rotten people so rarely get the crap kicked out of them.

Embarrased, ashamed - oh yeah.

Some of my social blunders have been spectacularly bad - to the point of my needing therapy to let them go and not obsessing over how badly I screwed up.