Time heals but only if you let it
“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.”
Marcel Proust
When you have suffered reputational harm the potential healing that one would seek through the passage of time does not unroll in an expected way. There is no formula to recovery from disgrace. There is no promise that by this month you will regain the capacity to show your face in a grocery store or that by this date you will be able to look acquaintances in the eye with confidence. There are few factors that contribute to this lack of linearity but principle among them is that your reputation exists externally and independently from you.
If you have experienced a rather public or potentially public shaming you have likely spent at least some time in the immediate aftermath in a sort of hibernation. You avoid everyone and are intimidated by the most casual of social tasks out of fear that you might be confronted by one of your detractors. The idea of standing in an elevator with someone who either loathes you or pities you (and you won’t know which) becomes so threatening that you opt to stay home. In time though, you regain some strength. You challenge yourself incrementally to resume your regular life. Perhaps you get therapy, you join a support group, or you find at least one other person that understands you and doesn’t judge you. You become more and more comfortable being exposed to the sunlight of public life and you see that if there are people who hate you they usually keep it to themselves at this point. You live. You learn. You see that everything’s going to be fine, fine, fine.
But as you return to a sense of emotional stasis, the spectre of your disgrace still resides in the minds of others. Your progress is not as visible to society as your downfall was.
Even though you are doing at least somewhat “better”, you are required to accept that for some people you will always be the one who had egg on his face. There will never be a version of you story that doesn’t include your most spectacular falls and fails. The picture that some people keep of you might always be that of you at your worst.
Now, often we have to just accept that we can’t change other people’s perceptions of us and focus our attention on the relationships that are positive. But if reputation restitution is what you seek most from Father Time, there is more required than just riding the wave while the Earth orbits the Sun.
The best way to allow time to heal your reputation is by giving people new material upon which to base their evaluations of you. This CAN be done by dedicating yourself to doing as much public good but you have to be cautious that you don’t come off as pandering. If your service to society looks like a ploy to win people over than it won’t be as effective. That being said, even if just to give you a better perception of yourself, it’s not a bad idea to do better and helping others.
Take MLB pitcher Dave Stewart. He had a public fall from grace that led to his release from the Texas Rangers. It looked like the end of a once promising career. He eventually was signed to the Oakland A’s and played a significant role in the relief efforts after the 1989 Loma Prieto earthquake in California. His sins had been forgotten and he was hailed as a hero in his new hometown. It also didn’t hurt that he was pitching up a storm as well.
Just being a do-gooder might be a decent start but it will not be sufficient. Your best bet is to change the narrative from how bad your fall from grace was, to how well you are handling it. When the dust settles people will appreciate if you can remain graceful and confident even when disaster strikes. They expect you to hide and die in a cave somewhere so it’s shocking to see you smiling and laughing at the beach.
In a 2015 concert in Sweden, “Foo Fighters” frontman Dave Grohl fell of the stage and broke his leg in what was only the second song of the night. There was a brief intermission but he returned to the stage, seated, and finished the 26 song set while a doctor put a cast on him. There is a good chance that technically this was not one of his best performances. You certainly don’t expect your rock hero to perform seated and in pain. But by the end of the night, the story wasn’t, “OMG I can’t believe Dave Grohl fell off the stage and broke his leg!” It was, “OMG, I can’t believe Dave Grohl finished the set after breaking his leg! That was amazing!”
We can’t resist a car crash so when it’s you who has been involved you will inevitably draw eyeballs and it’s an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. People put themselves in your place and they think they would fall apart. You often hear people say hyperbolically, “I would just die.” They expect you to curl up in a corner and await your merciful demise. You have the benefit of living through the “crash” and realizing that although it is indescribably painful, in this case at least, it was not fatal. You can emerge from the fiery rubble and demonstrate that you still stand.
There will be some who love you and who cheer for you. They will see your resilience and be filled with pride and relief. Unfortunately, the odds are that these will be numbered in the few. Then there are those who fully expected you to be obliterated. They are divided in two groups themselves. There are some who, for reasons we will discuss later, revel in your suffering. It sounds like the plot of a simplistic novel but it is their nature to find pleasure in your downfall. Schadenfreude. Most likely, these are also a small minority so you will do best to ignore them as best as you can. Your real opportunity lies with the second group, who expected you to crumble but now that you aren’t they are unsure how to respond. These people are “win-able” but not through pity. Instead you need to tap into their empathy, not for you as an emotional person, as they couldn’t be bothered at first. The cost of supporting you is far too high for people to show public sympathy. No, your best bet here is to take advantage of the cringe they feel as they try and put themselves in your shoes and then shock them with grace, poise, and confidence. They are certain that they would crumble in your shoes so when they see you doing the opposite their cringe is replaced with wonder. Soon a few people start talking about how amazing it is that you showed up to the Christmas party or the PTA meeting. You may be tempted to take offence but this is a sign that things might be turning in your favour. If they make a big deal out of your resilience, double down and play it off like it was to be expected all along. Like the Foo Fighters you show everyone that while this wasn’t what you had in mind for your life you are still going to continue. The majority of people love to see this. They love seeing a come-from-behind victory because they want so deeply to believe that if they were in a similar position they would find a way to thrive as well.
Now that time has passed, you have done the work, not just to change internally, but to move public opinion away from your disaster and towards your recovery. While some have a sadistic curiosity that draws them to catastrophe, most prefer comeback stories. Time doesn’t heal by hiding your shame but by suffocating it with honesty and confidence.