It’s not unnecessary. It’s a signal that you need to figure out that moment more deeply. It’s a signal telling you that at least one, possibly more, of the particular behavioral stupidities that led to the embarrassing situation hasn’t yet been figured out and changed.

The way to make the cringe go away is to go back and revisit the situation in detail, and analyze exactly what decisions you made incorrectly that led to it.

For example, I had a situation from fifteen years ago, with my ex girlfriend, involving sex with another guy while we were on a break. Every time I would think of that it would hurt so bad.

I took the above advice and revisited in tons of detail, and analyzed my own mistakes in the scenario. During this analysis I realized that my problem wasn’t the sex; it was the lying about the sex. I should have stopped pursuing her not because she had sex with someone else (which she had the right to do while we were broken up), but I should have stopped pursuing her right then and there because she lied about the sex.

Once I got that new understanding, that moment where I realized she’d just tucked that guy doesn’t hurt in my memory like it did before. Now it’s just a blank, flat, monotone part of my history, similar to “I was born in XXXX year and XXXX city”. It’s just basic data, not a highly charged moment of my past.

You don’t get cringe with all your embarrassing memories. There’s some stuff you did that was super embarrassing that’s just part of your early story, and doesn’t move your energy when you remember it. But certain memories — the ones with a significant emotional jolt upon recall — are like knots that need to be unraveled, and will continue to tug at the fabric of your everyday emotion until you do.