Rather than being your own tormentor, choose to become your best ally.
- Self-criticism is that little inner voice that allows you to evaluate yourself, to identify your own errors, limits and faults in order to improve.
- When it is excessive, it leads us into a spiral of self-depreciation where thoughts focus only on failures and weaknesses, overshadowing successes and qualities.
- Self-compassion is the best antidote: by learning to treat yourself with the same kindness, understanding, and empathy that you would offer a good friend, you encourage an attitude of kindness and support toward yourself.
Self-criticism is a double-edged sword. It can both stimulate self-improvement but also become destructive when it focuses disproportionately on flaws.
Self-criticism: what is it?
Self-criticism is that little inner voice that allows you to evaluate yourself, to identify your own errors, limits and faults in order to improve. In its constructive form, it encourages personal learning and skill development.
However, self-criticism can easily drift into merciless and incessant self-judgment. Instead of being a lever for progress, it turns into a source of stress, anxiety, and personal devaluation. It then causes unrealistic expectations and an inability to accept human imperfections.
How to recognize harmful self-criticism?
Excessive self-criticism leads to a spiral of self-depreciation where thoughts focus only on failures and weaknesses, overshadowing successes and qualities. Constant rumination on past mistakes, excessive sensitivity to criticism, and the tendency to minimize or ignore one’s accomplishments are signs of harmful self-criticism.
The consequences can be significant since excessive self-criticism can limit fulfillment and fuel a constant feeling of personal dissatisfaction. Doing personal work to recognize the roots of this self-criticism can be the first step to understanding that this tendency to harm oneself is neither necessary nor beneficial for one’s personal growth.
Practice self-compassion to overcome self-criticism
Self-compassion is the best antidote to the effects of excessive self-criticism. By learning to treat yourself with the same kindness, understanding, and empathy that you would offer a good friend, you encourage a caring and supportive attitude towards yourself.
In practice, you can, for example:
• Simply observe your thoughts and feelings without criticizing them.
• Write down what you would say to a friend in a similar situation to yours.
• Give you a hug to comfort you.
• Celebrate every little success along your path.
• Ask yourself what the experience teaches you.
By integrating these exercises into your daily life, you will begin to see changes in the way you treat yourself and therefore in your quality of life.
Learn more: “Self-compassion: A method for freeing ourselves from thoughts and emotions that harm us” by Christopher K. Germer.