Are you blaming yourself when something bad happens? Do you find it hard to feel satisfaction even when you achieve something? Are you always finding your self comparing with others? (20 signs you are too self-critical)

Well, these signs might indicate that you are being too hard on yourself. You are a victim of self-criticism. While it’s perfectly normal to be mindful of your mistakes and work on them, but being extremely hard on yourself can be rather counter-productive.

Being obsessed with improving on your mistakes and constantly torturing yourself over mistakes can have adverse effects on your mental well-being. So, let’s go through in depth, to get a more concrete idea of the downside of self-criticism.

Effects:

When you’re criticizing everything about yourself, your self-esteem takes a massive hit. You don’t consider yourselves worthy of holding yourself in a high regard. Your confidence drops. You might also get overwhelmed with self-doubt in the future. All of these things can act as barriers for you in achieving what you want. In some extreme cases this can lead to not only depression but it can also lead to a person developing disorders, especially eating disorders. A person not happy with their body shape, might punish themselves by not eating. On the flipside a person who is stressed might develop an excessive-eating disorder to suppress their feelings. (Self-criticism and how to overcome it)

Another unfortunate outcome of criticizing yourself is that overtime you start to avoid voicing your opinion in fear of getting criticized. They don’t want to enter into the mental warfare again. This can lead to a person entering a toxic relationship and playing a submissive role, where the person instead of having a say in how the relationship plays out just follows behind the footsteps of the other. This can be very emotionally and mentally draining. Toxic relationships never end well, especially for the ones who are forced to play the submissive role. (Effects of self-criticism)

Besides these effects, in other cases when you are constantly passing degrading remarks to yourself, you start emitting a lot of negative energy. This affects the people around you, as being around you becomes very mentally draining for them. Of course, when the person next to you is always focusing on the negative aspects even when there is something to celebrate, people around you will get fed up and frustrated. And for good reason! This ultimately paves the way for isolation and loneliness, which only makes matter worse! (Self-criticism and how to overcome it) Loneliness and isolation have their own fair share of adverse mental health effects.

So if self-criticism is so bad why don’t people just stop? Why do they start in the first place? Well to fully understand this, we’ll need to jump into the causes.

But before we move on I’d like to invite you guys to please subscribe to or follow this podcast. This is certainly beneficial for you if you struggle with feeling unmotivated, feeling lazy, or you probably don’t know where you’re heading. Or maybe you know you need to get somewhere but you just can’t figure it out yet. Things are too vague. Things are chaotic. Your mind is just everywhere. You’re feeling confused. You feel left behind, you feel that you aren’t stretched within your potentials, or you feel like things fall apart. There are more for you in this podcast. I’d love to stay connected. So hit that subscribe button, or share this with your colleagues, your friends and enjoy the show. Create meaningful things for youself, do yourself a favour. This podcast will remind you: The world is beautiful.

Causes:

Do you ever just feel that after making a mistake, there is a ripple of negative comments brewing inside your brain? Self-talk and self-degradation instantly start In your brain! The same thing happened to me, negative spirals seem uncontrollable. (Wignall 4 psychological reasons you're so self-critical)

But what is the origin of this habit of shaming yourself upon every minor error you make? Let’s find out!

From our childhood, if we observed the adults around us to be screaming on top of their lungs, “Oh, I’m such an idiot!” or “How can I be so stupid!” after a mistake they made, what else can we expect from those children when they grow up but to be obsessed with being perfect. Or If you were constantly being criticized and told by your parents how you stupidly did something wrong, then you can also develop a habit to being perfect and scolding yourself otherwise! (Wignall 4 psychological reasons you're so self-critical)

Children at a young age are very impressionable and however we’ll treat them and whatever they’ll see around them, it is very likely they will carry that with them for the rest of their lives!

It's as if it’s instilled in us that making a mistake is something terrible, however it’s quite the opposite. We learn more by making a mistake than by succeeding.

Moving on, another reason people keep on putting themselves down is to “in their opinion” stay humble. They believe that to remain down to earth and humble in front of the public eye it is important to consistently criticize themselves. They remind themselves of their flaws and mistakes and then compare themselves with someone who doesn’t have those exact flaws. They do this in an attempt to remind themselves that they are far from being “perfect” or worthy of considering themselves as someone who they’re proud of. (Umm… Guilty!!) (Wignall 4 psychological reasons you're so self-critical)

But we forget that no matter what we do, at the end of the day you cannot control what people think of you! Another thing they forget is that to be humble degrading yourself isn’t a requirement. There is this brilliant quote by C.S. Lewis which I think can sum up what I want to say, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less”. (Wignall 4 psychological reasons you're so self-critical)

Solutions:

So having discussed how bad excessive self-criticism can be for you and how this habit forms, how can those who are struggling with this, overcome this habit?

When you’ll keep rewinding a mistake you made in your head, obsessing over it and call yourself names in the hopes of not repeating the same mistake next time, eventually you will tear yourself apart. Instead, channel out all of your frustration into something more physical to allow your brain to rest. Now it does not need to be boxing or MMA (You don’t need to break someone’s nose), but exerting yourself physically can allow you to convert your negative energy into something positive. (7 ways to overcome toxic self-criticism)

The next step is to be aware when you start to mentally attack yourself. It’s estimated that you have 60,000 thoughts in your head per day, that’s 60,000 chances of you trying to bring yourself down. So be careful! Then when you’ll start identifying those thoughts, try replacing them. For instance, instead of “I’ll never be able to do swimming because I don’t have the stamina.” Try to keep on thinking this, “I’m having a self-critical thought that I’ll never be able to do swimming because I don’t have the stamina.”. You need to recognize this pattern in order to break this self-criticism curse. Remember like I always say, in order to solve a problem you need to know what it is. (7 ways to overcome toxic self-criticism) (MA and MD Signs you're too self critical & what to do about it)

You can also try to be more compassionate the next time you make a mistake. I know it’s easier said than done. “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” - LOUISE L. HAY, You Can Heal Your Life (Self criticism quotes (69 quotes))

You can substitute the urge of calling yourself an idiot by giving the same advice to yourself as you would to your friend. Now, I know friends can also make stupid mistakes but you don’t call them stupid in front of them! Instead, you try to guide them and make them understand in a more calm and friendly manner. Why don’t practice the same thing with yourself too! After all, people should be friends with themselves! (7 ways to overcome toxic self-criticism)

Lastly, I would recommend you to be realistic in every situation. Don’t be overly critical of yourself in an attempt to not repeat the same mistake next time. Because as I have mentioned before numerous times, that’s simply not how it works! Remind yourself that there is room for improvement, but don’t tell yourself that you cannot do it! Also accept if you feel nervous at times, scared at times. That’s all part of the process of improvement! Assure yourself that with time you’ll be able to overcome your mistakes and improve in your craft! (7 ways to overcome toxic self-criticism)

Take everything step by step, and you’ll be fine!

Outro:

That brings us to the end of this episode! Thank you, guys, for tuning in to this week’s episode! As always, I hope this discussion on self-criticism we talked about during this podcast was beneficial to you. For me it was certainly enlightening, and I also learnt a lot while making this podcast!

Anyways, please let me know your thoughts on this episode in the comments down below! Also, if you have any interesting topics, you want me to discuss in the future episodes, let me know!

If you enjoy my show, please rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Spotify—and be sure to come back next week for a discussion of [next episode’s topic]. Until then, take care and see you later

Works Cited:

Wignall, Nick. “4 Psychological Reasons You're so Self-Critical.” Medium, SIMPLE, 3 May 2021, https://medium.com/simple-pub/4-psychological-reasons-youre-so-self-critical-daa3494bf7a8.

“Self Criticism Quotes (69 Quotes).” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/self-criticism.

“7 Ways to Overcome Toxic Self-Criticism.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201801/7-ways-overcome-toxic-self-criticism.

MA, Written by: Meagan Turner, and Reviewed by: Trishanna Sookdeo MD. “Signs You're Too Self Critical & What to Do about It.” Choosing Therapy, https://www.choosingtherapy.com/self-critical/.

“Self-Criticism and How to Overcome It.” Self-Criticism and How to Overcome It, https://www.betterup.com/blog/self-criticism#:~:text=8%20ways%20to%20overcome%20self%2Dcriticism,-Each%20day%2C%20think&text=Stop%20thinking%20that%20your%20self,any%20trauma%20you've%20experienced.

“20 Signs You Are Too Self-Critical.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-neurochemical-self/201602/20-signs-you-are-too-self-critical.

Effects of Self-Criticism, https://explorable.com/e/effects-of-self-criticism.