Breaking Free from Self-Criticism

I am sure you’ve heard the saying: “You are your own worst critic.” We tend to hold ourselves to the standards we wouldn’t hold our friends or family to. When someone we care about experiences a setback or challenge, we are compassionate, loving and supportive. However, when a similar thing happens to us, different rules apply. 

I must admit that I am the victim of self-criticism: I can be quite hard on myself; I can demand a lot from myself. Even though I am aware of this tendency, it doesn’t stop me from continuously setting high standards for myself. 

Looking at it from a broader perspective, both women and men struggle with the high demands society places on them, which can easily translate into self-criticism. 

In her book “Daring Greatly,” Brené Brown focuses on how we experience shame. Based on her research, she defines shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

Women mostly struggle with it in terms of perfectionism. There are a lot of expectations for women to be perfect, to do perfect, to look perfect. Perfect and natural: to be natural beauties, mothers, and leaders. We should be all of that but without taking any time away from other responsibilities. It’s as if all of these qualities should effortlessly manifest or magically happen.

Men on the other hand face the pressure of not being seen as weak. They are taught from childhood not to be afraid, not to show fear, not to be vulnerable. At the same time, they should be great and all-powerful. 

With such high expectations from the outside world, it is natural to look at yourself and come to the conclusion that you’re clearly not doing your best.

Part of changing how I show up for myself involved looking at my thoughts and making a conscious effort to replace those that no longer serve me. Why? Because negative thoughts put me down and I made a decision to embrace a more positive life. 

As with any changes you want to implement, awareness is the first step, therefore it was also my starting point. It took me a bit of time to catch myself when I was self-criticizing, however setting the intention to be more aware helped me to focus, and I began to pick up on my own criticism. 

The first step is to notice the thought. The second step is to assess how true and significant is that thought. Believe me, most of these thoughts are actually insignificant and only known to you since you know your standards best. Finally, the third step is to incorporate techniques that combat self-criticism. 

Here are the techniques I incorporated into my life:

• I come up with at least one compliment about myself whenever I catch criticising myself.
• I remind myself that I am doing the best I can with what I have. I’ve stopped blaming myself for past decisions. Yes, with the knowledge I have now, I might have made different choices in some cases. But at the time, I made a decision based on where I was, and I did the best I could.  
• Every day I write down 3 things I am grateful for about myself in my gratitude journal. I usually do this first thing in the morning to set a positive tone for the day and train my brain to focus on the positives. I challenge myself to come up with new things each day. If you’re wondering if that comes easy to me, not always. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to think of something new and great about myself. 
• I lean on the opinions of others about me. Some days it is difficult to be kind and see the beauty in yourself (we all have bad days). That’s why I started collecting uplifting messages from friends and family. I go back to them when I need to see myself with kind and loving eyes but struggle to do so.
• I ask myself, “Is this really helping me to have the best day possible?” As you might have guessed, the answer is almost always no. 

To be honest, self-love can look different from moment to moment. What’s most important is to honour yourself and make decisions that reflect how you feel. Perhaps asking yourself throughout the day, “How do I feel and what do I need?” could be an option for you. Balance it with considering your future self so that you don’t make decisions you’ll regret later on. 

My advice would be:

Make choices to behave and to think in a way that builds your self-worth not that puts you down.

Because every minute of every day, we have a choice: to choose to act in a way that is self-loving or in a way that is not.