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Excessive self-criticism
The ability to see a mistake in one's own behavior and the willingness to make a change in a positive direction is one of the indicators of a healthy self-regulatory mechanism - the engagement of a part of the personality that has value and moral criteria, which evaluates whether our actions have caused some kind of injury to us or to someone from the environment .
Adequate, constructive criticism refers to a person's behavior, provides a chance and invites the other party, through suggestions, to change a certain element for the better, with the aim of maintaining and improving the quality of the relationship between two or more people.
When an individual believes that his actions are unquestionably correct, that due to special abilities and talents he cannot make a mistake, that what he does cannot hurt others or cause an unfavorable outcome - such an attitude could be said to have narcissistic elements. It is a kind of extreme, because in seeing himself as a valuable human being, he has difficulty integrating positive character traits and flaws into a whole, so it happens that he refuses to recognize objective failures as such.
The other extreme is excessive self-criticism. It exists when an individual often analyzes his actions with the impression that he did something bad or not good enough. It exists in people who, when they receive recognition for their work, do not experience satisfaction; when due to mistakes from the past, a person can come to the opinion that he is bad or incompetent, that because of this, future actions will always have some flaw, that this flaw will be noticed by others and that the individual will be rejected because of it. Thus, a "vicious circle" of thinking "I am bad and incompetent, and in the future the same will be shown, because there is an irreparable flaw in my identity" can arise. Such a conclusion is logically incorrect because it is based on untrue premises (generalizing attitudes that interpret traits and behaviors as immovable characteristics over time). As an effect of this type of thinking, psychological problems can be maintained, such as, for example. feelings of guilt and depression.
If one were to look for an example of what someone prone to excessive self-criticism looks like, it could be: a musician who after a concert focuses on what could have been played better instead of the praises he receives from the visitors; an employee who, after a successfully completed job and despite positive feedback, worries about whether he has dressed well, questions how his voice sounded, focuses his attention on a colleague who didn't say anything, and it becomes a topic to which time is devoted, and the result is that the person on the occasion after the successful event, she feels worried and blames herself for making the alleged mistakes.
Some of the guidelines that can be applied when fault-finding is the dominant way of approaching the analysis of one's own behavior are:
1. Distinguish between personality and procedure
Self-acceptance, among other things, means that a person can accept that he made a mistake - in a way that does not punish him, but draws a lesson and a constructive conclusion. From what he considers a mistake, from situations where he thinks he did not behave well, he can get to know himself better - the task is to understand why he behaved in a certain way. When he has an experience behind him that he is not satisfied with, he can have a guideline and think about how to behave differently in the future in similar circumstances.
When an error is observed where it objectively does not exist, a phenomenon that the environment does not recognize as such, space is left to redefine the error criterion. Emotions of anxiety and guilt can interfere with the process of realistic perception, and then the task is to psychologically work through the emotional obstacles that maintain the problem.
A decision from the past can be seen as a mistake from the perspective of the present. In order to have a more adequate understanding of one's own experiences and actions, it is useful to return to the decision-making situation - to remember the emotional state and understand one's own motives at the moment when the decision was made. There is a possibility that the person had a good intention, but the final result did not turn out to be good for him or others. It is necessary to notice the difference between the phenomena: intention and behavior, desire and the way to satisfy the desire. From mistakes, we learn how to approach what we want to achieve and get - how to choose an adequate way, so that we are satisfied with the overall outcome.
2. To notice the positive elements of the whole
By constantly looking for mistakes and self-blame, we leave no room to notice positive events around us, personal talents and skills, positive elements and effects of what we do. Emphasis on the positive elements of the whole, for a person prone to excessive criticism, is a shift towards a realistic perception of oneself, one's behavior and actions. The point is not to, figuratively speaking, "wear rose-colored glasses when looking at the world", but rather to exaggerate negative results or look for mistakes where there are none, not to miss the opportunity to invest time and energy in constructive content.
3. Praise
In relation to oneself, for experiences of satisfaction with what has been achieved and purposefulness, it is very useful for the part of the personality that evaluates and evaluates to praise the part that realizes, creates, creates. Instead of recycling unpleasant memories, we can look back and list: What did we do well today? What positive things happened to us today? What is the minimum situation we are proud of? When we catch ourselves entering a process of self-blame, we can ask the question, "What did I learn from this situation?" When we learn the lesson, we can leave the mistake behind.
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