The Importance Of Self Criticism

I am very nervous writing this because I am a perfectionist, everything has to be the done the absolute right way. So thinking about posting this and people reading it is frightening to me because I know my tendency to focus on the few negative comments over the multiple positive ones. It is so easy to focus on what you could have done better over simply enjoying what you did well. So here it goes.

Being a natural perfectionist, I thought my intentions were to do everything the right way. Over time, I realized that this wasn’t the case, and instead I was trying to avoid mistakes, mess-ups, and failures. This avoidance was caused by a fear of criticism. Initially, it was a fear of external criticism but I soon realized what scares me most was self-criticism. I realized that what I was doing was no longer enjoyable, it was simply to avoid self-criticism and fill the void it brought into my life. This void was present because self-criticism causes nothing to ever feel good enough.

While thinking about this concept, interesting analogies came to …show more content…
We think we are taking actions to becoming happier; we are actually fighting to stay afloat. We need these accomplishments to feel less bad about ourselves. For a moment it takes the pressure off of us versus actually making us happy. It is less of a negative, which does not mean more of a positive.

I used to always believe self-criticism was a good motivational tool. I felt it kept me in check; I realized that’s all it did. I was in check and not really making any mistakes. Was I living though? Sure, I didn’t do anything wrong, but did that mean I was doing anything right? Many people believe, as I once did, that self-criticism is an important motivational tool. There is a difference between a healthy sense of self-acceptance, realizing there are areas we can grow in and mistakes we can learn from, and self-criticism, being harsh on ourselves for having flaws or making