Is This Why You’re so Hard on Yourself?

Sometimes when you’re reveling in silence a certain memory or a certain epiphany pops up and it explains something you’ve long been confused about.

It’s like Alan Watts said, “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” When the mind isn’t (over)thinking, you get to a state of clarity, and it may just yield something you’ve long forgotten like it did for me today.

Maybe you had to deal with this as a kid, maybe not, but whenever someone would make fun of you and you didn’t like it, you learnt that in order to take the sting out of it, you’d just make fun of yourself.

As a result, the person who made fun of you didn’t get the joy of seeing you uncomfortable or getting to hurt you (or whatever their motive was). In fact, there was the added benefit of learning to not take yourself so seriously.

The reason people could make fun of you was because you had something noticeably different about you. But when you owned it instead of hid it, you learnt to accept yourself for what was normal about you and also what was weird or different.

Overall, it was a positive benefit.

Now, what I realized is that some of us took this line of reasoning and applied it in a place where it didn’t belong and would ultimately yield destruction.

If someone was being critical of you, you may have learnt that in order to take the sting out of others being hard on you, you could be hard on yourself first.

As a result, the person who wanted to lash out at you will either try to calm you down, say what they want to say without venom or say nothing at all.

They might still try to hurt you but when you agree with them and continue to hurt yourself, you have the power and they just look like a parrot mindlessly saying nothing of value. They’re just repeating what you’ve already said.

In my moment of clarity today I remember when I was a kid and I realized this “trick.” I thought I was a genius. Now, I can still appreciate that it was somewhat smart because I needed something to protect myself from getting hurt by others. But ultimately, I had no idea what I was about to do to myself.

Sure, my theory was proven right. People weren’t as mean to me anymore. Some were even conciliatory. That was nice. Too bad I was getting rewarded for being mean to myself.

Eventually after people grew up and started to deal with their problems in more responsible ways, I did not let my habit of self-criticism go. As a matter of fact, it gained a life of its own because it would wreak havoc in my mind and I just went along with it.

In trying to beat people to the emotional punch, in trying to ensure no one could take their pain and push it on me, I had become the very thing I hated.

Nothing was ever good enough anymore. Whatever I did, wherever I was, whoever I was or whoever I was with, however, I went about it and whenever it was done was always met with judgment.

Even though time would prove that certain things had to go the way they did and that sometimes things happened at exactly the right time, it didn’t matter. Not only would I criticize myself, I could never give or take compliments.

Whether it was from others or from myself, it was odd to hear something positive if it wasn’t pity. Yes, pity used to be positive to me.

Then there’s the hilariously ironic point where I had built up such a reservoir of self-criticism that I could no longer take criticism from others, whether it was constructive or destructive. I had become more fearful of negative treatment than ever before.

The very “trick” I had used to get myself out of trouble was now getting me into trouble.

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Eventually, I would learn how to get out of this way of being but it was a gradual process. It started when I kept hearing more and more of my friends tell me that I was constantly beating myself up.

My mind knew they were right but I thought that these same people weren’t being hard enough on themselves. As if that was the point.

Fortunately, I heeded their warning and started to watch my mind more diligently. If an nonconstructive thought popped up, it was eliminated. I simply stopped feeding it attention. I didn’t hate on the thought, I just refocused on whatever task I had to do. Other times I would replace the negative thought with a positive one.

As I said, it was a gradual process but it is one I’m still on. After all, ending a bad mental habit that you started when you were still a single-digit age is going to take some time.

But if you also did the same thing I did or you also struggle with self-criticism, I hope you begin the journey soon. And if you’ve already started, keep going. It gets better and better.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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