Confidence

How to stop beating yourself up

Written by S. Belton

Published 3rd July 2018

If you often beat yourself up about mistakes you make, where you fall short, what you didn’t get round to doing, or how you should be doing more, then read on to find out how to stop this demotivating self-criticism.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

It’s a mixture of biology and how we were raised.

Basically, we have evolved from internal bodily systems originally designed to keep us safe from lions and tigers by ensuring we had another stress hormones in our bodies to make a dash for it. However, these also kick into action when we feel that we make a mistake, screw up - a modern-day 'threat' where our survival, for some of us, is more about social perception than survival instincts.

On top of this, how we were raised will directly influence the degree to which we will self-criticise. So depending on how we were reprimanded for 'failing' in our youth, and how much 'success' we had to achieve to gain praise, can be a factor toward these levels of self-criticism in adult life.

So depending on your past experiences of this with parents, teachers, or the culture you were raised in, you'll likely be striving for a certain level of success and perfection - as a way toward perceived safety and stability.

So knowing this what to do?

Recognise your self-talk

The problem with negative self-talk is that over time, it can become so ingrained and automatic, that most of the time you will barely notice you're doing it to yourself.

The first thing you need to do is start catching when you do it - and even better, start building an inventory of the most common things you say to yourself.

For example:

"For god's sake why did you get that wrong?" , "You should have worked harder on that","Why didn't you know that?!"

The list is endless – but when you do start noting these down, you might notice a theme or a handful of regular self-judgements particular to you.

A great way to help you spot these is to ask yourself - Would I say this to my friend? How much hurt and pain would that cause?

If you wouldn't, or you recognise it may be offensive to somebody else, try not to say it to yourself. Realise the pain you are causing yourself through this negativity - on a regular basis.

Switch your internal narrative to a positive one

We now know that self-criticism is far from motivating, and instead can assert your worries, and reinforce your insecurities.

This is the resistance I usually come up against when working with high-achieving clients, who believe that self-criticism is essential in keeping them going, motivated, achieving, creating the next thing, smashing through the next big barrier. They fear that if they let go of all of the self-criticism, they will no longer be motivated to achieve and be successful.

However, many psychological studies have all proven that the more self-critical we are, the less likely we are to achieve our goals, plus conversely, the more self-compassionate we are, the more able we are to achieve our goals.

The self-judgement you're hanging onto is likely to keep you feeling anxious, worried, inadequate and insecure.

Instead, you should start replacing each criticism you tell yourself with a dose of motivating self-compassion. This time, it's something you would say to a close friend.

I've listed some phrases below that I've given out to my coaching clients in the past, that I'd like to encourage you to take away to try:

"That was a really tough situation, you did do your best with what you had/knew at the time", "Ok, I may not have done great there, but what’s the learning for next time?", "I love and accept myself exactly as I am", "I am just human and a work in progress like everyone else".

Learn to be a comfort to yourself

As our fight/flight response can be activated through criticism, it's likely that we'll be feeling stressed because of the response hormones now pumping through our body.

An immediate way to relive that, and bring you out of that negative, is to physically comfort yourself. I learned about this technique from the queen of self-compassion Kristin Neff, in her book Self Compassion.

By doing something she calls a ‘hugging practice’ we literally self-sooth our way out of this response and all of the self-judgement that brings. Doing this releases hormones, which can contribute to reduced stress levels and makes us feel calm, content, trusting and secure.

And yes, I know it sounds like a weird thing to do, but with those benefits why not try?

Next time you catch yourself going into beating-up mode, literally give yourself a hug. And if people are around you or you're in a meeting, you can do this by folding your arms in a non-obvious way, and give yourself a bit of a squeeze. If that’s not possible, you could even imagine hugging yourself - this could be a enough to give you a little relief.

And know that you are good enough, there is no such thing as perfect - you are just human, and a work in progress like the rest of us.

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