If you are like me, self-criticism has probably given you a headache more than once. In my case, criticizing myself sometimes looks like an Olympic sport in which I have spent several years defending the title. All it takes is getting something wrong for thoughts to appear like "why couldn't I do this well?", "I failed at this crap again," or, on days that are particularly generous with myself, "always the same bullshit."
For a long time I thought the problem was simply being too self-critical and that the solution consisted in learning to treat myself better. I still think there is something true in that, but now it seems like an incomplete explanation to me. Self-criticism is not necessarily the problem. Being able to observe our mistakes, recognize our limitations, and admit that we could have done something better is a fairly useful capacity. The difficulty appears when we stop evaluating what we did and start using it as evidence of what we are.
Criticizing yourself is not the same as evaluating yourself
There is an important difference between thinking "I did this badly" and concluding "I am bad at doing this." The first statement describes a result and, at least in principle, makes it possible to investigate what happened. The second turns that result into a personal definition. If we also go from "I got it wrong this time" to "I always get it wrong," we have managed to turn a concrete mistake into a fairly pessimistic theory about our own existence.
The curious thing is that we usually justify that harshness as a form of demand. It seems reasonable to think that, if we stop punishing ourselves for our mistakes, we will eventually become complacent. I am not completely sure it works that way, however. A criticism is only useful when it contains information we can use. Telling myself twenty times that I am an idiot because I did something wrong can make me feel very guilty, but guilt and learning are not necessarily the same thing.
The question I try to ask myself now is considerably more concrete: "What went wrong and what can I change next time?" Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable. Maybe I procrastinated, I did not prepare enough, I acted impulsively, or I simply fucked it up by making a decision that, even with the information available, I could have thought through better. Recognizing that does not require inventing a kind explanation to absolve myself of all responsibility. It requires something harder: identifying my responsibility without turning it into contempt for myself.
The problem with our inner voice
I have also discovered that tone matters, although not because we have to talk to ourselves as if we were our own motivational coach. I do not need to look in the mirror every morning and explain to myself that I am extraordinary. It is enough for me to try to make what I tell myself reasonably true.
"I never do anything well" is almost never true. "I have been improving little by little" does not have to be true either if I have not actually improved. A considerably less exciting, but much more useful, alternative could be: "This went wrong, these were probably the reasons, and this is what I can try differently." It does not sound particularly inspiring, but it contains information.
Thinking about how I would talk to a friend has also helped me notice this difference. I probably would not hide from him that he made a mistake if I really believe he did, but I also would not use that mistake to make a complete evaluation of his intelligence, his character, and his future possibilities. Curiously, with myself I can do all three before breakfast.
Recognizing what works is also information
There is also a strange bias when we evaluate our progress: mistakes seem to need an explanation, while successes are accepted quickly and disappear. If something goes wrong, I can analyze it for hours; if something goes well, my brain has an admirable capacity to conclude that "it was the least I had to do" and keep looking for the next problem.
That is why recognizing achievements should not be understood only as a self-esteem practice. It is also a matter of precision. If I want to evaluate my behavior honestly, ignoring what I did well distorts the analysis as much as ignoring my mistakes. Congratulating myself (congratulate yourself, damn it!) does not mean convincing myself that I do everything incredibly, but accepting that a reasonable evaluation also has to record what worked.
Learning not to punish myself twice
Not long ago I went through a stage in which I was being particularly hard on myself. There were already external situations that were complicated enough and, without quite noticing, I added a second difficulty: interpreting every mistake as confirmation that something was wrong with me. It was a kind of double punishment. First there was the problem, and then there was everything I concluded about myself for having that problem.
I cannot say I have stopped doing it. It would be a lie and, besides, fairly ironic to write an article about self-criticism and then demand of myself that I have completely resolved it. What I have learned is to try to stop the process a little earlier. When something goes wrong, I try to separate the fact from the interpretation: what happened, what part depended on me, what I could have done differently, and what I am adding afterward simply because I am frustrated.
Sometimes I find something I need to change. Other times I discover that I am trying to extract an enormous conclusion from a fairly small mistake. Both answers are useful because the purpose of examining myself should not be to prove that I am better or worse than I thought, but to understand more precisely what I can change.
That is why I am no longer so interested in eliminating my self-criticism. I probably could not do it even if I wanted to. I am interested in learning to distinguish between a criticism that provides information and one that simply repeats a condemnation. I can recognize that I did something wrong, take the consequences, and try to do it better next time without needing to turn myself into the next problem I have to solve.
I still fuck it up. I still criticize myself more than I should. The difference is that I progressively try to make sure that, when it happens, at least the criticism is good for something.
