A reader asks:
I’m a fairly successful person and generally very kind and supportive with other people in my life. But I have this tendency to get really critical and judgmental of myself. I just don’t understand where this impulse to be so mean to myself comes from, especially since I’m not like that with other people… Any insights?
I think there are three main ways to think about what causes an unhelpful mental habit like self-criticism:
1. Inherited Causes of Self-Criticism
These are things like basic temperamental or personality traits that are largely genetic in origin. For example, people who are higher on the personality trait neuroticism might be at a higher risk for self-criticism. Or folks who have a perfectionistic streak in their personality might, understandably, be more susceptible to self-criticism.
2. Learned Causes of Self-Criticism
The most common learned cause of self-criticism is likely modeling, typically by a parent or caregiver at a young age. If you had important people in your life at a young age verbalize their own self-criticism, you might learn to model that self-criticism yourself.
3. Maintaining Causes of Self-Criticism
Regardless of what caused your self-criticism initially, there are very likely factors that are maintaining this tendency to criticize yourself in the present. And these are the only ones you actually have control over. For example, for many people, self-criticism is a way to distract themselves from painful emotion like regret or sadness. For others, self-criticism serves as a way to avoid uncertainty anxiety or fear of failure.
In any case, the key is to realize that if self-criticism is habitual for you, you’re likely getting something out of it—it’s serving some function by addressing a psychological need. And if you want to let go of this habit of self-criticism (or “put it out of a job”), you need to find a way to address that need in a healthier way. Almost always, this takes the form of increasing your emotional resilience by learning to validate and accept difficult emotions like sadness or anxiety.
Here are a few ways to get started:
- Learn to listen for quiet emotions. Section 2 in this article goes deeper on this idea.
- Practice emotional validation. Here’s a brief guide to get you started.
- Practice setting mental boundaries. This article explains more on the idea of mental boundaries.