Do your friends make comments on how hard you are on yourself? Does it feel like you have always been like this towards yourself? Like it feels so normal, you hardly even notice it? Does it feel like you have all the perfect reasons to be hard on yourself? Like you’re not supposed to be where you’re at right now in life? You’re supposed to be further ahead by now, you’re supposed to have all this figured out by now, you should know better by now? Like you’d hate to think where you’d be if you weren’t as hard on yourself as you are right now? This article is for you.

This blog aims to outline what deep down, you might be gaining from cracking the whip on yourself and if you might want to reconsider whether this is a useful behaviour nowadays or if you’d even benefit from letting this go now.
There could be a bunch of reasons why you might be hard on yourself. I am going to outline 5 of them here. If you resonate with any of them, please make a note of it and bring to mind and note down recent examples when these reasons have actually been true, legitimate and accurate.
It helps you be better prepared.
Being hard on yourself, helps you solve problems, think of the worst case scenarios and plan out more well thought out solutions. If this reason resonates with you, you will believe that being hard on yourself is effective in being as prepared for the worst af.
2. It helps you stay motivated.
Being hard on yourself means that you care. If you resonate with this reason, you believe that if you were not hard on yourself, you’d be missing a crucial bit of fire up your bum to get moving and get things done. You’d become complacent and it would only be a matter of time before you’d lose everything.
3. It protects you from even worse emotions down the line.
The harder on yourself now, the less likely you’ll suffer so much in the future. If you believe in this reasoning, then you might have the ‘go hard or go home’ hustle vibe within you. Tough loving on yourself to protect you against loss, disappointment or maybe even betrayal.
4. It directly impacts the outcome of events.
For all the magical thinkers who have a leaning towards superstition. If you resonate with this, then you’ll likely believe that being hard on yourself will help you manifest the outcomes you need. So if something good happens, you might reason that it was because you were hard on yourself, and if you weren’t, then all that good stuff might not have happened.
5. It represents a positive personality trait.
Being hard on yourself is infused with your identity as a good person. If you resonate with this, then you’ll believe that being hard on yourself indicates that you really care. If you were no longer hard on yourself, people might think that you must not really care very much. People would perceive you differently, they might not trust you as much.
How many of these did you resonate with? It could be just one of them or it could be all of them. I really depends on the person, but its likely going to be at least one of these that are hidden-behind-the-scenes motivators for keeping you engaged in this endless self depreciating behavior.
If you’re interested in challenging this behaviour, we need to work on reevaluating the usefulness of it, by looking at the reasonings above and your personal examples.
1. Note down an example for each reason that you resonate with. Pick a memory where the reason was true for you in that moment. For example “there was that one time when I was hard on myself and it really motivated me to do that thing that I was putting off”.
2. Now, see if you can note down any occasion where the reasons that you resonated with was not true and it did not serve you in the way the reason described. For example: “there have been other times when I have been hard on myself to get what I needed to do done, and even though I really wanted to do the thing, I couldn’t get off TikTok and off the sofa”.
Even though these reasonings for being hard on yourself has the very best of intentions for you, I’m going to leave some reasons why each of the first five items listed above might not be true or effective. See what you think.
1. It helps you be better prepared.
Being hard on yourself might increase your ability to see the worst case scenario, but it could also be blocking you from conjuring up any creative solution too. When you are critical of yourself, you initiate the fight/flight/freeze response which limits the blood flow to that area, not leaving much for the pre frontal cortex. You’ll limit your problem solving ability this way. Trying a more compassionate approach isn’t just for the sake of being nice to yourself, its just more effective.
2. It helps you stay motivated.
Being hard on yourself might have been motivating one time, sure. A little pep talk to generate some fire and heat, but its not sustainable. This method is actually de-motivating, it depletes your energy and gets you wondering why you’re knee deep in a tube of pringles watching Love is Blind. If I were to wave a magic wand and remove your ability to be hard on yourself, would your ability to care and be motivated also vanish too? I think not. It would only strengthen it, and give more room for it to blossom.
3. It protects you from even worse emotions down the line.
This does not sound like a good deal. It feels like the whole system is rigged! If you believe that you should suffer now to suffer less later, then you’re suffering at least once, and maybe even twice! If you are critical of yourself now, and it still does not protect you from disappointment or shame or loss, then you’ve suffered twice. Or lets say that you don’t experience the feared outcomes, how long should you stay critical of yourself? Instead, practice letting go. Practice getting out of your head, and into the body. You might even want to visualize letting go of a balloon and watching it float away.
4. It directly impacts the outcome of events.
This also does not sound like a good deal and I would challenge you to conduct an experiment to see if it is true by completely dropping the behaviour of being critical of yourself. Stay open to all of the other possibilities and variables in the process.
5. It represents a positive personality trait.
Being critical of yourself could show that you have high standards, and it could also make people wonder or worry: “wow if they are so hard on themselves in this way, then what must they think about me?” It could lead people to want to reassure you or appease you. It is possible to show that you care in so many other ways than by being hard and critical of yourself. There are 5 love languages for example. Try showing you care in one of these ways instead. See if you can experiment with dropping the self criticism and watch how people respond.
Hopefully you can see how the inner critic has good intentions for us and may very well have helped at one time or another in the past, but a chronic overreliance of it can be really ineffective in getting closer towards where we want to go and who we want to become. Next time you hear that inner critic of yours, either out loud or in your own mind, thank it. Show it some appreciation for how hard it has worked up until now, and invite it to step aside and make room for other perspectives.
Reference
Dugas, M. J. (2004). Cognitive behavioral treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Hospital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal: Concordia University.
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