Self-criticism: Your best friend or your worst enemy

Today you had a big presentation in your office, which you have been preparing for the last few months, having devoted all your energy and attention to. And while all your colleagues are congratulating you and cheering your effort, you yourself decide to do the reverse, and instead of rewarding yourself, you answer with a critical attitude: "You could have said it better," "You were trying and the audience couldn't watch you with care," "next time they will assign it to someone else who can do better," "after all, you are useless."

Hearing this word turns into a torrent of severity in your ears, overwhelms your heart, and creates a knot in your throat. You feel so weak in front of a monster, which, with characteristic comfort and a commanding voice, without any hesitation, constantly criticizes you, activating your feelings of guilt and awakening memories and beliefs that are entrenched in you that accompany you throughout childhood and beyond your adult life, which, with each activation, create new mental cracks.

Parent role models

Your critical self made its first appearance at that tender age when your parents began to act as role models. If one or both exhibited elements of perfectionism and intense self-critical thinking, it is very likely that you copied the same traits, as everything is absorbed automatically and unconsciously, taking root in the subconscious and ending up becoming part of your temperament and subsequent personality.

Parents with high expectations

The pressure you felt was intense. It was like a vise around your neck, felt at every exhortation to fulfill one of their expectations: make the school football team or become a flag bearer at all costs. Their demands were high and clearly visible, even if there was no overt whining if you didn't make it in the end. The sound of their muted disappointment, however, was much louder than the jar breaking and shattering.

The bar was raised, especially if you were the eldest of your siblings or even an only child, as the sensitivity you had developed and your guilty self against your parents' expectations were at work incessantly. You adopted the concept of the "good child," the one who does not oppose anything and anyone, who realizes their dreams, who is their evolved image, often setting aside their own needs and wants, seeking, at unconscious mental cost for you himself, the encouraging and approving look of those closest to him.

Abusive parents

Thus, your frustration could easily turn into anger or sadness, sadness into fear, fear into anger, and even, in all likelihood, permanent. This is unfortunately the worst possible scenario. In this particular case, all the critical moods and the sense of worthlessness that you have experienced from your parents have now become your nature, your second self that haunts you. Now, as an adult, you treat yourself the exact same way your family treated you when you were growing up. Regardless of the reporting person or source, the results are the same. The external experiences that you collect throughout your life and accompany you in every step teach you to coexist and keep alive inside you, which effortlessly activates those voices that whip you for all your mistakes.

Whatever the reason, regardless of the answers you give to yourself, your self-criticism is fragmented, falls like a ten on a bumpy road, and takes root in your soul, while you are left wondering how you got this permanent partner. That's exactly where you're looking for the way to liberation!

Realize that self-criticism, not your behavior, is the problem you're trying to fix

What you must avoid at all costs is giving in to the belief smoldering inside you: that the only way to escape these voices is to share what they are "shouting" to you and to try harder and harder. Work harder, don't make mistakes, and do what others expect of you. This pattern will work temporarily. You will feel an immense sense of relief and peace of mind once you have achieved your goal, as the voices will be silenced but lurking until the next great expectation.

In the long run, this path will lead to a dead end because you are simply not perfect, you will continue to feel the pressure, and the more you blame yourself, the more the monster will swell before your eyes, performing a mad dance. But in order to get out of this maze, you have to train yourself to recognize all automatic negative thoughts, learn to gradually differentiate your cognitive process, and gradually change into a new "you"!

Separate the past, the present, and the future

What you must learn to do here and now is to separate the past from the present and from the future. When the whispers of the past start to tickle your ear for more, better, or stronger achievements, that's exactly the time to cut or get rid of the weights that were pulling you down, weighing you down, and reminding you of parts of your childhood that you wanted to leave behind but did not let you breathe freely. These weights don't have to be a part of your adult life.

Repulsion

In order to silence these voices, you must be in control of your mind, rather than it controlling you, by focusing on the cognitive process. To do this, you have two main options:

• The first is to visualize your critical self as a nervous dog that barks at your every move. In this case, you think that your critical self is trying to protect you and activate you against the impending fear of making a mistake. This is where you have to learn to tame the dog, telling him that everything will be fine because YOU ARE IN CONTROL!

• Another way is to visualize your critical voice as a child who bullies himself—that is, you! In this case, you gather all your strength and energy, stand your ground, and recognize, and record your negative thoughts and the sensitive patterns that activate you, focusing on the process and not so much on the content. What you actually achieve is to stand before him with courage and express everything you wanted and needed to tell your parents all these years. Every fear, worry, or feeling finds space and time to express itself, relieving you.

A new thought pattern

The next step is to replace the critical "messages" you receive with more positive and realistic ones. "I did my best," "even if I don't succeed, it's not the end of the world," "I'm a good person, and I'm proud of what I've achieved." These positive statements will make you feel better. Not immediately. At first, they will seem like theoretical statements without any background, but in time they will become yours; their sound will be familiar to you; the suspicion that they are true will grow stronger; and in the end, you will be ready to embrace them.

Because your critical self has learned to be guided by the rules and "shoulds" of your childhood, the expectations of others, and the demands of your adult life, every personal choice, relationship, reaction, cognitive process, and behavior goes through the prism of pleasing others. Be worthy of their expectations and not disappoint them in the slightest. As a "good kid," you try to live up to the standards set for you by others, while at the same time, you are invited to find the space and time to discover yourself and carve out your own path as you desire.

The point here is to take control into your own hands by changing the way you have learned to deal with your critical self. Accept your imperfection, the possibility of mistakes in your actions, embrace your guilty nature and tame it by instilling the belief that even if you don't follow what others expect of you, that doesn't automatically make you less "good" or "right' in the eyes of others. That's the only way your critical self can turn into your best friend.