Rengganis Rizka Prasanti To some people, being harsh towards themselves comes more naturally than saying “thank you” to a compliment from others. The tendency to criticize ourselves and be harder on ourselves than on others is called self-criticism.
The American Psychological Association Dictionary acknowledges self-criticism as a form of evaluation of ourselves and the recognition of our errors, weaknesses, and shortcomings. However, it mentioned that this tendency may become a risk factor for psychological issues such as depression.
Why Are People Self-Critical?
Like some other personality traits, self-critical tendencies develop in childhood. How our parents interacted with us, enforced boundaries, and set down rules may influence the development of self-critical traits.
A study by Koestner, Zuroff, and Powers (1991) examined whether parenting style is related to the development of self-criticism in adolescence.
Through a longitudinal study conducted from the 1950s to the 1980s, the result concluded that some parenting behaviors, including excessive restrictiveness and rejection, are closely related to the development of self-critical traits as the child grows up.
This result can be explained through Bandura’s social learning theory. Since children mainly learn from observation, being raised by overly restrictive and rejecting parents will lead to them internalizing those strict demands and evaluating themselves in the same harshly critical manner as they grow up.
Are You Self-Critical?
Self-critical traits vary in degree from person to person, but generally, there are some traits indicating that you may have higher self-critical tendencies compared to other people.
1. You hold yourself to impossibly high standards
There are several types of self-criticism. One type of self-criticism, internalized self-criticism, is related to how someone constantly compares themselves to their personal, internal standards (Thompson & Zuroff, 2004).
A self-critical person with internalized self-criticism will strive for nothing less than perfection; however, at the same time, their definition of perfection is constantly shifting and will always get higher and higher.
2. You are impatient with yourself
Someone with self-critical traits also tends to be impatient with themselves. Since they accept nothing less than perfect standards for themselves, whenever they are met with perceived failure, they cannot be gentle with themselves.
If you’re self-critical, you may find yourself criticizing or getting irrationally angry at yourself when you’re met with a situation that you see as a failure or something you could’ve prevented from happening.
3. You blame yourself in difficult situations
People may show different responses in hard times. Some people focus on external factors, accepting that sometimes there are situations outside of ourselves we cannot control.
However, some others may find it hard to accept hard circumstances. Very self-critical people will find fault in themselves, even when things happen outside of their control.
4. You don’t like accepting compliments
Self-critical people aim for perfection and nothing less. They are perfectionists, but the high standards they have are for themselves only.
While being a perfectionist can be a good thing, for self-critical people, this means they rarely acknowledge their success and rarely reward themselves for a job perfectly done.
Compliments are something they won’t mind receiving, but deep inside, they don’t believe they’ve done a great job and strive for something more.
5. You dismiss your own struggles
Sometimes, we feel reluctant to be gentle towards ourselves when we go through difficult times, based on the fear that we might grow too soft.
For highly self-critical people, this feeling is amped up. You may feel that you get cold and judgemental towards yourself when you start struggling with something (Montero-Marin et al, 2016).
6. You have negative perceptions of yourself
Lastly, self-critical people tend to judge themselves negatively. Maybe you’ve struggled to pass a grade once and it made you feel that you’re weak, incompetent, or stupid even though you have good grades for other classes. You dismiss the fact that other classmates are also struggling to pass and you have a much higher standard for yourself.
Healing from Self-Criticism
To us, self-criticism may seem like something positive that can encourage us to grow and be a better version of ourselves, but at some point, excessive self-criticism and the tendency to blame ourselves and perceive ourselves negatively can lead to depression.
Self-critical tendencies may not be something easy for us to dismiss. Sometimes, all we need is the reassurance that what we’re doing is enough. Talk to us on HelloReyo about your struggle with self-criticism.
References
Montero-Marín, J., Gaete, J., Demarzo, M., Rodero, B., Lopez, L. C. S., & García-Campayo, J. (2016). Self-Criticism: A Measure of Uncompassionate Behaviors Toward the Self, Based on the Negative Components of the Self-Compassion Scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1281. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01281
Koestner, R., Zuroff, D. C., & Powers, T. A. (1991). Family origins of adolescent self-criticism and its continuity into adulthood. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(2), 191–197. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.100.2.191
Thompson, R., & Zuroff, D. C. (2004). The Levels of Self-Criticism Scale: Comparative self-criticism and internalized self-criticism. Personality and Individual Differences, 36(2), 419–430. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00106-5
