12 October 2022

What Do We Do with Criticism?

 Do what you feel in your heart to be right--for you'll be criticized
anyway.  You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
-
Eleanor Roosevelt


I used to let criticism rule my life, in a way.  Most of what I did, I did to avoid criticism just as much as I did it to accomplish something or get something done.  As with most things, of course, this dynamic resulted from the way that I grew up, but the fear of criticism decided to hang around much longer than my growing-up years.  Or rather, I made room for it and gave it a home in my life rather than banishing it to some remote place where I'd never have to deal with it again.

And it's still her in my life, to be perfectly frank.  I still have the fear of criticism as one of my more dominant motivators.  It isn't nearly as strong as it used to be, but my guess is that it's going to be around until the day I die.  My task at hand, then, is to learn to live with it so that it doesn't affect me in negative ways.

I think that my fear of criticism is strongly related to the fear of not being liked.  Somehow, I learned to associate criticism with people not liking me, probably because I felt that if I didn't meet their expectations, there was no way they could like me.

But of course, the source of my fear isn't nearly as important as what I do with it now.  I still don't like being criticized, but I respond to criticism differently now.  For one thing, I've learned that much of the criticism that we receive has to do more with the person who is criticizing than it does with me.  For some reason, they want to put themselves up higher than me, or consider themselves better than me, even if it's just on a subconscious level.  In order to get that feeling, the only strategy they have is to criticize me or what I do, to put me down in order to build themselves up.  It's a horrible strategy, but one that many, many people employ.

And if their criticism comes as an effort to make them feel better about themselves, then it should mean absolutely nothing to me.  When I recognize this dynamic going on nowadays, I'm able to completely reject whatever they have to say in favor of maintaining my own peace of mind.  (I think that being a teacher has helped me to develop this ability--the number of times I'm criticized because someone didn't get a grade they thought they wanted, for example, is quite significant.  Teachers are among the most-criticized people on the planet, in general.)

But the fact that I've learned how to deal with criticism hasn't changed the fact that I still fear it.  It's not a debilitating fear that causes me to break down or to experience great anxiety, but it is a very real fear that doesn't feel good at all when it raises its head.  I do my best to recognize the fear for what it is--something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's there anyway.  I accept it and let it be, and I do my best to make sure that the fear doesn't change the way I act or the things I do or say.  The most important thing for me is to recognize that the fear is involuntary--it comes on its own--so I shouldn't be upset that I feel it, nor should I let it control me.  It is what it is, and the ways that it affects me are up to me.

You will be criticized.  I will be criticized.  Tons of people on this planet have adopted criticism as one of their main driving forces, so they spread it far and wide in an attempt to make themselves feel somewhat superior to others.  Sometimes, the criticism will be justified, and in those cases we can use it to help us to improve ourselves.  Often, though, it will be empty, and in those cases we can recognize it for what it is and reject it completely, and move on with our lives.  It's not always easy, but it is always possible.







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