2 Ways to Move Past Your Fear of Being Criticized

"Our relationship with criticism and negative feedback is shaped by many factors: our relationship with our parents, early childhood experiences, our personalities, peer influences, etc.

Here are two reasons why you may feel you are thin-skinned and what you can do to reframe your perspective.

1. Know about the negativity bias.

Have you ever felt like someone could compliment you nine times, but you would only care when they criticize you on the 10th instance? This tendency is referred to as the "negativity bias." The negativity bias is at play when we react more readily to negative stimuli, recall negative memories more clearly, and focus more on the negative aspects of an experience. It is our biological and genetic compulsion to magnify and dwell on the negatives.

This isn’t just true for the ones receiving the feedback. People are also giving in to negativity bias when they use sharper words or indulge in hyperbole when expressing dissatisfaction because they know that negative feedback is more effective and yields faster results.

Keeping this example in mind, here are three ways you can deal with unfavorable feedback:

1. Get clarity. Ask questions, get written feedback, or just ask someone for more details on how you can do better. Getting specific about what prompted the negative feedback will help you not feel powerless in the face of it. It will also feel less permanent.
2. Focus on the positives. Instead of reacting to the feedback at face value, take a beat to consider what it’s really asking for.
3. Practice mindfulness. A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science explains that mindfulness—the mental state achieved by focusing on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings—can not only help us see the negatives and positives equally, but it can also help us view the negatives in an optimistic light.

2. Don’t let fear hold you back from taking risks.

A fear of being evaluated as less or worse than what we are can affect our self-esteem. This can, unfortunately, ensure that negative feedback will always sting us a bit more because it threatens an already weakened ego. According to research, it can create in us a crippling need for social validation, which we might seek by using social media platforms (not a good coping strategy).

Criticism shakes the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs—safety and acceptance. Here are two things you can do to ease the grip of this need on your life:

1. Spend more time alone to understand the things you value. Enjoying your own company and working on yourself can make sure that you won’t overvalue other people’s opinions of you.
2. Learn the art of gentle confrontation for a two-fold benefit on your social life. First, the negative feedback will get clearer and more actionable for you. Second, the people who trash on you for no real reason will either change or leave."

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

How do you deal with criticism?

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