Traumatic Experiences Community Daily-Check In : Thursday, 18th October
Heya Trauma Support Community! My name is Samantha and I'm stopping by to post the check-in for thursday!
For those of you who don't know me very well, I am a huge sports fan!!! My treatment team incorporates a lot of sports psychology into my therapy so I thought I could bring up some sports analogies and relate it back to recovery for this check-in!
My two favorite sports are soccer and baseball! And one of my favorite types of books to read are sports memoirs because it talks alot of finding yourself, dealing with challenges, and constantly growing yourself to be your personal best!
One of the hardest things for me to deal with personally is accepting feedback - that could be positive or negative feedback even. For some reason it triggers this inner negative critic in my head that either tells me people are lying when they tell me positive feedback or the voice gets super dark if it's negative feedback. It can lead to feelings of low self-worth, anger, sadness, self-harm thoughts, and it's just the hardest thing for me to deal with. What about you, how do you cope with feedback?
Feedback is a super important part of recovery though! It's important to be able to give yourself open and honest feedback and to be able to accept feedback from other people!
Being a 7cups listener has helped me with this challenge because there's been times when I got feedback on my roles and then I wasn't so open to growing and learning from it. But each time I get feedback on my listener role, I try to get a little bit better. Even accepting feedback about this check-in thread would be difficult for me but I would love to hear it so I can improve on the next ones :P<3
Whoopsies, I got sidetracked from my main point so back to the sports memoirs topic!
One of my favorite sports books is by Carli Lloyd of the USA woman's national soccer team. Her memoir, When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World is super inspirational to me! In the book, Carli Lloyd talks about how the USA national team coach kicked her off the team because she had an "uncoachable attitude." It was a major setback for carli lloyd to be kicked off of the one thing that brings her the most joy in life - the USA woman's soccer team. It's really hard to hear criticisms about ourselves from other people and even the world's top athletes struggle to accept feedback. Even though Carli Lloyd didn't completely agree with her former coach, she turned the major setback of getting kicked off the team into a growth opportunity. She connected with an old soccer mentor and practiced harder than she ever did before! Slowly she started to learn to accept critisms about her performance and adapt her level of play to be the best version of herself she could be! Long story short, carli lloyd not only made it back on the USA woman's national soccer team, she is often the captain on the field and is a major force that helps the team win championships!
I started to apply this philosophy to my life and my recovery journey because there's many times when I can have that "uncoachable attitude." I tend to have rigid black & white thinking and I shut down when I am told critism even if it's helpful. I use anger to protect myself from feedback but then I usually just end up in worse trouble than before. You don't always have to accept what other people say as true but working on accepting feedback can be a helpful skill for recovery. Especially when my therapists, teachers, and grandparents try to point my harmful behaviors that are sabbotaging myself. Maybe I still don't always accept what they say right away but i'm really trying. Making small steps for growth and learning to process feedback in healthy ways to help yourself grow is super powerful for our mental health!
So I thought I would bring up the topic of accepting feedback for mental health and for recovery! It also makes me more mindful of the way I try to give feedback to other people but that's probably a topic for a whole different check-in!
Here's a short article for steps on how to accept feedback: it's a good little resource that helps keep you on track with coping with feedback!
- personally, step #1 on the article is the most difficult part of the process for me, "Stop your first reaction" Are there any steps from the article that are more difficult or easier for you?
https://www.themuse.com/advice/taking-constructive-criticism-like-a-champ
Here's some questions we can discuss in the check-in today (answer any or all of the questions below)
1. Do you struggle with feedback? What parts make accepting feedback difficult for you?
2. If you want you can share about a time when you struggled with feedback or when you grew from a difficult constructive criticism situtaion
3. How do you cope when you get feedback? Are there any skills or technqiues that help you through it?
4. How do you wish people gave you feedback differently? What would help make you feel safer when you are getting told feedback?
5. How are you feeling today? Are you looking forward to anything about the rest of the week? Any highlights about today or any downsides that we can help emotionally support you through?
@summertimeSamness - I'm late to the game, but still wanted to answer - I love this topic! :)
1. Do you struggle with feedback? What parts make accepting feedback difficult for you?
I tend to be okay with feedback, but struggle when it doesn't align to what I perceive as my strengths and weaknesses. I spend a decent amount of time reflecting on what those are, so it's upsetting if it doesn't feel aligned. For instance, I spent a lot of time at my job working on being more assertive and being told I was too nice and then when I finally got to a level my managers were happy with, my next manager basically said I was rude and mean, which was hard to hear.
2. If you want you can share about a time when you struggled with feedback or when you grew from a difficult constructive criticism situtaion
On this site a couple years ago I was given some constructive criticism from another user that I was being uneven in how I moderated site leaders vs. non-leaders and that it wasn't fair. That was hard to hear because I try really hard to be fair, but talking more with the person who gave me the feedback helped me to understand where they were coming from and helped me to change my behavior to be more even across the board. Hearing that from them made me a better forum moderator and a better leader and I appreciated that they told me!
3. How do you cope when you get feedback? Are there any skills or technqiues that help you through it?
I try to hold off my feelings about the feedback until later so that in the moment I can focus on what they are saying and later take time to think through how it aligns to my perspective. I also remind myself that even if I disagree with them, they are sharing a perspective that is important to hear. So if someone perceives my behavior a certain way, even if it wasn't my intent, it's a real perception and one that I need to be aware of and think about whether I need to adjust something to make sure that's not the perception. As an example, I managed someone once who asked why he had to do things a lot. The reason he did that was to try to understand better, but the way he asked made it sound like he just didn't want to do the work. When I gave him feedback we talked about ways to frame his questions so that it was clear that his intent wasn't to avoid working, but to understand the process better.
4. How do you wish people gave you feedback differently? What would help make you feel safer when you are getting told feedback?
I wish that people would give me feedback more quickly when they first notice something so that if it's an issue I can correct it from the beginning rather than not hearing that something has been upsetting someone until much later after it's caused more problems. I feel safer when after hearing the feedback I have some time to reflect on it before having to respond much so that I can process my emotions on my own and then talk more about the feedback.
5. How are you feeling today? Are you looking forward to anything about the rest of the week? Any highlights about today or any downsides that we can help emotionally support you through?
I'm feeling okay...it's been a busy week so I'm a little stressed that I'm behind on stuff I need to get done, but I'll get through :)
