Why Am I So Hard on Myself?
You got one thing wrong today. Not a big thing. Somebody had to fix it, said no problem, and meant it. That was at lunch. It is eleven at night and you are still on it, replaying your own tone of voice at a volume nobody else heard. Everything else today went fine. You know that, and it does not help.
Mostly because the harshness has a job, and you gave it the job. At some point you decided that being hard on yourself is what keeps you careful and stops the next mistake, so it runs after every slip, like a guard. The trouble is that it takes credit for everything your standards did, and it has never been tested. When it is tested, it tends to lose: people who ease off after a mistake work harder on the next attempt, not less. Keep the standard. Drop the punishment.
What is being hard on yourself actually for?
Ask it. Not where it came from, but what it is supposed to do for you tonight.
Paul Gilbert and his colleagues asked exactly that, giving 246 students a list of 21 possible reasons for criticising yourself and asking which fit. The reasons split in two. The bigger group, thirteen of the twenty-one, was about prevention: to make me concentrate, to stop me being lazy, to keep myself in check, to prevent future embarrassments, to make sure I keep up my standards. The researchers called it self-correction. The smaller group was something else: to take revenge on part of myself, to punish myself for my mistakes, to cope with feelings of disgust with myself. They called that self-persecution.
The first list is probably yours. Nobody is hard on themselves for fun. You do it because some part of you is sure that the moment you stop, you will get lazy or sloppy and it will all go wrong. That belief is the part worth testing, and it has been tested.
Does being hard on yourself actually work?
Here is the objection, and it is a fair one. You have been like this for years, and you are also good at what you do. Surely the one explains the other.
Maybe. But you have never run the other version: the same standards, the same effort, without the part where you call yourself an idiot. The harshness was standing next to every good result you ever got, and it has been taking the credit.
Experiments can run that other version. Juliana Breines and Serena Chen gave students a vocabulary test designed to be failed, and most failed it: the average was four out of ten. Then everyone got the answers and a word list to study for a second test, for as long as they liked. One group's instructions carried one extra sentence, the one your friends keep saying to you: if you feel bad about how you did, try not to be too hard on yourself. A second group was told not to feel bad because they must be smart to get into their university. A third got nothing extra.
The group told not to be hard on themselves studied the longest, about half again as long as the group that got nothing, and the longer people studied, the better they did on the retest. Three more experiments in the same paper pointed the same way: treated with some kindness after a slip, people wanted to improve more, not less.
Notice what the kind sentence did not do: lower anybody's standard. Same test, same retest. What it changed was whether looking at the mistake was bearable. If every error costs you ten minutes of contempt, your attention learns to flinch away from errors, and attention is how anyone gets better. Perfectionism research finds the same split: when Daniel Madigan pooled 37 studies of students, high standards went with better results and worry about falling short went with slightly worse ones.
What is the difference between high standards and being hard on myself?
A standard is about the work. Being hard on yourself is about you.
Try it on today's mistake. Where did the ten minutes after you noticed it go? Into what happened, what you would do differently and who needs telling: that was a standard doing its job, and it finished in ten minutes. Into what this says about you, what people must think now, and the other times you did this: that was the other thing, and it is still running at eleven.
The two end differently. A standard can be met: fix the thing, tell the person, done. Self-criticism cannot be met, because its subject is not the task, it is you, and you are still here. That is why a good week never lands as good enough. The bar moves the moment you clear it.
One thing first. A loud internal critic is common, tiring, and not dangerous. Criticism that runs constantly, that has turned into disliking or hating yourself, or that arrives with hopelessness or thoughts of hurting yourself is a different thing. In Gilbert's data that kind, the hating kind, was the one most tied to depression. It deserves a professional, not a blog post.
Why does it feel so true from the inside?
Because you have been keeping evidence for one side only. Mistakes get stored in detail, with dialogue. Days that went fine get summarised as fine and thrown out by the weekend. One item on Gilbert's scale for feeling inadequate reads simply: I remember and dwell on my failings. So when you ask yourself whether you are doing badly, you are asking an archive that only ever kept one kind of file.
It is also why thinking harder does not help: a loop that gets no new information cannot close. What helps is getting the sentence out of your head and in front of someone who will not simply agree with it. Out loud, the verdict has a length, and the length is usually absurd: a whole character assessment hung on one email.
That someone can be a friend, if you are not tired of asking. It is also roughly what Cave is for. You message or call Flamy, a small flame, and say the unflattering version. Flamy does not sugarcoat it and does not nod along either: it asks what the criticism is for, or points out that this is the same charge you brought in the spring. Some nights that turns a vent into actually looking at the thing. Some nights you just needed to say it, and that is fine too. It is not therapy.
What helps when you catch yourself doing it?
Not "be kinder to yourself". Nobody has managed that on instruction. Smaller moves work better.
- Ask what it is for. Pick your reason off Gilbert's list: to stop me being lazy, to keep my standards up. Then ask when you were last actually lazy. The guard is usually protecting against something that has not happened in years.
- Separate the correction from the sentence. Write down the one thing you would do differently. Then stop. Everything after that line is the punishment.
- Say it out loud, once, to someone. In your head the harshness has no edges. Venting is how it gets some, and how it reaches a person who can say that sounds like a lot for one email.
- Keep the bar. Nothing here asks you to care less. The standard and the beating are two things, and only one of them has ever been shown to help.
FAQ
Why am I so hard on myself when I make mistakes?
Because a mistake wakes the part of you that believes criticism prevents the next one. When researchers asked people why they attack themselves, most reasons were preventive: to stop me being lazy, to keep my standards up, to avoid embarrassment. But in experiments, people told not to be hard on themselves after failing tried harder next time, not less. The standard does the work; the punishment takes the credit.
Does being hard on yourself at work make you better at your job?
The high standard helps; the harshness does not. Perfectionism research separates the two: across 37 studies of students, high standards went with better results and worry about falling short went with slightly worse ones. In experiments, people told not to be too hard on themselves after failing a test studied longer for the retest. Keep the bar. Drop the punishment.
When is being hard on myself a sign of something more serious?
When it stops being about performance. A critical voice about work, decisions and mistakes is ordinary. Self-criticism that runs all the time, that has become disliking or hating yourself, or that comes with hopelessness or thoughts of hurting yourself is a different pattern, and in the research it is the one most tied to depression. That deserves a professional, not an article.
How do I stop being so hard on myself at night?
Get the sentence out of your head and in front of someone who will not just agree with it. Out loud it has a length, usually an absurd one. In Cave you say it to Flamy, a small flame you message or call. Flamy asks what the criticism is for, can remind you that you said the same thing in spring, and keeps what you say as memory you can open and read, never used for training.