Many times, because of mistakes or shortcomings in our work and life, we will deeply blame ourselves and feel lost and guilty. So what can we do to avoid excessive self-critical?

1. Don’t criticize your self-criticism

Most people who struggle with self-criticism are used to self-criticism that criticizes themselves. However, in fact the self-criticism that criticizes you is still self-criticism! This will most likely lead to more self-criticism and all the consequences that come from it:

• Increasingly painful emotions like anxiety or shame
• A strengthened habit of self-criticism
• A harder time being present and focus with other people or your work

Criticizing your self-criticism comes from the misguided belief that you have to do something in response to self-criticism. But you don’t. The real skill is to be aware of your self-criticism then leave it alone and get on with your life instead of getting sucked into unproductive spirals of trying to eliminate it.

2. Redirect self-criticism from you as a person to specific behaviors

Often self-criticism contains more than a little truth to it:

• You start criticizing yourself for screwing up the presentation because it actually didn’t go that well (probably not as bad as you told yourself, but not great either).
• You start criticizing yourself for being a procrastinator and undisciplined person because you’re really only procrastinating while writing your novel (of course, just because you procrastinate doesn’t mean you’re globally labeling yourself a “procrastinator” is true or helpful…)

The point is that your self-criticism may actually be helpful. Yeah, that’s not very friendly and exaggerated. But it may point to a real problem worth solving.

So instead of dismissing your self-criticism altogether, try to channel it into something more helpful. Specifically, try to translate an exaggerated criticism of your entire self (“I’m such an idiot!”) into a realistic criticism of a specific behavior (“I didn’t perform well in that speech because I procrastinated in preparation.” )

Excessively broad criticisms of your worth as a person are neither true nor helpful. But you likely have specific behaviors that are not good and actually worth criticizing in a thoughtful and constructive way.

3. Do your self-criticism on paper, not in your head

Thoughts flash through your mind very quickly.

You can think of dozens of ideas in 20-30 seconds. If these thoughts happen to be self-critical in nature, each one will produce some painful emotion like anxiety or shame, and you can quickly make yourself feel really bad.

If you’re prone to falling into self-criticism or feeling overwhelmed, you know what I’m talking about here.

Luckily, there’s a relatively simple trick for short-circuiting this process：

Do your self-criticism on paper.

You can’t write as fast as you think. So if you limit your self-criticism to the speed of writing (as opposed to the speed of thinking), you’ll end up self-criticizing much less. As a result, there are far less painful emotions on board.

You’ll be more successful in getting out of the spiral of self-criticism quickly, before it becomes too intense and overwhelming.

4. Practice affirming yourself

If you’re the type of person who chronically struggles with self-criticism, chances are you also suffer from a lack of self-affirmation. That is, you may spend a lot of time destroying yourself, but relatively little time building yourself up.

So here’s a quick recommendation:

Make more time to affirm, support, and express appreciation for yourself.

To be clear, I’m not saying this is a strategy for dealing with self-criticism: it’s not about replacing specific self-critical thoughts with more affirming ones. Rather, what I mean is setting aside a little time each day to practice affirming yourself.

Keeping a self-gratitude journal is one way to do this.

Eventually, if you get good at building this self-affirmation skill, it will start to crowd out some of the self-criticism you have throughout the day.

But like any skill, it doesn’t just happen.You must commit to regular practice.

5. Spend more time around supportive people

Human beings are social creatures.

Specifically, we are far more influenced by others than we admit to ourselves. The same goes for the way we think and talk to ourselve.

• If you’re constantly surrounded by negative, overly critical people, you’re going to suffer. You may find that you are more negative and critical (including of yourself) than you thought.
• On the other hand, if you surround yourself with positive, helpful, and level-headed people all the time, you’ll find yourself thinking more like this. This means you won’t be affected by self-criticism because of the people around you.

However，It’s often very hard to make significant and lasting changes to your social environment.

• If you have an overly-critical manager at work, it’s tough to get a transfer, much less actually leave your job and hopefully find another one with a more supportive manager.
• If you have an overly-negative and pessimistic spouse, it’s very difficult to simply spend less time around them.

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t change the fact that it’s real.

Making major changes to your primary relationship is difficult. But don’t kid yoursel. Sometimes other people are the main source of your pain and unhappiness (including self-criticism) and if you decide to leave those relationships, as costly and complicated as they are, you’ll be much better off in the long run in doing so.

That being said, even if you’re unwilling or unable to leave overly critical or negative people in your life, or set major boundaries around them, you can still try adding more supportive and positive people. That is, you can identify a few people in your life who can be good role models and commit to spending more time around or with them—even if that means calling or spending time with them every week a short lunch break.

It’s not all in your head. The way we think—including how we see ourselves—is more socially determined than we think. Any attempt to take self-criticism seriously should take this fact very seriously.