37. Self-criticism

This is the Haley's sensitive person podcast. A weekly podcast for people who experience the world brighter, louder, and more intensely. Join me on a journey of acceptance of our highly sensitive person traits. Welcome to episode 37 of the Haley's sensitive person podcast. I'm your host Kelly. This is a show for people who have high sensory processing sensitivity. We experience sound, smells, touches, emotions, and all the stimulation of the world very intensely. You know, it feels like it's been a long time since I've talked to you guys since I skipped last week, but I've been hard at work on my first book, which I am thrilled to announce is now available on Amazon. I don't want to bore you guys too much by talking about it for a long time, but I do want to tell you about it briefly. It is a compilation of my favorite slash best blog posts. I gathered these posts together, made them a little bit better, and they comprise this book, which is called a highly sensitive person's life, stories and advice for those who experience the world intensely. My goal with this book is the same as my goal for the podcast and the blog and everything. It is to spread information about high sensitivity in a way that is fun, light-hearted, personal, relatable, yet meaningful. At the time of this episode, April 21st, unfortunately the Kindle version and the paperback versions on Amazon are showing up on two separate listings. So if you'd like to buy the book, when you go on Amazon, if you're looking for the paperback, you're going to have to dig a little bit deeper. But in the next couple of days, it should be combined into one single listing, so sorry about any confusion. I'll have a link to the books in the show notes at highlysensitiveperson.net/episode37. That's 3/7. And one quick last thing about the book, I would be thrilled if any of you would be so kind as to purchase it or recommend it to others or leave a review. But I do want to remind you it is a compilation of my blog posts, so if you have read my blog thoroughly and listen to the podcast, then you've already seen or heard most of the content in this book. I just want to be clear about that. Today's show is about criticism, which goes perfectly hand in hand with publishing this book. The day after it went live, I checked the page on Amazon and read the reviews very nervously. I found myself feeling really anxious all of a sudden because I was anticipating a negative review at some point. I knew there would be a bad review because no matter what book it is, there's always a bad review, and I thought I'd be fine with it because I expected it. But I still had this weird nervous feeling. I told Jim about how I felt and he said he thought the reason I was so anxious was because these reviews were out of my control. I thought about what he said and wow, I think he nailed it. I had put this book out there in the world and now I can't do anything about how people feel about it. So I did some research on HSPs and criticism and I want to talk about the concept of self-criticism. In a next week's episode, I'm going to focus on how to deal with criticism. I found this piece by Dr. Elaine Aaron, which was so fantastic. I almost feel like telling you to just go read that. Turn off the podcast and read this article about criticism instead because it's so good. Anyway, I'll have a link to the article in the show notes. But in this piece, she examines criticism and everything she says makes so much sense. For sensitive people, criticism really hurts us. It can be truly traumatic. There are people who have been torn apart by criticism. This affects HSPs more than non-HSPs, unsurprisingly. And of course, we turn it over in our minds over and over. It can be so traumatizing that if we are criticized and then we try again, we make another attempt at whatever it is we were doing, we'll probably do even worse the next time because now we're overthinking it. In many HSPs, like me, are often detail-obsessed. We check our work over and over and over to avoid mistakes because we don't want to look bad and therefore get criticized. By not making any mistakes, we can avoid the trauma of criticism. It's self-preservation. I've written about being a people pleaser in the past and that's related to self-criticism as well. We'll bend over backwards to help people to avoid causing anyone any bother. Also, we can avoid the criticism that we weren't helpful or that we were a bother. We'll say things like, "Let's do whatever is easiest for you." Or, "I don't mean to be a bother." That's all to avoid criticism. It's part of what Dr. Aaron calls criticizing yourself first. That's when you say things like, "Oh, I probably screwed this up like I always do." Or, "Oh, I'm so stupid." Or, "Don't hate me, but the more I think about this, the idea of criticizing yourself first, the more I realize I do it all the time." Just the other day I was working with a graphic designer to create something for my book and I had to ask him repeatedly for edits. And I wrote to him at one point, "I'm so sorry to be such a pain you must hate me." Or something like that. Because if I criticize myself first, then he can't really do it. He can't say, "Oh, you're such a pain if I've already said it." So, I've avoided the negative criticism I feared from him. Anytime I'm asking someone for an opinion or to look at something I've done or I'm submitting work somewhere, I have to fight the urge to insult myself or my work. Just today I caught myself doing it in an email to someone. Isn't that strange when you really realize what you're doing in the real underlying reasons why? This was a big realization for me today. Now, as a side note, I do want to point out if you have really severe, incessant self-criticism, like if you're saying things to yourself like, "I can't do anything right. What's wrong with me? I'm such an idiot. I hate myself. Please talk to someone like a therapist because you deserve better." Maybe look into cognitive behavioral therapy and a professional can help you deal with self-criticism that's negatively affecting your daily life. So, HSPs tend to put impossible standards and expectations on ourselves. We pay super close attention to details in our work because we don't want to make mistakes, look bad, and then feel the trauma of criticism. We also criticize ourselves first, so other people can't inflict that trauma on us. Does any of this ring a bell for you like it did for me? Let me know in the show notes at highlysensitiveperson.net/episode37. And while you're there on the blog, you can sign up for twice monthly newsletters and read lots and lots of blog posts about other HSP topics. Tune in next Tuesday where I will be talking about how to deal with criticism. Thanks for listening and have a great day.