By Marelize Krieg
Follow her on Instagram at @TheBloomingPractice and like her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thebloomingpractice
Individuals who are too hard on themselves frequently believe their self-censure is justified. Perfectionists in particular are prone to this. This behaviour is frequently conditioned into us from childhood by parents, authority figures, teachers, and institutions, but it can also stem from toxic and abusive relationships in adulthood. We are bombarded by messages that we are not worthy of love, good enough, or acceptable to others if we are not wholly successful and perfect. We are taught that love, respect, and acceptance need to be earned with what we do rather than who we are. Unless you unlearn, heal, and grow beyond these messages, you will be what they made you.
Signs You Are Being Too Hard on Yourself
Do you tick most of the following boxes? If so, you are being too hard on yourself.
[ ] You psychologically punish yourself over mistakes that are of little or no consequence.
[ ] You continuously blame yourself for a mistake you’ve already corrected.
[ ] You prioritise other tasks over your own self-care and well-being.
[ ] You criticise yourself for other people’s bad behaviour.
[ ] You always do more than is required of you.
[ ] You feel like a failure despite having achieved a reasonable amount of success in life.
[ ] You see other people’s small mistakes as understandable, but not your own.
[ ] You don’t celebrate your successes.
[ ] You feel terrible about yourself when you compare yourself to others.
[ ] You don’t feel worthy or good enough.
[ ] You are constantly worrying about both big and small things.
[ ] You struggle to ask for help, even when you really, truly need it.
How to Stop Being So Hard on Yourself
1. Identify and Explore Dysfunctional Patterns of Behaviour
To pull out a weed, you first need to recognise it as such. Similarly, to change your behaviour, you first need to identify what it is you want to change.
Identify red flags in your behavioural patterns. For example, you are always the first person to volunteer to host a family event or the last person to leave the office at night.
Ask yourself:
What behaviour am I seeing that I don’t like?
What behaviour is harmful to me?
What behaviour would worry me if I saw it in a loved one instead of myself?
Next, establish how long you’ve been practising this pattern of behaviour when you learned it, who you learned it from, and how you learned to behave this way.
2. Recognise What You Are Afraid of
To pull out a weed, you need to pull it out by the root. Similarly, you can do the same with thoughts, beliefs, and actions that are no longer serving you by recognising the fear that led you to use it as a coping mechanism in the first place. Thereafter, it’s a lot easier to let go and heal from this once you realise that you are not the same, vulnerable individual who needed this coping mechanism to survive. You are not that child or victim of abuse anymore. You are not that past version of yourself. Life has moved on. And now, you can move on with it.
3. Let Go of Perfect
IN REALITY, PERFECT DOES NOT EXIST!!!
Perhaps, in theory, perfect exists, but not in practice. There is no such thing as the perfect child, student, employee, partner, parent, etc. You are human and that means to be perfectly imperfect because your flaws and shortcomings are part of what makes you who you are.
Every individual has a different idea of what constitutes “perfect” and that changes based on their daily moods, circumstances, needs, and influences from their environment. How then can you satisfy them? You can’t. How can you satisfy all of them? You can’t.
The only person whose opinion of you ultimately matters is your own - accept this, embrace it, own it, and celebrate it.
4. Revise Your Definition of Success
What does it really mean to be successful? Social media has lots of ideas about this: have the “perfect” career, the “perfect” marriage, the “perfect” children, the “perfect” house, the “perfect” body, and the “perfect” routine… But again, are these realistic ideals? Careers have ups and downs, marriages have conflicts, children test boundaries, houses require repairs, bodies have stretch marks and cellulite, and routines fluctuate based on our current circumstances and needs.
Nothing is perfect.
You cannot measure your definition of success against something that doesn’t exist. Sometimes “success” means “good enough”, “satisfactory”, “content”, “stable”, and “balanced”. Stuff is going to go wrong. Things are not always going to go according to plan. People will have shortcomings and difficulties. Careers will fluctuate over time. Things will break.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to resist the inevitable, or you can accept it for what it is and make lemonade (or lemon cheesecake, yum!) from your lemons. This does not entail settling for less than you deserve or desire, but rather adjusting your expectations and hopes to be more realistic.
5. Adjust Accordingly
To change your behaviour, you need to change your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. You need to retrain your brain. There are two ways to do this: a bottom-up approach (where you change your behaviour to “rewire” your brain, much like changing the hardware on a computer) and a top-down approach (where you change your thoughts to change your behaviour, similar to changing the software of a computer).