Thanks for this post Jennifer. It's always comforting the hear other people feel bad after a design critique when so much effort was put into the craft. Many posts on the internet imply that you're not gonna be a good designer if you take critiques personally, but designers are humans and we can't just put our emotions away when entering a critique session. As you mentioned, it does get easier to handle after some time, but no one should feel as they're not going to succeed in their careers just because they're not "walking on air" after their hard work is torn to pieces.