Why We Are Overly Self-Critical And How To Not To Beat Ourselves Up for That Too
“I have a stupid question.”
My high school students often began any conversation with a preface — this question is stupid, I know this is silly, sorry to bother you. They apologized before ever having anything to apologize for, and ninety-nine percent of the time, there was no need for an apology at all.
Usually their prefaces were to avoid a judgment on whatever they were about to say by showing me that they had judged themselves first.
I regret to inform you that I am thirty and I still do this on a regular basis, although I am getting better at it now that I am aware of it and why I do it.
Why do we feel the need to show off our self-criticism?
To Show How Smart and Aware We Are
You know those annoying people in your college class who couldn’t wait to point out what was wrong with an idea, method, or piece of literature? Sometimes they did that because they were genuinely excited about their own thinking, but often it was actually because they needed everyone else in the room to know that they were smart enough to point out the imperfections in the works of others.