5 Reasons We Fear Criticism

To criticize is to judge. Such judgment typically links to negative evaluation.

True, individuals can vary enormously in how they react to criticism. But to whatever degree, being criticized is intimately connected to lower levels of interpersonal comfort.

Source: John Hain/Pixabay

This post will summarize five facets of criticism likely to make almost anyone uneasy and increase their anxiety.

1. The Adverse Nature of Criticism

As already suggested, being criticized is commonly perceived in a negative light. The assumption here is that in pointing to one of our flaws, the other person is messaging our inferiority to them.

Their judgment may be intended as constructive, aiming to contribute to our healthy development. Still, if we remain afflicted with social insecurities, we can react to their feedback as though their principal motive was to put us down—make us see ourselves as less than them, and maybe others as well.

What’s most unfortunate about this is that even if they desire to help us better ourselves or improve our performance, our urge to defend ourselves from the criticism will prevent us from taking advantage of the opportunity kindly (vs. cruelly) offered us.

2. The Cardinal Value We Place on Safety

Whether a relationship is personal or professional, we need to feel safe in it. That’s just part of our (largely unconscious) survival programming.

It’s universally difficult not to be upset by someone’s negative assessment of us or simply one of our traits or tendencies. We’re inclined to be triggered by anything not aligned with how we need to see ourselves.

Therefore, anything cognitively dissonant with our preferred self-image will likely generate nervousness in us.

3. Our Sense of Personal Importance and Worth

It’s rare that another’s criticism is tantamount to ostracizing or rejecting us. But if we really don’t much like ourselves, criticism can induce this sort of extreme interpretation.

Such overreactions may originate in childhood, during which time parental criticism—unless it was delivered with painstaking tact and restraint—could indeed feel like a repudiation of our basic acceptability.

Analogously, to feel like we live in a “home” (connoting warmth and closeness) rather than inhabit a “house” (suggesting, coldly, an empty real estate property), it’s paramount for us to feel we belong to our family. If we doubt whether we fit in with our parents or siblings—and later on, with our peers and community—that void can lead to our becoming depressed, perhaps chronically.

4. Negative Emotions as Tied to Real—or Imagined—Disapproval

Being subject to criticism can elicit disheartening feelings of hurt and humiliation. Or we can seek to ward off such feelings by reacting vengefully—through anger and aggression.

In these instances, perceiving ourselves as unjustifiably or hyperbolically attacked, we’ll defensively conclude that the person addressing us isn’t being objective, has an axe to grind, or feels hostile toward us.

Nonetheless, we can’t grow our capacity to self-correct, or learn about possible turn-offs in our personality, if we’re closed-minded.

Not that others’ criticisms are always worthwhile, for they could be groundless. But if we’re to grasp how others see us, we need to be open to what they're sharing. This can’t happen if we reject all aversive feedback because of a compelling need to disconfirm anything that appears rejecting.

5. Competing With Others

We live in a highly competitive society. Many of our institutions oblige us, and can even force us, to compare our performance to that of others. When our achievements fall short of their accomplishments, it’s hard not to question whether we’re good enough.

Such doubts evoke fear since they constitute threats to our self-esteem. And these uncertainties can prompt us to think less of ourselves. Even though others may merely be projecting their self-doubts onto us, our “uncritically” taking in—or internalizing—their words can still do a number on us.

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We’re especially vulnerable to authority figures, not just the assumed supremacy bestowed on our caretakers, but from our teachers as well, from kindergarten on. In fact, when we’re very young, we probably perceive all adults as having an authority we can only aspire to.

Regardless of whether the setting is broadly developmental, specifically, when we're children in the classroom, or in the workplace when we're older, being criticized raises our anxiety level. We fear that we’re just not “making the grade.”

Moreover, in various social settings we can also fear being aversely compared to others. And it may be that very few of us can feel entirely comfortable in any surroundings when the opportunity for others to evaluate us negatively is always more or less present.

The Solutions

1. Self-Soothing

Many years ago it was decided that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alter the wording of the award presenters from “The winner is...” to “The Oscar goes to...” This euphemistic substitution was initiated to avoid having other contestants feel that by not winning they were, well, losers.

Such charitable diplomacy, however, certainly isn’t customary. We can’t expect people to regularly take into account how their utterances may impinge on our confidence and self-acceptance. So how can we take control of situations that otherwise can endanger what’s most fragile in our self-image?

Self-soothing is about offering ourselves from within what hasn’t been offered from without. Unless we’re completely ignorant about our successes in life, or repeatedly minimize them, we should be able to provide ourselves reassurances that may not be available from others, at least not immediately.

2. Self-Validation

We need—moment to moment—to “be there” for ourselves, to provide the compassion, understanding, and support essential to our happiness. And there’s no reason we can’t do this right now since fully accepting ourselves doesn’t necessitate improving ourselves as such.

The reason that self-soothing precedes self-validation is that while we’re busy slinging arrows at ourselves we can’t simultaneously refocus on the more positive aspects of our being. We first need to calm ourselves down in order to benevolently soften our derogatory self-judgments.

But as soon as we can regain our lost objectivity, we need—and this is evidence-based—to boost our confidence in our competence. We don’t need to excel in academics or sports or be wildly popular to conclude, realistically, that we are good enough and warrant a higher degree of self-liking than we ordinarily grant ourselves.

Moreover, such kindheartedness has nothing to do with narcissism. For in validating ourselves, we’re not grandiosely claiming entitlement or superiority over anyone or anything else.

We’re simply declaring that we’re capable enough to satisfactorily handle whatever might, however gratuitously, come up for us.

© 2024 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.