How to handle criticism

Do you find it very hard to tolerate criticism even if it was constructive?
Do critical comments make you feel bad for days and days?
Do you hate to be criticized?

Every normal person should not like the idea of being criticized but when you become extremely intolerant to criticism then this might be an indication of the presence of other underlying problems in your personality that you need to deal with.

Why does criticism hurt

Suppose that you told one of your friends (who always used to get straight As in college) that he is not intelligent, will that critical comment hurt him? Most likely it won’t

Now what if your friend has a self image problem (was not sure whether he looks pretty or ugly) and then someone told him that his clothes look bad on him. Will the critical comment hurt him this time?

Of course it will and it will make him very sad because it has touched an already existing wound that he has!!

Criticism really hurts when it touches a problem the person is already suffering from. If your problem was with self confidence then critical comments that are related to self confidence will hurt you the most while If your problem was with intelligence then critical comments that are related to intelligence will hurt you the most.

How to prevent criticism from affecting you?

Contrary to common beliefs the main reason criticism hurts is not emotional sensitivity but its rather the old untreated wound that hurts.

As the number of emotional wounds and unmet needs increase you will become more vulnerable to criticism and the only way to prevent critical comments from hurting you is to start healing these wounds.

Make a list of all of your emotional wounds then write a plan for dealing with each one of them, as you keep dealing with these problems you will find that you are becoming less vulnerable to criticism.

Peoplesmind