Sometimes in life we get an opportunity to take a step back and look at ourselves. This might not be fun, but if you embrace the chance, it can afford you some personal growth. I was recently given some feedback about myself that felt—honestly—pretty terrible. And it caused me to question myself. Was I really a nice person? Was what this person saying about me true?
In short, the comments caused me to question my core identity, both the way I think about myself and the way I present myself to the world.
My first reaction was to ask others around me for validation, but then I realized it was exactly the same thing. I had to look within myself… to know whether these comments were a truth or not.
If I depended on friends to reassure me that the commenter was off base, I was still relying on others for my identity.
So I spent some time thinking and meditating on the comments. It gave me some insights into myself, into the commenter, and may help me in the future with my relationships.
In the end, the comments may be the “truth” for the commenter; they did not feel like my truth. But the process afforded me the chance to take a step back and look critically at myself, and that is always a gift.
Have you ever received difficult feedback? How did you handle it?
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Oh boy, Steph. That is a tough one for us delicate flowers. It is always such a painful shock. For me, it does depend on the source of the comment. Then I stew a little bit and try to decide if it is true, and/or something I need to work on. In some cases I might think…I haven’t thought much of the opinion of anything else that person said, so….why would I believe this thing about myself? Nobody likes to hear anything negative about themselves. That said, nobody is more critical of myself than I am. Hush, critical voice that sounds suspiciously like the kinds of things I heard about myself while I was growing up. One thing I am really really working on is hearing a different voice in that respect.
Thanks Vik. I think it is especially hard if what you are hearing from a commenter matches at all what your inner critic is saying…
I tend to be harder on myself than my friends are, but I have learned lessons from them as well. I lost my best friend in 2000 and I still recall how well Amy could gently point out an area that needed some “reflection”. One of the most powerful lessons she taught me was that I tend to hold grudges. I reflect on that as an ongoing life lesson. After all, we are all works in progress.
Thanks Liz. Good friends are ones who tell us the truth, gently, I think. Not just always tell us what we want to hear.
It’s never easy to receive feedback that doesn’t jibe with who we think we are, but I’ve found that as I get older, those kinds of things seem to “stick” less and less. And no matter how many how-to or “know yourself” books we read (or how much therapy we undergo!), it’s still very difficult, in that moment, to really look at the comments from the other person’s perspective. I do tend to think that critical commentary is often more a relfection of the commenter’s fear or anger, but sometimes it can provide valid insights into ourselves and how we look to the rest of the world. Sounds like your self-reflection, at any rate, was of value to you, so that’s a good thing!
Ricki, I think you are so right that it is usually far more about the other person than about us. It’s just hard to hold onto that when your feelings are hurt. Thanks for commenting.