Today we are more connected than ever. It’s easy to monitor the lives of large groups of people both in-person and through virtual spaces. With this connection, society has given us many opportunities to compare ourselves to others. Where there is comparison, there is self-judgment. Often, people share only the more perfect parts of their life – carefully creating an image that challenges many peoples’ realities. When we don’t measure up, it’s a sure way to not feel good enough.
Beyond comparison, there are some traps that make one more prone to self-judgement.
Tying your worth to external achievements
Graduating college, getting that promotion, finishing a project – it feels good. Achievements are generally met with positive attention from others. However, the approval period is short lived. Relying on these moments to prove yourself means you will need to constantly be achieving bigger and better things. This is hard to sustain one hundred percent of the time. In the moments between achievement it can exacerbate self-judgment and the fear of disappointing others.
If you were stripped of your achievements (degrees, titles, awards, material items), how would you feel about yourself? Do you have a sense of who you would be? Creating a solid identity based on values (ex., kindness, joy, good-hearted) means you don’t have to rely on an external sense of worth. There is less room for judgment because you can easily connect with your values daily.
Confusing self-awareness with self-judgment
To grow, we must have a level of insight into our strengths and weaknesses. However, understanding where we can improve and beating ourselves up over it are two totally different things. The key difference: objectiveness. If the evaluation of yourself or a certain event is emotionally driven or based on what you think others are thinking about it, you’ve crossed the objective line into the subjective.
Another sign of self-judgment is all or nothing thinking – thinking that you’ll never be good enough or that you are always messing up. Being self-aware means being able to see both the strengths and weaknesses of a situation.
Adhering and fusing to judgement labels
Fill in the blanks:
Making a mistake is ________________. Hurting someone’s feelings is ______________. Failing is __________________. Being rejected is ________________.
It’s likely that your brain filled in the blanks with labels like wrong, bad, unacceptable, etc.
We are taught these labels at a young age and it sets the standard for perfection. Nobody goes through life without making a mistake or hurting someone along the way. It’s natural for a judgement thought to pop up (“well that was stupid”) but sometimes we take it a step further and identify with the judgment thought (“I am so stupid”). The longer you entertain the judgment, the worse you will feel, and the worse you will behave. That chain doesn’t typically end well and gives our brains more material for judging.
Interested in building self-awareness while combatting self-judgment? Individual Therapy can be a great place to start!