Those of us who live in most of Occidental countries We live in an environment in which two circumstances occur that, combined, can cause our self-esteem to be damaged relatively frequently.
On the one hand, we are immersed in an individualistic culture, in which the ego is given great importance and we are told over and over again that we must be “the best of ourselves”.
On the other hand, it is quite normal for people to criticize others not to help them or provide another constructive point of view, but to undermine their prestige or their reputation. public imagemaking your “worth” decrease and oneself can climb socially at the expense of the attacked person, by generating an illusion of triumph against him.
So, in this article we will review a series of tricks to not letting the negative comments directed at you by others affect you and annoy you a lot.
5 tips and tricks to avoid suffering so much from negative comments
Even those with stable self-esteem can feel their day ruined by hearing certain criticisms or malicious comments that we feel “hit the nail on the head” or exploit our insecurities.
To a certain extent, it is normal for us to experience this when living through these kinds of situations, and of course, we should not aim to totally block the emotional impact that these attacks have on us, because that would only lead to frustration. But as always happens in psychology, that we cannot control the behavior of others does not mean that we have no room for maneuver when deciding the attitude we show towards those actions. Those kinds of reproaches and poisonous comments will hurt us, but they don’t have to destroy our self-esteem. and generate in us intrusive thoughts that last for several hours.
So… How to deal with negative comments? These tips can be useful guidelines to help you deal with these kinds of problems.
1. Go writing a diary of emotions
Being in touch with your feelings and emotions is a way to maintain a more stable self-esteem. And it is that several investigations carried out about what in psychology is known as emotional labeling shows that putting into words what makes us feel anguish or insecurity helps us overcome it, not to let us give it more importance than it really has. Therefore, writing daily about the most significant moments of the previous hours in terms of how you have felt is a very good way to ensure your mental health. Of course, do not get used to writing a lot each time or you will end up stopping doing it due to lack of time.
2. Do a SWOT periodically
In a complementary way to the previous advice, carry out a brief SWOT analysis (focused on you and your way of behaving) with a certain frequency, such as once a month, also It will help you to be aware of your limitations and stop seeing them as something that feeds on your complexes.. In addition, it will allow you to be able to see opportunities in how to compensate or remedy them as much as possible.
On the other hand, this strategy will also help you to be aware at all times which imperfections and failures of your own are truly important to you and which actually generate indifference. And it is that the “impact” that produces in us the moment in which someone criticizes us can make us, if we have our guard down and without having thought about it, we assume that what that person mocks or criticizes is something that reveals very negative things about us, when in reality many times we don’t even care.
3. Always analyze the intention behind those comments
Negative comments usually say more about the person making them than about the recipient of the criticism. Therefore, taking into account that aspect of the criticism and attacks that you receive allows to contextualize the message and give it a relative importance: It is not a piece of information conceived and expressed in an objective and neutral way.
4. Aim to find at least one piece of useful information in each comment
Focusing on this little mission will allow you to focus on the moment and not limit yourself to experiencing the unpleasant emotions that these kinds of experiences generate. For example, if you feel that there is a grain of truth in those criticisms, holding on to that information will intuitively direct your attention to how you can use it in the future to improve, which is a much more constructive mindset.
5. Surround yourself with people who appreciate you
This, in addition to being a basic principle of mental health in general, will allow you to be in contact with more benign and positive versions of criticism that can come to you from others, which greatly cushions the blow produced by an eventual negative comment formulated in the form of unfair criticism.
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