Excessive self-criticism tends to backfire, because it leads us to focus on our so-called failures instead of the “small ways that we could have improved,” says psychologist Tamar E. Chansky, PhD, author of Freeing Yourself From Anxiety. And over the long term, studies show, self trash-talk is associated with higher stress levels and even depression.

Source:  9 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic – ABC News.

Being down on yourself is just a normal state for some and an occasional state for others. This seems especially true for  certain varieties of Christians who believe that all human beings are just worthless pieces of snot but then declare that God loves us anyway. It is hard to have a positive attitude about almost anything when that philosophy drives your life. As the article above says self criticism is a good thing to a certain degree. It allows us to change things in our lives when they are detrimental to our overall health or attitude.

I must admit that even though I long ago gave up the “worthless piece of snot” Christian beliefs, I still get down on myself more frequently than is probably healthy. But I don’t think I am unusual in that regard. I think that is a common human affliction. One of the worst problems with getting down on yourself is that it often leads to getting down on everyone else and seeing the world as a very dark place.  There seem to be many in that mode lately. In some ways that is perhaps one of the root problems we have in our currently disjointed world right now. We just can’t seem to see any goodness in ourselves or in others.

Upon reviewing the list in this article of ways to silence your inner critic  I think the first and the last ones are the most helpful.  The first one is to try to narrow it down when you are self-critical. Find out what specifically you don’t like about yourself and go about trying to change that smaller issue.  Don’t dump your criticism all over yourself like a heavy wet blanket.  The last one is to those perfectionists among us of which I am certainly not one but my wife is.  Seeking to be perfect is an unattainable goal in life. Perfection is so destructive. One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies is Tron- The Legacy. I have it on my DVR list and watch parts of it at least weekly.  In it the creator of a digital world commissioned a digital clone of himself to create a perfect world. Of course what resulted was chaos since perfection is unknowable.

I need to look at this list again in a few days to see if any other parts of it can stick on me.