He suggests asking yourself is the person having a bad day, being thoughtless, or being deliberately mean?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that first one \u2026 is someone who might just actually be in a bad place themselves \u2026 it\u2019s actually about trying to recognise that what\u2019s going on for them is theirs, and I don\u2019t have to pick that up,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s thoughtlessness, that\u2019s a little bit more tricky, particularly if it\u2019s a relationship that matters because then it\u2019s about actually trying to let the other person know what they might not be thinking about or might not have in their mind about us that has meant that they\u2019ve lashed out in some way.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if it\u2019s someone who is just mean by nature, then it\u2019s kind of the easiest one right? It\u2019s like they\u2019re gone.\u201d <\/p>\n
The comments that tend to linger are often the ones that hit close to home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat pain – that we commonly think of as having \u2018touched a nerve\u2019 – can get in the way of us being able to think through what\u2019s actually being said to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald shares his tips on how to handle criticism on this week’s episode of The Little Things podcast. Photo \/ supplied<\/p>\n
MacDonald says self-reflection also has a role to play in working through criticism. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times that\u2019s where our growth and learning is, which isn\u2019t easy and it isn\u2019t necessarily pain-free.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the big difficult bits is actually the more we can increase our own self-awareness, the more we can be honest with ourselves about where our own weak spots are.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we have a tendency to fly off the handle or to get frustrated when we are tired? Or do we have a tendency to get hangry, or are we not very patient sometimes at the end of the day with our kids? Then actually that opens up the possibility of taking responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a fundamental biological element to all this too. Humans are wired to focus more on negative information than positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing the world slightly negatively and being slightly fearful is a pretty good survival strategy,\u201d McDonald says. <\/p>\n
In everyday life, that can mean a single negative comment outweighs multiple positive ones. MacDonald says one of the most useful things you can do is create space before reacting.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways sleep on it, because that slows us down immediately, right? Hopefully most of the time we wake up more regulated the next day than we were the night before.\u201d <\/p>\n
He also suggests reframing criticism as feedback, which can be positive or negative. <\/p>\n
The goal isn\u2019t to ignore your feelings about what\u2019s been said completely, but to keep them in proportion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that tips out of balance, is what we think of as the self-critical problem,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
Listen to the full episode of The Little Things<\/a> for more on:<\/p>\n Why some people spiral after criticism while others can brush it off The simple way to tell if feedback is worth listening to What your inner critic is actually trying to do<\/p>\n The Little Things is available on iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. The series is hosted by broadcaster Francesca Rudkin and health researcher Louise Ayrey. New episodes are available every second Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He suggests asking yourself is the person having a bad day, being thoughtless, or being deliberately mean? \u201cSo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[56767,3054,156,28161,2109,18326,6098,4508,221,78,38692,6093,88770,5829,6092,111,139,69,384,1361,223,27051,6035,61,1316,4576],"class_list":["post-396396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-balancing","tag-criticism","tag-entertainment","tag-expectations","tag-family","tag-handle","tag-hard","tag-hits","tag-how","tag-in","tag-lands","tag-little","tag-longheld","tag-many","tag-midlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-that","tag-the","tag-themselves","tag-things","tag-to","tag-when","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}