Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves When We Make Mistakes?
Making mistakes is natural, a normal part of anyone’s life. Each person reacts and interprets their mistakes in very different ways. Some take it for what it is, something common, although sometimes difficult to accept depending on the case. For others, it can be very difficult to manage, since they see mistakes as a huge failure in their life.
But… what does this way of dealing with errors depend on?
Be aware that we made mistakes and reflect on it; It is a mechanism that our mind uses to help us learn from the mistake, so that it does not happen in the same way again. The problem occurs when we get “stuck” on that topic and we cannot turn the page on the error.
Throughout our childhood and growing up, the words of our primary caregivers are very important to us. It may be that during our childhood they corrected us a lot, told us how we should do things, and punished us very harshly when we made mistakes. All these words and situations that we experienced stayed within us, deep down, forming part of our unconscious, to the point of even defining us.
Everything described above He taught us that making a mistake is something very bad, that it deserves punishment creating insecurities, and forming a slightly weakened self-esteem.
How can we become more aware of this and begin to change our way of thinking?
The trap of excessive perfectionism
The fact of being so harsh when we make mistakes is also related to self-demand and perfectionism. And many insecurities hide behind them.
And you will think, how can someone who is a perfectionist be deep down an insecure person?
The reality is that perfection does not exist. We can all make mistakes and not accepting it is not accepting yourself. Nobody is perfect and wanting to be becomes a great burden for you, you feel like you are failing yourself.
Your mistakes or failures do not define you as a person: a divorce or a bad choice at work does not define who you are. When you think this way, you are putting your value as a person in something external, in something that happened at a specific moment in your life.
Allow yourself to feel all the unpleasant emotions that are experienced the moment you make a mistake, when something doesn’t go as you expect: anger, frustration, disappointment, disappointment, guilt, among others. Make peace with those emotions, as it is natural to feel them and you must move past them to learn from the experience and internalize what happened.
