How Do I Stop Beating Myself Up? 

Have you ever set your sights on a brand new goal or oppor­tu­ni­ty, only to be hin­dered by your mind, telling you that you’re not wor­thy, good enough, or deserv­ing of suc­cess? This com­mon­ly leads to a cas­cade of neg­a­tive thoughts, result­ing in the phrase “beat­ing your­self up,” also known as the inner crit­ic. Every­one has an inner voice that does its best to sup­port you; how­ev­er, these encour­age­ments com­mon­ly come out as crit­i­cisms. Your inner crit­ic like­ly wants to be a cheer­leader, a sup­port­ive coach, or a com­pan­ion, more than a crit­ic. Ask­ing your­self, “How do I stop beat­ing myself up?” is a com­mon ques­tion many peo­ple ask themselves–you’re not alone. 

Self-defeat­ing beliefs, no mat­ter how small or triv­ial, have the pow­er to cloud our per­cep­tion, dic­tate our deci­sions, dam­age our rela­tion­ships, and steer our lives to a des­ti­na­tion that’s nei­ther healthy nor fulfilling—but only if we let them. These neg­a­tive ways of think­ing take on many faces and forms. Learn­ing to iden­ti­fy them is key to over­com­ing them, and pre­vent­ing self-defeat­ing thoughts from defeat­ing you. Here are 7 exam­ples of unhelp­ful, and often crit­i­cal thoughts show up in our lives. In each exam­ple below, you’ll see 1) the name, 2) the exam­ple, and 3) how to change course. 

How to Not Beat Yourself Up Over a Mistake

1. Should Statements: “I should never fail or make a mistake.”

Do you have a habit of set­ting unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions about things you think you “should” or “must” do? Should state­ments often reflect per­fec­tion­is­tic stan­dards, even for sit­u­a­tions you have lit­tle to no con­trol over. They can cause you to feel anx­ious or like you’re con­stant­ly fail­ing.

When you rec­og­nize your­self engag­ing in this neg­a­tive belief, replace each state­ment with a health­i­er, more real­is­tic goal and thoughts of self-com­pas­sion. Focus on accept­ing your­self for who you are, instead of forc­ing your­self to become who you “should” be.

2. Emotional Reasoning: “I feel worthless, so I am worthless.”

If you always assume that some­thing is true just because you feel that way, even if there are no facts or evi­dence to prove it, then you may be strug­gling with emo­tion­al rea­son­ing. It’s a self-defeat­ing belief telling you that your neg­a­tive emo­tions reflect real­i­ty.

To over­come emo­tion­al rea­son­ing, start by mon­i­tor­ing your thoughts and learn­ing to sep­a­rate facts from feel­ings. Cer­tain types of treat­ment, like Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py, can help you achieve this.

3. Labeling Yourself: “I am a failure” or “I am a loser”

Label­ing is mak­ing a rash, unfair, and neg­a­tive judg­ment of your­self based on a sin­gle event that didn’t hap­pen the way you want­ed it to. For exam­ple, you might describe your­self as a “fail­ure at school” after scor­ing below aver­age on one test, with no room for redemp­tion.

You can com­bat this self-defeat­ing belief by rec­og­niz­ing the spe­cif­ic event that led to the neg­a­tive label and active­ly chal­leng­ing it. Look for evi­dence that coun­ters your self-assigned label, and remind your­self there’s always a chance to grow and improve.

4. Discounting the Positive: “I only won the award because of luck.”

Let’s say you’ve worked hard on a project at work, and have been giv­en an award for your great per­for­mance. Would you accept the achieve­ment with gen­uine pride and hap­pi­ness, or would you con­vince your­self it’s a result of pure luck, not your skills and effort?

Dis­count­ing the pos­i­tive is a ten­den­cy to reject or inval­i­date good expe­ri­ences in your life. The key to over­com­ing this is to work on your self-con­fi­dence and to open your eyes to the strengths and tal­ents you have and how they con­tribute to your suc­cess­es.

5. Jumping to Conclusions: “They didn’t smile so they are angry.”

We jump to con­clu­sions when­ev­er we pre­dict that an event will have a cer­tain neg­a­tive out­come, also known as “for­tune-telling.” It can also hap­pen when we expect that some­one will react to us in a cer­tain, neg­a­tive way, which is called “mind read­ing.”

This type of think­ing involves mak­ing quick deci­sions, based on lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion. You can move past this harm­ful pat­tern by chal­leng­ing your ini­tial con­clu­sions, explor­ing dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, and ask­ing ques­tions to learn more about a sit­u­a­tion before deci­sion-mak­ing.

6. All-or-nothing Thinking: “I made a mistake. I’ll never succeed.”

Also known as black-and-white think­ing, this self-defeat­ing belief refers to see­ing sit­u­a­tions in two extremes. You’re either a total suc­cess or a com­plete fail­ure, your per­for­mance is per­fect or ter­ri­ble, that per­son is either good or bad—there is no in-between.

You may hear your­self using absolute words like “nev­er,” “always,” or “com­plete­ly” with this type of think­ing error. One way to over­come it is to prac­tice mind­ful­ness and pay atten­tion to the lan­guage you use to speak to your­self. Rec­og­nize that suc­cess and progress exist in a spec­trum, and a healthy mid­dle ground may exist.

7. Personalization and Blame: “My child got a bad grade in school. I’m such a bad parent.”

When some­thing bad hap­pens, some peo­ple feel the need to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and blame them­selves even when the sit­u­a­tion is out of their con­trol. Oth­ers do the exact oppo­site and accuse oth­er peo­ple of the prob­lem. Both are exam­ples of per­son­al­iza­tion and blame.

If you have this self-defeat­ing belief, remem­ber that more than one fac­tor could have caused the neg­a­tive event. Make a con­scious effort to look at each sit­u­a­tion with a healthy, bal­anced, and unbi­ased per­spec­tive and be proac­tive in search­ing for solu­tions.

Online therapy Houston 

Self-defeat­ing beliefs are faulty and neg­a­tive think­ing pat­terns that allow our minds to play tricks on us. When ignored and untreat­ed, they can cause sig­nif­i­cant emo­tion­al dis­tress and get in the way of reach­ing our goals—damaging our health, well-being, and rela­tion­ships in the process

If you’re ready to chal­lenge your self-defeat­ing beliefs and change your real­i­ty into a bet­ter, health­i­er one, be pre­pared to look inside your­self and reassess the thoughts you might’ve been cling­ing to for a long time. Are you up to the chal­lenge? 

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