Dealing with harsh criticism

Sometimes criticism can be in the form of a helpful advice that can assist us in improving the way we are doing something but when nonconstructive criticism is delivered in a harsh way then it usually means that there are personal problems the person who criticized you is suffering from that are behind his critical comments.

Dealing with harsh criticism requires that you understand the critical message well, analyze its meaning and the reasons behind it.

Why do people criticize others?

First of all you must categorize the critical comment you received in order to give the correct response.

Generally when the critical comment is charged with negative emotions (for Example: Your are totally worthless) then this means that the person who wrote it was feeling really bad while writing it and that his critical comment is nothing more than a way to vent his stored emotions. (see Why are some people overly critical and sarcastic

Although its not a general rule but in most cases you can assume that the more aggressive the message is and the more emotionally charged it is the less it has to do with you and the more it has to do with personal issues that the other person is suffering from.

A person may criticize you because he believes that you harmed him even if you didn’t (See dealing with resentful people), he had a bad day and feels angry, he wants to feel worthy or because he is jealous.

The key is understanding whether the critical comment is really an advice or whether its just an emotional burst of someone who is already loaded with negative emotions.

How to respond to criticism

The following are guidelines that can help you respond to harsh criticism in a very effective way:

• Don’t reply right away, if possible: If the critical comment was received on Email, Facbook or any other place that can allow you to respond later then never respond right away because 1) Responding quickly shows how badly the comment affected you to the extent that you couldn’t wait to reply 2) Most likely you will be emotionally charged after reading the message and so your logical thinking will be affected
• Never Defend yourself: If someone sent you a message telling you that you are worthless, incompetent, dumb....etc then never try to defend yourself because trying to prove that you are not one of these shows that 1) You care a lot about the opinion of the person who criticized you 2) You feel really bad because of the wrong impression he formed of you 3) You think that you aren’t really worthy and so you are trying to prove it.
• Counter attack: Of course I am assuming that you already made sure that the other person's intention is bad. If I was told something like “You are dumb” I would reply saying "Millions read what I write, and that doesn't make me dumb, now what proof do you have that you are not dumb?"
• Ego breaking: Most people will respond in a defensive way trying to prove that they are worthy, if this happened then you can simply them knock out by putting no value to what they said, this really breaks a person. For example if a person replied saying "I am not dumb because of so and so and so" reply saying "hahahaaha, you did all that? you made my day, Good luck :)" This is very effective because when someone starts to give proofs of his worth then this means that he has identified with these proofs and so breaking the proofs breaks the person. See (Ego breaking techniques for more information)
• Let him know that you are ware of the underlying causes: If for example you made sure that the person is jealous of you then you could reply saying something like "Instead of trying to put me down to feel Good why don’t you try to make some achievements yourself to feel better?"

Final notes about criticism

Please make sure that you only use these techniques when you are 100% sure that the other person intention is bad especially the Ego breaking ones.

These advices should only be used with harsh criticism that is not by any means constructive and that has no other goal other than making you feel bad.

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Want to know more?

I can't tolerate criticism

Dealing with emotionally charged criticism

How to deal with Jealous people?