Sensitivity to Criticism

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I've never been good with criticism. I won't yell, or lash out at people, but I become quiet. Well, sometimes I do get to the point of yelling with my mom, but I rarely do it with anyone else. I know in the work place, it's important to be able to take it. I do try to use criticism to my advantage, but it's often hard for me not to take it personally.

At my current job and first job, I've gotten quite a bit of criticism. I know it's my supervisor's job to do it, but I naturally wonder if the person sees me in a negative light as whole if I get criticized enough times.

I especially get touchy about criticism about my art, creativity, or my intelligence. Those are big hot topics for me that I have trouble metabolizing criticism with. One reason why I'm reluctant to show people my creative work, is my sensitivity to criticism and this is one of the worst things someone can criticize about me. I'm aware there's always room for improvement, and I'm opened to advice, but you have to be very delicate with it.

There are a certain factors that go into how I will react. It also depends on what it is that is being criticised. My mood plays a part in how I feel about criticism. I'll admit that it can be disheartening when I've worked for hours on something and the other person acts as though I've done the bare minimum. Especially if it's quite a personal improvement from the previous attempts. Or if I manage to figure something out that had me stumped and the response is "Didn't you know that already? Isn't that basic stuff?"

I go through phases of self-doubt and confidence. The amount that my confidence flips between "I'm doing well" and "everything I do is awful" probably isn't healthy. My friends and family sometimes call me out on my self-deprecating tendencies and how I tend to undersell myself. I'm trying to cut down on this and cultivate a healthier self-image.

When it's criticism on my personality or how I currently handle things I tend to be somewhat emotionally detached unless the person focuses on something that I am insecure about. I consider their statement and whether I agree with it or not. Then I change based on what I think is the best way to handle the situation. Of course, I'm not always right.

If I get criticised on how I handled a past event and I cannot apply that feedback to future events, then I might get annoyed. Sure, I could've done this or that, but I did not.

It's why I dislike being around my uncle too long, he has a bad habit of criticising and lecturing. He won't recognise if you hint that you don't like being criticised, and if you tell him that you don't like being criticised then he'll criticise you for that.

He has a fascination with the word "adult", and everything he criticises you about he can somehow throw that word into it, even if it has nothing to do with age. He just loves telling you what you already know.

I am very sensitive to criticism. I think there may be a few different reasons for this, but largely I think the overriding reason is that I do not feel people see me for who I am and that is really difficult for me. I spend a lot of time observing others and trying to figure them out, but find that this level of notice is not given to me by others. They assume things about me that are more often than not false. Whether their views are positive or negative is immaterial, what matters to me most is that they really have no idea who I am or what is important to me and I hate that anyone with such a limited knowledge should think themselves worthy judges of me. Their opinions good or bad are usually false in my experience.

People in general do not understand me, what I think, why I do things or what I would like/dislike. People assume I have typical motives and desires. I do not.

On top of that I find others attention when it does come to be painful and intense. I struggle with the emotional/social response it asks for. It is too much. I am overwhelmed. I do not want an emotional reaction to be given to me. I just want facts and emotion free objective (as far as possible) interaction. It’s hard to come by.

Like a number of others I dislike both criticism and praise especially from people who are not my close family. Having this kind of attention raises my anxiety.

For sure, I used to be that way, but not any more though because I have learned to differentiate between the different kinds of critisism, I have learned about human nature in general.

Like others have said, I'm very sensitive in a general way. However, I don't see this as a weakness: yes, I'm not hard or conceptual like the average human, which requires a special handling skill on my side. For me, the advantage in sensitivity lies in making music, and enjoying life. I'm not one of those human hard bricks or heartless computers!

How I feel about criticism depends on who it's coming from, and on what I feel the person's underlying intent is.

I feel that it's important for me to be open to constructive criticism from people who I care about or who I have a working relationship with. After all, I've long known that I'm lousy at picking up on subtle hints -- which implies that if I can't respond gracefully to overt criticism, then that would rule out any possibility of resolving any interpersonal issues between myself and my friends, co-workers, etc. So I've made an effort to be receptive to constructive criticism.

On the other hand, I still can be quite bothered by criticism from people who I feel have no business criticizing me, or who I feel have an agenda of trying to undermine me for whatever reason. I try not to be too paranoid about the latter possibility.

Here, in a post in the separate thread Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's, I posted a list of links to articles on how to gracefully receive criticism.

I can be at times, but I believe spending my developmental years without a diagnosis means my 'responding and tolerating criticism muscles' are fairly well exercised. It depends on the nature of the criticism and how much I respect the person giving it.

Learning how to take criticism without feeling personally offended definitely took me time to develop.
Praise is something I tend to downplay as much as possible.
But it is important to weed out the ones that try to manipulate you with their criticism or praise.
Overall, I dislike any attention being focused on me.

I've often struggled with accepting praise too. I can deal with attention on my terms, but when it's not it's very exhausting very quickly.

(not directly responding to you, just that your post provoked the train of thought)

There are two types of criticism. These are destructive and constructive criticism. Most Aspies are bullied. We are told we are stupid, idiot, worthless. And it caused us distress. So in order to keep our sanity, we generally block it off. But the other form of criticism is very different. People who have our best interest at heart will give us criticism to help us, to make us better, to make us the best we can be, to help us succeed in life.

It is really important to listen to constructive criticism. But the problem is detecting the difference between destructive and constructive criticism. Sometimes you just have to give people the benefit of the doubt and over time build up a trust relationship.

There are people who consider any criticism to be destructive. If I criticize someone, it's to push them to do better, and help them reach their full potential. If I find a flaw with a certain process, criticism is used to help people rectify said flaw.

With politics, however, it gets very testy. While pragmatism was tolerated and usually encouraged in days past, it's no longer the case in the era of Trump and Brexit. Moderates and centrists are demonized much more frequently, and are considered fascist by supporters of people like Bernie and AOC, and considered socialist or communist by supporters of people like Trump, Roy Moore or Steve King.

More so, progressives are tired of being used and taken for granted by centrists and are starting to actually openly voice their criticisms towards that second set of opponents. We get it, you guys think compromise means we have to shut up and be grateful that you guys are sometimes slightly less awful than conservatives, but that attitude is slowly causing more progressives to realize that there's two camps hostile to us, not just one.

We get attacked as much, or possibly more so, by the MAGA crowd.

I'm aware of that. That bloc also don't understand that centrist liberals and more left-leaning progressives aren't the same thing (considering they don't even seem to understand the difference between those two blocs and Marxist-Leninism, judging by how often they lump all three together as communism).

That said, considering the attitudes centrists in the media and elsewhere demonstrate towards progressives, progressives would be fools to treat centrists like natural allies or even the lesser of two evils. Take single-payer health care for example, the Biden/Clinton bloc of the Democratic party is openly hostile to the notion and dismissive of attempts to even bring it up for discussion. If there's two blocs both equally hostile to a progressive agenda, it seems childish for one of those blocs to keep insisting progressives owe them their support just because historically we've often supported their cause. If liberals don't want to fight for a progressive agenda they shouldn't receive support from progressives.

Me too