There are three paradoxes at the heart of self-judgement:
- Self-judgement arises from our instinct to self-protect, but it impairs our health and well-being
- The reason we judge ourselves on the first place is in order to get rid of self-judgement.
- We use self-judgement to improve but it’s what’s preventing improvement.
Self-judgement inhibits our mental, emotional and physical well-being. It stifles our creativity, it triggers our fight or flight response, and it intimidates and humiliates us into not taking action.
Research has shown that people with high levels of self-judgement are likely to be less creative due to the suffocating grip of perfectionism. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, chronic stress, burnout and digestive issues.
While the most insidious forms of self-judgement are rather subconscious than deliberate actions we take against ourselves, self-judgement is counterintuitive to the ends it seeks. we use it to feel better but it’s why we feel bad on the first place. we use it to protect ourselves, but it threatens our well-being. We use it to grow, but it’s what keeps us stuck.
Self-judgement is an act of self-protection, but it impairs our health and well-being
Self-judgement is the voice of the ego fighting for its protection. The ego’s primordial function is to survive. In order to survive it needs to be right about itself, i.e. about the way we view ourselves.
Any change, any achievement, any transformation is threatening to the ego. Its survival depends on its reinforcement—on maintaining things as they are. It fights to protect our identity and all we believe ourselves to be because—not just our liberating perceptions of ourselves, but also for our perceived constraints; not just our strengths but also our weaknesses. And it guards these ideas about who we are so ferociously as if its life depends on it—because it does. Any form of transcendence and liberation is a literal death to the ego.
This is the reason why sometimes we fight for our perceived limitations, even when we’re aware that change would be in our favour. Being wrong is a form of death for the ego. The ego would much rather fail than be wrong.
The ego, by means of the self-judgement it uses, is trying to protect us. But what it’s trying to protect us from are the things that we want to achieve—growth, pursuit of new opportunities, indulging our interests and curiosities. It discourages us from venturing into zones of discomfort. But we grow and protect ourselves not by resisting discomfort, but by embracing it—and becoming more adaptable and resilient. Mainly, we protect ourselves by acknowledging that uncertainty is life’s nature and disabusing ourselves from the idea that protection is ever possible. We protect ourselves by letting go of our protective impulses.
We judge ourselves in order to get rid of self-judgement
Paradoxically, what we’re trying to achieve with self-judgement is the absence of self-judgement. We judge ourselves for our low levels of output because we think that if we were more prolific, we’d be more successful and we’d therefore feel better about ourselves. We judge ourselves for not going to the gym, because we want to lose weight so we stop judging ourselves for not being fit. The self-judgement that we try to avoid through self-judgement is what’s causing the problem on the first place. We use self-judgement to feel better but self-judgement is the reason we feel bad on the first place.
We use self-judgement to improve but it’s what’s preventing improvement
Whether it’s doubting ourselves, being afraid of following our interests, indulging our curiosities, or comparing ourselves to others, self-judgement is a form of negation of who we are in favour of who we think we should be.
When we judge ourselves, we deny who we are and we choose the idea of who we think we should be over who we actually are. Paradoxically, we aim not to be who we are in order to use ourselves to become better.
We think that by being somebody else we’ll get the results we want. But all we have to get there is ourselves. Instinctively, we judge ourselves in order to become better. But we become better by being who we are.