Don't Let Criticism Turn to Abuse
Highly critical people show up wearing different faces. The office gossip. The bully. The narcissist. The one who seems to exist only to locate a flaw and press your nose into it. A certain amount of criticism makes sense. Say your boss expects something close to perfection and your recent work hasn't measured up. Once the sting of being called out for your mistakes and gaps fades, you usually come away knowing what to do differently. The problem starts when correction stops being occasional and becomes a steady drumbeat of condemnation. At that point it has crossed into emotional abuse. People can absorb only so much negative feedback before it starts eating away at their growth and their sense of what they're capable of.
So why are some people wired this way? Maybe you know one. They judge fast, easily, and without any apparent embarrassment. The way they criticize varies as much as their reasons for doing it, but the fixation on flaws and fixing them tends to trace back to one of two roots: an absence of empathy, or shame they're carrying inside.
Take the empathy problem first. Some people are all business. Results matter to them in a way that feelings don't. Their standards sit somewhere near impossible, and the social filter that would soften their delivery just isn't there. Folks with narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, or antisocial personality disorder can all display thin empathy. The cutting remarks aren't really aimed at you as a person. Their makeup pushes them toward spotting what's wrong and prescribing the cure, and they do it coldly.
Then there's internal shame. Sometimes the person forever hunting for faults in others carries the very fault they keep pointing out. The self-help crowd has a phrase for this: "if you spot it, you got it," sometimes shortened to IYSIYGI. It isn't a clinical diagnosis, but it names a particular brand of hypocritical criticism pretty cleanly. I had a student once who went after gay people regularly. I handled it carefully, but I made it clear I wouldn't allow bullying and told him he needed to be more accepting. Years later I found out he's gay, and these days he's proud of it.
You see the pattern everywhere. The religious or political figure who trades on moral superiority and then turns up having an affair or quietly draining the collection plate. The person who gossips and hands down verdicts on everyone around them, often nursing deep insecurity about who they are. Bullying is probably the cleanest example: a way of taking the hate and revulsion someone feels toward themselves and dumping it onto another person. Causing pain covers the shame. The critic's claim to moral authority turns out to be a cover story for the things they can't face in themselves.
Dealing with a person like this is genuinely hard. The remarks land, and the missing compassion is tough to make sense of. For the sake of your own mental health, though, you have to cap how much of it reaches you. You won't control their personality or what they do. What you can control is your own response, and that's where you build a buffer against the negativity.
Be the change you want to see. Gandhi put it better than anyone. If you want change, you have to embody it. Reshaping a critic's behavior may be beyond you, but you can work on your own mind and grow in the direction you wish they would. The thing a hyper-critical person lacks is empathy. Try stepping into their shoes and asking what's actually driving the criticism, and you'll come out of it more empathetic yourself. That may do nothing for them. It still changes you.
Stand up for yourself. Be assertive whenever the opening is there. Tell the critic how their words and behavior land on you. Skip the blame and keep the focus on yourself and what you feel. Lean on "I" statements. The person might be your boss, and you still have dignity and a right to be treated with respect.
Take it for what it is. Most brutal criticism says more about the one delivering it than the one receiving it, and their manner is what makes the words bite so hard. Don't let those lines set up camp in your head and loop on repeat. That said, the message buried under the delivery might still carry some truth. Separate the point from the packaging. Is there something about yourself worth changing? If so, you've been handed a chance to grow. The criticism may not be constructive, but you can still pull a constructive message out of it.
Don't feed their negativity. Getting pulled into gossip happens easily. And the people who stand by while someone is bullied, doing nothing, share the blame for keeping the whole thing alive. Don't feed the beast. Push back on the gossip or the bully. Refuse to tear others down yourself. Let your actions make the point that relentless criticism isn't acceptable.
Keep your distance. This one borders on impossible, because the person is usually someone you're stuck being around. If you could avoid them, you probably already would. A boss or coworker is even harder to escape, but you can at least trim down how often you meet. In personal relationships, set your expectations and draw boundaries. When they're crossed, pull back. Leaving the room, walking off, or hanging up the phone is all fair. Just lead with a short explanation first, something like, "Comments like that hurt, so I'm going to go now." Responding that way is frightening, no question. But the nerve it takes sends a clear signal and guards your worth.
- Melissa Lavery, M.S.
References: Berglas, S. (2014, March 6). Why Are Some People So Critical? Retrieved March 18, 2015, from hbr.org. Light's Blog: A Blog About Toxic and Non-Toxic People. (2012, August 11). Retrieved March 18, 2015, from lightshouse.org. Linaman, T. (n.d.). Getting Along With Critical People. Retrieved March 18, 2015, from relationaladvantage.com. Tartakovsky, M. (n.d.). How to Deal with Critical People. Retrieved March 18, 2015, from psychcentral.com.