Criticism

Constructive, Destructive and whatnot

Hi, happy new month 🫶.

As someone who grew up having her every steps monitored critically, this is a very sensitive topic for me. Growing up, I had people close to me pick apart every single move I made, words I spoke, emotions I show. It was a very tiring experience and I believe it has shaped how I view criticism a lot. There is a popular saying that says ‘you cannot beat a child and expect the child not to cry’, this was however not the case for me because no matter how destructive the criticism is, I still had to take it with grace.

As an adult, I don’t do well with criticism. I strive hard to be ‘perfect’ as I was taught growing up but obviously, there are lapses here and there. But another skill I learnt growing up was how to conceal my emotions and just smile and say these popular words ‘ I’m sorry, I’ll work on it’ and it has always worked.

Now, I don’t like criticizing people (not to their face anyways 🌚) because I know how embarrassing it can be sometimes. However, on rare occasions when it is inevitable, I try to do it as soft as I can. I usually start with “ I’m not mad at you, we are cool but I’m just telling you so you can do better” but somehow somehow, 80% of the time I still end up being the bad person. There are two common reactions that I’ve gotten:

• They give me attitude for some days.

• They argue with me till I have no choice but to drop it.

As a person who does not like confrontations and frankly, it takes a lot of courage for me to tell people when they’ve done something wrong, this is grossly unsettling and I end up feeling bad at the end of the day. I once told someone politely that I did not like what they said to me and it was insulting, only for them to say that the fact that I said their attitude towards me was insulting, insults them.

Anyways, I’ve resolved to letting people do their thing and leaving my constructive/destructive criticism to myself. This is not a good resolution as I tend to move away from people that can’t handle the fact that they’ve done something wrong but it is what it is.

Thank you for reading my rants 😹. Also, let me know in the comments if you’ve experienced something like this and how you managed it😘.

Love,

Adesewa.