""Scott, I feel uncomfortable at parties sometimes when you tell a story real loud. I know you're not doing it on purpose, but it embarrasses me. Can you try not to talk so loud?" Andrea said to her husband. Immediately, Scott's face turned red. He felt a combination of shock, rage, and hurt. "I-I-I-," he stuttered. Then he ran down the steps to the basement, slamming the door behind him. Downstairs, he turned his music up as loudly as he could and started lifting weights furiously."
""I want you to work on giving your direct reports clearer feedback about their performance." As her supervisor explained that she wasn't challenging her employees enough, Rebecca's field of vision literally went blank. Her thoughts were swirling so quickly in her head that she barely heard anything else her boss said. "How can she say that?! I just gave someone feedback yesterday. She doesn't know what she's talking about. I'm going to start looking for a new job.""
People often react defensively to criticism because they lack deep self-knowledge about strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and motives. Limited self-awareness makes individuals overly vulnerable to others' opinions and leaves them without internal reference points for interpreting feedback. Emotional responses can include shock, rage, hurt, avoidance, and cognitive shutdown. Those reactions can lead to immediate withdrawal, attempts to drown out feedback, or plans to escape the evaluative situation. Developing clearer self-knowledge helps put specific critiques into context, reduces emotional reactivity, and enables more constructive responses to performance or behavior feedback.
Read at Psychology Today
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