Cut Yourself Some Slack: Strategies for Being Less Hard on Yourself

How much responsibility do you actually have for this?

It’s not uncommon to assume too much responsibility for something when it goes poorly and too little responsibility when it goes well! Is it actually your fault that the project failed to launch by the target deadline? Or was there a combination of complicated factors, some of which are totally outside of your control? Try making a pie chart and assigning yourself a piece of the pie that represents how much responsibility you feel like you have, and then, after you evaluate your distortion, how much responsibility really own.

You’re probably not the worst

You very well may have made a mistake, but was your mistake dangerous, oppressive, and/or harmful? If it was, yes, you have some serious work to do.  If it wasn’t, and it was just garden variety “not great” try to remember you aren’t a supervillain from a Bond film actively out here trying to ruin peoples’ lives.  Sometimes making a list of cartoon villains in your head as a comparison point is helpful.  That doesn’t mean behavior up to this line is automatically excusable, but it might help to have a counterpoint to your propensity to assume that you are simply the “worst” any time you make a mistake.

You’ve done well in the past

It’s tempting to let this VERY bad thing overshadow the rest of your life to such an extent that you become temporarily convinced you’ve never ever done anything right in your entire life. 

Try writing down a list of both wonderful things and regular old reasonable things you’ve done lately.  If you’re having trouble with this, ask a friend.

If you couldn’t do it, can it be done?

In the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, her stepmother tells her that she can only go to the ball if she picks all the lentils out of the ashes of the fireplace in two hours.  This is supposed to be an impossible task, not a task that a super industrious, careful person can accomplish, its only through the intercession of the turtledoves that nest in the tree planted on her mother’s grave aka MAGIC that that she is able to do this and go to the ball. 

If you made a mistake, is it because you were set (or set yourself) a “lentils in the fireplace” kind of task, where there is no way a regular person could actually accomplish it? If so, this is not your fault!

You’re a person, not a robot

Maybe it can be done without magical intercession, but can it be done without sleep, food, rest, breaks to see your loved ones, breaks to move your body, and breaks to see what tiktoks have made their way over to Instagram?

Your spreadsheet of deadlines might have forgotten to take in to consideration that you need slightly more maintenance than a succulent. Adjust accordingly, and try to remember that rest is a necessary human function, not “being lazy”. 

You’re aiming for sustainable, not perfect

Maybe you can do it, but you can’t do it all the time, and this has you feeling really crummy. Maybe you used to be able to do it, but you can’t do it right now, and not living up to your own hype doesn’t feel good. 

This life is a marathon, not a sprint.  We’re trying to come up with a plan that feels sustainable for the long run, and perfectionism is rarely that. I like the analogy of a marathon because we would never say a marathon runner is lazy, but they’re clearly adjusting their pace for the length of the race.  Adjust your pace to what you can sustain!

Whose voice is it?

Our inner critic is rarely our own voice.  Whether it’s a parent, our boss, our 2nd grade soccer coach, or our very own Miranda Priestly, someone once upon a time told us we needed to do better, and we took it to heart.  As children, young people, and people newer to the work of healing, it’s understandable that we internalized feedback from trusted authority figures without much thought.  But as people who are further along in our journey now, we get to reevaluate this.

Maybe the people who told us to “do better” “try harder” “toughen up” “stop crying” and “get it done no matter what” were wrong, or wrong some of the time.  Try asking, “how well is that working out for them?”

Who profits off your shame?

If the patriarchy, capitalism, racism, heteronormativity, fatphobia, or any other ism benefits from you feeling ashamed of yourself in this moment, and you are actively working on deconstructing these forces in your life and in the world, then part of fucking up the system is returning this shame back to sender.

Remember where you used to be

While healing isn’t linear, and you may be on a little bit of a backslide right now, there’s a version of you in the past that wished and hoped to be where you are now. 

Check in with this version of you, look at photos, read old progress notes, messy Instagram captions, anything to remember that you’ve made progress and are probably going to continue to do so.

What would you tell…

We’re usually much nicer to our loved ones than we are to ourselves.  What would you tell your best friend if this happened to them? What would you tell the overall-wearing, front-bang having bespeckled version of you at age six? Why do they deserve kindness and gentleness and you don’t?



To summarize

Without knowing you, and the specifics of your situation, we’re pretty confident in saying you deserve to cut yourself some slack.  We hope these exercises help you get started, and if you need more support and you live in Massachusetts, reach out, we’d love to help!