How to know you're too hard on yourself

In life, we know that we need to have certain qualities in order to make it through the different seasons of our lives. The basics are trying your best to be positive when feeling anxious or doubtful, and resilience to withstand life's pressures.

These essential qualities are easy to talk about in theory, but it's not always easy to put them into practice because of our inner struggles such as self-criticism. It's true that we are often our own worst critics, and if you can see these signs, then you should start to work on making it easier on yourself:

Most people agree that it's good to set goals and work towards achieving them and that it sucks to reach a point in your life when you realize you've failed. At the same time though, overdoing things and pushing yourself beyond a healthy limit isn't good either.

You end up neglecting other important parts of your life like your marriage, and the balance you were once able to maintain starts crumbling. At this point, it's time to slow down or take a break because life is more than just your achievement.

People who are suffering on the inside often pick up destructive habits. This is how they end up in problems like alcoholism and drug addiction because for a long time, that has become their coping mechanism.

These destructive habits are only a symptom of a bigger problem that needs to be addressed. The root might be feelings of inadequacy or a perceived personal failure that's slowly eating you up.

It isn't normal to feel bad about taking the weekend off or a long break from your usual routine. That guilt prevents you from seeing the effort and hard work you've been putting in all this time, which is not healthy.

You have to resist the urge to chronically keep going for the sake of your well-being in general but your health mainly.

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Anxiety is sometimes connected to the need to control life and its outcomes in an obsessive manner. It forces you to constantly keep going and keep feeding your need to be perfect until you break down.

This is a sign that you have some work to do to release that burden you've put on yourself. It might take time but you will be able to identify your root causes and heal from the anxiety itself.

This is also connected to perfectionism because you're extremely hard on yourself while offering grace to others for their mistakes. You will notice that you have no problems letting go of grudges against other people but then inwardly, you have this voice that keeps pointing out your mistakes.

To overcome this, you can actually learn how to change how you think about yourself. Some basics of self-forgiveness like recognizing when these toxic emotions come up and apologizing to yourself will help you with this process.