When working on yourself becomes relentless self-criticism, personal growth can turn into self-harassment.
This is a phrase I came across recently on Instagram from the wonderful Aunt Tammi that stopped me in my tracks: self-harassment.
It perfectly describes something I have been noticing for years in my therapy room. We have become very, very good at working on ourselves. We heal, journal and meditate. We listen to podcasts, analyse our attachment styles and learn how to regulate our nervous systems. We count our steps, monitor our sleep, optimise our mornings and improve our boundaries. We track our protein, practise gratitude, learn about trauma and identify our triggers.
Somewhere along the way, however, something that was supposed to make us feel better has started making an awful lot of people feel inadequate. Self-improvement was supposed to help us live our lives, but for some people it has become another job, and one from which they can never quite clock off.
What is self harassment?
Self harassment is what happens when the desire to grow, heal or improve becomes a relentless internal demand to be different from who you are now.
The underlying message shifts from, “I would like to do something that might help me,” to, “I should have sorted this out by now.” That distinction matters because healthy personal development comes from curiosity, whereas self harassment comes from criticism.
Healthy change asks, “I wonder what I need?” Self harassment asks, “What is wrong with me?”
The difficulty is that modern wellbeing culture can dress criticism in extremely respectable clothing, which means we do not always recognise what we are doing to ourselves. You can bully yourself with a meditation app just as effectively as you can bully yourself in front of a mirror.
When did simply being a person become a project?
There is now an extraordinary amount of information available about how we could become better versions of ourselves. We can become better sleepers, parents, partners, eaters, communicators, workers, thinkers and exercisers. Apparently, we can even become better breathers.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. Knowledge can be enormously useful. Understanding why you react in a particular way can be liberating, and learning that something you have blamed yourself for may actually be an old survival response can completely change how you see yourself.
The problem begins when information becomes surveillance, and you stop experiencing yourself and start monitoring yourself.
You begin wondering whether you are regulated enough, whether you have been triggered or are people-pleasing, whether something is your attachment style or a trauma response, whether you are setting your boundaries properly or being present enough. Then there are the more mundane checks. Have I drunk enough water? Why didn’t I meditate this morning? Why am I still anxious when I have done so much work on myself?
At that point, personal development has quietly become personal performance, with you playing the uncomfortable roles of both contestant and judge.
The endless search for your “best self”
I have always been slightly suspicious of the phrase “your best self”. Who exactly is this person, and when are you finally allowed to become them?
The implication is that somewhere just ahead of you is a superior version of yourself who gets up earlier, eats better, worries less, exercises more, has impeccable boundaries and responds calmly when someone behaves appallingly. Meanwhile, the person you actually are today is treated as an unfinished draft.
That can become exhausting because there will always be something else you could improve. You could be fitter or calmer, thinner or more productive, more confident, organised, resilient or emotionally intelligent. There is no finishing line.
If your sense of being acceptable depends upon finally becoming sufficiently improved, you have accidentally created a game you cannot win.
Why can self-improvement make anxiety worse?
For an anxious person, self-improvement can become particularly seductive because anxiety loves the idea that there is something you can do that will guarantee everything will be all right.
If I eat correctly, sleep correctly, think correctly, exercise correctly, communicate correctly and regulate my nervous system correctly, nothing bad will happen.
This can look remarkably like self-care, but it may actually be an attempt to create certainty. That is an important difference. You are no longer looking after yourself because it feels good or supports your wellbeing. Instead, you are following rules because breaking them feels dangerous.
Then you miss the gym, eat something you had decided not to eat, spend an evening scrolling through your phone or lose your temper with someone. Perhaps you cancel something or spend Sunday afternoon watching television instead of doing something “productive”.
Rather than thinking, “Apparently that was what I needed today,” you begin prosecuting yourself for failing to meet your own standards.
That is not wellbeing. It is self policing.
The wellness industry needs you to remain slightly dissatisfied
There is also an uncomfortable commercial truth sitting underneath much of this. A person who wakes up and thinks, “Actually, I’m basically all right,” is not always an ideal customer.
Dissatisfaction sells, and there is an enormous marketplace built around the gap between who you are and who you have been persuaded you ought to be.
It seems there is always something that can be optimised. Your body, face, gut, hormones and sleep can apparently be improved, along with your productivity, relationship, parenting, mindset and morning routine. Even ageing, one of the most ordinary processes of being alive, is increasingly presented as something requiring intervention.
None of this means that exercise, therapy or looking after yourself is pointless. It means we need to pay attention to the emotional message underneath what we are doing.
Is this care, or is it correction?
Healing can become another impossible standard
I see another version of self harassment around therapy and trauma.
People learn about childhood experiences, attachment, nervous system responses, or old emotional patterns and initially feel enormous relief because, finally, something makes sense. Then, quite subtly, that understanding becomes another standard they believe they have failed to meet.
- “I know where this comes from, so why am I still doing it?”
- “I’ve been in therapy. Why does this still bother me?”
- “I thought I’d dealt with this.”
- “I shouldn’t be triggered by this anymore.”
That word “should” is often the giveaway.
Knowing why something happens does not automatically stop it from happening. Human beings are not software updates, and old emotional responses can reappear when we are tired, stressed, frightened, overwhelmed or unexpectedly reminded of something.
That does not necessarily mean you have gone backwards, and it certainly does not mean you have failed at healing. Sometimes progress means noticing what is happening sooner or recovering more quickly. Sometimes it means recognising an old thought as an old thought rather than treating it as an instruction.
All of that counts.
How do you know if self-improvement has become self harassment?
Listen to the tone of the voice in your head because that will often tell you more than the activity itself.
There is a substantial difference between thinking, “I’d feel better if I went for a walk,” and telling yourself, “You’ve been sitting around all day. Get moving.”
There is a difference between deciding, “I want to eat something that will make me feel good,” and hearing, “You’ve ruined today now.”
Likewise, thinking, “I think I need some help with this,” is psychologically very different from asking yourself, “Why can’t I sort myself out?”
From the outside, the resulting behaviour may look almost identical. Internally, however, the psychological experience is completely different. One comes from care and the other from coercion.
You do not have to turn every difficult feeling into homework
This may be one of the most useful things we can reclaim from the relentless culture of self-improvement. Not every uncomfortable feeling requires investigation.
Sometimes you are irritated because someone is irritating. Sometimes you are tired. You have done too much, or are sad because something sad happened. Sometimes you dislike someone because you do not like them. Sometimes you are just having a bad day.
We have become so accustomed to interpreting ourselves that ordinary emotional fluctuations can begin to feel like evidence requiring analysis. We ask ourselves why something bothered us, what it says about our attachment, whether we are projecting and which childhood wound has been activated.
Something important is happening and deserves our attention. But perhaps you are cross.
You are allowed to experience an emotion without immediately turning it into a personal development assignment.
What does healthy self-improvement actually look like?
Healthy change has room for choice and flexibility. It does not collapse because you missed a day, and it does not require you to dislike who you currently are to become someone different.
Most importantly, healthy self-improvement should strengthen your relationship with yourself rather than make that relationship increasingly conditional.
One useful question to ask yourself is: If I spoke to somebody I loved the way I speak to myself about improving, would I consider myself supportive or controlling?
The answer can be revealing.
You might also ask yourself: Am I doing this because I genuinely want something, or because I am frightened of what it would mean if I didn’t?
That question can expose the difference between an act of self-care and something that has quietly become self-punishment.
Perhaps you don’t need another project
There are, of course, times when change is necessary. Some behaviours hurt us, relationships that need boundaries and old patterns that genuinely restrict our lives. Trauma deserves attention when it is affecting how we live now. Anxiety can become unbearable, and habits can damage our health.
I have spent more than 25 years helping people change what no longer serves them, so I am hardly going to argue that we should all remain exactly as we are forever.
But meaningful therapeutic change is not supposed to leave you permanently inspecting yourself for defects. At some point, all that work has to give you something back. It should give you greater freedom, more ease and more choice. Above all, it should give you more access to your actual life.
Perhaps, then, the question is no longer, “How can I improve myself?” but “Would changing this make my life genuinely better?”
If the answer is yes, it may be worth taking action. If the answer is no, you could leave yourself alone.
You can be a work in progress without constantly working on yourself
There is something deeply liberating about accepting that you will never become a completely optimised human being.
You will occasionally procrastinate and sometimes say the wrong thing. You may eat for comfort, miss opportunities, and make questionable decisions. There will be occasions when you know better and still do not do better. You will have days when you are emotionally articulate and insightful, and other days when your most sophisticated psychological observation is that everybody is getting on your nerves.
None of that means you have failed. It means you are human.
Personal development should create a bigger life rather than becoming another way of controlling it. Therapy should help you understand yourself, not turn you into your own permanent therapist, and self-care really ought to contain some actual care.
The next great act of personal growth is not adding another habit, downloading another app, buying another book or identifying yet another part of yourself that apparently needs fixing.
It may be recognising when you have done enough, trusting yourself a little more and allowing yourself to spend an entire day without trying to become a better version of yourself.
And perhaps, with full credit to the wonderful Aunt Tammi for introducing me to such an excellent phrase, it is simply deciding to stop harassing yourself.
