The skill of Not Keeping Score can be helpful for avoiding emotional pain in response to the comments and criticism of others. This is particularly true if you are sensitive or prone to interpreting even constructive criticism as a kind of rejection.
In my experience, people who are likely to be hurt by any kind of criticism or even neutral feedback are harboring a kind of perfectionistic expectation of themselves. They seem, at some level, to have to be perfect or they are not acceptable (as members of a tribe). Such individuals often experience distress because it’s impossible to go through life without being criticized even mildly. To use the language of Stop Keeping Score, they fail at living up to the scorecards that they create for themselves or that they adopt from others.
The pain of this distress is significant and can lead to avoiding social situations and work equal with their training when severe. Those who are less stricken may experience chronic worry (stress) about their being approved of by others.
The antidote for being less sensitive to the criticism of others is to have reasonable expectations about what you can and cannot do. A good place to start in this effort is realizing you cannot be perfect (and no one reasonable expects you to be perfect). Tailor your expectations and the related scorecards to your level of imperfection and the thought that you are a work in progress and that you’re comfortable with your imperfection as you strive to improve yourself — at a reasonable rate, learning, growing, and evolving as you go.
At the same time, your awareness of expectations (and scorecards) grows, act to soothe your fear that you will be rejected for being imperfect. Tell yourself that you are valued by those around you. Anyone who does not accept an imperfect you needs to work on their expectations or be left behind for being unreasonable and unrealistic. We all are imperfect, but we are all not equal in our ability to be tolerant in other’s imperfection.
With the benefit of these strategies, hopefully you will experience less distress at the real or imagined criticism of others. In addition, hopefully, you’ll also feel the comfort of being accepted for who and where you are on the journey to perfection.