Where the commentary comes from

If the tally was high and the words were ugly, the commentary probably had something to say about that too. You're so hard on yourself, it may have said, and you can't even stop. I'd like to start by suggesting that the commentary isn't really yours. You learned it.

Nobody is born calling themselves an idiot. A two-year-old who drops a cup looks surprised, or interested, or upset about the cup. The idea that dropping a cup says something shameful about the person who dropped it has to be supplied from outside. Often it's supplied in the exact words that later become the commentary. If you listen to yours carefully, you may recognise the phrasing. "What is wrong with you?" is a question people ask other people, usually children. "You always leave things" sounds like something said across a kitchen.

There's long-term research on this. Koestner, Zuroff and Powers used a study that had followed 156 people from early childhood into their thirties. The children's mothers had described their own parenting when the children were five. Children whose parents had been restrictive and rejecting, particularly the parent of the same sex, were more self-critical at the age of twelve. That held after allowing for the child's early temperament. For the women in the study, self-criticism at twelve strongly predicted self-criticism at thirty-one.

I don't want to make this a story about blaming parents. Most parents who criticise do it out of love and worry, in the way it was done to them, because they believe it's how children are made to try. Teachers do it, and so do coaches, older siblings and the general culture. The NHS, writing about low self-esteem, says it often begins in childhood, with messages from teachers, friends, siblings, parents and the media, and that for some reason the message that you're not good enough is the one that stays. A child takes in the critical voice and keeps it running after the critic has left the room. It's a sensible thing for a child to do. If you criticise yourself first, you may avoid the mistake, and you'll be ready for the telling-off if it comes.

So the habit began as protection, and you keep it for reasons that still feel sound.

You believe it makes you better. The harshness is how you keep your standards up and your effort going.

You believe it keeps you humble. People who are easy on themselves, you feel, become smug. In Britain especially, thinking well of yourself is close to a social offence.

You believe it's honest. You're only telling yourself the truth, and other people are too kind to say it.

You believe it's fair. When you've done wrong, you should pay for it.

And you believe it protects you. If you've already said the worst to yourself, nothing anyone else says can take you by surprise.

Underneath these are needs nobody should be ashamed of. You want to do things well. You want to see yourself clearly and to be a decent person, and you don't want to be hurt. The question for the next several chapters is whether the commentary serves those needs. I'll argue that it fails at each of them, and that something else does the job better.