Dealing with Criticism
There was a post on a forum I visit about regrets and I mentioned I have many. I can be very hard on myself and feel shame easily if I make a mistake or misunderstand something. Therefore, I tend to regret mistakes and I also feel ashamed and humiliated at the same time. I'm trying to learn to take criticism and correction better. They can lead me to be a better person, if the advice is good. And everyone makes mistakes -- people probably aren't always looking down on me and thinking I'm stupid just for a little mistake. I guess I'm still quite insecure about myself. Just like I used to always cry over my appearance, feeling ugly, I also fear looking dumb. That's probably partly because people used to think I wasn't very intelligent when I was younger and more obviously autistic. Also I did lose a friend who thought I was "too dumb" for him (even though there was no evidence he was more intelligent). I want to just accept myself for who I am, including my flaws, and put myself out in front of people -- ready to take criticism and either ignore it or apply what I've learned from it (depending on how useful the criticism was).