Self Criticism

How to Fully Accept Yourself—Just As You Are Most of us have plenty of experience with self-blame and guilt—but we are often at a loss when it comes to forgiving ourselves. According to Colin Tipping, this is because our idea of forgiveness usually requires a victim and a perpetrator—which...

Turn self-criticism into clarity, fear into guidance, and self-sabotage into confidence. Change begins when you choose to be your ally. Have you ever felt that just when you are about to move forward, something inside you suddenly hits the brakes? You procrastinate, hesitate, push yourself too hard, or fill your mind with excuses that sound logical… yet leave you standing in the same place. It is not a lack of discipline or a sign of weakness; it is your mind trying to protect you from fear, rejection, or the possibility of failure. This book invites you to understand that mechanism from ...

Perhaps you want to be nicer to yourself but don’t really know how to get there. Or maybe you’re someone who assumes self-criticism is a permanent part of your personality. Rest assured you’re not alone. Millions of people struggle with the toll that excessive self-criticism takes on their minds, energy levels, jobs, and relationships. And problems with self-talk vary dramatically from one person to the next: they can appear as mild but persistent inner criticism, full-blown self-loathing, or the pain of internalized oppression or abuse. 

After writing the runaway best seller Not Nice, Dr. Aziz returns to tackle the biggest killer of confidence: your own inner critic. That voice in your head tells you that you can’t achieve what you want or be loved for who you are, because you’re not enough. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize just how much that negative voice is running their lives, creating stress, anxiety, perfectionism, relentless business, and overwhelm.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR). These pages give us her searing...

“Psychologist and therapist Ellen Hendriksen has a likable, easygoing narrating style that holds together the impressive amount of useful information in her latest audiobook.”—AudioFile This program is read by the author. Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with...

Living with Avoidant Personality Disorder can feel exhausting, isolating, and painfully misunderstood. Managing Avoidant Personality Disorder is a compassionate, practical guide for people who struggle with social fear, rejection sensitivity, low self-worth, and the urge to withdraw even when they deeply want connection. Inside, you’ll find realistic coping strategies for managing anxiety, handling criticism, understanding emotional triggers, building healthier thought patterns, and taking small, workable steps toward stronger relationships and greater confidence. Whether you’ve been ...

Uncover your hidden assets—you can fill each day with excitement and a sense of satisfaction! Even if you love your work, you probably have days when almost nothing goes right. Bestselling author Dale Carnegie shows you how to make every day more exciting and rewarding—how you can get more...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ""Stomach stress gurgles are no match for this spinning rolodex of chill pills."" Neil Pasricha, #1 bestselling author of The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation Life is stressful as f*ck. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s no wonder you can’t calm down: your...

A dazzlingly original and ambitious audiobook on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today's most well-respected art critics. Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West...

In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and poet Elisa Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all kinds: dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and clichėd, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind them―chance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction.

Rich in clinical examples, this book offers a fresh perspective on the roles of shame and guilt in psychological distress and presents a step-by-step framework for treatment. Martha Sweezy explains how the principles of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy are ideally suited to helping trauma...

What follows is not a translation in the ordinary sense of the word. It’s more like a paraphrase. Rather than worry over the letter of the text, the goal has been to illuminate the large scale patterns that structure it. The King James Version, for instance, renders Paul’s letter with uncanny beauty but is opaque as an argument. Modern translations tend to have the same problem. Their overriding concern is with the letter of the text, not with its logic. As a result, Paul’s forest is always getting sacrificed for the sake of his trees. But Paul’s work is too important, his good news...

Stop Punishing Yourself for Being Human *How to Release Shame, End Self-Blame, and Finally Feel at Peace With Yourself* **By Oliver Stuart** * What real self-respect looks like in everyday life This is not a motivational book. It doesn’t tell you to “love yourself” or think positive thoughts. It offers something more practical and more honest: a way to grow without hating yourself into submission. You don’t need to suffer to improve. You don’t need to be harsh to be responsiYou don’t struggle because you’re lazy, broken, or undisciplined. You struggle because you’ve been ...

Do you catch yourself getting defensive—even when you don’t need to? Does feedback feel like a personal attack, even when it’s meant to help? If Criticism Makes You Anxious, Frustrated, Or Ready To Argue… This Book Is For You. No one likes being told they’re wrong. But if your first instinct is to shut down, argue, or avoid feedback altogether, defensiveness may be holding you back—without you even realizing it. If you've ever… Felt the need to explain yourself when someone gives feedback Found yourself arguing a point just to prove you’re not wrong Shut down or lashed out ...

“A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don’t. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person.”—Wall Street Journal A striking collection of essays from...

Enter the shocking world of the modern senior Civil Service where the power to award enormous contracts can lead to massive corruption, fuelled by personal greed and commercial fraud. In this novel of our times and ways of life, this cosy world of mutual protection and closing ranks against outsiders is laid bare – a world made possible by a culture of wilful blindness. The senior civil servants are bound together by a code of not just looking the other way but of deliberately avoiding any investigation of other senior civil servants’ activities. Highly intelligent and immensely capable...

What if the hardest voice to escape is the one that taught you nothing you do is ever quite enough? For many adults, parental criticism does not end when childhood ends. It becomes an inner voice. A hesitation before sharing good news. A need to explain every decision. A fear of being judged, compared, corrected, or quietly found disappointing all over again. Nothing Is Ever Enough is a practical, emotionally mature guide for adults dealing with critical parents, lifelong disapproval, impossible standards, and the exhausting search for parental approval. This is not a book about blaming ...

Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided is a sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a "positive" people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a...

Somewhere on your phone there is a list of everything wrong with you. You have been working on it for years. You track your sleep, your steps, your streaks. You have goals for your mornings, your moods, your relationships, even your past. You are always working on yourself, and you are always, somehow, behind. And nobody has ever asked the only question that matters: who decided you were a project? Esme Fairbanks spent nineteen years as a certified project manager. Then her sister found the spreadsheet on her laptop: forty-one rows of corrective actions, a status column that read Behind, ...