People who are overly self-critical find it impossible to be satisfied with their accomplishments, which puts their mental health at risk.
You’ve finished a difficult project, and despite your best efforts, it appears that you made a tiny mistake. As much as you’d like to correct the error, it’s going to be impossible to do so unless you completely start over. Even though you know objectively that no one but you will ever pick out this little glitch, your anxiety levels skyrocket every time you think about it. Needless to say, you can’t feel what should be well-deserved pride in your work.
Although it's dubbed a “personality style,” Thakur and Baumann believe that these high levels of self-criticism reflect a pattern ofthat’s gone awry. Referring to the well-known motivational approach known as self-determination theory, the ideal type of motivation occurs when you feel that you’re in charge of your behavior, not someone else.
An important point to note in this overall model is that it’s not only motivational problems that lead to the self-critical person’s misery. Additionally, there’s the factor of sensitivity to negative feelings that makes people high in self-criticism so likely to experienceand anxiety.