When Feedback Feels Like a Verdict
You received feedback — but experienced it as a verdict about you.
1 — THE EXPERIENCE
A meeting. Some feedback.
Someone comments on a piece of your work.
The words may be brief and specific. But the experience feels much bigger—as though the feedback says something definitive about your ability, your value or who you are.
The feedback happened.
But why did it feel like a verdict?
2 — THE FIRST EXPLANATION
They think I’m not good enough.
3 — SOMETHING DOESN’T QUITE ADD UP
Why did this feedback feel like a judgement about you?
Why did these particular words get your attention?
Was the person describing your work—or did you experience them as describing who you are?
4 — INVESTIGATE
- What actually happened?
- What words were used?
- What did you experience?
- What did you experience the feedback as meaning?
- What did you already know or expect?
- What was happening in your body?
- What else could explain what was said?
5 — UNDERSTAND
Your experience did not arrive with its explanation attached.
Your brain had to make sense of the feedback using the words, the context, your bodily state and what it had learned before.
The experience was genuine. But the conclusion that the feedback was a verdict about you was not automatically a fact.
6 — EXPERIENCE
Return to the actual feedback and separate what was said from what you experienced it as meaning.
If possible, ask one specific question:
“What would you like me to do differently?”
Listen for information you did not previously have. The aim is not to persuade yourself that everything is fine. It is to obtain new evidence.
7 — UPDATE
What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
What might your brain have available to predict differently next time?
What will you investigate next?
One experience. One investigation. A different possibility.