Receiving criticism

Calm down before you reply, ask questions until you know exactly what they mean, and sort the useful part from the sting later, on paper.

• Evidence: Some
• Takes: 10 minutes, then a day
• Work

Right now

1. Don’t answer yet if you can avoid it. Take one slow breath out before you say anything. If it’s an email, don’t reply for at least an hour.
2. Calm your body, don’t fire it up. Slow breathing or a quiet few minutes works better than venting or storming off for a run. In a review of 154 studies, activities that lowered arousal reduced anger clearly; ones that raised it (hitting a punch bag, going for a run) didn’t help on average [2].
3. Say one neutral sentence and buy time. “Thanks, let me think about that.” That’s enough for now.

Before

You often can’t prepare for criticism, but you can for reviews and feedback meetings.

• Decide that you’ll listen first and respond later. Go in planning to ask questions and take notes, not to defend every point.
• Expect at least one thing you disagree with. That’s normal, and it doesn’t make the rest wrong.
• Bring a notebook. Writing gives your hands something to do and slows the conversation down.

During

• Ask for specifics. “Your reports are sloppy” is hard to act on. “The figures in the March report didn’t match the spreadsheet” isn’t. Keep asking until you have an example.
• Repeat it back. Summarize what you heard in a sentence. It shows you were listening and catches misunderstandings early.
• Separate the work from you. Feedback works worst when it pulls your attention onto yourself and away from the task [1]. When you notice “they think I’m useless”, bring it back to “they want the figures checked”.
• Don’t argue the details now. If something is factually wrong, say so once, calmly, and move on.

After

• Write it down from a distance. Describe what happened as if it happened to a colleague: “Alex was told the report had errors.” A meta-analysis of 48 studies found that looking at upsetting events from an outsider’s view reduced the emotional sting a little, and more so when people wrote or talked it through rather than just imagining it [3].
• Sort it into three piles. What’s accurate, what’s partly true, and what you disagree with. Most criticism has a bit of each.
• Talk to yourself like you’d talk to a friend. In a set of five studies, people who treated themselves kindly were less upset by unflattering feedback, and could admit their part in what went wrong without feeling overwhelmed [4].
• Pick one change from the accurate pile and do it visibly. Then tell the person: “I’ve started double-checking the figures before I send them.”
• If the criticism was unfair or personal, write down the facts with dates. If it keeps happening, that’s a pattern worth raising. See dealing with a difficult boss.

Why this works

Calming down first has the strongest support: a large meta-analysis found activities that lower arousal, like slow breathing, reduced anger and aggression, and the result held across ages, cultures and settings [2].

Focusing on the task, not yourself comes from a classic meta-analysis of 607 effects. Feedback improved performance on average, but in over a third of cases it made performance worse. It did worst when it drew attention to the person rather than the task [1]. That study was about how feedback is given, but the same logic applies to how you take it in.

Self-distancing and self-compassion both help with the sting, but the effects are small, and most of the studies were short lab experiments with students [3][4].

Rated Some. The calming-down advice is well supported. The rest rests on smaller studies and on applying findings about giving feedback to receiving it.

Topics: Work, Feedback, Criticism, Emotions, Self-Compassion

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.