You hand in the report at eleven at night, after checking it three times. The next day you are congratulated and all you can think about is the typo on page four. Celebrating what you do well is hard, one small mistake stays with you for days and, when you finally rest, you feel you should be doing something more useful.

Being too hard on yourself often passes for a virtue: it is associated with effort, responsibility and doing things properly. And partly it is. But there is a point where high standards stop pushing you forward and start weighing you down. This guide explains what research says about that line, which signs suggest you demand too much of yourself, how it affects your health and which test can help you see it.

What does it mean to be too hard on yourself?

Being hard on yourself means setting high goals and asking a lot of yourself to reach them. In psychology this trait is studied mainly as perfectionism, and research divides it into two dimensions worth telling apart:

  • Perfectionistic strivings: setting high standards and working hard to meet them.
  • Perfectionistic concerns: fear of making mistakes, harsh self-criticism, doubts about what you do and the feeling that others expect you to be perfect.

The difference matters a great deal. A meta-analysis by Hill and Curran, covering 43 studies and almost 10,000 people, found that perfectionistic strivings had a small negative or non-significant relationship with burnout, whereas perfectionistic concerns had a medium-to-large one. In other words, the problem is usually not aiming high but what you tell yourself and how you feel when you fall short.

Healthy high standards versus being too hard on yourself

Healthy high standards Being too hard on yourself
Facing a goal It motivates you and helps you get organised It distresses you and sometimes stops you starting
After a mistake You fix it and move on You blame yourself for days
After an achievement You enjoy it You play it down or move straight on
Your sense of worth It does not depend on each result It rises and falls with every result

Signs you are too hard on yourself

These are some of the most common signs of being too hard on yourself. Several of them match the questions in the self-criticism area of the MyPsicoTest self-esteem test:

  • Nothing you do ever feels good enough.
  • When you make a mistake, you talk to yourself more harshly than you would to anyone else.
  • You find it hard to acknowledge your achievements without playing them down.
  • You compare yourself with others and almost always come off worse.
  • One specific mistake makes you feel like a failure as a person.
  • You feel your worth depends on what you achieve.
  • You check things over and over, or put tasks off for fear they will not turn out perfect.

The last one is more common than it seems: perfectionism and fear of failure are among the triggers of procrastination, as we explain in Procrastination: why it is not laziness and what sits underneath.

Why we are harder on ourselves than ever

It is not just an impression. Curran and Hill analysed 164 samples of 41,641 university students in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom who completed the same perfectionism scale between 1989 and 2016. All three types of perfectionism it measures rose steadily. The one that grew most was the sense that others demand more of you; next came what people demand of others, and last what they demand of themselves. The authors link this to a culture that, since the 1980s, has rewarded individual competition.

How being too hard on yourself affects your health

  • Burnout. Perfectionistic concerns are associated with burnout, and in some analyses of Hill and Curran's meta-analysis the effect was even stronger at work.
  • Anxiety, depression and other problems. A meta-analysis by Limburg and colleagues, covering 284 studies, found that both dimensions of perfectionism are associated with depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and general distress. That is why they describe it as a transdiagnostic factor, meaning one that appears across many different problems.

If you feel burnt out at work, the Burnout Test will help you measure it, and if constant worry is what stands out, you can try the Anxiety Test.

High standards and self-esteem

When your worth is at stake in every result, any mistake feels like evidence against you. That is why being too hard on yourself has so much to do with self-esteem: it is not only about how much you ask of yourself, but about how much you are worth to yourself when you fall short. Many successful people experience something similar, feeling they do not deserve what they have and will be found out at any moment; we cover this in Impostor syndrome: why you feel you are about to be found out.

How to tell if it is taking a toll

There is no validated online test just for this; research uses perfectionism scales such as those by Hewitt and Flett or by Frost. But you can start with something closely related: the MyPsicoTest Self-Esteem Test. It has 14 statements about how you see and treat yourself in general, which you answer in about four minutes according to how much you agree, grouped into three areas:

  • Self-worth and self-acceptance: whether you feel valuable regardless of your achievements.
  • Self-criticism and comparison: the area closest to being too hard on yourself. It asks, for example, whether you demand so much of yourself that nothing feels good enough, or whether you speak to yourself harshly when you fail.
  • Autonomy and boundaries: whether you need others' approval or find it hard to say no.

The score ranges from 0 to 42 and, the higher it is, the healthier your self-esteem: it falls into four bands, from "very low self-esteem" to "healthy self-esteem". You do not need to sign up, and your answers are not sent to any server. All the questionnaires, free and anonymous, are in the psychological tests catalogue.

How to stop being so hard on yourself without lowering the bar on what matters

The good news is that perfectionism can be worked on. A meta-analysis by Galloway and colleagues pooled 15 clinical trials with 912 participants and found that cognitive behavioural therapy for perfectionism, both as self-help and face to face, reduced perfectionism by a medium to large amount, especially concern over mistakes, and also improved symptoms of depression, anxiety and eating disorders. The authors note that there are still few trials.

Self-compassion is another key piece. A meta-analysis by MacBeth and Gumley found a strong inverse relationship between self-compassion and mental health problems: the kinder people are to themselves, the less distress they report. This is a correlation and does not prove that one causes the other, but it points in a clear direction.

Crumpled papers next to a note asking you to take a break, an image of perfectionism and of being too hard on yourself

Some ideas to get started:

  • Separate the goal from your judgement of yourself. You can want to do something very well and, at the same time, accept that a mistake is a mistake and not a verdict on who you are.
  • Decide what is good enough before you start. Putting a limit on a task, in time or in rounds of checking, helps you avoid dragging it out endlessly.
  • Notice how you talk to yourself. If you would not say it to a friend, it is worth changing the tone.
  • Try doing something "just well". Then check whether the consequences are as serious as you expected.

If being hard on yourself is costing you your health, sleep or relationships, therapy is the route with the most evidence behind it. At the end of the test you will find our recommendation of a licensed psychologist who works on self-esteem, online too.

If your result worries you or you want a professional assessment, you can talk to Xènia Capel Salcedo, a licensed psychologist (COPC reg. 14982), who offers a free first consultation call and online therapy from anywhere.

MyPsicoTest team · Updated: