The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - The Psychology of Feedback: How to Receive It (Without Falling Apart)

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Why does feedback sometimes feel like a personal attack, even when it’s meant to help? In this episode, Dr Marianne Trent explores the emotional and psychological reactions we have to feedback, particularly when it touches on our sense of self-worth. Whether it’s a peer review, a supervisor’s suggestion, or an unsolicited comment, learning to receive feedback without spiralling can transform your personal and professional growth. You’ll discover why feedback can feel so threatening, how rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD) can play a role, and practical strategies to help you respond with curiosity rather than self-doubt. This episode is essential listening for anyone who finds feedback overwhelming but wants to become more resilient and open to growth.⏱️ Timestamps:00:00 – Why feedback feels so personal01:56 – Physical and emotional reactions to feedback04:59 – Why we avoid feedback and the role of RSD06:11 – How to receive feedback without falling apart08:05 – Finding the useful grain in critical feedback09:21 – Be curious, not furious10:18 – Asking for clarity and SMART goal setting11:11 – Triggers and tender spots12:07 – Reframing and feedback journalling13:01 – Gratitude, not gaslighting13:56 – Closing thoughts and community call to actionLinks:🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/podcast and click the blue request info button at the top of the page. Hashtags: #aspiringpsychologist #dclinpsy #psychology #assistantpsychologist...

Why does receiving feedback about ourselves sometimes feel like a personal attack even when we know it's meant to help us? In this episode we're unpacking the psychology of feedback, why it stings, why we avoid it and how learning to receive it well can transform our personal and professional growth. I hope you find it super useful. Hi, I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and I do love receiving your feedback. You can do that by dropping me a like or a comment, subscribing to the channel, or by getting in contact and letting me know what you think to the content.

But I know that especially sometimes if it's unsolicited feedback we're offered, that doesn't always feel quite so nice. And I know when we're in a variety of roles, especially if we're working in mental health, that we need to be kind of aware of our impact on others. We need to be kind of getting regular check-ins from our supervisors, often from our clients and our peers as well, about how we are doing. But that doesn't always feel super comfortable. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming, confusing, sometimes even painful. So today we are exploring why this happens, how it can tie into our deep need for belonging, and offering a few practical ways that can make feedback feel less scary and more empowering.

Let's dive in. Number 1. Why feedback can feel like a personal attack. I think it's that it often kind of hits us in our tender spots. It can feel like it's an indication that we are lacking in some way, that we are not enough. That can trigger all sorts of current, past, present imaginings. You know, I'm going to lose my job or they're going to break up with me. I'm not good enough. Others are better. I'm not going to get the pay rise that I need. There can be so many aspects built in. It might also be traumatic things about when people have told you things in not the kindest of ways in the past,

that it all comes screaming back to you in the present. It might really tap into your self-worth. It might make you feel that you are not good enough, you are not enough. We've also got to remember that we've got those fantastic, tricky human brains of ours as well, and that being cast out can feel really, really threatening, and that it might well get our fight and flight system into full swing that makes us feel vulnerable and like our position in society

or our pack is at risk. As a result of that, you might notice physical sensations in your body when you're being offered feedback. That might include gurgling stomach, it might include feeling like you need to run to the loo. It really can feel awful. You might find that it makes you feel physically hot, sweaty, flushed. It can be very physically

uncomfortable indeed, not always, but sometimes. And of course that might be for good reason. This might be fear that's being elicited. It might be something that's been so super hard in the past that it gets your pattern matching receptors firing and makes you feel vulnerable and like it's going to happen all over again. Even what they call constructive feedback can trigger this response and make us feel like we are not good enough. And of course, this can be exacerbated,

made even worse with the temperature of our internal self-talk, the way we talk about ourselves. If it feeds into what you already think about yourself, that's when this can feel like a massive sledgehammer blow. So this brings us pretty nicely onto point two, why we would be avoiding of feedback from others. Well, having looked at section one and the responses that we might well be experiencing, it doesn't really feel that wild that we'd want to avoid experiencing all of that and so we might not

want to receive feedback from others. But let's take a quick look at some of the reasons why we might feel like we want to avoid that feedback. Well, it might be a fear of shame or humiliation. Perhaps fear of confirming our worst thoughts or doubts about ourselves. Past experiences where feedback was delivered poorly or unkindly.

There is something called RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria. That's where it feels even more painful or uncomfortable to receive feedback and where it might always feel like it's critical, like it's kind of stripping you down to the bone, like it's making you want to run away and hide. Those thoughts are spiraling, making you feel like others are better. You should never have done this. Who am I to think I could do this, makes you want to just bury your head in the sand and never come up for air again. And that can be something that is commonly experienced by people with an ADHD diagnosis. If you'd find a standalone episode on RSD

helpful, please do drop me a comment or connect with me on socials and let me know. OK, number three, how do we begin to be able to receive feedback without falling apart? So my number one tip is to try to stay in the moment. And one of the best ways we can do that is by just taking a moment to pause, make sure you are breathing. Make sure you're not holding your breath because that's when the body might start to go into fight and flight. So we want to try and keep you mindful of being in this moment so that you don't begin

to dissociate, you don't begin to start a panic cycle. So once you start to realize that you're receiving feedback, just take a breath. In through your nose. Hold that for a moment. Breathe out through your mouth. to realise that you're receiving feedback just take a breath in through your nose hold that for a moment breathe out through your mouth don't feel that you need to rush in to defend yourself sometimes we just need to be able to listen to hear and that's something that I find really helpful trying to remind myself when I'm parenting as well.

Sometimes I just need to listen. I don't need to fix, I just need to hear. Once we begin to be able to pause, to slow things down a bit, that's when we might be able to begin to separate the feedback from our self-worth. To know that one piece of feedback doesn't define you. You know, I guess even with this podcast,

some people might be like, oh, it's terrible. You're awful. I hate the sound of your voice. You're dreadful. But actually, they might not be the person this podcast is created for. We might be able to think about their opinion or I might be able to think about their opinion as an anomaly. Maybe it doesn't need to be a signal that I'm not cut out for this or that I should jack it all in, quit. Sometimes I can just allow other people to hold opinions that might be different to my own, that might be different to what I wanted or what others, I hope, might think about me. We need to know that that piece of feedback doesn't define us and that it might not also be true.

Of course, it might be true, and we might need to be able to consider what changes we can make, how we might reframe what we're doing, do something a little bit differently so that it better meets our needs and the needs of whoever it is we're trying to serve or kind of provide a service for. And another tip can be starting to look for the useful

grain. So even if someone gives you kind of a vitriolic, you know, really not very nice version of their truth, it might be that we can actually kind of dilute it down almost like looking for, if you were doing, I know in Australia once I was looking in opal mines and you were kind of getting like a sand sieve and trying to sieve out all the dirt to look for the tiny opals. And it might be that even within something that feels not very helpful, that there might be a really useful tiny little shiny diamond or opal that maybe is useful for you to take on board. So we can almost discard some of the stuff that feels like actually that's not kind, that's not helpful and just really kind of reduce it down almost to look for anything that might be helpful in going forward

but doesn't feel so personal. I love this next one. It is be curious, not furious. Can you begin to view this as information but not a verdict? We're literally with curiosity just looking at it, just taking a look at what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like and you know just trying to be a bit more zoomed out, a bit more objective. So curious, not furious. We also need to be able to ask clarifying questions. Now this is something that I probably wish I had done at one episode in my life when somebody told me they didn't like my voice and they found it to be the most painful experiences of their lives. I didn't ask for clarification in that moment, but I sure wish I had because

that person is no longer with us. So my opportunity to do that has passed. I think nowadays I would be a better self-advocate. I would be better at asking for clarification and also knowing that I don't need to hold on to that. I kind of wish I hadn't because I think it did keep me stuck for quite some years. But an example of a clarifying question might be, can you let me know what you think I could focus on to improve this? So I guess we're looking for things that are tangible, something that helps us to be able to make action steps, you know, something that makes us to be able to make action steps, something that makes it measurable.

When we're looking at goal setting, we're looking at smart goals. So something that's specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-focused. And that might be an approach that would work really well for garnering this feedback as well and putting that into action. We also

need to begin to notice our triggers. What really gets your goat, so to speak? What are your tender spots? Where are your Achilles heels? If it's always in the same spot, then it might be something that is kind of old stuff that's being brought to the front. It might be that we need to work through that in supervision, in a meeting with someone you care about, with a friend, a family, a loved one, or maybe even therapy too. This can be where reflective journal writing comes in really helpfully as well too.

Spend some time with yourself, really invite yourself to look at those tender spots and to think about what might have helped create them to begin with. Number four, let's look at some practical exercises that might be really helpful to help feedback feel less triggering, less awful. We need to reframe our feedback mentally. It might be that we need to notice those thoughts and really name them as thoughts as well. So rather than having the thought that I'm not good enough, you know, we can be like I'm having the thought that I'm not good enough and maybe even shift I'm not good enough to I'm learning. I'm trying to

improve my skills which can feel more positive and like you've got more hope and more scope. Keeping a feedback growth journal can be really transformational. Write back any feedback you've received and how you responded in that moment. You might find it helpful to leave some blank spaces underneath so you can revisit so that your future self might have different thoughts, different ways of weighing in

on that same problem. And you might actually one day be able to kind of cross it out and think, actually that's done, I've learned from that. I've incorporated that into my regular day-to-day interactions at work or in a home situation with a friend, with a colleague, with a loved one, a family member. And actually that's not an issue for me anymore. Or you start to get feedback about how well you're doing at that thing and you're like okay job done. This one might feel a little bit more of a struggle and what we're definitely not doing here is we're not

we're not whitewashing, we're not using positive psychology to make it toxic, we're not gaslighting ourselves but we might be able to be thinking about practising a bit of gratitude. When someone's offering us feedback, hopefully in a constructive way, it's actually that they are invested in our development and they care about us and that they think we can perhaps do better. That is someone who is invested in you, even if it might feel hostile, they want you to thrive, they want you to soar. And being able to hold onto that and like I said, with that sieve, sieving it out to find the useful nuggets, the useful grains of truth that you can hold onto and

that do feel comfortable enough to hold onto and to transform and act upon is really key. So have you found this helpful? What's been your take home point? Please do let me know in the comments. And if you've got any other advice, please do drop that in the comments. And if that resonates with you as a watcher or a viewer or a listener,

please do support other people in the comments as well. If you find this content helpful the kindest thing you can do is to follow the show on whatever platform you are watching or listening to or subscribe if you're on YouTube. Every like on YouTube helps YouTube to know this content is helpful and helps it to be discovered by a wider audience. So please, if you're watching, especially at this point when we're on the finishing lap, please do drop me a like, please do drop me a comment. And if you're not already subscribed, please do me that kindness. It really is the kindest thing you can do for any podcaster or content creator that you rate.

I would love to know what other content you would find helpful. Please do let me know. Come and connect with me on socials where I'm Dr Maryanne Trent absolutely everywhere. And please do, if you're an aspiring psychologist, come and join my free Facebook group, The Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr Maryanne Trent, which is the exclusive home of Maryanne's Motivation and Mindset S mindset sessions which happen on Friday mornings. With the aspiring psychologist in the pocket With Dr. Mary Endrit