About feeling judged, forgiving oneself, and moving on

2026-09-30

Judgement is the assessment of deeds relative to a standard of performance. It can come from another person such as a relative, friend, colleague, or figure of authority, or it may be embedded in the rules of the given action as a criterion for self-evaluation.

Interpersonal judgement comes in the form of receiving input from another, which is internalised as a demand to recalibrate the deed accordingly.

Whereas personal judgement, or self-evaluation, consists in interpreting the results directly, such as if I aim to shoot the ball on goal, my shot is checked by myself on the basis of whether I hit the target or not.

Celebrating a good shot is a way of passing positive judgement, else of recognising that the deed conforms with the standard. Similarly, a sense of disappointment involves the tacit recognition of the standard.

The same principle applies for interpersonal judgement: if you tell me something which I recognise as accurate, then I will feel you have identified in my actions that which can be improved or otherwise revised. But if I do not see the target you are pointing towards or if that target is your own mistake, then I will not be convinced to change my ways on my own.

How we respond to interpersonal judgement will depend on the situation, who the other person is, how they have communicated their message, and what is our own state of mind. We might not be good at coping with judgement because one or more of these variables are not in our favour. Here I focus on the self, which is the factor that we can control.

How you are ultimately judging yourself

Imagine this scenario. You know that I am maintaining this website. My writings inspire you to start your own blog, thinking that it will improve something in your life. You reason “if Protesilaos is doing it and he seems to be doing alright, then I can also do it to benefit as well”.

Suppose, further, that you let me know about your plan and I even help you get started by giving you some useful tips. I will even encourage you to keep going and will be happy to read your publications.

So you start your blog with a rush of enthusiasm: “Prot said ‘yes’!”, so fancy that.

Writing is difficult because you need to concentrate. You think you are skilful at it until you try. Words will not flow and you will have trouble collecting your thoughts. It will also be challenging to put ideas together in a way that makes sense. Put differently, you will understand that what you believe is in your head is not actually there: it remains unclear.

By persisting you manage to write something. I read it and think it is a job well done. In the meantime of you working to put together one article, I have produced ten long-form publications on a variety of topics. Each entry is insightful. You recognise its clarity and lucidity. “What kind of blogging monster is Protesilaos?” you may think in awe.

You keep writing to put out a second article. Same story: I continue accelerating away from you, though I still follow your writings, respond positively to your questions, and think you are making good progress.

As this patterns repeats, you eventually feel frustrated. Without me ever giving you any negative feedback, you start thinking that you are not made for this. Instead of recognising the progress you are making, however small or slow, you develop a nihilistic view where “if I am not great, then I am useless”. Once that mindset becomes the default, you will always feel worthless because you can never become good at something without first being awkward at it.

Put differently, you are judging yourself by comparing your output to what you have established as a standard of performance: my blogging.

The fact that you are judging yourself means that your situational awareness is working. It is indeed the case that my output in this imaginary scenario is more voluminous and rigorous than yours. Of course this is the case because I have been sharpening my skills for a long time, whereas you are only just getting started. What is not objectively true is your conclusion to be frustrated and to want to give up.

Your self-evaluation effectively puts you in front of a dilemma: to quit now or to continue at your own pace. The choice of quitting comes with certainty: you will 100% prove to yourself that you are not good at this task. The choice of persisting comes with uncertainty: you might learn that you are actually getting better and, in so doing, there is the possibility that you will become great.

At all times, it is not me who is belittling or inhibiting you: I am just living in my own little bubble and I am even there to help you. This is all about yourself. You are your own stern judge and executioner. Everything else is a distraction.

Forgiving yourself through acceptance

The above scenario is realistic. I am actually a competent writer, which also makes me an intensely sharp thinker with a keenly critical eye. “Critical” means “judgemental”, of course, as it derives from the Greek word “crisis”, which is “judgement”.

If you get to know me, you will realise that whatever I do, I do it well, because I do it wholeheartedly. If you want to argue with me, you have to know what you are talking about and have done the work of thinking it through. Otherwise you will find that I am much deeper than you think—and you cannot even imagine what lives down there. Same principle if you want to test me in other ways: you have to be up to the task yourself.

No, I am not threatening you. I am simply telling you that your self-evaluation will shock you if you are not careful with how you use it.

This does not mean that I am good at everything. So let me tell you how I am a failure. Think of the conventional markers of success for a straight male in his late 30s. I do not have wealth, I am not running some successful business, I do not have a [beautiful] wife, I have no children, I do not hold degrees from prestigious institutions of learning, I have no friends in places of power, I do not drive a fancy car, I do not live in an opulent house, I do not lead others in some capacity, I am not famous. To the eyes of the average person, I am a failure. If they are paying a little bit more attention they may politely say that I am irrelevant. They are right. I have not shown noteworthy results in any of those areas that virtually everybody is interested in.

Why am I failure then? I can reflect on this state of affairs, which is my way of judging myself and/or of internalising the judgement of other people. Maybe I am not as good as I think, or I have not tried hard enough, or something else is in my way that I have not taken care of, or some combination thereof. In the private world that is the realm of my thoughts, I may come up with explanations and secretly admit to my shortcomings. I might even choose to change things.

But whatever I am thinking and doing in response, I am effectively aware of the situation. As such, I am faced with judgement. There is no escape from it: for as long as you understand what you are doing, you are also cognisant of what moves you closer to the desired outcome.

To live as a failure, then, and to be doing it for so long, I must be treating myself with kindness. I am not being nihilistic, as I hinted at earlier. I am not saying, “I do not have some or all of these, therefore I am useless”. No. I have effectively forgiven myself by recognising who I am. I have said to myself: “it is okay, my friend, keeping doing what you can” and so I busily continue with my little projects.

Forgiveness only happens through acceptance. You have to admit to the truth of the situation and live with it. You cannot forgive yourself through lies: that is how you pretend that something is not there, although it is still at the periphery of your conscience and is constantly bothering you.

For as long as something is annoying you n this way, it prevents you from shifting your attention to other tasks. It demands that you notice it, it keeps asking more from you, it grows into a beast that eats everything around you and threatens to consume you as well.

Lies constitute a world that is tormenting you. And they have a life of their own. They can be charming, they can promise you hugs, kisses, comfort, and eternal love. But behind that cute smile are the jaws of a voracious predator. Make no mistake: you cannot befriend lies and fears.

Keep going from strength to strength

You will never move on if you are not recognising what the truth is. The wheels of your car will keep spinning in the sand without taking you anywhere. I can tell you about my failures because I have overcome them through acceptance. I noticed the vehicle was not moving, so I jumped off of it and started walking instead.

This is a personal matter. It is irrelevant what others think if you yourself are not practising forgiveness. They might tell you that you are fine the way you are, that everything is okay, and so on, but it will not make a difference if you keep beating yourself up for what you understand as shortcomings.

There is no insecurity in me: I can talk about everything and am not sensitive or defensive about it. This is because I was my own judge before you even brought up the topic. Whatever you can say to attack me, I have already done it myself. I killed myself through relentless judgement, but my spirit would not yield to the constant bombardment. So I came back with no hesitation left in my heart.

I stand here smiling, while happily doing what I can. There is nothing weighing me down, so I end up becoming annoyingly competent at my deeds. Why “annoyingly”, you might think? Because you would expect a dead man to just die already. You assume that a failure of a man is ultimately overtaken by resentment and broken by grief. Whereas I compete with the nightingales over who is the most natural singer and challenge the wolves on who is the most decisive hunter.

Acceptance has made me a beacon of hope and inexhaustible source of inspiration; a star so luminous that you may even doubt the veracity of my claims about my failure: trust me, those are real.

I am not a demigod or a prophet. No angel has appeared before me. There is nothing obviously remarkable about me. Though there is this attitude called honesty. It may seem insignificant, but it actually is a superpower that we all carry within. Practice it and you will not notice any impressive results. It feels as if it is barely working. Though it grows in effect the more you use it.

Honesty is how you expose the falsehood that grows in the shadows of your psyche. It shows you who are those creatures that pretend to love you in order to exploit you. No, I am not talking about other people right now: those are your own habits, your complacency, your learnt helplessness.

Honesty will make those go away. It can hurt to be alone, even if you just escaped from the company of a bully. In this regard, honesty is not a warm hug. It is as cold as a shower of icy water on a snowy morning. You have to think of it more as a stable shoulder. No matter how slippery the floor it, you can hold onto the shoulder and it will not fail you.

Honesty is fair. Trust it and it will endow you with stability. Be with it and it shall transform into the blade that cuts down all enfeebling thoughts, such as nihilism. Once you are in the mode of being honest, once that has become your new normal, you will be untouchable.

Stop avoiding yourself

If you find that you are always being judged, then there is a chance that you are doing it to yourself. Furthermore, if you notice that you keep looking around in the hope of finding something elusive, something that you do not know why you seek it or how it is even named, consider that what you may be looking for is not out there but right where you stand: it is you.

Turn inside and make sense of what you see in a spirit of justice. If you are making some progress, acknowledge it. Do not exaggerate its significance, but do not trivialise it either. If you are not moving in any direction, then maybe you should learn to stay where you are. Or you are trying to do it with the wrong method, like that vehicle that is stuck in the sand.

How do you feel about it? Stop rationalising. You will only find emotion behind rationality. Listen to your heart, trust your gut feelings, and do what seems right for you. Do it for your own sake. The rest will follow from there.

For as long as you are able to forgive yourself, through the acceptance of how things stand, you have nothing to fear. Continue and you will discover you are actually not that bad after all.