I recently happened upon an article on Yahoo news, describing how Kelly Osbourne—who had spent much of the previous year grieving the death of her father, Ozzy—was body shamed by a mob of strangers on social media. Some of the troll swarm’s criticisms complained that she was “too thin,” and “fragile” and one person even compared the way she looked to a dead body. All this while she was grieving her father’s loss, and struggling just to put one foot in front of the other each day.
There is a lot to condemn here, of course: the viciousness of the online mob, the coarsening of public discourse, even an observation that the web tends to magnify the toxic blather of a relatively small number of people.
But what got me thinking was what I hear from my clients: It is not unusual for such unwanted feedback to be directed at them. Sometimes it’s just a thoughtless comment, sometimes a casual dig, sometimes it’s just a look. Sometimes it’s deliberately cruel.
I imagine that in most cases the offending person likely forgot they said anything adversely affecting someone else thirty seconds later. But all too often, the targets of this unwanted and unappreciated feedback don’t forget. They let it go in. Replay it. Ruminate over it. Some (many?) bear hurtful observations for years. (One study of 898 54-year-old women found that the negative comments about their bodies that they had received while growing up were still associated with lower body self-esteem in middle age.)
Don’t Accept Delivery
How we process and try to ignore unhelpful—and hurtful—negative feedback is complex, and certainly cannot be fully addressed in a single blogpost hack. But, for what it’s worth, I’ve come up with a small visualization trick that sometimes helps.
Enter: the F*ckit Bucket.
Imagine a magic, invisible bucket that follows you around. Most of the time you don’t even know it’s there. But it’s always ready for action.
Suddenly, a hurtful comment is hurled at you from out of the blue. As soon as you’re aware of the comment, the insult,or even the well-meaning but bone-headed remark…
You don’t accept delivery.
SPLAT.
You smack that comment, that look, that moment of frustration, right into the F*ckit Bucket.
Then go dump the bucket into the sewer. Fling it off a cliff. Maybe your bucket is filled with magic hot lava and the offending remark is immediately incinerated. Hey, it’s your visualization, so your rules.
(Maybe you don’t want a bucket. Fine. Give yourself a force field. A trapdoor. An emotional paper shredder. The specific image isn’t really the point.)
The Pause Is the Point
Not everything other people have to say about you, or even think about you, deserves entry into your sense of who you are. Creating one tiny moment between what somebody throws at you and your decision whether or not to let it become part of you is what matters.
Of course, some criticism aimed at us contains useful information, and we should evaluate it. After all, some things hurt because even though feedback may be hard to hear, there are considerations worth examining.
But some things are just an expression of another person’s cruelty, insecurity, carelessness, bad mood or wrong-headed assumptions.
From Reacting to Responding
Previously, I had written about the difference between reacting and responding. Reacting, as I defined it, is what happens when the trigger goes straight into you and it immediately starts driving your behavior. Responding is more empowering; it’s what becomes possible when you create a mindful moment after the trigger and you consider the best choices around what you might do next.
The takeaway:
The F*ckit Bucket is more than a cute visualization. It exists to remind you that someone else’s unfair and negative thoughts about you should not become your own ideas about yourself.