I Feel More Comfortable With Criticism than Compliments

I feel uncomfortable when people pay me compliments. I don’t even particularly like it when people wish me “happy birthday” – or anything like that. I find this all a bit strange given that I engage in a fair bit of self promotion. Compliments are a wasted on me. I either ignore them completely or I quickly change the subject. When people criticize me though, I can be like a dog with bone.

Discomfort with Compliments as Low Self Esteem

If I was playing the amateur psychologist I would suggest that my aversion to compliments is due to low self esteem. I wouldn’t be able to agree with my own diagnosis though. I don’t believe that I suffer from low self esteem – I used to. It is also not that I usually think the compliment is wrong. It is more that I just don’t like to be the certain of attention like that. I don’t remember compliments but a criticism will bang around in my head for days.

I’m sure that my discomfort with compliments says something important about me, but I don’t know what that is. I suspect like other areas in my life the answer will become clearer to me in the future.