Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here today.

And we are going to talk this episode all about self-judgment.

It's something I've struggled with all my life.

I have very high standards of myself.

I'm a perfectionist in recovery. I often tell people. And as a result, I am by far my harshest critic.

I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out what I could do better, making these unrealistic

expectations of myself, never really valuing what I bring to the table

because it always could be a little bit better. And if any of this sounds familiar, any of this

is something you are struggling with, well, I am here. One to say, welcome to the club and also

to give you five tips on how to overcome self-judgment. First, let's talk about how did we

arrive at a place where we might be our own harshest critic. I would say systemically, as black

women, we have often been told that we have to go above and beyond what everyone expects of us.

We have unrealistic expectations for ourselves, our emotions. We can't

complain. We have to be strong. We need to have this myth around our superhuman strength and

ability. And we often encourage and reward each other for it, right? We talk about how this person's so

strong that they've gotten

through this or this person has been able to overcome the most incredible odds to do some great

achievement. And when we surround ourselves with unrealistic expectations, it's no wonder that we

might develop an attitude or a belief system that we

internalize that makes us think over and over again. You could have done better. This could have

been good. Why are you like this? This very negative, harsh, critical inner voice. If you are struggling with self-judgment,

...