STOP beating yourself up!

Bullying. Pretty nasty, right? Not something you’d ever want to be associated with. Funny, then, that so many of us are in the habit of beating ourselves up.

We set the bar high, and when we don’t quite make the mark, the self-admonishment starts: “Oh, why didn’t I leave earlier? I’m such an idiot...”, or “How could I eat that whole packet of biscuits?” We’d never talk to a friend this way, so why on earth do we speak to ourselves like that?

Treat yourself like a good friend

“Self-bullying is something we do when we fall short of our own self-image,” says Dr Kristin Neff, a psychologist who’s