Feedback Thoughts

I have a lot of trouble with feedback.  With all the messages surrounding us about "not being afraid to be yourself" or "daring to be different", it's sometimes hard for me to tell which feedback is constructive criticism I should follow or which is thinly veiled criticism.  Often, I feel personally attacked even with the most benign feedback, which I know is not something I should be feeling.  I really appreciated the ideas about overcoming the fear of feedback by building a new habit chain regarding feedback.  I have tried to do so in the past but still find it rather difficult to not think that I am being victimized.  Hopefully, in the future I will be able to take criticism effectively and realize when it is truly meant to help rather than to break me down.
Feelings of rejection definitely contribute to my negative thoughts when given feedback.  It feels as if the people are just trying to insult me rather than help, but I am trying to work on that as well.  I know that they are not truly rejecting me but actually helping me.  I also appreciated the suggestions when faced with actual rejection though as I often fear rejection when approaching new acquaintances or when speaking in front of the class.  I am also very prone to beating myself up when rejected, so next time I will try thinking of all my good qualities rather than focusing on what I could have done differently.
At first when I was reading the articles about giving feedback, I was rather surprised because I always felt like I gave good, constructive feedback.  However, after thinking about it more I realized that I often did exactly what both articles said was bad:  tried to mitigate my criticism by constantly praising how "smart" or "good" the work was.  I liked the ideas about praising hard work rather than cleverness and also about opening up a dialogue and being present rather than doling out empty praise.  In the future, I will try to say what I truly feel about somebody else's work constructively rather using empty words.

How I feel when given feedback.  Web Source.