Life under the microscope: public criticism and mental health

It’s two in the morning. The phone glows in the dark, your thumb scrolling down. There are four hundred comments under the article, and although you promised yourself you wouldn’t read them, you are reading them. Most are the kind you can skip. Then comes one that mentions your daughter. And suddenly you can’t sleep any more, because in your head you are composing a reply you will never send.

“Don’t read the comments,” everyone tells you. As if it were that simple. As if it were possible not to hear someone calling your name in a square where half the country is standing.

This piece is for people who live under the microscope: for politicians, directors, mayors, head teachers, doctors who have ended up in the media, journalists, athletes, artists and anyone whose name has become public — by their own choice or because of a single event. And it is also for those who live alongside them. Because public criticism never hits just one person.

Why one criticism outweighs a hundred compliments

If you have ever read ten kind messages and one insulting one, you know which stayed in your head. That isn’t your weakness. In 2001 Roy Baumeister and colleagues reviewed an extensive body of research and reached a conclusion they summed up in the title itself: bad is stronger than good. Negative experiences, reactions and information have, on average, a stronger and longer-lasting effect on us than positive ones of the same intensity. Brains that evolved in communities where being excluded from the group was dangerous give more attention to threat than to praise.

In 2003 Naomi Eisenberger and colleagues showed something else: when people were excluded from a group during a simple computer game, areas of the brain that are also involved in the unpleasantness of physical pain became active. The phrase “what they write about me hurts” is therefore not just a figure of speech.

Public figures are exposed not only to criticism but increasingly to online harassment too. In 2021 the Pew Research Center in the United States reported that 41 per cent of American adults had experienced some form of online harassment. For people who are in the public eye because of their work, such experiences are even more to be expected, because their name is visible and their decisions affect a great many people.

What happens in the body when everyone is judging you

In 2004 Sally Dickerson and Margaret Kemeny carried out a meta-analysis of more than two hundred laboratory studies, looking for an answer to the question of which kinds of stress most strongly trigger the release of the stress hormone cortisol. The answer was surprisingly clear. The strongest response and the slowest recovery appeared when two conditions met: social evaluation — others are judging you, your image is at stake — and uncontrollability — you can’t influence the outcome, whatever you do.

Public criticism on social media is an almost perfect example of both conditions at once. You are being judged by people you don’t know, and your response usually changes nothing — or makes things worse. It’s no wonder that after a day like that people can’t sleep, that their heart races when they see a notification on their phone, and that their thoughts circle around the same sentence for days afterwards. I wrote about this circling in Rumination: the scientific name for spinning thoughts — and why the brain does it at all.

It is important to understand that this is a normal response of the nervous system to abnormal circumstances. Human beings aren’t made to be watched by a hundred thousand people at once. When there is too much stress, you can slip out of what we call the window of tolerance — the zone in which you can feel and think at the same time.

Shame in the town square

Criticism cuts to different depths. It is one thing if someone says “that decision was bad”. It is something entirely different if they say “you are incompetent, corrupt, ridiculous”. The first refers to an action and stirs up guilt or anger at most. The second refers to the person and stirs up shame.

Shame is an emotion that has always been tied to the gaze of others. We don’t say “I wanted the ground to swallow me up” for nothing. In Shame: the emotion that whispers “There is something wrong with me” I described how shame triggers the urge to withdraw, disappear, fall silent. For a public figure this urge runs directly against the role: they are expected to appear, respond, show themselves. So many learn to wear armour — outward indifference, cynicism, sometimes attack. Beneath the armour, shame carries on working.

One consequence is that outer criticism is joined by inner criticism. The comments you read slowly move into your own voice. In the morning in front of the mirror, you hear for yourself what they wrote at night. I wrote about how the voice that constantly judges us comes about in The inner critic: where the voice that constantly judges you comes from. You can also find a short explanation in the knowledge base under shame.

Criticism, attack and threat are not the same

For people who are in the public eye because of their work, it is worth learning to separate three things that often blur together on the screen.

• Criticism refers to your decisions, statements or work. It can be unfair, harsh and painful, but it is part of a public role. People in positions of power must be open to scrutiny — that is part of how a democratic society works.
• An attack refers to your person, your appearance, your privacy, your family. It carries no information about your work. Its aim is not to correct but to wound or humiliate.
• A threat is an announcement of harm to you or your loved ones. It isn’t an opinion. It is a matter of safety — in Slovenia you report it to the police on 113, and in an emergency you call 112. You can also report online hate speech through the Spletno oko reporting point.

Researchers have noticed that content which stirs strong moral emotions — outrage, disgust, anger — spreads faster on social media. In 2017 William Brady and colleagues showed that tweets containing more moral-emotional words reached noticeably more people. For a public figure this means something uncomfortable: the loudest criticism is not necessarily the most substantial. It is merely the most contagious. Once you know this, you can ask yourself: is what I’m reading information about my work — or information about how the algorithm works?

A family under the microscope

When one person in a family is public, the whole family is public — except that none of the others chose it. Children hear what classmates say about their father or mother, having heard it from their own parents. A partner reads the same comments, but has neither a microphone nor a role with which to reply. Parents feel ashamed or angry, relatives ask questions over Sunday lunch.

In Slovenia this is even more pronounced, because we are small. A public figure can’t disappear into the crowd of a big city. Their child goes to the same school as the children of the journalists who write about them, their partner shops in the same supermarket as the people who were commenting at night. The line between public and private is thin, and family members often have to guard it themselves.

This is how a conversation between partners might sound after a bad week in the media (composite, not a real person):

“Why didn’t you tell me there would be an article tomorrow?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I found out from a colleague. In front of everyone.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You’re not protecting me. I’m just alone in this, and so are you.”

This short exchange holds the core of it: the wish to protect loved ones through silence often leaves them alone. I write more about how a career at the top affects a partner and children in A family in the shadow of a career: the partners and children of people in senior positions.

How to protect yourself

There is no perfect protection. But there are habits that reduce the amount of poison that reaches you and increase your capacity to bear it.

Don’t read alone, and don’t read at night. If you have to follow the reactions, let someone else go through them first — a colleague, a press officer, a trusted friend — and pass on to you what matters in substance. If you read them yourself, set a time of day when you are rested and limit it. Never before sleep: night is when the brain is least able to keep things in proportion. I described why thoughts spin most at that very time in Overthinking at bedtime: why the mind starts the film just when it should be switching off.

Separate the role from yourself. When you are criticised as a minister, a director or a head teacher, it is above all the role that is being criticised. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. But it does mean your worth as a human being isn’t being voted on in the comments.

Have at least one space without an audience. A space where you don’t have to be measured, where you don’t have to watch how something will be quoted. For some it is a partner, for others a childhood friend, for some it is therapy.

Set boundaries. A public role doesn’t mean everything is public. What you say about your family and what you don’t. Which questions you answer and which you don’t. Boundaries aren’t about shutting yourself away; they protect the space in which you can live.

How to protect your loved ones

You can’t protect your loved ones from everything that gets written. But you can help them not to carry it alone.

Tell them before they find out elsewhere. Children and partners cope better with unpleasant news they hear from you than with news that ambushes them in a school corridor or at work. With children, adapt your language to their age: younger ones need only know that some people are saying nasty things about their mum or dad and that it isn’t true, or isn’t the whole truth; older ones can be told more.

Let them feel what they feel. A child may be angry with you because your job has made them a target at school. A partner may be tired of always being someone’s wife or someone’s husband. These feelings aren’t betrayal. They are part of the price the family pays, and it is right that they have room.

Don’t turn your partner into your defender. A partner who argues online with your critics exposes themselves without the protection you have. Agree on who says what in public — and that it is better for your partner to say nothing.

Safety before politeness. If threats mention your children, your address or your daily routes, this is not a matter of patience. Inform the police, the school and the people responsible for your safety.

Exercise: criticism on the table

Do this exercise when a piece of criticism won’t let you go — but not straight away; wait until the first wave has passed. You need a sheet of paper and fifteen minutes.

1. Write the criticism down word for word. Don’t summarise or interpret it. On paper it is often shorter and less menacing than it was in your head.
2. Divide it into three parts. What refers to my work or decision? What to my person? What is merely tone — outrage, mockery, insult? Underline each part in a different colour.
3. For the part about your work, ask yourself: is there anything in this that someone I trust would also say? If so, write down what you could do with it. If not, write that down.
4. For the part about your person, ask yourself: whose voice do I also hear in this? Is this really the first time I’ve heard it — or have I known it for ever? Public criticism often reopens an old wound.
5. Set it down. Fold the sheet and put it away. Before you return to work, do something with your body — a walk, a few slow out-breaths, a glass of water. This tells your body that the danger has passed for now.

The exercise doesn’t make criticism painless. But it helps you separate what is worth hearing from what is only noise — and notice where the criticism struck something that was wounded long before.

Where this doesn’t apply

Criticism is sometimes justified. This piece doesn’t say that every criticism is an attack or that you need to protect yourself from it. People with public power must be open to scrutiny. The protection I am writing about isn’t protection from accountability, but from being destroyed by humiliation. If it seems to you that every criticism is an attack, that may be a sign that the shame is so great it can no longer tell the two apart — and that is worth exploring.

Armour isn’t a solution. Some people protect themselves by ceasing to feel. Nothing moves them any more — not criticism, not praise, not their loved ones. It does make public appearances easier, but it comes at a cost at home and in the body. Indifference is not the same as resilience.

Sometimes the answer is a matter of security or law, not psychology. With threats, stalking or the publication of personal details, working on yourself isn’t enough. You need the police and legal help.

When thoughts arise that you can’t go on living. Public disgrace can be so severe that thoughts of suicide appear. If that happens, don’t wait. In Slovenia, call the Klic v duševni stiski helpline on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samarijan confidential line on 116 123 (24 hours a day), or in an emergency 112. See your GP or a psychiatrist as well.

What therapy can offer

Therapy can’t give a public figure their anonymity back. But it can offer something that is scarce in public life: a space without an audience. Where you don’t have to be measured, where nothing is on the record and where you can be angry, frightened and ashamed all at once without anyone exploiting it.

For people whom others recognise, the question of confidentiality is especially sensitive. I described what stays between therapist and client and where the legal limits lie in Confidentiality in therapy: what stays between us and where the limits are; and I write about the particular considerations for people in senior positions in Therapy for people in senior positions: confidentiality when people know who you are.

In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, we are interested not only in what was written about someone, but also in what it opened up in them. Christian Gostečnik describes how present relationships awaken old emotional patterns. Someone who as a child felt loved only when they were flawless will experience a public mistake differently from someone who was sometimes allowed to get things wrong. Once this is put into words, the criticism doesn’t disappear — but it loses some of the power the past gives it. Sometimes it makes sense for a partner to come to a session too, because both of them carry the public gaze. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• One criticism outweighs a hundred compliments because the brain is built to give threat more attention — this is not a weakness.
• Public criticism combines evaluation and uncontrollability, the two conditions that most strongly trigger the stress response.
• Separate criticism, attack and threat: the first is part of the role, the second is noise, the third is a matter for the police.
• You don’t protect your loved ones with silence — tell them before they find out elsewhere, and allow them their own feelings.
• Have at least one space without an audience; indifference is not the same as resilience.