How do I deal better with feedback in an online class?

August 29, 2023 7:49 AM

How do I take non-professional artistic feedback less personally? I'm fine with feedback at my job so I don't understand why I get so upset with feedback in a different setting.

I have been working in my (artistic) field for more than 20 years and have no trouble taking feedback on my professional work. I am for the most part able to not take it personally. I might not be happy about getting notes on my work (even if it might be quite harsh) but I'm able to take a walk, sit back at my desk, shrug and say it's not my project, it's the client's, and implement the feedback.

But for the past roughly several years, due to lack of work in my preferred field, I have been trying to reskill in an area that's adjacent to the one I've been working in, doing a several 'mentorships'/ online classes. Here feedback is delivered as 10-40 minute video critiques. I have such a tough time with these - I procrastinate watching them, and once I start I can only watch a couple minutes at a time before I become really emotionally overwhelmed with the feedback. I feel unable not to take it very personally. The way it's delivered feels very patronizing and condescending. I feel like this is more of a 'me' problem than a problem with the instructor because I've felt this way about the feedback from several different instructors (though some have been better, some worse) Whether it's my fault or theirs I need to find a way to get past this so I can watch the critiques and learn from them, without it taking me all day to watch a 40 minute critique and without me wasting the entire weekend being upset about a critique and even more upset about having my whole weekend wasted on being upset (I'm still working a 9-5 on top of doing classwork so my free time is limited.)

Yes, therapy/meditation I'm sure is the ultimate answer but I have until the end of the year in this particular class and I would still like to get something out of it and I know therapy/meditation are more of a long-term solution. Also no money/insurance coverage for that :( . I have been in therapy before for social anxiety issues and depression.

Suggestions for reframing or practical suggestions that can be implemented in the short term would be extremely helpful.

Also please be gentle, I know this is an extremely important and necessary skill in professional life and I've worked very hard on it so that I can deal with criticism in a professional manner. I feel like if someone posted this question I would have lots of helpful suggestions, that is why it is so frustrating to me that I feel like after several years I'm still at square one dealing with it in a non-professional setting.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (18 answers total)

Also please be gentle, I know this is an extremely important and necessary skill in professional life

Well… is it, though? I mean, multiple people I’ve worked with have remarked on how little ego I have around feedback, I really do take criticism well, but you could not fucking pay me enough to sit down and watch a FOURTY MINUTE VIDEO of someone taking my work apart. That’s not a situation you should ever encounter in your work or personal or creative life. Maybe this program is just structured in a way that sucks.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2023 [26 favorites]

First, it sounds like you’re approaching this really well, that you’re open but also self-aware!

While I need to think of a reframing, I can offer validation on how hard it can be to receive difficult feedback! It’s hard because you were an expert in the old area and the new iteration is close enough to make you feel like you should be “better” already. Restarting or refocusing as an adult can be so incredibly hard!! We are not used to having a beginner’s mind and the humility it takes. New experiences can be incredibly humbling or perhaps I should say humiliating!? Think of an older, experienced immigrant with high status in their home country moving to a new place only to have to start fresh with limited or no skills in the target language. Ultimately everything will work out for you in that you’ll feel more comfortable as your past and present skills flow together and experience increases but there are definitely growing pains.

I think if my own experience moving abroad at 19 with strong German skills versus at 34 with weak Spanish skills. Both situations had a happy end but the shift when I was older, even though it was fully my choice both times, was much harder: not due to my intellect but rather emotional hurdles. I had to transition from my older identity as an experienced teacher to a new one as a struggling student. I did the same thing learning how to dance, something I had always wanted to do. I made great progress and feel confident but it took being ok with being bad for awhile. I am so grateful that I can let go of my ego enough to be confident to try something new as an adult; indeed, such growth brings us joy in the long-term. You’re doing the work and perhaps simply knowing that one day it’ll all feel better is good enough for now?
posted by smorgasbord at 8:17 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

What you're feeling is totally normal, and I don't think this is exactly a "therapy" thing (I mean, yes, common CBT exercises would be perfect for this, but they don't need to be administered by a professional - a workbook would suffice) so much as a "gain experience until normalized" thing. It's just a fact that personal work that has more skin in the game is harder to hear criticism - or even just feedback, opinions, sometimes even compliments - on.

It's possible that some business-oriented techniques would help here, and the classic of course is Difficult Conversations, but you might also try Thanks For The Feedback.

The ultimate reframe is to treat feedback - criticism, editing, fact-checking, etc - as the teamwork it is meant to be, at least when you're inviting it. Especially when you're paying for it! I think this starts as making a real attempt to believe deep in your Art Heart that a) they WANT to help you and they think they're helping even if you are not so sure b) they are offering some benefit of their own skillset/expertise that you respect c) you are truly consenting to have this done to you and it's not an attack. And none of the critique you receive is binding - like any successful creative will tell you, sometimes the feedback is just flat wrong - and THAT is also useful as a springboard for your final decisions about the work as you are the final arbiter of the implementation, or may tip you off to a misinterpretation you weren't expecting and still have time to make modifications to avoid.

I don't think you're ever required to LOVE the experience of getting feedback, but I do think treating the step of going through feedback as a really important component to Process and therefore desired and appreciated helps cut through the tension of getting it.

It may also help to consider that unidirectional editorial/critique has its own challenges in effectiveness, but that there are limitations to everyone's time and other resources to provide this, and so if you feel this format is perhaps lacking that might well be because it is. Both of you are doing your best with a less-than-ideal format. You are allowed to take this with a grain of salt as more of an exercise in processing feedback than the substance of the feedback itself.

As someone who cries even when I get a good performance review and can barely stand being complimented much less critiqued, this shit is HARD. You are brave! You are doing the thing! The more you do it the easier (and more in-perspective) it gets!
posted by Lyn Never at 8:26 AM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mmmmmm, I don't know if this is a you thing. It's been several years of these classes--are you at all advanced in making this a career? It might be that you're sick of the criticism because you're not being paid, it's much easier to take notes if you're putting out an actual product at the end.
posted by kingdead at 8:44 AM on August 29, 2023

2nding the point that no professional feedback I‘ve ever had required me to listen to someone dissecting my work for half an hr+. Verbal feedback is normally a small number of specific observations with specific examples….for good reason, you can only take in so much verbal information, especially things you may not like to hear. People normally pick something to focus on, not everything.

Feedback on a document may entail some/many/dozens of comments but you work through them on a one by one basis.

So I just wanted to reiterate that the format sounds awful. Finding this difficult is not a failing.

Perhaps you could reframe this by listening for specific, actionable things as opposed to the feedback provider’s personal preferences for example. They are entitled to those but you don’t have to agree.

You also don’t have to listen to all of it. If you don’t hear anything specific, actionable in the first 5 or 10 mins….I’d personally stop and get on with the rest of my day. Anybody with any sense would not wait until the end to make key points. If you get through a few videos without anything useful in the first few mins that would go on my course evaluation…
posted by koahiatamadl at 8:49 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Some answers from this previous Ask may speak to you. For instance, given that you are in the process of learning a skill and joining a new field, maybe something has struck at your sense of self-worth as tied to identity or belonging, and maybe reminded you of a past time when others excluded you from a group and undermined you.

You mention that you feel emotionally overwhelmed, upset, patronized and condescended to. Can you be more specific and delve into the details? Like, what thoughts do you have, and what sensations do you feel? Noticing and naming those specifics can sometimes reduce their power.

A problem for you right now is that the aversion to these feelings is causing you to procrastinate or slowly work through one recording over multiple days. One way to reframe these experiences is, when you're having them, trying to get curious about what thoughts and sensations are being provoked. Instead of watching these videos with a goal of "learn from the feedback to become better at the skill," you could try a different goal: "notice patterns in what I am feeling and thinking as this feedback washes over me." Yes, it's unpleasant, but how is it unpleasant, and how does the unpleasantness differ from one instructor to the next, or by time of day, or by whether the piece they're critiquing is one you were happy with when you finished it?

Wishing you well.
posted by brainwane at 8:49 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Having been in a fair number of writing workshops, my good professors were really careful about constructing a framework for students to be supportive, kind and constructive when giving feedback. And then I had one class where I had to turn in a screenplay that I knew to be bad, not having been given nearly enough time to write a good full-length screenplay, and then just had to spend an hour hearing everything that was wrong with it.

Giving feedback on creative work in a way that doesn't hurt the artist's ego is tremendously difficult and most of the people who do it have not been trained to do it well - there are few established protocols for doing it well - and most of the people who do it do not care to be kind and careful about their feedback, because we (the learners) should be grateful for any pearls of wisdom from them (the experts).

So if you have not completely transcended your ego (as most of us haven't), and you're not lucky enough to get one of those very rare teachers who understands how to be kind and careful with their feedback, then, yes, it's going to be terrible! I can think of a couple reasons why it might be more terrible than getting that feedback in a professional context -

1) Your work feels more personal to you
2) Anxiety about reskilling/moving into a new field
3) Feeling like you have too much knowledge and expertise to be talked to as if this is your first rodeo

None of that solves the basic problem, but I wonder if it might be helpful just to acknowledge what's going on and reframe it for yourself in that way.

I think you probably already know that avoidance makes things worse. For one thing, you're stretching out the total time you spend feeling anxious about watching the critique - you're adding in all the time you spend procrastinating, and the whole day it takes you to watch the 40-minute critique. You're also teaching yourself that responding to discomfort by moving away from the source of the discomfort works (at least temporarily). The more you avoid it, the scarier it gets, in the same way that someone who avoids parties because they're scared of talking to people gets more nervous about going to parties and talking to people. But you would watch the critique immediately, all the way through, if it felt possible to you! I am definitely not trying to sell you on "just do it" because, if you could, you would.

So, I try to

1) recognize that I'm avoiding the thing
2) do some of the anxiety diffusion things in the book "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris until the thing feels at least a little bit more possible
3) Commit to doing a little bit more than I'm comfortable with - if you can usually watch 10 minutes of critique at a time, commit to doing 12 or 13 minutes
4) Then, be VERY NICE to myself when I'm done - I'm not allowed to say "Ugh, I've got to get better at this, I've got to do the whole thing at once," I'm only allowed to say "Good job for doing the thing!" I am not allowed to say "Ugh, I wish I hadn't done the thing I got critiqued on" - maybe, at worst, I can say "Next time I'll turn in a great project because I'll know to focus more on X."
posted by Jeanne at 9:26 AM on August 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Run that damn video through otter.ai and get a transcript!
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 9:49 AM on August 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

I think you've had some good advice about why this is hard, and some good reminders not to be too hard on yourself about it.

An anecdote from my own past in case it's helpful -- I faced something similar, I think, when entering a graduate program in a new field. I gritted my teeth and took the medicine of difficult feedback, and when I graduated I felt good about my perseverence. But I will say that a colleague in a very similar position to mine instead left our degree program for one that better suited her, and has done quite well for herself since. So: you can muscle through, with humility and self-compassion, but maybe there's another path. Only you can make that call.
posted by eirias at 9:53 AM on August 29, 2023

If it ain't working it doesn't matter if it is you or not, it still ain't working.

How about getting a speech to text app and getting it to convert the video to text, reading the text, and only then watching the video with the sound off so you can match any part where the critic says something like "And the way you blended colour here...."

How about looking at the text of the criticism and figuring out from that if the person doing the criticism is actually any good at giving criticism? Because you know, they are not. It's the job of an instructor to tailor their instruction to the student. It may be you who can't deal with their criticism but it is them who is providing criticism you can't deal with. Watch for the ratio of negative words to positive words. Watch for bias where they are basically dissing your written work because you write thrillers and they only appreciate cerebral novels about how pointless the world is.

If you have a text to work with you can edit it so that the meta message they are expressing is phrased in a useful way. "Your brushwork is clumsy and your colour blending is slapdash," can be rewritten by you as: "Work on brushwork control and spend more time on colour blending." Delete the original words. They don't like your backgrounds? "Central figures do not get negative feedback, so that's one of my strengths."

I'm going to turn your request back on you: "Please be gentle with yourself when you are hurting and look for practical ways to get better and more useful criticism." Quite honestly if the criticism comes across as patronizing that is probably because it IS. Also, tough criticism is often a compliment. The person tearing your work down may not be building it up because they know it is so good that they assume your ego is not looking for positive feedback but is looking for someone to zero in on the few little details where there is still room for improvement.

Think of the time and care that a virtuoso pianist spends going over those two bars, over and over and over.... because they spotted a certain lack of precision and think that a smoother delivery will add to the power the piece has to move emotions. Picky, picky, picky. 99 out of a hundred listeners will not be able to tell the difference between a recording of the piece before they put in the three hours that brought the two bars to a higher standard than the one they make after - but the virtuoso pianist will hear it, and so will a handful of other virtuoso pianists, and one little old lady who can't play the piano herself, but when she listens to the second recording will cry out in triumph, stop the recording and replay it five or six times while smiling with tears in her eyes.

Your job is to take the feedback you are getting, and turn your work from really really good, to God, I have no idea how anonymous gets that effect. You don't need to suffer to get there. The pianist who plays those two bars over and over, experimenting is in a state of flow. If the criticism is blocking your state of flow it's frankly not very useful criticism. It doesn't matter how gifted the instructor is. Their purpose is to provide useful criticism and they are failing at it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:00 AM on August 29, 2023

2nding the point that no professional feedback I‘ve ever had required me to listen to someone dissecting my work for half an hr+.

Depends on the field. Some of the best professional feedback I've ever gotten has been watching videos of myself doing my thing with contemporaneous feedback for twenty minutes-plus.

But...not routinely. (And...it's painful!!!) I do think that for more than ten minutes you need to pace yourself, but in a structured way: take fifteen-minute breaks every ten minutes to do a specifically calming activity of your choice. That should mean only about an hour and a half devoted to finishing the task.

You might also find it helpful to take written notes (if it's feasible given the medium). That way you will have a secondary focus on digesting and noting down the information that may give you some distance/absorb some of the emotional effect.
posted by praemunire at 10:27 AM on August 29, 2023

Do you have a friend or mentor (ideally in the field, but possibly not) who can watch your feedback and boil it down for you before you watch the video?

Maybe if you kind of know what's in it up front, it won't feel as excruciating.

And having a knowledgeable person give you a heads up that a particular critique is bullshit makes it much easier to not internalize it.
posted by BrashTech at 10:40 AM on August 29, 2023

Once I was on a course teaching a physical skill. The coach would video us all doing the thing. Then we would all go to the classroom, and they would put those videos frame by frame on a big screen so everyone could point out in detail where someone's ass was at the wrong angle or whatever. I was the least skilled student in the class by some distance, so you can bet my ass was often at the wrong angle!

It was a fairly excruciating experience. I had a set of thoughts that helped me get through it (YMMV of course):

- I'm really lucky to have access to such high level teaching (which it was)
- The critique is of my current skill level, it's not a value judgement and it's not about me as a person. I have the capacity to improve at this skill - and if I don't then there's probably something amiss with their teaching.
- They have identified a point for improvement! How fantastic! I'll go and work on that! Rapid feedback helps me improve, yay.
- These people will be so happy when I get better at this, and so will I.
- Remember that there's an entire field of sports psychology dedicated to the fact that sometimes training can make you feel shitty and your mind can get in the way of your performance. It's not just you. This is a hard thing. You can do it!

Also I would kind of cheer myself whenever I would "get knocked down and get up again", whether literally or metaphorically since there was plenty of both. "You got up again! Go you! You are the stubbornest!".

I would very deliberately associate positive feelings with "getting up again" to try and make sure I would keep doing it. Also I made sure to keep having sessions where I just did the activity for maximum fun and didn't stress about technique. It would have been easy to let my feelings about the lessons infect my attitude towards the activity itself, and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen.
posted by quacks like a duck at 10:56 AM on August 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Very, very strong second on using otter.ai or whatever else works for you to produce a transcript and then reading the transcript! The video comment format is way more excruciating than either text or in-person feedback, and I don't think there's any sense in which dealing with its specific horrors is an important or necessary professional skill. Transcript! Transcript!
posted by redfoxtail at 12:20 PM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

How about looking at the text of the criticism and figuring out from that if the person doing the criticism is actually any good at giving criticism?

This was the first thing that came to my mind, too. I've had to do a buuuunch of these kinds of round robin class critiques and they were just...never useful. At best they were misguided. At worst they were an excuse for a fellow student to get away with (what they thought was) being a witty bastard. I would trust a panel of instructors to deliver a salient (and actionable!) critique, but never a group of fellow students. Even if a fellow student was high level at your chosen craft, being able to offer constructive criticism is an entirely separate skill.

So it's likely them and not you, is what I'm saying.

Also, forty minutes?!?? This isn't YouTube. They don't need to pad for the algorithm or promote Raid: Shadow Legends. Jesus. Five to seven minutes max is sufficient to deliver what should be bullet points, and the instructor should be providing that kind of framework for the students to slot their critiques into.

The folks above have great advice on how to manage anxiety and how to minimize moments like these, but I also think you're not being served well by the critique portions of the classes you're taking, and that the instructors need to do better by you and your fellow students.
posted by greenland at 4:18 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

The fact that these critiques are being delivered as recordings stands out to me. To begin with, both parties are missing the human aspect that can make receiving critical feedback more palatable. It's also easy to imagine this turning into a kind of feedback conveyor belt on the instructor side, leading to what others are rightfully naming as unskillful critique. Also, is there a live/interactive component to these classes at all, or are the instructors responding to you as just a name on a screen? Do they have any context for who you are? Do you have a sense of how your own professional profile compares to other people taking these courses? Obviously there's a level on which these things are not relevant to whatever technical pieces of this new skill they're responding to. But I'm wondering if it's possible that some of the patronizing tone could be related to the instructors' assumptions that they're responding to a, say, college-age student who is new enough to this that they would actually benefit from some of the commentary that seems condescending to you rather than someone who is mid-career in an artistic profession.

That last point would probably be the emotional heart of it for me- there's something about not being given credit, so to speak, for who I am and what my qualifications are that lands in the neighborhood of not being seen. Other possibilities: you say you've struggled with social anxiety, and I can see where this could hit on feeling personally rejected. And maybe it just wounds your pride! That's okay too; you've earned some pride.

Since you say you want to stick with this, I think the best way to approach it is to just let it be hard. I do think it's worth thinking or journaling about what exactly it is that's happening under the surface. And then, rather than beating yourself with the 'why am I not more chill about this' stick, be your own friend in the struggle. Approach the videos (or transcripts--I think this is a fantastic idea if you're not losing important visual detail) with a soothing beverage in hand/in a comfortable place/whatever you can do to turn up the volume on physical ease. Allow yourself your own commentary about how the critiques are landing, and validate those feelings. It sucks to feel like you're not good at something yet. It sucks even more to feel like someone else thinks you're not good yet. That's real! Do you have a folder somewhere with work you're really proud of, or glowing feedback you've gotten from clients, etc.? If not, it might be worth creating one as a place you can dip into as a reminder of who you are and what you are capable of outside of this very limited course context. It's great that you've developed ways to handle feedback in the field in which you're really accomplished- but offering up creative output for other people to pick apart is fundamentally just a really vulnerable thing, and it's allowed to be that.
posted by wormtales at 6:00 AM on August 30, 2023

Giving and receiving criticism about work is something that people at art school, drama school, etc get used to (maybe you did) although it can obviously be done well or badly. But I agree that just receiving a video of feedback sounds so much worse!

That's so different from being in person or, at least, in a video conversation, where you and the other person can discuss the criticism. It probably also makes it easier for them to (probably unintentionally) be less tactful and harsher than if they were talking to you face to face.

Maybe this isn't a good answer, because I don't have a magic solution to make you feel better about it, but as someone who's had a lot of feedback about their work in various educational places, this sounds like a really rough way to do it.
posted by fabius at 7:08 AM on August 30, 2023

The class format is clearly not working for you. I would stop framing it as a "you" problem that deserves self-criticism, and rather take your avoidance as an indication that you need to find a different type of class for this kind of teaching or coaching or workshopping or whatever circle of hell it is that you're describing.

I believe that when this kind of thing does not take place in a physical space, in real time, it becomes very unlikely that you will be able to process the instruction or critique in a productive way. Personally, I would never put myself through this.
posted by desert outpost at 1:02 AM on August 31, 2023