I’ve been hard on myself most of my life. As a perfectionist, I learned at an early age that I needed to do things the “right” way in order to gain approval. And so I did just that. It was what I always knew, and it worked for me through my time in school. But at a certain point, as I began to navigate my adult life, there was an underlying feeling of unease when I would acknowledge my constant stream of self-judgment.