EP 127: Real Confidence- Staying Confident When Criticism Hits Hard

March 01, 2026

You know what we don’t talk enough about? Nasty feedback.

Not constructive feedback. Not “well-meaning suggestions.” I mean the kind that lands sideways, feels personal and makes your stomach drop before your brain can catch up. The kind that instantly puts you on the defense, even if a tiny part of you wonders whether there’s something in there worth paying attention to.

This episode came out of years of being on stages, publishing work, putting ideas into the world and inevitably getting feedback that stings. No matter how much praise surrounds it, a sharp comment still finds a way to linger. I wanted to talk honestly about that moment: the internal scramble between wanting to dismiss it completely and secretly replaying it later, wondering if it says something uncomfortable about you.

What I explore here isn’t about becoming thicker-skinned or pretending criticism doesn’t matter. It’s about what confidence actually looks like after the feedback hits. The pause. The emotional surge. And how quickly confidence can wobble if we don’t know how to separate who we are from what someone just said about our work, our presence or our performance.

There’s also a quieter question underneath all of this: what responsibility do we have once the feedback is in our hands?

This episode is an invitation to rethink how you engage with criticism that feels unfair, clumsy or poorly delivered and how to stay grounded enough to decide what, if anything, deserves your energy.

Because confident people aren’t immune to feedback—they’re just better at not letting it run the show.

Episode Transcript

EP 127

The Wisdom in nasty feedback

Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.

Alyssa:
Your breath stinks and your baby's ugly. I cracked up when I read that phrase years ago. I thought it was hilarious, and then I thought, well, how would I feel if somebody said that to me right? At least with my breath I could do something about but I think that criticism often is laced with wisdom, and when it's offered in the proper way, we call it feedback, right? It's just that unfortunately, when it's delivered, communicated in a way that feels aggressive or attacking in any way we get defensive. And even if we think the person's right, you know, maybe there is a possibility our baby's ugly, right? It just it, we get defensive. We put up that cave person reaction, because they are saying something about us that's not so positive, right? Think about that.

Now turning to something every day, you know that happens. I do a lot of presentations and written quite a lot of books and even TED talks, so I get a lot of negative criticism, whether I like it or not. I was joking in the last keynote I gave at a large Women's Leadership Conference, there were about 1200 people in the room and a couple 100 online. And I said, you know, I know you're all going to fill in feedback forms, and probably, you know, 11,198 people in the room will give me some nice positive feedback, and then there's going to be two people here that will inevitably say something really negative and doesn't matter what I do or how well I do it, it's just that two of you are going to give me negative feedback. That's what I found over the years. And sure enough, when I got the feedback, it was exactly that. And the funny thing was that all the ones that were positive, I would say about 30, 40% maybe even 50% of them, the reason they liked it so much they stayed is because of my great energy. And wouldn't you know it, the people that, the two people that said didn't love it was because they didn't think I had enough energy. So there you go. We can't please everyone, clearly. But as I said in the presentation, I won't deny here that you know two people that didn't like me still feels like eh, even though I could kind of rationalize it and think about the fact that they probably are weren't paying attention. But you know, it is what it is, and we do take things personally. It's not even a measure of who you are, it's what you did. And you can say to yourself, well, I'll just do it differently next time, right?

But even that doesn't really soothe the ego, so I want to talk about the kind of feedback that we get, because even if it's delivered in that way, in a kind of negative, hurtful way, not only can we decompartmentalize it or compartmentalize it, I should say, and say, Look, you know what, there's some some information in this nugget of nastiness that we should pay attention to, that we should think about, aside from, you know, take the kernel off of it, take that hard shell off of that person, and see if there's any value in it, and maybe even Feel sorry for that person, right? Because they're trying to do something helpful, but they're not doing it in a very good way. And there probably is some nugget in not all of it. I mean the energy example, clearly, I don't know, give more energy, take less energy. I don't know what I was supposed to do with that, but I think that most of the time it is a person who wants to do the right thing, giving them maybe a benefit of the doubt that I shouldn't, but I think they're trying to tell you something that they think will be helpful, but they're not delivering it in a way that feels good and helpful. So. Sure we can look at that and peel it apart and still look at it in a way that says, Okay, what were they trying to say? But it still may hurt, right? It still may not feel good. And the question is, does it matter? Should we go through that effort, right? There's always this question of, hey, wait a minute. They should learn to deliver it better. They should get better communication skills. But when it's delivered to us at that moment in time, whether they have the skills or not, it falls in our lap like a hot potato, and we have to decide what we're going to do with it.

Are we going to toss it away and just say that person doesn't know what they're talking about, or that person doesn't have good perspective, or they're crazy, or whatever dismissal excuse me on. Are we going to just toss it aside? Are we going to look at that hot potato and say, I'm going to take the shell off and I'm going to use some extra strong oven mitts this time, because I know that this potato's hot, this person came in hot, and I recognize that, but it may have nothing to do with me, but there may be something inside that has value. Maybe there is a pearl that I can peel apart that I'm using lots of metaphors here. I don't know why, but it kind of feels right. You know that hard oyster shell, you know, take my shucking Tool and open it up, because I know how to do those things and see if there's something of value inside. So I want you to stew on that for a minute. Had to make oysters do, but you know why not? And I'm going to be right back with maybe some comforting ways to just look at that hot potato or oyster or whatever that is tossed in your lap that may or may not have some nugget of positive feedback or helpful feedback, I should say, and how to really get to the core of it, we'll be right back.

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Alyssa:
All right, so let's assume somebody just threw you a it doesn't even have to be super nasty, but not a positive, a negative piece of feedback, a something that, you know, you get and you say, right? It's that moment of, I'm so frustrated, you know, I put so much work into that book, they don't know what it's like to write or, boy, I'm the one on the stage. They're in the audience. They had the easy role, and I put all this time and energy and took all that bravery and courage to get on stage. And what do they know? Right? You immediately want to jump to that defensiveness. If you're feeling that happening. That's a signal, right? That's your amygdala trying to calm you down to say, you know that feedback doesn't matter. You're awesome and you are awesome.

So the first thing is feedback, regardless if you left that stage or you wrote that book, and you feel really good about it, don't feel any worse about it because one person tossed you this sour what apple, or whatever you want to use for your own metaphor, but I do want you to look at it in a way and ponder, what are they saying? What is the message in that mess? What are they trying to tell you and then disagree, like, peel apart the anger, the frustration, the justification, peel apart all that stuff, get it on the side and just tell it to sit there waiting and the nugget of information that was delivered, you know, you didn't have enough energy, or you know your book wasn't well edited, or I didn't really follow the storyline, or whatever it is, look at that, take that as a piece of data, and then you can decide, man, I don't agree I had plenty of energy or you can say, Hm, well, maybe next time I will consider that as I'm working on this in the future.

It can be really hard, right? Right, especially if it's something like a book or presentation that you can't go back and necessarily change immediately, but maybe the next time you can change it or do better. Right? As an author, I've written many books, and every one of them gets better because of the feedback I get, positive and negative and on the stage, trust me, I've had so much negative feedback over the years, you know 1000s of presentations. You kind of have a collection. It just helps you grow and create better. The other thing I want you to do is if you know who the person is, if not a an anonymous person is, I want you to thank them for that feedback. And this takes a lot of balls. Takes a lot of courage, because you want to acknowledge that you heard that person, and you can say to them, you know, I know that it takes sometimes confidence or courage to provide feedback, and I do appreciate what you sent me. You do not have to say that you agree with it. You do not have to get defensive. In fact, I suggest you don't and really be the better person. Take the high road in all of this.

I want you to remember that you can't control other people. We know this, right? We just can't. We can maybe control our kids a little bit, maybe our significant others, but really can't control other people and the way that they're going to plow through life, but we can certainly control how we react. So what I'm suggesting to you is not only look at it objectively for your own sake, to maybe there's something positive you can use out of it, but to calm yourself down enough that you can say to that person, thanks for the feedback, right? And either go get yourself a mint, if it's your breath that stinks, or move on and just assume that person has no tools, no communication skills, anger, frustration, jealousy, whatever their issue is, it's for them to deal with. All right. Well, I hope this has been helpful. Don't be nasty, but do give people feedback in a positive, loving, compassionate way when you can, and maybe feel a little sorry for those who don't know how to do that yet. All right, see you next podcast.

Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others, and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.

EP 127: Real Confidence- Staying Confident When Criticism Hits Hard

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