HEALTH AND WELLBEING.

Fear of Judgment. 

At the heart of wellbeing is our ability to be authentically ourselves.

How does one come to know oneself as we continually evolve throughout our life span?? What is our authentic self? We can come to know our authentic self as our personality, however Gabor Mate challenges this presumption- “Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.”

Authenticity is an essential human need and one that can be compromised in the face of judgement.

Judgement, writes Marshall B Rosenberg a pioneering psychologist who’s work explored how language can unite and empower , is a form of life alienating communication-” it is the use of moralistic judgements that implies wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values”.

He explains how judgment either from ourselves or others alienates “A world of judgements it is a language rich with words that classify and dichotomise people and their actions.

This way we obscure the natural compassionate nature of ourselves and our capacity to relate to each other through our shared interiority- which is where the foundations of our authenticity are found. He continues “ at the root of much, if not all violence- whether verbal psychological, or physical, whether among family members, tribes or nations, is a kind of thinking that attributes the cause of conflict to the wrongness in one’s adversaries and a corresponding inability to think of oneselves or others in terms of vulnerability- what one might be feeling, fearing, yearning for or missing-”

And to be idealistic, and think that we wont encounter judgement in our lives, maybe a naivety to the realities of living. Judgement maybe an unnecessary- but harsh fact of life. So how can we face living truly- to continue to embrace our vulnerability in our most painful of moments.

Yes, if you build something people might judge it or dislike it. But if you don’t create and share the things that you have inside of you, then you’ll commit the far worse crime of rejecting yourself. You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you.- James Clear.

And Gabor Mate’s words complement this notion, and emphasise the importance of compassion and understanding- “Everything you judged about yourself served a purpose at the time”.

By Helen Coutts.

30 Oct. 2025.

References and Further Reading.

Rosenberg, Marshall B. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. 2nd ed. PuddleDancer Press, 2003.

Image Kim Verdebo.