Eldest Daughter Syndrome and learning to take criticism

When what other people think about you literally *IS* your business

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I am the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter.

I am three generations deep into being The Responsible One™. I am Meadow Soprano. I am Lisa Simpson. I am Jane Bennett and Meg March. I am SPARTACUS.

The last one ran away with me, full disclosure; I’ve taken valium today (back injury, ugh etc).

Is it – I ASK YOU – any wonder that I lean in heavily to such eldest-daughter-syndrome tropes as: being the good example setter for an entire generation of a family’s grandchildren, being the high achiever, being a ‘second parent’ to my sister, naturally gravitating toward leadership, feeling independent very early (and very powerfully) in life. If you’re an eldest daughter, you’ll know.

This piece by Emma Specter says:

“People dealing with the effects of eldest-daughter syndrome might find themselves struggling to uphold boundaries, devoting too much of their energy to people-pleasing, or finding it hard to shake a type A or overachiever mentality in their day-to-day lives.”

I’m ticking boxes here like someone who doesn’t understand what’s involved in PR-STV voting.

Anway. A fear of failure and a desire for perfection are also traits of, well, me. Not all eldest daughters, blah blah. But I definitely lean in to both of these. Fear of failure, in me anyway, leads to a desire for control. Desiring control AND perfection does not a balanced person make, I can confirm.

When perfection is not achieved (which, spoiler alert, it very rarely is my friends) I don’t take it well. It itches as me, the injustice of it. When the absence of perfection exists in my personal life, I can hack it. Just. But when I aim for professional perfection and miss my mark – well…

I had my six month review at my wonderful new(ish!) job recently and thankfully, praise be, it went better than I could’ve hoped. HOWEVER. One of the categories I had to self-assess and then have re-assessed by my boss was around feedback and criticism. I noted on my assessment that I didn’t feel I took negative OR positive feedback well. My boss, as is his right, agreed with my self-assessment. 

You see, my Eldest Daughter conditioning means that when it comes to negative feedback, I take it on a one-way flight to the centre of my heart, no stopovers. 

I plant it in the ground there and let it sprout shoots, which prod at my self-esteem for weeks on end. It upends my ability to concentrate, it sends me into a revision spiral where I relive every piece of negative feedback I’ve ever received.

Positive feedback goes equally badly for me. I assume straight away that it’s undue praise, given only to soften the blow of the negative, or I brush it off by saying something vague like ‘oh, team effort!’ and then scuttling away. I revert to my deeply embedded imposter syndrome in a flash.

But back to the negative feedback issue, which I feel more people will identify with finding tricky, and how I’m trying to learn to handle it.