Judgement gets spoken about like it’s something you shouldn’t be doing. People say don’t judge, be less judgemental, let things go. But the truth is you are always judging and you need to be. 

Judgement allows you to see something and decide what it means. You hear something and you decide if it feels right. You walk into a situation and you decide if you are comfortable. That isn’t a bad habit, that’s how your brain keeps you safe.

Judgement is how you work out what is ok for you and what isn’t. It’s how you decide who and what you trust and where you feel comfortable. It’s how you recognise when something doesn’t feel right for you.

It’s not just about judging people, it’s far more than that.

It’s about situations, decisions and the choices you make every day. You use judgement when you decide whether to speak or stay quiet, when you decide if something is worth your time and when you decide if something feels safe enough to try.

It’s also how you measure yourself. You think about whether you are doing this right, whether that was good enough and whether you should have done something differently. That is judgement too. So it isn’t something you switch on in certain moments, it is running all the time on automation, shaping what you do, what you may need to avoid and how you see yourself.

So judgement isn’t the problem. The problem is when it stops being about safety and starts being about approval.

Because the same system that keeps you safe is also trying to help you fit in. It is trying to work out how to be accepted, how to avoid being criticised and how to avoid being judged. For me, with my ADHD and rejection sensitivity, this was massive.

This wasn’t just a passing thought about being judged. It shaped how I showed up. It shaped what I said and what I didn’t say. It meant I was constantly checking what I was saying and how I thought I was coming across.

I wasn’t just thinking about what felt right for me, I was thinking about how it would be seen, how it would be taken and whether I would be judged for it.

I spent years overthinking what people thought of me. I had been told I was too much, that I was difficult, that I was too sensitive, that I didn’t have a sense of humour and that I took things too seriously. So I was constantly checking myself.

After conversations I would go back over everything I said. I would think about whether I had said too much, whether I had got something wrong, whether I had upset anyone and whether people even liked me. Nothing had to actually happen. No one needed to say anything. My own judgement was already doing it.

If you are used to being judged, or you believe you are, your mind learns to stay one step ahead of it. It tries to work it out before it happens.

This was really big for me when I started thinking about posting videos on social media. At first it was general, I was thinking about what people would think, what if I got it wrong, what if I said something that didn’t make sense. Then it changed. I was able to post on my private groups but not on my main profile and then it became about two specific people.

I’d heard them judge others and I had seen how quickly they formed opinions. So my mind focused on them. I started thinking about what they would say, what they would think and what if they judged me in the same way. Nothing had actually happened, but my brain had already decided there was a risk.

That is judgement doing its job. It is scanning for anything that could cause discomfort or rejection and trying to avoid it.

And this is where it becomes important to be aware of what is actually happening. Because in that moment, judgement wasn’t helping me stay safe in a real situation. It was stopping me from doing something I wanted to do. It had moved from protection into limitation.

Judgement starts as something that protects you, but over time it can start to control you. Not because there is something wrong with you, but because your brain has learnt that being accepted matters, that being judged doesn’t feel safe and that getting it wrong could lead to rejection.

So it tries to prevent that before it even happens. That’s why you stop yourself before you speak, why you replay conversations afterwards and why you hold back from doing things you actually want to do. Not because you can’t, but because your judgement is trying to keep you within what feels safe.

Not all judgement is useful. Some of it is based on what is actually happening in front of you and some of it is based on what you think might happen. That is where awareness starts to matter.

Once you can see that, you can begin to separate the two. You can start to notice whether this is about something that is happening right now or something you think might happen and whether it’s helping you or stopping you.

You don’t need to change it straight away. You just need to become aware of it. Because when you see it clearly, it stops feeling like something that is just happening to you on automation.

You start to see where it comes from, when it is useful and when it isn’t.

And that is where everything else begins to shift. This is the first of 4 blogs on judgement so come back next week and read the next one!